Abandoned Babies: The Backlash of South Korea\u27s Special Adoption Act

South Korea amended its adoption law to reduce the number of foreign adoptions and to keep children with their biological families. However, since the amendment took effect in August 2012, more babies have been abandoned. The amendment (hereinafter the “Special Adoption Act”) created three conditions on birthparents who wish to place their child up for adoption. First, birthparents must wait at least seven days after their child is born before they may consent to placing their child up for adoption. Second, birthparents must receive counseling on the various resources that would be available to them if they choose to raise the child themselves. Finally, birthparents must go through family court to place their child up for adoption, meaning that the adoption would be a part of government records. The legislative intent behind the Special Adoption Act was to keep children with their biological families, reduce the number of foreign adoptions, and encourage more domestic adoptions. The legislature intended to accomplish these goals by making the adoption process more transparent and by making available information deemed “necessary to promote domestic adoption.” However, after the Special Adoption Act took effect, an unexpected problem emerged: more infants are being abandoned, particularly those born to unwed mothers. This comment examines South Korea’s Special Adoption Act in the context of the Korean culture and history. It proposes that the biggest weakness of the Act is that it attempts to keep children with their biological families by making the adoption process more burdensome on the birthparents. This comment further suggests that the Act should instead resort to more effective and permanent means of encouraging birthparents to raise their children, such as fighting the social stigma surrounding adoptions, children born out of wedlock, and single mothers. In fact, even though South Korea overhauled its constitution to guarantee gender equality in the mid-1980s, a legacy remains of decades of discrimination against women, and women today still struggle to raise children born out of wedlock

The gender pay gap in the UK: evidence from the UKHLS

This is a report on research undertaken by Professor Wendy Olsen, Dr Vanessa Gash, Sook Kim, and Dr Min Zhang on behalf of the Government Equalities Office. The primary aim of this research is to identify the factors that influence the gender pay gap in the UK. The work uses decomposition techniques to analyse the main predictors of the gender pay gap using waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS) relating to 2014 to 2015. The gender pay gap is the difference between men’s and women’s average hourly earnings

Storytelling and Self-Formation in Nineteenth-Century British Novels

This dissertation aims to examine the various ways in which three Victorian novels, such as Wilkie Collins?s The Woman in White (1860), Anne Bront�?s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Charlotte Bront�?s Villette (1853), address the relationship between storytelling and self-formation, showing that a subject formulates a sense of self by storytelling. The constructed nature of self and storytelling in Collins?s The Woman in White shows that narrative is a significant way of attributing meaning in our lives and that constructing stories about self is connected to the construction of self, illustrating that storytelling is a form of self-formation. Anne Bront�?s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall exemplifies Bront�?s configuration of the relational and contextual aspect of storytelling and self-formation in her belief that self is formed not merely through the story he/she tells but through the triangular relationship of the storyteller, the story, and the reader. This novel proves that even though the writer?s role in constructing his/her self-concept through his/her narrative is important, the narrator?s triangular relationship with the reader and the text is also a significant component in his/her self-formation. Charlotte Bront�?s Villette is concerned with unnarration, in which the narrative does not say, and it shows that the unnarrated elements provide useful resource for the display of the narrator?s self. For Charlotte Bront�, unnarration is part of the narrative configuration that contributes to constructing and presenting the storyteller?s self-formation. These three novels illuminate that narrative is more than linguistic activities of the symbolic representation of the world, and that it cannot be fully conceived without taking into consideration the storyteller?s experience and thoughts of the world

Smaller spared subcortical nuclei are associated with worse post-stroke sensorimotor outcomes in 28 cohorts worldwide

Up to two-thirds of stroke survivors experience persistent sensorimotor impairments. Recovery relies on the integrity of spared brain areas to compensate for damaged tissue. Deep grey matter structures play a critical role in the control and regulation of sensorimotor circuits. The goal of this work is to identify associations between volumes of spared subcortical nuclei and sensorimotor behaviour at different timepoints after stroke. We pooled high-resolution

Concert recording 2021-10-18

[Track 1]. From lo song pur solo, H. 344. Solo cantata for soprano and basso continuo. I. Recitiative, lo son pur solo ; II. Aria, Sono amante / Alessandro Scarlatti - From Szene aus Goethe\u27s Faust. Gretchens Bitte, D. 564 / Franz Schubert -- Deh pietoso, oh addolorata / Giuseppe Verdi -- From Song of Almah. I. Rose of Sharon ; III. Cedar Lebanon / Andrew Beall. [Track 2]. Duet. Dirait-on from Les chansons des roses / Morten Lauridsen ; Puisqu\u27ici bas toute âme, Op. 10, No. 1 / Gabriel Fauré -- Korean art song collection. Ihwau (Pear blossom rain) ; Betle Norae (Loom song) / Won-Joo Lee -- From the musical Salzzagi opseoye. Salzzagi opseoye (Softly, please come) / Chang-Kwon Choi

Identification and analysis of in planta expressed genes of Magnaporthe oryzae

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Infection of plants by pathogens and the subsequent disease development involves substantial changes in the biochemistry and physiology of both partners. Analysis of genes that are expressed during these interactions represents a powerful strategy to obtain insights into the molecular events underlying these changes. We have employed expressed sequence tag (EST) analysis to identify rice genes involved in defense responses against infection by the blast fungus <it>Magnaporthe oryzae </it>and fungal genes involved in infectious growth within the host during a compatible interaction.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A cDNA library was constructed with RNA from rice leaves (<it>Oryza sativa </it>cv. Hwacheong) infected with <it>M. oryzae </it>strain KJ201. To enrich for fungal genes, subtraction library using PCR-based suppression subtractive hybridization was constructed with RNA from infected rice leaves as a tester and that from uninfected rice leaves as the driver. A total of 4,148 clones from two libraries were sequenced to generate 2,302 non-redundant ESTs. Of these, 712 and 1,562 ESTs could be identified to encode fungal and rice genes, respectively. To predict gene function, Gene Ontology (GO) analysis was applied, with 31% and 32% of rice and fungal ESTs being assigned to GO terms, respectively. One hundred uniESTs were found to be specific to fungal infection EST. More than 80 full-length fungal cDNA sequences were used to validate <it>ab initio</it> annotated gene model of <it>M. oryzae</it> genome sequence.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study shows the power of ESTs to refine genome annotation and functional characterization. Results of this work have advanced our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning fungal-plant interactions and formed the basis for new hypothesis.</p

Concert recording 2019-03-29

[Track 1]. Ionhontsiá:te (Mother earth). Grandmother moon for soprano and cello / Dawn Ierihò:kwats Avery -- [Track 2]. Lieux ecartez, paisible solitude from Céphale et Procris / Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre -- [Track 3]. Four Dickinson songs / Lori Laitman Emily Dickinson -- [Track 4]. Guendae Issume (Because you are here) / Sunae Kim -- [Track 5]. Lee Eung and Arirang (Arirang) / YoungRan Park -- [Track 6]. She tell her love [Track 7]. A boy and a girl / Stephen Caldwell -- [Track 8]. Morgen, op. 27, no. 4 [Track 9]. Heimliche Aufforderung, op. 27, no. 3 / Richard Strauss -- [Track 10]. Suleika, op. 14, no. 1 / Franz Schubert -- [Track 11]. Philine: Singet nicht in Trauertönen, op. 98a, no. 7 / Robert Schumann -- [Track 12]. Mignon: Kennst du das Land / Hugo Wolf -- [Track 13]. From Song of Almah. III. Cedar of Lebanon / Andrew Beall

Essential Role for Schizosaccharomyces pombe pik1 in Septation

Background: Schizosaccharomyces pombe pik1 encodes a phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase, reported to bind Cdc4, but no