• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.180-187
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• 2016

The objective of this study was to investigate the quality characteristics and antioxidant activities of aronia jam prepared with different content of mashed apple. To analyze the quality characteristics pH, texture, color, antioxidant activity, total polyphenol content, and sensory property were investigated. As aronia amounts decreased, the pH of aronia jam level increased from 3.97 to 4.40, while its total acidity decreased from 0.39 to 0.27. In color, the L-, a-, and b- values increased with decreases in aronia contents when compared with 100% aroma jam. Texture evaluation revealed that the hardness, springiness, gumminess, and chewiness of 100% aronia jam were markedly higher than those of the control and other samples (p<0.05). As the aronia content decreased, both the antioxidant activity and total polyphenol content significantly decreased (p<0.05) and the total anthocyanin content gradually decreased. In the sensory evaluation, the jams containing 50% and 70% aronia showed higher values than those of other samples in overall acceptability. Taken together, aronia jam with 30% apple could be the best in order to meet the taste and functional requirements for consumers.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.123-128
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• 2014

Purpose - The purpose of the study is to reexamine the price fairness as practiced by low cost airlines, as a consumer has to experience such inconveniences as inferior airport transportation, extra fees on in-flight meals, and non-negotiable seats, and consumers evaluate such experiences keeping in mind their total costs. This evaluation includes price fairness and allows a reasonable and overall consideration of factors of low cost airlines. It tries to set up a measurement of the indicators consumers' perceptions of price fairness academically as it adapts price fairness to airline services which are renowned for price volatility. Research design, data, and methodology - The research proposes an alternative pricing strategy for the long term profit of low cost airlines after going over conflicts between the traditional theory of consumers' price perception mechanism and flexible fair policy of low cost airlines. It was meaningful when it relates to the early stage of the business, while it enhances the risks relating to the long term survival of low cost airlines. In addition, it is significant as it highlights the negative influences on consumers' perceptions of price fairness, as low cost airlines run on extremely low cost perspectives. Results - The results of the research provide insight into four perspectives, as consumers' perceptions of price fairness are influenced by the frequency and range of price changes and services. The first perspective is that it would lead to positive price evaluation when a low cost airline cuts prices frequently with little changes than one big change. It also would lead to the same result when it comes to necessary services. The second perspective is that one big increase of price would rather undermine the negative aspects of price changes than those of several smaller ones. The third perspective is that additional services would be good to consumers' perceptions of price fairness as compared to discount benefits with respect to the cost. Finally, a low cost airline should consider that consumers will change airlines or defer their flight schedule if the flight fares increase beyond their limits. Conclusions - Low cost airlines should reconsider their pricing policies for services that were provided free earlier. A consumer would not like discount benefits when made to pay for services that were, for long, free of charge. If a low cost airline can provide services with no charge, it should improve volumes if the costs are standardized and, moreover, should consider the charging fees. Alternatively, a consumer can choose between services and fair discount. Low cost airlines are implementing sales promotion strategies, as the competition is more intense than it used to be. In these days, they should regard services over sales promotion, as consumers may prefer to spend money on good premium services. Some differentiation in services could create a good market position for the airlines and, hence, good financial performance.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.26.1-26.12
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• 2018

Shigella spp. constitutes some of the key pathogens responsible for the global burden of diarrhoeal disease. With over 164 million reported cases per annum, shigellosis accounts for 1.1 million deaths each year. Majority of these cases occur among the children of the developing nations and the emergence of multi-drug resistance Shigella strains in clinical isolates demands the development of better/new drugs against this pathogen. The genome of Shigella flexneri was extensively analyzed and found 4,362 proteins among which the functions of 674 proteins, termed as hypothetical proteins (HPs) had not been previously elucidated. Amino acid sequences of all these 674 HPs were studied and the functions of a total of 39 HPs have been assigned with high level of confidence. Here we have utilized a combination of the latest versions of databases to assign the precise function of HPs for which no experimental information is available. These HPs were found to belong to various classes of proteins such as enzymes, binding proteins, signal transducers, lipoprotein, transporters, virulence and other proteins. Evaluation of the performance of the various computational tools conducted using receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and a resoundingly high average accuracy of 93.6% were obtained. Our comprehensive analysis will help to gain greater understanding for the development of many novel potential therapeutic interventions to defeat Shigella infection.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.43-54
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• 2011

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore EMT-paramedic students' experience of simulation education and analyze the confidence before and after education, learning attitude and course evaluation. Method: Research survey was conducted on 38 EMT-paramedic students during November, 2011 and EMT-paramedic students' experience of simulation education was analyzed after applying head, spinal, and chest injury scenario. The confidence before and after education, learning attitude and course evaluation in gender were analyzed by Mann-Whitny U test and the difference of confidence before and after education was analyzed by Wilcoxon signed rank test and learning attitude & course evaluation were analyzed by evaluating frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation by using SPSS WIN 17.0 program. Results: 1. Students experienced various advantages such as increasing interest and self-reflection on learning, critical thinking ability, and EMT-paramedic-role experience and recognition of importance of teamwork. Students also pointed out disadvantages such as gap between real situation and simulation, limit of time and equipments, and burden of demonstration. 2. The confidence between before and after education, learning attitude and course evaluation in gender were not significant different statistically. 3. Confidence mean score elevated from 5.53(before education) to 5.87(after education), but the difference in their confidence did not show significant difference statistically. 4. Total mean score in learning attitude after simulation education was 3.70 out of 5.00, which is considerably very high. 5. Total mean score in course evaluation was 3.89 with score of 3.83 in evaluation in learning environment and 3.99 in evaluation of debriefing. Conclusion: The finding of this study demonstrate that the simulation education can provide a safe and repetitive practice environment, improve problem-solving ability and critical thinking, and increase the confidence in prehospital emergency care; therefore, simulation may be the new effective EMT-paramedic education strategy.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.22 no.4 s.58
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• pp.197-220
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• 2005

This research aims to explore faculty research support systems in university libraries, assess their service performance for faculty research, and suggest the need and roadmap for new service development. We perform in-depth analyses of not only the current university library evaluation criteria as part of the overall university evaluation criteria, but also ten university libraries in the United States and two university libraries in Korea. Thorough benchmarking studies reveal the problems of the current university library evaluation criteria in its advances and limitations of current faculty support service systems. Especially this research suggests to develop a one-stop service execution wheel for the roadmap for the faculty research support system which is based on customer relationship management(CRM) for one-to-one, mass-personalized services to the faculty.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.44 no.8
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• pp.127-142
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• 2006

This study, systematically evaluated the services provided by consumer organization site in order to improve the possessing problems or deficient aspects and present a desirable direction for instituting the planning of a new consumer group site. An evaluation of the level with respect to contents of consumer organization site showed that communication had the lowest grade while design had the highest. There were some technical errors related to accessibility of the site. An examination of the quality of consultation showed that success rate was low and the contents of the consultation were inadequate. However, compared with service quality of the consumer organization site estimated in the year of 2000, the current service showed significant improvements in terms of the overall quantity of information.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.41-59
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• 2014

The marketing literature suggests that personal relationships between customers and service providers influence consumers' evaluation of goods and services. In this paper, we investigate the effects of service providers' conversation types (non-physical communication) on customers' evaluation and satisfaction in conversation with service providers. The empirical results show that the non-physical communication affect consumers' satisfaction in communication with service providers. This implies that the non-physical communication could be considered as a strategic tool when corporations need to differentiate their services from competitors to gain an advantage in competition.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.426-431
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• 2011

The quality of performance evaluation on engineering consultants that provide design-related technical services is difficult to be measured, and only a handful of papers discussed the quality during the design stage. Although design cost is relatively far less than construction cost for a project, the decisions made in the design phase have a significant impact on the final products of the project, especially for large public construction projects. Therefore, this research focuses on reviewing and then establishing a performance evaluation framework for the consulting firms that execute detailed design and provide technical services for the Taipei Rapid Transit Systems (TRTS). By interviewing experts, this study first established a set of indicators to evaluate these firms' performance. Then, those indicators were incorporated into the four aspects of balanced scorecard (BSC) to establish the architecture of the evaluation mechanism. The weight of each indicator was calculated by analytic hierarchy process (AHP) from a survey conducted among experts. The results showed that the top-three indicators were quantity take-off, functions conformity, and budgeting. The framework of performance evaluation established by this study can be applied to measure service performance during the design stage. It not only facilitates the monitoring of consulting firms, but also helps to reduce unnecessary change orders and disputes during the construction stage.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1-21
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• 2024

This study aims to develop a comprehensive technological framework anchored in a theoretical model to assess user satisfaction with university library websites (ULWs) in Myanmar. Adopting a quantitative approach, data were obtained via convenience sampling and subsequent inferential analysis. The target population for this study investigated users of various ULWs in Myanmar who were utilizing six university libraries. Of the collected responses, 273 valid surveys were analyzed using SPSS (version 25) and AMOS. Tools such as structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis played pivotal roles in data interpretation and hypothesis validation. The proposed model highlights the significance of information quality, system quality, and librarian services in influencing both perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU), culminating in user satisfaction. Notably, information quality and librarian services primarily impact PU, while system quality is more influential on PEOU. Interestingly, while PU has a direct bearing on user satisfaction, PEOU does not. Moreover, demographic elements such as age, gender, and education level introduce considerable differences in the utilization of ULW services. Drawing from the study's findings, recommendations are made for ULW managers in Myanmar to bolster services, aligning with user preferences. The resulting framework offers tangible benefits to Myanmar's educational sector, including academia, government entities, librarians, and policy framers. This pioneering research delves into the realm of ULWs in Myanmar's higher education sector. Practically, the research underscores the necessity for stakeholders, encompassing Myanmar's library experts and governing bodies, to elevate the standard of ULWs. Theoretically, a salient takeaway is the direct linkage between heightened usefulness and increased user satisfaction.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.87-119
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• 1999

The main purpose of this research is to measure and analyze how productive the health centers are and how much inputs(or outputs) in the inefficient health centers should be decreased(or increased) for efficiency. The evaluation of the performance of health centers gives a strong incentive to improve resource allocation in regional health planning. It has been, however, implemented very rarely until now. In this regard, this paper measures the performance of the health centers with a single indicator for multiple-outputs in terms of productivity(technical efficiency), based on Data Envelopment method. The 20 Kyungnam health centers which provide clinic services and specific primary health care services were analyzed. The results show that 50.0% of 20 health centers were productive with respective to overall technical efficiency, 65.0% were productive for pure technical efficiency, and 50.0% for scale efficiency. The inefficient group includes Geoje, Mahsan, Miryang, Sahchun, Tongyoung, Gosung, Nahmhae, Euryang, Hahmahn, Hahbchun health centers. The worst case was identified as Tongyoung health center which represented a 47.5% efficiency, compared with productive health centers. The empirical results for input-output analysis indicates that the low-productive health centers have excessive manpower in administration department, producing low outputs in clinical services and vaccination program. These findings imply that a systemic evaluation of the performance of the Korean health centers and the subsequent structural reform are strongly required.