A Cross-National Analysis of the Gender Pay Gap: National Perceptions and Contradictory Effects on Women's Status

This project analyzed and predicted the economic inequality problem of women with respect to sociological context among four different OECD countries by comparing men's wage and women's wages in terms of their education level, cultural background, and social relation. The index data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) was used to analyze the gender pay gap among four typical OECD countries. I used the Ordinary Least Square method to examine what factors have contributed to their wage gaps. First, quantitative approaches to the gender wage gap on the general population and in higher education, showed that higher education mostly lessens the gender pay gap. However, those closing gaps differ by countries, and this research analyzed four states with its perception of success factors, marriage, and professional occupations. It gives an intuitive understanding of the general trend in the gender pay gap among OECD countries and how it relates to their perceptions.Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Scholarship (URS)No embargoAcademic Major: EconomicsAcademic Major: Sociolog

The Impact Of French Camp Academy On Child Abuse And Neglect

Within the last few decades, child abuse and neglect has not improved in the United States. Government services provides facilities and licensed families for abused and neglected children, but children often do not adjust due to negative past experiences. However, there are other non-governmental programs that help counter child abuse and neglect. This research focuses on one student attending French Camp Academy, a Christian-based boarding school in central Mississippi, in order to shed light on possible ways to stop the vicious cycle that children go through. When children receive the acknowledgment and support from a parental figure, they are more likely to change their negative behaviors and eventually contribute in their future society

Contentious Narratives on National Identity of South Korea: How to Understand the Self and the Significant Others, North Korea and the United States

At the time of writing, the expectation for a peace settlement on the Korean peninsula is greater than ever due to ongoing inter-Korean summits as well as the historic encounters between the two leaders of the US and North Korea. Although the second Hanoi DPRK-US summit in February, 2019 ended without reaching an agreement, it is still a positive sign that formerly hostile nations are willing to talk to find a way of coexistence. However, at the same time, the degree of inner conflict within the South has grown significantly since the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye in 2017, and there exist deep discrepancies over how to approach and how to pursue cooperation with the North. The dissertation examines how and why a variety of reforms led by the progressive administrations of South Korea, ranging from foreign policies toward the North and the US to domestic policies, have intensified social conflicts and division, rather than contributing to the conflict transformation and reconciliation that they originally aimed at. In doing so, this research contributes to the field of identity politics and peacebuilding by offering novel insights into the role of narrative identity and history in contexts of protracted, identity-based conflict, and the peacebuilding process. Its particular focus is on the Korean peninsula, one of the areas where the legacy of the Cold War is still lingering and history is deeply contested and politicized. This study primarily claims that the social and political polarization within South Korea stems from fundamental disagreements over two important concepts in the formation of national identity: 1) the self, how to define South Korea, which means whether the birth of a South Korean government should be celebrated as a lawful and legitimate process, or treated as failure to establish one united nation; and 2) the significant others, the question of how to identify North Korea and the US. The research highlights the fact that narratives on the national identity of South Korea were initially crafted in the context of intractable conflicts with the North. Narrative identities created during or after the war have been formed with a strong certainty of the good self and evil others, thus being resistant to change. In particular, the narrative of conservatives was formed with the firm certainty about the North as an evil enemy. Thus, those who see the reality of the nation through the lens of this narrative find it extremely difficult to adapt to the alternative that identifies the North as a normal neighboring state with which to coexist. Secondly, this study argues that it is identity politics, in which the rhetoric of othering/exclusion is frequently applied, that has significantly affected the intensification of social and political polarization in South Korea through creating a dichotomy of good self and evil others. Both narratives have constructed antagonism toward their own hostile “others”: North Korean sympathizers, whether called pro-North, the reds, commies, or anti-South forces, in the “state-centered nationalism narrative” of conservatives that identifies the North as an arch enemy; and anti-nationalists, including pro-Japanese and pro-American collaborators, and ruling elites, in the “ethnic nationalism narrative” of progressives that views the North as part of the self based on the ethnic notion of the Korean nation, and thus as a partner for coexistence and ultimately for unification. More importantly, both of these contradictory narratives have been politicized to delegitimize political opponents, consequently intensifying societal and political conflicts within South Korea. Lastly, the study maintains that reforms led by progressive regimes failed to create an open and inclusive “dialogical space” where competing parties can reassess and redefine their narratives in the process of policy decision making and its enactment, thus deepening conflicts. Establishing a positive domestic context toward peace through creating consensus and cooperation with those who have different values and ideologies is a necessary condition for conflict transformation and peace settlement on the peninsula. Attempts to transform the master narrative on the national identity of South Korea led by progressive regimes without efforts to engage in cooperation with their political opponents have simply replaced an old narrative with a new one, rather than constructing a transcendent and integrative narrative on which conflicting parties can agree. Hence, conservatives’ resistance to narrative transformation and related policy changes has grown intensified. The present study can not only contribute to extending generality in the study of the narrative basis of conflict, but also offer theoretical grounds for rethinking inner conflicts in South Korea to lead to conflict transformation and an ultimate peace settlement on the Korean peninsula. We have seen in post-conflict societies like Germany or Northern Ireland that a political declaration or peace agreement does not necessarily lead to genuine peaceful relations and reconciliation between the former adversaries. This justifies the argument that the narrative of rightists in South Korea who construct a strong national identity that still views the North as an arch enemy should be taken into consideration in advancing peaceful relations with the North. It is a challenging task to transform narrative identity with firm certainty based on a dichotomy of good self and evil other crafted in the context of intractable conflicts. In the process of the engagement policy toward the North and peace initiatives on the peninsula, however, some degree of consensus and cooperation between conflicting groups in South Korea who have radically different conceptions of national identity is a prerequisite for ultimate peace settlement between the two Koreas

Removal of Synthetic Organic Compounds and NOM by Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes-Ultrafiltration and Forward Osmosis Membrane System

This overall theme of this dissertation is to investigate the potential engineered application of low pressure membranes incorporated with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and forward osmosis (FO) membrane systems for the removal of synthetic organic compounds (SOCs) and natural organic matter (NOM) from drinking water sources. The focus is on the use of SWNTs-ultrafiltration (UF) and FO membrane systems to facilitate the removal of these compounds and potential applications of these membrane system designs for reducing the energy demands and membrane fouling in environmental water filtration process and seawater desalination. The SWNTs-UF results indicate that SOCs transport is influenced by NOM, which fouls the membrane through pore blockage and cake/gel formation. A strong linear correlation between the retention and adsorption of SOCs was observed, indicating that retention by the SWNTs-UF membranes is mainly due to the adsorption of SOCs onto the membrane, the SWNTs, and/or NOM. The performance of SWNTs-UF was also evaluated on the basis of a resistance-in-series model, filtration laws, and NOM transportation mechanisms. The addition of SWNTs to the UF process did not significantly exacerbate the permeate flux decline and total membrane resistances. Further, it appeared that the effect of SWNTs on membrane fouling is a function of hydrodynamic and operational conditions. The results suggest that the NOM transportation in SWNTs-UF systems depends, to a significant extent, on the concentration polarization and cake/gel layer formation at the membrane boundary. In the application for artificial seawater in SWNTs-UF, the presence of SWNTs shows 20% increase in membrane flux and a strong linear correlation between retention and adsorption of SOCs was obtained. In FO membrane systems, the cellulose triacetate based FO membrane exhibited the better separation properties than that of polyamide based reverse osmosis (RO) membrane. And, in active layer (AL)-facing-feed solution (FS) configuration in FO mode, the RO membrane exhibited higher removal efficiency at the expense of severe internal concentration polarization (ICP) and flux reduction. Under higher cross-flow velocity operations in FO mode, both reduced external concentration polarization and retarded SOC diffusion from the reverse flux of sodium chloride contributed to the improved SOC removal performance. The FO membrane removal behavior was principally related to size exclusion, while the RO membrane removal behavior was related to interactions between hydrophobicity, size, and electrostatic repulsion. The results significantly confirmed the dominant role of ICP, and the trade-off between flux and removal efficiency depends on the porous supporting layer in AL-facing-FS configurations in the FO process

A case report of successfully treated metachronous gastrointestinal stromal tumor and colon cancer

The diagnosis of gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) has become relatively common in recent years, but little is known about its association with other malignancies. We present a rare case of successfully treated metachronous GIST and colon cancer with concurrent FOLFOX (5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, and oxaliplatin) chemotherapy and imatinib. A 63-year-old man presented with abdominal pain that had started 2 weeks ago, and endoscopic ultrasonography showed masses that were compatible with GIST on the duodenum. He underwent Whipple surgery. One year after the GIST diagnosis, two liver masses were found on abdominal computed tomography images taken for surveillance. A liver biopsy showed metastatic adenocarcinoma, not GIST. Colonoscopy was then performed to identify the primary site of the metastatic adenocarcinoma in the liver, and sigmoid colon cancer was found. He received 12 cycles of adjuvant FOLFOX concurrently with adjuvant imatinib. There were no serious adverse events of grade 3 or higher from either imatinib or chemotherapy. He has completed adjuvant imatinib and FOLFOX chemotherapy and there is no evidence of disease recurrence. When a synchronous or metachronous tumor is found in a GIST patient, the clinician should keep in mind the possibility of another primary tumor of different histopathology, as well as GIST recurrence

Frank–van der Merwe Growth versus Volmer–Weber Growth in Successive Stacking of a Few-Layer Bi2Te3/Sb2Te3 by van der Waals Heteroepitaxy: The Critical Roles of Finite Lattice-Mismatch with Seed Substrates

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Multi-view Cross-Modality MR Image Translation for Vestibular Schwannoma and Cochlea Segmentation

In this work, we propose a multi-view image translation framework, which can translate contrast-enhanced T1 (ceT1) MR imaging to high-resolution T2 (hrT2) MR imaging for unsupervised vestibular schwannoma and cochlea segmentation. We adopt two image translation models in parallel that use a pixel-level consistent constraint and a patch-level contrastive constraint, respectively. Thereby, we can augment pseudo-hrT2 images reflecting different perspectives, which eventually lead to a high-performing segmentation model. Our experimental results on the CrossMoDA challenge show that the proposed method achieved enhanced performance on the vestibular schwannoma and cochlea segmentation.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Protective effect of genistein on radiation-induced intestinal injury in tumor bearing mice

BACKGROUND: Radiation therapy is the most widely used treatment for cancer, but it causes the side effect of mucositis due to intestinal damage. We examined the protective effect of genistein in tumor-bearing mice after abdominal irradiation by evaluation of apoptosis and intestinal morphological changes. METHODS: Mouse colon cancer CT26 cells were subcutaneously injected at the flank of BALB/c mice to generate tumors. The tumor-bearing mice were treated with abdominal radiation at 5 and 10 Gy, and with genistein at 200 mg/kg body weight per day for 1 d before radiation. The changes in intestinal histology were evaluated 12 h and 3.5 d after irradiation. To assess the effect of the combination treatment on the cancer growth, the tumor volume was determined at sacrifice before tumor overgrowth occurred. RESULTS: Genistein significantly decreased the number of apoptotic nuclei compared with that in the irradiation group 12 h after 5 Gy irradiation. Evaluation of histological changes showed that genistein ameliorated intestinal morphological changes such as decreased crypt survival, villus shortening, and increased length of the basal lamina 3.5 d after 10 Gy irradiation. Moreover, the genistein-treated group exhibited more Ki-67-positive proliferating cells in the jejunum than the irradiated control group, and crypt depths were greater in the genistein-treated group than in the irradiated control group. The mean weight of the CT26 tumors was reduced in the group treated with genistein and radiation compared with the control group. CONCLUSION: Genistein had a protective effect on intestinal damage induced by irradiation and delayed tumor growth. These results suggest that genistein is a useful candidate for preventing radiotherapy-induced intestinal damage in cancer patients