TGFβ ligands belonging to the Activin/Nodal family, induces mesoderm and endoderm, specifies the embryonic axes, promotes gastrulation movements, maintains pluripotency of embryonic stem cells, and determines left-right asymmetry in vertebrates. Activin/Nodal ligands signal through type I and type II transmembrane serine/threonine kinase receptors. Ligand binding induces the formation of heteromeric receptor complexes in which type II receptors phosphorylate and activate type I receptors. The activated type I receptors transduce the signal inside the cell through the phosphorylation of th..

A multi-platform supporting mobile applications software development environment technology has been developed. More than 30% of current development effort is expected to be saved through the new environment. Professor Kyo-Chul Kang (Department of Computer Science and Engineering) and his research team have joined efforts with Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in the Mobile Platform based Application Development (MoPAD) project which launched in March 2007 with the support of Institute for Information Technology Advancement. The first report of the research outcomes ..

Spin-valve devices are a key component of a magnetoresistive random access memory. Mr. Woo Youn Kim and Professor Kwang Soo Kim of Department of Chemistry of POSTECH predicted supermagnetoresistance in a graphene nanoribbon device, the article of which has appeared in Nature Nanotech (3, 408-412, 2008). The reported graphene nanoribbon spin-valve device shows extremely large magnetoresistance (ten thousand times larger than that of conventional devices), which promises high speed access, and good sensitivity. The striking enhancement originates from the peculiar symmetry of band structures of ..

Climate change caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 is a major environmental problem of the 21st century. There has been much discussion about how to reduce CO2 output and prevent global warming. In this respect, plants are an important part of the overall picture as they are primary CO2 consumers and are directly challenged by increasing CO2 levels. Moreover, plants vary in their responses to elevated CO2. Plants that adapt better to this change are expected to out-compete their neighbors, which would cause instability in present ecosystems and unpredictable changes in weather and climate.In ..

As the eventful year of 2008 comes to a close and the New Year of 2009 begins, I wish all of you a New Year full of happiness and love.2009 is the Year of the Ox. There is an old saying that goes, “Ox pace takes you a thousand miles,” which means slow and steady steps take you much farther. This year’s start is cloudier and gloomier than ever. The recent global economic crisis has been even more brutal than the foreign exchange crisis we experienced a decade ago. At a time of such hardship, we should learn from the wisdom of the ox, not panicking or getting nervous, but being..

The way to prevent intra-operative awareness has been paved by joint efforts of medical science and physics. Intra-operative awareness, familiarized through some thriller movies, is a unique physiological phenomenon which causes the patient under general anesthesia to recover consciousness during surgery. The patient experiencing intra-operative awareness may feel the pain or pressure of surgery, hear conversations, or feel as if he cannot breathe, but may be unable to communicate any distress because he has been given a paralytic or muscle relaxant.Professor Seunghwan Kim (Department of Physi..