Social Service Contracting-Out in Korea and Japan: Municipal Governments, Nonprofit Contractors, and Local Residents

Focusing on the role of local residents participation in nonprofit social service contracting-out, this research has three aims. The first is to reveal the commonalities and differences in the relationships among municipal governments, contractors, and local residents in Korea and Japan through the use of survey data. We observed several common elements between the two countries regarding the relationship between municipal governments and nonprofit contractors. However, the relationships between nonprofit contractors and local residents were quite different in each country because of their different local selfgoverning environments. The second is to identify the current types of local residents participation in contracting-out, and to categorize them into inclusion of local residents as members of contractors, participation of local residents in governance mechanisms, open meetings, and involvement of local residents as volunteers. The final aim is to ascertain whether there are statistical differences between the respondents perceptions in the two countries regarding the effects of local residents participation on service responsiveness. Using an independent sample t-test analysis, we verified that Japanese municipal managers had more positive and statistically significant perceptions regarding the effects of open meetings, and Korean nonprofit managers had more positive and statistically significant perceptions regarding the effects of involvement as volunteers.This work was supported by grants from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (2008-2010 Korea-Japan Joint Research Project)

Commonsense Knowledge Augmentation for Low-Resource Languages via Adversarial Learning

Commonsense reasoning is one of the ultimate goals of artificial intelligence research because it simulates the human thinking process. However, most commonsense reasoning studies have focused on English because available commonsense knowledge for low-resource languages is scarce due to high construction costs. Translation is one of the typical methods for augmenting data for low-resource languages; however, translation entails ambiguity problems, where one word can be translated into multiple words due to polysemes and homonyms. Previous studies have suggested methods to measure the validity of translated multiple triples by using additional metadata and manually labeled data. However, such handcrafted datasets are not available for many low-resource languages. In this paper, we propose a knowledge augmentation method using adversarial networks that does not require any labeled data. Our adversarial networks can transfer knowledge learned from a resource-rich language to low-resource languages and thus measure the validity score of translated triples even without labeled data. We designed experiments to demonstrate that high-scoring triples obtained by the proposed model can be considered augmented knowledge. The experimental results show that our proposed method for a low-resource language, Korean, achieved 93.7% precision@1 on a manually labeled benchmark. Furthermore, to verify our model for other low-resource languages, we introduced new test sets for knowledge validation in 16 different languages. Our adversarial model obtains strong results for all language test sets. We will release the augmented Korean knowledge and test sets for 16 languages

Trifluoromethyl benzimidazole-based conjugated polymers with deep HOMO levels for organic photovoltaics

We synthesized new alternating conjugated polymers, PCDTFMMBI and PBDTDTFMMBI, which consist of trifluoromethyl substituted dimethyl-2H-benzimidazole (FMMBI) as new electron deficient unit, by palladium(0)-catalyzed Suzuki or Stille polymerization. Trifluoromethyl group has attractive features such as high solubility, chemical and thermal stability and strong electron withdrawing ability to adjust redox potentials. In addition to this, the introduction of trifluoromethyl group into benzimidazole unit will expand the absorption range into the longer wavelength region. Poly(4,8-bis(2-octyldodecyloxy) benzo[1,2-b:3,4-b]dithiophene-alt-5,5-(2-methyl-4???,7???-di-(2-thienyl)-2-(trifluoromethyl)-2H-benzimidazole)) (PBDTDTFMMBI) film, in which benzodithiophene unit was introduced as the electron rich unit, showed an absorption onset at 932 nm, corresponding to a low band gap of 1.33 eV. Poly(N-9???-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(2-methyl-4???,7???-di-(2-thienyl)-2-(trifluoromethyl)-2H-benzimidazole)) (PCDTFMMBI), with carbazole as the electron rich unit, showed low lying HOMO energy level of -5.69 eV.close0

Synthesis and properties of low band gap polymers based on thienyl thienoindole as a new electron-rich unit for organic photovoltaics

A series of polymers based on 6-(2-thienyl)-4H-thieno[3,2-b]indole (TTI), a new electron-rich unit for organic photovoltaics, was synthesized. By replacing the six-membered benzene ring of the carbazole with an electron-rich five-membered thiophene ring, an enhanced ICT effect between the electron-rich group and the electron-deficient group is expected to result in improved p-electron delocalization, low band gap and increased light-harvesting ability of the OPVs. The TTI unit, with a fused rigid backbone, has an efficient structure for the ICT effect and for tuning of the HOMO and LUMO energy levels to generate a low band gap. As electron-deficient units, 4,7-bis(4-hexylthiophen-2-yl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (DTBT-h), 2-dimethyl-4,7-di(2-thienyl)-2H-benzimidazole (DTMBI) and 3,6-di(2-thienyl)-2,5 dihydropyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,4-dione (DPP) were introduced by using Stille polymerization. PTTIDTMBI and PTTIDPP have low band gaps and show absorption up to 849 and 948 nm, respectively. The highest PCE was achieved with the device fabricated from a PTTIDTBT-h : PC71BM (1 : 3 w/w) blend with 1,8-octanedithiol (ODT) as an additive. The device demonstrated a V-oc value of 0.81 V, a J(sc) value of 8.19 mA cm(-2), and an FF of 0.51, giving a highest power conversion efficiency of 3.35%.close0

Syntheses and solar cell applications of conjugated copolymers consisting of 3,3 '-dicarboximide and benzodithiophene units with thiophene and bithiophene linkage

Novel conjugated copolymers consisting of bis(2-octyldodecyloxy)benzo[1,2-b:3,4-b]dithiophene (BDT) and N-alkyl-2,2'-bithiophene-3,3'-dicarboximide (BTI) with thiophene and bithiophene linkages have been synthesized and evaluated in bulk heterojunction solar cell. BDT, BTI and thiophene (or bithiophene) units were incorporated using Stille polymerization to generate poly(5-dodecyl-3-(2-thienyl)-4H-dithieno[3,2-c:2,3-e]azepine-4,6(5H)-dione-co-4,8-di(2-octyldodecyloxy)benzo[1,2-b;3,4-b]dithiophene) (P1, P2 and P3) and poly(5-dodecyl-3-di(thien-2-yl)-4H-dithieno[3,2-c:2,3-e]azepine-4,6(5H)-dione-co-4,8-di(2-octyldodecyloxy)benzo[1,2-b:3,4-b]dithiophene) (P4, P5 and P6). The BTI unit, as the electron deficient moeity, and the BDT-thiophene (or bithiophene) unit, as the electron rich moeity, have been applied for the efficient intramolecular charge transfer. The introduction of thiophene or bithiophene unit improved power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the OPVs. The best device with P2:PC61BM (1:1) showed a open circuit voltage (V-OC) of 0.88 V, a short circuit current (J(SC)) of 7.36 mA/cm(2), and fill factor (FF) of 0.63, which yield PCE of 4.17%. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reservedclose0

Conjugated polymers containing 6-(2-thienyl)-4H-thieno[3,2-b]indole (TTI) and isoindigo for organic photovoltaics

Conjugated polymers using 6-(2-thienyl)-4H-thieno[3,2-b]indole (TTI) and isoindigo (ID) were synthesized and applied to the polymer solar cells. TTI as electron pushing unit and ID as electron pulling unit were incorporated in the push-pull types of conjugated polymers (PTTIID, PTTIID-3, PTTIID-5 and PTTIID-7). The alternating copolymer with TTI and ID units was synthesized in addition to the corresponding random copolymers. The UV-vis absorption spectra of the random copolymers showed red-shifted maximum peaks and wider full width at the half maximum (fwhm) with raising percentages of ID contents. Synthesized polymers shows deeper highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels with increased percentage of ID as electron pulling unit. As compared to the alternating copolymer PTTIID, the random copolymer PTTIID-7 showed higher JSC and FF values caused by the better morphology and decent hole mobility, resulting in higher PCE value. The device comprising PTTIID-7 and PCBM (1:2) with chloronaphthalene (CN) additive showed a VOC of 0.63 V, a JSC of 12.3 mA/cm2, and a fill factor (FF) of 0.52, giving a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 4.03%.clos

Syntheses and solar cell applications of conjugated copolymers containing tetrafluorophenylene units

Novel conjugated copolymers containing tetrafluorophenylene unit have been synthesized and evaluated in bulk heterojunction solar cell. The tetrafluorophenylene unit, as the strong electron deficient moeity, has been applied for the syntheses of donor-acceptor type copolymers with a narrow-band-gap for bulk heterojunction solar cells. DTBT, tetrafluorophenylene and four types of BDT derivatives as the electron rich units were incorporated using Stille polymerization to generate PE-BDTF, PO-BDTF, PE-BDTTF and PO-BDTTF. The introduction of even 1% of tetrafluorophenylene unit substituting DTBT of BDTDTBT type of polymers results in significant decrease of the band gap of the polymers. The device with PO-BDTF: PC71BM (1:1) showed an open-circuit voltage (V-OC) of 0.75 V, a short circuit current (J(SC)) of 11.80 mA/cm(2), and a fill factor (FF) of 0.59, which yields PCE of 5.22%. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedclose