• Title/Summary/Keyword: interest development

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The Role of Social Capital and Identity in Knowledge Contribution in Virtual Communities: An Empirical Investigation (가상 커뮤니티에서 사회적 자본과 정체성이 지식기여에 미치는 역할: 실증적 분석)

  • Shin, Ho Kyoung;Kim, Kyung Kyu;Lee, Un-Kon
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.53-74
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    • 2012
  • A challenge in fostering virtual communities is the continuous supply of knowledge, namely members' willingness to contribute knowledge to their communities. Previous research argues that giving away knowledge eventually causes the possessors of that knowledge to lose their unique value to others, benefiting all except the contributor. Furthermore, communication within virtual communities involves a large number of participants with different social backgrounds and perspectives. The establishment of mutual understanding to comprehend conversations and foster knowledge contribution in virtual communities is inevitably more difficult than face-to-face communication in a small group. In spite of these arguments, evidence suggests that individuals in virtual communities do engage in social behaviors such as knowledge contribution. It is important to understand why individuals provide their valuable knowledge to other community members without a guarantee of returns. In virtual communities, knowledge is inherently rooted in individual members' experiences and expertise. This personal nature of knowledge requires social interactions between virtual community members for knowledge transfer. This study employs the social capital theory in order to account for interpersonal relationship factors and identity theory for individual and group factors that may affect knowledge contribution. First, social capital is the relationship capital which is embedded within the relationships among the participants in a network and available for use when it is needed. Social capital is a productive resource, facilitating individuals' actions for attainment. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1997) identify three dimensions of social capital and explain theoretically how these dimensions affect the exchange of knowledge. Thus, social capital would be relevant to knowledge contribution in virtual communities. Second, existing research has addressed the importance of identity in facilitating knowledge contribution in a virtual context. Identity in virtual communities has been described as playing a vital role in the establishment of personal reputations and in the recognition of others. For instance, reputation systems that rate participants in terms of the quality of their contributions provide a readily available inventory of experts to knowledge seekers. Despite the growing interest in identities, however, there is little empirical research about how identities in the communities influence knowledge contribution. Therefore, the goal of this study is to better understand knowledge contribution by examining the roles of social capital and identity in virtual communities. Based on a theoretical framework of social capital and identity theory, we develop and test a theoretical model and evaluate our hypotheses. Specifically, we propose three variables such as cohesiveness, reciprocity, and commitment, referring to the social capital theory, as antecedents of knowledge contribution in virtual communities. We further posit that members with a strong identity (self-presentation and group identification) contribute more knowledge to virtual communities. We conducted a field study in order to validate our research model. We collected data from 192 members of virtual communities and used the PLS method to analyse the data. The tests of the measurement model confirm that our data set has appropriate discriminant and convergent validity. The results of testing the structural model show that cohesion, reciprocity, and self-presentation significantly influence knowledge contribution, while commitment and group identification do not significantly influence knowledge contribution. Our findings on cohesion and reciprocity are consistent with the previous literature. Contrary to our expectations, commitment did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This result may be due to the fact that knowledge contribution was voluntary in the virtual communities in our sample. Another plausible explanation for this result may be the self-selection bias for the survey respondents, who are more likely to contribute their knowledge to virtual communities. The relationship between self-presentation and knowledge contribution was found to be significant in virtual communities, supporting the results of prior literature. Group identification did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in this study, inconsistent with the wealth of research that identifies group identification as an important factor for knowledge sharing. This conflicting result calls for future research that examines the role of group identification in knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This study makes a contribution to theory development in the area of knowledge management in general and virtual communities in particular. For practice, the results of this study identify the circumstances under which individual factors would be effective for motivating knowledge contribution to virtual communities.

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Development of Sentiment Analysis Model for the hot topic detection of online stock forums (온라인 주식 포럼의 핫토픽 탐지를 위한 감성분석 모형의 개발)

  • Hong, Taeho;Lee, Taewon;Li, Jingjing
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.187-204
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    • 2016
  • Document classification based on emotional polarity has become a welcomed emerging task owing to the great explosion of data on the Web. In the big data age, there are too many information sources to refer to when making decisions. For example, when considering travel to a city, a person may search reviews from a search engine such as Google or social networking services (SNSs) such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. The emotional polarity of positive and negative reviews helps a user decide on whether or not to make a trip. Sentiment analysis of customer reviews has become an important research topic as datamining technology is widely accepted for text mining of the Web. Sentiment analysis has been used to classify documents through machine learning techniques, such as the decision tree, neural networks, and support vector machines (SVMs). is used to determine the attitude, position, and sensibility of people who write articles about various topics that are published on the Web. Regardless of the polarity of customer reviews, emotional reviews are very helpful materials for analyzing the opinions of customers through their reviews. Sentiment analysis helps with understanding what customers really want instantly through the help of automated text mining techniques. Sensitivity analysis utilizes text mining techniques on text on the Web to extract subjective information in the text for text analysis. Sensitivity analysis is utilized to determine the attitudes or positions of the person who wrote the article and presented their opinion about a particular topic. In this study, we developed a model that selects a hot topic from user posts at China's online stock forum by using the k-means algorithm and self-organizing map (SOM). In addition, we developed a detecting model to predict a hot topic by using machine learning techniques such as logit, the decision tree, and SVM. We employed sensitivity analysis to develop our model for the selection and detection of hot topics from China's online stock forum. The sensitivity analysis calculates a sentimental value from a document based on contrast and classification according to the polarity sentimental dictionary (positive or negative). The online stock forum was an attractive site because of its information about stock investment. Users post numerous texts about stock movement by analyzing the market according to government policy announcements, market reports, reports from research institutes on the economy, and even rumors. We divided the online forum's topics into 21 categories to utilize sentiment analysis. One hundred forty-four topics were selected among 21 categories at online forums about stock. The posts were crawled to build a positive and negative text database. We ultimately obtained 21,141 posts on 88 topics by preprocessing the text from March 2013 to February 2015. The interest index was defined to select the hot topics, and the k-means algorithm and SOM presented equivalent results with this data. We developed a decision tree model to detect hot topics with three algorithms: CHAID, CART, and C4.5. The results of CHAID were subpar compared to the others. We also employed SVM to detect the hot topics from negative data. The SVM models were trained with the radial basis function (RBF) kernel function by a grid search to detect the hot topics. The detection of hot topics by using sentiment analysis provides the latest trends and hot topics in the stock forum for investors so that they no longer need to search the vast amounts of information on the Web. Our proposed model is also helpful to rapidly determine customers' signals or attitudes towards government policy and firms' products and services.

A Study of School Health Nursing Activity Performed Teachers Holding Additonal school Health (양호겸직교사의 학교보건간호 업무활동에 관한 조사연구)

  • Jung, Chan Gyoo;Chung, Yeon Kang
    • Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.108-130
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    • 1989
  • The purpose of this study is to provide the basic data for the development of school health nursing activities by surveying realities of school health nursing activities in schools lacking in a school nurse performed by teachers holding additional school health. The subjects for the study was selected from teachers holding additional school health who participated in the annual training course for teachers holding additional school health in 1988 organized by Province Education Council. 105 teachers holding additonal school health from Kyung-gi Province, 85 from Chung-buk province, 50 from Chun-buk Province, answered the questionaire. The results can be epitomized as follows. 1. General characteristics of Teachers Holding Additional School Health. The majority of the subjects are female (94.3%) and 64.1% of the subjects are in their twenties, 79.5% of them graduated from four-year teacher's college, 54.5% of them are unmarried, 74.5% has less than one-year experience as a teacher holding additional school health. 2. General characteristics of schools 92.4% of schools are national, of public schools, and 91.9% are located in country, elementary schools are 64%, junior high schools are 35.4%. The annual school nursing budget is unknow to 89.2% of them. The school nursing organization is non- existent to 85.6%. 82.4% of the school nursing clinics occupy their place solely, or jointly. 3. Status of School Health Nursing Activities In the questionaire, School Health Nursing Activities arc divided into Health Program planning and Evaluation (4 items), Clinic Management (4 items), Health Education (4 items), Management of School Environment 98 items), Operating of School Health Organization (1 item) and Health Care Service (25 items). The answers to each item measured by the Likert-type scale reveals that in the activities of techcrs holding additional school health the practice rate in Management of School Environment is 55%, 47% in Health Education, 45% in Health Program Planning and Evaluation, 32% in Health Care Service, 27% in Operating of School Health Organization, and 27% in Clinic Management. 4. The Relation between Influencing variables and School Health Nursing Activities. The results are as follows. (1) Health Program Planning and Evaluation: religion, marital status ($P<0.05^{**}$) (2) Clinic Management: age, school health organization ($P<0.05^{**}$) (3) Health Education: age ($P<0.01^*$), religion ($P<0.05^{**}$), business except for school nursing ($P<0.05^{**}$), form of operation ($P<0.05^{**}$), the number of clinic client a month ($P<0.05^{**}$). (4) Management of School Health Environment: age, marital status, business except for school nursing ($P<0.05^{**}$), presence of the annual school health nursing budget ($P<0.01^*$), school health organization ($P<0.05^{**}$). (5) Operating of School Health Organization: There is a statistical significance in Education, Interest in School Nursing ($P<0.05^{**}$). 5. The Regional Relationship of School Health Nursing Activity. There is a statistically significal difference in Health Education ($P<0.05^{**}$) and Health Care Service ($P<0.01^*$) of elementary school located in Kyung-gi, Chung-buk, Chun-buk Province. There is a statistically significant difference Health Program Planning and Evaluation of junior high Schools located in Kyung-gi, Chung-buk, Province ($P<0.05^{**}$). 6. The Correlation in School Health Nursing Activities. The analysis of the correlation in the 6 fields of school Health Nursng Activities shows that there is a statistically significant difference between Clinic Management and health Education, Clinic Management and Operating of School Health Organization, and between management of School Environment and operating of School Health Organization ($P<0.05^{**}$). The conclusions are as follows The 40.5 percent of schools should arrange nurse teachers by regulation 38, relative to the application of the Law of Education. But, in reality, teachers who have nothing to do with nursing, hold school health as an additional job. And it is very difficult to expect the qualititive health management of school faculty and students. In the 85.6 percent of schools, there is no organization for school health. And also, persons in charge of pracitcal affairs perform the school health activity without any knowledge about annual school health nursing budget. In the school health nursing activity of teacheres holding additional school health, operating of school, health organization and clinic management are the most difficult to get the cooperation from the persons relate to school and communities. There are a lot of problems in performing the school health nursing activity without any disposition of school health teachers, therefore, it is necessary to supplement school health teachers who had a professional training in order to make efficient the school health nursing management for children who are about to attend a school.

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A Study on the Influence of Consumer Type on the Choice of Next-Generation Eco-Friendly Vehicle and Consumer Purchase Intention - Comparative Study on Japan and Korea - (소비자 유형이 차세대 친환경자동차선택속성과 소비자 구매의도에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구 - 한국 일본 비교연구 -)

  • Yim, Ki-Heung;Chong, Min-Young
    • Journal of Digital Convergence
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    • v.15 no.11
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    • pp.133-146
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    • 2017
  • In recent years, the development and market participation of major makers of next-generation eco-green vehicles has been accelerating. Consumer interest has also increased. Consumer characteristics, consumption type, characteristics of next-generation eco-friendly vehicles, and government policies on next eco-green vehicles. The results of this study are as follows. In Korea, there was no significant difference by gender, age, monthly average income, and consumer type. However, there was no significant difference in purchase intention by gender, age, and monthly income, Respectively. In the case of Japan, there was no significant difference by gender, age, monthly income, and consumer type. In Korea, on the other hand, images such as brand, color, and design have positive effects on eco-friendly vehicles. In the case of Japan, image and stability have a positive effect on consumers' purchasing behavior. Therefore, it is important for Japanese consumers to consider not only the image of purchasing an eco-friendly vehicles, but also the safety of the vehicles body, appear. In the case of Korea, the socio-environmental value-seeking type has a significant relationship with the purchasing intention. In the case of socio-environmental value-seeking type, the government's support policy such as carbon dioxide tax, direct support from the national or local governments, gasoline tax, Carbon tax and fuel related tax relief showed positive effects. In the case of Japan, the price-seeking type and the socio-environmental value-seeking type were found to have a significant relationship with the purchasing intention. Both the price-seeking type and the socio-environmental value-seeking type showed that the carbon dioxide tax, Direct support, gasoline tax, gasoline tax, and carbon tax, etc. have positive effects.

A Study on Strategy for developing LBS Entertainment content based on local tourist information (지역 관광 정보를 활용한 LBS 엔터테인먼트 컨텐츠 개발 방안에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Hyun-Jeong
    • Archives of design research
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    • v.20 no.3 s.71
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    • pp.151-162
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    • 2007
  • How can new media devices and networks provide an effective response to the world's growing sector of cultural and historically-minded travelers? This study emerged from the question of how mobile handsets can change the nature of cultural and historical tourism in ubiquitous city environments. As wireless network and mobile IT have rapidly developed, it becomes possible to deliver cultural and historical information on the site through mobile handset as a tour guidance system. The paper describes the development of a new type of mobile tourism platform for site-specific cultural and historical information. The central objective of the project was to organize this cultural and historical walking tour around the mobile handset and its unique advantages (i.e. portability, multi-media capacity, access to wireless internet, and location-awareness potential) and then integrate the tour with a historical story and role-playing game that would deepen the mobile user's interest in the sites being visited, and enhance his or her overall experience of the area. The project was based on twelve locations that were culturally and historically significant to Korean War era in Busan. After the mobile tour game prototype was developed for this route, it was evaluated at the 10th PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival). After use test, some new strategies for developing mobile "edutainment content" to deliver cultural historical contents of the location were discussed. Combining 'edutainment' with a cultural and historical mobile walking tour brings a new dimension to existing approaches of the tourism and mobile content industry.

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The Effects of the Heavy and Chemical Industry Policy of the 1970s on the Capital Efficiency and Export Competitiveness of Korean Manufacturing Industries (1970년대(年代) 중화학공업정책(重化學工業政策)이 자본효율성(資本效率性)과 수출경쟁력(輸出競爭力)에 미친 영향(影響))

  • Yoo, Jung-ho
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.65-113
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    • 1991
  • Korea's rapid economic growth of the past thirty years was led by extremely fast export growth under extensive government intervention. Until very recently, the political regimes were authoritarian and oppressed human rights and labor movements. Because of these characteristics, many inside and outside Korea are under the impression that the rapid economic growth was made possible by the government's relentless push for export growth through industrial targetjng. Whether or not the government intervention was pivotal in Korean economic growth is an important issue because of its normative implications on the role of government and the degree of economic policy intervention in a market economy. A good example of industrial targeting policy in Korea is the "Heavy and Chemical Industry (HCI)" policy, which began in the early 1970s and lasted for one decade. Under the HCI policy the government intervened in resource allocation through preferential tax, trade, and credit and interest rate policies for "key industries" which included iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, shipbuilding, general machinery, chemicals, and electronics. This paper investigates the effects of. the HCI policy on the efficiency of capital and the export competitiveness of manufacturing industries. For individual three-digit KSIC (Korea Standard Industrial Classification) industries and for two industry groups, one favored by HCI Policy and the other not, this paper: (1) computes capital intensities and discusses the impact of the HCI policy on the changes in the intensities over time, (2) estimates the capital efficiencies and examines them on the basis of optimal condition of resource allocation, and (3) compares the Korean and Taiwanese shares of total imports by the OECD countries as a way of weighing the effects of the policy on the industries' export competitiveness. Taiwan is a good reference, as it did not adopt the kind of industrial targeting policy that Korea did, while the Taiwanese and Korean economies share similar characteristics. In the 1973-78 period, the capital intensity rose rapidly for the "HC Group" the group of industries favored by the policy, while it first declined and later showed an anemic rise for the "Light Group," the remaining manufacturing industries. Capital efficiency was much lower in the HC Group than in the Light Group, at least until the late 1970s. This paper acribes these results to excess investments in the favored industries and concludes that growth could have been faster in the absence of the HCI policy. The Korean Light Group's share in total imports by the OECD was larger than that of its Taiwanese counterpart but has become much smaller since 1978. For the HC Group Korea's market share was smaller than Taiwan's and has declined even more since the mid-1970s. This weakening in the export competitiveness of Korea's industries relative to Taiwan's lasted until the mid-1980s. This paper concludes that the HCI policy had either no positive effect on the competitiveness of the Korean manufacturing industries or negative effects.

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Simulation of Pension Finance and Its Economic Effects (연금재정(年金財政) 시뮬레이션과 경제적(經濟的) 파급효과(波及效果))

  • Min, Jae-sung;Kim, Yong-ha
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.115-134
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    • 1991
  • The role of pension plans in the macroeconomy has been a subject of much interest for some years. It has come to be recognized that pension plans may alter basic macroeconomic behavior patterns. The net effects on both savings and labor supply are thus matters for speculation. The aim of the present paper is to provide quantitative results which may be helpful in attaching orders of magnitude to some of the possible effects. We are not concerned with the providing empirical evidence relating to actual behavior, but rather with deriving the macroeconomic implications for a alternative possibilities. The pension plan interacts with the economy and the population in a number of ways. Demographic variables may thus affect both the economic burden of a national pension plan and the ability of the economy to sustain the burden. The tax transfer process associated with the pension plan may have implications for national patterns of saving and consumption. The existence of a pension plan may have implications also for the size of the labor force, inasmuch as labor force participation rates may be affected. Changes in technology and the associated changes in average productivity levels bear directly on the size of the national income, and hence on the pension contribution base. The vehicle for the analysis is a hypothetical but broadly realistic simulation model of an economic- demographic system into which is inserted a national pension plan. All income, expenditure, and related aggregates are in real terms. The economy is basically neoclassical; full employment is assumed, output is generated by a Cobb-Douglas production process, and factors receive their marginal products. The model was designed for use in computer simulation experiments. The simulation results suggest a number of general conclusions. These may be summarized as follows; - The introduction of a national pension plan (funded system) tends to increase the rate of economic growth until cost exceeds revenue. - A scheme with full wage indexing is more expensive than one in which pensions are merely price indexed. - The rate of technical progress is not a critical element in determining the economic burden of the pension scheme. - Raising the rate of benefits affects its economic burden, and raising the age of eligibility may decrease the burden substantially. - The level of fertility is an element in determining the long-run burden. A sustained low fertility rate increases the proportion of the aged in total population and increases the burden of the pension plan. High fertility has inverse effects.

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NUI/NUX of the Virtual Monitor Concept using the Concentration Indicator and the User's Physical Features (사용자의 신체적 특징과 뇌파 집중 지수를 이용한 가상 모니터 개념의 NUI/NUX)

  • Jeon, Chang-hyun;Ahn, So-young;Shin, Dong-il;Shin, Dong-kyoo
    • Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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    • v.16 no.6
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    • pp.11-21
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    • 2015
  • As growing interest in Human-Computer Interaction(HCI), research on HCI has been actively conducted. Also with that, research on Natural User Interface/Natural User eXperience(NUI/NUX) that uses user's gesture and voice has been actively conducted. In case of NUI/NUX, it needs recognition algorithm such as gesture recognition or voice recognition. However these recognition algorithms have weakness because their implementation is complex and a lot of time are needed in training because they have to go through steps including preprocessing, normalization, feature extraction. Recently, Kinect is launched by Microsoft as NUI/NUX development tool which attracts people's attention, and studies using Kinect has been conducted. The authors of this paper implemented hand-mouse interface with outstanding intuitiveness using the physical features of a user in a previous study. However, there are weaknesses such as unnatural movement of mouse and low accuracy of mouse functions. In this study, we designed and implemented a hand mouse interface which introduce a new concept called 'Virtual monitor' extracting user's physical features through Kinect in real-time. Virtual monitor means virtual space that can be controlled by hand mouse. It is possible that the coordinate on virtual monitor is accurately mapped onto the coordinate on real monitor. Hand-mouse interface based on virtual monitor concept maintains outstanding intuitiveness that is strength of the previous study and enhance accuracy of mouse functions. Further, we increased accuracy of the interface by recognizing user's unnecessary actions using his concentration indicator from his encephalogram(EEG) data. In order to evaluate intuitiveness and accuracy of the interface, we experimented it for 50 people from 10s to 50s. As the result of intuitiveness experiment, 84% of subjects learned how to use it within 1 minute. Also, as the result of accuracy experiment, accuracy of mouse functions (drag(80.4%), click(80%), double-click(76.7%)) is shown. The intuitiveness and accuracy of the proposed hand-mouse interface is checked through experiment, this is expected to be a good example of the interface for controlling the system by hand in the future.

Biological Functions of N- and O-linked Oligosaccharides of Equine Chorionic Gonadotropin and Lutropin/Chorionicgonadotropin Receptor

  • Min, K. S.
    • Proceedings of the KSAR Conference
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    • 2000.10a
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    • pp.10-12
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    • 2000
  • Members of the glycoprotein family, which includes CG, LH, FSH and TSH, comprise two noncovalently linked $\alpha$- and $\beta$-subunits. Equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG), known as PMSG, has a number of interesting and unique characteristics since it appears to be a single molecule that possesses both LH- and FSH-like activities in other species than the horse. This dual activity of eCG in heterologous species is of fundamental interest to the study of the structure-function relationships of gonadotropins and their receptors. CG and LH $\beta$ genes are different in primates. In horse, however, a single gene encodes both eCG and eLH $\beta$-subunits. The subunit mRNA levels seem to be independently regulated and their imbalance may account for differences in the quantities of $\alpha$ - and $\beta$ -subunits in the placenta and pituitary. The dual activities of eCG could be separated by removal of the N-linked oligosaccharide on the $\alpha$-subunit Asn 56 or CTP-associated O-linked oligosaccharides. The tethered-eCG was. efficiently secreted and showed similar LH-like activity to the dimeric eCG. Interestingly, the FSH-like activity of the tethered-eCG was increased markedly in comparison with the native and wild type eCG. These results also suggest that this molecular can implay particular models of FSH-like activity not LH-like activity in the eCG/indicate that the constructs of tethered molecule will be useful in the study of mutants that affect subunit association and/or secretion. A single-chain analog can also be constructed to include additional hormone-specific bioactive generating potentially efficacious compounds that have only FSH-like activity. The LH/CG receptor (LH/CGR), a membrane glycoprotein that is present on testicular Leydig cells and ovarian theca, granulosa, luteal, and interstitial cells, plays a pivotal role in the regulation of gonadal development and function in males as well as in nonpregnant and pregnant females. The LH/CGR is a member of the family of G protein-coupled receptors and its structure is predicted to consist of a large extracellular domain connected to a bundle of seven membrane-spanning a-helices. The LH/CGR phosphorylation can be induced with a phorbol ester, but not with a calcium ionophore. The truncated form of LHR also was down-regulated normally in response to hCG stimulation. In contrast, the cell lines expressing LHR-t63I or LHR-628, the two phosphorylation-negative receptor mutant, showed a delay in the early phase of hCG-induced desensitization, a complete loss of PMA-induced desensitization, and an increase in the rate of hCG-induced receptor down-regulation. These results clearly show that residues 632-653 in the C-terminal tail of the LHR are involved in PMA-induced desensitization, hCG-induced desensitization, and hCG-induced down-regulation. Recently, constitutively activating mutations of the receptor have been identified that are associated with familial male-precocious puberty. Cells expressing LHR-D556Y bind hCG with normal affinity, exhibit a 25-fold increase in basal cAMP and respond to hCG with a normal increase in cAMP accumulation. This mutation enhances the internalization of the free and agonist-occupied receptors ~2- and ~17-fold, respectively. We conclude that the state of activation of the LHR can modulate its basal and/or agonist-stimulated internalization. Since the internalization of hCG is involved in the termination of hCG actions, we suggest that the lack of responsiveness detected in cells expressing LHR-L435R is due to the fast rate of internalization of the bound hCG. This statement is supported by the finding that hCG responsiveness is restored when the cells are lysed and signal transduction is measured in a subcellular fraction (membranes) that cannot internalize the bound hormone.

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A PLS Path Modeling Approach on the Cause-and-Effect Relationships among BSC Critical Success Factors for IT Organizations (PLS 경로모형을 이용한 IT 조직의 BSC 성공요인간의 인과관계 분석)

  • Lee, Jung-Hoon;Shin, Taek-Soo;Lim, Jong-Ho
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.207-228
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    • 2007
  • Measuring Information Technology(IT) organizations' activities have been limited to mainly measure financial indicators for a long time. However, according to the multifarious functions of Information System, a number of researches have been done for the new trends on measurement methodologies that come with financial measurement as well as new measurement methods. Especially, the researches on IT Balanced Scorecard(BSC), concept from BSC measuring IT activities have been done as well in recent years. BSC provides more advantages than only integration of non-financial measures in a performance measurement system. The core of BSC rests on the cause-and-effect relationships between measures to allow prediction of value chain performance measures to allow prediction of value chain performance measures, communication, and realization of the corporate strategy and incentive controlled actions. More recently, BSC proponents have focused on the need to tie measures together into a causal chain of performance, and to test the validity of these hypothesized effects to guide the development of strategy. Kaplan and Norton[2001] argue that one of the primary benefits of the balanced scorecard is its use in gauging the success of strategy. Norreklit[2000] insist that the cause-and-effect chain is central to the balanced scorecard. The cause-and-effect chain is also central to the IT BSC. However, prior researches on relationship between information system and enterprise strategies as well as connection between various IT performance measurement indicators are not so much studied. Ittner et al.[2003] report that 77% of all surveyed companies with an implemented BSC place no or only little interest on soundly modeled cause-and-effect relationships despite of the importance of cause-and-effect chains as an integral part of BSC. This shortcoming can be explained with one theoretical and one practical reason[Blumenberg and Hinz, 2006]. From a theoretical point of view, causalities within the BSC method and their application are only vaguely described by Kaplan and Norton. From a practical consideration, modeling corporate causalities is a complex task due to tedious data acquisition and following reliability maintenance. However, cause-and effect relationships are an essential part of BSCs because they differentiate performance measurement systems like BSCs from simple key performance indicator(KPI) lists. KPI lists present an ad-hoc collection of measures to managers but do not allow for a comprehensive view on corporate performance. Instead, performance measurement system like BSCs tries to model the relationships of the underlying value chain in cause-and-effect relationships. Therefore, to overcome the deficiencies of causal modeling in IT BSC, sound and robust causal modeling approaches are required in theory as well as in practice for offering a solution. The propose of this study is to suggest critical success factors(CSFs) and KPIs for measuring performance for IT organizations and empirically validate the casual relationships between those CSFs. For this purpose, we define four perspectives of BSC for IT organizations according to Van Grembergen's study[2000] as follows. The Future Orientation perspective represents the human and technology resources needed by IT to deliver its services. The Operational Excellence perspective represents the IT processes employed to develop and deliver the applications. The User Orientation perspective represents the user evaluation of IT. The Business Contribution perspective captures the business value of the IT investments. Each of these perspectives has to be translated into corresponding metrics and measures that assess the current situations. This study suggests 12 CSFs for IT BSC based on the previous IT BSC's studies and COBIT 4.1. These CSFs consist of 51 KPIs. We defines the cause-and-effect relationships among BSC CSFs for IT Organizations as follows. The Future Orientation perspective will have positive effects on the Operational Excellence perspective. Then the Operational Excellence perspective will have positive effects on the User Orientation perspective. Finally, the User Orientation perspective will have positive effects on the Business Contribution perspective. This research tests the validity of these hypothesized casual effects and the sub-hypothesized causal relationships. For the purpose, we used the Partial Least Squares approach to Structural Equation Modeling(or PLS Path Modeling) for analyzing multiple IT BSC CSFs. The PLS path modeling has special abilities that make it more appropriate than other techniques, such as multiple regression and LISREL, when analyzing small sample sizes. Recently the use of PLS path modeling has been gaining interests and use among IS researchers in recent years because of its ability to model latent constructs under conditions of nonormality and with small to medium sample sizes(Chin et al., 2003). The empirical results of our study using PLS path modeling show that the casual effects in IT BSC significantly exist partially in our hypotheses.