Concentrated growth and spatial disparities in Korea

The purpose of this study is to analyze the conditions and change of spatial inequality of South Korea according to the spatial policy. For this, this study will characteristics of the spatial policies by Korean government for 20 years (1995~2014), and will analyze what effect the spatial policy had on the spatial inequality of South Korea. South Korea¡¯s spatial inequality is very severe in the world. For example, concentration of Seoul, Korea is much higher than London, England, Tokyo, Japan and Paris, France. Therefore, South Korea¡¯s top priority for sustainable development is to solve concentration to capital region and spatial inequality. However, South Korea has pushed forward alternately the growth policy and balance policy for 20 years. Spatial policy of South Korea had been carried forward by the growth policy till 1998, but it changed to the balance policy between 1998~2007. Since 2008, it has been being pushed forward by the growth policy again. As a result, spatial inequality of South Korea somewhat eased off between 2000~2005, but it rather has shown a tendency of being expanded since. Particularly, the spatial inequality is broadening in population, economic, industry, finance and the powers sectors. In addition, infrastructure, health and welfare, education sectors, whose spatial inequality is relatively low, the spatial inequality is being expanded

Transcriptional regulatory networks underlying the reprogramming of spermatogonial stem cells to multipotent stem cells

Spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) are germline stem cells located along the basement membrane of seminiferous tubules in testes. Recently, SSCs were shown to be reprogrammed into multipotent SSCs (mSSCs). However, both the key factors and biological networks underlying this reprogramming remain elusive. Here, we present transcriptional regulatory networks (TRNs) that control cellular processes related to the SSC-to-mSSC reprogramming. Previously, we established intermediate SSCs (iSSCs) undergoing the transition to mSSCs and generated gene expression profiles of SSCs, iSSCs and mSSCs. By comparing these profiles, we identified 2643 genes that were up-regulated during the reprogramming process and 15 key transcription factors (TFs) that regulate these genes. Using the TF-target relationships, we developed TRNs describing how these TFs regulate three pluripotency-related processes (cell proliferation, stem cell maintenance and epigenetic regulation) during the reprogramming. The TRNs showed that 4 of the 15 TFs (Oct4/Pou5f1, Cux1, Zfp143 and E2f4) regulated cell proliferation during the early stages of reprogramming, whereas 11 TFs (Oct4/Pou5f1, Foxm1, Cux1, Zfp143, Trp53, E2f4, Esrrb, Nfyb, Nanog, Sox2 and Klf4) regulated the three pluripotency-related processes during the late stages of reprogramming. Our TRNs provide a model for the temporally coordinated transcriptional regulation of pluripotency-related processes during the SSC-to-mSSC reprogramming, which can be further tested in detailed functional studies.111Ysciescopuskc

Noise Reduction Analysis of Radar Rainfall Using Chaotic Dynamics and Filtering Techniques

The aim of this study is to evaluate the filtering techniques which can remove the noise involved in the time series. For this, Logistic series which is chaotic series and radar rainfall series are used for the evaluation of low-pass filter (LF) and Kalman filter (KF). The noise is added to Logistic series by considering noise level and the noise added series is filtered by LF and KF for the noise reduction. The analysis for the evaluation of LF and KF techniques is performed by the correlation coefficient, standard error, the attractor, and the BDS statistic from chaos theory. The analysis result for Logistic series clearly showed that KF is better tool than LF for removing the noise. Also, we used the radar rainfall series for evaluating the noise reduction capabilities of LF and KF. In this case, it was difficult to distinguish which filtering technique is better way for noise reduction when the typical statistics such as correlation coefficient and standard error were used. However, when the attractor and the BDS statistic were used for evaluating LF and KF, we could clearly identify that KF is better than LF

Assessment of Meteorological Drought in Korea under Climate Change

Drought has become one of the most important elements for water resources planning and management in Korea. The objective of this study is to estimate the spatial distribution of drought and change in the drought characteristics over time due to climate change. For the spatial characterization of drought, the standardized precipitation index (SPI) is calculated from the 45 observatories in Korea and the spatial distribution is also estimated based on the joint probability analysis using the copula method. To analyze the effect of climate change, spatial distribution of drought in the future is analyzed using the SPI time series calculated from Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) scenarios and HADGEM3-RA regional climate model. The results show that the Youngsan River and the northwest of Nakdong River basins in Korea have nearly doubled drought amount compared to the present and are most vulnerable to drought in near future (2016 to 2039 years)

Ultrafast giant magnetic cooling effect in ferromagnetic Co/Pt multilayers

The magnetic cooling effect originates from a large change in entropy by the forced magnetization alignment, which has long been considered to be utilized as an alternative environment-friendly cooling technology compared to conventional refrigeration. However, an ultimate timescale of the magnetic cooling effect has never been studied yet. Here, we report that a giant magnetic cooling (up to 200 K) phenomenon exists in the Co/Pt nanomultilayers on a femtosecond timescale during the photoinduced demagnetization and remagnetization, where the disordered spins are more rapidly aligned, and thus magnetically cooled, by the external magnetic field via the lattice-spin interaction in the multilayer system. These findings were obtained by the extensive analysis of time-resolved magneto-optical responses with systematic variation of laser fluence as well as external field strength and direction. Ultrafast giant magnetic cooling observed in the present study can enable a new avenue to the realization of ultrafast magnetic devices.111Ysciescopu