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Professor Lee Sang Yeop Nominated the Chairman of Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum
Professor Lee Sang Yeop, Dean of College Life Science & Bioengineering, was appointed as the chairman of the Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum.
He will be in office till the 31st of August 2012, exactly 1 year from the date of his appointment.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a ‘think tank’ consisting of world leaders in various fields like economics, politics, and policies and has created the ‘Global Agenda Council’ to solve the problems mankind faces in achieving environmentally sustainable growth and suggest a collective vision and strategy.
The committee to be chaired by Professor Lee (Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council) will discuss the direction in which the fields of biological engineering, nanotechnology, and IT (information technology) should develop and discuss the possible impact these fields will have on the society.
Professor Lee commented that, “I am extremely happy to be appointed as the chair of the Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council at the World Economic Forum which is a gathering of world class leaders” and that “it is a great opportunity to spread Korea’s success and lessons in the advancement of science and technology.”
Professor Lee is the creator of the field of system metabolism engineering and is making great strides in manipulating the microorganism’s metabolic pathways on a systems scale to make changing chemicals derived from oil into eco-friendly and bio-based products.
2011.09.20 View 9014 -
Review of organophosphonate nerve agent remediation and sensing chemistry
Professor David Churchill, Dept. of Chemistry, KAIST
Scientists in Daejeon, South Korea and Lexington, Kentucky (USA) have recently published a review on the subject of nerve agent remediation and probing chemistry (Chemical Reviews, DOI:10.1021/cr100193y). This article endeavored to pursue organophosphonate nerve agent chemistry deeply and comprehensively and to reflect that decontamination / sensing and nerve agents / pesticides are quite inextricable: when one tries to degrade nerve agents one also needs to detect what components are still present “downstream,” etc. Nerve agents and many pesticides also share a common generalized organophosphate / -phosphonate structure.
Also, the use of simulant molecules (mimics) and a consideration of the closely related organophosphonate pesticides were also treated comprehensively in the Review. The authors reached back into the literature when developing some sections to make important connections to the contemporary topics of interest. The review also includes industrial insights.
Kibong Kim, Olga G. Tsay and David G. Churchill of the Department of Chemistry at KAIST and David A. Atwood of the Department of Chemistry of the University of Kentucky endeavored to "make a variety of connections in research strategies and (sub-) fields to present what is still possible, fruitful, practical, and necessary and to facilitate a current comprehensive molecular level understanding of organophosphonate degradation and sensing," Churchill says.
The authors feel that for the time being, researchers in varying research areas “can use this manuscript effectively when considering future research directions.”
2011.09.19 View 8402 -
Yonhap News, Scientists Develop Nitrogen-Doped Graphene Supercapacitor, June 6, 2011
Yonhap News Agency, South Korea’s wire news agency, reported that KAIST’s research team developed “a new type of power storage technology using nitrogen and graphene.”
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsworld.php?id=591725
2011.06.08 View 8646 -
'WWW2014' to be held in Seoul
WWW2014 (World Wide Web 2014) will be held in Seoul.
KAIST, Agency for Technology and Standards, W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), and ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) all worked in cooperation to have WWW2014 in Seoul. The announcement that WWW2014 will be held in Seoul was announced in the Closing Ceremony of WWW2011 India Conference. Seoul overtook Adelaide and Melbourne of Australia.
Hosting WWW2014 in Seoul will be a great opportunity to showcase Korea’s Web Technology and get a grasp on the current trend in the field of high tech web technology and services.
The WWW conferences are attended by over 1,000 experts all over the world and are the world’s largest international conference in the field of IT.
Efforts to host the conference in their own respective countries are made on a national scale. The WWW2011 was hosted in India with the President of India giving an opening ceremony speech and WWW2013 will be hosted in Brazil in part due to the President himself sending a letter to express their desire to host WWW conference.
2011.05.11 View 9975
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Oh Myung Chairman of the Board gives Special Lecture in the S+ Convergence AMP Program
Chairman Oh Myung (CEO of Woong Jin Energy Poly Silicon) gave a special lecture in the KAIST S+ Convergence AMP Program with the topic of ’Dream of a Korea 30 years into the future’.
Chairman Oh insisted to the program attendees that they do their best in developing Korea through development of new technology and IT and that he considers education and development of new technology as the reason for Korea’s rapid development.
The program invites a guest speaker every month, apart from the planed lectures. The guest speakers were the top of their respective fields. In addition, various activities like riding the OLEV or domestic workshops or educational trips abroad imparted the ability to take on a global perspective.
2011.05.11 View 8459
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Genetic Cause of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) Found
The cooperative research team consisting research teams under Professor Kim Eun Joon and Professor Kang Chang Won of the department of Biological Sciences discovered that ADHD arises from the deficiency of GIT1 protein in the brain’s neural synapses.
ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is found in around 5% of children around the world and is a disorder where the child becomes unable to concentrate, show over the top responses, and display impulsive behavior.
The research team found that the difference between children with ADHD and those without it is one base in the GIT1 gene. The difference of a single base causes the underproduction of this protein, and those children with low levels of the protein had a higher probability to develop ADHD.
In addition, further evidence was provided when the research team conducted mice experiments. Those mice with low levels of GIT1 exhibited impulsive and exaggerated reactions like humans with ADHD, had learning disabilities, and produced abnormal brain waves. And upon injecting these mice with cure for ADHD, the symptoms of ADHD disappeared.
The impulsive behavior of ADHD children disappears as the child enters adulthood and a similar pattern was found in mice. A mice with low levels of GIT1 showed impulsive behaviors when 2 months old, but these behaviors disappeared as it got older to around 7 months old (equivalent to 20~30 years old for humans).
Professor Kim Eun Joon commented that there has to be equilibrium between mechanisms that excite the neurons and mechanisms that calm the neurons, but the lack of GIT1 leads to the decrease in the mechanisms that calm the neurons which causes the impulsive behavior of ADHD patients.
In addition, Professor Kang Chang Won commented that the results of the experiment has been receiving rave reviews and is being seen as the new method in the production of the cure for ADHD.
The result of the experiment was published in the online edition of Nature Medicine magazine.
2011.04.30 View 10013
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Low Cost and Simple Gene Analysis Technology Developed
Professor Park Hyun Kyu of the Department of Biology and Chemical Engineering has developed a ‘real time CPR’ using Methylene Blue (nucleic acid bonding molecule with Electro-Chemical property).
The current gene analysis being used in the field is the real time PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) which takes advantage of the luminescent property of the gene and therefore requires expensive machines and chemicals to run.
By contrast, the electro-chemical method is easy to use and low cost and, most importantly, it allows the machine to become small and portable.
Professor Park’s research team used the decrease in the electro-chemical signal when the Methylene Blue reacts with nucleic acid and applied this to PCR which allowed for the real time analysis of the nucleic acid amplification process.
With the result of the experiment as the basis, the team was able to perform a trial with Chlamydia trachomatis, a pathogen that causes sexually transmitted disease.
The result showed that the electro-chemical method showed the same performance level as the real time PCR, which proved that the technology can be applied to diagnosing various diseases and gene research.
2011.04.30 View 9098
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The Irish Times: Gene link identified in ADHD, April 18, 2011
The Irish Times wrote an article on the recent research breakthrough made by a KAIST research team to identify a gene that triggers the syndrome of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) among children. Given the heightened attention to the syndrome across the world, the research result has received a great deal of attention not only from the academia but also from the media and public.
For the article, please visit http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0418/1224294910305.html. The research paper was appeared online April 17, 2011 in Nature Medicine, which will be printed in its May 2011 issue. For the paper, please click the link of http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.2330.html.
2011.04.18 View 9153
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Businessweek: How Twitter Could Unleash World Peace, April 11, 2011
A KAIST graduate scholar, Meeyoung Cha, conducted a joint study with international researchers and released a paper on the aspect of twitter as an emerging cyber arena for political and social debates and discussions. An article on the paper from Businessweek follows:
Businessweek
April 11, 2011, 9:08PM EST text size: TT
How Twitter Could Unleash World Peace
Researchers from Britain, Korea, and Germany have determined that the amount of fresh information you get on Twitter is less a matter of what you follow than whom—and who follows you
By Bobbie Johnson
On certain days, Twitter can feel like the world"s biggest, fastest echo chamber. Since we tend to follow people who are similar to us, we often see our own views reflected back—meaning a gloomy cloud of irritation can rapidly swirl into a cyclone of outrage as we hear from other people who feel as we do. A group of computer scientists have discovered that the opposite may also be true. Can Twitter be part of the solution, not merely part of the problem?
In a study to be presented at a conference in July, a team of researchers from the U.K."s University of Cambridge, Korea"s Graduate School of cultural Technology-KAIST, and Germany"s Max Planck Institute for Software Systems show how Twitter can provide users greater access to more varied political viewpoints and media sources than they might otherwise get.
The paper, called "The Media Landscape in Twitter(http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jac22/out/twitter-diverse.pdf)," explains how the team made surprising discoveries when they looked into the site"s usage patterns. First they looked at who follows whom and discovered that Twitter is a highly politicized space. Then they examined patterns of tweeting and retweeting to try to understand how people receive information on Twitter—and what they might see. Their conclusion: Although Twitter is a pretty partisan space, it can offer unprecedented opportunities to break down the barriers that plague local, national, and international politics.
How? Through retweets and interaction—what the authors call "indirect media exposure." As they put it, this "expands the political diversity of news to which users are exposed to a surprising extent, increasing the range by between 60 percent and 98 percent. These results are valuable because they have not been readily available to traditional media and they can help predict how we will read news and how publishers will interact with us in the future."
If you"re interested in the way Twitter works, I recommend reading the paper, which isn"t very long. Meanwhile, let"s boil it down to a few key pieces of data and see what lessons they can teach.
Most Twitter users are political. Just over half (50.8 percent) of all Twitter users studied showed a distinct political bias in the media outlets and individuals they followed. Most of those lean to the left of the political spectrum, accounting for 62 percent of users who demonstrated some bias. Thirty-seven percent were doggedly centrist. Just 1 percent of Twitter users who showed a political preference were right-wing.
Here are a couple of caveats about reading too much into the sharp divide the authors found. Given that Twitter"s user base is younger and more metropolitan than the societal norm, it"s not surprising that it"s weighted to the left. It"s worth noting that this study was undertaken more than a year ago; since then, Twitter has grown dramatically, while global politics have largely skewed back toward the right. Twitter"s user base today might reflect a more-balanced political picture. Either way, there"s a big split.
Twitter has secondary and tertiary benefits. Most organizations comprehend Twitter in simple terms: More followers means more exposure. But the study shows that it"s not just about those you follow, but those your followers follow—essentially the people in your extended network. The network offers a number of routes for information from fresh sources to get to you. According to the study, some 80 percent of users choose to follow at least 10 media sources, but they are exposed to between 6 and 10 times as many media sources through their friends.
People outweigh brands. Many of the biggest Twitter accounts are big media brands such as CNN (TWX) and Time, but the study suggests that Twitter"s active users tend to prefer individuals over outlets. So while the average follower of @NYTimes (NYT) has six followers apiece, individual journalists have followers who boast a median following count of around 100. That gives individual journalists—who are, the study says, more likely to link to a multiplicity of sources—a much wider, more influential network of connections.
The inference is that the personal touch of a journalist is more important than the lofty, impersonal tone of publications that largely act as promotion channels for their content. It"s a discovery that reminded me of Twitter"s recent blog post on the science of the hashtag, which found that hashtags explode in usage when they are picked up by individuals with the most dedicated—not necessarily the largest—followings.
Active users access a wider range of views. The researchers say that indirect exposure expands political diversity by a "significant amount," despite other studies showing a tendency for social networks to do the opposite. "Other studies have found a stronger tendency of homophily; blogs of different political views rarely linked to each other," they point out. "One possible reason is that a Twitter network encompasses several different relationships—from shared interest, to familial ties, friends, and acquaintances—so political similarity doesn"t necessarily exist in all such ties."
This is not to say that Twitter"s creators should be preparing a Nobel Prize-winning speech. Far from it: The influence of its diversity is unknown. It could be that many people who see messages they disagree with simply change their behavior to screen out such material in future. But it shows that there is a potential to do something positive at Twitter. It"s clear there"s much work to be done. The researchers say they want to investigate a number of areas they"ve uncovered, having provided important insights at a time when politics seem more fractious and divided than ever.
2011.04.12 View 10797
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2011 International Web Science Symposium Held
The 2011 International Web Science Symposium was held in Seoul on the 24th of March hosted by Web Science Engineering College.
The symposium dealt with the technological development and the social impact of web science and the future of the Web.
A special guest was invited to the symposium this year; the founder of web science, Wendy Hall’s lecture on ‘Web Science: New Frontier’. The numerous experts from abroad was unanimous in stating their outlook of web science affecting the competitiveness of IT companies and ultimately become the driving force in new businesses.
The main research in web science are web platforms and contents production, human based web research, and web SW engineering and web science has to do with pulling together various webs all around the world to create new industries.
2011.04.01 View 6985
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2011 Wearable Computer Competition Participant Registration Started
The registration process for the ‘Wearable Computer Contest’ (WCC) held by KAST and Korea Next Generation Computing Institute.
The contest is the only contest that designs wearable computers in Korea. This year’s theme is ‘Smart Wear for the Smart Life’ in response to the spread of smartphones. In 2010 the contest was run cooperatively with International Symposium on Wearable Computer (ISWC) and is fast becoming an international even with students from foreign universities attending.
The participants will be putting forth an idea on wearable computers that have IT and fashion fused into it and actually produces such an outfit. The cost of producing a prototype will be provided by the holders and education of basics needed in producing a prototype like ubiquitous computing, wearable computer platform, human-computer interface, fashion and design.
The restriction of theme was taken out of the equation and in its place, an idea tank involving handing in ideas in poster format was put into place. In addition the competition is no longer limited to undergraduates or graduate students.
Detailed information on registration and of the contest itself can be found at www.ufcom.org .
2011.03.26 View 9142
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'S+ Convergence CEO Program' Completion Ceremony
KAIST will be holding the first Completion Ceremony for the ‘S+ Convergence CEO Program’ which is a differentiated course with a new paradigm. The program offers a different syllabus from the existing CEO training programs and focuses on the fusion of industries and IT, fusion of management and security, and fusing together other future technologies. The course should provide the future CEO’s with the ability to plot a suitable creative management strategy in this day of rapid change and growth.
The program invited a guest speaker every month, apart from the planed lectures. The guest speakers were the top of their respective fields. In addition, various activities like riding the OLEV or domestic workshops or educational trips abroad imparted the ability to take on a global perspective.
The use of Social Network Services like twitter or facebook was educated in the free study period before the lecture began. As a result most of the graduates can now use these SNS freely, better preparing them for the technology oriented direction the world is striving in.
The program will have a total of 54 graduates who come from companies from various industries, are politicians, and/or are government officials.
The program name “S+ Convergence CEO Program” is imbedded with the program goal of training the best CEO’s by fusing together Smart Technology, Security, and Strategy.
2011.03.18 View 8893