This paper investigates how the members of the Kigye Yu lineage imagined and invented their ancestral roots during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) and how such a pursuit of ancestral origins led to subsequent developments in genealogical records. As early as the fifteenth century, Chosŏn elites began to show interests in genealogy that included identifying remote ancestors from ancient times for various political, social, and cultural reasons. From the seventeenth century, the transformation of kinship organization in line with the Confucian ideal of patriliny and elites’ competition for power and prestige intensified genealogical consciousness. Elites became heavily invested in searching for ancestral origins in the form of their lineages’ founders and their tombs. While claiming to rely on documentary and physical evidence, elites often deviated from their professed empiricism and adopted evidence from dubious sources such as oral testimonies and geomancy to rationalize invented ancestral roots. Such pliable approaches, often observed in other early modern cultures such as late imperial China and Europe, opened a floodgate of lineages glorifying their ancestry by pushing their origins back even to mythical founders of ancient Korean and Chinese kingdoms, and adorning their lineages with invented heroes. At the same time, loopholes and blank spots in genealogies enabled quasi- and nonelites to become a member of prominent lineages by grafting their names onto their family trees.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on treatment outcomes in critically ill patients with carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) bloodstream infection (BSI). This single-centre, retrospective cohort study was conducted in a 1,048-bed university-affiliated tertiary hospital in the Republic of Korea from January 2021 to March 2022. The study participants included consecutive hospitalised adult patients (aged ≥18 years) in the intensive care unit with CRAB monomicrobial BSI. During the study period, a total of 70 patients were included in our study, and 24 (34.3%) were diagnosed with COVID-19. The 28-day mortality rate was 64.3%. In the multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, diagnosis of COVID-19 (hazard ratio (HR), 2.91; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.45–5.87), neutropenia (HR, 2.76; 95% CI: 1.04–7.29), Pitt bacteraemia score (per point; HR, 1.30; 95% CI: 1.19–1.41), and appropriate definite antibiotic therapy (HR, 0.31; 95% CI: 0.15–0.62) were independent predictors of 28-day mortality in patients with CRAB BSI. In conclusion, our findings suggested that COVID-19 has a negative prognostic impact on patients with CRAB BSI. Further study is needed to investigate the specific mechanisms of how COVID-19 worsens the prognosis of CRAB infection.

Theranostics was proposed as a combined process of therapeutics and diagnostics methodology for increasing treatment efficacy and safety with simultaneous monitoring of the response to treatment. In the past two decades, nanotechnology has been the focus of developing strategies for drug delivery and imaging functions, and it has expanded to the design of multifunctional nanoparticles and the creation of “nanotheranostics” (i.e., theranostic nanomedicines). Nanotheranostics also shows potential in gene therapy; however, nanoparticle-mediated delivery of genes still faces major obstacles related to (1) the uptake by the reticuloendothelial system, (2) the ability to get across the target cell membranes through endocytosis, and (3) the ability to accumulate in organs with permeable vasculature. Here, we review the development and application of nanotheranostics, highlighting their relevance to gene therapy as well as molecular imaging.

Background: Highly educated participants with normal cognition show lower incidence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) than poorly educated participants, whereas longitudinal studies involving AD have reported that higher education is associated with more rapid cognitive decline. We aimed to evaluate whether highly educated amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) participants show more rapid cognitive decline than those with lower levels of education.

Methods: A total of 249 aMCI patients enrolled from 31 memory clinics using the standard assessment and diagnostic processes were followed with neuropsychological evaluation (duration 17.2 ± 8.8 months). According to baseline performances on memory tests, participants were divided into early-stage aMCI (−1.5 to −1.0 standard deviation (SD)) and late-stage aMCI (below −1.5 SD) groups. Risk of AD conversion and changes in neuropsychological performances according to the level of education were evaluated.

Results: Sixty-two patients converted to AD over a mean follow-up of 1.43 years. The risk of AD conversion was higher in late-stage aMCI than early-stage aMCI. Cox proportional hazard models showed that aMCI participants, and late-stage aMCI participants in particular, with higher levels of education had a higher risk of AD conversion than those with lower levels of education. Late-stage aMCI participants with higher education showed faster cognitive decline in language, memory, and Clinical Dementia Rating Sum of Boxes (CDR-SOB) scores. On the contrary, early-stage aMCI participants with higher education showed slower cognitive decline in MMSE and CDR-SOB scores.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the protective effects of education against cognitive decline remain in early-stage aMCI and disappear in late-stage aMCI.

Boron carbide (B4C) is currently used in lightweight armors and high temperature materials, because it has high meting point, good hardness, low specific gravity and good mechanical properties. The sintering of boron carbide, however, is restricted by its high covalent bonding and B2O3 coatings on B4C particles surface which can cause a microstructural coarsening during sintering. Therefore, it is necessary to remove B2O3 film of By4C particles surface to restrict microstructural coarsening and densification of B4C. B4C ceramics were fabricated by a hot-press sintering and its sintering behavior, microstructure and mechanical properties were evaluated. The relative density of B4C ceramics were obtained by a hot-press sintering reached as high as 99% without any sintering additives. The mechanical properties of B4C ceramics was improved by a methanol washing which can remove B2O3 phase from a B4C powder surface. This improvement is resulted from the formation of homogeneous microstructure because the grain coarsening was suppressed by the elimination of B2O3 phase. Particularly, the mechanical properties of the sintered samples using a methanol washed powder improved compared with the samples using an as-received commercial powder.

This paper examines the causes and processes of a popular tax-resistance movement by adopting a multidimensional approach that considers dynamic rural power relations, popular responses to social and economic changes, and cultural practices that both united and divided rural communities. Popular rebellions in 1862 reflected not only the social and economic distress that the peasantry experienced in everyday life but also the inability of the dynastic structure to accommodate the social, political, and economic changes that were occurring in the nineteenth century. This work pays close attention to the particular historical and cultural context of 1862 Korea, such as various rural conditions and the workings of dynastic institutions at the local level, and discovers that different patterns of popular protest grew out of the competition, division, and conflict that had developed along class, social status, village community, and political lines.

We designed and synthesized a dendritic architecture in which three branches of the NLO-active component consisting of push-pull type conjugated structure were linked onto its core. Chemical structure of the dendritic nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophore was verified by NMR spectroscopy, which clearly showed that the conjugated bridge had a trans-conformation. The dendrimer exhibited that the broad absorption band centered at around 608 nm extending to 760 nm. It was thermally stable up to 275 °C in the nitrogen atmosphere. Polymer film was prepared by spincoating the solution of mixture of amorphous polycarbonate (APC) and the dendritic chromophore, which exhibited an electro-optic coefficient of 19 pm/V at 1.55 μm wavelength.