• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.93-106
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• 2011

This review has dealt with definition, size, history, and status of mesocosm, and also discussed several problems and trouble shootings related to the building of mesocosm, and finally will suggest the future directions of this scientific tool. Due to the restriction of the space, the discussion mainly focused on "the mesocosm building for the soft-bottom ecosystem". The mesocosm is defined as "medium-sized, self-sustaining, and man-controllable ecosystem". This type of studies has already initiated since 1960, but nowadays it expands to the diverse fields of science and technologies, such as toxicology, limnology, environmental sciences and engineering, and even geochemistry. As a scientific tool, the mesocosm requires following aspects; replicability, repeatability, and ecological realism or accuracy. Several technical problems have to be solved for the perfect building of mesocosm. They are known as scaling, composition of seawater/sediment, light intensity, turbulence, hydraulic residence time, and top predator. These trouble shootings are provided at the discussion in detail. In the context, I expect two promising directions in the future; 1. Objectivity based on the diverse statistical methodologies, 2. "Living ecosystem modelling" coordinated with the mathematical modelling. With these, the mesocosm will be more powerful tool for the scientists and engineers to investigate the chemical and the ecological responses to the toxic materials and global climate changes.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.167-207
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• 2015

This study focused on the awareness and coping methods of psychological trauma and human suffering in the contemporary era after the development of posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD) including the situations in the Korean society, and proposed principles for an alternative paradigm of trauma recovery. Trauma is defined as an 'external' stress causing chronic suffering mediated by memory, and the American Psychiatric Association approved PTSD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980. The development of PTSD empowered moral legitimacy to the victims, opened a successful way to treatment, and accomplished explosive amount of research in the area of neurobiology and cognitive neuroscience. However, this also narrowed the understanding of human suffering, and the importance of an alternative coping method which overcomes the limitations of technical intervention became overlooked. Moreover, the Korean society has an underlying mechanism of replacing the matter of trauma to a problem of an individual. This is shown among the historical context of splitting and denial, and among medicalized bureaucracy. Trauma should be acknowledged as a social suffering, and searching for an alternative paradigm is in need. This study suggested the following principles; seeking for truth and justice, survivor as the agent of recovery emphasizing the responsibility of the community, ecological adaptations of recent bio-psychological achievements, and finally putting emphasis on continuous discussions about the definition of recovery.