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The Influence of Ventilation and Shade on the Mean Radiant Temperature of Summer Outdoor (통풍과 차양이 하절기 옥외공간의 평균복사온도에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Chun-Seok;Ryu, Nam-Hyung
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.40 no.5
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    • pp.100-108
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    • 2012
  • The purpose of the study was to evaluate the influence of shading and ventilation on Mean Radiant Temperature(MRT) of the outdoor space at a summer outdoor. The Wind Speed(WS), Air Temperature(AT) and Globe Temperature(GT) were recorded every minute from $1^{st}$ of May to the $30^{th}$ of September 2011 at a height of 1.2m above in four experimental plots with different shading and ventilating conditions, with a measuring system consisting of a vane type anemometer(Barini Design's BDTH), Resistance Temperature Detector(RTD, Pt-100), standard black globe(${\O}$ 150mm) and data acquisition systems(National Instrument's Labview and Compfile Techs' Moacon). To implement four different ventilating and shading conditions, three hexahedral steel frames, and one natural plot were established in the open grass field. Two of the steel frames had a dimension of $3m(W){\times}3m(L){\times}1.5m(H)$ and every vertical side covered with transparent polyethylene film to prevent lateral ventilation(Ventilation Blocking Plot: VP), and an additional shading curtain was applied on the top side of a frame(Shading and Ventilation Blocking Plot: SVP). The third was $1.5m(W){\times}1.5m(L){\times}1.5m(H)$, only the top side of which was covered by the shading curtain without the lateral film(Shading Plot: SP). The last plot was natural condition without any kind of shading and wind blocking material(Natural Open Plot: NP). Based on the 13,262 records of 44 sunny days, the time serial difference of AT and GT for 24 hour were analyzed and compared, and statistical analysis was done based on the 7,172 records of daytime period from 7 A.M. to 8 P.M., while the relation between the MRT and solar radiation and wind speed was analyzed based on the records of the hottest period from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M.. The major findings were as follows: 1. The peak AT was $40.8^{\circ}C$ at VP and $35.6^{\circ}C$ at SP showing the difference about $5^{\circ}C$, but the difference of average AT was very small within${\pm}1^{\circ}C$. 2. The difference of the peak GT was $12^{\circ}C$ showing $52.5^{\circ}C$ at VP and $40.6^{\circ}C$ at SP, while the gap of average GT between the two plots was $6^{\circ}C$. Comparing all four plots including NP and SVP, it can be said that the shading decrease $6^{\circ}C$ GT while the wind blocking increase $3^{\circ}C$ GT. 3. According to the calculated MRT, the shading has a cooling effect in reducing a maximum of $13^{\circ}C$ and average $9^{\circ}C$ MRT, while the wind blocking has heating effect of increasing average $3^{\circ}C$ MRT. In other words, the MRT of the shaded area with natural ventilation could be cooler than the wind blocking the sunny site to about $16^{\circ}C$ MRT maximum. 4. The regression and correlation tests showed that the shading is more important than the ventilation in reducing the MRT, while both of them do an important role in improving the outdoor thermal comfort. In summary, the results of this study showed that the shade is the first and the ventilation is the second important factor in terms of improving outdoor thermal comfort in summer daylight hours. Therefore, it can be apparently said that the more shade by the forest, shading trees etc., the more effective in conditioning the microclimate of an outdoor space reducing the useless or even harmful heat energy for human activities. Furthermore, the delicately designed wind corridor or outdoor ventilation system can improve even the thermal environment of urban area.

A Study on Modern People's Consciousness and Wearing Practice of Korean Costumes (우리나라 옷에 대한 현대인(現代人)의 의식(意識)과 춘용실태(春用實態)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究) - 서울 지역(地域)을 중심(中心)으로 -)

  • Hwang, Chun-Sub
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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    • v.1
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    • pp.119-129
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    • 1977
  • It is significant for developing the future for us to know our present age. In order to preserve our Korean costume as a fola clothes retaining our distinguished independent characterisitics and to help design the tomorrow of our Korean costume playing a role as a racial to develop the world clothing culture, a survey was conducted to investigate modern people's conscious-ness and wearing practumes of Korean costume by questionaire and interviewing methods. The results of the survey were analyzed as follows: (1) At present, Korean costumes were purchased as customtailored(64.0%) and as ready-made(17.8%) and most of them were not made at individual homes. The laundry and ironing of them were carried out at laundry shops(68.8%). Considering our present economic, social and cultural aspects, sowing, laundryand ironing will not be carried out at homes again in the future and ready made costumes seen to be produced in a large scale in the future. Garment makers and laundry shop operators should be trained how to make our Korean costumes retain our traditional beauty in the course of their production and laundry and the makers of ready-made costumes must make research how to efficiently produce ideal ready-made costumes by adopting the synchro system in their wrk odisivion. (2) The age group wearing Korean costumes most frequently was the aged people over 60 (their wearing rate; 45%-50%) and the group wearing them most frequently next io the aged people over 60, was housewives(their wearing rate; 15%-20%). Excludign aged people and housewives, other respondentsdid not wear Korean costumes very frequently. Men's wearing rate was lower their wearing rate was the younger their ages were and the less their monthly incomes were. Korean costumes were used for holiday and festival(60%), wedding and funeral ceremonies (52%), visiting and working(22%), casual wear(12.8%) and home wear(9.2%). The use of Korean costumes as casual and home wears, was lower than the use for holday, festival, visiting and working, Under our present circumstances in which our Korean people use both Western style clothes and Korean costumer, our Korean costume has lostits position as a basic and necessary requiement in Korean people's daily life and become a ceremonical and fancy costume. It is natural that the times and life change everything in our daily life. Our costume has to be made as good ceremonial and fancy clothes satisfying modern sensibility according to its new role. In order for us to get close with our clothes, a keen study must be carried out to cleat the color, material, style, function and harmony of the Korean costume matching the of the times. (3) The 47.8% of the respondents answered that they were proud of our Korean costume as our folk clothes, 47.6% replied that thought them just common and 1.1% responded that they were ashamed of it. Most of them were affirmative in feeling pride with our Korean costume. (4) Considering the functional aspect of Korean costumes, their strong points were symetric beauty, rhythmical beauty, unity feeling, harmonical beauty and detailed decorations. Their common shortcomings were lack of individuality and inadequateness for active life. The shortcomings of woman costumes were suppressing breast, making resperation difficult and in adequnteness in summer time. The main reason not to wear our Korean costumes, was due to the fact that they are incomvenient for active life. As a measure to eliminate such shortcomings, 1) the suspension system of skirt to remove the suppression of breast should be generally adopted. 2) they should be simplified in their structure to make them convenient for active life and adepuate in wearing them in hot weather in an extent to which the traditional beauty of the costume may not be lostand 3) a new technique must be explored for showing individuality by wearing method and new arrangment of colors and decorations. (5) The reasons desiring to wear Korean costumes were classifide as follows: A. Korean costumes are our traditional clothes(43.4%). B. Korean costumes are noble and beautiful(26.8%). C. They are accustomed to wear Korean costumes by habit(19.5%). D. Korean costumes are necessary for attending ceremoneis(9.5%). E. Miscellaneous reasons(0.8%). Classifying these reasons into age groups, the high age group over 40 wore them because they were easy to wear by habit and the low age group of 10-30 never thought that they were east to wear by habit. Considering that even those who were accustomed to wear Korean costumes showed a low wearing rate and that the young generation were accustomed to wear Western style clothes rather than Korean costumes, the wearing rate of Korean costumes will be reduced in the future if such trend continues. It is urgent for us to make our best efforts in order to enhance the interest of young generation in Korean costumes and not to make them lose the strong points of Korean costume in the future. (6) Conicering the plan of the respondents on what kind of clothes they were going to wear in the future, among the age group over 50, those who wanted to wear only Korean costumes were 24.8%(men) and 35.1%(women), those who wanted to wear 49.7%(men) and 47.4(women), those who wanted to wear chiefly Western style clothes were 20.7% (men) and 14.4%(women) and those who wanted to wear only Western style clothes, were 2.4% (men) and 2.1%(women). This shows that the general tendency to wear only or chiefly Korean costumes is more prevalent than that to wear only Western style. Among the age group under 50, the tendency to wear Western style clothes was conspicuous and most of the respondent answered that they would wear chiefly Western style clothes and Korean costumes occasionally. Only 5.4% of the respondent answered that they would wear only Western style clothes and this shows that meny respondents still wonted to wear Korean costumes. Those who wanted their descendants to wear what they desire, were 50.1%(men) and 68.8% (women) and those who wanted their descendants to wear Koran costumes occasionally, were 85.8%(men) and 86.3%(women). This shows that most of respondents wanted their descendants to wear Korean costumes. In order to realize, it is necessory for us to make ourdescendants recognize the preciousness of our traditional culture and modify our Korean costumes according to their taste so that they may like wearing them.

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Effects of firm strategies on customer acquisition of Software as a Service (SaaS) providers: A mediating and moderating role of SaaS technology maturity (SaaS 기업의 차별화 및 가격전략이 고객획득성과에 미치는 영향: SaaS 기술성숙도 수준의 매개효과 및 조절효과를 중심으로)

  • Chae, SeongWook;Park, Sungbum
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.151-171
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    • 2014
  • Firms today have sought management effectiveness and efficiency utilizing information technologies (IT). Numerous firms are outsourcing specific information systems functions to cope with their short of information resources or IT experts, or to reduce their capital cost. Recently, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a new type of information system has become one of the powerful outsourcing alternatives. SaaS is software deployed as a hosted and accessed over the internet. It is regarded as the idea of on-demand, pay-per-use, and utility computing and is now being applied to support the core competencies of clients in areas ranging from the individual productivity area to the vertical industry and e-commerce area. In this study, therefore, we seek to quantify the value that SaaS has on business performance by examining the relationships among firm strategies, SaaS technology maturity, and business performance of SaaS providers. We begin by drawing from prior literature on SaaS, technology maturity and firm strategy. SaaS technology maturity is classified into three different phases such as application service providing (ASP), Web-native application, and Web-service application. Firm strategies are manipulated by the low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy. Finally, we considered customer acquisition as a business performance. In this sense, specific objectives of this study are as follows. First, we examine the relationships between customer acquisition performance and both low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy of SaaS providers. Secondly, we investigate the mediating and moderating effects of SaaS technology maturity on those relationships. For this purpose, study collects data from the SaaS providers, and their line of applications registered in the database in CNK (Commerce net Korea) in Korea using a questionnaire method by the professional research institution. The unit of analysis in this study is the SBUs (strategic business unit) in the software provider. A total of 199 SBUs is used for analyzing and testing our hypotheses. With regards to the measurement of firm strategy, we take three measurement items for differentiation strategy such as the application uniqueness (referring an application aims to differentiate within just one or a small number of target industry), supply channel diversification (regarding whether SaaS vendor had diversified supply chain) as well as the number of specialized expertise and take two items for low cost strategy like subscription fee and initial set-up fee. We employ a hierarchical regression analysis technique for testing moderation effects of SaaS technology maturity and follow the Baron and Kenny's procedure for determining if firm strategies affect customer acquisition through technology maturity. Empirical results revealed that, firstly, when differentiation strategy is applied to attain business performance like customer acquisition, the effects of the strategy is moderated by the technology maturity level of SaaS providers. In other words, securing higher level of SaaS technology maturity is essential for higher business performance. For instance, given that firms implement application uniqueness or a distribution channel diversification as a differentiation strategy, they can acquire more customers when their level of SaaS technology maturity is higher rather than lower. Secondly, results indicate that pursuing differentiation strategy or low cost strategy effectively works for SaaS providers' obtaining customer, which means that continuously differentiating their service from others or making their service fee (subscription fee or initial set-up fee) lower are helpful for their business success in terms of acquiring their customers. Lastly, results show that the level of SaaS technology maturity mediates the relationships between low cost strategy and customer acquisition. That is, based on our research design, customers usually perceive the real value of the low subscription fee or initial set-up fee only through the SaaS service provide by vender and, in turn, this will affect their decision making whether subscribe or not.

An Ontology Model for Public Service Export Platform (공공 서비스 수출 플랫폼을 위한 온톨로지 모형)

  • Lee, Gang-Won;Park, Sei-Kwon;Ryu, Seung-Wan;Shin, Dong-Cheon
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.149-161
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    • 2014
  • The export of domestic public services to overseas markets contains many potential obstacles, stemming from different export procedures, the target services, and socio-economic environments. In order to alleviate these problems, the business incubation platform as an open business ecosystem can be a powerful instrument to support the decisions taken by participants and stakeholders. In this paper, we propose an ontology model and its implementation processes for the business incubation platform with an open and pervasive architecture to support public service exports. For the conceptual model of platform ontology, export case studies are used for requirements analysis. The conceptual model shows the basic structure, with vocabulary and its meaning, the relationship between ontologies, and key attributes. For the implementation and test of the ontology model, the logical structure is edited using Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$ editor. The core engine of the business incubation platform is the simulator module, where the various contexts of export businesses should be captured, defined, and shared with other modules through ontologies. It is well-known that an ontology, with which concepts and their relationships are represented using a shared vocabulary, is an efficient and effective tool for organizing meta-information to develop structural frameworks in a particular domain. The proposed model consists of five ontologies derived from a requirements survey of major stakeholders and their operational scenarios: service, requirements, environment, enterprise, and county. The service ontology contains several components that can find and categorize public services through a case analysis of the public service export. Key attributes of the service ontology are composed of categories including objective, requirements, activity, and service. The objective category, which has sub-attributes including operational body (organization) and user, acts as a reference to search and classify public services. The requirements category relates to the functional needs at a particular phase of system (service) design or operation. Sub-attributes of requirements are user, application, platform, architecture, and social overhead. The activity category represents business processes during the operation and maintenance phase. The activity category also has sub-attributes including facility, software, and project unit. The service category, with sub-attributes such as target, time, and place, acts as a reference to sort and classify the public services. The requirements ontology is derived from the basic and common components of public services and target countries. The key attributes of the requirements ontology are business, technology, and constraints. Business requirements represent the needs of processes and activities for public service export; technology represents the technological requirements for the operation of public services; and constraints represent the business law, regulations, or cultural characteristics of the target country. The environment ontology is derived from case studies of target countries for public service operation. Key attributes of the environment ontology are user, requirements, and activity. A user includes stakeholders in public services, from citizens to operators and managers; the requirements attribute represents the managerial and physical needs during operation; the activity attribute represents business processes in detail. The enterprise ontology is introduced from a previous study, and its attributes are activity, organization, strategy, marketing, and time. The country ontology is derived from the demographic and geopolitical analysis of the target country, and its key attributes are economy, social infrastructure, law, regulation, customs, population, location, and development strategies. The priority list for target services for a certain country and/or the priority list for target countries for a certain public services are generated by a matching algorithm. These lists are used as input seeds to simulate the consortium partners, and government's policies and programs. In the simulation, the environmental differences between Korea and the target country can be customized through a gap analysis and work-flow optimization process. When the process gap between Korea and the target country is too large for a single corporation to cover, a consortium is considered an alternative choice, and various alternatives are derived from the capability index of enterprises. For financial packages, a mix of various foreign aid funds can be simulated during this stage. It is expected that the proposed ontology model and the business incubation platform can be used by various participants in the public service export market. It could be especially beneficial to small and medium businesses that have relatively fewer resources and experience with public service export. We also expect that the open and pervasive service architecture in a digital business ecosystem will help stakeholders find new opportunities through information sharing and collaboration on business processes.

Open Digital Textbook for Smart Education (스마트교육을 위한 오픈 디지털교과서)

  • Koo, Young-Il;Park, Choong-Shik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.177-189
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    • 2013
  • In Smart Education, the roles of digital textbook is very important as face-to-face media to learners. The standardization of digital textbook will promote the industrialization of digital textbook for contents providers and distributers as well as learner and instructors. In this study, the following three objectives-oriented digital textbooks are looking for ways to standardize. (1) digital textbooks should undertake the role of the media for blended learning which supports on-off classes, should be operating on common EPUB viewer without special dedicated viewer, should utilize the existing framework of the e-learning learning contents and learning management. The reason to consider the EPUB as the standard for digital textbooks is that digital textbooks don't need to specify antoher standard for the form of books, and can take advantage od industrial base with EPUB standards-rich content and distribution structure (2) digital textbooks should provide a low-cost open market service that are currently available as the standard open software (3) To provide appropriate learning feedback information to students, digital textbooks should provide a foundation which accumulates and manages all the learning activity information according to standard infrastructure for educational Big Data processing. In this study, the digital textbook in a smart education environment was referred to open digital textbook. The components of open digital textbooks service framework are (1) digital textbook terminals such as smart pad, smart TVs, smart phones, PC, etc., (2) digital textbooks platform to show and perform digital contents on digital textbook terminals, (3) learning contents repository, which exist on the cloud, maintains accredited learning, (4) App Store providing and distributing secondary learning contents and learning tools by learning contents developing companies, and (5) LMS as a learning support/management tool which on-site class teacher use for creating classroom instruction materials. In addition, locating all of the hardware and software implement a smart education service within the cloud must have take advantage of the cloud computing for efficient management and reducing expense. The open digital textbooks of smart education is consdered as providing e-book style interface of LMS to learners. In open digital textbooks, the representation of text, image, audio, video, equations, etc. is basic function. But painting, writing, problem solving, etc are beyond the capabilities of a simple e-book. The Communication of teacher-to-student, learner-to-learnert, tems-to-team is required by using the open digital textbook. To represent student demographics, portfolio information, and class information, the standard used in e-learning is desirable. To process learner tracking information about the activities of the learner for LMS(Learning Management System), open digital textbook must have the recording function and the commnincating function with LMS. DRM is a function for protecting various copyright. Currently DRMs of e-boook are controlled by the corresponding book viewer. If open digital textbook admitt DRM that is used in a variety of different DRM standards of various e-book viewer, the implementation of redundant features can be avoided. Security/privacy functions are required to protect information about the study or instruction from a third party UDL (Universal Design for Learning) is learning support function for those with disabilities have difficulty in learning courses. The open digital textbook, which is based on E-book standard EPUB 3.0, must (1) record the learning activity log information, and (2) communicate with the server to support the learning activity. While the recording function and the communication function, which is not determined on current standards, is implemented as a JavaScript and is utilized in the current EPUB 3.0 viewer, ths strategy of proposing such recording and communication functions as the next generation of e-book standard, or special standard (EPUB 3.0 for education) is needed. Future research in this study will implement open source program with the proposed open digital textbook standard and present a new educational services including Big Data analysis.

The Effect of Customer Satisfaction on Corporate Credit Ratings (고객만족이 기업의 신용평가에 미치는 영향)

  • Jeon, In-soo;Chun, Myung-hoon;Yu, Jung-su
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.14 no.1
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    • pp.1-24
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    • 2012
  • Nowadays, customer satisfaction has been one of company's major objectives, and the index to measure and communicate customer satisfaction has been generally accepted among business practices. The major issues of CSI(customer satisfaction index) are three questions, as follows: (a)what level of customer satisfaction is tolerable, (b)whether customer satisfaction and company performance has positive causality, and (c)what to do to improve customer satisfaction. Among these, the second issue is recently attracting academic research in several perspectives. On this study, the second issue will be addressed. Many researchers including Anderson have regarded customer satisfaction as core competencies, such as brand equity, customer equity. They want to verify following causality "customer satisfaction → market performance(market share, sales growth rate) → financial performance(operating margin, profitability) → corporate value performance(stock price, credit ratings)" based on the process model of marketing performance. On the other hand, Insoo Jeon and Aeju Jeong(2009) verified sequential causality based on the process model by the domestic data. According to the rejection of several hypotheses, they suggested the balance model of marketing performance as an alternative. The objective of this study, based on the existing process model, is to examine the causal relationship between customer satisfaction and corporate value performance. Anderson and Mansi(2009) proved the relationship between ACSI(American Customer Satisfaction Index) and credit ratings using 2,574 samples from 1994 to 2004 on the assumption that credit rating could be an indicator of a corporate value performance. The similar study(Sangwoon Yoon, 2010) was processed in Korean data, but it didn't confirm the relationship between KCSI(Korean CSI) and credit ratings, unlike the results of Anderson and Mansi(2009). The summary of these studies is in the Table 1. Two studies analyzing the relationship between customer satisfaction and credit ratings weren't consistent results. So, in this study we are to test the conflicting results of the relationship between customer satisfaction and credit ratings based on the research model considering Korean credit ratings. To prove the hypothesis, we suggest the research model as follows. Two important features of this model are the inclusion of important variables in the existing Korean credit rating system and government support. To control their influences on credit ratings, we included three important variables of Korean credit rating system and government support, in case of financial institutions including banks. ROA, ER, TA, these three variables are chosen among various kinds of financial indicators since they are the most frequent variables in many previous studies. The results of the research model are relatively favorable : R2, F-value and p-value is .631, 233.15 and .000 respectively. Thus, the explanatory power of the research model as a whole is good and the model is statistically significant. The research model has good explanatory power, the regression coefficients of the KCSI is .096 as positive(+) and t-value and p-value is 2.220 and .0135 respectively. As a results, we can say the hypothesis is supported. Meanwhile, all other explanatory variables including ROA, ER, log(TA), GS_DV are identified as significant and each variables has a positive(+) relationship with CRS. In particular, the t-value of log(TA) is 23.557 and log(TA) as an explanatory variables of the corporate credit ratings shows very high level of statistical significance. Considering interrelationship between financial indicators such as ROA, ER which include total asset in their formula, we can expect multicollinearity problem. But indicators like VIF and tolerance limits that shows whether multicollinearity exists or not, say that there is no statistically significant multicollinearity in all the explanatory variables. KCSI, the main subject of this study, is a statistically significant level even though the standardized regression coefficients and t-value of KCSI is .055 and 2.220 respectively and a relatively low level among explanatory variables. Considering that we chose other explanatory variables based on the level of explanatory power out of many indicators in the previous studies, KCSI is validated as one of the most significant explanatory variables for credit rating score. And this result can provide new insights on the determinants of credit ratings. However, KCSI has relatively lower impact than main financial indicators like log(TA), ER. Therefore, KCSI is one of the determinants of credit ratings, but don't have an exceedingly significant influence. In addition, this study found that customer satisfaction had more meaningful impact on corporations of small asset size than those of big asset size, and on service companies than manufacturers. The findings of this study is consistent with Anderson and Mansi(2009), but different from Sangwoon Yoon(2010). Although research model of this study is a bit different from Anderson and Mansi(2009), we can conclude that customer satisfaction has a significant influence on company's credit ratings either Korea or the United State. In addition, this paper found that customer satisfaction had more meaningful impact on corporations of small asset size than those of big asset size and on service companies than manufacturers. Until now there are a few of researches about the relationship between customer satisfaction and various business performance, some of which were supported, some weren't. The contribution of this study is that credit rating is applied as a corporate value performance in addition to stock price. It is somewhat important, because credit ratings determine the cost of debt. But so far it doesn't get attention of marketing researches. Based on this study, we can say that customer satisfaction is partially related to all indicators of corporate business performances. Practical meanings for customer satisfaction department are that it needs to actively invest in the customer satisfaction, because active investment also contributes to higher credit ratings and other business performances. A suggestion for credit evaluators is that they need to design new credit rating model which reflect qualitative customer satisfaction as well as existing variables like ROA, ER, TA.

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A Role for Leu247 Residue within Transmembrane Domain 2 in Ginsenoside-Mediated α7 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Regulation

  • Lee, Byung-Hwan;Choi, Sun-Hye;Pyo, Mi Kyung;Shin, Tae-Joon;Hwang, Sung-Hee;Kim, Bo-Ra;Lee, Sang-MoK;Lee, Jun-Ho;Lee, Joon-Hee;Lee, Hui Sun;Choe, Han;Han, Kyou-Hoon;Kim, Hyoung-Chun;Rhim, Hyewhon;Yong, Joon-Hwan;Nah, Seung-Yeol
    • Molecules and Cells
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    • v.27 no.5
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    • pp.591-599
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    • 2009
  • Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) play important roles in nervous system functions and are involved in a variety of diseases. We previously demonstrated that ginsenosides, the active ingredients of Panax ginseng, inhibit subsets of nAChR channel currents, but not ${\alpha}7$, expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes. Mutation of the highly conserved Leu247 to Thr247 in the transmembrane domain 2 (TM2) channel pore region of ${\alpha}7$ nAChR induces alterations in channel gating properties and converts ${\alpha}7$ nAChR antagonists into agonists. In the present study, we assessed how point mutations in the Leu247 residue leading to various amino acids affect 20(S)-ginsenoside $Rg_3$ ($Rg_3$) activity against the ${\alpha}7$ nAChR. Mutation of L247 to L247A, L247D, L247E, L247I, L247S, and L247T, but not L247K, rendered mutant receptors sensitive to $Rg_3$. We further characterized $Rg_3$ regulation of L247T receptors. We found that $Rg_3$ inhibition of mutant ${\alpha}7$ nAChR channel currents was reversible and concentration-dependent. $Rg_3$ inhibition was strongly voltage-dependent and noncompetitive manner. These results indicate that the interaction between $Rg_3$ and mutant receptors might differ from its interaction with the wild-type receptor. To identify differences in $Rg_3$ interactions between wild-type and L247T receptors, we utilized docked modeling. This modeling revealed that $Rg_3$ forms hydrogen bonds with amino acids, such as Ser240 of subunit I and Thr244 of subunit II and V at the channel pore, whereas $Rg_3$ localizes at the interface of the two wild-type receptor subunits. These results indicate that mutation of Leu247 to Thr247 induces conformational changes in the wild-type receptor and provides a binding pocket for $Rg_3$ at the channel pore.

Scheme on Environmental Risk Assessment and Management for Carbon Dioxide Sequestration in Sub-seabed Geological Structures in Korea (이산화탄소 해양 지중저장사업의 환경위해성평가관리 방안)

  • Choi, Tae-Seob;Lee, Jung-Suk;Lee, Kyu-Tae;Park, Young-Gyu;Hwang, Jin-Hwan;Kang, Seong-Gil
    • Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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    • v.12 no.4
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    • pp.307-319
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    • 2009
  • Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology has been regarded as one of the most possible and practical option to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) and consequently to mitigate the climate change. Korean government also have started a 10-year R&D project on $CO_2$ storage in sea-bed geological structure including gas field and deep saline aquifer since 2005. Various relevant researches are carried out to cover the initial survey of suitable geological structure storage site, monitoring of the stored $CO_2$ behavior, basic design of $CO_2$ transport and storage process and the risk assessment and management related to $CO_2$ leakage from engineered and geological processes. Leakage of $CO_2$ to the marine environment can change the chemistry of seawater including the pH and carbonate composition and also influence adversely on the diverse living organisms in ecosystems. Recently, IMO (International Maritime Organization) have developed the risk assessment and management framework for the $CO_2$ sequestration in sub-seabed geological structures (CS-SSGS) and considered the sequestration as a waste management option to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. This framework for CS-SSGS aims to provide generic guidance to the Contracting Parties to the London Convention and Protocol, in order to characterize the risks to the marine environment from CS-SSGS on a site-specific basis and also to collect the necessary information to develop a management strategy to address uncertainties and any residual risks. The environmental risk assessment (ERA) plan for $CO_2$ storage work should include site selection and characterization, exposure assessment with probable leak scenario, risk assessment from direct and in-direct impact to the living organisms and risk management strategy. Domestic trial of the $CO_2$ capture and sequestration in to the marine geologic formation also should be accomplished through risk management with specified ERA approaches based on the IMO framework. The risk assessment procedure for $CO_2$ marine storage should contain the following components; 1) prediction of leakage probabilities with the reliable leakage scenarios from both engineered and geological part, 2) understanding on physio-chemical fate of $CO_2$ in marine environment especially for the candidate sites, 3) exposure assessment methods for various receptors in marine environments, 4) database production on the toxic effect of $CO_2$ to the ecologically and economically important species, and finally 5) development of surveillance procedures on the environmental changes with adequate monitoring techniques.

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Critical Review about the Character of Communication among Participating Stakeholders in the Improving Alley Landscapes in Residential Neighborhoods Project (주거지골목길 경관개선사업에서 참여 이해관계자의 의사소통 특성)

  • Kim, Yun-Geum;Lee, Ai-Ran
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.44 no.2
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    • pp.25-36
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    • 2016
  • This paper discusses the character of communication among participating stakeholders in the Improving Alley Landscapes in Residential Neighborhoods project. The participation of diverse stakeholders in conventional urban redevelopment is considered to delay and complicate the progress of a project. However, in urban regeneration, a field-oriented operating system and collaboration between diverse stakeholders is considered critical to building a sustainable community. A stakeholder is defined as "a person or organization that can influence decision-making or be influenced by it." This paper uses a case study to examine what types of stakeholders participate and what communicative processes and ideas are shared among them. Six neighborhoods were selected out of a total of 26 of Seoul's 2014 Improving Alley Landscapes project. This research was developed through interviews and a review of the literature. The character of communication among stakeholders in the case study is as follows. Firstly, the administration initiated the project but did not show leadership. This was caused by a gap in understanding about the project between city and borough administrations, Further, the city administration lacked experience with projects that placed an emphasis on fieldwork. Tongjand and Banjang, at ancillary institutions, acted as spokespersons and helped people in the community to understand the administrative process. However, because they led communication and used personal relationships to ensure they communicated effectively, the communication process had limits from the perspective of democratic process. Diverse stakeholders expressed their opinions in the public sphere and communicated about them using diverse media. Finally, experts produced the output, facilitated communication, and mediated in conflicts. Because new experts acted as facilitators and mediators, there was a great deal of trial and error. This project has particular significance: Seoul's city government deals with urban space rather than parks and green space, which are limited by boundaries; and whether "green" can be used for urban renovation was tested by several landscape architects, who sought to identify a new role in urban renovation, namely, the role of landscape and landscape architecture. However, the project has some limitations, including an insufficiently detailed project plan, a lack of common understanding among stakeholders, and a short timeframe. A number of stakeholders overcame these limitations to a certain degree. Officials of the Borough and the Dong managed the project and resolved civil complaints. Experts provided special information, and contributed to the design and construction of improvements.

Environmental Impact Assessment and Evaluation of Environmental Risks (환경영향평가와 환경위험의 평가)

  • Niemeyer, Adelbert
    • Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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    • v.4 no.3
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    • pp.41-48
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    • 1995
  • In former times the protection of our environment didn't play an important role due to the fact that emissions and effluents were not considered as serious impacts. However, opinions and scientific measurements meanwhile confirmed that the impacts are more serious than expected. Thus measures to protect our earth has to be taken into consideration. A part of these measures in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). One of the most important parts of the EIA is the collection of basic datas and the following evaluation. Experience out of the daily business of Gerling Consulting Group shows that the content of the EIA has to be revised and enlarged in certain fields. The historical development demonstrated that in areas in which the population and the industrial activities reached high concentration there is a high necessity to develop strict environmental laws and regulations. Maximum values of the concentration of hazardous materials were fixed concerning the emission into and water. Companies not following these regulations were punished. The total amount of environmental offences increased rapidly during the last decade, at least in Germany. During this development the public consciousness concerning environmental affairs increased as well in the industrialized countries. But it could clearly be seen that the development in the field of environmental protection went into the wrong direction. The technologies to protect the environment became more and more sophisticated and terms as: "state of the art" guided more and more to lower emissions, Filtertechnologies and wastewater treatment for example reached a high technical level-but all these sophisticated technologies has one and the same characteristic: they were end-of-the pipe solutions. A second effect was that this kind of environmental protection costs a lot of money. High investments are necessary to reduce the dust emission by another ppm! Could this be the correct way? In Germany the discussion started that the environmental laws reduce the attractivity to invest or to enlarge existing investments within the country. Other countries seem to be not so strict with controlling the environmental laws which means it's simply cheaper to produce in Portugal or Greece. Everybody however knows that this is not the correct way and does not solve the environmental problems. Meanwhile the general picture changes a little bit and we think it changes into the correct direction "End-of-the-pipe" solutions are still necessary but this word received a real negative touch and nobody wants to be brought into connection with this word received a real negative touch and nobody wants to be brought into connection with this word especially in connection with environmental management and safety. Modern actual environmental management starts in a different way. Thoughts about emissions start in the very beginning of the production, they start with the design of the product and modification of traditional modes of production. Basis of these ideas are detailed analyses of products and processes. Due to the above mentioned facts that the public environmental consciousness changed dramatically a continous environmental improvement of each single production plant has to be guarantied. This question is already an important question of the EIA. But it was never really checked in a wholistic approach. Environmental risks have to be taken into considerations during the execution of an EIA. This means that the environmental risks have to be reduced down to a capable risk-level. Environmental risks have to be considered within the phase of planning, during the operation of a plant and after shut down. The experience shows that most of the environmental relevant accidents were and caused by human fault. Even in highly protected plants the human risk-factor can not be excluded during evaluation of the risk-potential. Thus the approach of an EIA has to regard technical evaluations as well as organizational thoughts and the human factor. An environmental risk is a threat to the environment. An analysis of the risk concerning the organizational and human aspect however never was properly executed during an EIA. A possible solution could be to use an instrument as the actual EMAS (Environmental Management System) of the EC for more accurate evaluation of the impact to the environment during an EIA. Organizations or investors could demonstrate by an approved EMAS or even by showing their installment of EMAS that not only the technical level of the planned investment meets the requested standards but as well the actual or planned management is able to reduce the environmental impact down to a bearable level.

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