SOUTH KOREAN SUICIDE PREVENTION: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE STRATEGIES

South Korea has the second-highest suicide rate in the world, with 20 deaths per 100,000 according to the World Health Organization. With 5% of South Korean deaths attributed to suicide annually, the distribution is across every age cohort, from children to teens, to young workers, to the middle-aged, to senior citizens. A South Korean aged 70 and higher is 3 times as likely to commit suicide than the global average. This paper will research suicide prevention programs implemented by both governmental and non-governmental organizations before and during the COVID pandemic which address the country’s high rate of suicidal behaviors. These include training for warning signs, social media campaigns targeting young people, preventing the sale of materials that have been used to commit suicides, and guidelines on how suicides should be reported by the media. South Korean individuals and organizations have created psychological support groups and encourage intervention to reduce mental distress. This paper will also address theories explaining the particularly high suicide rates of South Koreans in different age cohorts. Finally, this paper will study the effectiveness of existing suicide prevention policies in South Korea and recommend actions that should be strengthened in the future

Disturbance of greedy publishing to academia

Questionable publications have been accused of "greedy" practices; however, their influence on academia has not been gauged. Here, we probe the impact of questionable publications through a systematic and comprehensive analysis with various participants from academia and compare the results with those of their unaccused counterparts using billions of citation records, including liaisons, e.g., journals and publishers, and prosumers, e.g., authors. The analysis reveals that questionable publications embellished their citation scores by attributing publisher-level self-citations to their journals while also controlling the journal-level self-citations to circumvent the evaluation of journal-indexing services. This approach makes it difficult to detect malpractice by conventional journal-level metrics. We propose journal-publisher-hybrid metric that help detect malpractice. We also demonstrate that the questionable publications had a weaker disruptiveness and influence than their counterparts. This indicates the negative effect of suspicious publishers in the academia. The findings provide a basis for actionable policy making against questionable publications.Comment: 16 pages of main text including 4 figures + 32 pages of supplementary information including 30 supplementary figure

Two-dimensional imaging of edge-localized modes in KSTAR plasmas unperturbed and perturbed by n=1 external magnetic fields

The temporal evolution of edge-localized modes (ELMs) has been studied using a 2-D electron cyclotron emission imaging system in the KSTAR tokamak. The ELMs are observed to evolve in three distinctive stages: the initial linear growth of multiple filamentary structures having a net poloidal rotation, the interim state of regularly spaced saturated filaments, and the final crash through a short transient phase characterized by abrupt changes in the relative amplitudes and distance among filaments. The crash phase, typically consisted of multiple bursts of a single filament, involves a complex dynamics, poloidal elongation of the bursting filament, development of a fingerlike bulge, and fast localized burst through the finger. Substantial alterations of the ELM dynamics, such as mode number, poloidal rotation, and crash time scale, have been observed under external magnetic perturbations with the toroidal mode number n = 1. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3694842]X1125sciescopu

Survival and breakthrough: A case study of evolutionary change in a state-owned enterprise

This study examines the processes undertaken by a state-owned enterprise to overcome limitations and successfully reverse its decline through moderate, gradual and small-scale evolutionary change. This paper utilizes the "social process research model" to analyze and record organizational changes at Jiangnan Resort, and further observes strategic countermeasures employed to address crises and successful management of organizational change. Results from our study suggest that organizational evolutionary change strategies should include institutionalization strategies, development of marketing channels, festival event marketing, placement marketing, product packaging strategies, niche market segmentation, service quality enhancement, and manpower flexibility strategies. Key factors in change management include Total Quality Management (TQM), Management by Objective (MBO), organizational members understanding of urgency and need of change, gaining support through education and communication, employee empowerment and participation, and institutionalizing change. The resulting information can serve as a reference for future qualitative research and development of strategic concepts for organizations planning to adopt evolutionary change into their companies

A Framework Design for the Next-Generation Radio Access System

Extensive use of the Internet and huge demands for multimedia services via portable devices require the development of packet-based radio access systems with high transmission efficiency. Advanced radio transmission technologies have recently been proposed to achieve this challenging task. However, few researches have been reported on the design of an integrated system that can efficiently exploit the advantages of these transmission technologies. This paper considers the design of a packet-based cellular system for next-generation radio access. We propose a novel system framework that can incorporate various advanced transmission technologies such as link adaptation, opportunistic packet scheduling, channel coding, and multiantenna techniques. For efficient use of these technologies together, we first investigate the interoperability between these technologies by proposing a so-called cause and effect analysis. Based on this investigation, we design a differentiated-segments-based orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing system, called DiffSeg, to accommodate heterogeneous operating conditions in a seamless manner. Simulation results show that the proposed DiffSeg system can provide a nearly optimum performance with flexible configuration in a wide range of wireless channel conditions

MAPK Cascades in Guard Cell Signal Transduction

Guard cells form stomata on the epidermis and continuously respond to endogenous and environmental stimuli to fine-tune the gas exchange and transpirational water loss, processes which involve mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades. MAPKs form three-tiered kinase cascades with MAPK kinases and MAPK kinase kinases, by which signals are transduced to the target proteins. MAPK cascade genes are highly conserved in all eukaryotes, and they play crucial roles in myriad developmental and physiological processes. MAPK cascades function during biotic and abiotic stress responses by linking extracellular signals received by receptors to cytosolic events and gene expression. In this review, we highlight recent findings and insights into MAPK-mediated guard cell signaling, including the specificity of MAPK cascades and the remaining questions. © 2016 Lee, Kim, Kim and Kwak.1