President Moon Jae-in − The Right Choice for South Korea. Asia Policy Brief 2017/02

The success of President Moon’s minority government will depend on whether he can unite a divided society and to what degree the public and opposition are willing to support his planned reforms

Micronutrients and Alzheimer's disease

The current high life expectancy is overshadowed by neurodegenerative illnesses that lead to dementia and dependence. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common of these conditions, and is considered to be a proteinopathy, with amyloid-β42 as a key factor, leading via a cascade of events to neurodegeneration. Major factors involved are oxidative stress, perturbed Ca homeostasis and impaired energy metabolism. Protection against oxidative stress by micronutrients (including secondary bioactive substances) has been shown in transgenic Alzheimer model systems to delay AD. Epidemiological evidence is less conclusive, but the vast majority of the evidence supports a protective effect on cognitive functions in old age and AD. Thus, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables but also containing meat and fish is the most suitable to provide adequate micronutrients. The strong link between cardiovascular risk and AD may be explained by common pathogenetic mechanisms mediated, for example, by homocysteine and thus dependant on B-vitamins (folate and vitamins B12 and B6). However, micronutrients may also be harmful. The high affinity of amyloid for metals (Fe, Al and Zn) favours the generation of reactive oxygen species and triggers an inflammatory response. Micronutrients in a balanced diet have a long-lasting, albeit low, protective impact on brain aging, hence prevention should be life lon

Coarse-Grained Modeling of Genetic Circuits as a Function of the Inherent Time Scales

From a coarse-grained perspective the motif of a self-activating species, activating a second species which acts as its own repressor, is widely found in biological systems, in particular in genetic systems with inherent oscillatory behavior. Here we consider a specific realization of this motif as a genetic circuit, in which genes are described as directly producing proteins, leaving out the intermediate step of mRNA production. We focus on the effect that inherent time scales on the underlying fine-grained scale can have on the bifurcation patterns on a coarser scale in time. Time scales are set by the binding and unbinding rates of the transcription factors to the promoter regions of the genes. Depending on the ratio of these rates to the decay times of the proteins, the appropriate averaging procedure for obtaining a coarse-grained description changes and leads to sets of deterministic equations, which differ in their bifurcation structure. In particular the desired intermediate range of regular limit cycles fades away when the binding rates of genes are of the same order or less than the decay time of at least one of the proteins. Our analysis illustrates that the common topology of the widely found motif alone does not necessarily imply universal features in the dynamics.Comment: 29 pages, 16 figure

The Elephant in the Room: Problems and Potentials of the Workers’ Party of Korea in a Korean Unification Scenario

This paper investigates how North Koreans today, after having lived under the rule of a particular one-party system, evaluate the role, performance, and potential of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) regarding future unification scenarios. This was done by analyzing survey data of North Korean migrants (N = 356) residing in South Korea, who serve as the best possible proxy for the North Korean populace. The survey comprises questions on the respondents’ general assessment of and trust in the party as well as their opinions on the role and development of the party when they were still in North Korea and now; it also includes questions about possible modes of reform for the party in the case of unification. Normatively speaking, for peaceful reunification it would be desirable for the fate of the WPK to be left to the people and free democratic elections, like in Germany; however, the particular trajectories of Korean contemporary history, including the Korean War (1950–1953), loom over such a worthwhile procedure. This is also reflected in the results that show negative appraisal of and low trust in the party, and high favor for its forced dissolution, thus providing important insights into the state of mind of North Koreans, and an important stimulus for thinking about possible ways to prepare a smooth transition into a post-division era

Dynamics of Magma Mixing in Partially Crystallized Magma Chambers: Textural and Petrological Constraints from the Basal Complex of the Austurhorn Intrusion (SE Iceland)

The Tertiary Austurhorn intrusive complex in SE Iceland represents an exhumed magma chamber that has recorded an extensive history of magma mixing and mingling. The basal part of the intrusion consists predominantly of granophyres that have been intensively and repeatedly intruded by more mafic magma. This association of granophyres, basic and hybrid rocks at Austurhorn is referred to in the literature as a ‘net-veined' complex, but field relations suggest a much more complex emplacement history. Here we present petrological and physical constraints on the various processes that resulted in magma mixing and mingling and the formation of different generations of hybrid rocks at Austurhorn. The complexity of the mixing and mingling processes increases towards the inferred centre of the intrusion, where chaotic hybrid rocks dominate the exposed lithology. Complex cross-cutting relations between different hybrid generations strongly suggest multiple magma injection and reheating events in the basal part of the shallow magma chamber. Model calculations employing distribution coefficients based on rare earth element concentrations reveal that early stage hybrid magma generations formed by pure endmember mixing between felsic and mafic magma with about 10% mafic fraction in the hybrids. With repeated injections of mafic magma into the base of the magma chamber, the intruding magma interacted to a greater extent with pre-existing hybrids. This led to the formation of hybrid magma compositions that are shifted towards the mafic endmember over time, with up to 30% of the mafic fraction in the hybrids. These mixing processes are recorded in the zonation patterns of clinopyroxene and plagioclase phenocrysts; the latter have been divided into four main groups by cross-correlation analysis. Melt viscosity calculations were performed to constrain the possible conditions of magma mixing and the results indicate that the interaction of the contrasting magmas most probably occurred at temperatures of approximately 1000°C up to 1120°C. This suggests that the initiation of effective magma mixing requires local superheating of the felsic magmas, thereby confining the process to areas of localized, substantial mafic magma injectio