Korean-American Divided Families: catalyst for changing the course of the USA policy on North Korea

The Korea War has left deep scars on the psyches of Koreans in Korea and throughout the world. Among many ordeals that Korean citizens had to suffer during and after the war, the separation of the family was one of the most tragic continuing results of the war. Countless individuals were forcibly severed from their family members in North Korea and most haven’t seen their separated relatives for over six decades. There have been 18 rounds of reunions between North and South Koreans since a historic summit talk in June 2000. However, Korean-American members of divided families cannot participate in such reunions with their Korean relatives. They are not eligible to even apply for the reunion program because they are American citizens and only Korean citizens are eligible to apply to participate. The personal histories of nine Korean-Americans are related herein. Their stories cover an important chapter of Korean and U.S. history before and after the Korean War. The nine Korean-Americans’ hard life as war refugees and life-long yearning and search for their flesh and blood serve as a reminder of wars’ effect on humanity and humans’ response to war: the brutal nature of war being legitimately used as a mechanism for peace-keeping, devastating effects of war on civilians, and family values. The demographic characteristic of the divided family issue adds urgency to this matter: solutions must be found sooner rather than later, or any solution will be moot—the divided family members will have died. A reunion amongst divided Korean-American families could open a new avenue for the U.S. and North Korea to resolve the issue of North Korean nuclear weapons: an avenue not of confrontation, but of negotiation and dialogue; an avenue to build mutual confidence and trust; and finally commencement of normal diplomatic relationship

BUBBLE PREDICTION AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EMERGING AND MATURE MARKETS

By analyzing the financial bubbles, it can be observed that every bubble burst causes financial turmoil and severe economic recession. The paper utilize the technical analysis indicators for providing warning conditions for predicting the stock market bubbles. The significance of the technical analysis indicators are that they can provide early warning system for financial crisis and can help in avoiding such problems. We applied the early warning technical indicators to the stock market of US, South Korea, Brazil, China, Germany, and Japan for the period of 1995 to 2018. We also made comparison of the bubble warning conditions of emerging markets and the mature markets. The standard bubble warning conditions include K value 90, Bias 10%, and RSI value of 90.  Empirical results shows that mature market shows less degree of volatility and lowering the warning baseline can improve the accuracy of bubble predictions. Furthermore, results shows that mature markets bursting time is about 6 months while in emerging market, the time is reduced to only 3 months. These results also indicate that mature market has good antirisk ability compare to the emerging markets

A Vocabulary Forest-based object matching processor with 2.07M-vec/s throughput and 13.3nJ/vector energy in full-HD resolution

A Vocabulary Forest-based object matching processor is proposed to speed up the feature matching stage for the object recognition system with high accuracy. Adopting Reusable-Vocabulary Tree architecture and hardware sharing technique reduces area, as well as adopting propagate-and-compute-array architecture in the combiner and external database elimination enhances the matching speed more than 16x compared to Approximate Nearest Neighbor searching processors. The proposed Vocabulary Forest processor, implemented in 65nm CMOS process, achieves 2.07M-vec/s throughput and 13.3nJ/vector energy efficiency, and successfully matches 100 objects with 95.7% matching accuracy

Grasp and index finger reach zone during one-handed smartphone rear interaction: effects of task type, phone width and hand length

Recently, some smartphones have introduced index finger interaction functions on the rear surface. The current study investigated the effects of task type, phone width, and hand length on grasp, index finger reach zone, discomfort, and muscle activation during such interaction. We considered five interaction tasks (neutral, comfortable, maximum, vertical, and horizontal strokes), two device widths (60 and 90 mm) and three hand lengths. Horizontal (vertical) strokes deviated from the horizontal axis in the range from -10.8 degrees to -13.5 degrees (81.6-88.4 degrees). Maximum strokes appeared to be excessive as these caused 43.8% greater discomfort than did neutral strokes. The 90-mm width also appeared to be excessive as it resulted in 12.3% increased discomfort relative to the 60-mm width. The small-hand group reported 11.9-18.2% higher discomfort ratings, and the percent maximum voluntary exertion of their flexor digitorum superficialis muscle, pertaining to index finger flexion, was also 6.4% higher. These findings should be considered to make smartphone rear interaction more comfortable. Practitioner Summary: Among neutral, comfortable, maximum, horizontal, and vertical index finger strokes on smartphone rear surfaces, maximum vs. neutral strokes caused 43.8% greater discomfort. Horizontal (vertical) strokes deviated from the horizontal (vertical) axis. Discomfort increased by 12.3% with 90-mm-vs. 60-mm-wide devices. Rear interaction regions of five commercialised smartphones should be lowered 20 to 30 mm for more comfortable rear interaction.clos

Thiol-yne click crosslink hyaluronic acid/chitosan hydrogel for three-dimensional in vitro follicle development

There is a great deal of potential for in vitro follicle growth to provide an alternative approach to fertility preservation. This strategy reduces the possibility of cancer cells re-exposure after transplantation, and it does not require hormone stimulation. Adopting a three-dimensional (3D) culture method helps preserve the architecture of the follicle and promotes the maturity of oocytes. In order to maintain follicle morphology, enhance the quality of mature oocytes, and facilitate meiotic spindle assembly, the current work aimed to develop the 3D in vitro preantral mouse follicle culture method. Thiolated chitosan-co-thiolated hyaluronic (CSHS) hydrogel was designed to evaluate the effects of biomaterials on ovarian follicle development. Isolated follicles from mouse ovaries were randomly divided into alginate (Alg) as a 3D control, thiolated hyaluronic acid (HASH), and CSHS groups. Single follicle was encapsulated in each hydrogel, and performed for 10 days and subsequently ovulated to retrieve mature oocytes on day 11. CSHS hydrogel promoted follicle survival and oocyte viability with maintained spherical morphology of follicle. Matured oocytes with normal appearance of meiotic spindle and chromosome alignment were higher in the CSHS group compared with those in the Alg and HASH groups. Furthermore, CSHS increased expression level of folliculogenesis genes (TGFβ-1, GDF-9) and endocrine-related genes (LHCGR, and FSHR). With various experimental setups and clinical applications, this platform could be applied as an alternative method to in vitro follicle culture with different experimental designs and clinical applications in the long-term period