Women in South Korea, Japan, and Singapore.

East Asia has achieved remarkable economic growth in the past few decades. Coupled with an influx of western liberal views, this growth has brought about a dramatic change in economic and educational opportunities for women. This paper will explore women‟s movements in three East Asian societies: Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. All three societies have traditionally been strongly male-dominated and women adhere to strict Confucian ideals of female behaviour and obligations. In light of this, what kind of changes have economic progress brought about for women‟s issues? As these societies transit from tradition to modernity, how have society‟s demands on women changed? Have women achieved a stronger status in their respective societies, or do they continue to be oppressed by social expectations? In this paper, I will argue that there is an insufficient level of gender equality in the three societies. The freedom of choice continues to elude many women in their societies. There is also a need to question whether society is entirely to be blamed for women‟s continual oppression. Do women themselves perpetuate stereotypes and entrench themselves in passive acceptance of their status? To this end, I will explore Shin Kyung-Sook‟s Please Look after Mom, Banana Yoshimoto‟s Kitchen, and Suchen Christine Lim‟s Fistful of Colours, and analyse the complexity of women‟s desires and the relationships they form with both men and women.Bachelor of Art

Validation of suitable reference genes for assessing gene expression of MicroRNAs in Lonicera japonica

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), which play crucial regulatory roles in plant secondary metabolism and responses to the environment, could be developed as promising biomarkers for different varieties and production areas of herbal medicines. However, limited information is available for miRNAs from Lonicera japonica, which is widely used in East Asian countries owing to various pharmaceutically active secondary metabolites. Selection of suitable reference genes for quantification of target miRNA expression through quantitative real-time (qRT)-PCR is important for elucidating the molecular mechanisms of secondary metabolic regulation in different tissues and varieties of L. japonica. For precise normalization of gene expression data in L. japonica, 16 candidate miRNAs were examined in three tissues, as well as twenty-one cultivated varieties collected from sixteen production areas, using GeNorm, NormFinder, and RefFinder algorithms. Our results revealed combination of u534122 and u3868172 as the best reference genes across all samples. Their specificity was confirmed by detecting the cycling threshold (Ct) value ranges in different varieties of L. japonica collected from diverse production areas, suggesting the use of these two reference miRNAs is sufficient for accurate transcript normalization with different tissues, varieties, and production areas. To our knowledge, this is the first report on validation of reference miRNAs in honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.). Restuls from this study can further facilitate discovery of functional regulatory miRNAs in different varieties of L. japonica