The study aimed to evaluate the damage persistence during subsequent years in kiwifruit vines defoliated by strong wind such as typhoons. Artificial defoliation was treated on five-year-old ‘Jecy Gold’ kiwifruit vines grown in a plastic house in year 2013 and 2014 by applying four levels of defoliation, i.e., 0, 50, 75, and 100% in August 23, 2013 and 100% defoliation in July 28 and August 29, 2014, respectively. Return bloom and fruit quality were investigated in the following two years, 2014 and 2015. A significant reduction in number of flowers per shoot in the following year, 2014 was recorded for the vines with 50%, 75%, and 100% defoliations treated in 2013 compared to the control vines. The number of flowers per florescence was significantly reduced for defoliated vines. Nevertheless, the fruit quality parameters, i.e., fruit length, width, weight, firmness, TSS, acidity, and dry matter content were not significantly different for the defoliated vines compared to the control vines. The vines defoliated in 2013 at 75% and 100% levels showed a significant reduction of number of flower per inflorescence in 2015 compared to the 0% defoliation. However, the number of flowers per shoot and fruit quality were not significantly different. Also, the number of flowers per inflorescence in 2015 was significantly reduced by July 28, 2014 or August 29, 2014 defoliation compared to non-defoliated vines while the number of flowers per shoot, and fruit quality in 2015 were not significantly different between treatments and control vines. Accordance with the present findings, the flowering is considerably affected by the shortage of carbohydrate supply than the fruit quality of ‘Jecy Gold’ kiwifruit. In addition, the negative impacts of severe defoliation in flowering of ‘Jecy Gold’ kiwifruit might be persisted more than one season from the time of defoliation and consequently, the total yield might be reduced in the following seasons after defoliation.

This study investigated the effect of dietary lysine and gamma-linolenic acid(GLA) levels on growth performance, carcass traits, and meat quality in finishing pigs. Pigs were provided with feed containing two different levels of lysine(0.45% and 0.75%) with three different levels of gamma-linolenic acid(0.0, 0.3, and 0.6%). Average daily gain(ADG) was significantly lower (p<0.01) in pigs provided with the lower level of lysine. In contrast, feed/gain(p<0.01), diet cost/gain(p<0.05), and intramuscular fat(p<0.01) were all significantly higher in pigs fed the lower level of lysine. Similarly, meat color scores(CIE L*, a*, and b*) and cooking loss were significantly higher(p<0.01) in pigs fed the lower level of lysine, whereas shear force(kg/2.5 inch2)was not affected by dietary lysine. The addition of GLA had no significant effect on any of the parameters measured. The results indicate that providing pigs with 0.45% lysine in their diet may help to increase intramuscular fat content, allowing the industry to produce pork products that meet consumer needs in Korea.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of strengthening and stretching exercises on forward head angle and static·dynamic balance ability. 21 adults with the forward head posture were participated in this study. Subjects were randomly assigned to strengthening exercise group I(n=11) and stretching exercise group II (n=10) respectively. Each group were underwent six intervention over the period of 2 weeks, each session lasting 30 minutes. During a preliminary examination, forward head angle and static∙dynamic balance were measured, and a post examination was conducted that involved same procedure as preliminary examination. There were significant differences in forward head angle after exercise in both groups. In the strengthening group, center of gravity total sway distances was significantly changed under all conditions. In the stretching group, center of gravity total sway distances was significantly changed when subjects had their eyes open while standing on an foam surface. There were significant changes in center of gravity sway velocities in the strengthening group under all conditions, and the same was true in the stretching group only when the subjects had their eyes open while standing on an foam surface. In the comparison between groups, eyes closed while standing on a firm surface was significantly different. There was a significant difference in dynamic balance of the stretching group when the subjects tilted their bodies forward, and there was a statistically significant difference between groups under the same condition. The results of this study suggest that forward head posture can be corrected through therapeutic exercise, and muscle strengthening exercise more effective in improving static balance of forward head posture more than stretching exercise.

To investigated the mechanism, induced pluripotent stem cells(iPSC) is important for clinical application and stem cell research. It is well known that hMAGEA2 expression pattern and effect on differentiation in embryonic stem cell but their specific role in iPS cells are unclear. The present study was schemed to understand the function of hMAGEA2 gene in iPS cells and to elucidate its characteristic. Although overexpression of hMAGEA2 in iPS cells are not different on morphology, their pluripotency and self-renewal capacity are significantly strengthened. And hMAGEA2 contributed to promote the cell cycle progression, this cell cycle changes induced proliferation acceleration. Through embryoid body formation in vitro and teratoma formation in vivo, we found that hMAGEA2 critically decreases the differentiation ability in iPS cells. Our results demonstrate that hMAGEA2 intensified the self-renewal, pluripotency, proliferation degree but efficiency of differentiaton is significantly repressed. Our findings provided that hMAGEA2 play a key role of iPS cells.

The mammary gland is a complex organ, made up of various cell types that work together for mil synthesis. A previous study had established a clonal cell line from primary bovine mammary alveolar cells (MAC-T) for the study of bovine milk production and synthesis. In this study, we transplanted MAC-T bovine alveolar cell line to BALB/C nude mice for regeneration of bovine mammary gland alveolar ducts. The MAC-T cells were suspended with matrigel and injected into the dorsal tissue of 8 weeks old male BALB/C nude mice. After 6 weeks, the injected cells were showed typical morphology of the tubuloalveolar female glands by histological analysis. It was made the branching ducts that were surrounded by smooth muscle with small alveoli budding off the ducts. In addition, the epithelial markers CK14 and CK18 were expressed within the duct-like structure. Prolactin was detected in the duct interior in these CK14 and CK18 positive cells but not in the non-transplanted MAC-T cells. These results showed that duct-like tissue had been successfully formed after 6 weeks of transplantation of the CK14 and CK18 positive MAC-T cells into mice dorsal tissue. This mouse model will be a useful tool for further research on the bovine mammary gland.

Adipose tissue is the largest energy storage in the body, with the endocrine, paracrine and autocrine function, and they constitute a network regulatory signal, and participate in energy balance and metabolism regulation in adipose tissue. When adipose tissue is excessively accumulated or obesity, inflammatory signaling pathway is activated as the secretion increase of a variety of inflammatory cytokines, then, the body is under the state of chronic inflammation, causing insulin resistance and many metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, cancer and other chronic metabolic disease, and bringing a serious health crisis to humans. And, excessive fat deposition reduces the feed conversion rate, leading to the increase of livestock and poultry production cost and the reduction of meat food quality. Therefore, the regulation of adipogenic differentiation has become an important field in the study of human health and animal production. 1. The source of adipose tissue The formation of adipose tissue is due to the increase of adipose cell number caused by differentiation and the increase of adipose cell volume and adipose accumulation during development. This process is that adipose mescenchymal stem cells (AMSCs) are transformed to preadipocytes in adipogenic environment, and differentiation related specific transcription factors start to express and induce the specific expression of adipose cell genes and terminal differentiation, finally, mature adipose cells are formed after adipose accumulation. Recent studies have suggested that dedifferentiated fat cells (DFATs) may be an important source of adipose tissue. Mature adipose cells can be dedifferentiated to the sub cells (DFATs) with the dividing ability in vitro culture, and DFATs are pluripotent and can be redifferentiated to adipose cells or transdifferentiated to other cell types, such as cartilage cells, bone cells, muscle cells, etc. by induction. This suggests that DFATs are progenitor cells with the stem cell properties, showing the great potential in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Research on the mechanism of DFATs redifferentiation and transdifferentiation has an important significance for human health and animal production. 2. Regulation of adipocyte differentiation and transcription The adipocyte differentiation lies in the transcription level regulation, involving the cascade and cooperative effects of multiple transcription factors, among which, the core transcription factor is peroxisome proliferator activated receptors-γ (PPARγ), which specifically expresses in adipose tissue, combines the promoters of downstream genes promoter and induces their expression, such as lipoprotein lipase (LPL), insulin sensitive glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4), fatty acid synthase (FAS), adipose-specific fatty acid binding protein-2 (AP2) and adiponectin, and promotes the differentiation and maturation of adipose cells. 3. Transcription regulation of PPARγ by Kruppel like factors Kruppel like factors (KLFs) are a class of transcription factors with zinc finger structure, which is involved in the regulation of cell proliferation, cell apoptosis, cell differentiation and tumor formation in a variety of animal cell types. Since KLF15 is first proved to have the transcriptional regulation capability of adipose differentiation by Gray, et al. in 2002, other KLFs are also found to be involved in the adipose differentiation regulation. According to the recent studies of KLFs regulation of adipose differentiation, Christopher, et al. in 2009 summarized KLFs transcription regulation network in the PPARγ upstream. This network includes 8 types of KLFs, namely, KLF2-7, KLF11 and KLF15, among which, KLF2, KLF3 and KLF7 are involved in the negative regulation of adipose formation, while KLF4-6, KLF11 and KLF15 positively regulates adipose formation, and they express according to a certain time sequence during adipocyte differentiation. 4. Regulation of adipose differentiation by curcumin Curcumin is a kind of polyphenols extracted from Curcuma longa L.. Curcumin can reduce the mice obesity formation, directly interfere with the preadipocytes differentiation and decrease the adipocyte number and adipose accumulation. Moreover, curcumin plays a role in the early stage of adipocyte differentiation, and inhibit the mitotic proliferation process and the expression levels of PPARγ, C/EBPα, and certain downstream transcription factors. 5. Regulation of AMSCs and DFATs adipogenic differentiation in pigs It is generally believed that pigs are the most suitable animal models for the application of human clinical medicine. Also, pigs are the largest source of human meat food, and one of animals with the most fat content. Therefore, research on the regulation of porcine adipocyte differentiation has an important significance for the establishment of human disease model and the production of low fat and lean meat pigs. This report summarizes the expression patterns of different KLFs and the effect of curcumin on the KLFs and PPARγ expression during the adipogenic differentiation of porcine AMSCs and DFATs in recent years.

Most previous studies on dinoflagellates in Korean coastal areas were conducted without morphological descriptions and illustrations of the observed dinoflagellates. This indicates that the species and diversity of dinoflagellates may have been respectively misidentified and underestimated in the past, probably due to cell shrinkage, distortion and loss caused by sample fixation. This study provides information on the morphological observations of four dinoflagellate orders (Prorocentrales, Dinophysiales, Gonyaulacales and Gymnodiniales) from Jangmok Harbour in Jinhae Bay, Korea. The unfixed samples were collected weekly from December 2013 to February 2015. A total of 13 genera and 30 species were identified using light and scanning electron microscopy, although some samples were not clarified at the species level. Harmful dinoflagellates, Prorocentrum donghaiense, Tripos furca, Alexandrium affine, A. fundyense, Akashiwo sanguinea and Cochlodinium polykrikoides, were identified based on the morphological observations. The results also reflect the occurrence and identification of dinoflagellates that had not been previously recorded in Jangmok Harbour.

Cultural industry has grown into a pivotal part of the knowledge economy and it characteristically allows high employment of young population with high education and at the same time is a labor-intensive industry that yields high added values. For these reasons, it has been regarded as an industry that can be an answer to ever worsening problems of youth unemployment and deteriorating employment quality in the service industry sector. The Korean government has established and enacted government-level supporting policies to foster the cultural industry, especially in the 2000s. In the process, a supporting system for start-up businesses in the cultural industry was implemented to foster one-person culture businesses, focusing on the supporting system for start-up businesses established by the Small and Medium Business Administration (SMBA). This study will look into possible solutions to some problems that occurred in the course of implementing supporting policies for cultural industry and will see if there could be alternatives to them.

In modern society, the financial system has grown in importance. The financial system interchanges according globalization. China financial market is popular because it is great potential and has a large of customer. And Korea’s bank gets through china. It has trouble with going to china because of china’s regulation. But after joining WTO, china relaxes regulation. However, Korea banks have different thing some unique due to Korea bank’s customer has only business. So they emphasize service. Service includes not only kindness and high-quality job performance but also differentiation of space. Thereby, space is composed of simple moving line and easy business handling. This research studies about Architectural Planning Characteristics of Korean bank in China. In future this research would be basic material in architecture.

We improve the energy conversion efficiency (ECE) of a dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) by preparing a working electrode (WE) with localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) by inducing Au thin films with thickness of 0.0 to 5.0 nm, deposited via sputtering. Field emission scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy were used to characterize the microstructure of the blocking layer (BL) of the Au thin films. Micro-Raman measurement was employed to confirm the LSPR effect, and a solar simulator and potentiostat were used to evaluate the photovoltaic properties, including the impedance and the I-V of the DSSC of the Au thin films. The results of the microstructural analysis confirmed that nano-sized Au agglomerates were present at certain thicknesses. The photovoltaic results show that the ECE reached a value of 5.34% with a 1-nm thick-Au thin film compared to the value of 5.15 % without the Au thin film. This improvement was a result of the increase in the LSPR of the TiO2 layer that resulted from the Au thin film coating. Our results imply that the ECE of a DSSC may be improved by coating with a proper thickness of Au thin film on the BL.

Cross-buying refers to the customer action of buying additional products and/or services from the same provider (Valentin 2004). With the belief that cross-buying enables firms to increase profit from existing customers, firms have steadily placed greater emphasis on cross-selling strategies for profitability. To date, numerous studies show that cross-buying behavior of customers has a positive effect on firm profitability. Business reality, however, offers a different perspective; namely, that high levels of cross-buying may not always be linked to firm profitability. For example, Best Buy (an electronics retailer in the United States) has identified approximately 20% of its customers as unprofitable in spite of them purchasing multiple items (McWilliams 2004). Shah, Kumar, Qu, and Chen (2012) found that customers who persistently exhibit certain types of behavior (e.g., excessive service requests, high levels of returning products, lower levels of revenue growth, promotion maximizers) are unprofitable even though they purchased more than one product category.The aforementioned research implies that cross-buying can exert a negative impact on profitability, thereby calling for further examination of cross-buying behavior. It is conceivable that a repeated purchase propensity (contrasted with a cross-buying propensity) concentrated on a single brand is more profitable. Therefore, our primary objective in this paper is to identify a more beneficial type of customer among those who tend to patronize a limited number of brands versus those who tend to patronize a variety of brands, using a one-dimensional model (brand dispersion index). In addition, the second goal of this research is to investigate the boundary conditions where cross-buying will not lead to an increase in sales (unprofitable cross-buying conditions). As two moderating factors that weaken a customer’s crossbuying propensity and a firm’s sales (frequency and transaction size of firms), we consider (1) promotion dependency and (2) spending limiter condition. We use transaction data that include partners in various industries such as gasoline stations, convenience stores, banks, restaurants, and online shopping malls, covering forty-seven categories. Because multiple partners in many categories are available, this allows us to study whether a customer’s cross-buying level in the current period (t) affects the customer’s purchase frequency and transaction size in the subsequent period (t+1). The observation period for the data set extends over three years. Findings from this study indicate that a high level of cross-buying at period t has a positive impact on increasing customer frequencies and transaction sizes in the subsequent (t+1) period. This means that cross-buying has the potential to increase the firm’s profitability. Customers who show a high level of cross-buying propensity tend to exhibit higher levels of loyalty than customers who concentrated on limited brands. Firms should find ways to induce customers with low cross-buying propensity to increase crossbuying. Regarding moderating effects, promotion dependency and spending growth (decline vs. stagnation), spending growth has a considerable moderating effect on the relationship between cross-buying propensity and a customer’s transaction size. Specifically, the effect of cross-buying on transaction size weakens when spending is shrinking. This result makes an important contribution to cross-buying research. If customers showing a high level of cross-buying do not increase their spending level, they may be merely switching to other brands in the program under a fixed budget. So while the rate of crossbuying seems to increase, profit might not increase. The findings from this study imply that it is crucial to target and motivate customers who tend to use various brands and contribute to sales to do more cross-buying instead of suggesting cross-buying to random customers. The promotion dependency, however, turns out to not have significant moderating effects on the relationship between the customer’s propensity to cross-buying and the customer’s purchase frequency and transaction size. For marketing purposes, it is important to consider which customers are more profitable among those who tend to do cross-buying among multi-brands versus those who tend to purchase repeatedly in a limited number of brands. This research provides a solution with a one-dimensional index, the brand dispersion index. Whether cross-buying is shown to be a positive or negative impact on sales, the results are meaningful in implementing customer relationship management. Regardless of the direction in the level of crossbuying, both directions provide a solution to allocate marketing resources. For instance, if the propensity for cross-buying increases sales, the firm should implement marketing strategies to encourage people to use a variety of brands by adding new brands. If repeat purchases increase sales, the company should concentrate on certain brands that customers use most frequently. In addition, by finding the conditions that do not increase sales (e.g., spending limiter condition), it makes marketing practitioners think that cross-buying does not always bring positive results. Overall, the findings from this study are that it is crucial to motivate and target customers who tend to use various brands and contribute to sales to do crossbuying activity, instead of promoting cross-buying to random customers. Conceptual Framework Figure 1 provides an overview of our framework for the relationship between brand dispersion and visiting frequency and transaction size of customers. Specifically, we hypothesize how customer frequencies and transaction sizes in time t+1 will be influenced by customer brand dispersion levels (the extent that customer transactions occur across a broad range of brands) in time t. In addition, we examine the moderating influence of two customer specific variables: (1) degree of promotion dependency and (2) spending limits.

The increasing competition in recent years made more and more firms regard strategic alliance as an important alternative and solution to respond to fierce competition. As a kind of system arrangement among firms, the concept of strategic alliance was first proposed by Hopland and Nigel in the early 1980s, who defined strategic alliance as the collaboration mode in which two or more firms, aiming at joint-owned both market and resources, formed the kind of cooperation to enhance advantages, share risk or cost, and also mutual flow of production factors via different kinds of contracts or agreement. However, even before this definition, many firms have already begun their alliance strategies practices. As a cooperative form, strategic alliance, no matter its specific types, becomes one key choice for firms to acquire, maintain and enhance their market shares and positions. Shrader (2001) found that collaboration to foreign firms become key methods for newly-founded firms and small firms to enter foreign markets, which can bring these firms with suitable knowledge and market information, making these firms expand even faster with lower costs and market risks. The enhancing pace of globalization and internationalization triggered firms’ attentions to external markets, Archibugi and Iammarino (2002) found that fierce changes in internal market forced firms to expand their market and product scopes, making more and more firms realize product and R&D internationalization by searching, choosing and collaborating with foreign firms. Dong and Glaister (2006) found Chinese firms cared more about market positions, international expansion and technology exchanges, while foreign firms tended to enter to Chinese market and learn how to operate in China via strategic alliances. Although, many scholars brought out managerial practices of firms’ strategic alliances, and had already formed theoretical foundations, researches related to market orientation, especially how alliance firms establish and realize their strategic goals and performance goals under market motivation is still lack of studies. In reality, the mechanism how firms’ alliance intention transformed into their strategic or performance goals is still in the black box. Taken alliance firms as research objectives, this paper tends to explore how firms constructed strategic alliance due to market-orientation realize their strategic or performance goals via choice of patent strategies. We introduced patent strategies to establish the matching model, to analyze how firms market orientation influence choices of patent strategies, and their mutual effects on firms innovative performance, in hope to provide to the future studies and managerial practice how firms can choose the reasonable and effective alliance partners according to their own strategic and performance goals. Based on differentiation of market access and market extension motivation, we pointed out that, in order to realize the transformation from alliance motivation to innovation performance, alliance firms had to choose and determine among a set of practical and operational plans. Patent strategies, as a kind of operational plan, were conducive to transformation from alliance motivation to innovation performance. With the framework of market motivation, patent strategy and firms innovative performance, we put forward the hypotheses on how market motivation affect firms’ choices of patent strategies, and also the joint effects of market motivation and patent strategies on firm innovative performance. We selected alliance firms in IT industry as samples, with data from Cooperative Agreements and Technology Indicators Database, USPTO and R&D Scoreboard released by Department for Business, Innovation & Skills of UK, we empirically tested effects of market motivation on choices of patent strategies, and also effects of market motivation and patent strategies on firms innovative performance. Results showed that: different market positions led to differentiated motivations and patent strategies in their strategic alliances, firms with relatively weak market positions tend to pursue strategic profile of patent defensive and leveraging strategies under market access motivation, while firms with strong positions would like to implement patent proprietary and leveraging strategies in market extension motivation. The implementation of patent defensive and leveraging strategies under market access motivation enhanced innovation efficiency of the firms with weak market positions. Since these firms focused more on market positions and opportunities, their market capitalization tended to improve, but the motivation and utilization of patent strategies had no effect on patent output. Similar to these firms, the ones with stronger market position were inclined to strengthen their market opportunities and improve their market capitalization. Results indicated that because of their stronger market positions, these firms showed lower awareness of innovation efficiency and their emphasis on patent output was not high either, which then led to the fact that both market extension motivation and patent strategies used had no effects on firms innovative performance measured by innovation efficiency or patent output.

This study investigated peer-to-peer interaction during collaborative, computer-mediated reading tasks. Fourteen university EFL students in Korea worked in pairs to complete three gapfill tasks. The transcript data from these tasks were analyzed to determine: (1) how often collaboration occurs during collaborative reading tasks, (2) the ways in which peers help each other, and (3) how successful peers are in resolving the problems they collaboratively pursue. The results showed that each of these aspects of interaction varied among sets of pairs. On average, however, the participants collaborated to jointly solve 75% of the problems they encountered. They also used a range of helping behaviors during collaboration. While the participants correctly resolved nearly half of the problems they attempted, half were incorrectly answered or unresolved. Based on these findings, pedagogical implications are offered, in addition to suggestions for future research into collaborative reading tasks.

We prepared polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) beads with a particle size of 80 nm to improve the energy conversion efficiency (ECE) by increasing the effective surface area and the dye absorption ability of the working electrodes (WEs) in a dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC). We prepared the TiO2 layer with PMMA beads of 0.0~1.0 wt%; then, finally, a DSSC with 0.45 cm2 active area was obtained. Optical microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy were used to characterize the microstructure of the TiO2 layer with PMMA. UV-VIS-NIR was used to determine the optical absorbance of the WEs with PMMA. A solar simulator and a potentiostat were used to determine the photovoltaic properties of the PMMA-added DSSC. Analysis of the microstructure showed that pores of 200 nm were formed by the decomposition of PMMA. Also, root mean square values linearly increased as more PMMA was added. The absorbance in the visible light regime was found to increase as the degree of PMMA dispersion increased. The ECE increased from 4.91% to 5.35% when the amount of PMMA beads added was increased from 0.0 to 0.4 wt%. However, the ECE decreased when more than 0.6 wt% of PMMA was added. Thus, adding a proper amount of PMMA to the TiO2 layer was determined to be an effective method for improving the ECE of a DSSC.