Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 395-409.

SignificanceElectrical burns can cause severe damage to the nervous system, resulting in autonomic dysfunction with reduced cerebral perfusion. However, few studies have investigated these consequences.AimTo elucidate changes in prefrontal cerebral hemodynamics using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during the head-up tilt table test (HUT) for patients with electrical burns.ApproachWe recruited 17 patients with acute electrical burns within 1 week after their accidents and 10 healthy volunteers. The NIRS parameters acquired using an fNIRS device attached to the forehead were analyzed in five (...) distinct HUT phases.ResultsBased on their HUT response patterns, patients with electrical burns were classified into the group with abnormal HUT results (APG, n = 4) or normal HUT results (NPG, n = 13) and compared with the healthy control (HC, n = 10) participants. We found trends in hemodynamic changes during the HUT that distinguished HC, NPG, and APG. Reduced cerebral perfusion and decreased blood oxygenation during the HUT were found in both the NPG and APG groups. Patients with electrical burns had autonomic dysfunction compared to the HC participants.ConclusionsUsing fNIRS, we observed that acute-stage electrical burn injuries could affect cerebral perfusion. (shrink)

In an emerging field such as social enterprise, it is important for an organization to secure legitimacy to obtain resources and sustain its business. Specifically, when a government distributing subsidies does not have adequate information to decide which organization is trustworthy, it is the legitimacy-seeking activities of social enterprise that decides who receives a subsidy; this, in turn, decides which organization will survive. One of the most effective ways to gain legitimacy is to explicitly emphasize in the public promotion that (...) the organization devotes to its social mission. In the case of Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs), an organization emphasizes its social employment of the disadvantaged individuals. However, we argue that social enterprises’ public promotion that emphasizes social employment can lower the expected wage, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment of the employees who are hired due to their disadvantaged social status. This is because such obvious promotional messages makes the employees more keenly aware of their disadvantaged status; as a result, this reinforces their self-prejudice that they are not competitive enough in the labor market. We test our hypotheses in the context of South Korean WISEs and found general support for our arguments. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted prosocial behavior as a professional healthcare core competency. Although medical students are expected to work in the best interests of their patients, in the pandemic context, there is a greater need for ethical attention to be paid to the way medical students deal with moral dilemmas that may conflict with their obligations.MethodsThis study was conducted in the spring semester of 2019 on 271 students majoring in health professions: medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. All participants provided (...) informed consent and completed measures that assessed utilitarian moral views, cognitive reflections, cognitive reappraisal, and moral judgment.ResultsThe healthcare-affiliated students who scored higher on the instrumental harm subscale in the measurement of utilitarian moral views were more likely to endorse not only other-sacrificial actions but also self-sacrificial ones for the greater good in moral dilemma scenarios. In particular, those engaged in deliberative processes tended to make more self-sacrificial judgments. The mediation analysis also revealed that the effect of deliberative processes on self-sacrificial judgments was mediated by cognitive reappraisal.ConclusionsThese findings suggested that cognitive reappraisal through deliberative processes is involved when the students with utilitarian inclination make prosocial decisions, that it is necessary to consider both moral views and emotional regulation when admitting candidates, and that moral education programs are needed in the healthcare field. (shrink)

& The functional equivalence of overt movements and dynamic imagery is of fundamental importance in neuroscience. Here, we investigated the participation of the neocortical motor areas in a classic task of dynamic imagery, Shepard and Metzler's mental rotation task, by time-resolved single-trial functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The subjects performed the mental-rotation task 16 times, each time with different object pairs. Functional images were acquired for each pair separately, and the onset times and..

This paper will describe the rite for the exorcism of toch'aebi and examine its symbolic significance in the wider social reality of Cheju shamanism. Toch'aebi is a stranger deity who visits Cheju randomly and tries to get on good terms with the people. However, this deity afflicts people, particularly women, wearing down their vitality and causing a kind of “madness” (turida). The exorcism ritual of toch'aebi requires a sacrificial feast of roast pig and several days of dancing by the possessed. (...) For this reason, the exorcism ritual is called a dancing rite, or ch'unun kut. It is supposedly toch'aebi himself who has the desire to dance. Shaman's songs (seouje sori) are used to induce the toch'aebi, who is hiding in the patient's body, to dance and reveal his identity. The trance dance and singing are directed toward a dialogical construction of the demonic reality, which entails a romantic entanglement of toch'aebi and the possessed. By translating a history of personal suffering into the idiom of love, the shaman's songs develop a particular cultural logic of cure. Through an analysis of curing song texts, along with various modes of performance such as dance and comic play, this paper explores the transformative process in which a particular cultural logic of illness and cure are produced and enacted to reintegrate the patient into the social world. In practice, the analysis addresses the articulation of a personal case of madness that afflicted Sunho, a twenty-one year old female factory worker, whose social values and understanding are reflective of contemporary Korea. (shrink)

BackgroundAlthough the Life-Sustaining Treatment (LST) Decision Act was enforced in 2018 in Korea, data on whether it is well established in actual clinical settings are limited. Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) is a common nosocomial infection with high mortality. However, there are limited data on the end-of-life (EOL) decision of patients with HAP. Therefore, we aimed to examine clinical characteristics and outcomes according to the EOL decision for patients with HAP.MethodsThis multicenter study enrolled patients with HAP at 16 referral hospitals retrospectively from (...) January to December 2019. EOL decisions included do-not-resuscitate (DNR), withholding of LST, and withdrawal of LST. Descriptive and Kaplan–Meier curve analyses for survival were performed.ResultsOf 1,131 patients with HAP, 283 deceased patients with EOL decisions (105 cases of DNR, 108 cases of withholding of LST, and 70 cases of withdrawal of LST) were analyzed. The median age was 74 (IQR 63–81) years. The prevalence of solid malignant tumors was high (32.4% vs. 46.3% vs. 54.3%, P = 0.011), and the ICU admission rate was lower (42.9% vs. 35.2% vs. 24.3%, P = 0.042) in the withdrawal group. The prevalence of multidrug-resistant pathogens, impaired consciousness, and cough was significantly lower in the withdrawal group. Kaplan–Meier curve analysis revealed that 30-day and 60-day survival rates were higher in the withdrawal group than in the DNR and withholding groups (log-rank P = 0.021 and 0.018). The survival of the withdrawal group was markedly decreased after 40 days; thus, the withdrawal decision was made around this time. Among patients aged below 80 years, the rates of EOL decisions were not different (P = 0.430); however, mong patients aged over 80 years, the rate of withdrawal was significantly lower than that of DNR and withholding (P = 0.001).ConclusionsAfter the LST Decision Act was enforced in Korea, a DNR order was still common in EOL decisions. Baseline characteristics and outcomes were similar between the DNR and withholding groups; however, differences were observed in the withdrawal group. Withdrawal decisions seemed to be made at the late stage of dying. Therefore, advance care planning for patients with HAP is needed. (shrink)

The result of 2007’s presidential election in South Korea symbolizes the decline of the Left and the growth of the new Right. They say it goes with the global retrogression of democracy, or the consolidation of the hegemony of the rightist versions of democracy. According to Choi Jang-jip, the general public in Korea has thought that the Roh Moo-hyun’s administration had betrayed them, handing power over to the market, and seeking to form a coalition government with theconservatives. Similarly, Professor Jang (...) Ha-jun asserts that the democratic governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun have mistaken economic democratization for neo-liberalistic structural adjustment. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to identify relationship between leisure constraint negotiations and leisure activity participation through meta-analysis within the Korean context. Through this study, the inconsistent research results of previous studies are explained by comprehensively clarifying the relationship between the two variables and identifying a third variable that controls the relationship. The efforts of this project are expected to provide useful data that can be used for future research and to seek ways of increasing participation in leisure activities. (...) In order to achieve the purpose of this study, the research questions set in this study are as follows. First, what is the magnitude of the effect of the correlation coefficient between leisure constraint negotiations and leisure participation? Second, what are the variables that control the relationship between leisure constraint negotiations and leisure participation? Materials were collected by utilizing Research Information Sharing Service, DBpia, Korean studies Information Service System, and Korea Citation Index. Finally, 20 pieces of research materials were selected with a total of 6,843 participants. The conclusions drawn from the research questions set in this study are as follows. First, leisure constraint negotiations and leisure participation are in a static relationship, and their level is considerable. In other words, efforts to overcome leisure constraints increase participation in leisure activities. Second, gender, age, and type of active leisure activities are major variables that control the relationship between leisure constraint negotiations and leisure participation. Finally, the limitation of this study and future research orientation were discussed. (shrink)

This paper attempts to provide a concise but systematic presentation of the discursive ontology of the social that underpins the thought of the Argentinian political theorist Ernesto Laclau. First articulated by Laclau and his collaborator Chantal Mouffe at the historical conjuncture of the late twentieth century that witnessed the disintegration of established leftist political visions and the rise of a plurality of new social movements, the post-structuralist discursive ontology on which Laclau bases his theorization of hegemony as the paradigm of (...) politics is one that continues to exert a powerful influence on contemporary post-foundational political thought, discourse analysis, and “left populist” political movements. This paper traces the fundamental claims of that ontology, paying special attention to Laclau’s theses apropos the limits of universality and impossibility of “fullness.” In the final third of this paper, the French philosopher Alain Badiou’s approach to the conceptualization of social change is employed as a foil to draw some key implications of Laclau’s elevation of “hegemony” as the universal form of the political for political thought and practice. (shrink)

This article explores the Korean application of “mind-transmission” (K. chŏnsim, C. chuanxin) episodes to the intra-Sŏn (C. Chan) polemics. Korean Sŏn masters, unlike Chinese counterparts, sought for the religious meaning of the existence of multiple transmission episodes that circulated in East Asia from the Sŏn polemical perspective. In particular, Kagun and Paekp’a used the term “samch’ŏ chŏnsim” to promote their own visions of Sŏn within the situation in which different visions of Sŏn competed for dominance.

The innovation of Alain Badiou’s theory of change, which has attracted a great amount of attention from scholars working in disciplines across humanities, social sciences, and art over the past two decades, cannot be appreciated independently of the account of situations prior to an event’s irruption, namely, the order of being that is conceived using modern set theory in his treatise on general ontology. Retracing the meticulous systematicity with which pre-evental situations are conceived in Being and Event, this paper offers (...) a reconstruction of Badiou’s general ontology that points toward the potential therein for articulating an account of structures and situations that may be qualified as social. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study is twofold. The first is to reveal the unique significance on publicness in the Confucian 儒家 tradition. In order to achieve this, Confucian philosophical documents that explain the state 國 (guo) and the family 家 (jia), and loyalty 忠 (zhong) and filial piety 孝 (xiao) as continuous relationships will be analyzed. The second is to elucidate that the most important principle for maintaining the Confucian distinction between the public and the private, or publicness in (...) the Confucian sense, is the scholar-gentry 士 (shi) spirit. In order to achieve this, the significance of uprightness 直 (zhi) and conducting oneself with reverence 居敬 (jujing), which are central to the scholar-gentry spirit, will be translated into contemporary terms and, furthermore, the possibility of Confucian existentialism will be explored. The final point of the present study is that the condition for the inheritance of the Confucian concept of publicness in modern culture must be found in the possibility of Confucian existentialism. (shrink)

Generalized anxiety disorder can cause significant socioeconomic burden and daily life dysfunction; hence, therapeutic intervention through early detection is important. This study was the final stage of a 3-year anxiety screening tool development project that evaluated the psychometric properties and diagnostic screening utility of the Mental Health Screening Tool for Anxiety Disorders, which measures GAD. A total of 527 Koreans completed online and offline versions of the MHS: A, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, and Penn State Worry Questionnaire. The (...) participants had an average age of 38.6 years and included 340 females. Participants were also administered the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview. Internal consistency, convergent/criterion validity, item characteristics, and test information were assessed based on the item response theory, and a factor analysis and cut-off score analyses were conducted. The MHS: A had good internal consistency and good convergent validity with other anxiety scales. The two versions of the MHS: A were nearly identical. It had a one-factor structure and showed better diagnostic accuracy for GAD detection than the GAD-7 and BAI. The IRT analysis indicated that the MHS: A was most informative as a screening tool for GAD. The MHS: A can serve as a clinically useful screening tool for GAD in Korea. Furthermore, it can be administered both online and offline and can be flexibly used as a brief mental health screener, especially with the current rise in telehealth. (shrink)