본 연구의 목적은 광자계수검출기 기반 스펙트럼 전산화단층촬영을 이용하여 K-각 영상을 획득하고, 이 를 통해 3차원 융합진단영상을 구현하여 임상적 이용 가능성을 평가하고자 하였다. 실험을 통한 K-각 영상 획득을 위해 스펙트럼 전산화단층촬영 시스템을 이용하였다. 희석된 iodine과 gadolinium 조영제가 주입된 6개의 튜브를 돼지고기에 삽입하여 팬텀을 제작하였다. 100 kVp 관전압과 500 μA 관전류 조건에서 발생된 X-선을 이용하였으며, iodine과 gadolinium의 K-각 흡수에너지를 고려한 35 및 52 keV에 저에너지 문턱값 을 설정하여 K-각 영상을 획득하였다. 융합진단영상은 일반적인 전산화단층촬영 영상과 스펙트럼 전산화 단층촬영을 통해 획득한 iodine 및 gadolinium 영상을 정합하여 획득하였다. 두 가지 조영제 기반 융합진단 영상의 CNR은 일반적인 CT보다 평균적으로 6.76-14.9배 높았으며, 3차원 융합진단영상은 각 조영제의 물 질 지도 정보를 제공할 수 있었다. 따라서 본 연구에서 제안하는 방법을 통해 전산화단층영상의 화질을 향 상시킬 수 있으며 특정 물질의 추가적인 정보를 제공을 통해 진단의 효율성을 증가시킬 수 있다.

The Sogdian Merchants were the undertakers of international trade on the Land Silk Road in the Middle Ages, and their business footprints spread all over Eurasia. The ancient trading currency of Sogdian Merchants is a key to study the trading history of the region and the entire Silk Road. Although the economic strength of Sogdiana was strong, the country was very weak and had been controlled by the powerful forces around it. Sogdian Merchants wanted to use large amounts of currency for exchanging activities in countries along the Silk Road, they must imitate the currency of the powerful countries that controlled the Silk Road or even use their currencies directly to meet the needs of long-distance transshipment trade. Most scholars agreed that the Persian Sassanian silver coins used to be the currency of circulation along the Silk Road. Whether the main purpose of the unearthed Byzantine gold coins was to act as circulating currencies on the Silk Road at that time, there is still a great controversy.

The study aims to explore key dimensions of service quality of E-Retailing of Islamic banks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The convenience sample size consists of 373 respondents who regularly use online Islamic banking facilities in Saudi Arabia was used. For measuring the consumers’ perspective, a four-factor E-SERVQUAL scale; namely efficiency, system availability, fulfillment, and privacy was used. Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis are used to test the model fitness. Structural equation modelling is utilized to determine the impact of E-service quality dimensions on customers’ satisfaction. The results of the study reveal that 1) reliability as a dimension of E-retailing of Islamic banks made a significant impact on customers’ overall satisfaction; 2) there is a positive significant relationship between responsiveness and customers’ overall satisfaction. One unit increased in responsive leads to 0.763 unit increases in the overall satisfaction of the customer; and 3) ease of use is the most important dimensions of service quality of E-retailing of Islamic banks. One unit increases in Security/ Privacy leads to 0.473 unit increases in overall satisfaction. There is a positive impact of good E-service on customers’ satisfaction, but it does not override unsatisfactory performance in other areas.

On November 10, 2015, the CPC Central Committee proposed a supply-side structural reform. The structural problems of China's economic development are outstanding. There is a problem of supply and demand asymmetry between the total demand shortage and the demand spillover. There is also the problem of supply and demand asymmetry in which the supply side is insufficient and the relative surplus coexist. It can be seen that the focus of the supply-side structure reform is to focus on the optimization of the economic structure. To this end, the primary task in the supply-side structural reform is to de-capacity. At the same time of de-capacity, we must actively respond to the negative impact of de-capacity. An effective measure to deal with the negative impact of de-capacity is to actively seek a stable way to resolve excess capacity while accelerating the follow-up implementation of systematic supporting measures. Taking Hebei Province as an example, the specific measures are discussed.

This study examines the different roles of cash flow in assessing investment returns in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The analysis covers over 900 listed firms across Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand for the period post the Asian financial crisis of 2001-2017. Firm-level panel data analysis shows that cash flow factors are important in all contexts of cash return on assets, earnings quality and market value multiple across the region even after controlling for typical measures of profitability. The results suggest that firms should manage cash flow prudently in considerations of firm value from the shareholder’s perspective, measured directly using stock return. Cash profitability on assets should become an important firm performance indicator, whilst higher cash component over reported earnings is preferred. The market also tends to respond favourably to cash flow yield as a price multiple in valuation, outpacing the role of earnings yield. Such findings are robust across the pre and post subprime crisis periods, across estimation methods pertaining to finance panel standard errors, as well as across static and dynamic considerations of returns. It is hence sensible to consider cash flow factors in the research pertaining to asset pricing and factor investing in the ASEAN region.

The study aims to contribute to the improvement of project management in Vietnam. It focuses on developing new critical success factors (CSFs) which can be used to assess the success of project management in the country. This is a promising issue considering the rapid changes occurring within the business environment. The reason is because CSFs carry great consequences on project management issues, particularly in the context of Vietnam, which is currently experiencing many big scale projects involving both local and foreign investors. Two applications are utilised. One is to adapt the business model of Belassi and Tukel (1996) to observe the transitional and emerging economy of Vietnam. The other is to examine the data collected from a survey to examine the new CSFs which can then be used to assess the success of its projects and project management in Vietnam. The research results showed some remarkable differences between CSFs of Vietnam and foreign countries in both number of success factors and its impact levels which should be paid attention by foreign project managers/owners when doing investment and project management in Vietnam. The outcome generated can be useful to project owners/managers as well as policy makers in Vietnam’s business environment.

The Indonesian government launched a new people's business credit program as part of a package of economic policy and deregulation. The interest rate is set lower than the average of the current loan interest rates, especially when compared with rural bank interest rates. To capture the social spatial aspects, quota sampling is applied to ten areas that divided based on the social culture. Further, the method utilized in this research is logit models, which designed to analyse the determinants of asymmetric information particularly on the rural bank and small micro enterprises. The study was conducted in East Java as the province with the largest number of rural banks in Indonesia. Based on the estimation of asymmetric information model to the respondent of rural banks and small businesses, the result shows that adverse selection can be avoided by strengthening the information about prospective borrowers. Regarding moral hazard, rural banks and small businessmen argued that the imposition of the collateral to the debtor has an important role to avoid moral hazard. Rural bank respondents stated that the KUR program with low-interest rates has affected their business development. The results implied the need of broadening the collaboration schemes between this people’s business credit program and rural banks.

Purpose – This research explores the impacts of third-party logistics (3PLs) within the aircraft Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to explore the role of collaborative relationships for improving outsourcing. Globalization and time based competition have changed business environments and challenged the conventional management strategies that are related to core competencies and operational models. Organizations are forced to devise innovative practices in which logistics outsourcing to 3PLs offers significant advantages. Research design, data, and methodology – This case study was conducted within a leading global aircraft MRO organization whose reach spans across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. The methods used face to face semi-structured interviews, validated through further focus group discussions. Results – These findings highlight the effectiveness of collaborative relationships on their role to improve outsourcing and also demonstrated that MROs gain several advantages from 3PL arrangements. However, any gaps in outsourcing management elevates potential risks to organizations as well, which could result in reputational, operational and financial losses. Conclusions – Although generalizability is not possible due to the case study approach, generality suggests that in order to reduce reputational, operational and financial risks, enhanced collaboration with 3PLs is recommended to optimize outsourcing arrangements.

Honey used as conventional medicine has various pharmacological properties. In the honey and anti-inflammatory effect, Gelam honey and Manuka honey has been reported to exert anti-inflammatory activity. However, the anti-inflammatory effect and potential mechanisms of acacia honey (AH) are not well understood. In this study, we investigated anti-inflammatory activity and mechanism of action of AH in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cells. AH attenuated NO production through inhibition of iNOS expression in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cells. AH also decreased the expressions of IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α as pro-inflammatory cytokines, and MCP-1 expression as a pro-inflammatory chemokine. In the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms, AH decreased LPS-mediated IκB-α degradation and subsequent nuclear accumulation of p65, which resulted in the inhibition of NF-κB activation in RAW264.7 cells. AH dose-dependently suppressed LPS-mediated phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and p38 in RAW264.7 cells. In addition, AH significantly inhibited ATF2 phosphorylation and nuclear accumulation of ATF2 in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cells. These results suggest that AH has an anti-inflammatory effect, inhibiting the production of pro-inflammatory mediators such as NO, iNOS, TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β and MCP-1 via interruption of the NF-κB and MAPK/ATF2 signaling pathways.

The study tests the Fama and French three-factor model by using the newly created Islamic equity style indices. Based on a dataset from May 2006 to April 2011, the three-factor model is tested based on returns of Islamic unit trust funds using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) methodology. The sample period is also divided between periods before and after the Global Financial Crisis in August 2008 to test for robustness, and the Bai and Perron (2003) multiple structural break test was used to determine the structural break in the series. The analysis shows that the Fama and French model is valid for Islamic unit trust funds before and after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The result further indicates the reversal of size effect. As for trading strategies, value funds outperform growth funds by annualized 3.13 percent for the full period. During pre-crisis period, value funds perform better than growth funds while in post-crisis, size factor yields better return than other strategies. As policy suggestion, fund managers need to be aware of the reversal of size effect, and they need to ensure a more transparent stock selection process so that investors can make an informed decision in their asset allocation.

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of branch extracts of Vaccinium oldhamii (VOB) on melanin synthesis in B16F10 cells. VOB promoted melanin production in absence or presence of α-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (α-MSH) in B16F10 cells. However, VOB did not affect the expression of tyrosinase and TRP-1 associated with melanin synthesis at the mRNA and protein levels in B16F10. But, VOB decreased TRP-2 protein level and induced tyrosinase activation in B16F10 cells. Inhibition of tyrosinase activity and tyrosinase knockdown attenuated VOB-mediated melanin synthesis. In conclusion, VOB may stimulate melanin synthesis through activating tyrosinase activity.

Inflorescence, stem, and leaf samples of lettuce grown in a greenhouse in spring and autumn seasons were assayed for sesquiterpene lactones (SLs) content by high performance liquid chromatography. The concentrations of SLs were significantly higher in the inflorescences followed by upper leaf and stem compared to the other plant parts in most of the samples. SLs content (sum of lactucin and lactucopicrin) in various tissues of lettuce cultivated in spring season varied from 5.7 to 22.5 fold ranging from 27.4 ㎍/g dry weight (DW) in the upper stem (cultivar “PI 176588”) as the lowest to as high as 2,292.0 ㎍/g DW in the inflorescence (cultivar “709849-1”). During autumn cultivation, the concentration of SLs varied from 2.0 to 14.4 fold ranging from as low of 32.4 ㎍/g DW in the lower stem (cultivar “PI176588”) to as high of 838.0 ㎍/g DW in the upper leaf (cultivar “Dambaesangchu”). Higher lactucin (1.2 to 5.6 fold) and lactucopicrin (1.1 to 3.9 fold) concentration was observed during spring compared to autumn cultivation in most of the samples. SLs content in various organs of lettuce increases from the basal plant part going upwards. As lactucin and lactucopicrin are the major SLs which affects the sensory property of lettuce, their quantitative variation in the lettuce cultivars is useful for breeding new varieties with better consumer acceptance.