• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.41 no.1
• /
• pp.71-79
• /
• 2016

Background: It is necessary to analyze radioactivity of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) in products to ensure radiological safety required by Natural Radiation Safety Management Act. The pretreatments for the existing analysis methods require high technology and time. Such destructive pretreatments including grinding and dissolution of samples make impossible to reuse products. We developed a rapid and simple procedure of radioactivity analysis for thorium series in the products containing NORM. Materials and Methods: The developed method requires non-destructive or minimized pretreatment. Radioactivity of the product without pretreatment is initially measured using gamma spectroscopy and then the measured radioactivity is adjusted by considering material composition, mass density, and geometrical shape of the product. The radioactivity adjustment can be made using scaling factors, which is derived by radiation transport Monte Carlo simulation. Necklace, bracelet, male health care product, and tile for health mat were selected as representative products for this study. The products are commonly used by the public and directly contacted with human body and thus resulting in high radiation exposure to the user. Results and Discussion: The scaling factors were derived using MCNPX code and the values ranged from 0.31 to 0.47. If radioactivity of the products is measured without pretreatment, the thorium series may be overestimated by up to 2.8 times. If scaling factors are applied, the difference in radioactivity estimates are reduced to 3-24%. Conclusion : The developed procedure in this study can be used for other products with various materials and shapes and thus ensuring radiological safety.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.131-146
• /
• 2011

It is becoming more essential than ever for office professionals to become competent in information collection/gathering and problem solving in today's global business society. In particular, office professionals do not only assist simple chores but are also forced to make decisions as quickly and efficiently as possible in problematic situations that can end in either profit or loss to their company. Since office professionals rely heavily on their tacit knowledge to solve problems that arise in everyday business situations, it is truly helpful and efficient to refer to similar business cases from the past and share or reuse such previous business knowledge for better performance results. Case-based reasoning(CBR) is a problem-solving method which utilizes previous similar cases to solve problems. Through CBR, the closest case to the current business situation can be searched and retrieved from the case or knowledge base and can be referred to for a new solution. This reduces the time and resources needed and increase success probability. The main purpose of this study is to design a system called COKRS(Case-based reasoning Office Knowledge Recommender System) and develop a prototype for it. COKRS manages cases and their meta data, accepts key words from the user and searches the casebase for the most similar past case to the input keyword, and communicates with users to collect information about the quality of the case provided and continuously apply the information to update values on the similarity table. Core concepts like system architecture, definition of a case, meta database, similarity table have been introduced, and also an algorithm to retrieve all similar cases from past work history has also been proposed. In this research, a case is best defined as a work experience in office administration. However, defining a case in office administration was not an easy task in reality. We surveyed 10 office professionals in order to get an idea of how to define a case in office administration and found out that in most cases any type of office work is to be recorded digitally and/or non-digitally. Therefore, we have defined a record or document case as for COKRS. Similarity table was composed of items of the result of job analysis for office professionals conducted in a previous research. Values between items of the similarity table were initially set to those from researchers' experiences and literature review. The results of this study could also be utilized in other areas of business for knowledge sharing wherever it is necessary and beneficial to share and learn from past experiences. We expect this research to be a reference for researchers and developers who are in this area or interested in office knowledge recommendation system based on CBR. Focus group interview(FGI) was conducted with ten administrative assistants carefully selected from various areas of business. They were given a chance to try out COKRS in an actual work setting and make some suggestions for future improvement. FGI has identified the user-interface for saving and searching cases for keywords as the most positive aspect of COKRS, and has identified the most urgently needed improvement as transforming tacit knowledge and knowhow into recorded documents more efficiently. Also, the focus group has mentioned that it is essential to secure enough support, encouragement, and reward from the company and promote positive attitude and atmosphere for knowledge sharing for everybody's benefit in the company.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.12-17
• /
• 2012

Purpose : The patient's clothes and sheet after radioiodine therapy must be disposed of by related regulation. That must be disposed of as radioactive wastes, but that is reusing after radioactivity decay by keeping for the certain period of time. In general, The minimum storage period calculate by standard of take radioactive substance out of radiation controlled area based on measured surface contamination level. But the measurements of surface contamination level are able to differ by measurement method. In this paper, I wish to calculate the minimum storage period of patient's clothes and sheet after radioiodine therapy by measure nuclide concentration offered by the regulation on self-disposal of radioactive wastes. Materials and Methods : The whole area of patient's clothes and sheet measured 31 patients(male:9 patients, female:22 patients), who had radioiodine therapy(3.7 GBq:13 patients, 5.55 GBq:16 patients, 7.4 GBq:2 patients) from july 2011 to march 2012. The minimum storage period is calculated by the regulation on self-disposal of radioactive waste(100 Bq/g) and standard of take radioactive substance out of radiation controlled area(4 kBq/m2) Results : The minimum storage period of pillow sheet, upper uniform, lower uniform by standard of take radioactive substance out of radiation controlled area were each 4.6 days, 63days, 78 days. The minimum storage period of pillow sheet, upper uniform, lower uniform by the regulation on self-disposal of radioactive waste were each 18.1 days, 43 days, 62 days. Conclusion : We can verify that patient's clothes and sheet after radioiodine therapy exists a great deal of radioactive contamination. The minimum storage period calculation of patient's clothes and sheet is better suited to applying nuclide concentration offered by the regulation on self-disposal of radioactive waste. I recommend, To keep for at least 2 months of the patient's clothes and sheet contaminated radioactivity, for prevent contamination and unnecessary radiation exposure.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.29 no.6
• /
• pp.715-721
• /
• 2007

Residual calcium concentration is high, in general, at the effluent of the fluoride removal process in the electronics industry manufacturing semiconductor and LCD. To increase the stability of the membrane process incorporated for reuse of wastewater, the residual calcium is required to be pre-removed. Hyperkinetic Vortex Crystallization(HVC) process was installed in the electronics industry manufecturing semi conductor as a pilot scale for accelerating calcification of calcium ion. Compared to the conventional soda ash method, the 31% higher calcium removal efficiency was achieved when HVC was applied at the same sodium carbonate dosage. In order to maintain the economic calcium removal target of 70% preset by manufacturer, the dosing concentration of the soda ash was 530 mg/L based on influent flowrate. The seed concentration in the reactor was one of the critical factors and should be maintained in the range of $800\sim1,200mg$ SS/L to maximize the calcium removal efficiency. The calcite production rate was 0.30 g SS/g $Na_2CO_3$ in the average. The economic HVC passing time of the mixture was in the range of $2\sim5$ times. Relatively, stable calcium concentration was maintained in the range of $30\sim72$ mg/L(average 49 mg/L) although the calcium concentration in the feed was severely fluctuated with $74\sim359$ mg/L(average 173 mg/L). The HVC process was characterized as environment-friendly technology reducing chemical dosage and chemical sludge production and minimizing maintenance cost.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.77-86
• /
• 2018

For the past few years, KISTI has been servicing an online simulation execution platform, called EDISON, allowing users to conduct simulations on various scientific applications supplied by diverse computational science and engineering disciplines. Typically, these simulations accompany large-scale computation and accordingly produce a huge volume of output data. One critical issue arising when conducting those simulations on an online platform stems from the fact that a number of users simultaneously submit to the platform their simulation requests (or jobs) with the same (or almost unchanging) input parameters or files, resulting in charging a significant burden on the platform. In other words, the same computing jobs lead to duplicate consumption computing and storage resources at an undesirably fast pace. To overcome excessive resource usage by such identical simulation requests, in this paper we introduce a novel framework, called IceSheet, to efficiently manage simulation data based on execution metadata, that is, provenance. The IceSheet framework captures and stores each provenance associated with a conducted simulation. The collected provenance records are utilized for not only inspecting duplicate simulation requests but also performing search on existing simulation results via an open-source search engine, ElasticSearch. In particular, this paper elaborates on the core components in the IceSheet framework to support the search and reuse on the stored simulation results. We implemented as prototype the proposed framework using the engine in conjunction with the online simulation execution platform. Our evaluation of the framework was performed on the real simulation execution-provenance records collected on the platform. Once the prototyped IceSheet framework fully functions with the platform, users can quickly search for past parameter values entered into desired simulation software and receive existing results on the same input parameter values on the software if any. Therefore, we expect that the proposed framework contributes to eliminating duplicate resource consumption and significantly reducing execution time on the same requests as previously-executed simulations.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.39-58
• /
• 2014

As the importance of big data and related technologies continues to grow in the industry, it has become highlighted to visualize results of processing and analyzing big data. Visualization of data delivers people effectiveness and clarity for understanding the result of analyzing. By the way, visualization has a role as the GUI (Graphical User Interface) that supports communications between people and analysis systems. Usually to make development and maintenance easier, these GUI parts should be loosely coupled from the parts of processing and analyzing data. And also to implement a loosely coupled architecture, it is necessary to adopt design patterns such as MVC (Model-View-Controller) which is designed for minimizing coupling between UI part and data processing part. On the other hand, big data can be classified as structured data and unstructured data. The visualization of structured data is relatively easy to unstructured data. For all that, as it has been spread out that the people utilize and analyze unstructured data, they usually develop the visualization system only for each project to overcome the limitation traditional visualization system for structured data. Furthermore, for text data which covers a huge part of unstructured data, visualization of data is more difficult. It results from the complexity of technology for analyzing text data as like linguistic analysis, text mining, social network analysis, and so on. And also those technologies are not standardized. This situation makes it more difficult to reuse the visualization system of a project to other projects. We assume that the reason is lack of commonality design of visualization system considering to expanse it to other system. In our research, we suggest a common information model for visualizing text data and propose a comprehensive and reusable framework, TexVizu, for visualizing text data. At first, we survey representative researches in text visualization era. And also we identify common elements for text visualization and common patterns among various cases of its. And then we review and analyze elements and patterns with three different viewpoints as structural viewpoint, interactive viewpoint, and semantic viewpoint. And then we design an integrated model of text data which represent elements for visualization. The structural viewpoint is for identifying structural element from various text documents as like title, author, body, and so on. The interactive viewpoint is for identifying the types of relations and interactions between text documents as like post, comment, reply and so on. The semantic viewpoint is for identifying semantic elements which extracted from analyzing text data linguistically and are represented as tags for classifying types of entity as like people, place or location, time, event and so on. After then we extract and choose common requirements for visualizing text data. The requirements are categorized as four types which are structure information, content information, relation information, trend information. Each type of requirements comprised with required visualization techniques, data and goal (what to know). These requirements are common and key requirement for design a framework which keep that a visualization system are loosely coupled from data processing or analyzing system. Finally we designed a common text visualization framework, TexVizu which is reusable and expansible for various visualization projects by collaborating with various Text Data Loader and Analytical Text Data Visualizer via common interfaces as like ITextDataLoader and IATDProvider. And also TexVisu is comprised with Analytical Text Data Model, Analytical Text Data Storage and Analytical Text Data Controller. In this framework, external components are the specifications of required interfaces for collaborating with this framework. As an experiment, we also adopt this framework into two text visualization systems as like a social opinion mining system and an online news analysis system.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
• /
• v.7 no.11S
• /
• pp.3651-3667
• /
• 2000

Recently, in the distributed multimedia environments based on internet, as radical growing technologies, the most of researchers focus on both streaming technology and distributed object thchnology, Specially, the studies which are tried to integrate the streaming services on the distributed object technology have been progressing. These technologies are applied to various stream service mamgements and protocols. However, the stream service management mexlels which are being proposed by the existing researches are insufficient for suporting the QoS of stream services. Besides, the existing models have the problems that cannot support the extensibility and the reusability, when the QoS-reiatedfunctions are being developed as a sub-module which is suited on the specific-purpose application services. For solving these problems, in this paper. we suggested a QoS Integrated platform which can extend and reuse using the distributed object technologies, and guarantee the QoS of the stream services. A structure of platform we suggested consists of three components such as User Control Module(UCM), QoS Management Module(QoSM) and Stream Object. Stream Object has Send/Receive operations for transmitting the RTP packets over TCP/IP. User Control ModuleI(UCM) controls Stream Objects via the COREA service objects. QoS Management Modulel(QoSM) has the functions which maintain the QoS of stream service between the UCMs in client and server. As QoS control methexlologies, procedures of resource monitoring, negotiation, and resource adaptation are executed via the interactions among these comiXments mentioned above. For constmcting this QoS integrated platform, we first implemented the modules mentioned above independently, and then, used IDL for defining interfaces among these mexlules so that can support platform independence, interoperability and portability base on COREA. This platform is constructed using OrbixWeb 3.1c following CORBA specification on Solaris 2.5/2.7, Java language, Java, Java Media Framework API 2.0, Mini-SQL1.0.16 and multimedia equipments. As results for verifying this platform functionally, we showed executing results of each module we mentioned above, and a numerical data obtained from QoS control procedures on client and server's GUI, while stream service is executing on our platform.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.383-397
• /
• 1999

For sites to be investigated, the results of such an investigation can be used in determining foals for cleanup, quantifying risks, determining acceptable and unacceptable risk, and developing cleanup plans t hat do not cause unnecessary delays in the redevelopment and reuse of the property. To do this, it is essential that an appropriately detailed study of the site be performed to identify the cause, nature, and extent of contamination and the possible threats to the environment or to any people living or working nearby through the analysis of samples of soil and soil gas, groundwater, surface water, and sediment. The migration pathways of contaminants also are examined during this phase. Key aspects of cost-effective site assessment to help standardize and accelerate the evaluation of contaminated soils at sites are to provide a simple step-by-step methodology for environmental science/engineering professionals to calculate risk-based, site-specific soil levels for contaminants in soil. Its use may significantly reduce the time it takes to complete soil investigations and cleanup actions at some sites, as well as improve the consistency of these actions across the nation. To achieve the effective site assessment, it requires the criteria for choosing the type of standard and setting the magnitude of the standard come from different sources, depending on many factors including the nature of the contamination. A general scheme for site-specific assessment consists of sequential Phase I, II, and III, which is defined by workplan and soil screening levels. Phase I are conducted to identify and confirm a site's recognized environmental conditions resulting from past actions. If a Phase 1 identifies potential hazardous substances, a Phase II is usually conducted to confirm the absence, or presence and extent, of contamination. Phase II involve the collection and analysis of samples. And Phase III is to remediate the contaminated soils determined by Phase I and Phase II. However, important factors in determining whether a assessment standard is site-specific and suitable are (1) the spatial extent of the sampling and the size of the sample area; (2) the number of samples taken: (3) the strategy of taking samples: and (4) the way the data are analyzed. Although selected methods are recommended, application of quantitative methods is directed by users having prior training or experience for the dynamic site investigation process.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.175-191
• /
• 2011

With the MICE(Meeting, Incentive travel, Convention, Exhibition) industry coming into the spotlight, there has been a growing interest in the domestic exhibition industry. Accordingly, in Korea, various studies of the industry are being conducted to enhance exhibition performance as in the United States or Europe. Some studies are focusing particularly on analyzing visiting patterns of exhibition visitors using intelligent information technology in consideration of the variations in effects of watching exhibitions according to the exhibitory environment or technique, thereby understanding visitors and, furthermore, drawing the correlations between exhibiting businesses and improving exhibition performance. However, previous studies related to booth recommendation systems only discussed the accuracy of recommendation in the aspect of a system rather than determining changes in visitors' behavior or perception by recommendation. A booth recommendation system enables visitors to visit unplanned exhibition booths by recommending visitors suitable ones based on information about visitors' visits. Meanwhile, some visitors may be satisfied with their unplanned visits, while others may consider the recommending process to be cumbersome or obstructive to their free observation. In the latter case, the exhibition is likely to produce worse results compared to when visitors are allowed to freely observe the exhibition. Thus, in order to apply a booth recommendation system to exhibition halls, the factors affecting the performance of the system should be generally examined, and the effects of the system on visitors' unplanned visiting behavior should be carefully studied. As such, this study aims to determine the factors that affect the performance of a booth recommendation system by reviewing theories and literature and to examine the effects of visitors' perceived performance of the system on their satisfaction of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. Toward this end, the unplanned behavior theory was adopted as the theoretical framework. Unplanned behavior can be defined as "behavior that is done by consumers without any prearranged plan". Thus far, consumers' unplanned behavior has been studied in various fields. The field of marketing, in particular, has focused on unplanned purchasing among various types of unplanned behavior, which has been often confused with impulsive purchasing. Nevertheless, the two are different from each other; while impulsive purchasing means strong, continuous urges to purchase things, unplanned purchasing is behavior with purchasing decisions that are made inside a store, not before going into one. In other words, all impulsive purchases are unplanned, but not all unplanned purchases are impulsive. Then why do consumers engage in unplanned behavior? Regarding this question, many scholars have made many suggestions, but there has been a consensus that it is because consumers have enough flexibility to change their plans in the middle instead of developing plans thoroughly. In other words, if unplanned behavior costs much, it will be difficult for consumers to change their prearranged plans. In the case of the exhibition hall examined in this study, visitors learn the programs of the hall and plan which booth to visit in advance. This is because it is practically impossible for visitors to visit all of the various booths that an exhibition operates due to their limited time. Therefore, if the booth recommendation system proposed in this study recommends visitors booths that they may like, they can change their plans and visit the recommended booths. Such visiting behavior can be regarded similarly to consumers' visit to a store or tourists' unplanned behavior in a tourist spot and can be understand in the same context as the recent increase in tourism consumers' unplanned behavior influenced by information devices. Thus, the following research model was established. This research model uses visitors' perceived performance of a booth recommendation system as the parameter, and the factors affecting the performance include trust in the system, exhibition visitors' knowledge levels, expected personalization of the system, and the system's threat to freedom. In addition, the causal relation between visitors' satisfaction of their perceived performance of the system and unplanned behavior and their intention to reuse the system was determined. While doing so, trust in the booth recommendation system consisted of 2nd order factors such as competence, benevolence, and integrity, while the other factors consisted of 1st order factors. In order to verify this model, a booth recommendation system was developed to be tested in 2011 DMC Culture Open, and 101 visitors were empirically studied and analyzed. The results are as follows. First, visitors' trust was the most important factor in the booth recommendation system, and the visitors who used the system perceived its performance as a success based on their trust. Second, visitors' knowledge levels also had significant effects on the performance of the system, which indicates that the performance of a recommendation system requires an advance understanding. In other words, visitors with higher levels of understanding of the exhibition hall learned better the usefulness of the booth recommendation system. Third, expected personalization did not have significant effects, which is a different result from previous studies' results. This is presumably because the booth recommendation system used in this study did not provide enough personalized services. Fourth, the recommendation information provided by the booth recommendation system was not considered to threaten or restrict one's freedom, which means it is valuable in terms of usefulness. Lastly, high performance of the booth recommendation system led to visitors' high satisfaction levels of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. To sum up, in order to analyze the effects of a booth recommendation system on visitors' unplanned visits to a booth, empirical data were examined based on the unplanned behavior theory and, accordingly, useful suggestions for the establishment and design of future booth recommendation systems were made. In the future, further examination should be conducted through elaborate survey questions and survey objects.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.69-98
• /
• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.