• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.298-303
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• 2009

(-)-Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), a major flavonoid in green tea has multiple health benefits including chemoprevention, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, and anti-obesity effects. In connection with these effects, EGCG can be a candidate to help the treatment of metabolic diseases. Metformin is a widely used anti-diabetic drug regulating cellular energy homeostasis via AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation. Therefore, the combination of metformin with EGCG may have additive or synergistic effects on treatment of type 2 diabetes. Nevertheless, there is no report for the pharmacokinetic and/or pharmacodynamic interaction of EGCG with metformin. Here, we evaluated the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic interaction between metformin and EGCG in rats. Pharmacokinetics parameters of metformin were measured after oral administration of metformin in rats pre-treated with EGCG (10 mg/kg) or saline for 7 days. The results showed that there is no significant difference in pharmacokinetic parameters between saline control and EGCG-treated group. In addition, the hepatic AMPK activation by metformin in EGCG-treated rats was also similar to the control. The lack of additive effects of EGCG on AMPK activation or intracellular uptake of metformin was also evaluated in cells in the presence or absence of EGCG. Treatment of HepG2 cells with EGCG inhibited the metformin-induced AMPK activation. Combined results suggested that EGCG has no effect on the pharmacokinetics of metformin but may contribute to metformin action.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.20-20
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• 2011

The purpose of this research aims to evaluate the emergence of new business mode in the Chinese water market since the mid-2000s - Transfer-Operate-Transfer(TOT) Projects. The study pays special attention to the case of the Hefei Wangxiaoying Wastewater Treatment TOT Project, which was awarded to the consortium of Berlin Water International and its Chinese partner in late 2004. The consortium secured an exclusive operating right for 23 years on the basis of a TOT scheme and would take responsibility of all the profits and losses in the operation of the plant. The total investment for the transfer amounted to RMB 491 million(US$70 million). The price was more than 288% of the original value, RMB 170 million (US$24 million). The project can be regarded as a successful case because of the following three causes. First, the Hefei government followed a series of standardized procedures in the international bidding, which ignited best-performed international players' competition for the project. Second, the project will bring in cutting-edge operation skills and management know-how. Third, the government succeeded in raising public asset values, and thanks to this, the government is able to consider other similar projects not only in the water sector but also other sectors in public utility services. Nevertheless, Berlin Water's point of view, there are several challenges. First, the company took a risk to pay such a large amount of cash to the Hefei government. Although such premium can be recouped in the operation period of 23 years, whether or not the company would be able to recover the initial investment and realize profits is in question due to an uncertainty of socio-political circumstances in China. Second, Berlin Water should expect a steep rise of water tariffs over the contract period in order to get the investment back. Water pricing is still a sensible matter to Chinese authorities, and therefore, it is uncertain if such rise of water tariffs would be possible. Third, the TOT mode leads to creation of a large amount of cash to government officials, which might have caused corruption between those who are involved in TOT deals. Then, the final contract fee would soar, which often results in the burden of normal customers. As discussed, the TOT mode has drawn much attention of foreign investors as a new alternative to enter into the Chinese water market. But it is important to note that foreign investors should be aware of possible risks in water TOT projects, which reflects some features of the Chinese political economy landscape and social norms. The Hefei case indicates that benefits can overshadow risks in TOT projects, which will continue to attract foreign investors that are dedicated to establishing their strongholds in the Chinese water market.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2012

Republic of Korea has been applying offset to defense acquisition program for some benefits such as modernization of defense industry and enhancement of R&D capabilities since 1983. But in point of implementation, there is the possibility of delay of offset agreements based on the value of proposed technologies. As it often happens that the delay of offset agreement negatively affects the time schedule of main defense deal, it is necessary to prepare for this issue. The purpose of this study is to extract some factors affecting the duration of offset agreement by statistical analysis. Reviewing existing papers and contract process, nationality of enterprise, the number of project participants, properties of project, the number of technologies in the first proposal, level of domestic defense technology in each weapons system, the amount of main contract were used as independent variable and duration of agreement as dependent variable. To hypothesis testing, correlation and multiple regression analysis were conducted using the previous 25 contract cases. As a result of correlation analysis, the amount of main contract, the number of technologies in the first proposal and properties of project have positive relationships with dependent variable. In multiple regression, the amount of main contract and the number of project participants have significant effect on the duration of offset agreement.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.30-31
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• 2009

Early detection of schedule delay in field construction activities is vital to project management. It provides the opportunity to initiate remedial actions and increases the chance of controlling such overruns or minimizing their impacts. This entails project managers to design, implement, and maintain a systematic approach for progress monitoring to promptly identify, process and communicate discrepancies between actual and as-planned performances as early as possible. Despite importance, systematic implementation of progress monitoring is challenging: (1) Current progress monitoring is time-consuming as it needs extensive as-planned and as-built data collection; (2) The excessive amount of work required to be performed may cause human-errors and reduce the quality of manually collected data and since only an approximate visual inspection is usually performed, makes the collected data subjective; (3) Existing methods of progress monitoring are also non-systematic and may also create a time-lag between the time progress is reported and the time progress is actually accomplished; (4) Progress reports are visually complex, and do not reflect spatial aspects of construction; and (5) Current reporting methods increase the time required to describe and explain progress in coordination meetings and in turn could delay the decision making process. In summary, with current methods, it may be not be easy to understand the progress situation clearly and quickly. To overcome such inefficiencies, this research focuses on exploring application of unsorted daily progress photograph logs - available on any construction site - as well as IFC-based 4D models for progress monitoring. Our approach is based on computing, from the images themselves, the photographer's locations and orientations, along with a sparse 3D geometric representation of the as-built scene using daily progress photographs and superimposition of the reconstructed scene over the as-planned 4D model. Within such an environment, progress photographs are registered in the virtual as-planned environment, allowing a large unstructured collection of daily construction images to be interactively explored. In addition, sparse reconstructed scenes superimposed over 4D models allow site images to be geo-registered with the as-planned components and consequently, a location-based image processing technique to be implemented and progress data to be extracted automatically. The result of progress comparison study between as-planned and as-built performances can subsequently be visualized in the D4AR - 4D Augmented Reality - environment using a traffic light metaphor. In such an environment, project participants would be able to: 1) use the 4D as-planned model as a baseline for progress monitoring, compare it to daily construction photographs and study workspace logistics; 2) interactively and remotely explore registered construction photographs in a 3D environment; 3) analyze registered images and quantify as-built progress; 4) measure discrepancies between as-planned and as-built performances; and 5) visually represent progress discrepancies through superimposition of 4D as-planned models over progress photographs, make control decisions and effectively communicate those with project participants. We present our preliminary results on two ongoing construction projects and discuss implementation, perceived benefits and future potential enhancement of this new technology in construction, in all fronts of automatic data collection, processing and communication.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Information Technology Applications Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.234-245
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• 2007

The empirical studies on the implementation of data warehousing systems (DWS) are lacking while there exist a number of studies on the implementation of IS. This study intends to examine the factors affecting the implementation success of DWS. The study adopts the empirical analysis of the sample of 112 responses from DWS practitioners. The study results suggest several implications for researchers and practitioners. First, when the support from top management becomes great, the implementation success of DWS in organizational aspects is more likely. When the support from top management exists, users are more likely to be encouraged to use DWS, and organizational resistance to use DWS is well coped with increasing the possibility of implementation success of DWS. The support of resource increases the implementation success of DWS in project aspects while it is not significantly related to the implementation success of DWS in organizational aspects. The support of funds, human resources, and other efforts enhances the possibility of successful implementation of project; the project does not exceed the time and resource budgets and meet the functional requirements. The effect of resource support, however, is not significantly related to the organizational success. The user involvement in systems implementation affects the implementation success of DWS in organizational and project aspects. The success of DWS implementation is significantly related to the users' commitment to the project and the proactive involvement in the implementation tasks. users' task. The observation of the behaviors of competitors which possibly increases data quality does not affect the implementation success of DWS. This indicates that the quality of data such as data consistency and accuracy is not ensured through the understanding of the behaviors of competitors, and this does not affect the data integration and the successful implementation of DWS projects. The prototyping for the DWS implementation positively affects the implementation success of DWS. This indicates that the extent of understanding requirements and the communication among project members increases the implementation success of DWS. Developing the prototypes for DWS ensures the acquirement of accurate or integrated data, the flexible processing of data, and the adaptation into new organizational conditions. The extent of consulting activities in DWS projects increases the implementation success of DWS in project aspects. The continuous support for consulting activities and technology transfer enhances the adherence to the project schedule preventing the exceeding use of project budget and ensuring the implementation of intended system functions; this ultimately leads to the successful implementation of DWS projects. The research hypothesis that the capability of project teams affects the implementation success of DWS is rejected. The technical ability of team members and human relationship skills themselves do not affect the successful implementation of DWS projects. The quality of the system which provided data to DWS affects the implementation success of DWS in technical aspects. The standardization of data definition and the commitment to the technical standard increase the possibility of overcoming the technical problems of DWS. Further, the development technology of DWS affects the implementation success of DWS. The hardware, software, implementation methodology, and implementation tools contribute to effective integration and classification of data in various forms. In addition, the implementation success of DWS in organizational and project aspects increases the data quality and system quality of DWS while the implementation success of DWS in technical aspects does not affect the data quality and system quality of DWS. The data and systems quality increases the effective processing of individual tasks, and reduces the decision making times and efforts enhancing the perceived benefits of DWS.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.35-47
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• 2014

With the qualitative methods for casino-related policy analysis on sense of residents, the degrees of expectation, support, adequacy, awareness, participation, contribution, and benefit which were derived from results are as follows: Firstly, from the recognition analysis on casino related policy, recognition III ranked at the top, and benefit and contribution II followed next. From the result, promotion policy on closed mine area fell short of expectations. The second phase of development project and appropriate the dead-mine development fund for promotion of substitute industry by the needs of residents. Secondly, derived from the comparative evaluation of casino-related industry, all comparison targets ; awareness of promoting policy and contribution to regional development, participation and contribution to Regional development, benefits and contribution to regional development, participation in the closed-mine area and contribution to regional balanced development, and lastly benefits and regional balanced development) are related to each other.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.435-461
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• 2015

Recently, Korean development Institute includes water for environmental improvement as an additional water demand category in water resources development project. In response to this change, this paper is to measure benefits of providing additional water in Yeondok Ohsip River by applying contingent valuation method. This study extended the conventional CVM design by incorporating distance variable into WTP function of dichotonomous choice responses and treated protest bids by estimating sample-selection models. The empirical analysis exhibited that more than 30% of respondents were categorized as protest bids and the mean of WTP from sample selection models were three times higher than that of the whole sample. In addition, the distance variable had significantly negative impact on sample WTP regardless of variables forms, and the geographical market area were more 400km, which implies that beneficiaries of water service would the households from the whole nation.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.265-285
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• 2006

The purpose of this research is to identify the major evaluation criteria of IT investment projects and establish the importance weights of criteria through AHP analysis. Seven evaluation criteria which have been drawn from prior studies and industry practices are direct costs, indirect costs, financial benefits, strategic value, risk, technical necessity, and political considerations. Data have been collected from 95 IT projects in 40 public organizations and private firms in Korea. After having applied the data reliability test, 79 projects have been selected. The results of AHP analysis show the importance weights and priorities of seven evaluation criteria as follows: financial benefits 25.2%, strategic value 22.36%, direct costs 14.34%, risk 12.10%, technical necessity 11.55%, political considerations 8.3%, and indirect costs 6.48%. And the weights of seven criteria shows considerable differences among three different IT project types such as transactional, informational, and infrastructural.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.286-300
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• 2020

In 2019, the Seoul metropolitan government established its own 'Seoul-type paid sick leave project'. Although the central government had to introduce such a system, which is also called sickness benefits, it was not implemented. In order to understand the process by which the Seoul government has implemented such a policy, this study used Kingdon's multiple streams framework. As a result, in the problem stream, it was found that the economic burden of sickness has been considered only in terms of medical expenses in the past of Korea. Then Songpa's three women and Middle East respiratory syndrome incidents raised awareness of the necessity of the sickness benefit system in 2014 and 2015. In the political stream, several social affairs such as national health insurance huge surpluses and the 2017 presidential election opened policy window. At that time, Seoul Mayor actively promoted sickness benefits as a policy entrepreneur. In the policy stream, the sickness benefit system has gained new attention through political events. To summary, these three streams flowed separately and then they assembled around huge political affairs. As a result, it was confirmed that Kingdon's model is the most effective theory than any other models in analyzing the health care policy decision process in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.51-70
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• 2013

This paper develops a model to predict the adoption and level of usage of network technology in a two-level supply chain with buyer-supplier relationships. A firm's adoption of a new technology depends not only on its own beliefs of the new technology's costs and benefits, but also on the adoption decisions of other firms in the supply chain. A model first analyzes an individual supplier's decision about a new technology adoption considering with multiple suppliers and buyers. Individual suppliers' decisions are aggregated with a population model to project how new technology diffuses across the supply chain and examine the pattern of diffusion process. This study found that as more firms adopt in initial periods, the total amount of information to the potential adopters in the population increases, and then the number of firms persuaded by the information increases as the process moves up the distribution of adoption process. We consider three factors influencing the diffusion speed of the new technology in a supply chain network : mean benefits, cost sharing, and information provision. This study examines how such factors affect the reduction of threshold levels, which implies that reductions in threshold levels have an aggregate effect by accelerating the rate of adoption. In particular, we explore relationship factors available in practice in a buyer-supplier relationship and numerically examines how these relationship factors contribute to increase the diffusion speed of the technology in a two-level supply chain.