Asian perspectives on human rights and trade-off thesis : focus on South Korea

The primary objective of this study is to elucidate the nature of the Asian concept of human rights and to examine the interrelation between the process of economic growth and contingent human rights policies, using South Korea as a case study. In the aftermath of the Cold War, several East Asian states in particular mounted a challenge to Western beliefs about human rights. Based on a successful economic growth and on the Confucian logic inherent in their tradition. East Asian states sought to redefine the concepts of human rights by questioning the applicability of universal human rights in different cultural, economic and socio-political settings. Such an Asian concept of human rights has been supported for decades by several East Asian authoritarian leaders including those of Singapore, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the former ones of South Korea. In its most basic version, this special concept holds that economic development has to precede the full flowering of political and civil rights; that East Asians place greater value on the harmony of the community than on individual freedoms; and that individual states should be able to interpret international standards on human rights in accordance with their history, culture, political system, and level of economic development. These arguments are often labeled soft authoritarianism or Asian-style democracy. The logic of Asian style democracy has been used by Asian repressive states to support the trade-off proposition: that a certain degree of authoritarianism is necessary to make the hard political and economic decisions that produce a state\u27s spectacular growth, and that such growth will facilitate the promotion of human rights. However, in recent decades the history of human rights in South Korea offers no promise or proof that civil and political rights will be extended to citizens upon the realization of economic development goals. Authoritarian leaders have justified their failure to respect human rights not only as a sacrifice necessary to ensure the successful development of their economic growth strategy, but also as essential for the maintenance of law and order. Basing itself on an understanding of Asian perspectives on human rights and on human rights practices characteristic of modem Korean history, this study concludes that if the economic growth of a country does not facilitate the realization of human rights after the country reaches a certain level of economic development, then various restrictions on human rights cannot be justified in the name of economic growth, and that human rights, a critical factor of desirable democracy, carmot be pushed aside until economic development is consolidated. In the same context, a country\u27s economic policies should promote the rule of law and not the political interests of abusive governments

The biological significance of non-enzymatic reaction of menadione with plasma thiols: enhancement of menadione-induced cytotoxicity to platelets by the presence of blood plasma

AbstractTo test the hypothesis that the non-enzymatic reaction of quinones with thiols in plasma can generate reactive oxygens (ROS), thereby leading to potentiated cellular toxicity, we have studied the effect of a representative quinone compound, menadione, on plasma isolated from rats. The experimental results are as follows: (1) menadione generated ROS via non-enzymatic reaction with protein thiols in plasma; (2) the presence of plasma increased menadione-induced cytotoxicity to platelets; (3) pretreatment of plasma with a thiol-depleting agent significantly suppressed menadione-induced ROS and cytotoxicity. These results suggest that the non-enzymatic reaction of menadione with plasma thiols could be an important process in quinone-induced cellular toxicity

Limits of Binaries That Can Be Characterized by Gravitational Microlensing

Due to the high efficiency of planet detections, current microlensing planet searches focus on high-magnification events. High-magnification events are sensitive to remote binary companions as well and thus a sample of wide-separation binaries are expected to be collected as a byproduct. In this paper, we show that characterizing binaries for a portion of this sample will be difficult due to the degeneracy of the binary-lensing parameters. This degeneracy arises because the perturbation induced by the binary companion is well approximated by the Chang-Refsdal lensing for binaries with separations greater than a certain limit. For binaries composed of equal mass lenses, we find that the lens binarity can be noticed up to the separations of $\sim 60$ times of the Einstein radius corresponding to the mass of each lens. Among these binaries, however, we find that the lensing parameters can be determined only for a portion of binaries with separations less than $\sim 20$ times of the Einstein radius.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Transcription Factor Sp1 Is Involved in Expressional Regulation of Coxsackie and Adenovirus Receptor in Cancer Cells

Coxsackie and adenovirus receptor (CAR) was first known as a virus receptor. Recently, it is also known to have tumor suppressive activity such as inhibition of cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. It is important to understand how CAR expression can be regulated in cancers. Based on an existence of putative Sp1 binding site within CAR promoter, we investigated whether indeed Sp1 is involved in the regulation of CAR expression. We observed that deletion or mutation of Sp1 binding motif (−503/−498) prominently impaired the Sp1 binding affinity and activity of CAR promoter. Histone deacetylase inhibitor (TSA) treatment enhanced recruitment of Sp1 to the CAR promoter in ChIP assay. Meanwhile, Sp1 binding inhibitor suppressed the recruitment. Exogenous expression of wild-type Sp1 increased CAR expression in CAR-negative cells; meanwhile, dominant negative Sp1 decreased the CAR expression in CAR-positive cells. These results indicate that Sp1 is involved in regulation of CAR expression

Validating of the pre-clinical mouse model for metastatic breast cancer to the mandible

Metastatic breast carcinoma has a great tendency to spread to the mandible. It is concomitantly associated with bone destruction, food intake disorder, and a poorer prognosis. Appropriate animal models need to be developed for a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the metastatic process of breast cancer cells to mandible and to test the effects of potential lead compounds. Here, we assessed the metastasis model of intracardiac injection using luciferase-transfected metastatic breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231Luc+) by determining the incidences of metastasis, mCT images, and histopathological results. A high bioluminescence signal mainly detected mandibular lesions with less frequent distal femora and proximal tibiae lesions. Extensive mandibular bone destruction occurred in nude mice grafted with metastatic breast cancer cells. This type of animal model might be a useful tool in assessing therapeutic implications and the efficacy of anti-cancer drugs for osteolytic cancers

Microlensing Detections of Planets in Binary Stellar Systems

We demonstrate that microlensing can be used for detecting planets in binary stellar systems. This is possible because in the geometry of planetary binary systems where the planet orbits one of the binary component and the other binary star is located at a large distance, both planet and secondary companion produce perturbations at a common region around the planet-hosting binary star and thus the signatures of both planet and binary companion can be detected in the light curves of high-magnification lensing events. We find that identifying planets in binary systems is optimized when the secondary is located in a certain range which depends on the type of the planet. The proposed method can detect planets with masses down to one tenth of the Jupiter mass in binaries with separations <~ 100 AU. These ranges of planet mass and binary separation are not covered by other methods and thus microlensing would be able to make the planetary binary sample richer.Comment: 5 pages, two figures in JPG forma

Improving the prediction accuracy in classification using the combined data sets by ranks of gene expressions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The information from different data sets experimented under different conditions may be inconsistent even though they are performed with the same research objectives. More than that, even when the data sets were generated from the same platform, the data agreement may be affected by the technical variation among the laboratories. In this case, it is necessary to use the combined data set after adjusting the differences between such data sets, for detecting the more reliable information.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The proposed method combines data sets posterior to the discretization of data sets based on the ranks of the gene expression ratios, and the statistical method is applied to the combined data set for predictive gene selection. The efficiency of the proposed method was evaluated using five colon cancer related data sets, which were experimented using cDNA microarrays with different RNA sources, and one experiment utilized oligonucleotide arrays. NCI-60 cell lines data sets were used, which were performed with two different platforms of cDNA microarrays and Affymetrix HU6800 oligonucleotide arrays. The combined data set by the proposed method predicted the test data sets more accurately than the separated data sets did. The biological significant genes were detected from the combined data set, which were missed on the separated data sets.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>By transforming gene expressions using ranks, the proposed method is not influenced by systematic bias among chips and normalization method. The method may be especially more useful to find predictive genes from data sets which have different scale in gene expressions.</p