Intensifying Gated Exclusiveness of Apartment Complex Boundary Design in Seoul, Korea

The proliferation of private residential development is evident worldwide. In Seoul, these developments have distinctive spatial and morphological characteristics. Originally, government housing policies drove the construction of apartment complexes to ensure massive housing supply. Over time, development shifted, becoming more market-driven, aimed at the middle class, and built by the private sector. During the late 1990s, an increase in luxury high-rise apartment complexes increased, reflecting a tendency to live in a socioeconomically homogeneous community and propelling the proliferation of self-contained gated communities. To understand the continually increasing exclusive nature of apartment complexes in Seoul, we examine two areas with apartment complexes of different periods and development methods: Mok-dong, where the 1980s ‘Housing Site Development’ resulted in the simultaneous construction of multiple apartment complexes according to a single master-plan, and Geumho-dong, a neighbourhood transforming by apartment complexes under ‘Housing Redevelopment’ from the 1980s to the present. The research focused on 28 complexes, and measured the surrounding vertical borders, pedestrian paths, and roadways, and access control. Tracing these features over time, we investigated the increasingly exclusive nature and decreasing public nature of apartment complexes, consequences of development for physical and social space during different periods, and degree of public or private intervention

Corporate governance and firm performance in Korea / Hyo Jin Kim and Soon Suk Yoon

We investigate how firm performance is related to corporate governance in Korea. We find that the adoption of an audit committee itself does not significantly improve the level of firm performance. However, we find that there is positive relationship between the outside directors’ activity level and firm profitability. This suggests that outside directors can play a role of reducing agency conflicts between management and external shareholders so that the profitability is positively with their activity

Learning Adaptive Representations for Image Retrieval and Recognition

Content-based image retrieval is a core problem in computer vision. It has a wide range of application such as object and place recognition, digital library search, organizing image collections, and 3D reconstruction. However, robust and accurate image retrieval from a large-scale image collection still remains an open problem. For particular instance retrieval, challenges come not only from photometric and geometric changes between the query and the database images, but also from severe visual overlap with irrelevant images. On the other hand, large intra-class variation and inter-class similarity between semantic categories represents a major obstacle in semantic image retrieval and recognition. This dissertation explores learning image representations that adaptively focus on specific image content to tackle these challenges. For this purpose, three kinds of image contexts for discriminating relevant and irrelevant image content are exploited: (1) local image context, (2) semi-global image context, and (3) global image context. Novel models for learning adaptive image representations based on each context are introduced. Moreover, as a byproduct of training the proposed models, the underlying task-relevant contexts are automatically revealed from the data in a self-supervised manner. These include data-driven notion of good local mid-level features, task-relevant semi-global contexts with rich high-level information, and the hierarchy of images. Experimental evaluation illustrates the superiority of the proposed methods in the applications of place recognition, scene categorization, and particular object retrieval.Doctor of Philosoph

INSPIRATION FROM NATURE AS IMPETUS TO THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN MUSIC

Music is usually not considered representational - it does not sharpen our perception of the external world, nor does it generally imitate it. Neither is music propositional - it does not put forward theories about the world or convey information in the same way as language does. However, when we analyze composers' musical language and personal inspiration, their music that juxtaposes the inner and outer worlds has meaning not only to interpreters but for listeners as well. My three recital programs presented here are those works that I believe have a strong connection to the creative process in music, especially dealing with the natural world. Nature bas been one of the most inspiring subjects for expressing a composer's inner mind and feelings. Nature not only describes the elements of reality, it also becomes a stimulus for expressing spiritual qualities and experiences in life. Music is the ability to express emotions audibly and is the spiritual language of emotion - this feeling of emotion was prevalent in the music of Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Liszt. These composers' works contain extra-musical ideas that relate human life with natural settings, yet each composer's approach is personal and unique. Debussy and Ravel also shared a natural affection for using extra-musical titles, but they are more objective and concerned with sights and sounds to characterize scenes, rather than the more dramatic approach taken by Liszt. Natural settings such as bird-like songs, the whistle of the wind, and flowing waters have been put to music. Composers have employed techniques of tone painting and coloring to evoke these images through the music. It is the interpreter's job to understand a composer's vivid imagination and artistry in order to successfully deliver the composer's message to the audience

Energy state of InGaAs quantum dots on SiO2-patterned vicinal substrate

The optical properties of In0.8Ga0.2As self-assembled quantum dots (SAQDs) grown on GaAs wire structures formed by utilizing SiO2-patterned exact and 5°-off (001) GaAs substrates have been studied with micro-photoluminescence (μ-PL). Single PL peak was occurred for In0.8Ga0.2As SAQDs grown on SiO2-patterned exact (001) GaAs, whereas double PL peaks were showed for SAQDs grown on 5°-off (001) GaAs substrates as the width of the opening windows increased. The power-dependent μ-PL spectra show that the first and second peaks of these double peaks were originated from the well-defined ground and excited state, respectively. These results demonstrated that In0.8Ga0.2As SAQDs selectively grown by utilizing SiO2-patterned 5°-off (001) GaAs substrates have well-defined zero-dimensional quantum states

Risk Factors of Emergence Agitation in Adults Undergoing General Anesthesia for Nasal Surgery

ObjectivesTo identify the incidence and the risk factors of emergence agitation in adults undergoing general anesthesia for nasal surgery.MethodsWe retrospectively examined 792 patients aged ≥18 years who underwent general anesthesia for elective nasal surgery between July 2012 and August 2013. Patients in the postanesthesia care unit with a Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale≥+1 at any time were considered to have emergence agitation.ResultsThe overall incidence of emergence agitation is 22.2%. From multivariate regression analysis, the following six variables were found to be significantly associated with emergence agitation (P<0.05): younger age, recent smoking, sevoflurane anesthesia, postoperative pain on the numerical rating scale (NRS)≥5, presence of a tracheal tube, and presence of a urinary catheter. Presence of a tracheal tube was the greatest risk factor, increasing the risk of developing emergence agitation by approximately fivefold (odds ratio, 5.448; 95% confidence interval, 2.973 to 9.982). Younger age was also a strong risk factor (odds ratio, 0.975 for each 1-year increase; 95% confidence interval, 0.964 to 0.987). Current smoking, sevoflurane anesthesia, postoperative pain of NRS≥5, and the presence of a urinary catheter nearly doubled the risk of emergence agitation.ConclusionEmergence agitation following general anesthesia is a common complication in adult nasal surgery patients. To reduce the occurrence and consequences of agitation episodes, elimination of the associated risk factors is necessary, especially in at-risk patients

Hoarding By Elderly People

Although hoarding has been studied in adults, little is known about problems of hoarding by elderly people. This study used a structured telephone interview with elder services providers to investigate hoarding behaviors in relation to functional impairment, cognitive deficits, and physical and psychological conditions in 62 elderly clients. Most elderly hoarders were female, unmarried, and lived alone. Extensive clutter was associated with significant impairment, interfering with basic hygiene, and posing a serious physical threat for many elderly clients. Clients were rarely insightful about their collecting and often resisted change, rendering interventions generally ineffective. Never-married status was associated with more severe hoarding and greater impairment and possibly with worse outcomes of intervention efforts. Health and mental health implications of hoarding by elderly people and implications for treatment are discussed