Transition or Tradition: Imagining National R&D Innovation in South Korea

From the late 1990s, many national policies for research and development (R&D), focusing on innovation, were established in South Korea. In May 2015, the Korean government announced another bold blueprint for R&D innovation emphasizing a serious approach toward overcoming outdated ideas and practices regarding the governance of the science and technology sectors. This emphasized very high expectations for the country, though in the end it brought brutal criticism and bitter disappointment. This paper conducts a critical analysis of the discourse surrounding the notion of national R&D innovation by focusing on the case of the 2015 Government R&D Innovation Plan. Various (un)published papers were examined as mediators to reproduce, construct, and deliver a particular imagination. By analyzing not only the final policy documents but also the initial policy draft, this paper highlights a substantive discontinuity in the formation of the 2015 Government R&D Innovation Plan that illuminates different imaginations of so-called national innovation in terms of R&D. It illustrates a tension occurring in national R&D innovation in South Korea between the desire to reproduce past glory by following previous experiences and a willingness to embody semantic meanings of innovation with novel approaches. This paper reveals a discursive oscillation of imaginations in national R&D innovation which resulted in its conceptual and practical ambiguity

Considerations for physicians using ketamine for sedation of children in emergency departments

Objective Ketamine use in emergency departments (EDs) for procedural sedation and analgesia is becoming increasingly common. However, few studies have examined patient factors related to adverse events associated with ketamine. This study investigated factors for consideration when using ketamine to sedate pediatric ED patients. Methods The study included pediatric patients receiving ketamine for laceration repair in the ED. Before sedation, information was collected about upper respiratory tract infection symptoms, allergy history, and fasting time. Patients received 2 mg/kg ketamine intravenously or 4 mg/kg ketamine intramuscularly. The primary outcomes were adverse events due to ketamine. Results We studied 116 patients aged 8 months to 7 years (2.8±1.5 years). The group with adverse events was significantly younger on average than the group without adverse events (2.5±1.5 vs. 3.1±1.5, P=0.028). Upper respiratory tract infection symptoms were not significant variables affecting ketamine sedation (48.9% vs. 43.7%, P=0.719). There was no significant association between duration of fasting and adverse events (P=0.073 and P=0.897, respectively), or between food type and adverse events (P=0.734). However, the number of attempts to sedate and ketamine dose correlated with adverse events (P<0.001 and P=0.022, respectively). In multiple logistic regression analysis, intravenous injection and ketamine dose were significant factors (odds ratio, 16.77; 95% confidence interval, 1.78 to 498.54; odds ratio, 4.37; 95% confidence interval, 1.59 to 22.9, respectively). Conclusion Emergency medicine physicians should consider injection type and ketamine dose when using ketamine sedation while suturing lacerations

Surface-induced transition of nematic liquid crystals on graphene/SiC substrate

A nematic liquid-crystal director aligns along the armchair direction of graphene grown on a SiC substrate. The temperature-dependent textural change in the nematic phase is different from the usual texture on the alignment layer. The isotropic-nematic phase transition temperature decreases over time after cell fabrication. Tiny domains occur with the phase transition and appear to be merged from a critical temperature with decreasing temperature in the nematic phase. This is thought to be due to the transition occurring at the interface. On the other hand, the nematic liquid crystal in graphene grown on a Cu foil does not show textural changes, and the phase transition temperature does not decrease even after a long time has elapsed. X-ray fluorescence measurements indicate that silicon atoms exist in the liquid crystal possibly extracted from the SiC substrate. A model of first-order phase transition on the graphene surface has been proposed. This transition is accompanied by an inhomogeneous distribution of scalar order parameters and the transformation from a small multi-grained structure to a large domain distribution in the director field. This structural transformation takes place at a temperature different from that corresponding to the bulk transition. Such behavior may be explained by the adsorption process of silicon atoms in contact with the SiC-graphene interface

Spatiotemporal laser speckle flowmetry based on elastic-walled U-shaped tubing apparatus: optical method for urinary flow measurement

We propose an optical method for uroflowmetry, exploiting the laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) technique onto an intermediate tubing apparatus having an elastic wall that can sensitively respond to flow-induced shedding vortices. Based on the method, we devised and fabricated an elastic-walled U-shaped tubing apparatus (EWUSTA), using the three-dimensional printing technique. We utilized the spatiotemporal contrast scheme for the LSCI as a fast and reliable computational algorithm. We investigated three different materials of flex-vinyl, ninja-flex, and natural rubber latex for the elastic wall of the EWUSTA in steady flow conditions, and verified that their optimal operational ranges could extend up to 7, 15, and 25 ml/s, respectively. We characterized the natural-rubber-latex-based EWUSTA in dynamic flow conditions in comparison with a commercial reservoir-weight-transducer-based gravimetric flowmeter, and verified its feasibility. We stress that the proposed method can offer precise and accurate information on flow dynamics. In addition, we found that the upper limit of the optimal operational range of the proposed apparatus had strong correlation with the tensile strength of the elastic-wall material. We reckon that the proposed and demonstrated method has great potential not only for uroflowmetry but also for other flow-related medical and industrial applications.</p