.. On top of that, right before the war they gave the North Koreans 70,000+ ethnic Korean soldiers from the Chinese People's Liberation Army, including two already-organized, experienced ethnic Korean divisions that had fought in the Chinese civil war. Kim Il Sung invaded the south only after Mao promised to send forces if the USA intervened ..

China’s problem has become the world’s problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China’s coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Seoul launches reforestation of China’s Inner Mongolia region by Joseph Yun Li-sun The city of Seoul signs a US$ 49 million tree-planting agreement to reforest the Kubuqi, the seventh biggest desert in the world. The goal is to block sand blown by spring storms towards the Korean Peninsula.

Seoul (AsiaNews) – The Seoul Metropolitan Government has decided to plant 72,000 trees in the Kubuqi Desert of Inner Mongolia, which is the source of severe sandstorms that sweep across Asia. The aim is to prevent the so-called "yellow dust", dense clouds of fine, dry soil particles kicked up by high-speed surface winds in intense storms that block ventilation and irrigation systems on the Korean Peninsula and create health problems for the population. The city signed the deal on Tuesday with Future Forest and the All China Youth Federation to plant 72,000 trees and will invest about W50 million (US$ 49 million) in the tree-planting project.

The plan calls for members of the All China Youth Federation, which is affiliated with the Communist Party of China, to plant trees in Inner Mongolia.

NGOs will provide technical leadership and logistical support to planters, who might have problems in creating small oases to guarantee the survival of the saplings.

The 72,000 trees include poplar and desert willow, the only trees capable of growing with shallow roots.

According to some studies by Seoul University, if the tree-planting project is completed as scheduled, a green ecosystem in the desert will come into being by the end of next year, and will be capable of stopping the sand when winds blow from the West.

The Kubuqi is located some 600 kilometres west of Beijing and is seventh largest desert in the world.

Covered in forests until the late 19th century, it lost its vegetation as a result of early industrial development and overpopulation.

The region is known to be the source of 40 per cent of the yellow dust, which affects the Korean Peninsula every spring.

The South Koreans decided to launch this initiative because dusty thunderstorms have worsened over the past decade.

Sand can provoke serious respiratory problems and affects especially vulnerable groups like children, women and the elderly.

It can also clog air conditioning, an essential service for South Koreans during hot humid summers.

E. coli is frequently used as a model organism in microbiology studies. Cultivated strains (e.g. E. coli K12) are well-adapted to the laboratory environment, and, unlike wild type strains, have lost their ability to thrive in the intestine. Many lab strains lose their ability to form biofilms.[70][71] These features protect wild type strains from antibodies and other chemical attacks, but require a large expenditure of energy and material resources.

In 1946, Joshua Lederberg and Edward Tatum first described the phenomenon known as bacterial conjugation using E. coli as a model bacterium,[72] and it remains the primary model to study conjugation.[citation needed] E. coli was an integral part of the first experiments to understand phage genetics,[73] and early researchers, such as Seymour Benzer, used E. coli and phage T4 to understand the topography of gene structure.[74] Prior to Benzer's research, it was not known whether the gene was a linear structure, or if it had a branching pattern.

E. coli was one of the first organisms to have its genome sequenced; the complete genome of E. coli K12 was published by Science in 1997.[75]

The long-term evolution experiments using E. coli, begun by Richard Lenski in 1988, have allowed direct observation of major evolutionary shifts in the laboratory.[76] In this experiment, one population of E. coli unexpectedly evolved the ability to aerobically metabolize citrate. This capacity is extremely rare in E. coli. As the inability to grow aerobically is normally used as a diagnostic criterion with which to differentiate E. coli from other, closely related bacteria such as Salmonella, this innovation may mark a speciation event observed in the lab.

By combining nanotechnologies with landscape ecology complex habitat landscapes can be generated with details at the nanoscale.[77] On such synthetic ecosystems evolutionary experiments with E. coli have been performed in order to study the spatial biophysics of adaptation in an island biogeography on-chip.

The fact is this - malware has always had the ability to be updated in the field, it has always been able to be remote controlled, and it has always had the ability to spawn a remote shell to a live attacker. And, it has always had the ability to scan the file-system for files like source-code and CAD drawings, and it has always had the ability to exfiltrate those files. At all times and without exception, these malware programs have been operated by real and persistent humans at the other end. The malware doesn't operate itself, it's not an automaton. For the last 365 days, I just called that malware.

Because the big four banks are already so large, it’s impossible for them collectively to grow at a faster rate than the overall economy. For one bank to enjoy higher growth means that they have to market share off the other three, and the big banks appear deeply reluctant to do this.

It’s clear from recent comments made by the banks that they’re dissatisfied with the rate at which their lending is growing. And this is backed by recent statistics from the Reserve Bank which show that while total bank lending for housing is relatively strong, (rising by 0.6 per cent in August to reach a level that’s 8.1 per cent higher than a year earlier), total business lending actually fell by 0.4 per cent in the month (and was down 4 per cent from a year earlier).

Faced with weak lending growth, the big banks will only be able to continue to report increases in their profits year after year if they are able to maintain – and, preferably build – their interest margins.

But this means that the banks are inevitably on a collision course with the rest of the community.

EMP Attacks A number of Chinese writers suggest utilizing EMP weapons to dis- rupt the U.S. C4 ISR system. One Chinese source (Dai, 1999, p.272) describes EMP attacks as including
nuclear EMP attacks and nonnuclear EMP attacks. Nuclear and thermonuclear explosions create a large EMP eect that can cause electronic equipment to be overloaded and ruined. This type of large nuclear EMP can cause electronic systems within hundreds to over a thousand kilometers to be destroyed. he eective power of a nonnuclear EMP burst is several million times greater than those of current jammers (reaching 10,000 MW) and can burn unprotected and highly sensitive and even complete electronic equipment (systems) [sic], as well as destroy the normal operation of computer systems. [authors’ translation]

Another source (Nie, 1999, p.185) speaks of using EMP weapons as part of an attack on an aircraft carrier strike group:
We can use the Second Artillery or the Air Force to deliver an EMP bomb to the enemy’s large naval force to destroy the ene- my’s warning and detection systems, operational command sys-Potential Implications for U.S. Theater Access 57 tems, and other electronic information systems. [authors’ transla- tion

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China has long viewed American pre-eminence in the region as a historical accident and an aberration. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) feels enormously uncomfortable existing in a regional order that is based not just on open trade, freedom of the seas and rule-of-law, but also on a democratic community backed by American naval power and military alliances. Look through Chinese strategic documents over the past decade and around four-fifths are about how best to bind, dilute, circumvent or supersede American power and influence.

Rudd is correct to suggest that China has become a "major stakeholder" in the regional and global system. But the broad-brush approach by America and its partners in Asia has been to encourage China to be a "responsible stakeholder" as it rises – one that will increasingly uphold and strengthen the existing order rather than seek to challenge or subvert it. But the latter is precisely what Beijing is looking to do, even as it has been a significant beneficiary of the current system.

Washington erroneously assumes it can shape Chinese goals and purposes. While encouraging China to be a responsible stakeholder is seen as an end-game in the US, internal debates within China reveal that Beijing sees behaving as a responsible stakeholder as a way to bide its time while it builds what it terms Chinese "comprehensive national power."

The responsible stakeholder approach is designed to entrench China as a status quo power because it has been allowed to benefit from the current system. For example, China benefits enormously from the US naval role in the South China Sea, which helps trade and commerce to thrive by protecting trade routes. Yet while the US devotes ships, troops and money to these efforts, China benefits as a security free-loader in the region instead of a trusted contributor.

China has not become an entrenched stakeholder within the US-led region. Indeed, its disruptive claims to over four-fifths of the South China Sea have only intensified, rather than faded, as it continues to rise within the existing order. This approach assumes there is no alternative for emerging states but to compete within the existing open and liberal order.

The responsible stakeholder framework does not account for the fact that rising participants – especially genuinely powerful ones – can seek to gradually dismantle and redesign the current order from within. Subversion and "winning without fighting," rather than confrontation and contest, is the prudent Chinese strategy for undermining both the US and the strength of Washington’s security alliances and partnerships in Asia-Pacific.

The responsible stakeholder framework also assumes that Chinese interests and ambitions are elastic and can be molded according to the circumstances of China's rise. This argument ignores compelling historical and contemporary evidence that China is predisposed to seek leadership of Asia and to recast the regional order according to its preferences. After all, regaining its paramount place in the region is inextricable from reversing what Chinese history books describe as 150 years of humiliation at the hands of western and Japanese powers.

...

Kimchi, a traditional Korean food, is a well-known lactic acid-fermented vegetable product, and is a good source of industrially useful lactic acid bacteria (LAB). The microorganisms involved in the fermentation of kimchi include approximately 200 species of bacteria and several yeasts. The LAB involved in this fermentation continuously produce organic acids after an optimum ripening time, and cause changes in the composition of the product, referred to as the over-ripening or acid deterioration of kimchi.

The over-ripening of kimchi is the most serious concern when it is in storage. Since the over-ripening is mainly due to acid-forming LAB, the best way to overcome this issue is to control the growth of LAB without destroying the quality of the end product. The LAB play an important role in the taste of kimchi, and many LAB from kimchi have antimicrobial activity in addition to other useful properties.

Recently, scientists at Chosun University investigated LAB from kimchi as molecular sources for various end products, including antimicrobial compounds. Antimicrobial compounds are relatively abundant in traditionally fermented foods, in which they may play an important role as competitors with natural microflora during fermentation. Antimicrobial compound-producing LAB may be useful in preserving kimchi. This can be done by either directly applying the LAB to the culture or by adding LAB-produced antimicrobial compounds as natural bio-preservatives.

Japan's goal in WWII was basically a unification of Asia so it could be independent of Western "superiority". Also anecdotal evidence (mostly from my grandparents) says that the Japanese themselves weren't the ones raping and killing the captured population, just the Koreans who worked for them.

To the Japanese, Koreans were only slightly better than the Allied prisoners. For their part, the Koreans would have felt little loyalty towards Japan, which had invaded and brutalised their country for decades. One Korean POW guard, Kasayama Yoshikichi, said of his feelings toward the Japanese:

"After the first couple of years, we didn’t hide our feelings any longer ‘Do you think we’re going to let you shit on us till we die?’ The Japanese apologised and grovelled when they didn’t have their rifles."

One doctor witnessed three Korean guards attack a Japanese captain in his sleep, and one of the guards repeatedly asked the doctor for poison to kill this officer

UTSUMI Aiko of Keisen University, Japan, conducted extensive research on Korean POW guards and found that more than 3,000 young Korean men were "recruited" (that is "press-ganged" or otherwise forced to "volunteer") for the prison guard corps. Many of [them] feared they would be shipped to Japan as indentured servants if they did not join the corps. Others were perhaps attracted by the high pay rates offered - 50 yen a month, a large amount at that time. [They] were classified as civilian employees rather than members of the military, and many hoped this status would prevent their transfer to the front line and ... allow them to be demobilized after their two-year contract was concluded. However, on joining, the new recruits were issued with uniforms, and their basic training was very much military in character, including weapons training. Despite the difference between the promise and the reality of the guard corps, few deserted, possibly because deserters were threatened with court-martial.

...

The Koreans were trained in Japanese and forbidden to use their native tongue. They were also given Japanese names in place of their Korean names. They were instructed to treat POWs as animals as a way of ensuring their fear and respect. They were trained primarily in the Japanese Field Service Code, and they were frequently beaten by Japanese officers, for no justifiable reason. The Geneva Convention was never mentioned. In other words they were trained as de facto Japanese soldiers, yet their rank of "kanshi-hei" (guard) was lower than that of a private, and there was no possibility of promotion. Clearly the Korean guards ... were treated as second-class soldiers within the forces, bound by the same iron discipline, yet enjoying none of the prestige accorded to Japanese soldiers. Indeed, one of their unstated functions ... was to give the Japanese soldiers someone to look down on, thus strengthening a sense of ethnic solidarity among the Japanese and minimizing the resentment felt by Japanese troops toward their officers.