Joint Determination of Internal Organizational Design: Decision-Making, Task Allocation, and Incentive Scheme,

This paper studies the issue of designing an optimal organizational form: design for sub-units' task allocation, decision-making structure, and incentive schemes for organizational members. Depending on the way tasks are allocated between the sub-units, and whether decision-making is centralized or not, organizations face a trade-off between coordination and information. Task allocation by production processes calls for coordination more strongly than the allocation by final products. Centralized decision-making serves for better coordination, whereas decentralization serves for better information. The coordinational benefit under centralization gets bigger as the organization's common uncertainty increases, and this benefit is magnified when the sub-units are functionally divided by production processes. The informational benefit under decentralization gets bigger as the organization's local uncertainty increases, and this benefit is magnified when the sub-units are designed autonomous. Thus, complementarily designed organizations tend to have centralized decision-making structures and fixed salary scheme, whereas less complementarily designed organizations tend to have decentralized decision-making and 'pay for performance' incentive contract.

What factors of early-stage innovative projects are likely to drive projects’ success? A longitudinal analysis of Korean entrepreneurial firms

Previous studies have identified the factors affecting successful technology commercialization as outcomes of R&D projects. However, most of them have used cross‐sectional data, whereas there is a dearth of literature using longitudinal data analysis. Longitudinal analysis is essential for investigating the characteristics of early‐stage innovative projects due to the inherent time lag between project evaluation and commercialization. Therefore, this study examines the early‐stage project characteristics that can be used as meaningful evaluation criteria for predicting success, particularly in technology commercialization. We collected data on the ex‐ante evaluation results and ex‐post commercialization results of R&D projects pursued by entrepreneurial firms. We then conducted a logistic regression analysis and identified three market‐related factors as significant in driving technology commercialization success in the early stages of technology development: market potential, commercialization plan, and market condition

The Effects of Antidepressant Treatment on Serum Cytokines and Nutritional Status in Hemodialysis Patients

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of antidepressant treatment on serum cytokines and nutritional status in hemodialysis patients. Twenty-eight hemodialysis patients with a depressed mood were given 20 mg of fluoxetine for 8 weeks. The degree of depressive symptoms, the serum levels of interleukin-1β, interleukin-2, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, c-reactive protein, and markers of nutritional status were assessed at baseline and after treatment. The outcome was assessed in terms of response to treatment (>50% reduction in the score of the Hamilton depression rating scale). Antidepressant treatment decreased the serum level of interleukin-1β in both response and nonresponse groups, and increased the serum level of interleukin-6 only in the response group. At baseline, the level of interleukin-6 in the response group was lower than in the nonresponse group. Antidepressant treatment also increased fat distribution significantly in the response group which might have slightly improved the nutritional status. This study suggests that antidepressant treatment improve depressive symptoms and may affect immunological functions and nutritional status in chronic hemodialysis patients with depression

Clinical Characteristics of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo in Korea: A Multicenter Study

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is characterized by episodic vertigo and nystagmus provoked by head motions. To study the characteristics of BPPV in a large group of patients in Korea, we retrospectively analyzed clinical features of 1,692 patients (women: 1,146, 67.7%; men: 54.6, 32.3%; mean age: 54.8±14.0 yr), who had been diagnosed as BPPV by trained neuro-otologists Dizziness Clinics. The diagnosis of BPPV was based on typical nystagmus elicited by positioning maneuvers. Posterior semicircular canal was involved in 60.9% of the patients, horizontal canal in 31.9%, anterior canal in 2.2%, and mixed canals in 5.0%. The horizontal canal type of BPPV (HC-BPPV) comprised 49.5% of geotropic and 50.5% of apogeotropic types. We could observe significant negative correlation between the proportion of HC-BPPV of each clinic and the mean time interval between the symptom onset and the first visit to the clinics (r = -0.841, p<0.05). Most patients were successfully treated with canalith repositioning maneuvers (86.9%). The high incidence of HC-BPPV in this study may be explained by relatively shorter time interval between the symptom onset and visit to the Dizziness Clinics in Korea, compared with previous studies in other countries

Electrothermal soft manipulator enabling safe transport and handling of thin cell/tissue sheets and bioelectronic devices

“Living” cell sheets or bioelectronic chips have great potentials to improve the quality of diagnostics and therapies. However, handling these thin and delicate materials remains a grand challenge because the external force applied for gripping and releasing can easily deform or damage the materials. This study presents a soft manipulator that can manipulate and transport cell/tissue sheets and ultrathin wearable biosensing devices seamlessly by recapitulating how a cephalopod’s suction cup works. The soft manipulator consists of an ultrafast thermo-responsive, microchanneled hydrogel layer with tissue-like softness and an electric heater layer. The electric current to the manipulator drives microchannels of the gel to shrink/expand and results in a pressure change through the microchannels. The manipulator can lift/detach an object within 10 s and can be used repeatedly over 50 times. This soft manipulator would be highly useful for safe and reliable assembly and implantation of therapeutic cell/tissue sheets and biosensing devices

A Case of Wilson's Disease in Patient with Mildly Elevated Liver Enzymes

Wilson's disease is an autosomal recessive disorder affecting copper transport; it results in the accumulation of copper in the liver, brain, and other organs. Wilson's disease is the most common inherited liver disease with more than 500 cases reported in Korea. An impairment in biliary excretion process leads to copper accumulation in the liver, which progressively damages the liver, leading to cirrhosis. Since effective treatment is available for this disease, early and correct diagnosis is very important. Here, we report a case of Wilson's disease with mildly elevated liver enzyme levels in a 29-year-old breast-feeding woman with weight loss