This paper examines how consumers evaluate digital products with multiple Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs), which are blockchain-enabled cryptographic assets that represent proof-of-ownership for digital objects. The study predicts that people prefer fractioned NFTs (unique fractions of a digital object) versus duplicated NFTs (identical digital objects with distinct numbers) due to their preference for uniqueness. The study also examines the moderating role of product attributes, predicting that preferences for fractioned NFTs will be reduced when the product provides unique aspects, such as a serial number.

The market for counterfeit luxury goods is growing rapidly, with estimates suggesting that counterfeit trades are valued at around $4.5 trillion globally, with 60% to 70% of this being made up of counterfeit luxury goods. Research has shown that counterfeits dilute the perceived quality of luxury brands and reduce consumers' purchase intentions. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a form of ownership record that is linked and stored on a blockchain.

Social media has emerged as a prevalent tool for businesses in recent years through which brands actively engage in promotions. This development has resulted in several social media trends aimed at garnering increased consumer engagement on various social media platforms that brands utilize routinely. We investigate one such prevalent social media trend: brands sharing memes. Several popular brands, such as Netflix, regularly post memes on social media platforms. Therefore, it is important to study the brands’ use of memes and their resultant impact on consumer behavior.

The study investigates how the presence of blockchain technology affects social fairness and selfish monetary decisions. Based on the assumption that blockchain technology enhances transparency and traceability in social exchanges, the study predicts that individuals will make less selfish decisions when blockchain is present. To test these predictions, the study conducted three experiments using a modified version of the dictator game scenario where participants decide how to divide a sum of money among themselves. In Study 1, the results show that individuals took less money for themselves and allocated more to the third player when blockchain technology was present, and the importance of social fairness was higher under the blockchain-presence condition. The mediation analysis indicates that the increase in social fairness mediates the effect of blockchain technology on monetary decisions. Study 2 replicated Study 1 with real monetary incentives. The results showed that individuals took less money for themselves only under the blockchain-image condition, and the importance of social fairness was higher only under the blockchain-image condition. Study 3 examined the moderating effect of the first player's allocation on participants' behavior under the presence or absence of blockchain technology. The study provides empirical evidence that blockchain technology can positively influence social fairness and reduce selfish monetary decisions. The findings have implications for policymakers and blockchain developers to design and implement blockchain systems that promote transparency and traceability in social exchanges, thereby enhancing social fairness.

Most of the prior studies on the servitization of manufacturing companies have been actively studied, focusing on the performance and cases of servitization at the single company level. According to the results, most of the servitization at the single company level has been expanded based on the relevance of the company’s core products. However, the form of companies that form a large axis of the Korean economy is a large-scale business group, and these business groups incorporate service affiliates for various purposes, so they show different characteristics from that of a single corporate. In addition, since the purpose of forming a business group is different for each business group, the service relevance between affiliates within the business group is different. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of service relevance between affiliates within a business group on the management performance of each business group. To this end, an empirical analysis will be conducted using panel data for 10 years from 2011 to 2020 for a total of 98 affiliates listed on KOSPI and KOSDAQ of 9 domestic business groups. Based on these results, the direction for improving management performance and establishing future servitization strategies for large business groups in Korea will be expected to be made.

A liver mass was incidentally revealed in a 10-year-old male neutered Himalayan cat on radiographic examination conducted in a local animal hospital. The abdominal distention had worsened over the past five months, along with intermittent vomiting and nausea for two weeks. Serum chemistry was unremarkable, except for elevated alkaline phosphatase and gamma-glutamyl transferase levels. Radiography revealed a round-shaped soft mass in the cranial abdomen. Abdominal ultrasonography showed a well defined, massive, fluid-filled cyst with multiple lobes, and heterogeneous echogenicity in the pancreas. Computed tomography examination revealed hypoplasia of the left lobes of the liver, but the vascular changes and enhancement of the mass were not observed on contrast computed tomography images. The herniation of the abdominal fat through the diaphragm was incidentally observed on sonography and computed tomography scan. The patient was tentatively diagnosed with pancreatic cyst. The laparotomy revealed that the origin was not related to the pancreas, but was suspended from the liver. The mass was multilobular and filled with approximately 120 ml of fluid containing a few white blood cells. The patient recovered from anesthesia, but showed postoperative respiratory depression and died of cardiac arrest 15 hours later. Histopathologically, the mass was definitively diagnosed to be hepatic cellular carcinoma.

A female English bulldog was gave birth two neonates by cesarean section on the sixty one days after mating, but both neonates were died soon after birth. The bodies of neonates were diagnosed using radiography, ultrasonography, computed tomography and necropsy immediately after death. Both neonates had caudal regression syndrome, butterfly vertebra, hydrocephalus, umbilical hernia, cleft palate and bow-legged hind-limb. At necropsy, neonates had mild fetal anasarca, cleft lip and the skull was remained non-union. At thoracic cavity, only three ribs and thoracic spines were existed and patent ductus arteriosus was found. At abnormal cavity, the renal ectopia was found with abnormal morphology. In the present case, those English bulldog neonates with multiple congenital malformation syndromes seriously suffered vertebral column anomalies and that may induced by neural tube defects in during embryonic period. To prevent congenital malformation occurring in English bulldog, further in depth studies are needed for the breed specific genetic diversity and for the reason of behind genetic abnormality in these breed.

Since the road management paradigm has changed into the user-oriented circumstance, the functionality of the crucial road maintenance factors became important than before. Among these factors, the roughness directly related to the ride quality for driver became to get more attention. IRI(International Roughness Index) is recently the most widely used roughness indices in the world. IRI is a reasonable index that reflects the vertical displacement(bounce) of vehicle as the road profile changes. Since IRI reflects the vertical behavior of vehicle, it reflects ride quality indirectly. However, there are various rotational behaviors such as roll, yaw, and pitch in addition to the vertical displacement. Profiles, which MRI range was 1.13-4.12m/km, were measured in five sections and the profiles were entered into CarSIM to simulate vehicle behavior. As a result, the pitch was the largest in all sections, followed by roll and yaw, relatively. Especially, the amount of yaw is about 5% of the pitch or about 7% of the roll. The behavior of moving vehicle was measured using INS(inertial navigation system) and accelerometer in the section where the road surface profile was measured. As a result, as in the simulation, the pitch was the largest in all the sections and the amount of yaw is only about 7% of the pitch or about 18% of the roll. Field experiments were conducted to analyze the effect of the rotational behavior of the actual driving vehicle on the ride quality. 33 panels evaluated the ride quality on a ten-point scale while driving on 35 sections with various roughnesses. 35 test sections were selected considering the roughness distribution of actual expressway. The panel was selected considering age, driving experience, gender, and expertise. Of the total 1,155 responses, 964 responses were used for the analysis, except 191 responses measured at low driving speeds. In addition, the amount of vehicle behavior and road surface profile were measured using INS and laser. As a result of correlation analysis between MPR(mean panel rating) and vehicle behavior, correlation coefficient of bounce was the highest with 0.814, and the order of pitch was 0.798, and roll was 0.734, relatively. As a result of regression analysis for predicting ride quality, regression model combining bounce and roll was statistically the most suitable. This model is expected to reflect the ride quality more effectively because it can consider the vehicle behavior due to the longitudinal profile change of the road surface as well as the vehicle behavior due to the difference between the left and right wheel path road profile.

In general, the road roughness is managed by the roughness factor(or level, index) which is numerically or quantitatively generated(or converted) from the surface profile. However, it should be mentioned that the various roughness indexes including IRI(i.e. International Roughness Index) consider only vertical displacement and one longitudinal profile. In this research, the new roughness index, which evaluates reasonably the ride quality, was developed through the extensive correlation analysis between various vehicle behavior and ride quality. The bounce and pitch of moving vehicle are caused by the change of longitudinal profile. On the other hand, the roll is caused by the difference of the left and right profiles. Since the pitch is caused by the bounce difference between the front and rear axles of a vehicle, the two values occur in a similar pattern. In this study, the bounce and roll of a vehicle were predicted with a half car model, which is connected with two quarter car models. A half-car model was used to calculate the roll rotation angle of the vehicle body according to the change of the road profile. The roll rotation angle was used to calculate the coordinates of the head position of the passenger in the passenger seat. Finally, the coordinates were used to calculate the horizontal and vertical displacement of the head position. The new roughness index is the cumulative RMS value of the horizontal and vertical displacement occurring at the head position while moving at a speed of 80 km/h per km. The first and second experiment results presented that the coefficient of determination(i.e. R2) for the new roughness index was the highest with 0.80. Moreover, the R2 values of MRI, HRI, and RN were also relatively high such as 0.73 ~ 0.79. The feasibility test was conducted on sections that show the greater IRI variation between left and right wheel-pass among the pilot sites. Because a prediction result came from MRI and IRI, the difference between KERI and MRI was relatively lager with the increment of IRI difference between right and left wheel-pass. In this case, the roll was high, and the satisfaction of the ride quality was relatively low. Based on the other field survey results obtained in Seoul, the portion of IRI difference between left and right wheel-pass was above 0.4m/km that presented approximately seven times higher value than the measured IRI values on the expressway. In addition, the sectors showed IRI difference level higher than 2.0m/km were approximately 70 times higher than those in expressway. Thus, it is possible that the KERI could successfully and reasonably evaluate the ride quality on various road types.

Since 2010, old concrete pavement of expressway in Korea has approached the design life or exceeded it. As a result, the amount of maintenance for various types of distresses has also been increasing. In addition, there is increasing a demand for improvement in riding quality due to poor roughness. In this paper, when applying a diamond grinding method (DG) to improve the functionality of aged concrete pavement, a program to predict the 3D road surface profile was developed. Two field tests were conducted for program verification, and the comparison with the existing program and equipment was performed. As a result of the evaluation, the predicted result of the program was very similar to those actually measured using the existing roughness measuring equipment, and the error of the two results was about 5%. As a result of the roughness prediction using the 2D road surface profile measured before DG construction, it was similar to the existing program ProVAL. Using the data obtained by the 3D profile measuring equipment, it is confirmed that the prediction of how the IRI of the road will change in 3D is possible. In the future, through supplementary algorithms and economic analysis modules, it is possible to provide a tool for efficient budget execution of road maintenance agencies.

As a surface treatment method of concrete pavement in Korea, transverse tinning has initially been applied to improve drainage and friction at first. Since 2003, in order to reduce the noise of concrete pavement, longitudinal tinning have been studied and proved its superiority. Therefore, Korea Expressway Corporation (KEC) has applied this as surface texturing method in concrete pavement from 2008 to the present. However, the lateral vibration during vehicle running has been continuously raised in the longitudinal tinning section, and lots of efforts have been made to solve this problem. Nonetheless, complaints still occur intermittently in some sections. In this research, three sections in which complaints occur and three test sections were chosen to evaluate characteristics of lateral vibration between tire and longitudinal texturing. Based on the literature survey on the correlation between longitudinal texturing and tire, evaluation of the site and FEM analysis of each road surface were carried out. As a result of the analysis, the lateral vibration occurred most frequently in the random tinning section compared to other sections, and it was relatively few at the other improved tinning of the test section. Further studies on various tire types and timing intervals in the future will provide a standard of longitudinal texturing, which will reduce lateral vibration.

One of the most important national tasks of the current administration is to realize social value and boost the economy. In the road sector, it is particularly important to ensure the road sectors public good and create jobs based on the Framework Act on the Realization of Public Institutions’ Social Value (Proposal). In regard to job creation in the road sector, however, there has so far been a lack of career management for construction engineers. In this regard, this study used Monte Carlo simulation and analyzed how to estimate the amount of manpower required to efficiently manage engineering human resources in the road sector. Monte Carlo simulation uses random numbers for prediction and estimation, extracts values repeatedly from a probability distribution predefined by the user, and performs tasks on various scenarios. This study made the following assumptions for the analysis: (a) researchers’ abilities were identical; (b) the research project was analyzed on a 1 year basis while technical advice was analyzed on a 9-week basis to reflect the characteristics of the road sector; (c) technical advice had the same probability from Week 1 to Week 52; (d) the amount of manpower required for a project carried over to the next year was input at the beginning of the year; and (e) the largest amount of manpower required at any particular time in a year was calculated and estimated as required manpower. The input variables were an estimated number of project and technical advice in each research field while the output variables were the amount of manpower and technical advice required for each research project. Simulation was performed 10,000 times. An analysis found that required number of manpower for case analysis was 75 as opposed to the current number of 66, assuming that 57 research projects were undertaken and technical advice was provided 223 times. Every sector is making efforts to create social value through various means. The field of construction social overhead capital is no exception. It has undertaken a very important task to ensure the role of roads in public good and create jobs. However, there is still a lack of objective approach to estimate the required amount of manpower. Thus, as done in this study, calculating required manpower through the simulation method would be useful as an objective evidence for job creation.

Recently, as road users have become increasingly important, the importance of functional performance as much as structural one has been important to provide comfortable and safe road services. As a result of the survey on the customer satisfaction of the highway, the road surface condition is selected as the most important area of the road service, and the functional performance such as driving comfort and noise is pointed out as an important problem. Therefore, many studies have been conducted to improve this problem. In most cases, there is a fundamental limitation in providing a comfortable road to the user through the roughness management of the final layer. In this paper, a study was carried out to improve the roughness of the final layer by controlling the roughness of each layer. In construction field of Busan-ChangWon expressway, roughness was measured by three methods according to construction phases of subbase, 1st and 2nd base layer, intermedia layer and surface layer. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the roughness of the lower layer affects the roughness of the upper layer. Especially, the roughness of 1st base layer was relatively clear correlation with the intermedia and the surface layer IRI. In the future, after getting more field data and establishing the management standards, it is possible to provide a comfortable road to users.

Human malignant melanoma is an aggressive skin cancer which has been rising at a greater rate than any other cancers. Although various new therapeutic methods have been developed in previous studies, this disease has properties of high proliferation and metastasis rate which remain obstacles that have lead to a poor prognosis in patients. It has been reported that a specific Lactobacillus extract has anti-cancer and –metastasis effect in vitro and in vivo. However, previous research has not specified precisely what effect the Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG) extract has had on human malignant melanomas. In this study, we showed that the LGG extract has anti-cancer and –metastasis effects on the human malignant melanoma cell lines, A375P and A375SM. At first, it was found that, while the LGG extract affects human neonatal dermal fibroblasts slightly, it induced the dose-dependent anti-cancer effect on A375P and A375SM by a WST-1 proliferation assay. As a result of a real-time PCR analysis, the expression patterns of several genes related to cell cycle, proliferation, and apoptosis were modulating in a manner that inhibited the growth of both malignant melanoma cell lines after the treatment of the LGG extract. Furthermore, genes related to the epithelialmesenchymal transition were down-regulated, and migration rates were also decreased significantly by the LGG extract. Our study showed that the LGG extract could be used as a potential therapeutic source.