The Government of South Korea is the union government of the Republic of Korea, created by the Constitution of South Korea as the executive, legislative and judicial authority of the republic. The president acts as the head of state and is the highest figure of executive authority in the country, followed by the prime minister and government ministers in decreasing order.The Executive and Legislative branches operate primarily at the national level, although various ministries in the executive branch also carry out local functions. Local governments are semi-autonomous and contain executive and legislative bodies of their own. The judicial branch operates at both the national and local levels.The South Korean government's structure is determined by the Constitution of the Republic of Korea. This document has been revised several times since its first promulgation in 1948 (for details, see History of South Korea). However, it has retained many broad characteristics; with the exception of the short-lived Second Republic of South Korea, the country has always had a relatively independent chief executive in the form of a president.As with most stable three-branch systems, a careful system of checks and balances is in place. For instance, the judges of the Constitutional Court are partially appointed by the executive, and partially by the legislature. Likewise, when a resolution of impeachment is passed by the legislature, it is sent to the judiciary for a final decision.
Kimchi Cabbage (Brassica rapa L. subsp. pekinensis [Lour.] Hanelt) belonging to the Brassicaceae family is a globally cultivated vegetable, valued for its nutritional content and versatility in cooking applications (Hwang et al. 2023). In Korea, it holds particular significance as the primary ingredient in Kimchi, a traditional fermented food integral to Korean dish and culture. In July 2023, symptoms of wilting and yellowing leaves were observed in Taebaek, the Republic of Korea (37°9'50.6"N, 128°59'8.03"E). The average incidence was approximately 1%. The diseased plants with browning inside the root were cut and surface-sterilized with 1% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) for 1 min followed by rinsing twice in sterile distilled water. The tissue pieces were placed on 1% water agar (WA) and incubated at 25℃ for 5 days. Through single spore isolation method, five isolates (SKH23014, SKH23015, SKH23024, SKH23025, and SKH23026) were collected. For cultural and morphological characteristics, 5 mm disk with mycelium were cultured on potato dextrose agar (PDA), malt extract agar (MEA), and oatmeal agar (OA) at 25℃ for 10 days. The mycelial growth (diameter) were 44-55 mm on PDA, 50.5-60.5 mm on MEA, 51-56.7 mm on OA. Colonies on OA were buff to pale brown, slimy, and aerial mycelium were white and rarely present. Conidia were hyaline, smooth, thin-walled, elliptical to ovoid, 0-1 septate, and 4.7-10.8 × 2.3-4 μm in size (n>50). Chlamydospores were absent. These cultural and morphological characteristics were similar to those of previously reported Plectosphaerella cucumerina (Carlucci et al. 2012; Mirtalebi and Banihashemi 2017). For molecular analysis, three gene regions, including the internal transcribed spacer (ITS), translation elongation facter 1 alpha (EF1-α), and large subunit rRNA (LSU) gene were amplified and sequenced using ITS1F/ITS4 (Gardes and Bruns 1993; White et al. 1990), EF1-983F/EF-2218R (Rehner and Buckley 2005), LR0R/LR7 (Vilgalys and Hester 1990), respectively. The obtained sequences were deposited in NCBI GenBank (GenBank accession no. PV589464-PV589468 for ITS, PV593115-PV593119 for EF1-α, and PV589472-PV589476 for LSU). BLASTn homology searches for these nucleotides showed 98 to 100% identity to the ITS sequences (MH855387, 501/509 bp), the EF-1α sequences (LR026492, 785/787 bp), and the LSU sequences (MH855387, 831/833 bp) of P. cucumerina strain CBS 137.33. Through cultural/morphological characteristics and molecular analysis using the maximum likelihood method, they were identified as P. cucumerina. Pathogenicity assays were conducted using the soil inoculation method with cornmeal sand inoculum. For each treatment, cornmeal sand was inoculated using 15 PDA disks (Ø 5mm) that had been colonized by a single isolate. Control treatments used 15 uninoculated PDA disks (Ø 5mm). Cornmeal sand inoculum was incubated in the dark at 25℃ for two weeks. About three-week-old plants were transplanted into infested soil (3 plants/isolate), which was prepared by mixing the inoculum with soil at a ratio of 3:7 (v/v). These experiments were repeated three times. Approximately 1 week after inoculation, wilt symptoms were observed except on control plants. Koch's postulates were fulfilled by reisolation of P. cucumerina from the browned vascular tissues of inoculated plants. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of kimchi cabbage wilt caused by P. cucumerina in Korea. It is believed that this will be helpful in research on the management of kimchi cabbage wilt disease.
BACKGROUND:Sex disparities in stroke outcomes are well-recognized, but it remains unclear whether these disparities vary across stroke subtypes and how they relate to differences in acute care delivery. AIM:The aim of the study was to examine sex differences in long-term mortality, functional outcomes, and acute stroke management across stroke subtypes using a nationwide population-based cohort. METHODS:This retrospective cohort study analyzed linked clinical audit and claims data from 58,429 patients with acute stroke admitted to 269 hospitals in South Korea between 2018 and 2021. Clinical data were derived from the national Acute Stroke Quality Assessment Program and linked to claims. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality. The secondary outcome was poor functional outcome at discharge. Multivariable Cox and logistic regression models were used to assess associations between sex and outcomes, stratified by stroke subtype and adjusted for age, stroke severity, and comorbidities. Differences in acute stroke care were also analyzed. RESULTS:Of 58,429 patients (mean [SD] age, 68.6 [13.8] years; 43.9% female), 76.1% had ischemic stroke (IS), 15.7% intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), and 8.2% subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Females were older than males across all subtypes and had different comorbidity profiles. After adjustment, females had significantly lower mortality in all subtypes (adjusted hazard ratios [95% CI]: IS, 0.77 [0.74-0.80]; ICH, 0.60 [0.56-0.64]; SAH, 0.60 [0.54-0.67]; all P < 0.001). Functional outcomes varied: females had worse outcomes in IS, better in ICH, and no difference in SAH. Males were more likely to receive reperfusion and surgical therapies; females were more likely to receive rehabilitation services. These care differences did not fully explain the observed disparities in outcomes. CONCLUSION:In this national cohort, sex disparities in stroke outcomes differed by subtype. Despite lower adjusted mortality in females, functional outcomes were not uniformly better. These findings underscore the importance of adopting sex- and subtype-specific approaches to stroke care, secondary prevention, and rehabilitation.
Despite recent advances, applying deep learning to X-rays remains challenging due to the need for substantial downsampling and limited dataset sizes. While multistage frameworks have been proposed to promote stable performance, their advantages over single-stage designs remain unclear. This study aims to systematically compare the two designs for analyzing the C1-2 complex on cervical spine lateral radiographs. A total of 1200 dynamic cervical spine X-ray and MRI pairs were collected from a tertiary care institution, and 300 studies from another institution were set aside for external validation. Two deep learning-based frameworks for localizing 8 landmarks and measuring 14 radiologic indices of the C1-2 complex were developed. The first of which is a multistage pipeline that implements coarse-to-fine localization, and the other is a single-stage model that processes full-region images. Five-fold cross-validation and an anatomy-aware multi-term loss were implemented, and performance was compared in terms of localization, segmentation, and measurement accuracy. The multistage framework demonstrated significantly smaller errors for the localization of the basion and C2 landmarks on the test sets (p < 0.001). For vertebral segmentation, the multistage framework achieved better performance (p < 0.001), yielding DSC and IoU of over 0.90 and 0.80, respectively. Radiologic measurements were more precise with the multistage design, exhibiting mean errors of 1–2° for angular measurements and 0.5–1.5 mm for distance measurements. We demonstrate that the multistage framework can consistently achieve superior performance over single-stage counterparts in analyzing cervical spine radiographs. It is expected to provide evidence for architectural design when developing deep learning models for the analysis of musculoskeletal imaging studies. Not applicable.
