The Role of Village Leaders and the Allocation of Government Grants on the South Korean Rural Development

This report contains two chapters. The first chapter, “The role of village leaders on the production of public goods: Evidence from South Korea,” considers the role of village leaders in the Korean rural development in the early 1970s. Under the New Village Movement (Saemaul Undong), the role of village leaders was considered as one of the most important factors for the success of the Movement. However, there has been few empirical research documenting the relationship between the leaders and their roles on the improvement of village through the Movement. Using novel data on the village leaders and Saemaul classifications, we show that villages with village leaders who had relatively better educational attainment tend to improve their village public goods in two years. High human capital of both male and female village leaders mattered for the improvement of public goods. The second chapter, “The Allocation of Government Grants in the Community Development Program,” shows that the government resource allocation in the 1970s was not matched with outcomes of Saemaul projects. Despite government documents and anecdotal evidences from Saemaul practitioners that the government selectively provided grants only to the better-performing villages in Saemaul projects, we find that there is no empirical evidence that verifies the performance-based support system

Localized Pd Overgrowth on Cubic Pt Nanocrystals for Enhanced Electrocatalytic Oxidation of Formic Acid

Single crystalline surface such as (100), (111), (110) has been studied as an idealized platform for electrocatalytic reactions since the atomic arrangement affects a catalytic property. The secondary metal deposition on these surfaces also alters the catalytic property often showing improvement such as poisoning decrease. On the other hand, electrocatalysts used for practical purpose usually have a size on the order of nanometers. Therefore, linking the knowledge from single crystalline studies to nanoparticle catalysts is of enormous importance. Recently, the Pt nanoparticles which surface structure was preferentially oriented was synthesized and used as electrocatalysts. Here, we demonstrate a rational design of a binary metallic nanocatalyst based on the single crystalline study

Fine-Grained Socioeconomic Prediction from Satellite Images with Distributional Adjustment

While measuring socioeconomic indicators is critical for local governments to make informed policy decisions, such measurements are often unavailable at fine-grained levels like municipality. This study employs deep learning-based predictions from satellite images to close the gap. We propose a method that assigns a socioeconomic score to each satellite image by capturing the distributional behavior observed in larger areas based on the ground truth. We train an ordinal regression scoring model and adjust the scores to follow the common power law within and across regions. Evaluation based on official statistics in South Korea shows that our method outperforms previous models in predicting population and employment size at both the municipality and grid levels. Our method also demonstrates robust performance in districts with uneven development, suggesting its potential use in developing countries where reliable, fine-grained data is scarce

Pretransplant BKV-IgG serostatus and BKV-specific ELISPOT assays to predict BKV infection after kidney transplantation

IntroductionPolyomavirus (BKV) infection can lead to major complications and damage to the graft in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). We investigated whether pretransplant BK serostatus and BK-specific cell-mediated immunity (CMI) predicts post-transplant BK infection.MethodsA total of 93 donor-recipient pairs who underwent kidney transplantation (KT) and 44 healthy controls were examined. Assessment of donor and recipient BKV serostatus and BKV-CMI in recipients was performed prior to transplantation using BKV-IgG ELISA and BKV-specific IFN-g ELISPOT assays against five BK viral antigens (LT, St, VP1, VP2, and VP3). BK viremia was diagnosed when blood BKV-DNA of 104 copies/mL or more was detected during follow-up periods. ResultsAnti-BKV IgG antibody was detected in 74 (79.6%) of 93 KTRs and in 68 (73.1%) of 93 KT donors. A greater percentage of KTRs who received allograft from donors with high levels of anti-BKV IgG had posttransplant BK viremia (+) than KTRs from donors with low anti-BKV IgG (25.5% [12/47] vs. 4.3% [2/46], respectively; P = 0.007). Pretransplant total BKV-ELISPOT results were lower in BK viremia (+) patients than in patients without viremia (-) 20.5 [range 9.9−63.6] vs. 72.0 [43.2 - 110.8]; P = 0. 027). The sensitivity and specificity of the total BKV-ELISPOT assay (cut-off ≤ 53 spots/3×105 cells) for prediction of posttransplant BK viremia were 71.4 (95% CI: 41.9–91.6) and 54.4 (42.8–65.7), respectively. The combination of high donor BKV-IgG, low recipient BKV-IgG, and low total BKV-ELISPOT results improved specificity to 91.1%.DiscussionOur study highlights the importance of pretransplant BKV-IgG serostatus and BKV-specific CMI in predicting posttransplant BKV infection in KTRs. The combination of high donor BKV-IgG, low recipient BKV-IgG, and low total BKV-ELISPOT results predicted BK viremia after KT. Pretransplant identification of patients at highrisk for BK viremia could enable timely interventions and improve clinical outcomes of KTRs

Reliability and Validity of the Korean Version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form for Psychiatric Outpatients

Objective The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) is perhaps the most widely used and well-studied retrospective measure of childhood abuse or neglect. This study tested the initial reliability and validity of a Korean translation of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-K) among non-psychotic psychiatric outpatients.Methods The CTQ-K was administered to a total of 163 non-psychotic psychiatric outpatients at a university-affiliated training hospital. Internal consistency, four-week test-retest reliability, and validity were calculated. A portion of the participants (n=65) also completed the Trauma Assessment Questionnaire (TAQ), the Impact of Events Scale-Revised, and the Dissociative Experiences Scale-Taxon.Results Four-week test-retest reliability was high (r=0.87) and internal consistency was good (Cronbach's alpha=0.88). Each type of childhood trauma was significantly correlated with the corresponding subscale of the TAQ, thus confirming its concurrent validity. In addition, the CTQ-K total score was positively related to post-traumatic symptoms and pathological dissociation, demonstrating the convergent validity of the scale. The CTQ-K was also negatively correlated with the competence and safety subscale of the TAQ, confirming discriminant validity. Additionally, we confirmed the factorial validity by identifying a five-factor structure that explained 64% of the total variance.Conclusion Our study indicates that the CTQ-K is a measure of psychometric soundness that can be used to assess childhood abuse or neglect in Korean patients. It also supports the cross-cultural equivalence of the scale. Psychiatry Investig 2011;8:305-311This work was supported by the research fund of Hanyang University (HY-2010-I)