Analysis of the Impacts of South Korea\u27s Political Relations on its Bilateral Trade: Focus on South Korea\u27s Political and Trade Relations with China, Japan, Russia, and North Korea

Through all chapters, this thesis is finding answers to the following questions: Why are political relations and trade important to South Korea? What are current problems that South Korea confronts in political relations and trade? How are political relations of South Korea with the trading partners and North Korea? Does South Korea’s political relations with the four countries have impacts on South Korea’s bilateral trade with the countries? If it does, how does it affect South Korea’s trade? In answering these questions, this thesis demonstrates how South Korea’s political relations influence South Korea’s bilateral trade as well as presents trade relationship between countries still follows political flags. As an empirical analysis, this research builds on two models, a vector auto-regression (VAR) model and a gravity model. The VAR model is a decent method to find the degree of the impact at different time periods, which meets one of the purposes of this study. As the most common and popular way to estimate relations between politics and trade, the gravity v model assumes that the bilateral trade is proportional to the size of economy, personal income and economic activity in both countries and, in reverse, it decreases with resistance such as physical distance between countries (Herge, Oneal and Russett, 2010; Du et al., 2017). Through this analysis, this study finds that South Korea’s political relationship with China barely affects its bilateral trade with China. On the other hand, South Korea’s political relations with Japan, Russia, and North Korea have certain impacts on its bilateral trade with the countries. As a result, South Korea’s political relations with China, Japan, Russia, and North Korea do affect South Korea’s trade with these countries. However, the results are mixed, and it is difficult to make absolute statements about how political relations affect trade. The significance of political impacts on trade depends on the trading partner, and there are also differing results for imports and exports. In addition, the results reveal that the magnitude and duration of the impacts are also differentiated by trading partner. Consequently, South Korea’s political relations with the four countries are reflected in South Korea’s trade relations partially or entirely by trading partners, which means there could be other factors to affect South Korea’s trade with the countries. Other potential factors include the importance of the foreign market in South Korea’s exports and imports or specific features of the South Korean industry. These variables could be important potential covariates along with political relations

Painter: Teaching Auto-regressive Language Models to Draw Sketches

Large language models (LLMs) have made tremendous progress in natural language understanding and they have also been successfully adopted in other domains such as computer vision, robotics, reinforcement learning, etc. In this work, we apply LLMs to image generation tasks by directly generating the virtual brush strokes to paint an image. We present Painter, an LLM that can convert user prompts in text description format to sketches by generating the corresponding brush strokes in an auto-regressive way. We construct Painter based on off-the-shelf LLM that is pre-trained on a large text corpus, by fine-tuning it on the new task while preserving language understanding capabilities. We create a dataset of diverse multi-object sketches paired with textual prompts that covers several object types and tasks. Painter can generate sketches from text descriptions, remove objects from canvas, and detect and classify objects in sketches. Although this is an unprecedented pioneering work in using LLMs for auto-regressive image generation, the results are very encouraging

Deductive Verification of Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

Large Language Models (LLMs) significantly benefit from Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting in performing various reasoning tasks. While CoT allows models to produce more comprehensive reasoning processes, its emphasis on intermediate reasoning steps can inadvertently introduce hallucinations and accumulated errors, thereby limiting models' ability to solve complex reasoning tasks. Inspired by how humans engage in careful and meticulous deductive logical reasoning processes to solve tasks, we seek to enable language models to perform explicit and rigorous deductive reasoning, and also ensure the trustworthiness of their reasoning process through self-verification. However, directly verifying the validity of an entire deductive reasoning process is challenging, even with advanced models like ChatGPT. In light of this, we propose to decompose a reasoning verification process into a series of step-by-step subprocesses, each only receiving their necessary context and premises. To facilitate this procedure, we propose Natural Program, a natural language-based deductive reasoning format. Our approach enables models to generate precise reasoning steps where subsequent steps are more rigorously grounded on prior steps. It also empowers language models to carry out reasoning self-verification in a step-by-step manner. By integrating this verification process into each deductive reasoning stage, we significantly enhance the rigor and trustfulness of generated reasoning steps. Along this process, we also improve the answer correctness on complex reasoning tasks. Code will be released at https://github.com/lz1oceani/verify_cot

Conformational heterogeneity of molecules physisorbed on a gold surface at room temperature

A quantitative single-molecule tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) study at room temperature remained a challenge due to the rapid structural dynamics of molecules exposed to air. Here, we demonstrate the hyperspectral TERS imaging of single or a few brilliant cresyl blue (BCB) molecules at room temperature, along with quantitative spectral analyses. Robust chemical imaging is enabled by the freeze-frame approach using a thin Al2O3 capping layer, which suppresses spectral diffusions and inhibits chemical reactions and contamination in air. For the molecules resolved spatially in the TERS image, a clear Raman peak variation up to 7.5 cm(-1) is observed, which cannot be found in molecular ensembles. From density functional theory-based quantitative analyses of the varied TERS peaks, we reveal the conformational heterogeneity at the single-molecule level. This work provides a facile way to investigate the single-molecule properties in interacting media, expanding the scope of single-molecule vibrational spectroscopy studies. Tip-enhanced vibrational spectroscopy at room temperature is complicated by molecular conformational dynamics, photobleaching, contaminations, and chemical reactions in air. This study demonstrates that a sub-nm protective layer of Al2O3 provides robust conditions for probing single-molecule conformations

Lipid emulsion inhibits the cardiac toxicity caused by chloroquine via inhibition of reactive oxygen species production

Background Lipid emulsion (LE) is effective in treating intractable cardiac depression induced by the toxicity of highly lipid-soluble drugs including local anesthetics. However, the effect of LE on chloroquine (CQ)-evoked cardiac toxicity remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the effect of Lipofundin MCT/LCT, an LE, on the cardiotoxicity caused by CQ in H9c2 rat cardiomyoblasts and elucidate the underlying cellular mechanism. Methods The effects of CQ (1 × 10-4 M), LE, and the reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavengers mitotempo and N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC), alone or combined, on cell viability and migration, apoptosis, ROS production, calcium levels, mitochondrial membrane potential, and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) were examined. Additionally, the effects of LE on the activities of catalase (CAT), malondialdehyde (MDA), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) induced by CQ were assessed. Results Pretreatment with LE, mitotempo, or NAC reversed the reduction in cell migration and viability, mitochondrial membrane potential, and ATP levels evoked by CQ, and inhibited the increase in cleaved caspase-3, ROS, and calcium concentration induced by CQ. LE inhibited the increase in Bax expression, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling-positive cells, MDA activity, and late apoptosis, and reversed the reduction in SOD and CAT activity induced by CQ. CQ did not significantly affect cleaved caspase-8 expression, and LE did not significantly affect CQ concentration. Conclusions Collectively, these results suggest that LE (Lipofundin MCT/LCT) inhibits the cardiotoxicity and late apoptosis induced by CQ toxicity via the intrinsic mitochondrial apoptotic pathway that is associated with direct inhibition of ROS production

Original Article

99 cases were operated while we could not use antibiotics. The author traced X-ray photos on paper and measured areas of the peeled cavities with a planimeter. Results were as follows. 1) 66 cases had increasing stage and the rates were more than 30 %. 2) Cases with good developments showed larger original areas (50〜100cm^2) and smaller increasing rates (less than 30 %). 3) Also their X-ray photos showed coinciding or almost coinciding lines of the apices of lungs and the bases of cavities, but we had to take precautions against suppuration when they showed a horizontal line several days after operation. 4) Most of too high degree of adhesion or thickning of pleura did not show good results. When we found a cord which we must manage with some procedures by pneumolysis we must attend to suppuration too. 5)We ought to resect 4th or 5th rib more than 20 cm and 5th or 4th several cm supplementary. 6) As a method of constriction we commend the INVAGI.NATION method. 7) The author noticed in a considerable number of cases that the areas of cavities increased again after they kept long balanced stages