• Title/Summary/Keyword: less developed countries

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Shigellosis

  • Niyogi Swapan Kumar
    • Journal of Microbiology
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    • v.43 no.2
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    • pp.133-143
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    • 2005
  • Shigellosis is a global human health problem. Four species of Shigella i.e. S. dysenteriae, S. flexneri, S. boydii and S. sonnei are able to cause the disease. These species are subdivided into serotypes on the basis of O-specific polysaccharide of the LPS. Shigella dysenteriae type 1 produces severe disease and may be associated with life-threatening complications. The symptoms of shigellosis include diarrhoea and/or dysentery with frequent mucoid bloody stools, abdominal cramps and tenesmus. Shigella spp. cause dysentery by invading the colonic mucosa. Shigella bacteria multiply within colonic epithelial cells, cause cell death and spread laterally to infect and kill adjacent epithelial cells, causing mucosal ulceration, inflammation and bleeding. Transmission usually occurs via contaminated food and water or through person-to-person contact. Laboratory diagnosis is made by culturing the stool samples using selective/differential agar media. Shigella spp. are highly fragile organism and considerable care must be exercised in collecting faecal specimens, transporting them to the laboratories and in using appropriate media for isolation. Antimicrobial agents are the mainstay of therapy of all cases of shigellosis. Due to the global emergence of drug resistance, the choice of antimicrobial agents for treating shigellosis is limited. Although single dose of norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin has been shown to be effective, they are currently less effective against S. dysenteriae type 1 infection. Newer quinolones, cephalosporin derivatives, and azithromycin are the drug of choice. However, fluoroquinolone-resistant S. dysenteriae type 1 infection have been reported. Currently, no vaccines against Shigella infection exist. Both live and subunit parenteral vaccine candidates are under development. Because immunity to Shigella is serotype-specific, the priority is to develop vaccine against S. dysenteriae type 1 and S. flexneri type 2a. Shigella species are important pathogens responsible for diarrhoeal diseases and dysentery occurring all over the world. The morbidity and mortality due to shigellosis are especially high among children in developing countries. A recent review of literature (KotIoff et al.,1999) concluded that, of the estimated 165 million cases of Shigella diarrhoea that occur annually, $99\%$ occur in developing countries, and in developing countries $69\%$ of episodes occur in children under five years of age. Moreover, of the ca.1.1 million deaths attributed to Shigella infections in developing countries, $60\%$ of deaths occur in the under-five age group. Travellers from developed to developing regions and soldiers serving under field conditions are also at an increased risk to develop shigellosis.

A Study on the Market Penetration of Imported Apparel and Consumer Attitude toward the Country-of-Origin (시장 개방하에서 수입 의류의 시장 침투와 의류상품의 원산지에 대한 소비자 태도 조사)

  • 전경숙;민신기
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.357-367
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    • 1997
  • The success of apparel goods mainly depends on the purchase behavior of end use consumers. The decision making processes of apparel merchandise are very complicated according to the many information cues available to the consumers. The country-of-origin is one of the extrinsic cues to affect the consumers 'decision. To study the effect of country -of-origin, the Polo style knit shirts were chosen as stimuli to the male and the female subjects (total 527) aged from 18 to 35. The identical nine shirts (3 countries$\times$3 levels of price) were carefully manipulated for the treatments. The three countries labelled are Italy as industrialized country, China as less developed one, and Korea. In addition to the country-of -origin, the prices of the shirts were exposed to the respondents. The price levels were 14,000 won for the low, 39,000 won for the moderate, and 64,000 won for the high price level. The findings were as follows: 1) As price was increased, the perceived value and purchase intention were decresed. Price was not statistically significant to perceived quality, but it was significant to perceived value and willingness to buy. 2) The merchandise of "Made in Italy" was evaluated higher than those of "Made in Korea" and "Made in China" The country-of-origin had statistically significant influences on the perceived quality, perceived value and also willingness to buy. 3) The interaction between the two factors, country-of-origin and price, was not observed.n and price, was not observed.

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The Differences in the Selection of Outward FDI Locations between State- and Privately Owned Enterprises of China: Focusing on the Effects of Host Country Factors (중국 국유기업과 민간기업 간 해외직접투자 입지 차이 분석: 현지국 요인의 영향을 중심으로)

  • Ra, Wonchan;Wu, Mengqiu
    • Korea Trade Review
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    • v.44 no.6
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    • pp.345-361
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    • 2019
  • In recent years, Chinese firms have explosively increased outward foreign direct investment (oFDI). While state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are still dominant in Chinese oFDI, privately-owned enterprises (POEs) are also accelerating their internationalization. These two types of Chinese firms differ in their behavior regarding oFDI. The objective of this paper is to analyze the differences in the choice of oFDI locations between Chinese SOEs and POEs by considering host country factors. By integrating the literature on Chinese firms' oFDI and on FDI locations, we developed six hypotheses concerning how host country factors affect their choice of location. We tested our hypotheses by conducting multiple regression analysis with recent secondary data on 413 Chinese MNEs in 88 countries between 2005 and 2016. The results of the test show that in selecting oFDI locations, Chinese SOEs invest relatively more in countries with richer natural resources, more abundant strategic assets, less production efficiency, higher political risk, and lower institutional quality compared with Chinese POEs. It is our hope that the empirical results of this paper will contribute to research on Chinese oFDI.

What Exacerbates the Probability of Business Closure in the Private Sector During the COVID-19 Pandemic? Evidence from World Bank Enterprise Survey Data

  • PHAM, Thi Bich Duyen;NGUYEN, Hoang Phong
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.9 no.6
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    • pp.69-79
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    • 2022
  • The purpose of the study is to look into the likelihood of private sector enterprises going bankrupt due to COVID-19 pandemic-related issues. The data for this study was taken from the World Bank's Enterprise Survey, which was intended to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the business sector. This study uses the Ordinal Logit Method to analyze the model with dependent variables having ordinal values. The determinants reflect business performance, innovation, business relationships, and government support. According to the estimation results, a lower probability of business closures, illiquidity, and payment delays are found in businesses that maintain sales growth, operating hours, temporary workers, product portfolio, consumer demand, and input supply. Meanwhile, the increase in online business activities and receiving support from financial institutions and the government do not help businesses reduce the risk. Moreover, higher survival is found in manufacturing and developing countries. This implies the fragility of businesses in the retail and service sectors, especially for mega-enterprises in developed countries. In addition, the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses in Europe and West Asia is less severe than in other regions. The results imply policies to support the private sector during the pandemic, such as increasing labor market flexibility or rapidly implementing supportive policies.

A Systematic Review of Commercial Building Greening with CiteSpace

  • Yimeng Wu;Zhendong Wang;Kai Li;Hao Wang
    • International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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    • v.12 no.4
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    • pp.273-285
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    • 2023
  • The commercial buildings greening can generate multiple benefits to achieve a sustainable building and business environment. However, a comprehensive systematic review of commercial buildings greening across multiple disciplines has yet to be reported. This study conducted a systematic analysis of 39 literature on commercial building greening from Web of Science over the past 19 years and utilized CiteSpace to visualize the academic evolution and trends in this field. Key findings were: 1) The number of publications in the past five years has increased, indicating that commercial building greening research has received widespread attention. 2) The large number of publications means that the research field of commercial building greening is relatively broad. 3) The study of commercial building greening has become a global participation and cooperation research topic. The top cooperating countries mainly come from the United States and Europe, while the differences in cooperation between institutions in developing countries are less significant. 4) The greening of commercial buildings is more related to research on behavioral activities. 5) The research on commercial building greening has developed from architecture and plants to interdisciplinary fields, including psychology, economics, and management. 6) The cost of commercial buildings greening is generally an obstacle to installation. This study provides specific references for stakeholders and plays a crucial role in determining the evolution of commercial building greening research and predicting future research needs and opportunities.

Measuring Foreign Outsourcing and Labor Market Responses in US Manufacturing (해외 아웃소싱과 노동시장의 반응: 미국 제조업을 중심으로)

  • Choi, Minsik
    • Journal of Labour Economics
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    • v.30 no.2
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    • pp.119-148
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    • 2007
  • Foreign outsourcing, otherwise known as off-shoring, has become a matter of intense public debate and great concern in both developed countries and developing countries. Yet, there is a lack of good data on foreign outsourcing since the early 1990's. This paper presents updated measures of foreign outsourcing for the recent period. Its main findings are that the share of foreign-sourced goods in total manufactured inputs almost doubled-from 12.4 percent to 22.7 percent between 1987 and 2003. I then look at the relationship between the measure of foreign outsourcing activity and wages in US manufacturing industries in recent years from 1998 to 2003. The results show that for all workers, the outsourcing level is statistically significantly and negatively associated with industry wage premiums. The estimate suggests that a magnitude of 0.9 - a 9% decrease in industry wage premiums tends to accompany a 10% increase in industry outsourcing level. Outsourcing has a bigger effect on the less-skilled workers-industry outsourcing level increases by 10% and industry wage premiums decrease by about 11% in the case of less-skilled workers.

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Molecular Genetic Studies on 167 Pediatric ALL Patients from Different Areas of Pakistan Confirm a Low Frequency of the Favorable Prognosis Fusion Oncogene TEL-AML1 (t 12; 21) in Underdeveloped Countries of the Region

  • Iqbal, Zafar
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.15 no.8
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    • pp.3541-3546
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    • 2014
  • TEL-AML1 fusion oncogene (t 12; 21) is the most common chromosomal abnormality in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). This translocation is associated with a good prognosis and rarely shows chemotherapeutic resistance to 3-drug based remission induction phase of treatment as well as overall treatment. Thus, the higher the frequency of this fusion oncogene, the easier to manage childhood ALL in a given region with less intensive chemotherapy. Although global frequency of TEL-AML1 has been reported to be 20-30%, a very low frequency has been found in some geographical regions, including one study from Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan and others from India. The objective of present study was to investigate if this low frequency of TEL-AML1 in pediatric ALL is only in Lahore region or similar situation exists at other representative oncology centers of Pakistan. A total of 167 pediatric ALL patients were recruited from major pediatric oncology centers situated in Lahore, Faisalabad, Peshawar and Islamabad. Patients were tested for TEL-AML1 using nested reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Only 17 out of 167 (10.2%) patients were found to be TEL-AML1 positive. TEL-AML1+ALL patients had favorable prognosis, most of them (82.4%, 14/17) showing early remission and good overall survival. Thus, our findings indicate an overall low frequency of TEL-AML1 in Pakistan pediatric ALL patients, in accordance with lower representation of this prognostically important genetic abnormality in other less developed countries, specifically in south Asia, thus associating it with poor living standards in these ethnic groups. It also indicates ethnic and geographical differences in the distribution of this prognostically important genetic abnormality among childhood ALL patients, which may have a significant bearing on ALL management strategies in different parts of the world.

Social investment in Europe: bold plans, slow progress and implications for Korea

  • Taylor-Gooby, Peter
    • 한국사회복지학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2004.06a
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    • pp.3-50
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    • 2004
  • ${\cdot}$ Recent social policy and labour markets debates in Europe, responding to the difficulties faced by the traditional neo-Keynesian welfare state settlement, stress the value of positive investment alongside de-regulation and greater flexibility as a way of achieving both economic and social goals. ${\cdot}$ Patterns of policy reform are complex and reflect differing national circumstances. A general move towards deregulation, constraints on entitlement to passive benefits, programmes to enhance employment, particularly among high-risk groups such as single parents and young people, targeted subsidies for low earners and casemanagement may be identified. ${\cdot}$ In relation to investment in education, research and development and combined training and benefit programmes to enhance mobility between jobs the picture is less clear. Education standards continue to rise, but research and development spending stagnates and few countries have developed substantial ‘flexi-curity’ programmes to support job mobility. ${\cdot}$ The labour market tradition in much of Europe has been one of conflict between labour and employers. As labour grows weaker, new approaches develop. These tend to stress productivity agreements and greater flexibility in work practices within firms and reforms to passive social security systems more broadly, but movement to support the more challenging investment and flexi-curity policies is slow. ${\cdot}$ In general, social and labour market policies in Europe stress deregulation and negative activation more strongly than social investment and ‘flexi-curity’. The countries with high growth and employment achieve that goal by different routes: Sweden has a closely integrated social democratic corporatism with high spending on benefits and training programmes and the UK a more liberal market-oriented system, with lower spending, highly targeted benefits and less mobility support. ${\cdot}$ Europe has something to learn from Korea in achieving high investment in human capital and R and D, while Korea may have something to learn from Europe in social investment, particularly flexi-curity and equal opportunity policies.

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A Study on the Production Process Management Support System for Smart Shipyard Based on Mobile (모바일 기반 스마트 조선소 생산 공정관리 지원 시스템에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Ju-Yong;Oh, Hyoung-Seok;Lee, Dong-Kun
    • Journal of Welding and Joining
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    • v.32 no.5
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    • pp.58-64
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    • 2014
  • The shipbuilding industry is facing the various problems of less demand and oversupply owing to the global economic crisis and the increase in shipbuilding countries. Shipyards of the industry are making effort to strengthen their ability to handle the crisis via a smartwork technology for flexible working environment. In this study, we developed a smartwork system that manages the information in shipbuilding process with mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet PCs. To successfully apply the developed smartwork system to shipyards, we analyzed several best practices and management tasks of the shipbuilding processes. The developed system was designed by CBD approach that is a branch of service-oriented software engineering for reusability and flexibility on the system. As it is designed considering the flexible working environment, it supports to increase their productivity by reducing the time required to carry out tasks and by increasing the mobility required to manage work performance in field of shipyards.

Correlation between Total Sleep Time and Weekend Catch-up Sleep and Obesity based on Body Mass Index : A nationwide cohort study in Korea

  • Choi, Yoon-Hee
    • Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.1-11
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    • 2022
  • Purpose : Obesity is a major public health burden in developed countries and a well-known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Short sleep duration is associated with obesity, as well as diabetes, heart disease and death. In modern society, habitual sleep restrictions seem unavoidable due to social obligations and work schedules along with a tendency toward decreased sleep time. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of differences in sleep time between weekdays and weekends on body mass index (BMI). Methods : This study involved 4,234 Korean adults aged 20 to 64 years based on data obtained from the 7th national health and nutrition examination survey (2016). All subjects were classified into the weekend catch-up sleep group (weekend CUS group). and the non catch-up sleep group (non-CUS group). Results : The longer the average sleep time, the lower was the BMI, and the larger the difference in sleep time between weekdays and weekends, the lower was the BMI. Compared with those with an average sleep time of 8 hours or more, obesity was 1.6-fold higher when the average sleep time was less than 6 hours, and 1.2-fold higher in the case of sleep time of 7 hours or more and less than 8 hours. When the difference in sleep time between weekdays and weekends was 0 or less, more than 0 hours but less than 1 hour, and more than 1 hour and less than 2 hours, the risk of obesity was 1.2-fold, 1.1-fold and 1.1-fold higher, respectively, compared with the risk associated with a sleep time difference of 2 hours or greater between weekdays and weekends. However, the difference was not statistically significant. Conclusion : Short sleep duration is positively associated with obesity. In addition, weekend catch-up sleep affects BMI.