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Critical Issues and Practical Strategies in Technology Education: Technology Education Practitioners' Perception in South Korea (기술교육의 쟁점과 실천 전략: 우리나라 기술교육 현장 전문가의 인식)

  • Sung, Eui-Suk;Kwon, Hyuk-Soo
    • 대한공업교육학회지
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    • v.39 no.1
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    • pp.189-208
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    • 2014
  • The purpose of this research was to investigate the critical issues and practical strategies that Korean technology teachers perceived. To accomplish the purpose of this study, a qualitative study was conducted to identify critical issues and practical strategies of Korean technology education targeted on Korean technology teachers. A purposeful sampling for choosing technology teachers was used for this study with three selection conditions: 1) 'Excellent Korean technology teacher' award winning teachers, or 2) technology teachers actively involved in both on-line and off-line teachers' association, and 3) leaders in local technology teachers' association. This study conducted exploratory in-depth interviews with selective 15 technology teachers regarding critical issues and practical strategies of Korean technology teachers. The interpretation of the interview content was conducted by two researchers using the thematic analysis which analyzed the frequency of concepts, words, and meanings held from collected data. In the conclusion, critical issues researchers identified were 1) curriculum problems, 2) education environment and facilities problems, 3) teachers' problems, 4) students' problems, 5) related research institution and college problems, 6) social problems. Secondly, Korean technology teachers agreed with following practical strategies 1) separating technology education from home economic education, 2) sharing practices on managing and improving educational environment and laboratory for technology education, 3) actively involving in technology teachers' group, 4) motivating students using hands-on activity 5) improving the quality and the quantity on technology teachers preparatory institution, 6) advertising the values of technology education to the public. Lastly, the positive factors to succeed technology education were 1) technology education satisfying social needs and 2) technology teachers' will or passion toward improving their technology classrooms. The negative factors to hinder technology education were 1) low self-respect of Korean technology teachers and 2) rejection or retarded acceptance toward social transition. Several recommendations based the conclusion were suggested as 1) implementing supplementary study toward selected critical issues and 2) conducting exemplary case studies regarding concrete practical strategies for improving challenges of Korean technology education.

Financial Fraud Detection using Text Mining Analysis against Municipal Cybercriminality (지자체 사이버 공간 안전을 위한 금융사기 탐지 텍스트 마이닝 방법)

  • Choi, Sukjae;Lee, Jungwon;Kwon, Ohbyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.3
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    • pp.119-138
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    • 2017
  • Recently, SNS has become an important channel for marketing as well as personal communication. However, cybercrime has also evolved with the development of information and communication technology, and illegal advertising is distributed to SNS in large quantity. As a result, personal information is lost and even monetary damages occur more frequently. In this study, we propose a method to analyze which sentences and documents, which have been sent to the SNS, are related to financial fraud. First of all, as a conceptual framework, we developed a matrix of conceptual characteristics of cybercriminality on SNS and emergency management. We also suggested emergency management process which consists of Pre-Cybercriminality (e.g. risk identification) and Post-Cybercriminality steps. Among those we focused on risk identification in this paper. The main process consists of data collection, preprocessing and analysis. First, we selected two words 'daechul(loan)' and 'sachae(private loan)' as seed words and collected data with this word from SNS such as twitter. The collected data are given to the two researchers to decide whether they are related to the cybercriminality, particularly financial fraud, or not. Then we selected some of them as keywords if the vocabularies are related to the nominals and symbols. With the selected keywords, we searched and collected data from web materials such as twitter, news, blog, and more than 820,000 articles collected. The collected articles were refined through preprocessing and made into learning data. The preprocessing process is divided into performing morphological analysis step, removing stop words step, and selecting valid part-of-speech step. In the morphological analysis step, a complex sentence is transformed into some morpheme units to enable mechanical analysis. In the removing stop words step, non-lexical elements such as numbers, punctuation marks, and double spaces are removed from the text. In the step of selecting valid part-of-speech, only two kinds of nouns and symbols are considered. Since nouns could refer to things, the intent of message is expressed better than the other part-of-speech. Moreover, the more illegal the text is, the more frequently symbols are used. The selected data is given 'legal' or 'illegal'. To make the selected data as learning data through the preprocessing process, it is necessary to classify whether each data is legitimate or not. The processed data is then converted into Corpus type and Document-Term Matrix. Finally, the two types of 'legal' and 'illegal' files were mixed and randomly divided into learning data set and test data set. In this study, we set the learning data as 70% and the test data as 30%. SVM was used as the discrimination algorithm. Since SVM requires gamma and cost values as the main parameters, we set gamma as 0.5 and cost as 10, based on the optimal value function. The cost is set higher than general cases. To show the feasibility of the idea proposed in this paper, we compared the proposed method with MLE (Maximum Likelihood Estimation), Term Frequency, and Collective Intelligence method. Overall accuracy and was used as the metric. As a result, the overall accuracy of the proposed method was 92.41% of illegal loan advertisement and 77.75% of illegal visit sales, which is apparently superior to that of the Term Frequency, MLE, etc. Hence, the result suggests that the proposed method is valid and usable practically. In this paper, we propose a framework for crisis management caused by abnormalities of unstructured data sources such as SNS. We hope this study will contribute to the academia by identifying what to consider when applying the SVM-like discrimination algorithm to text analysis. Moreover, the study will also contribute to the practitioners in the field of brand management and opinion mining.

Valuation of Mining Investment Projects by the Real Option Approach - A Case Study of Uzbekistan's Copper Mining Industry - (실물옵션평가방법에 의한 광산투자의 가치평가 -우즈베키스탄 구리광산업의 사례연구를 중심으로-)

  • Makhkamov, Mumm Sh.;Kim, Dong-Hwan
    • Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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    • v.8 no.6
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    • pp.1634-1647
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    • 2007
  • "To invest or not to invest?" Most business leaders are frequently faced with this question on new and ongoing projects. The challenge lies in deciding what projects to choose, expand, contract, defer, or abandon. The project valuation tools used in this process are vital to making the right decisions. Traditional tools such as discounted cash flow (DCF)/net present value (NPV) assume a "fixed" path ahead, but real world projects face uncertainties, forcing us to change the path often. Comparing to other traditional valuation methods, the real options approach captures the flexibility inherent to investment decisions. The use of real options has gained wide acceptance among practitioners in a number of several industries during the last few decades. Even though the options are present in all types of business decisions, it is still not considered as a proper method of valuation in some industries. Mining has been comparably slow to adopt new valuation techniques over the years. The reason fur this is not entirely clear. One possible reason is the level and types of risks in mining. Not only are these risks high, but they are also more numerous and involve natural risks compared with other industries. That is why the purpose of this study is to deal with a more practical approach to project valuation, known as real options analysis in mining industry. This paper provides a case study approach to the copper mining industry using a real options analysis. It shows how companies can minimize investment risks, exercise flexibility in decision making and maximize returns.

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Bankruptcy Type Prediction Using A Hybrid Artificial Neural Networks Model (하이브리드 인공신경망 모형을 이용한 부도 유형 예측)

  • Jo, Nam-ok;Kim, Hyun-jung;Shin, Kyung-shik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.3
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    • pp.79-99
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    • 2015
  • The prediction of bankruptcy has been extensively studied in the accounting and finance field. It can have an important impact on lending decisions and the profitability of financial institutions in terms of risk management. Many researchers have focused on constructing a more robust bankruptcy prediction model. Early studies primarily used statistical techniques such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and logit analysis for bankruptcy prediction. However, many studies have demonstrated that artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, such as artificial neural networks (ANN), decision trees, case-based reasoning (CBR), and support vector machine (SVM), have been outperforming statistical techniques since 1990s for business classification problems because statistical methods have some rigid assumptions in their application. In previous studies on corporate bankruptcy, many researchers have focused on developing a bankruptcy prediction model using financial ratios. However, there are few studies that suggest the specific types of bankruptcy. Previous bankruptcy prediction models have generally been interested in predicting whether or not firms will become bankrupt. Most of the studies on bankruptcy types have focused on reviewing the previous literature or performing a case study. Thus, this study develops a model using data mining techniques for predicting the specific types of bankruptcy as well as the occurrence of bankruptcy in Korean small- and medium-sized construction firms in terms of profitability, stability, and activity index. Thus, firms will be able to prevent it from occurring in advance. We propose a hybrid approach using two artificial neural networks (ANNs) for the prediction of bankruptcy types. The first is a back-propagation neural network (BPN) model using supervised learning for bankruptcy prediction and the second is a self-organizing map (SOM) model using unsupervised learning to classify bankruptcy data into several types. Based on the constructed model, we predict the bankruptcy of companies by applying the BPN model to a validation set that was not utilized in the development of the model. This allows for identifying the specific types of bankruptcy by using bankruptcy data predicted by the BPN model. We calculated the average of selected input variables through statistical test for each cluster to interpret characteristics of the derived clusters in the SOM model. Each cluster represents bankruptcy type classified through data of bankruptcy firms, and input variables indicate financial ratios in interpreting the meaning of each cluster. The experimental result shows that each of five bankruptcy types has different characteristics according to financial ratios. Type 1 (severe bankruptcy) has inferior financial statements except for EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) to sales based on the clustering results. Type 2 (lack of stability) has a low quick ratio, low stockholder's equity to total assets, and high total borrowings to total assets. Type 3 (lack of activity) has a slightly low total asset turnover and fixed asset turnover. Type 4 (lack of profitability) has low retained earnings to total assets and EBITDA to sales which represent the indices of profitability. Type 5 (recoverable bankruptcy) includes firms that have a relatively good financial condition as compared to other bankruptcy types even though they are bankrupt. Based on the findings, researchers and practitioners engaged in the credit evaluation field can obtain more useful information about the types of corporate bankruptcy. In this paper, we utilized the financial ratios of firms to classify bankruptcy types. It is important to select the input variables that correctly predict bankruptcy and meaningfully classify the type of bankruptcy. In a further study, we will include non-financial factors such as size, industry, and age of the firms. Thus, we can obtain realistic clustering results for bankruptcy types by combining qualitative factors and reflecting the domain knowledge of experts.

Understanding the Relationship between Value Co-Creation Mechanism and Firm's Performance based on the Service-Dominant Logic (서비스지배논리하에서 가치공동창출 매커니즘과 기업성과간의 관계에 대한 연구)

  • Nam, Ki-Chan;Kim, Yong-Jin;Yim, Myung-Seong;Lee, Nam-Hee;Jo, Ah-Rha
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.177-200
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    • 2009
  • AIn the advanced - economy, the services industry hasbecome a dominant sector. Evidently, the services sector has grown at a much faster rate than any other. For instance, in such developed countries as the U.S., the proportion of the services sector in its GDP is greater than 75%. Even in the developing countries including India and China, the magnitude of the services sector in their GDPs is rapidly growing. The increasing dependence on service gives rise to new initiatives including service science and service-dominant logic. These new initiatives propose a new theoretical prism to promote the better understanding of the changing economic structure. From the new perspectives, service is no longer regarded as a transaction or exchange, but rather co-creation of value through the interaction among service users, providers, and other stakeholders including partners, external environments, and customer communities. The purpose of this study is the following. First, we review previous literature on service, service innovation, and service systems and integrate the studies based on service dominant logic. Second, we categorize the ten propositions of service dominant logic into conceptual propositions and the ones that are directly related to service provision. Conceptual propositions are left out to form the research model. With the selected propositions, we define the research constructs for this study. Third, we develop measurement items for the new service concepts including service provider network, customer network, value co-creation, and convergence of service with product. We then propose a research model to explain the relationship among the factors that affect the value creation mechanism. Finally, we empirically investigate the effects of the factors on firm performance. Through the process of this research study, we want to show the value creation mechanism of service systems in which various participants in service provision interact with related parties in a joint effort to create values. To test the proposed hypotheses, we developed measurement items and distributed survey questionnaires to domestic companies. 500 survey questionnaires were distributed and 180 were returned among which 171 were usable. The results of the empirical test can be summarized as the following. First, service providers' network which is to help offer required services to customers is found to affect customer network, while it does not have a significant effect on value co-creation and product-service convergence. Second, customer network, on the other hand, appears to influence both value co-creation and product-service convergence. Third, value co-creation accomplished through the collaboration of service providers and customers is found to have a significant effect on both product-service convergence and firm performance. Finally, product-service convergence appears to affect firm performance. To interpret the results from the value creation mechanism perspective, service provider network well established to support customer network is found to have significant effect on customer network which in turn facilitates value co-creation in service provision and product-service convergence to lead to greater firm performance. The results have some enlightening implications for practitioners. If companies want to transform themselves into service-centered business enterprises, they have to consider the four factors suggested in this study: service provider network, customer network, value co-creation, and product-service convergence. That is, companies becoming a service-oriented organization need to understand what the four factors are and how the factors interact with one another in their business context. They then may want to devise a better tool to analyze the value creation mechanism and apply the four factors to their own environment. This research study contributes to the literature in following ways. First, this study is one of the very first empirical studies on the service dominant logic as it has categorized the fundamental propositions into conceptual and empirically testable ones and tested the proposed hypotheses against the data collected through the survey method. Most of the propositions are found to work as Vargo and Lusch have suggested. Second, by providing a testable set of relationships among the research variables, this study may provide policy makers and decision makers with some theoretical grounds for their decision making on what to do with service innovation and management. Finally, this study incorporates the concepts of value co-creation through the interaction between customers and service providers into the proposed research model and empirically tests the validity of the concepts. The results of this study will help establish a value creation mechanism in the service-based economy, which can be used to develop and implement new service provision.

A Review of Service Innovation Research: A Comparison of Domestic and International Research Papers (서비스혁신 연구 동향: 국내 및 해외 주요 학술지를 중심으로)

  • Ryu, Hyun-Sun
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.24 no.4
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    • pp.577-610
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    • 2014
  • Although service innovation is not a new concept, innovation research in general tends to focus on technological innovation by manufacturing firms. With this view, innovation studies focus on product(e.g., goods) and process(e.g., product systems) innovation, ignoring service innovation and its inherent opportunities. Since major economy has been transformed to service economy, service innovation is considered a new effective way to sustain and gain a competitive advantage. Service innovation is no longer regarded merely as a side activity to product innovation; it has become a main research topic in its own right, accompanied by an increasing focus on services. While the number of service innovation studies has increased dramatically in the past 30 years in international research, few studies have been performed in domestic studies because domestic service innovation research began from the middle of 2000. In addition, there are no comprehensive literature reviews describing the evolution of service innovation research in both international and domestic studies because of the heterogeneities of service industry and multidiscipline characteristics of service innovation studies. To bridge this research gap, the purpose of this paper is to perform an extensive literature review and synthesis to enable a critical review of extant research on service innovation and trace its evolution, which will establish a foundation for further studies. By reviewing 169 articles (136 international papers; 33 domestic papers) published between 2000 and 2014 (in past 15 years), primarily in leading service, innovation and management information systems journals, this study analyzes the progression of service innovation research according to the four aspects such as number of studies, topics, methodologies and target industries. Overall, the view of service innovation has evolved, from a complement of traditional product innovation to a multidimensional, all-encompassing concept that entails several functions, both within and outside the firms. The results showed that domestic research still stays at the formation phase of service innovation studies although international research is in the maturity or multidimensional phase. We found increasing recent activities pertaining to service innovation, resulting from the increasing interest in services innovation across various industries and the links of new topics to the service innovation concept in both international and domestic studies. However, the main focus of service innovation research showed a different propensity between international and domestic studies: the former mainly focuses on a much more diversified pattern, emphasizing the linkages between service innovation and business strategy while the latter mainly focuses on the service innovation process(system) and service design. In addition, there are many case studies in domestic studies while many empirical studies in international studies. Domestic studies should increases the understanding of the interplay between service innovation and product innovation within manufacturing firms. Furthermore, rather than focusing on intrinsic distinctions between service innovation and product innovation, researchers should strive to develop and conceptualize service innovation in domestics studies. The present research also provides useful implications for practitioners. First, this study contributes to expand the current understanding of service innovation research by performing an extensive literature review. Second, tracing and comparing the progression and trends of service innovation research between international and domestic studies, this study showed the similarities and differences between them, which provide practical guidance on future research directions and research agenda. Third, this study performed literature review establishing the analysis system in the initial stage and using them to analyze articles, which is leading to explain the research review of service innovation more systematically and objectively. Finally, this study suggests the domestic researchers their future interests and topics of service innovation research.

The Mediating Role of Perceived Risk in the Relationships Between Enduring Product Involvement and Trust Expectation (지속적 제품관여도와 소비자 요구신뢰수준 간의 영향관계: 인지된 위험의 매개 역할에 대한 실증분석을 중심으로)

  • Hong, Ilyoo B.;Kim, Taeha;Cha, Hoon S.
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.23 no.4
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    • pp.103-128
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    • 2013
  • When a consumer needs a product or service and multiple sellers are available online, the process of selecting a seller to buy online from is complex since the process involves many behavioral dimensions that have to be taken into account. As a part of this selection process, consumers may set minimum trust expectation that can be used to screen out less trustworthy sellers. In the previous research, the level of consumers' trust expectation has been anchored on two important factors: product involvement and perceived risk. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a consumer perceives a specific product important. Thus, the higher product involvement may result in the higher trust expectation in sellers. On the other hand, other related studies found that when consumers perceived a higher level of risk (e.g., credit card fraud risk), they set higher trust expectation as well. While abundant research exists addressing the relationship between product involvement and perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the integrative view of the link between the two constructs and their impacts on the trust expectation. The present paper is a step toward filling this research gap. The purpose of this paper is to understand the process by which a consumer chooses an online merchant by examining the relationships among product involvement, perceived risk, trust expectation, and intention to buy from an e-tailer. We specifically focus on the mediating role of perceived risk in the relationships between enduring product involvement and the trust expectation. That is, we question whether product involvement affects the trust expectation directly without mediation or indirectly mediated by perceived risk. The research model with four hypotheses was initially tested using data gathered from 635 respondents through an online survey method. The structural equation modeling technique with partial least square was used to validate the instrument and the proposed model. The results showed that three out of the four hypotheses formulated were supported. First, we found that the intention to buy from a digital storefront is positively and significantly influenced by the trust expectation, providing support for H4 (trust expectation ${\rightarrow}$ purchase intention). Second, perceived risk was found to be a strong predictor of trust expectation, supporting H2 as well (perceived risk ${\rightarrow}$ trust expectation). Third, we did not find any evidence of direct influence of product involvement, which caused H3 to be rejected (product involvement ${\rightarrow}$ trust expectation). Finally, we found significant positive relationship between product involvement and perceived risk (H1: product involvement ${\rightarrow}$ perceived risk), which suggests that the possibility of complete mediation of perceived risk in the relationship between enduring product involvement and the trust expectation. As a result, we conducted an additional test for the mediation effect by comparing the original model with the revised model without the mediator variable of perceived risk. Indeed, we found that there exists a strong influence of product involvement on the trust expectation (by intentionally eliminating the variable of perceived risk) that was suppressed (i.e., mediated) by the perceived risk in the original model. The Sobel test statistically confirmed the complete mediation effect. Results of this study offer the following key findings. First, enduring product involvement is positively related to perceived risk, implying that the higher a consumer is enduringly involved with a given product, the greater risk he or she is likely to perceive with regards to the online purchase of the product. Second, perceived risk is positively related to trust expectation. A consumer with great risk perceptions concerning the online purchase is likely to buy from a highly trustworthy online merchant, thereby mitigating potential risks. Finally, product involvement was found to have no direct influence on trust expectation, but the relationship between the two constructs was indirect and mediated by the perceived risk. This is perhaps an important theoretical integration of two separate streams of literature on product involvement and perceived risk. The present research also provides useful implications for practitioners as well as academicians. First, one implication for practicing managers in online retail stores is that they should invest in reducing the perceived risk of consumers in order to lower down the trust expectation and thus increasing the consumer's intention to purchase products or services. Second, an academic implication is that perceived risk mediates the relationship between enduring product involvement and trust expectation. Further research is needed to elaborate the theoretical relationships among the constructs under consideration.

Development of Task Guidelines for Hospice Team Members (호스피스 팀 구성원의 직무지침 개발)

  • Ro, You-Ja;Han, Sung-Suk;Yoo, Yang-Sook;Yong, Jin-Sun
    • Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.26-40
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    • 2001
  • Purpose : The purpose of this study was to develop task guidelines for hospice team members. The task range of all personnel who work for hospice institutions was identified, and a tool describing roles and tasks of the hospice team members was developed based on review of related literature, both domestic and international. Methods : The content validity of the tool was assured by an expert panel through two phases of discussion. The first phase of the study included a survey conducted from December 1999 to January 2000 for a total of 126 hospice experts and practitioners affiliated with domestic hospice institutions. The second phase of the study included 35 subjects. The data were collected using a survey when the investigators visited each hospice institution. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results : 1) In the first phase of the study, all items scored over 80 points in CVI were selected as the roles and tasks of hospice coordinator, nurse, pastor, social worker, pharmacist, nutritionist, therapist, volunteer, and nurse aide. However, two items were excluded because they scored below 80 points: an item describing eligibility of a physician, a person who has a license for managing anesthetic agents was scored as 78.6 points, and an item describing the eligibility of the team leader of volunteers, a person educated at the graduate level was scored as 74.7 points. 2) In the second phase of the study, all items scored over 80 points in CVI were selected as the roles and tasks of hospice nurse, pastor, social worker, pharmacist, nutritionist, therapist, volunteer, and nurse aide. Of the roles of the hospice coordinator, however, the item scored as 77.9 points, assess and plan a patients physical, social, emotional, and spiritual status, and, of the roles of the team leaders of volunteers, the item scored as 78.6, attend a team meeting once a week and participate in building an standard nursing plan for patients were included in the tool since they scored over 80 points in the first phase of the study. Conclusion : The developed task guideline should be further modified and revised based on the findings of a preliminary application in the actual field. There is also a need of continuous research for developing more culturally-appropriate task guidelines for hospice team members.

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A Study on Recognition of Foreign Judgements Obtained by Fraud (사기에 의하여 취득한 외국재판의 승인에 관한 연구)

  • Lee, Hun-Mook
    • Journal of Legislation Research
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    • no.53
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    • pp.553-591
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    • 2017
  • This article discussed whether so-called 'foreign judgments obtained by fraud' is in breach of public policy provided in Article 217(1)(3) of Civil Procedure Act and, if so, what the specific requirements could be. The summary of the conclusion is as follows. The 'foreign judgments obtained by fraud' is against the municipal procedural public policy and then shall not be recognized. In this regard one more question comes up whether reviewing if 'foreign judgments obtained by fraud' is in breach of the municipal procedural public policy is allowed in consideration of the principle of prohibition of $r{\acute{e}}vision$ au fond. Since the principle is applied entirely in the course of the above reviewing, it is allowed only when it does not breach the principle. The two instances that the reviewing is allowed are where the defendant was not able to produce evidences of fraud during foreign procedures and where the defendant's claim of fraud without evidences was rejected by the foreign court and then evidences of fraud were found after the foreign procedure was completed. On the other hand, the specific requirements for 'foreign judgments obtained by fraud' to be against public policy are following four requirements based on principle of strict interpretation of public policy. (1) plaintiff's intention to fraud, (2) preventing the defendant from being involved in the procedure by fraud or cheating the foreign court using manipulated evidences, (3) the defendant could not present himself in the foreign court procedure due to the plaintiff's extraneous fraud or the foreign court decided wrongly due to intrinsic fraud, and (4) defendant's fundamental procedural rights were breached to the extent that recognizing the effect of foreign judgments was against justice defendant's fundamental procedural rights. These results differ from the Supreme Court 2004. 10. 28. ruling 2002da74213 in many aspects. Most of all, in my opinion there is no need to distinguish between intrinsic fraud and extraneous fraud and reviewing 'foreign judgments obtained by fraud' is not in conflict with the principle of prohibition of $r{\acute{e}}vision$ au fond but the both may coexist. In this regard I expect the variation of the Supreme Court's position and hope to contribute to academia and practitioners.

Estimation of Reference Crop Evapotranspiration Using Backpropagation Neural Network Model (역전파 신경망 모델을 이용한 기준 작물 증발산량 산정)

  • Kim, Minyoung;Choi, Yonghun;O'Shaughnessy, Susan;Colaizzi, Paul;Kim, Youngjin;Jeon, Jonggil;Lee, Sangbong
    • Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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    • v.61 no.6
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    • pp.111-121
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    • 2019
  • Evapotranspiration (ET) of vegetation is one of the major components of the hydrologic cycle, and its accurate estimation is important for hydrologic water balance, irrigation management, crop yield simulation, and water resources planning and management. For agricultural crops, ET is often calculated in terms of a short or tall crop reference, such as well-watered, clipped grass (reference crop evapotranspiration, $ET_o$). The Penman-Monteith equation recommended by FAO (FAO 56-PM) has been accepted by researchers and practitioners, as the sole $ET_o$ method. However, its accuracy is contingent on high quality measurements of four meteorological variables, and its use has been limited by incomplete and/or inaccurate input data. Therefore, this study evaluated the applicability of Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN) model for estimating $ET_o$ from less meteorological data than required by the FAO 56-PM. A total of six meteorological inputs, minimum temperature, average temperature, maximum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation, were divided into a series of input groups (a combination of one, two, three, four, five and six variables) and each combination of different meteorological dataset was evaluated for its level of accuracy in estimating $ET_o$. The overall findings of this study indicated that $ET_o$ could be reasonably estimated using less than all six meteorological data using BPNN. In addition, it was shown that the proper choice of neural network architecture could not only minimize the computational error, but also maximize the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The findings of this study would be of use in instances where data availability and/or accuracy are limited.