Microplastics (MPs) are everywhere: from the Arctic snow to the deepest oceans, they can also enter the human body via food, drink, and the atmosphere. According to the University of Newcastle, Australia, people intake 2,000 pieces of plastic every week, which is equal to the weight of a credit card. In March, MPs were even detected in human blood, causing more concern about the problem.MPs are any small pieces of plastic less than five millimeters in length. They are categorized into two types: primary and secondary. Primary MPs are plastic fragments that are already five millimeters in lengt

Semiconductor industries have risen steadily during the last two years, which will be recorded as the worst stagnation in various industries around the world due to COVID-19. Increasing demand for IT devices via the non-face-to-face contact spread, additional data center constructions due to the OTT market growth caused a continuous rise in demand for semiconductor components.In South Korea, Samsung Electronics (SEC) was expected to receive a blow to sales due to the recently occurred GOS (Game Optimizing Service) incident, but they covered the losses through semiconductor sales. SK Hynix had

While mass vaccination of the population along with herd immunity has been cemented as the most effective solution against the pandemic, many impoverished regions around the world still suffer from low vaccine distribution rates and lack of storage infrastructure. As of mid-April, the African continent still has an overall vaccination rate of around 20%, contrary to rates of over 70% in North America and Europe. War-torn countries like Yemen have even less vaccines, with less than 2.1% of the population inoculated, and civilians having to travel as much as 20 hours through battle-raging region

Approximately 4 billion users access information on the Internet through Google; Facebook has 2.89 billion active users, and YouTube has 2 billion. These Tech Giants wield the divine power to shape social relationships, sway societal norms and, most importantly, control what is believed to be true: the fabric of reality upon which democratic society functions. “Persuasive technology is a massively underestimated and powerful force shaping the world because it shapes where two billion people place their attention on a daily basis,” testified Tristan Harris, an American technology ethicist and t

In a TV address on Feb. 24, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, declared that Russia feels a constant threat from Ukraine. Immediately after the announcement was made, the military headquarters of Ukraine were attacked. Afterward, troops from Russia, Crimea, and Belarus crossed the border of Ukraine. Putin banned the terms of “war” or “invasion” in Russian articles and broadcasts, insisting the attack is a “special military operation”. According to Putin, the attack was for the “demilitarization and de-Nazification” of Ukraine and for protecting Russians from genocide in Ukraine. However, Vol

The spread of COVID-19 is removing barriers to telehealth, which refers to the provision of digital healthcare services. As part of the fourth industrial revolution advances such as metaverse and blockchain, this new type of medical service is gradually increasing through online platforms and advancing from the traditional health system. Recently, the rise of Omicron, which is seemingly less severe but much more contagious compared to previous variants, resulted in greater attention given to telehealth.The global telehealth market is growing every year. According to Fortune Business Insights,

David Bennett looked like a “pretty healthy 57-year-old except that his heart was failing,” recounts his physician, Dr. Bartley Griffth. In late November of 2021, he was transferred to the University of Maryland Medical Center where he spent the next two weeks under intensified care. And in spite of “multiple medications to drive his heart, and a device called a balloon pump that was inserted through the groin to make his heart more efficient, he just did not have enough blood flow to sustain his life. So, he was placed on another treatment called Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), wh

This article was written with the latest information available on Feb. 12, and policies may have changed afterward.Since the COVID-19 vaccine was distributed across the world, there have been debates about whether vaccinations should be mandatory or not. The most extreme measure for pressuring COVID-19 vaccinations was implementing a vaccine pass policy. A vaccine pass refers to an official record of one’s COVID-19 vaccination status for use in public facilities. Since Jan. 17, the Korean government has been completely implementing a COVID-19 vaccine pass policy. Citizens who have not passed t

Humankind and the UniverseHumankind has been observing the universe since the ancient past. In 3000 B.C., many civilizations such as the Sumerians, who carved stars on clay plates, observed and recorded the movements of the sun, moon, and stars in the sky. Egyptians observed the sky and predicted the flooding period of the Nile River, and the ancient Greek philosophers such as Thales, Aristotle, and Ptolemy observed the sky and mathematically organized the movements of stars, systematizing the field of astronomy.The desire to seek the origin of the universe led to the development of a technolo

Entering 2022, it has been two years since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. For two years, there have been so many changes in our lives, and things such as wearing masks outside, writing a visitor log, or being aware of the number of people in gatherings, are now parts of our daily routine. With the development of COVID-19 vaccines in the middle of 2021, people hoped that the pandemic would be eased and go back to those normal days. However, for now, the pandemic seems to persist longer with daily confirmed cases still rising and new variants emerging, including Omicron.The new COVID-19 varian

In May, an employee at Naver committed suicide due to workplace abuse, reigniting concerns about workplace bullying and prompting the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) to launch an investigation of the company. In June, employees at Krafton, a game development company, petitioned the MOEL about workplace abuses such as being forced to work overtime and being threatened verbally.Workplace bullying is a serious and perpetual problem. Workplace Abuse 119 (Jikjang Gapjil 119), a South Korean NGO, conducted a survey about workplace bullying on 1,000 office workers aged 19~55 on 22~29 Dec. 202

Despite being in an era of a smooth logistics system, we have experienced the shock of shortages; not being able to buy or having to wait days for masks, smartphones, etc. Shortages occur when demand is greater than supply. There are various reasons for the shortage; lack of labor force, lack of materials, circulation problems, and sometimes it is just a kind of marketing. For whatever reason, shortages continue to occur, and we must seek the causes and measures to be taken. Here are two shortage cases that occurred recently.Diesel exhaust fluid shortageOn Oct. 11, Chinese customs officials an

Internet bots are software applications that are automatically programmed to perform simple, repetitive tasks. The first internet bot can be traced back to 1988 when it was used by a small group of developers. Nowadays, internet bots can easily be found and bought on many different websites. Internet bots are essential for internet search engines as they are used for web crawling, a process that allows companies to analyze millions of data on servers. However, internet bots can also be malignant when developed by cybercriminals. DDoS attacks and email spams are classic examples. Since 2016, us

On Oct. 21, South Korea’s first homegrown launch vehicle KSLV-II (Korea Space Launch Vehicle II), commonly known as Nuri, was launched into space. The rocket seemed to go through a successful flight as it reached the target altitude of 700 kilometers, yet it failed to deliver the payload into orbit. However, the launch marked a milestone in South Korea’s aerospace history. Some experts suggested that the fact Nuri failed at its last step while completing prior stages could be considered as a huge success, given that less than 30 percent of the rockets in the world succeeded on their first laun

On Aug. 15, the Afghanistan government surrendered to the Taliban, and as a result the Taliban took control of the country. The two-decades-long war between the U.S. and Afghanistan ended when the president of Afghanistan fled abroad, and the last U.S. transport plane left Afghanistan on Aug. 30. Presently, the Taliban are in the process of establishing a new government.The beginning of this war goes back 20 years. After the 9.11 attack shocked the world, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 along with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the name of eliminating Osama bin Laden, th

On Aug. 31, the National Assembly of South Korea passed a new bill, “In-app Payment Prevention Act (amendment to the Telecommunications Business Act),” which prevents app marketers from forcing their own payment methods in in-app transactions. As a result, South Korea has become the first country in the world to restrict compulsory in-app payment (IAP) regulations set by app market operators. The bill, which is also called the “Anti-Google Law”, is aimed to challenge Google and Apple’s duopoly in the app store market, which has been condemned for abusing their market power with unreasonable co

The 17-day long Tokyo Olympics came to an end with a closing ceremony on Aug. 8. The Tokyo Olympics was unprecedented compared to the previous Olympics: it was postponed for a year due to COVID-19, and spectators were banned after a state of emergency was declared on July 8 in Tokyo. Nevertheless, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics ended successfully with lots of memorable moments and new records. Team USA secured the top spot on the table by winning 39 gold medals, 41 silver medals, and 33 bronze medals, followed by China and Japan in second and third place. Team Korea ranked 16th place with six gold me

If AI were able to automatically complete the code you had been struggling with for countless nights, would you truly count on the unaccustomed technology? GitHub Copilot is a brand-new extension for Visual Studio Code, a popular source-code editor for software development. The recently unveiled technology uses AI to help developers write code. Copilot is powered by Codex, a deep neural network language model developed by OpenAI and GitHub. It is a descendent of the previous OpenAI language model—Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3)—and has been repurposed to generate syntax-abiding co

“You would get to see a massive canyon, some frozen icebergs, geysers, and some craters.” This is not what a human said, but what an AI responded, taking the role of Pluto when it was asked, “Tell me what I would see if I visited (you).”Google’s new conversational machine learning program, LaMDA (short for “Language Model for Dialogue Applications”) is drawing attention due to its proficient, human-like words. LaMDA was announced at the 2021 Google I/O (Innovation in the Open), Google’s annual developer conference, which aired online from May 18 to 19 at Mountain Dew’s head office in Californi

On April 22, 2021, 23-year-old Lee Seon-Ho passed away in a devastating industrial accident. While working part-time to clean cargo containers on the port of Pyeongtaek, in Gyeonggi-do, the container’s 300kg iron plate crushed Lee to death. There was no safety management official or signal operator near him. The victim had been sent to work without undergoing any safety training.The problem of a weak safety system came into the spotlight after the Korean television channel JTBC released CCTV footage of the tragic accident. After JTBC’s video went public, the Cheongwadae’s national petition, wh