Given the recent modest growth of the personal luxury good market and the urge to face difficulties through innovative brands’ marketing communication strategies, this paper examines the potentialities of tactical associations between luxury fashion brands and furniture design. Results indicate that there can be positive repercussions deriving from luxury fashion brands and furniture design interconnections. In particular, associations with collectable furniture design may help to define and enhance brands’ luxury values whilst providing consumers with innovative and creative luxury brand experiences. Future expectations in this market show a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 3% to 4% through 2020, to just about €280 billion. This is dramatically slower than the past fast growth experienced from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s. In this scenario, luxury fashion managers and marketers must envision new strategies to succeed and surpass competition. In order to be competitive and successful, luxury brand managers must take into account current market dynamics and find pertinent and substantial solutions. This paper shifts its attention to the identification of how in such a difficult scenario different cultural industries can meet in order to mutually enhance their circuits of value. Some studies have demonstrated that in order to meet such new global challenges, luxury fashion firms may discover strategic opportunities in art (Codignola, 2016). Given their symbolic connotation and aesthetic value, high-end furniture design items are more and more perceived as art works exchanged in art auctions or fairs, collected and purchased by collectors, exhibited in galleries or museums. At the same time, furniture design goods show some divergences from conventional art works (i.e. functionality, reproducibility, etc.) and some correspondences with fashion goods. By observing the luxury fashion sector, one may then find--for different sets of reasons--more than one interesting intersection with the furniture design sector. By taking into account the furniture design sector within its specific market features and goods, this paper argues that through furniture design LFBs can develop engaging creative and innovative brands’ marketing communication strategies. Compared to art, such strategies would be able to add value and strengthen LFBs’ luxury features even in a more effective way.

The willingness to actively contribute to more sustainability bares important challenges for managers who must take strategic decisions. The literature about corporate social responsibility has developed in many directions, with often a divide in focus, between society (Acquier & Aggeri, 2015) or corporate sustainability and responsibility (Bansal & Song, 2017). The paper sits at the intersection of these fields by focusing on the question of ethical dilemmas. The objective is to approach the question of ethics in context, through the trade-offs that managers are facing when taking strategic decisions to build sustainable business models, to discuss the contours of the ethical competences at work. The paper focuses on a specific context, the one of successful pure players of sustainability in the luxury fashion industry. It means first that we leave aside the question of organizational change to analyze the core dilemmas that even new actors that start from scratch must face. These pure players could also be named “social entrepreneurs” (Elkington & Hartigan, 2008) or “elegant disrupters” (Bendell & Thomas, 2013). Second, by focusing on luxury fashion we locate our analysis in an industry where the nature of the activity is both a source of salient controversies and of exemplary practices (Kapferer, 2010; Godart & Seong, 2014), two aspects that have the potential to make visible some dilemmas. We focus on a small number of cases of organizations that we selected per criteria of similarities and differences, to allow for an inductive in-depth comparative case study (Yin, 2009). The four organizations are: a producer of yak products, a fur recycling company, a fur auction house and a digital platform for emerging designers. The cases are similar in that each organization is a successful promoter of sustainable practices. The four cases however differ in that each puts at the core of the business model different types of sustainability issues and is based at a different level of the value chain (sourcing, fabrication, intermediation and market access). Also, the four organizations differ in the degree to which they aim to disrupt existing practices in the luxury fashion industry. Data were collected through a series of interviews and complementary press articles, websites and reports. Data analysis proceeds in two steps. We start by narrating each case through the voice of the organization, to describe and understand the rationale behind each business model. We then further our interpretation of the cases through a comparative analysis by systematically recording the tensions or contradictions. Each firm organizes the activity around key engaging choices that promote sustainability but do not lift some inbuilt dilemmas–labelled as: sustainability vs. luxury fashion, sustainability vs. sustainability, and sustainability today vs. tomorrow. The paper highlights how innovative players can openly discuss some dilemmas, approaching sustainability as a story they care about but also as a debate. Yet, the paper also points to the fact that some dilemmas may remain harder to reflect upon, especially the ones that can counter in the long-run the objectives that were at the base of the business. Some questions as the one of growth, in time and scale, might push far the reflexive ability but it is also where ethical competences might be the most needed.

The New Product Development (NPD) in the textile industry is peculiar, as it follows constraints that are particular to the fashion business. A qualitative study comprising 45 interviews were conducted in a South American textile industry and results showcase that fashion forecast, pressure for newness, and cost reduction are relevant matters. Introduction The textile industry follows a particular cycle for New Product Development (NPD) as it answers the demand from the fashion industry. Fashion supply chain is fragmented, as the production process is fragmented with companies playing different roles in the production cycle. There are companies that uses the raw material to produce yarns that will be transformed into fabrics, which then it is transformed into clothes, through process that may be a single sewing to complex process that demands intermediate process such as industrial washes. These clothes are sold to consumers through various selling channels, such as stores, retailers, e-commerce, and even door-to-door. Usually one company plays only one of these roles in the supply chain, what makes the production plan to be fragmented amongst several different companies in the supply chain (Şen, 2008). After globalization, this supply chain became even more complex as each chain may be located in different parts of the world, due to production costs and optimization. This scenario results in a supply chain that demands several planning skills, that works, sometimes, with extensive production cycles. (Thomassey, 2014). But, as Christopher, Lowson, & Peck (2004) noted, the supply chain in the fashion business must be agile to respond to changes in demand from consumers, which often occurs, and it can be also very complex as clothing is a way for consumers to either differentiate or fit in society, and the rules to be in or out of society patterns changes fast (Cholachatpinyo, Fletcher, Padgett, & Crocker, 2002a, 2002b). Due to this complexity and richness of information, the production cycle in fashion business has been extensively studied in the literature (Alexander & Contreras, 2016; Aung & Sha, 2016; Oxborrow & Brindley, 2014) but authors often use a wide perspective to grasp an overview of the supply chain they are studying, using market data and information, or gathering general information from companies that are present in the fashion supply chain. Authors focused their analysis in the supply chain itself, and we could not find studies that focused on the perspective of the product development task in the challenging context of fashion business. There are some characteristics from the fashion business that differentiate New Product Development (NPD) from a classical Business to Business (B2B) scenario. In a brief description of the fashion business production system, we see that it starts with the production of raw materials that varies from natural fibers (e.g. cotton, silk, linen) or artificial fibers (e.g. polyester, nylon, elastane) that are then spinning into threads that may contain one or more different fibers. These threads are then transformed into fabrics through several different weaving techniques, and then it may go through some finishing treatments (e.g. dying, washing), and then it goes to garment manufacturing where garment makers produce clothes for their own brands or for third-parties brands. These clothes are then sold to consumers through various channels (e.g. retail stores, electronic stores). If we analyze this brief description we can see that fashion may influence in all parts of the production cycle, including the demand for raw materials: if denim products are in vogue, then there is a growing demand for cotton products, if sportswear is in vogue, then the demand improves for artificial fibers, and so on. One other thing that should be noted is that usually each part of the production cycle is performed by a different company: the most common scenario we see in the textile industry includes companies that produce only threads, and sell these threads to textile companies that produce fabrics to sell to garment makers that produces clothes to sell to brands to sell them to consumers. There are some companies that integrates two or more parts of the production cycles but they are the exception, not the rule. This fragmented production process combined with the fashion influence result in long production cycles: a designer’s idea may take from three to eighteen months to be available to consumers, depending on the production channels assessed by the designer. These characteristics showcase how NPD in the fashion business may be complex and therefore it should be investigated further in the literature, and this is the objective of this study. In order to do that, we researched the specific literature in NPD that is vastly discussed in literature as it is responsible for creating, managing and releasing products that are both appealing to customers and profitable to the company. (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995). Understanding what makes an NP succeed in the market has been on the marketing agenda for a long time, including the fashion business (Alexander & Contreras, 2016; Clarke, 2012; Thompson & Haytko, 1997). One interesting point of view is to understand the predecessors of NP success in the market. Henard & Szymanski (2001) conducted a meta-analysis of 60 studies focused on the antecedents of NP success and proposed a list of 24 predictors of NP performance, which they grouped into four categories: (i) product characteristics, (ii) firm strategy characteristics, (iii) firm process characteristics and (iv) marketplace characteristics. We selected the most relevant predecessors discussed by Henard & Szymanski (2001) and Song & Xie (2000) to use as a basis for a script for interviews with NPD professionals. Methodology We conducted in-depth interviews with 45 professionals from different areas that participate in, or are impacted by, NPD process in a South American textile industry. From now on we will call this company “Southex”. These interviews offered a deep understanding of the perspective of NPD professionals, both insiders (professional that work in the NPD team) or outsiders (professional from departments that work as an internal supplier or client for the NPD team). Southex is one of the biggest textile producers in the world, with producing units in Latin America, commercial offices in Europe, Asia, and America. Sales are over U$ 1 bi/year, and the company employed more than 8,000 people in 2012, when this study was performed. Their main market is Latin America where fashion seasons are in opposition to the ones in the North part of the globe, home of the fashion trendsetters for global macro trends (Europe, USA, and Japan). This leads to a one-year postponement of fashion trends, so when something is released as a fashion trend for summer in Europe, it will be considered a trend for summer one year later in Latin America. Southex NPD team had 12 exclusively dedicated professionals as of 2012. Southex launches products in the market with the concept of collections, when the company releases a group of NPs in the market. Every year, the company releases two collections in the market. It usually takes up to six months for NPD team to complete and launch a new collection. Research into fashion trends, commercial needs and technological improvements available in the market are the main sources the company uses to develop NP. Prior to launching a product in the market, the NPD team needs to test its production process in order to guarantee that the product can be produced on a large scale at competitive costs. Every collection is launched as a sample of fabrics that will be produced 4-6 months in the future. If a collection is released in January, the products that Southex is launching will start to be produced in June. So their clients, mainly garment makers and fashion brands, need to coordinate their production chain to start receiving these fabrics after June. Considering the production cycle in these garment makers, it is estimated that the clothing produced with the fabric launched by Southex in January will be delivered to retail stores (and then available to the consumer) in November, almost one year after Southex has launched the fabric in the market. In order to gather a deep perspective of all matters related to NPD we interview 45 professionals, totaling over 1,600 hours of recorded interviews. 12 insiders, comprising 100% of the team available at that moment, and 33 outsiders from departments such as Marketing, Sales, and Technical Support. Their positions ranged from analysts to directors.. All interviews followed a predefined script of topics. Interviews were transcribed and sent to the corresponding professional for validation, during which they could ask for adjustments. 12 professionals asked for changes in the transcription and we used the changed and approved text, together with the 33 unchanged texts in this analysis. Results and Discussion All texts were then codified according to content, which involved identifying similar topics and applying codes to facilitate analysis of the interviews. Using the predecessors of NP success has facilitated our understanding of the matters related to NPD at Southex. By formatting the presentation of information gathered in the interviews with the predecessors we were able to see the main issues found in NPD. In total, there were 421 mentions codified. After analyzing the codification of the interviews, we can see that Cross function is the main topic addressed by respondents. This is due to the relationship that the flow of NPD activities in the company. As we can see, there were several issues related to the relationship of NP team with the outsiders and that communication amongst insiders and outsiders needs to be improved. There are some context-specific content that appeared as relevant in the analysis of these interviews: insiders are worried with the pressure they feel to forecast fashion preference for products. They say that fashion industry is constantly demanding new technologies, new products, and this has been creating a pressure to accelerate product development they think it is not healthy to the system. Also there is a general worry (insiders and outsiders) with the pressure for price reduction in basic products. Some products are considered basic and are included for several collections (interviewees mentioned that some products are included in more than 15 successive collections) and for these products instead of demanding for innovation, there is a demand for price reduction which leads outsiders to perform tests to substitute materials or changes in the production to reduce costs without prior knowledge from NPD team, which causes several problems in the organization. It is important to point out that even though we used only one company in this study, it was a complete and deep perspective, as we were able to collect high quality data with all 45 professionals that are directly or indirectly related to NPD in the company. Also, as Southex works as a thread and fabric producer, it showed us an insider perspective about the textile supply chain in the fashion business. Even though the exploratory study presented the reality of a firm in an extensive and very detailed way, it may not reflect the full complexity of other organizations in the market; thus, caution is advised if applied in a market that differs deeply from the scenario presented in this study. However, it is also important to remember that this is a qualitative approach where generalization is not expected, and the attention for details is important.

The choice of strain, substrate, and environmental conditions are fundamental factors that determine the ability of a fungus to develop and produce mushrooms with high quality. The objective of this study was to compare the strains of Lentinula edodes and Ganoderma lucidum originated from South Korea and Brazil in relation to their vegetative development in different culture media, to obtain isolates with high quality. The strains of the two mushroom species from Brazil and South Korea grew slowly, possibly because of abiotic factors or storage technique used. However, it may be concluded that temperature, humidity, light, pH, and nutrients from the substrate, if not regulated appropriately may affect the vegetative species.

The aim of this plan was the creation of a series of forests landscape within the forest-damaged areas in Janggye Neighborhood Park (132,000㎡), located in Jangsu-gun, Jeollabuk-do, for improving the quality of rural landscape and promoting leisure activities. Additional objectives included developing forest-related local festivals and energizing the local economy. In establishing these plans, the researcher considered analyses of the following designating the project areas: forests, types of forest landscape damage, views, landscape quality, and topographical characteristics. Local residents were given survey questions, and 58 sets of response sheets were incorporated into the construction plans for the forest landscape. The goal of the plan was established as the construction of specialized forests that offer outstanding landscape quality and healing effects. The selected trees were the Acer palmatum Thunb. (beautiful foliage), Chamaecyparis obtusa (outstanding healing effects), and Koelreuteria paniculata Laxm. (related festival applicability). The Acer palmatum Thunb. forest design reflects consideration for the highlighting of seasonal landscape changes and wintertime outdoor ambulation; thus, its location is planned along the trail in linear. Considerations for the Chamaecyparis obtusa forest were visitor accessibility and distribution of phytoncide; hence, placement is mostly in the valley near existing park facilities, with trees placed in rows for user convenience. For visual impact, the Koelreuteria paniculata Laxm. forest must be seen from nearby highways; thus, it was allocated to the higher elevation sites within forest-damaged areas using natural-looking patterns of planting. Local festivals featuring the Chamaecyparis obtusa and Koelreuteria paniculata Laxm. forests as themes were planned. Such programs were envisioned as contributing to revitalization of rural economy.

This study analyzed the use suitability with regard to resource characteristics of provincial parks to provide basic data for park management, and has yielded the following results. Organized by resource, the use suitability is highest for landscape/scenery, weather/climate, smell/sound/colors, and topography/ geology. By season, weather/climate is important in the spring, and landscape/scenery is important in the summer and autumn in determining the use suitability. Aside from the temporary phenomena of the weather/climate, the resource that most influences the use suitability of provincial parks is landscape/scenery for spring, summer, and autumn. Specifically, on a park basis, Mt. Moak’s most important resource for park use suitability is the weather/climate; other parks’ most important resource is landscape/scenery. Mt. Moak and Mt. Seonun Provincial Parks have high use suitabilities in the spring; Mt. Daedun and Mt. Mai Provincial Parks have high use suitabilities in the spring and summer. Organizing parks on a seasonal basis, there are differences depending on the resource type; moreover, there are differences in use suitability between parks depending on the season. Through evaluating the use suitability of parks, it is possible to identify resource characteristics of parks and to predict the seasonal use frequency of parks in park management, which can be used as the basic data for determining the intensity of management. As such, this study can aid visitors in determining which park suits their use purposes, and for managers in determining the priority by which the parks should be managed.

This present contribution examines by means of a discrete event and agent-based simulation the potential of a joint use of resources in the installation phase of offshore wind energy. To this end, wind farm projects to be installed simultaneously are being examined, the impact of weather restrictions on the processes of loading, transport and installation are also taken into consideration, and both the wind farm specific resource allocation and the approach of a resource pool or resource sharing, respectively, are being implemented. This study is motivated by the large number of wind farms that will be installed in the future and by the potential savings that might be realized through resource sharing. While, so far, the main driver of the resource sharing approach has been the end consumer market, it has been applied in more and more areas, even in relatively conservative industries such as logistics. After the presentation of the backgrounds and of the underlying methodology, and the description of the prior art in this context, the network of the offshore wind energy installation phase will be described. This is the basis for the subsequent determination of the savings potential of a shared resource utilization, which is determined by the performance indicators such as the total installation time and degree of utilization of the resources. The results of the simulation show that weather restrictions have a significant effect on the installation times and the usage times of the resources as well as on their degree of utilization. In addition, the resource sharing approach, has been identified to have significant savings potential for the offshore wind energy installation.

Due to the existence of uncertainties and the unknown time variant environmental disturbances for ship course nonlinear control system, the ship course adaptive neural network robust course-keeping controller is designed by combining the backstepping technique. The neural networks (NNs) are employed for the compensating of the nonlinear term of the nonlinear ship course-keeping control system. The designed adaptive laws are designed to estimate the weights of NNs and the bounds of unknown environmental disturbances. The first order commander are introduced to solve the problem of repeating differential operations in the traditional backstepping design method, which let the designed controller easier to implement in navigation practice and structure simplicity. Theoretically, it indicates that the proposed controller can track the setting course in arbitrary expected accuracy, while keeping all control signals in the ship course control closed-loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, the training ship of Dalian Maritime University is taken for example; simulation results illustrated the effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed controller.

Dyes are widely used in various industries including textile, cosmetic, paper, plastics, rubber, and coating, and their discharge into waterways causes serious environmental and health problems. Four different carbon nanostructures, graphene oxide, oxidized multi-walled carbon nanotubes, activated carbon and multi-walled carbon nanotubes, were used as adsorbents for the removal of Nile Blue A (NBA) dye from aqueous solution. The four carbon nanostructures were characterized by scanning electron microscope and X-ray diffractometer. The effects of various parameters were investigated. Kinetic adsorption data were analyzed using the first-order model and the pseudo-second-order model. The regression results showed that the adsorption kinetics were more accurately represented by the pseudo-second-order model. The equilibrium data for the aqueous solutions were fitted to Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms, and the equilibrium adsorption of NBA was best described by the Langmuir isotherm model. This is the first research on the removal of dye using four carbon nanostructures adsorbents.

This paper introduces a nitrogen-doped ordered mesoporous carbon (NOMC) derived from glucosamine with hybrid capacitive behaviors, achieved by successfully combining electrical double-layer capacitance with pseudo-capacitance behaviors. The nitrogen doping content of the fabricated NOMC reached 7.4 at% while its specific surface area (SBET) and total pore volume reached 778 m2 g−1 and 1.17 cm3 g−1, respectively. A dual mesoporous structure with small mesopores centered at 3.6 nm and large mesopores centered at 9.9 nm was observed. The specific capacitance of the reported materials reached up to 328 F g−1, which was 2.1 times higher than that of pristine CMK-3. The capacitance retention rate was found to be higher than 87.9% after 1000 charge/discharge cycles. The supplementary pseudocapacitance as well as the enhanced wettability and conductivity due to the incorporation of nitrogen heteroatoms within the carbon matrixes were found to be responsible for the excellent capacitive performance of the reported NOMC materials.

This study investigated the relationship between class size and students’ participation on the academic performance of senior secondary school students in Nigeria. The population for this study comprised all the Senior Secondary school students in Mainland Local Government Area, Lagos State. The study adopted descriptive survey design and random sampling technique was used in arriving at the selection of two hundred and seventy (270) students and thirty (30) teachers among the population of senior secondary school students in Mainland Local Government Area in Lagos State, which formed the sample of this study. Specifically, students and teachers were randomly selected from six Senior Secondary schools in Mainland Local Government in Lagos State. Forty five (45) Senior Secondary school students and five (5) teachers were randomly sampled from each school. Two self- developed, structured and validated questionnaires (students’ questionnaire and teachers’ questionnaire) of 15 items for teachers’ questionnaire and 18 items for students’ questionnaire were used to collect information from the students and teachers after its validity and reliability were determined. The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, simple percentage while Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient statistical tool was used for hypothesis testing at 0.05 levels of significance. The study revealed that: there is no significant relationship between class size and academic performance. There is significant difference between the students’ participation and their academics performance in secondary schools. There is no significance relationship between students’ perception of class size and the academic performance. There is no significance relationship between teachers’ perception of class size and the students’ academic performance.

Ganglioside GT1b, glycosphigolipids with three sialic acid, is known to play an important role in signal transduction such as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). EGF is also known to induce resumption of meiosis and cumulus cells expansion during porcine oocyte maturation. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the effects of ganglioside GT1b on resumption of meiosis and cumulus cells expansion in porcine oocyte maturation. First, porcine cumulus-oocyte complexes were cultured in NCSU-23 medium supplemented with GT1b (0, 1, 2 and 4 μM) at 44 h. We observed that the proportion of the metaphase II (M II) stage was significantly increased in the 2 μM GT1b (78.0 ± 2.3) treated group than in the other groups. Furthermore, expression of cumulus cells expansion factor genes (Has2, TNFAIP6, Ptx3) were significantly increased in the 2 μM GT1b treated group than in the other groups. Next, we investigated the meiotic maturation and the expressions of cumulus cells expansion factor genes after GT1b and/or EGF treatment. The proportion of the M II stage was significantly higher in the GT1b+EGF (90.1 ± 2.3) treated group than in the other groups. Moreover, expressions of cumulus cells expansion factor genes were significantly increased in the GT1b+EGF treated group than in the control group. After in vitro fertilization, fertilization rate, preimplantation development competence and quality of blastocyst were improved in oocytes derived from GT1b+EGF treated group. Taken together, these results suggest that exogenous ganglioside GT1b improving the developmental competence of porcine embryos via increase of resumption of meiosis and cumulus cells expansion during in vitro maturation of porcine oocytes.

With increasing interests on health issues, whole grains are getting focus with their various beneficial effects along with unique characteristics. Studies on whole grains, however, are mostly focused on whole wheat grains, no systematic researches on whole rice grain has been attempted. In this study, we tried to characterize the starches in whole rice grain including morphology, molecular weight distribution and its side chain structures for further application. Early harvested whole rice grains, named as green whole rice (GWR) was coarsely grounded and starch fraction was separated through alkaline steeping method and dried for the analysis. Morphology of starch particles of GWR was investigated with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and no significant differences was observed compared to the control rice starches. Pre-treatments such as dehulling and steaming also did not affect overall shape of starches in rice. Molecular weight distribution of GWR starch was analyzed with gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and compared with normal rice starch. GPC analyses revealed that the relative ratio of higher molecular weight fractions in GWR was significantly higher than normal rice. In addition, side chain structures of amylopectin molecules in GWR starch was analyzed with high performance size exclusion chromatography (HPSEC). The average number of DP in GWR was shorter with higher ratio of shorter side chain fractions than normal rice starch. These findings on GWR starch would be useful basement for following research and application of green whole rice.

Cryptography is a science to maintain the security of the message by changing data or information into a different form, so the message cannot be recognized. Today, many algorithms have been proposed for image encryption, but the chaotic encryption methods have a good combination of speed and high security. In recent years, the chaos based cryptographic algorithms have suggested some new and efficient ways to develop secure image encryption techniques. The chaos-based encryption schemes are composed of two steps: chaotic confusion and pixel diffusion. In the chaotic confusion stage, a combination of the chaotic maps is used to realize the confusion of all pixels. In this paper, we first give a brief introduction into chaotic image encryption and then we investigate some important properties and behaviour of the logistic map. The logistic map, aperiodic trajectory, or random-like fluctuation, could not be obtained with some choice of initial condition. Therefore, a noisy logistic map with an additive system noise is introduced. The proposed scheme is based on the extended map of the Clifford strange attractor, where each dimension has a specific role in the encryption process. Two dimensions are used for pixel permutation and the third dimension is used for pixel diffusion. In order to optimize the Clifford encryption system we increase the space key by using the noisy logistic map and a novel encryption scheme based on the Clifford attractor and the noisy logistic map for secure transfer images is proposed. This algorithm consists of two parts: the noisy logistic map shuffle of the pixel position and the pixel value. We use times for shuffling the pixel position and value then we generate the new pixel position and value by the Clifford system. To illustrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme, various types of security analysis are tested. It can be concluded that the proposed image encryption system is a suitable choice for practical applications.

The aim of the work was to investigate the thermo-electrical properties of low cost and rapidly produced randomly oriented carbon/carbon (C/C) composite. The composite body was fabricated by combining the high-pressure hot-pressing (HP) method with the lowpressure impregnation thermosetting carbonization (ITC) method. After the ITC method step selected samples were graphitized at 3000°C. Detailed characterization of the samples’ physical properties and thermal properties, including thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity, specific heat and coefficient of thermal expansion, was carried out. Additionally, direct current (DC) electrical conductivity in both the in-plane and through-plane directions was evaluated. The results indicated that after graphitization the specimens had excellent carbon purity (99.9 %) as compared to that after carbonization (98.1). The results further showed an increasing trend in thermal conductivity with temperature for the carbonized samples and a decreasing trend in thermal conductivity with temperature for graphitized samples. The influence of the thickness of the test specimen on the thermal conductivity was found to be negligible. Further, all of the specimens after graphitization displayed an enormous increase in electrical conductivity (from 190 to 565 and 595 to 1180 S/cm in the through-plane and in-plane directions, respectively).

Monochamus alternatus (M. alternatus) and Monochamus saltuarius (M. saltuarius) are major vectors for Bursaphelenchus xylophilus in South Korea. When an adult, they are easily distinguishable by several morphological classification. However, it is difficult to identification between M. alternatus and M. saltuarius when they are larvae as they have very similar morphological characters. Thus, they are not easily distinguishable without expertise about Cerambycidae taxonomy. Furthermore, during epidemiological investigation, sometimes, adults or larvae would not be founded in death pine trees. For these reasons, in this experiment, we are able to identified between M. alternatus and M. saltuarius by mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene primers that are specific to 12S rRNA gene fragment of M. alternatus using larvae tissue and frass. Moreover, we had examined whether vectors that were already escaped from dead pine tree have Bursaphelenchus xylophilus or not by multiplex PCR using larva frass that was remained in dead pine tree.

Monochamus alternatus (M. alternatus) and Monochamus saltuarius (M. saltuarius) are major vectors for Bursaphelenchus xylophilus in South Korea. When an adult, they are easily distinguishable by several morphological classification. However, it is difficult to identification between M. alternatus and M. saltuarius when they are larvae as they have very similar morphological characters. Thus, they are not easily distinguishable without expertise about Cerambycidae taxonomy. Furthermore, during epidemiological investigation, sometimes, adults or larvae would not be founded in death pine trees. For these reasons, in this experiment, we are able to identified between M. alternatus and M. saltuarius by mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene primers that are specific to 12S rRNA gene fragment of M. alternatus using larvae tissue and frass. Moreover, we had examined whether vectors that were already escaped from dead pine tree have Bursaphelenchus xylophilus or not by multiplex PCR using larva frass that was remained in dead pine tree.

콩명나방(Maruca vitrata)은 팥과 동부를 포함하는 Vigna 속 작물을 가해하는 해충이다. 다양한 화학 살충제가 이 해충의 유충을 방제하는 데 효과적이다. 특히 Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) 미생물농약이 이 해충을 방제하는 데 가능성을 제시하였다. 그러나 화학농약에 비해서 비교적 느린 살충 효과는 현장 적용에 어려움을 주었다. 본 연구는 Bt의 살충효과를 증가시키기 위해 면역억제제를 첨가하는 방안을 강구하였다. 콩명나방의 면역반응은 혈구세포의 소낭형성으로 분석하였다. 소낭형성 반응은 아이코사노이드 생합성 억제자인 dexamethasone 처리에 의해 현격하게 낮아졌다. 아이코사노이드 생합성 억제자를 합성하여 분비하는 Xenorhabdus nematophila 세균 배양액을 Bt와 함께 처리한 결과 Bt 단독에 비해 살충효과가 크게 증가하였다. 본 연구는 비티플러스 살충제가 콩명나방 방제에 효과적이라 는 것을 제시하였다.