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From Pencil Lead to Batteries: the Unlimited Transformation of Carbon
Those materials, like lead or diamond, made completely up of Carbon are being used in numerous ways as materials or parts. Especially with the discovery of carbon nanotubes, graphemes, and other carbon based materials in nanoscale, the carbon based materials are receiving a lot of interest in both fields of research and industry.
The carbon nanotubes and graphemes are considered as the ‘dream material’ and have a structure of a cross section of a bee hive. Such structure allows the material to have strength higher than that of a diamond and still be able to bend, be transparent and also conduct electricity. However the problem up till now was that these carbon structures appeared in layers and in bunches and were therefore hard to separate to individual layers or tubes.
Professor Kim Sang Wook’s research team developed the technology that can assemble the grapheme and carbon nanotubes in a three dimensional manner.
The team was able to assemble the grapheme ad carbon nanotubes in an entirely new three dimensional structure. In addition, the team was able to efficiently extract single layered grapheme from cheap pencil lead.
Professor Kim is scheduled to give a guest lecture in the “Materials Research Society” in San Francisco and the paper was published in ‘Advanced Functional Materials’ magazine as an ‘Invited Feature Article’.
2011.05.11 View 10158 -
Jang Young Shin Chairwoman of AeKyung Group donates 3billion Won to KAIST
AeKyung Group donated 3 billion Won for the development of KAIST and the betterment of Korea’s Science. The ceremony was held on the 2nd of May with President Seo Nam Pyo of KAIST and Jang Young Shin Chairwoman of AeKyung Group in attendance.
Chairwoman Jang insisted that the donation be used for the establishment of a stable study environment at KAIST and the improvement of student welfare.
Chairwoman Jang is a CEO with an engineering background. She majored in Chemistry in Chestnut Hill College with National Scholarship in 1950 and established the AeKyung Group’s many subsidiaries that deal with Chemicals.
2011.05.11 View 9498
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Dong Ah Newspaper Publish '100 Koreans who will Represent Korea in 10 years'
The 2011 list of ‘100 Koreans who will Represent Korea in 10 years’ published by Dong Ah Newspaper includes people of varying ages, vocation, and gender.
In terms of University Professors, five professors from each of KAIST and SNU (Seoul National University) were selected. Especially Professor Charles Ahn received the most votes due to his world class talent, potential, and dedication.
Professor Kim Sang Wook of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering is the world leading expert in the field of ‘Atom Construction Nanotechnology’ which deals with using macromolecules, carbon nanotubes, and grapheme to form various structures. His work on ‘low cost, large area nano patterning technology’ is expected to overcome the limits of nano treatment processes and its application in semi-conductors or displays carries great promise.
Professor Kim Eun Sung of the Department of Physics discovered a new quantum behavior, supersolidity, in a low temperature, solid Helium for the first time in the world and is the leading scientist that leads the mechanics behind such a phenomenon. Professor Kim is leading the field of supersolidity through his works on hidden phase in a low temperature solid Helium, the understanding the role of crystalline faults in the supersolidity phenomenon, and the destruction of the supersolid’s macromolecular phenomenon through spinning solids.
Professor Charles Ahn of the Graduate School of Innovation and Technology Management has been working as the developer of the V3 series (an anti-computer virus Vaccine Program) since 1988. He established the ‘Charles Ahn Research Center’ in 1995 and his solid and practical management style won him rave reviews. Professor Ahn was appointed as the Professor of the Graduate School of Innovation and Technology Management and has been teaching entrepreneurial perspective and Technology Management.
Professor Lee Sang Yeop of the Department of Biology and Chemical Engineering developed world’s most efficient production method of succinic acid, developed high efficiency, tailored, culture for the production of key amino acids, Valine and Threonine, developed the production culture off bio-buthanol which is superior to bio-ethanol, and is widely known as one of the leaders in the field of metabolic engineering.
Professor Jeong Ha Woong of the Department of Physics is being regarded as world leader in the field of Complex System Network Sciences. He implemented Statistical Physics to Complex Systems and also used the concept of ‘Networks’ and published 80 papers, including 5 which were published in Nature Magazine.
2011.04.30 View 12502
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KAIST Festival [May 2~ May 4]
The annual Spring Student Festival will be starting this coming Monday (2nd of May) and will continue till Wednesday (the 4th of May).
The annual Spring Festival is aimed at bringing students closer together and offering an opportunity to relieve stress and socialize with other members of the KAIST community. Famous celebrities and singers are invited to the festival to perform and liven up the festival atmosphere.
On top of the celebrities, various clubs and groups in the KAIST community will be opening up booths to serve the students an large assortment of food and drinks and open up venues for students to sit down in the shade and socialize whilst enjoying the treats.
The annual Spring Student Festival never fails to show non-KAISTians that KAIST students do not only study hard, but also know how to play hard.
Look out for updates on the festival during the dates above.
2011.04.30 View 7732
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The Harvard Crimson: Engineers Who Can Lead, April 14, 2011
An inspiring opinion on the role of engineers as global leaders in the era of science- and technology-based economies was published in the Harvard Crimson, the university’s newspaper, dated April 14, 2011. The piece was coauthored by Cherry A. Murray, the dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Andrew R. Garman, a graduate of the Harvard School, who is a managing partner at New Venture Partners.
For the opinion piece, please go to http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/4/14/engineering-engineers-science-new/.
Engineers Who Can Lead
By Andrew R. Garman and Cherry A. Murray
Published: Thursday, April 14, 2011
2011.04.20 View 8594
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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 9128
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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 10771
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TEAK: New Multimedia Site kaistube.org Offers Lectures on English
For those wanting an experience of KAIST from an entirely new perspective, there is some good news. The new multimedia website, kaistube.org is available for browsing with better and newer content.
The website, kaistube.org, is a “Creative media in English by the students of KAIST” and was created with aims to introduce university life from the perspective of the very components that makes KAIST, KAIST; its students.
The website features photos the students took and short films they created about KAIST and of KAIST. It can be said that kaistube.org is fast becoming the creative hub and outlet for students at KAIST to express their creative personalities. Students at KAIST or anywhere else for that matter should not be restricted to just academic activities, which make kaistube.org so meaningful.
One great service that can be found at kaistube.org is the TEAK (Teaching English at KAIST). TEAK is a weekly show created and hosted by Visiting Professors Tim Thompson and Don Rikley and serves to provide education in presentation skills and writing skills in English. Season one focused on academic writing and Season two will focus on academic speaking and presentation skills.
The importance of clear communications skills via presentations or writing format in English has become ever important in this era of globalization. The lectures provided for at kaistube.org is a great resource and guide that will aid not only the family members at KAIST, but to any and all non-KAISTians who wish to strengthen their grasp on the English language.
The podcasts can be downloaded onto the computer for transfer to a portable music player, like the iPod or the iPhone, and can be even downloaded from the iTunes.
2011.04.02 View 9186
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KAIST Design Week 2011 Held
KAIST designated a week (from March 27th to April 2nd) as KAIST Design Week 2011 and will be hosting a series of international conferences on engineering designs.
The 21st CIRP Design Conference, the 6th International Conference on Axiomatic Design, and the 1st Design in Civil and Environmental Engineering Workshop will be held in Fusion hall in the KI Building from the 27th of March.
The CIRP Design Conference was held on the 27th and the 28th and annually provides an opportunity for researchers and industry developers to exchange information and knowledge.
The International Conference on Axiomatic Design was held on the 30th to the 31st and dealt with various presentations and discussions on the axiomatic design theory. The Axiomatic Design Theory was thought up by KAIST President Seo Nam Pyo and deals with analyzing the wants of the consumers and solves the problems associated with the product through making altercations on the product design.
Last The Design in Civil and environmental Engineering Workshop will be held on the 1st and 2nd of April and will deal with sustainable city design and development.
The Design Week will also be featuring humanoid robot HUBO, the Online Electric Vehicle that can charge its battery wirelessly, and the Mobile Harbor, and therefore show off KAIST’s achievements.
2011.04.01 View 9431
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MOU on Joint Research Program with KUSTAR
KAIST has signed a MOU on Joint Research Program with KUSTAR (Khalifa, University of Science, Technology, and Research).
The Signing ceremony was held in UAE Abu Dhabi with KAIST President Seo Nam Pyo and KUSTAR Presdient Tod Laursen in attendance.
The MOU contains agreements on seed money project, exchange professors and students program, seminars and workshops, and cooperative closely through funding joint research facilities among other key agreements.
The two universities are considering joint research on educational nuclear power plant simulator, research use nuclear reactor plans and nuclear reactor for saltwater desalination plants. In addition, the field of cooperation will not be limited to nuclear power, but will be broadened to electric and electronic, mechanical engineering, aeronautical engineering, industrial engineering, construction environment, and other fields by appointing KAIST professors to perform educational cooperation programs at KUSTAR.
The cooperation is part of the agreement made by the two respective countries in the Korea export of nuclear power plants to UAE in 2009. KAIST will be helping KUSTAR to develop into a world leading science and technology based education and research institute for the next 10 years.
2011.03.25 View 11412
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Professor Ko Kyu Young Appointed as a Distinguished Professor at KAIST
Professor Ko Kyu Young of the Graduate School of Medical Sciences was appointed as the Distinguished Professor at KAIST.
Professor Ko is famous internationally for his work on the catalyst for blood vessel growth COMP-ANG1, and also for his research on blood vessel growth and lymph duct growth control.
Professor Ko developed the Double Anti-Angiogenic Protein (DAAP) which effectively restricts the blood vessels from growing, opening a new approach to curing caner. The paper was published in ‘Cancer Cell’ as the cover paper (2010 August 17th edition) and is widely recognized as the marker that sums up the new paradigm of cure for cancer.
In addition, his work on explaining how the new antigen interacts with the T-lymphocyte during a vaccination lead to the possibility of the increase of the efficiency of vaccination. The result of the research was published as the cover paper in ‘Immunity’ magazine.
As is obvious to see his work with blood vessel growth and lymph duct growth and control is being published in major scientific journals. In addition he is continuously invited to international conferences as guest speakers and leader, effectively leading the field. As a result, he was appointed as the editor of ‘Blood’ magazine, the world’s best journal in the field of hematology and received ‘2010 KAISTian of the Year’ Award.
The title Distinguished Professor is appointed to those who have made world-class research results and educational results and actively lead their respective field. They are provided with extra incentives and can even continue on with the professorship after retirement.
It is only limited to 3% of the professors at KAIST and has to be someone recommended by the President, Vice-President, and the Deans of department and their worthiness is scrutinized by a foreign expert.
2011.03.25 View 10402
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Late Dr. Ryu Geun Chul's Achievements and Generous Contributions
First Doctor in the field of Korean Traditional Medicine
The late Dr. Ryu was born in 1926 and is the father figure of Korea’s Traditional Medicine and is its First Doctor (1976 Kyung Hee University), and was the vice-professor of Kyung Hee University of Medicine, Vice-Director of Kyung Hee Institute of Korean Traditional Medicine, and was the first chairman of the Association of Korea Oriental Medicine. He developed the painless acupuncture administering device for the first time in Korea in 1962, and succeeded in anesthetizing a patient for cesarean procedure using acupuncture in 1972.
He even was the first to receive a medical engineering doctorate degree from the Moscow National Engineering School in April of 1996 and developed a stroke rehabilitation machine.
Korea’s Most Generous Donor
Dr. Ryu surprised the world by donating 57.8billion Won worth of real estate to KAIST in August of 2008. Dr. Ryu revealed that his reason for donating such a huge sum to KAIST was due to its focused students giving him the belief that the future of Korea is at KAIST and that the development of science and technology is necessary for Korea to develop into a world class nation and KAIST is the institute most suitable to lead Korea in the field.
Dr. Ryu lived on KAIST campus after donating his entire fortune and even established ‘KAIST scholars and spacemen health research center’ and ‘Dr. Ryu Health Clinic’ as he also wanted to donate his knowledge.
Even when he was a professor at Moscow National Engineering University in the late 1990s he carried out free medical work throughout Korea and in recognition of his devoted work, he was named honorary citizen from Chun Ahn city, San Chung city, and DaeJeon city. In 2007 he donated 450million Won to Cheon Dong Elementary School in Chun Ahn city to build a gymnasium and an indoor golf practice range.
Role as Science and Technology Public Relations Officer
Dr. Ryu volunteered to numerous lectures and interviews after donation to advertise science and technology. His belief that the development of science and technology is necessary for Korea’s development was the driving force behind his efforts at increasing interest and support for the field of science and technology.
In addition, through interviews with MBC, KBS, SBS, KTV, Joong Ang Newspapers, Dong Ah Newspaper and other media mediums, Dr. Ryu improved the public perception on donations whilst increasing the pride of scientists and researchers by highlighting their importance and the importance of science and technology.
In recognition of Dr. Ryu’s efforts, he received the 43rd Science Day Science and Technology Creation Award, 2010 MBC Social Service Special Award, and 2010 ‘Proud Chung Cheong Citizen’ Award.
2011.03.22 View 15178