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The market competition of package deliveries in Korea is severe because a large number of companies have entered into the Korean market. A package delivery company in Korea generally owns and operates a number of service centers and consolidation terminals for high level customer service. However, some service centers cannot create profits due to low volume acting as the facilities raising the costs. This challenge can be overcome by collaboration strategy in order to improve its competitiveness. In this regard, this study suggests an approach to the reconfiguration of package service networks with respect to collaboration strategy. Thus, we propose a multi-objective nonlinear integer programming model and a genetic algorithm-based solution procedure for participated companies to maximize their profit. An illustrative numerical example in Korea is presented to demonstrate the practicality and efficiency of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Clustered within the nomenclature of Asian American are numerous subgroups, each with their own ethnic heritage, cultural, and linguistic characteristics. An understanding of the prevailing health knowledge, attitudes, and screening behaviors of these subgroups is essential for creating population-specific health promotion programs.Methods: Korean American women (123) completed baseline surveys of breast cancer knowledge, attitudes, and screening behaviors as part of an Asian grocery store-based breast cancer education program evaluation. Follow-up telephone surveys, initiated two weeks later, were completed by 93 women.Results: Low adherence to the American Cancer Society's breast cancer screening guidelines and insufficient breast cancer knowledge were reported. Participants' receptiveness to the grocery store-based breast cancer education program underscores the importance of finding ways to reach Korean women with breast cancer early detection information and repeated cues for screening. The data also suggest that the Asian grocery store-based cancer education program being tested may have been effective in motivating a proportion of the women to schedule a breast cancer screening between the baseline and follow-up surveys.Conclusion: The program offers a viable strategy to reach Korean women that addresses the language, cultural, transportation, and time barriers they face in accessing breast cancer early detection information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study was designed to identify characteristics of Korean nurses' perceptions about child sexual abuse. More specifically, it was designed to examine to what extent various child sexual abuse incident characteristics and respondent background characteristics affect Korean nurses' perceptions of the seriousness of child sexual abuse incidents., Methods: A vignette design was used to assess 1029 Korean registered nurses' perceptions of child sexual abuse. Seven abuse situation variables were organized into 64 vignettes in a one-fourth fractional factorial design. Respondents were given randomly selected and ordered samples of 16 of the vignettes and asked to indicate the degree of seriousness of the sexual abuse incidents portrayed in the vignettes. Information was also gathered about respondent demographics and personal history of child sexual abuse., Results: Logistic regression analyses showed intrusiveness of the sexual act had the greatest impact on Korean nurses' perceptions of the seriousness of child sexual abuse, followed by victim resistance, cross-gender combinations of victim and perpetrator, frequency of sexual acts, and age of perpetrator, all of which were abuse situational characteristics. With the exception of media exposure to sexual abuse, background characteristics and sexual abuse history had negligible effect on perceived seriousness., Conclusions: Situational characteristics, not respondent characteristics, influence the perceived seriousness of child sexual abuse for Korean nurses. These findings are similar to those obtained previously with US samples.

Concentrations of Al, Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn, V, Ni, Co, Cr, Cd and Pb in the Asian periwinkle Littorina brevicula were determined from 39 sampling locations along the whole Korean coast. Metal concentrations in the periwinkle varied highly with sampling stations, but the variations could be well explained by the body size after eliminating the data exceeding the 'High' criteria. Among the stations exceeding the 'High' criteria corresponding to mean plus one standard deviation of the logarithms of the individual site mean, some stations exhibited values higher than expected from the relationship between metal body burden and body size, indicating that these locations were polluted with metals. However, several 'High' stations followed the trends of the curve, suggesting that they resulted from the effect of their small body size, not from environmental contamination. Periwinkles of similar body sizes exhibited same range of metal concentrations in their body, independent of geographical position.

Although Asian samples have been studied using the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), the literature lacks data on Korean samples. Furthermore, although cross-cultural studies of eating disorders have been done, intraethnic studies are lacking. This study concerns an intraethnic Korean comparison of eating attitudes. The EAT-26 was translated into Korean and validated by back-translation and by a preliminary study on 32 bilingual (Korean and English-speaking) Korean women. The validated Korean translation was completed by a sample of 195 native South Koreans (NKs) and the original version by a sample of 39 Korean Americans (KAs). EAT-26 scores seemed to indicate that the NKs had more disordered eating attitudes. Furthermore, the KAs appear to be a low-risk sample for eating disorders. Implications for further research are discussed.