weareyoung

Student from South Korea wants immigrate to Kazakhstan

weareyoung — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:25:19 +0000

by romashka

A 33-year-old from South Korea has become an MBA student at KIMEP after living for more than 20 years in Middle Eastern and Asia countries. Kim Jung Min says he is excited about Kazakhstan’s economy and after graduating wants to stay here and open his own business.

Kim’s father was an architect who spent 20 years in Saudi Arabia running his own business-from the time Kim was 3 until he was 13. After graduating from Yonsei University in South Korea with a degree in public administration, he went to Japan to study the language. He also lived in China. Kim became intrigued by what he had read about Kazakhstan’s improving economy and decided to look into going to KIMEP

“Several years ago people in Asian countries didn’t know about Kazakhstan – where it is locate, for example,” he said. “My parents thought that Kazakhstan was still part of the U.S.S.R. and that people here live like in a desert and try to survive being herders”. Now, however, South Koreans and others read about the economic boom going in Kazakhstan “through our local mass media, and many people want to come here,” he said.What prompted him to make a final decision to come to KIMEP was learning that the university president, Dr. Chan Young Bang, also had graduated from Yonsei University, one of the South Korea’s top schools.He never met Dr. Bang until coming to Almaty in the fall of 2006,however Kim likes fact that there are many international students at KIMEP, particularly from South Korea.In 1996, a year after graduating from Yonsei University, he fulfilled his South Korean military obligation by working as an officer.From 1998 to 2001 he studied in language schools in Japan and England. In 2001 he returned to South and, using his newfound Japanese, worked for a Japanese trading company.When he returned to South Korea in 2001, he saw how much life had changed in just the four years he was away. Many South Koreans were abandoning their traditions. And English words were being used more and more, changing the language.“ When I came back to home, I was like a stranger, because I wear Korean traditional clothes and keep our traditions and the local people thought that I was a foreigner,” Kim said.Before coming to Almaty, Kim spent a year at a South Korean manufacturing company that made printed circuit boards- a job where he worked seven days a week.He takes comfort from the fact that about 100,000 ethnic Koreans live in Kazakhstan. Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered them transferred here from the Far East decades ago as part of a policy of “breaking up” ethnic communities.Kim dreams about creating a contiguous Korean community inside Almaty, like the large Koreatown in Los Angeles, for example.Today Kazakhstan has a business relationship with such South Korean companies as LG, Samsung and Hyundai – and of course Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese companies. Kim believes that after graduating from KIMEP he will find his place in the world of business here. In addition to learning about business at KIMEP, he is trying to learn about the culture, history and traditions of Kazakhstan. “ I want to be a perfect specialist in my sphere and therefore I will try to know everything about Kazakhstan,” he said.These days, in addition to thinking about his studies and future business, he is thinking about marriage. He likes the fact that Kazakh, Uzbek and Tajik women are conservative, like South Korean women, focusing on family.

Uzbekistan-Buhara

weareyoung — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:36:43 +0000

A stroke of good luck for smokers

weareyoung — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 18:17:03 +0000

Jon Von Radowitz, London
January 27, 2007

SCIENTISTS have pinpointed the source of nicotine addiction — a 2.5-centimetre-wide pleasure centre deep in the brain.The insula, a small island in the cerebral cortex, has been described as a “platform for feelings and emotion”.Researchers found that smokers who suffered damage to this part of the brain were able to quit quickly and easily.They suspect the insula may also be involved in other forms of addictive behaviour that keep people hooked on drugs or excessive eating.

Understanding the link could lead to new ways to deal with addiction.The discovery emerged after US scientists learned of a heavy smoker whose dependency was broken after a stroke damaged his insula.The man, who had smoked 40 cigarettes a day, quit immediately. He told researchers that his body “forgot the urge to smoke”.

An investigation of 69 brain-damaged smokers then revealed 19 with insula injury. Of these, 13 had also given up, all but one without any difficulty. The researchers do not know why the six others failed to quit.The study leader, Antoine Bechara, of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, said: “One of the most difficult problems in any form of addiction is the difficulty in stopping the urge to smoke, to take a drug, or to eat for that matter.

“Now we have identified a brain target for further research into dealing with that urge.”

The insula receives information from other parts of the body and is thought to help translate those signals into something subjectively felt, such as hunger, pain, or a craving.In the 1990s, a neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, first suggested that the insula was a platform for feelings and emotion.

“It’s really intriguing to think that disrupting this region breaks the pleasure feelings associated with smoking,” he said.Compared with other brain regions, the insula has not attracted much attention from addiction researchers.But some imaging studies have shown that the region is activated by drug-associated cues, such as the sight of people taking drugs, or drug-taking equipment such as spoons, syringes and “roll-up” paper.Any anti-smoking treatment aimed at the insula would have to preserve the brain region’s beneficial functions.But Dr Bechara points out that the insula appears to be involved specifically with “learned behaviours”, rather than fundamental drives necessary for survival. He believes it might be possible to target one without disrupting the other.

The findings were reported this week in the journal Science. Peter Stern, the journal’s senior editor, said: “This kind of study is quite forward-looking. In addition to investigating a basic scientific mechanism underlying drug addiction, these authors have come up with innovative ideas about how we may be able to treat addiction and prevent relapse.”

Hello world!

weareyoung — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:46:13 +0000

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!