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A Critical Evaluation of the Correlation Between Biomarkers of Folate and Vitamin $B_{12}$ in Nutritional Homocysteinemia (엽산과 비타민 $B_{12}$ 결핍에 의한 호모시스테인혈증 흰쥐의 조직내 비타민 지표간의 상관관계 분석)

  • Min, Hye-Sun;Kim, Mi-Sook
    • Journal of Nutrition and Health
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    • v.42 no.5
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    • pp.423-433
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    • 2009
  • Folate and vitamin $B_{12}$ are essential cofactors for homocysteine (Hcy) metabolism. Homocysteinemia has been related with cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disease. We examined the effect of folate and/or vitamin $B_{12}$ deficiency on biomarkers of one carbon metabolism in blood, liver and brain, and analyzed the correlation between vitamin biomarkers in mild and moderate homocysteinemia. In this study, Sprague-Dawley male rats (5 groups, n = 10) were fed folatesufficient diet (FS), folate-deficient diet (FD) with 0 or 3 g homocystine (FSH and FDH), and folate-/vitamin $B_{12}$-deficient diet with 3 g homocystine (FDHCD) for 8 weeks. The FDH diet induced mild homocysteinemia (plasma Hcy 17.41 ${\pm}$ 1.94 nmol/mL) and the FDHCD diet induced moderate homocysteinemia (plasma Hcy 44.13 ${\pm}$ 2.65 nmol/mL), respectively. Although liver and brain folate levels were significantly lower compared with those values of rats fed FS or FSH (p < 0.001, p < 0.01 respectively), there were no significant differences in folate levels in liver and brain among the rats fed FD, FDH and FDHCD diet. However, rats fed FDHCD showed higher plasma folate levels (126.5 ${\pm}$ 9.6 nmol/L) compared with rats fed FD and FDH (21.1 ${\pm}$ 1.4 nmol/L, 22.0 ${\pm}$ 2.2 nmol/L)(p < 0.001), which is the feature of "ethyl-folate trap"by vitamin $B_{12}$ deficiency. Plasma Hcy was correlated with hepatic folate (r = -0.641, p < 0.01) but not with plasma folate or brain folate in this experimental condition. However, as we eliminated FDHCD group during correlation test, plasma Hcy was correlated with plasma folate (r = -0.581, p < 0.01), hepatic folate (r = -0.684, p < 0.01) and brain folate (r = -0.321, p < 0.05). Hepatic S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) level was lower in rats fed FD, FDH and FDHCD than in rats fed FS and FSH (p < 0.001, p < 0.001 respectively) and hepatic S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH) level was significantly higher in those groups. The SAH level in brain was also significantly increased in rats fed FDHCD (p < 0.05). However, brain SAM level was not affected by folate and/or vitamin $B_{12}$ deficiency. This result suggests that dietary folate- and vitamin B12-deficiency may inhibit methylation in brain by increasing SAH rather than decreasing SAM level, which may be closely associated with impaired cognitive function in nutritional homocysteinemia.

A Study on the Cultural Landscape Metamorphosis of ChoYeon Pavilion's Garden in SoonCheon City (순천 초연정(超然亭) 원림의 문화경관 변용 양상)

  • Kahng, Byung-Seon;Lee, Seung-Yoen;Shin, Sang-Sup
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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    • v.35 no.3
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    • pp.13-21
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    • 2017
  • The Cho-yeon Pavilion located in the Wangdae village in Samcheong-ri, Songgwang-myeon, Suncheon-si, was transformed into a place of refuge, a shrine, a vacation home, a lecture hall for kings. Based on the change, the current study has explored the periodic changing placeness and the transformation of cultural landscape and has figured out the meaning. The result of this study is as follows. First, "Cho-yeon", named by Yeonjae Song, Byeong-Seon, originated from Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. The concept is found not only in the Cho-yeon Pavilion in Suncheon but also in various places, such as, the Cho-yeon-dae in Pocheon, of the Cho-yeon-dae in Gapyeong, of the Cho-yeon-dae of the embankment behind the Gioheon of Changdeok-gung Garden, Cho-Yeon-Mul-Oe old buildings, including Jung(亭), Dae(臺), Gak(閣), of Ockriukag in Yuseong, etc. This shows that taoistic Poongrhu was naturally grafted onto confucian places, which is one of the examples of the fusion of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Second, the placeness of the Cho-yeon Pavilion area is related to a legend that King Gong-min sought refuge here at the end of the Koryo Dynasty. The legend is based on the Wangdae village(king's region), Yu-Gyeong(留京)(the place where kings stayed), rock inscription of Wang-Dae-Sa-Jeok, Oh-Jang-Dae (the place where admiral flags were planted), and the Mohusan Mountain. Third, the Cho-yeon Pavilion not only has a base(the vacation home) that reflects confucian values from the rock inscription(趙鎭忠別業, 趙秉翼, 宋秉璿) of the beautiful rock walls and torrents but also has territoriality as taoistic Abode of the Immortals (there are places where people believe taoist hermits with miraculous powers live within 1km of the pavillion: Wol-Cheong(月靑), Pung-Cheong(風靑), Su-Cheong(水靑), Dong-Cheon(洞天). The Cho-yeon Pavilion also reflects the heaven of Neo-Confucianism for, pursuing study, and improving aesthetic sense by expanding its outer area and establishing the nine Gok: Se-Rok-Gyo(洗鹿橋)., Bong-Il-Dae(捧日臺), Ja-Mi-Gu(紫薇鳩), Un-Mae-Dae(雲梅臺), Wa-Ryong-Chong(臥龍叢), Gwang-Seok-Dae(廣石臺), Eun-Seon-Gul(隱仙窟), Byeok-Ok-Dam(碧玉潭), and Wa-Seok-Po(臥石布). In sum, the Cho-yeon Pavilion is a complex cultural landscape. Fourth, the usage of the Cho-yeon Pavilion was expanded and transformed: (1)Buddhist monastery${\rightarrow}$(2)Confucian vacation home${\rightarrow}$(3)Vacation home+Taoistic Poongrhu Place${\rightarrow}$(4)Vacation Home+Taoistic Poongrhu Place+Lecture Hall(the heaven of Neo-Confucianism). To illustrate, in 7978, the place served as Buddist Monk Kwang-Sa's monastery; in 1863, Cho, Jin-Choong established a vacation home by building a shrine in front of the tomb of his ancestor; in 1864, Cho, Jae-Ho expanded its usage to a vacation home to serve ancestors as a taoistic place by repairing the pavilion with roof tiles; and after 1890, Cho, Jun-Sup received the name of the pavilion, Cho-yeon, from his teacher Song, Byeong-Seon, and used the Pavilion for a lecture hall.

A Study of 'Emotion Trigger' by Text Mining Techniques (텍스트 마이닝을 이용한 감정 유발 요인 'Emotion Trigger'에 관한 연구)

  • An, Juyoung;Bae, Junghwan;Han, Namgi;Song, Min
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.69-92
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    • 2015
  • The explosion of social media data has led to apply text-mining techniques to analyze big social media data in a more rigorous manner. Even if social media text analysis algorithms were improved, previous approaches to social media text analysis have some limitations. In the field of sentiment analysis of social media written in Korean, there are two typical approaches. One is the linguistic approach using machine learning, which is the most common approach. Some studies have been conducted by adding grammatical factors to feature sets for training classification model. The other approach adopts the semantic analysis method to sentiment analysis, but this approach is mainly applied to English texts. To overcome these limitations, this study applies the Word2Vec algorithm which is an extension of the neural network algorithms to deal with more extensive semantic features that were underestimated in existing sentiment analysis. The result from adopting the Word2Vec algorithm is compared to the result from co-occurrence analysis to identify the difference between two approaches. The results show that the distribution related word extracted by Word2Vec algorithm in that the words represent some emotion about the keyword used are three times more than extracted by co-occurrence analysis. The reason of the difference between two results comes from Word2Vec's semantic features vectorization. Therefore, it is possible to say that Word2Vec algorithm is able to catch the hidden related words which have not been found in traditional analysis. In addition, Part Of Speech (POS) tagging for Korean is used to detect adjective as "emotional word" in Korean. In addition, the emotion words extracted from the text are converted into word vector by the Word2Vec algorithm to find related words. Among these related words, noun words are selected because each word of them would have causal relationship with "emotional word" in the sentence. The process of extracting these trigger factor of emotional word is named "Emotion Trigger" in this study. As a case study, the datasets used in the study are collected by searching using three keywords: professor, prosecutor, and doctor in that these keywords contain rich public emotion and opinion. Advanced data collecting was conducted to select secondary keywords for data gathering. The secondary keywords for each keyword used to gather the data to be used in actual analysis are followed: Professor (sexual assault, misappropriation of research money, recruitment irregularities, polifessor), Doctor (Shin hae-chul sky hospital, drinking and plastic surgery, rebate) Prosecutor (lewd behavior, sponsor). The size of the text data is about to 100,000(Professor: 25720, Doctor: 35110, Prosecutor: 43225) and the data are gathered from news, blog, and twitter to reflect various level of public emotion into text data analysis. As a visualization method, Gephi (http://gephi.github.io) was used and every program used in text processing and analysis are java coding. The contributions of this study are as follows: First, different approaches for sentiment analysis are integrated to overcome the limitations of existing approaches. Secondly, finding Emotion Trigger can detect the hidden connections to public emotion which existing method cannot detect. Finally, the approach used in this study could be generalized regardless of types of text data. The limitation of this study is that it is hard to say the word extracted by Emotion Trigger processing has significantly causal relationship with emotional word in a sentence. The future study will be conducted to clarify the causal relationship between emotional words and the words extracted by Emotion Trigger by comparing with the relationships manually tagged. Furthermore, the text data used in Emotion Trigger are twitter, so the data have a number of distinct features which we did not deal with in this study. These features will be considered in further study.

Methods for Integration of Documents using Hierarchical Structure based on the Formal Concept Analysis (FCA 기반 계층적 구조를 이용한 문서 통합 기법)

  • Kim, Tae-Hwan;Jeon, Ho-Cheol;Choi, Joong-Min
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.63-77
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    • 2011
  • The World Wide Web is a very large distributed digital information space. From its origins in 1991, the web has grown to encompass diverse information resources as personal home pasges, online digital libraries and virtual museums. Some estimates suggest that the web currently includes over 500 billion pages in the deep web. The ability to search and retrieve information from the web efficiently and effectively is an enabling technology for realizing its full potential. With powerful workstations and parallel processing technology, efficiency is not a bottleneck. In fact, some existing search tools sift through gigabyte.syze precompiled web indexes in a fraction of a second. But retrieval effectiveness is a different matter. Current search tools retrieve too many documents, of which only a small fraction are relevant to the user query. Furthermore, the most relevant documents do not nessarily appear at the top of the query output order. Also, current search tools can not retrieve the documents related with retrieved document from gigantic amount of documents. The most important problem for lots of current searching systems is to increase the quality of search. It means to provide related documents or decrease the number of unrelated documents as low as possible in the results of search. For this problem, CiteSeer proposed the ACI (Autonomous Citation Indexing) of the articles on the World Wide Web. A "citation index" indexes the links between articles that researchers make when they cite other articles. Citation indexes are very useful for a number of purposes, including literature search and analysis of the academic literature. For details of this work, references contained in academic articles are used to give credit to previous work in the literature and provide a link between the "citing" and "cited" articles. A citation index indexes the citations that an article makes, linking the articleswith the cited works. Citation indexes were originally designed mainly for information retrieval. The citation links allow navigating the literature in unique ways. Papers can be located independent of language, and words in thetitle, keywords or document. A citation index allows navigation backward in time (the list of cited articles) and forwardin time (which subsequent articles cite the current article?) But CiteSeer can not indexes the links between articles that researchers doesn't make. Because it indexes the links between articles that only researchers make when they cite other articles. Also, CiteSeer is not easy to scalability. Because CiteSeer can not indexes the links between articles that researchers doesn't make. All these problems make us orient for designing more effective search system. This paper shows a method that extracts subject and predicate per each sentence in documents. A document will be changed into the tabular form that extracted predicate checked value of possible subject and object. We make a hierarchical graph of a document using the table and then integrate graphs of documents. The graph of entire documents calculates the area of document as compared with integrated documents. We mark relation among the documents as compared with the area of documents. Also it proposes a method for structural integration of documents that retrieves documents from the graph. It makes that the user can find information easier. We compared the performance of the proposed approaches with lucene search engine using the formulas for ranking. As a result, the F.measure is about 60% and it is better as about 15%.

Product Evaluation Criteria Extraction through Online Review Analysis: Using LDA and k-Nearest Neighbor Approach (온라인 리뷰 분석을 통한 상품 평가 기준 추출: LDA 및 k-최근접 이웃 접근법을 활용하여)

  • Lee, Ji Hyeon;Jung, Sang Hyung;Kim, Jun Ho;Min, Eun Joo;Yeo, Un Yeong;Kim, Jong Woo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.26 no.1
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    • pp.97-117
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    • 2020
  • Product evaluation criteria is an indicator describing attributes or values of products, which enable users or manufacturers measure and understand the products. When companies analyze their products or compare them with competitors, appropriate criteria must be selected for objective evaluation. The criteria should show the features of products that consumers considered when they purchased, used and evaluated the products. However, current evaluation criteria do not reflect different consumers' opinion from product to product. Previous studies tried to used online reviews from e-commerce sites that reflect consumer opinions to extract the features and topics of products and use them as evaluation criteria. However, there is still a limit that they produce irrelevant criteria to products due to extracted or improper words are not refined. To overcome this limitation, this research suggests LDA-k-NN model which extracts possible criteria words from online reviews by using LDA and refines them with k-nearest neighbor. Proposed approach starts with preparation phase, which is constructed with 6 steps. At first, it collects review data from e-commerce websites. Most e-commerce websites classify their selling items by high-level, middle-level, and low-level categories. Review data for preparation phase are gathered from each middle-level category and collapsed later, which is to present single high-level category. Next, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs are extracted from reviews by getting part of speech information using morpheme analysis module. After preprocessing, words per each topic from review are shown with LDA and only nouns in topic words are chosen as potential words for criteria. Then, words are tagged based on possibility of criteria for each middle-level category. Next, every tagged word is vectorized by pre-trained word embedding model. Finally, k-nearest neighbor case-based approach is used to classify each word with tags. After setting up preparation phase, criteria extraction phase is conducted with low-level categories. This phase starts with crawling reviews in the corresponding low-level category. Same preprocessing as preparation phase is conducted using morpheme analysis module and LDA. Possible criteria words are extracted by getting nouns from the data and vectorized by pre-trained word embedding model. Finally, evaluation criteria are extracted by refining possible criteria words using k-nearest neighbor approach and reference proportion of each word in the words set. To evaluate the performance of the proposed model, an experiment was conducted with review on '11st', one of the biggest e-commerce companies in Korea. Review data were from 'Electronics/Digital' section, one of high-level categories in 11st. For performance evaluation of suggested model, three other models were used for comparing with the suggested model; actual criteria of 11st, a model that extracts nouns by morpheme analysis module and refines them according to word frequency, and a model that extracts nouns from LDA topics and refines them by word frequency. The performance evaluation was set to predict evaluation criteria of 10 low-level categories with the suggested model and 3 models above. Criteria words extracted from each model were combined into a single words set and it was used for survey questionnaires. In the survey, respondents chose every item they consider as appropriate criteria for each category. Each model got its score when chosen words were extracted from that model. The suggested model had higher scores than other models in 8 out of 10 low-level categories. By conducting paired t-tests on scores of each model, we confirmed that the suggested model shows better performance in 26 tests out of 30. In addition, the suggested model was the best model in terms of accuracy. This research proposes evaluation criteria extracting method that combines topic extraction using LDA and refinement with k-nearest neighbor approach. This method overcomes the limits of previous dictionary-based models and frequency-based refinement models. This study can contribute to improve review analysis for deriving business insights in e-commerce market.

Statistical Analysis of Operating Efficiency and Failures of a Medical Linear Accelerator for Ten Years (선형가속기의 10년간 가동률과 고장률에 관한 통계분석)

  • Ju Sang Gyu;Huh Seung Jae;Han Youngyih;Seo Jeong Min;Kim Won Kyou;Kim Tae Jong;Shin Eun Hyuk;Park Ju Young;Yeo Inhwan J.;Choi David R.;Ahn Yong Chan;Park Won;Lim Do Hoon
    • Radiation Oncology Journal
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    • v.23 no.3
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    • pp.186-193
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    • 2005
  • Purpose: To improve the management of a medical linear accelerator, the records of operational failures of a Varian CL2l00C over a ten year period were retrospectively analyzed. Materials and Methods: The failures were classified according to the involved functional subunits, with each class rated Into one of three levels depending on the operational conditions. The relationships between the failure rate and working ratio and between the failure rate and outside temperature were investigated. In addition, the average life time of the main part and the operating efficiency over the last 4 years were analyzed. Results: Among the recorded failures (total 587 failures), the most frequent failure was observed in the parts related with the collimation system, including the monitor chamber, which accounted for $20\%$ of all failures. With regard to the operational conditions, 2nd level of failures, which temporally interrupted treatments, were the most frequent. Third level of failures, which interrupted treatment for more than several hours, were mostly caused by the accelerating subunit. The number of failures was increased with number of treatments and operating time. The average life-times of the Klystron and Thyratron became shorter as the working ratio increased, and were 42 and $83\%$ of the expected values, respectively. The operating efficiency was maintained at $95\%$ or higher, but this value slightly decreased. There was no significant correlation between the number of failures and the outside temperature. Conclusion: The maintenance of detailed equipment problems and failures records over a long period of time can provide good knowledge of equipment function as well as the capability of predicting future failure. Wore rigorous equipment maintenance Is required for old medical linear accelerators for the advanced avoidance of serious failure and to improve the qualify of patient treatment.

Results of Curative Treatment for Cancer of the Tonsil (편도암의 근치적 치료 결과)

  • Park, Won;Ahn, Yong-Chan;Lim, Do-Hoon;Baek, Chung-Whan;Son, Young-Ik;Park, Keun-Chil;Kim, Kyoung-Ju;Lee, Jeung-Eun;Kang, Min-Kyu;Park, Young-Je;Nam, Hee-Rim;Huh, Seung-Jae
    • Radiation Oncology Journal
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.261-268
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    • 2003
  • Purpose: To report the results of curative treatment for patients with tonsil cancer by retrospective analysis. Materials and Methods: From Jan. 1995 till Dec. 2000, 27 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tonsil received curative treatment at Samsung Medical Center. Therapeutic decision was made through multidisciplinary conference, and curative radiation therapy was favored when, (1) the patient's condition was not fit for general anesthesia and surgery, (2) the patient refused surgery, (3) complete resection was presumed impossible, or (4) too severe disability was expected after surgery. Surgery was the main local modality in 17 patients (S$\pm$RT group), and radiation therapy in 10 (RT$\pm$CT group). The median follow-up period was 41 months. Results: AJCC stages were I/II in four, III in two, and IV in 21 patients. The 5-year disease-free survival rate was 73.3$\%$ in all patients, 70.6$\%$ in the S$\pm$RT group, and 77.8$\%$ in the RT$\pm$CT group. Treatment failure occurred in seven patients, all with stage III/IV, and all the failures occurred within 24 months of the start of treatment. Five patients among the S$\pm$CT group developed treatment failures; 2 local, 2 regional, and 1 distant (crude rate=29.4$\%$). Two patients among the RT$\pm$CT group developed failures; 1 synchronous local and regional, and 1 distant (crude rate=20.0$\%$). The 5-year overall survival rate was 77.0$\%$ in all patients, 80.9$\%$ in the S$\pm$RT group, and 70.0$\%$ in the RT$\pm$CT group. Conclusion: We could achieve favorable results that were comparable to previously reported data with respect to both the rates of local control and of survival by applying S$\pm$RT and RT$\pm$CT. RT$\pm$CT is judged to be an alternative option that can avoid the functional disability after surgical resection.

Immuno-regulatory Activities of Various Fractions from Ehpedrae Sinica STAPF, Rubus Coreanus Miq. and Angelica gigas Nakai Extracts with Ultrasonification (초음파 병행 추출을 이용한 마황과 복분자, 당귀 분획물의 면역활성 조절 효과)

  • Kim, Jung-Hwa;Kim, Dae-Ho;You, Jin-Hyun;Kim, Cheol-Hee;Kwon, Min-Chul;Seong, Nak-Sul;Lee, Seung-Eun;Lee, Hyeon-Yong
    • Korean Journal of Medicinal Crop Science
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.161-170
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    • 2005
  • This study was performed to examine immuno-regulatory activities of Ehpedrae Sinica STAPF, Rubus Coreanus Miq. and Angelica gigas Nakai extracts in conbination with ultrasonification. The extract yields of plants were the highest in the extraction system of $60^{\circ}C$ and 40 kHz of ultrasonification. The immune cell growth ratio of human immune B and T cells was increased compared to other fractions by the water fraction of the plants at $60^{\circ}C$ and 40 kHz. The water fractions of the plants at $60^{\circ}C$ and 40 kHz increased the specific secretion of IL-6 and $TNF-{\alpha}$ of human immune B and T cells compared to other fractions of the plants. The water fraction of Ehpedrae Sinica STAPF among the plants was observed to show the highest specific secretion of IL-6 and $TNF-{\alpha}$. Also, NK-92 MI cells growth was increased in adding the water fractions of the plants at $60^{\circ}C$ and 40 kHz. The water fraction of Ehpedrae Sinica STAPF among the plants showed the highest in NK-92 MI cell growth ratio. The differentiation activity of the HL-60 cells significantly increased in adding the water fraction of Ehpedrae Sinica STAPF compared to other fractions of the plants. These results suggest that the water fractions of the plants in extraction system of temperature $60^{\circ}C$ and ultrasonification 40 kHz have marked useful immuno-stimulatory activities.

Consumer Awareness and Evaluation of Retailers' Social Responsibility: An Exploratory Approach into Ethical Purchase Behavior from a U.S Perspective (소비자인지도화령수상사회책임(消费者认知度和零售商社会责任): 종미국시각출발적도덕구매행위적탐색성연구(从美国视角出发的道德购买行为的探索性研究))

  • Lee, Min-Young;Jackson, Vanessa P.
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.49-58
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    • 2010
  • Corporate social responsibility has become a very important issue for researchers (Greenfield, 2004; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; McWilliams et al., 2006; Pearce & Doh 2005), and many consider it necessary for businesses to define their role in society and apply social and ethical standards to their businesses (Lichtenstein et al., 2004). As a result, a significant number of retailers have adopted CSR as a strategic tool to promote their businesses. To this end, this study sought to discover U.S. consumers' attitudes and behavior in ethical purchasing and consumption based on their subjective perception and evaluation of a retailer. The objectives of this study include: 1) determine the participants awareness of retailers corporate social responsibility; 2) assess how participants evaluate retailers corporate social responsibility; 3) examine whether participants evaluation process of retailers CSR influence their attitude toward the retailer; and 4) assess if participants attitude toward the retailers CSR influence their purchase behavior. This study does not focus on actual retailers' CSR performance because a consumer's decision making process is based on an individual assessment not an actual fact. This study examines US college students' awareness and evaluations of retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR). Fifty six college students at a major Southeastern university participated in the study. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 26 years old. Content analysis was conducted with open coding and focused coding. Over 100 single-spaced pages of written responses were collected and analyzed. Two steps of coding (i.e., open coding and focused coding) were conducted (Esterberg, 2002). Coding results and analytic memos were used to understand participants' awareness of CSR and their ethical purchasing behavior supported through the selection and inclusion of direct quotes that were extracted from the written responses. Names used here are pseudonyms to protect confidentiality of participants. Participants were asked to write about retailers, their aware-ness of CSR issues, and to evaluate a retailer's CSR performance. A majority (n = 28) of respondents indicated their awareness of CSR but have not felt the need to act on this issue. Few (n=8) indicated that they are aware of this issue but not greatly concerned. Findings suggest that when college students evaluate retailers' CSR performance, they use three dimensions of CSR: employee support, community support, and environmental support. Employee treatment and support were found as an important criterion in evaluation of retailers' CSR. Respondents indicated that their good experience with a retailer as an employee made them have a positive perception and attitude toward the retailer. Regarding employee support four themes emerged: employee rewards and incentives based on performance, working environment, employee education and training program, and employee and family discounts. Well organized rewards and incentives were mentioned as an important attribute. The factors related to the working environment included: how well retailers follow the rules related to working hours, lunch time and breaks was also one of the most mentioned attributes. Regarding community support, three themes emerged: contributing a percentage of sales to the local community, financial contribution to charity organizations, and events for community support. Regarding environments, two themes emerged: recycling and selling organic or green products. It was mentioned in the responses that retailers are trying to do what they can to be environmentally friendly. One respondent mentioned that the company is creating stores that have an environmentally friendly design. Information about what the company does to help the environment can easily be found on the company’s website as well. Respondents have also noticed that the stores are starting to offer products that are organic and environmentally friendly. A retailer was also mentioned by a respondent in this category in reference to how the company uses eco-friendly cups and how they are helping to rebuild homes in New Orleans. The respondents noticed that a retailer offers reusable bags for their consumers to purchase. One respondent stated that a retailer uses its products to help the environment, through offering organic cotton. After thorough analysis of responses, we found that a participant's evaluation of a retailers' CSR influenced their attitudes towards retailers. However, there was a significant gap between attitudes and purchasing behavior. Although the participants had positive attitudes toward retailers CSR, the lack of funds and time influenced their purchase behavior. Overall, half (n=28) of the respondents mentioned that CSR performance affects their purchasing decisions making when shopping. Findings from this study provide support for retailers to consider their corporate social responsibility when developing their image with the consumer. This study implied that consumers evaluate retailers based on employee, community and environmental support. The evaluation, attitude and purchase behavior of consumers seem to be intertwined. That is, evaluation is based on the knowledge the consumer has of the retailers CSR. That knowledge may influence their attitude toward the retailer and thus influence their purchase behavior. Participants also indicated that having CSR makes them think highly of the retailer, but it does not influence their purchase behavior. Price and convenience seem to surpass the importance of CSR among the participants. Implications, recommendations for future research, and limitations of the study are also discussed.

A CLINICAL STUDY ON TOURETTE'S DISORDER (뚜렛 장애의 임상적 연구)

  • Min, Sung-Kil;Noh, Kyung S.;Shin, Dong-Won
    • Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.92-100
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    • 1997
  • Objective:The objective of this study is to examine the clinical characteristics and behavioral comorbidity of patients with Tourette’s disorder. Method:Subjects consisted of 157 patients with Tourette’ disorder diagnosed by DSM-IIIR, who were examined and diagnosed from Jan. 1988 to May 1994 at the Tourette’s Clinic of Yonsei University Medical Center. Characteristics and behavioral comorbidity of Patients were assessed by a semi-structured interview schedule. Behavioral problems like hyperactivity, obsession-compulsion, self destructiveness, enuresis, sleep problem were assessed by global clinical impression. Results:The mean age of patients was 14.49(${\pm}7.99$) years. Patients consisted of 138 males (87.9%) and 19 females(12.1%). The sex ratio was 7:1, showing a male preponderance. The number of right-handers was 133(84.7%), and the number of non-right handers was 24(15.3%). Mean age of onset was 8.85(${\pm}4.56$) years, ranging from 2-to-16 years. More than half of the patients had their age of onset at 6-10 years. Bimodal peak in age of onset was observed;the first peak was around 6 and the second peak was around 10 years. There was no sex difference in bimodal age of onset. The most common initial symptom was eye blinking. More than 55% of patients reported eye blinking as their first symptom. The second common initial symptom was head turning and the third was vocal tic. The most common symptoms that patients reported on their first visit since onset were eye blinking(82.2%), head turning or nodding(57.9%), shoulder shrugging(52.7%) and forearm movement(32.6%). Of 157 cases, 101(64.3%) patients showed downward progression of symptoms, and 25(15.9%) showed upward progression of symptoms. Nineteen fathers(12%) of patients had a past history of obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD). Seventeen fathers(10.6%) had a history of tic disorder. SSevenmothers(4.5%) had OCD, 4 mothers (2.5%) had tic disorder. One hundred and eighteen patients(75.1%) had comorbid hyperactivity, 95 patients(60.5%) had obsession, 55 patiens(35.0%) had self destructiveness, 46 patients(29.3%) had impulsivity, and 35 patients(22.3%) had enuresis. Age of onset had a significant positive correlation with age, duration, and the global severity of obsession;and a negative correlation with the severity of hyperactivity. Hyperactivity had a significant positive correlation with impulsivity, obsession-compulsion, enuresis, and self destructiveness. Obsession-compulsion had a significant positive correlation with hyperactivity, sleep problems, and self destructiveness. Conclusion:These data suggest that clinical characteristcs and behavioral comorbidity of patients with Tourette’ disorder in this study are similar to previous research findings in Korea and other contries. The younger the age of onset was, the more severe hyperactivity was, and the less severe obsession-compulsion was. And severity of hyperactivity had a positive correlation with the severity of obsession-compulsion, impulsivity, enuresis, and self destructiveness.

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