Won Institute of Graduate Studies

Bisphenol A (BPA), a common plastic additive, has been demonstrated mechanistically to be a potential endocrine disruptor and to affect a variety of body functions in organisms. Although previous research has shown that BPA is toxic to aquatic organisms, the mechanism of neurotoxic effects in marine bivalves remains unknown. The current study aimed to elucidate the neurotoxic effects of BPA when administered at different concentrations (0.25, 1, 2, and 5 µg/L) for twenty-eight days in the ganglia of a bivalve model, the Mediterranean mussel (Lithophaga lithophaga), which is an ecologically and economically important human food source of bivalve species in the Mediterranean Sea. Our findings revealed an increase in behavioural disturbances and malondialdehyde levels in treated mussel ganglia compared to the control group. Furthermore, superoxide dismutase activity increased in the ganglia of L. lithophaga treated with 0.25 and 2 µg/L. However, at BPA concentrations of 1 and 5 µg/L, SOD activity was significantly reduced, as was total glutathione concentration. BPA causes neurotoxicity, as evidenced by concentration-dependent inhibition of acetylcholinesterase, dopamine, and serotonin. After chronic exposure to BPA, neurons showed distortion of the neuronal cell body and varying degrees of pyknosis. The ultrastructure changes in BPA-treated groups revealed the lightening of the nucleoplasm and a shrunken nuclear envelope. Overall, our findings suggest that BPA exposure altered antioxidation, neurochemical biomarkers, histopathological, and ultrastructural properties, resulting in behavioural changes. As a result, our findings provide a basis for further study into the toxicity of BPA in marine bivalves.

This study examines the life of Yi Ch’ŏngch’un 李靑春 (1886–1955), one of the first female disciples of Wŏn Buddhism, a 20th-century Korean religious movement. Her story shows modernity’s impact on Korean women’s psyche and social roles, and the progressive initiative of male teachers who advanced gender equality in new Korean religious movements. A range of data, including periodicals, letters, and newspaper articles, enable us to understand the changing face of women during the process of modernization in Korea. This paper gives voice to the significant role of Yi Ch’ŏngch’un, an exceptional financial sponsor in the formative years of Wŏn Buddhism and an advocate for women’s rights. By highlighting her contributions, it becomes clear that the progressive males who pushed for gender equality relied on the support of female-ordained devotees to actualize the doctrine’s ideal.

Abstract This chapter shows how the emotion of resentment was recognized as the cause of the moral illness of the world and how the Won Buddhist ethics provides the way to cure the moral illness by changing the life of resentment to the life of gratitude. The universal beneficence of nature comprises the beneficence of heaven and earth, the beneficence of parents, the beneficence of fellow beings, and the beneficence of laws. The life of gratitude consists in following the general principles of beneficence requital, which are favoring others with no false thought, protecting the helpless, mutual benefit, and doing justice and forsaking injustice. Thus, ‘awareness and requital of beneficence’ is the panacea to cure the emotion of resentment.

Purpose: To assess the effects of thymoquinone (TQ) on the integrity of sperm DNA in nicotineinduced sperm impairment in rats.
 Methods: Adult male Sprague Dawley rats were randomized into four equal groups: control group received normal saline orally for 60 days; nicotine group was subcutaneously injected with 5 mg/kg/day nicotine for 30 days and then given normal saline for the next 30 days; TQ group was given normal saline for 30 days followed by TQ at 5 mg/kg/day for 30 days; and nicotine-TQ group received 5 mg/kg of nicotine for 30 days and 5mg/kg of TQ for another 30 days. Sperm DNA breakages were evaluated using Comet assay. The expression levels of protamine 1 (PT1) and transition nuclear protein 2 (Tnp2) genes which are essential for the proper compaction of the sperm DNA were analyzed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR).
 Results: Thymoquinone significantly decreased DNA fragmentation in the sperm of nicotine-treated rats. However, there was no change in PT1 gene expression. Tnp2 was downregulated in the nicotine group and slightly upregulated in nicotine-TQ group (p < 0.05).
 Conclusion: The results demonstrate the potential benefits of TQ in improving sperm DNA quality of nicotine-induced male infertility.

In a paper titled “Meditation Matters: Replies to the Anti-McMindfulness Bandwagon!”, Rick Repetti aims to refute four common criticisms directed at the Mindfulness community. The present paper offers a response to each of Repetti’s four refutations. The main contentions made in this rebuttal to Repetti are that he: (i) conflates the ideological construct known as Mindfulness with a cognitive ability, called mindfulness (lower case), of paying attention “in a particular way” to what one is thinking, saying, and doing and (ii) claims for mindfulness a materialist “phenomenological self-mirroring” that is, in fact, more consistent with idealism. On the basis of Repetti’s refutations, my chapter argues throughout that Mindfulness advocates have failed to respond adequately to the brunt of the most serious criticisms leveled against them.

The Software Engineering Project is a required course in the Master of Software Engineering Program at the Wang Institute (WI). The objectives of project courses and alternative approaches to organizing them have been described by McKeeman (1). Each student takes two, one semester projects near the end of the program. The projects are team efforts, with teams ranging in size from three to seven members. A project objective, from the viewpoint of the instructor, is to provide a learning experience in thirteen weeks that scales usefully to industrial practice. A project in intended to integrate the knowledge the student has obtained from the courses in the core curriculum (2, 3), with emphasis on team techniques, communication skills, planning, reporting, reviewing and documentation. Projects are judged by both academic and industrial standards, and are closely supervised by a faculty member.

In this correspondence we are interested in how interpretation and context restrictions can guide the analysis of ambiguous segmentations of images in computer vision systems. The final objective is to find image segments that can be interpreted (classified) such that their interpretations do not conflict with interpretations given to related segments. In the case that we have several possible labels for each segment, some of this ambiguity can be reduced by means of a relaxation process. In its discrete formulation, the relaxation operator examines pairs of related segments to see if they have incompatible labels, which are then discarded. This process is iterated until only compatible labels are left. In this work a new approach is proposed that considers all possible segmentations resulting from an ambiguous segmentation simultaneously in only one relaxation process. A new relaxation operator is defined that can be applied to ambiguous segmentations. In this way no backtracking is performed, ambiguity is reduced, and the best solution is still retained. The output of the process is a collection of segmentations and interpretations that is hopefully small enough so that each case can be considered separately.