The Limits of Romancing Food in the Neoliberal Era: Ruth L. Ozeki`s My Year of Meats

( Sunyoung Ahn ) 한국영어영문학회 2017 영어 영문학 Vol.63 No.3

Ruth L. Ozeki`s My Year of Meats houses a tension between two ways of engaging with food: one is taking a “romantic” approach by depicting food as a source of inspiration and pleasure that enables cross-cultural rapport, and the other is taking an expository approach that involves investigating the process of food production, circulation, and consumption as framed by the global neoliberal economy. The interplay of these two perspectives is productive in that it highlights how food operates on a number of different levels: as a livelihood, a cultural signifier, and economic currency. It is, however, the investigative approach that subsumes the romantic approach in the end, for its impulsive, idiosyncratic, and aesthetic ways of engaging with food is found to downplay, and even neutralize, the gruesome reality of modern-day food production. This conclusion is especially pertinent to the current times, in which writings about food increasingly stress the necessity of knowing the ontology of food, or experiencing food viscerally, as a highly affective, spontaneous, and vital substance. The journey the novel takes into the underbelly of meat industry is a reminder that food is an asset circulating according to the dictates of efficiency and profit, not an object of romance that captivates the consumer with its palatable and transformative substance.

Animal Ethics and the Human Question in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

( Sunyoung Ahn ) 한국영어영문학회 2021 영어 영문학 Vol.67 No.1

In Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee scrutinizes what it might mean, in post-apartheid South Africa still fraught with racial and political animosity, to tell the story of a disgraced man learning to relate to animals with compassion and humility. The novel highlights the urgency of this animal ethics in that it mitigates the cruelty of utilitarian logic that reduces all living beings to the status of disposable things. In addition, it interrogates the ways in which speciesism operates hand-in-hand with racism and racial discourse. Notwithstanding the importance attached to the issue of suffering animals in South Africa, however, I argue that the novel also illuminates how the cultivation of human-animal companionship obfuscates the urgency of developing human relationships. Animal ethics in Disgrace carries a treacherous quality in that it simultaneously has the effect of being a turn away from the human by shelving the problems of the human domination of humans, which not infrequently takes place by way of favoring and elevating animals while further alienating the already de-privileged and marginalized human. Disgrace, then, reflects on the ways in which ethics is extended to nonhumans without necessarily practicing it among and between humans. At the dawn of post-apartheid democracy, to cultivate animal ethics by choosing to be “like a dog” in the act of self-abnegation, as if to renounce the occupancy of political space, may be inadequate; the novel therefore highlights the ethical imperative to become neighbors to each other by recognizing fraternity and shared power.

“Science as a Vocation” in the Anthropocene: Ian McEwan’s Solar

( Sunyoung Ahn ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2018 현대영미소설 Vol.25 No.2

Ian McEwan’s 2010 novel Solar advocates the Enlightenment ideals of science such as empiricism, reason, and progress as the most adequate means to mitigate global warming. Yet these are not the only values McEwan champions, as demonstrated by the way his scientist-protagonist encounters an irreversible crisis precisely by only following these Enlightenment ideals. This essay reads Solar as a text that aspires to maintain a delicate balance between the pursuit of scientific knowledge and poetic knowledge―specifically the forms of knowledge acquired through the workings of imaginative, spontaneous, and speculative intelligence. While never convinced that aesthetic or poetic forms of knowledge mitigate global warming in any direct way, McEwan nevertheless advocates these forms of knowing because their best executions help cultivate moral and intellectual integrity through which “good” science―one that clarifies, demonstrates, and persuades ―can be practiced. A deceptively light comical story, Solar, in fact, weaves an ambitious narrative that highlights the importance of bridging, if not closing, the chasm between the scientific and the poetic. Such a chasm has been described by Max Weber as disenchantment, but in the same way that it was never Weber’s intention to call for re-enchantment, McEwan, too, promotes not re-enchantment but a strained balance or strife among multiple forms of knowledge. In Solar, science as a vocation is thus given the important task of doing good science by being in step with, and against the grain of, other forms of knowledge.

Effect of Outlier Elimination on the 99th Percentile Upper Reference Limits of High-Sensitivity Cardiac Troponin I Assays Based on a Strictly Selected Healthy Reference Population

Ahn Sunyoung,Kim Hyun-Ki,Lee Woochang,Chun Sail,Min Won-Ki 대한진단검사의학회 2022 Annals of Laboratory Medicine Vol.42 No.3

Background: We established high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I (hsTnI) 99th percentile upper reference limits (URLs) for the Centaur XPT High-Sensitivity Troponin I assay (Centaur hsTnI; Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) and Atellica IM High-Sensitivity Troponin I assay (Atellica hsTnI; Siemens) and assessed the effect of outlier elimination. Methods: The reference population comprised 380 men and 387 women, satisfying the strict systematic reference population criteria. After reference population verification by the N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) assay, 99th percentile URLs for Centaur hsTnI and Atellica hsTnI were calculated before and after outlier elimination. Results: The 99th percentile URL for Centaur hsTnI was 60.4 (men, 74.7; women, 57.5) ng/L and that for Atellica hsTnI was 59.6 (men, 75.2; women, 55.1) ng/L. After the elimination of 61 (8.0%) outlier samples in Centaur hsTnI and 58 (7.6%) in Atellica hsTnI, the 99th percentile URLs were 13.5 ng/L (men, 15.3 ng/L; women, 11.9 ng/L) and 13.4 ng/L (men, 15.5 ng/L; women, 12.9 ng/L), respectively, significantly lower than those before outlier elimination. The CVs at the 99th percentile URLs were 5.2% and 3.5%, respectively. The measurable fractions among the reference population were 91.5% and 93.4%, respectively. Performance evaluation of Atellica B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), Atellica NT-proBNP, Centaur hsTnI, and Atellica hsTnI showed outstanding results. Conclusions: The Korean hsTnI 99th percentile URLs calculated in this study were significantly lower after outlier elimination than before. Centaur hsTnI and Atellica hsTnI meet the “Guideline acceptable” and “Level 3 (second generation, high sensitivity)” requirements, satisfying international standards.

Effects of visual cues on distance perception in the virtual environment : focusing on two visual systems based on object identification and visually guided action

Sunyoung Ahn(안선영),Sangwon Lee(이상원) 대한인간공학회 2019 대한인간공학회 학술대회논문집 Vol.2019 No.5

The Great Refusal in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral

Sunyoung Ahn 한국아메리카학회 2021 美國學論集 Vol.53 No.3

Ever since the publication of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, critics have debated whether the text’s unfavorable and reductive depiction of the radicals in the long 1960s can be attributed to Roth’s own conservativism. The debate has been in part further aroused by his supposedly more sympathetic account of the fall of the protagonist “the Swede,” who embraces all things considered as standing for America itself. However, by drawing on various historical contexts and materials—the history of the long 60s, Roth’s interviews, textual cues, and above all Herbert Marcuse’s concept of the Great Refusal—I argue that the novel is more accepting of radicalism than it allows itself and the critics allow it to be. The novel partakes in the making of the Great Refusal, that is, through which it searches for a more resilient form of radicalism. In that sense, the novel looks back at the long 60s and depicts the age with nuance, rejecting the caricature that it is crazed and enraged.

Chasing a Moving Target: Environmental Justice in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

( Sunyoung Ahn ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2019 현대영미소설 Vol.26 No.3

In Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004) are the stories of humans and animals, who suffer the consequences of British colonialism, state violence, and even well-intentioned conservationist movements. Especially prominent is the story of the indigenous population of humans and tigers in the islands of the Sundarbans, whose well-being is pit against one another so that justice for humans leads to a neglect of tigers, and likewise, justice for tigers leads to a dismissal of humans. Against this dichotomized politics, I argue that Ghosh aims to be just to both by delivering a justice narrative, for which Ghosh writes in a form that I will argue resembles a chase after a moving target, because justice in the Sundarbans is a highly mobile notion that necessitates a storytelling that traverses the local, the national, and the global, and involves multigenerational histories and multispecies relations. Demonstrating how this chase after justice and just storytelling result in a form that is dynamic, intersecting, and multifocal, I suggest that the arc of the narrative in The Hungry Tide delineates a movement toward totality, wherein humans, animals, and the environment form ever-expanding relationships of interdependence and conflict.

Development of an Operational Plan for the Liquid Biopsy External Quality Assessment Program in Korea

Sunyoung Ahn,Hyun-Ki Kim,Ji Hyun Kim,이우창,전사일,Wee Gyo Lee,민원기 대한임상검사정도관리협회 2020 Journal of Laboratory Medicine And Quality Assuran Vol.42 No.2

Background: Liquid biopsy is a useful assay for the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis prediction of solid tumors and its clinical application is expanding. Therefore, the need for developing an External Quality Assessment (EQA) protocol for liquid biopsy is increasing. In this study, we developed and implemented the liquid biopsy EQA program for the epidermal growth factor receptor mutation. Methods: We validated the feasibility of the protocol using citrate instead of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA). Additionally, we analyzed the homogeneity and stability of the aliquoted quality control (QC) materials. Mutation-positive QC material with four mutations (exon 19 deletion, L858R, T790M, and exon 20 insertion) was used to make two types of QC materials (low and high) and the wild type material was used for the negative controls. If the EQA results showed consensus in more than 80% of the participating laboratories, the results were reported as acceptable or unacceptable. If not, we reported the results as not graded. Results: Citrate showed equivalent performance to EDTA. Highly mutated QC material and mutation-negative QC material passed the homogeneity and stability test, but low-level mutant specimens showed inconsistent results. In total, 11 laboratories participated, and all of them reported consistent results except for low-grade mutant samples. Thus, the evaluation results were acceptable except for low mutation QC material. Conclusions: The applicability of liquid biopsy is expanding. To obtain accurate test results, EQA is indispensable. Here, QC materials for liquid biopsy EQA were produced, distributed, and had its results analyzed. This study could be the foundation for further development of liquid biopsy EQA.

Modernism and Bourgeois Dissidence in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Ahn, Sunyoung 한국중앙영어영문학회 2022 영어영문학연구 Vol.64 No.2

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) problematizes bourgeois housewifery as a condition that puts a married woman like Clarissa Dalloway into a contradictory position in which she is at once a beneficiary of bourgeois institutions and its victim. While housewifery binds her, because she is also dependent on the dominant order and inseparable from it, she is simultaneously an accomplice and a critic. I call this ambivalent condition “bourgeois dissidence,” a concept that Raymond Williams develops to describe the writers’ ambivalent position in the inceptive period of modernism and the avant-garde, which is bourgeois but dissident, and dissident but bourgeois. This dual position is one of the key characteristics of modernists as they strived to counter the orthodox and invent the new. As such, their works contain the potential to develop into politics of wide spectrum— from fascism to communism, from aesthetic conservativism to artistically innovative progressivism, and from solipsism to realism. Clarissa, too, as a modernist figure, occupies this double position in which she is a bourgeois but dissident and a dissident but a bourgeois. Her seeming doubleness contains, like modernism does, the potential to turn into new art, new position, and new politics.

4모수 문항반응모형을 적용한 TIMSS 2015 수학 검사의 문항모수 추정

안선영(Sunyoung Ahn),서영숙(Youngsuk Suh),송미영(Mi-Young Song),성태제(Taeje Seong) 한국교육평가학회 2021 교육평가연구 Vol.34 No.1

4모수 로지스틱 문항반응모형은 3모수 모형에 문항실수제외도를 추가하여 확장된 모형으로서, 응답 자료에 불확실성으로 포함되어 있던 문항추측도와 실수도를 모두 분리해낸다. 본 연구는 4모수 모형을 소개하고 TIMSS 2015 8학년 수학의 문항반응 자료에 적용하여 모형의 활용성을 탐색하였다. 이를 위해 2모수 모형, 3모수 모형, 그리고 인지진단 DINA 모형을 함께 분석하여 그 결과를 비교하였다. 문항반응모형 간 비교에서 문항 모수별 상관은 대부분 높았으며, 모형이 복잡해질수록 문항난이도, 변별도, 추측도 추정치와 해당 표준오차도 증가하였다. 그러나 4모수 모형에서 문항실수제외도의 평균 표준오차는 작아서 다른 문항 모수보다 안정적으로 추정되었음을 확인하였다. 4모수 모형과 DINA 모형의 비교 결과, 4모수 모형의 자료 적합성이 더 좋았고, 문항추측도는 부적상관을, 문항실수제외도는 매우 낮은 상관을 나타내어 두 검사 모형의 서로 다른 추정 경향을 확인하였다. 본 연구는 4모수 모형의 다양한 자료 해석과 정보제공 가능성을 밝히고, 문항 분석의 다양성과 측정의 정확성을 높이기 위한 시사점을 논의하였다. The 4-parameter logistic model(4PLM) was extended from the 3-parameter logistic model(3PLM) by considering the item non-slip parameter. It separates the guessing and the slip parameter from the ambiguity of the response data. The purpose of current study is to explore the use of the 4PLM by applying it for analyzing the 8th grade mathematics data of TIMSS 2015. In comparison between item response models, the correlations by item parameters were mostly high. As the model became more complicated, the difficulty, discrimination, guessing parameter estimates, and the corresponding standard errors also increased. However, for the 4PLM, the mean standard error was small, indicating that it was more reliably estimated relatively than other item parameter estimates. The comparison results of the 4PLM and the DINA model were as follows. The 4PLM was more suitable for the data. The guessing parameter estimates of the models showed a negative correlation, and the correlation for the item non-slip was very small, implying the different estimation trends of the two test models. This article demonstrated a possible application of the 4PLM by comparing it with other conventional models, and provided discussions for implications of the 4PLM in analyzing various test data.