The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors make the relationships between Korean firms and their Canadian counterparts good or bad, particularly within the context of international trade. This study suggests that the factors affecting the quality of business relationship and relationship performance include relational norms, formalization, and market uncertainty. It also proposes that relational norms are determined by trust, relationship investment, and continuity experience. Data was collected through a mail survey of 412 Korean exporting firms which have transaction relationships with Canadian companies. Data strongly supports the research hypotheses. As hypothesized, the results of data analysis show that relational norms and formalization tend to enhance relationship quality and relationship performance. The impact of formalization is only moderate, however. In addition, we notice that relationship quality and relationship performance seem to decrease as market uncertainty increases. Data also supports the hypotheses regarding the determinants of relational norms. Trust, relationship investment, and continuity experience tend to induce the development of relational norms.

Hepatocytes and hepatic progenitors derived from human ES cells may be a useful source for clinical application. Therefore, identification and purification of these cell types would be following important issues. There are very few candidate surface markers that can be used to identify and purify hepatic progenitor cells. In addition, indocyanine-green can be uptaken by mature hepatocytes, but cannot be applied for fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) due to its long emission wavelength. In the present study, we tested EpCAM as a potential marker for magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS) of hepatic progenitors and also modified indocyanine-green into fluorescent indomonocarbocyanine for FACS-mediated sorting of mature hepatocytes after differentiation of human ES cells. Hepatic progenitor cells were sorted by MACS after incubation with anti-human EpCAM antibodies. After the final differentiation, the differentiated cells and mouse primary hepatocytes (control group) were incubated with indomonocarbocyanine and were sorted by FACS. MACS and immunocytochemistry data showed that approximately 45% of differentiated cells were EpCAM-positive cells. EpCAM-positive cells expressed α-fetoprotein, FOXa2, HnF4a, and CK18. Differentiation efficiency into albumin-positive cells was significantly higher in EpCAM-positive cells, compared to EpCAM-negative cells. Importantly, indomonocarbocyanine successfully stained cells that expressed ALB. Furthermore, FACS analysis data showed that the purity of hepatocytes that expressed albumin was significantly increased after purification of indomonocarbocyanine-positive cells. Our data demonstrated that human ES cell-derived hepatic progenitors can be efficiently isolated by MACS using EpCAM antibody. In addition, we also showed that indomonocarbocyanine can be successfully used to identify and purify mature hepatocytes using FACS.

Rye genome- and chromosome-specific DNA markers were selected to easily identify the existence of rye chromatin in the wheat genome by RAPD analysis. Among 260 decamer primers used, five primers, namely, OPC01, OPF07, OPF11, OPH09, and OPH16 amplified rye