This year, farmers suffered from heat waves under severe drought in South Korea. During the Joseon Dynasty, the agriculture industry was centered on rice farming, which made society more vulnerable to droughts or floods. Thus, our ancestors made great efforts to predict the weather in order to minimize agricultural losses.Professor Jonghun Kam and Dr. Park Chang-Kyun in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering developed a “self-calibrating Effective Drought Index (scEDI)” and compared and analyzed precipitation records for about 250 years from the Joseon Dynasty to the modern er

There is now a way to strategically treat cancer because of the usage of not only the microenvironment of cancer, but also an in-vitro cancer model that simulates blood and lymphatic vessels, the main metastatic pathways. In the future, personalized cancer treatments will be possible by engineering a cancer model with cells from patients.Professor Cho Dong-woo of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cho Won-woo and Ahn Min-jun of the integrated course, and Prof. Kim Byung-soo of the Department of Biomedical Convergence Engineering of Pusan National University produced a metastatic melanom

Both the inflation rate and the consumer price index (CPI) are maintaining high rates. Deputy Prime Minister Choo Kyung-ho maintained his previous forecast that the inflation rate would peak around October. According to Statistics Korea, the CPI was recorded at 6.0% in June, 6.3% in July, and 5.7% in August. This is the highest rate in 23 years. What is more serious is that the inflation is centering on items with high public sensitivity, such as agricultural and fishery products. As a result, the CPI for restaurant purchases in July recorded the highest rate in 30 years. To make matters worse

Hinnamnor is the 11th typhoon of this year that has cleared its way through Jeju Island and Gyeongsang Province during the early morning of Sept. 6, causing devastation and irreparable scars to millions of lives. Named after a national reserve in Laos, the Category-5 equivalent super typhoon Hinnamnor landed on the coast of Geoje at 4:50 A.M., headed North East at 50km/h, and exited through the sea of Ulsan at 7:30 A.M. It is yet the strongest typhoon of this year and has incurred 12 deaths, ruined 3,800ha of agricultural goods, and submerged over 10,000 cars in Korea.Pohang was one of the mos

A research team led by Professor Park Kyoung-duck of the Department of Physics (PHYS) and Kang Min-gu (PHYS Ph.D. Candidate) conducted a joint study with Prof. Suh Yung Doug of the Department of Chemistry at UNIST, and succeeded in visualizing a single-molecule’s conformational heterogeneity (structural variation) at room temperature (RT) for the first time. It is now possible to investigate the conformation of a single-molecule which is the basic unit of all matter. A single-molecule about 1 nanometer (nm, billionth of a meter) in size is very unstable at RT. The fast diffusion of Coronavirus

Alzheimer’s disease is a representative neurodegenerative disease. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease and their families continue to suffer while the precise cause of dementia remains unknown.Professor Kyong-Tai Kim and Ph.D. candidate Eun Ji Oh of the Department of Life Sciences (LIFE) have developed a substance that activates the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR), thereby revealing the possibility of treating Alzheimer’s disease. PPAR is a transcription factor necessary for metabolic regulation and is considered to be an important target protein for the treatment of metabolic

Nowadays, it is no exaggeration that many Koreans consider pets to be an integral part of their family. Therefore, the government has begun to collect opinions on animal welfare policies to improve the existing system.On Aug. 10, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced that they would conduct research services, including public opinion polls, on the introduction of a pet tax. The pet tax is a system that collects a certain amount of money every year from those who raise pets. It is used for funds related to animal welfare, such as animal hospitals and medical insurance. T

On Aug. 2, United States politician Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. This was the first high ranking American official’s visit to the island nation since 1997, when the Republican politician Newt Gingrich visited. Pelosi portrayed the reason for her trip as an obligation to stand with democratic countries in opposition to autocratic nations. This was not her first show of support for democracy, as she had also visited Tiananmen Square in 1991.After Pelosi’s visit, the relationship between China and Taiwan deteriorated significantly. This is because China has declared Taiwan as part of its territor

Recently, electric vehicles (EVs) are everywhere, from passenger cars, and buses, to taxis. EVs have the advantage of being eco-friendly and having low maintenance costs, but their owners must remain wary of fatal accidents in case the battery runs out or reaches the end of its life. Therefore, precise capacity and lifespan predictions for lithium-ion batteries – commonly used in EVs – are vital.A joint research team led by Professor Seungchul Lee (ME), Ph.D. candidate Sung Wook Kim (ME Ph.D. Candidate, advisor Prof. Seungchul Lee), and Prof. Ki-Yong Oh (Hanyang University) conducted research

Tactile sensors have been used as the basic platform of an artificial sensory system for fabricating robotic skins, prosthetics, haptic devices, and wearable or implantable devices. Several technological issues to produce practical tactile sensors have been intensively investigated and have seen remarkable advances. However, low power consumption and simple device structure are still big technological challenges. Among the potential power sources for tactile sensors, self-powered high potential signal generation with a weak external stimulus could be obtained through a triboelectric nanogenera

A prediction was raised that Apple’s own charging port which was first released in 2012 would finally be discontinued. In the last decade, Apple has stuck to their charging type, ‘Lightning’, but it is predicted that Apple will change it into ‘USB-C’ which is an international standard due to the recently emerging environmental issues, increase in consumer complaints, and EU sanctions. Accordingly, consumers and the mobile market show a hospitable position.Almost every company adopted USB-C since the mid to late 2010s and port standardization seems to be achieved, but Apple continued to use lig

People in the cryptocurrency industry believed that stable coins, like the Terra coin, are a brilliant idea and predicted that stable coin methodology is the direction that coin methodology would develop in the future. As the name suggests, the purpose of a stable coin is to remain stable, as they are pegged to fiat currency, such as the dollar. Furthermore, the Luna system promised investors an interest rate of 20% per year and made it into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap. In the case of the Terra system, one Terra was pegged on one USD by additionally creating a new coin, Luna, tha

Distribution of waste cooking oil extracted from sewage or food waste caused controversy. In fact, how clean is the cooking oil we eat? Professor Young-Tae Chang’s team developed a sensor for detecting waste cooking oil (WCO) using fluorescent substances. Now, anyone can easily measure the degree of deterioration of any variety of cooking oil. The technology of filtering waste cooking oil like a highlighter pen measures how clean the cooking oil is.The research team led by Professor Young-Tae Jang of the Department of Chemistry and Dr. Xiao Liu of IBS developed “Bad Oil Sensor (BOS)” the first

The dream of fully autonomous vehicles is slowly becoming closer to reality, but obstacles still litter the way to commercialization. One such example is adverse weather conditions, e.g., fog, rain, and snow, which substantially degrade visibility, and consequently performance of visual recognition systems of autonomous vehicles. Since safety is a critical feature of autonomous vehicles, their visual perception systems must be robust against these impediments.Professor Suha Kwak of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Sohyun Lee (GSAI Ph.D/M.S. Candidate, advisor Prof. Suh

You would be hard pressed to find someone who has not subscribed to a streaming service nowadays. Starting with Netflix in 2007, streaming services have been regarded as a blue ocean for businesspeople and investors alike due to their convenience, cost-effectiveness, and entertainment value. The notion of being able to log onto one platform and watch TV shows and movies ranging from Disney animations to Steven Spielberg in the comfort of one’s own home was something that most people had only dreamed of. During COVID-19, the prospects of streaming services only rose, as lockdown made it impossi

Controversy over delivery fees has become a hot topic as major delivery apps have suspended promotions. Coupang Eats (a popular delivery application) launched a food delivery service in May 2019 and brought in a “single-order-per-delivery” system. Previously, it was common for deliverers to handle three to four cases of orders at once. Single deliveries could solve the problem of delays and food cooling. It had a short delivery time because only one order was handled at a time.The condition of the single delivery was 15% of the fee and 6,000 KRW for delivery, but Coupang Eats offered a promoti

A technology that allows organic photodiodes (OPDs) to detect objects in strong light by adding small molecules has been developed. OPDs are optical sensors that detect color and brightness by converting light energy into electrical energy. Originally, objects could not be easily detected when receiving strong light such as sunlight.A research team led by Professor Chung Dae-sung (CE) and Dr. Kang Min-kyun (CE) succeeded in enhancing the performance of OPDs by synthesizing molecular switches. These research results were published in Advanced Materials.Unlike inorganic semiconductors, organic s

Google’s Contact lens, which diagnosed diabetes by analyzing glucose in tears, had become a hot topic. However, clinical trials have been suspended because the correlation between blood and tear glucose has not been verified, due to the low sensitivity of the glucose sensor. However, a new smart contact lens that can accurately diagnose blood glucose in real-time has recently been developed.Professor Hahn Sei Kwang, Dr. Kim Su-Kyoung, and Lee Geon-Hui in the Department of Material Science and Engineering developed smart contact lenses for continuous glucose monitoring in collaboration with Pro

Chelsea FC is experiencing financial problems. In an interview about the lack of money for away games, Chelsea player Kai Havertz said “That is not a big deal. I think that a lot of harder moments are in the world right now and I will pay, it’s simple.” What could have made them fall?Chelsea’s former owner Roman Abramovich suffered financial sanctions and his corporate account was blocked to prevent these assets from being repatriated to Russia. The resulting freezing of assets is increasing in real-time and it is the largest asset freeze action in U.K. history. As a result, Roman gave up all

On April 11, the 20th presidential transition team said, “We will push for a plan to unify the legal and social age calculation method based on ‘international age’ in accordance with president-elect Yoon Seok-yeol’s pledge.”First, the team plans to establish the “international age” and marking regulations through the Civil Act and the General Act On Public Administration to ensure the use of “international age” in the civil and administrative fields. After that, they will promote revising laws that use the existing age calculation and using only “international age” in official documents. In ad