No abstract

Based on in-depth interviews with middle-class Korean professional sojourner migrant married couples in Singapore and their elderly parents, this paper examines how the cultural meaning and social practice of filial co-habitation and support have been transformed in an international migration context. Transnational co-residence and visiting among these families are examined and a differentiated and patterned organisation of support by sons versus daughters for their own elderly parents is demonstrated. Although the immigration regulations and co-ethnic community environments for older Koreans in Singapore pose a challenge to elderly parents, the family remains the most important nexus of care and support. By adopting ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’ co-residence strategies and deploying multi-purpose long-term visits by wives and children in Singapore to their elderly parents in Korea, and by remitting regular financial contributions, these families are able to maintain the cultural ideal of filial co-residence and support. However, the gendered traditional co-habitation ideal differentiates between actual and virtual co-residence. The actual co-residence pattern was mainly adopted by first sons/daughters-in-law couples and the elderly parents of the first sons, whereas the virtual co-residence pattern was mainly adopted by sons-in-law/daughters couples and the elderly parents of daughters. These results show that patterned two-way transnational mobility for providing care and support is shaped by cultural norms and the practical negotiation of family obligations.

In Korea, more than one-third of cross-border marriages are remarriages for at least one spouse, yet little is known about the experiences of Korean adolescents who enter into a blended multicultural family through their father’s remarriages. The current study examined the experiences of 10 Korean (seven female) adolescents ( Mage = 15.9 years) primarily from low-income families with Korean fathers and non-Korean stepmothers using content analysis of in-depth interviews with adolescents, supplemented with field observations at after-school mentoring program. The analysis suggested that many of the Korean adolescents gained a new sense of identity as a member of a multicultural family primarily through new kinship bonds they experienced through the intimate labor of caretaking for their new half-siblings. Many of the adolescents had grown up without close kinship ties to their biological parents, thus the introduction of foreign stepmothers to the family provided opportunities for the adolescents to claim them as kins despite language and cultural barriers. At the same time, the adolescents also experienced challenges and tensions that often accompany new blended family formation. These results have implications for understanding formations of kinship and new cultural identity in blended families across borders.

We present recent updates for 𝜀 𝐾 determined directly from the standard model (SM) with lattice QCD inputs such as B𝐾 , |𝑉 𝑐𝑏 |, |𝑉 𝑢𝑠 |, 𝜉 0 , 𝜉 2 , 𝜉 LD , 𝑓 𝐾 , and 𝑚 𝑐 . We find that the standard model with exclusive |𝑉 𝑐𝑏 | and other lattice QCD inputs describes only 66% of the experimental value of |𝜀 𝐾 | and does not explain its remaining 34%, which leads to a strong tension in |𝜀 𝐾 | at the 4.5𝜎 ∼ 3.7𝜎 level between the SM theory and experiment. We also find that this tension disappears when we use the inclusive value of |𝑉 𝑐𝑏 | obtained using the heavy quark expansion based on the QCD sum rule approach.

Magnetization‐prepared (MP) gradient‐echo (GRE) sequences suffer from signal contaminations from T1 recovery during the readout train, which can be eliminated by paired RF phase cycling (PC) at the cost of doubling the scan time. The objective of this study was to develop and validate a novel unpaired PC strategy to eliminate the time penalty for high‐resolution quantitative parameter mapping in 3D MP‐GRE sequences. Based on the observation that the contaminating T1 recovery signal along the GRE readout train is independent of magnetization preparation, its impact can be eliminated using a novel curve‐fitting approach with complex‐valued data without needing paired PC acquisitions. Four new unpaired PC schemes were compared with two traditional paired PC schemes in both phantom and in vivo human knee studies at 3 T using a MP angle‐modulated partitioned k‐space spoiled gradient‐echo snapshots (MAPSS) T1ρ mapping sequence. In the phantom study, all methods resulted in consistent T1ρ measurements (∆T1ρ < 0.5%) at the center slice when B0/B1 values were uniform. Results were not consistent when off‐center slices with nonideal B0/B1 were included. Two unpaired PC schemes had comparable or significantly improved quantitative accuracy and scan‐rescan reproducibility compared with the paired PC schemes. There was no significant T1ρ quantitative variability increase or spatial fidelity loss using the new unpaired PC schemes. Unpaired PC schemes also had different T1ρ spectral responses at different B0 frequency offsets, which can potentially be exploited to reduce sensitivity to B0 field inhomogeneities. The human knee study results were consistent with the phantom study findings. In conclusion, an unpaired PC strategy potentially allows more accurate quantitative parameter mapping with halved scan time compared with the paired PC approach to eliminate signal contaminations from T1 recovery. It therefore offers additional flexibility in SNR optimization, spatial resolution improvement, and choice of imaging sampling points to obtain more accurate quantitative parameter mapping.