Optimization of the protocorm-like body (PLB) formation of Phalaenopsis and Dendrobium hybrids was performed by determining the effects of plant growth regulators (PGRs) and different parts and division sizes of the PLB. For both genera, the base part was the best for the proliferation of PLBs, yielding the highest number of PLBs on a PGR-free medium for Phalaenopsis and medium containing 0.1μM NAA and 10.0μM BAP for Dendrobium. As regards the division size, four-division sections resulted in a higher PLB formation efficiency for Phalaenopsis, while two-division sections produced a higher PLB formation efficiency for Dendrobium. It is expected that these findings will be applicable to efficient PLB formation of other Phalaenopsis and Dendrobium orchids.

HMR is a home-style food product designed for convenience and cooked outside the home leaving out cumbersome cooking process and consumed at home. The present paper aims to find out factors that influence the consumption of HMR by analyzing data on food consumption during the 3 years between December 2010 and November 2013. Following the classification of Costa et al. (2001), this study categorized HMR products as 3 types as follows: C1 (ready to eat), C2 (ready to heat) and C3 (ready to cook), and examined factors affecting purchase rate and per capita purchase price for each type of HMR product. The results of our analysis show that only the purchase rate of C3 products was influenced by whether the purchaser was housewife with job or not. For those who do not live together with parents, per capita purchase price for HMR was high; and the more they ate out, the higher the purchase rate of HMR was.

The Wolbachia bacterium is one of the best studied reproductive manipulators found in variuos invertebrate taxa. Theoretically it infects two thirds of invertebrates. It is thought to have a huge impact on its hosts’ evolution. The ant is a very successful organism in terrestrial ecosystems especially with its charicteristic sociality. However, the influence of Wolbachia on the animal remains to be paid more attention. This study is to examine Wolbachia infection frequency in some ant species in Korea. The result shows that 9 out of 12 ant species harbor the bacterium. Furthermore, at least two species show polymorphism in their infection status at the colony level. This will be used as a foundation of further study on the interactions between the bacterium and ant species.

The Ceratovacuna aphids are one of the major gall-forming aphids. Four Ceratovacuna aphids have been reported from East Asia including Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. In Korea, only one species, Ceratovacuna nekoashi (Sasaki), has been confirmed amongst the four species, and yet their colonies have been found only from the banana bundle or cats-paw shaped galls on the primary hosts, Styrax trees (Styraceae). Colonies on the secondary hosts (Gramineae) have not been seen from Korea nor confirmed from Taiwan, although they are usually seen from Japan limitedly on stiltgrass Microstegium vimineum. Recently in Korea, a colony consisting of an emigrant and first instar soldiers were found from a grass species, Seteria sp. that have not been reported as a secondary host of C. nekoashi. Identity of C. nekoashi is definite based on morphology of the first instar soldier. Genetic identity is being explored for confirmation.

The study was to examine the variation and pattern of colony components of Vollenhovia emeryi. The total of 38 colonies was collected from 10 locations, including 35 colonies from 9 locations in South Korea and 3 colonies from 1 location in USA. To know colony components variation, we studied the approximate colony size, the approximate number of reproductives: queens, gyne and male, the approximate number of brood during 7 months. The observation period was from September 2012 to March 2013 over the breeding season from July to August. As a result, the study has found that colony components of the 38 colonies are not constant. This also indicates that gynes and males appear during non-breeding season at least in the laboratory condition. There are 4 types of gynes and males emergence: both(31.6%), only gynes(2.6%), only males(28.9%), absence(28.9%). The number of gynes and males of each colony also shows variance. It indicates that Vollenhovia emeryi may show colony components continuum. In this species, fertilized eggs become worker females and males; worker females are diploid but males are haplid because of maternal genomic elimination. Unfertilized eggs become queens which are diploid by clonal reproduction. Therefore, each individual of the sex can exceptionally transfer its own genes. This unique haplodiploid sex determination may create the conflict between queen and male and cause colony components continuum.

Deciding what value to offer to customers is a key managerial task in differentiating a service in the market and in satisfying customer needs better than competitors. This task is more critical for B2B services because customer satisfaction results from both the customer’s actual experience with the service and the ongoing interactions a customer has with the service provider. Previous research supports this view by showing that a service’s performance and relational value offerings are paramount in driving customer satisfaction; however, the distinct effect of each of these value offerings on customer satisfaction has not been fully explained. Using a multi-informant design and data from 173 B2B service firms, our study provides a deeper understanding of how the outcomes of performance and relational value vary at different levels of customer participation and supplier collaboration in a B2B service project. This deeper understanding helps managers to identify precisely the conditions under which a specific configuration of performance and relational value offerings is more or less influential with respect to customer satisfaction.

Openplus have proposed a socially sustainable architecture and programme for Mapo oil reserve tank and its parking lot space. Mapo oil reserve tanks have been abandoned for more than 10 years but they are surrounded by beautiful nature and located in the state-of-the-art city, Mapo of Seoul. Instead of filling the space with programme and construction, Openplus proposed an art MADANG (open space) and art TANKs that will be filled and developed by local artists by leaving the site half empty. Instead, transformed topography and laid-out “service pole” was proposed as infrastructure to enable various size and shape of artist studios at Madang, and “service ring” was proposed as supporting space to enable tank to contain flexible programme in Tanks. Mapo Art Madang, Mapo Art Tank will be built by user themselves amd will build its unique character over time.

Megacities in Asia such as Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore is modern and historical at the same time. Although technologically developed and highly urbanized, these megacities’ urban fabric and life-style heavily rely on human scale – the software of the urban – as its main shaping force. This interesting mixture and contrast is what gives this city its unique characteristics. It is very motivating to find out how the software – human, community & social aspects of everyday life, rather than hardware of the city – built environment itself, drive the evolution of Seoul to such high degree. Through continuous research and workshops, the software part of the city is investigated and the lowest level elements in urban fabrication - human are looked at in two distinguish methods; computational and analogue. Differences and similarities between them are questioned, by investigating the contrast between digital and physical, virtual and actual in the thinking process. The study looks at the formation of urbanism and architecture on the level of local communities, mapping the social data, and trying to approach this idea in multiple level and perspectives.

Various forms of consumer gatherings have been increasingly recognized to collectively organize new marketplaces where consumer value arises from shared experiences of social belonging and togetherness. One such rapidly globalizing retail phenomenon is Restaurant Day, where everyday citizens, in a form of tempered civil disobedience, suspend the rules and regulations of commercial retail to create a one-day restaurant carnival that takes the form of copious pop-up restaurants located throughout city-spaces. An ethnographic exploration of this retail spectacle allows us to reconsider many conventional notions of the retailing discourse and problematize the notion of consumer activism in such contexts.

Prior research has investigated the consumer effects of cash and card payments in service settings, but the growing trend of innovative payment with a mobile device hasn’t been considered in the literature so fare. This article represents one of the first studies that considers the adoption of mobile as a new payment method and investigate how the ‘checkout’ phase affect the shoppers’ overall price image of retail stores (OSPI). Results from our studies show that the ‘checkout’ phase is the ‘moment of truth’ for shoppers judging OSPI. We investigate the effects of cash, card, and mobile payments and show that the less transparent a payment method, the lower OSPI judgments of shoppers. In particular, favorable comparisons of basket prices to shoppers’ mental budgets trigger lower store price perceptions. Subsequently, these results have major implications for retailers aiming to lower their OSPI in customers’ minds.

Advertising signaling theory predicts that the amount that a company invests in advertising impacts on consumers’ perception about the quality of a product (Anand & Shachar, 2009). For this signaling to occur, some specific conditions are necessary, for example, the product must be a repetitive purchasing product and its quality must not be observable at the time of purchase, but only during the consumption of the product (Kirmani & Rao, 2000). Advertising signaling is based on the assumption of a rational consumer, who is expected to perform an objective and deliberate evaluation of the advertising actions, taking into account the amount invested by the company in the advertisement production and media and the level of investments applied by competitors in the same market to perceive the quality signals. However, this strictly rational perspective has been questioned since Simon (1947, 1955) demonstrated that humans’ rationality is limited by several factors, such as cognitive resources and selective memory, which may influence judgments and decision making. More recently, researchers have argued that affect is also a source of bounded rationality, playing an important role in the way people think and make decisions (e.g., Hanoch, 2002; Kaufman, 1999; Muramatsu & Hanoch, 2005). The objective of the present research is to examine advertising signaling theory through the consumer information processing perspective, exploring the influence of the following three variables on these processes: the individual’s mood, the level of information asymmetry about the product’s attributes and the individual’s gender. The study was applied to 390 undergraduate students in France. Three factors were manipulated in the study: the advertising investment, which was manipulated in three levels (below, the average and above the market average advertising investments for similar campaigns), the subject’s mood (two levels, positive and negative) and the level of information asymmetry about the product’s attributes (two levels, high information asymmetry and low information asymmetry). Thus, the research had a 3 x 2 x 2 experimental design. Respondents were asked to declare their gender, which was considered in a subsequent analysis. Students were approached in the university and invited to participate in the study. Twelve booklet models (each booklet contained the activities and scales related to one experimental group) were randomly distributed among the respondents who accepted to participate of the study. The results of an ANOVA analysis showed main effects of mood (F (1, 376) = 13.31, p < .001), level of information asymmetry (F (1, 376) = 135.00, p < .001) and advertising investment (F (2, 376) = 31.06, p< .001) on the respondents’ quality perception. These main effects were obtained in a context of two significant interactions, between the advertising investment and mood (F (2, 376) = 3.68, p < .050) and mood and information asymmetry about the product (F (1, 376) = 19.05, p < .001). Regarding the first significant interaction, the results showed that subjects who were informed that the advertising investment was below the market average showed similar means of product evaluation whether they were in a positive (M = 5.47) or negative (M = 5.46) mood (F (1, 364) = .000, p > .10). Those who were informed that the advertising investment was at the market average evaluated the product as significantly better when in a positive (M = 6.40) than a negative (M = 5.91) mood (F (1, 364) = 6.29, p < .05). In the same way, respondents who were informed that the advertising investment was above the market level evaluated the product as significantly better when they were in a positive (MPA = 6.94) than a negative (MNA = 6.19) mood (F (1, 364) = 14.32, p < .001). The interaction between the individual’s mood and the level of information asymmetry about the product demonstrated that subjects who were exposed to a slight level of information asymmetry, receiving some information about the product’s attributes, showed similar means of product evaluation whether they were in a positive (M = 6.71) or a negative (M = 6.74) mood (F (1, 364) = .04, p > .10). By contrast, those who were not given any information about the product characteristics, being exposed to a severe level of information asymmetry, evaluated the product as significantly better when in a positive (M = 5.83) than a negative (M = 4.96) mood (F (1, 364) = 27.63, p < .001). A second ANOVA model was conducted to examine the influence of the advertising investment and the individual’s gender on the perceived product quality. The results showed main effects of the advertising investment (F (2, 376) = 31.56, p < .001) and gender (F (1, 376) = 9.77, p < .005) on the subjects’ quality perception. These main effects were qualified by a significant interaction between the advertising investment and the subjects’ gender (F (2, 376) = 5.28, p < .010). Women evaluated the product quality as better (MW = 5.81) than men (MM = 4.71) in the context of advertising investments below the market average (F (1, 370) = 19.05, p < .001). This difference disappeared in the contexts of advertising investment at the market average (MW = 6.19, MM = 6.14, F (1, 370) = .04, p > .10) and above the market average (MW = 6.70, MM = 6.52, F (1, 370) = .55, p > .10), in which men and women showed similar means of perceived product quality. The results show that positive mood influences in the individuals’ perceived product quality specifically in situations of advertising investment at the market average and above the market average. When individuals were informed that a level of advertising below the market average was invested, they demonstrated similar means of product evaluation irrespective of their mood. By contrast, in situations in which they were informed that the company invested approximately the same as competitors in similar advertising campaigns, or even above this amount, respondents who were in a positive mood evaluated the product as significantly better than those who were in a negative mood. The fact that the advertising investment interacts with the individual’s mood suggests that both variables are likely processed by the same information processing route, namely, the peripheral route (Elaboration Likelihood Model, Petty, Cacioppo and Schumann, 1983). That is, although individuals are expected to compute the information related to the advertising investment through the central route, the signal emitted through the advertising investment is more likely processed by the peripheral route. Thus, this signal is also a heuristic element on which individuals based their product evaluations. Our findings also demonstrate gender differences in the processing of the information signaled through the advertising investment only in situations of advertising investment below the market average. In the contexts in which the advertising investment was manipulated below the market average, women evaluated the product as better than men. Nevertheless, in situations in which the advertising investments were manipulated at the market average and above the market average, men and women showed similar levels of perceived product quality. An explanation for this effect is that women are better able than men to process the information sent through the advertising investment and, thus, to perceive the advertising signal only at a specific level of advertising investment. Above a certain level of advertising investment, men are as motivated as women to process this information, causing the gender differences to disappear. This finding is consistent with the Selectivity Model (Meyers-Levy, 1989), which predicts that some situational elements may stimulate men and women to engage in an effortful and detailed processing of the information that can eliminate the differences between the genders. Thus, in situations in which the investment in advertising is sufficient to encourage both women and men to process it, the genders become equally sensitive to the advertising signaling.

This study examines how consumer trust across multiple customer interaction channels, company management policies, and customer previous experience affect service renewal, loyalty. Structural equation modeling of an online survey of 657 US insurance and mobile telecomm consumers confirmed the importance of the three antecedents and that the impact of the three interaction channels differed in the two service contexts.

K+ channels are involved in the regulation of a variety of physiological functions, including proliferation, apoptosis and differentiation, in mammalian cells. Our previous study demonstrated that the blockage of K+ channels inhibits mouse early embryonic development. This study was designed to identify the effect of K+ channels during bovine embryonic development. K+ channel blockers (tetraethylammonium (TEA), BaCl2, quinine, ruthenium red and fluoxetine) were added to the culture medium during in vitro fertilization (IVF) for 6 h to first identify the short-term effect of these chemicals. Among K+ channel blockers, fluoxetine, which is used as a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, significantly increased the blastocyst formation rate by approximately 6% when compared to control. During the in vitro maturation (IVM) of immature oocytes and the in vitro culture (IVC) of embryos, the oocytes and embryos were exposed to fluoxetine for either a short-term (6 h) or a long-term (24 h) to compare the embryonic development in response to exposure time. The 6 h exposure to fluoxetine during IVM did not affect the blastocyst formation rate, but the rate of blastocyst formation was reduced after the 24 h exposure. On the other hand, embryonic development increased approximately 10% in both groups of embryos exposed to fluoxetine for 6 and 24 h during IVC. Taken together, fluoxetine treatment during IVF and IVC, but not IVM, enhances bovine embryonic development. These results suggest that fluoxetine-modulated signals in oocytes and embryos could be an important factor towards enhancing bovine embryonic development.

This study used focus group transcripts and blog entries to explore the experiences of five Korean community college students in a course designed to promote second language (L2) writing development. To provide an in-depth look at this experience from the learner’s perspective, the author was “embedded” in this writing course, taking on the role of participant-researcher. Through multiple readings and coding of data from focus groups and students’ shared blogs, five relevant themes emerged from the students’ discourse: internalization; depersonalization; simplification; bonding; and approbation. From consideration of the students’ perspectives on their experiences in the writing class, suggestions for improving the experience of Korean and other L2 writing students are proposed, including use of relevant and accessible writing topics. The cohesiveness established through the discussion activities in the current study may have benefited participants’ motivational and strategic adaptation, suggesting that such sharing of experiences could be helpful for L2 writing students.

This article reviews the US Supreme Court cases regarding detention of alleged terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and examines the interplay between international human rights law and the American Constitution with respect to the executive policies of the Bush Administration to detain terror suspects. The article first references the international human rights legal framework regarding detainees, specifically the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and then analyzes seminal cases brought before the Supreme Court by detainees, specifically how the Supreme Court interprets the US Constitution and international law in reaching its decisions regarding detainees at Guantanamo. While the Supreme Court provided detainees the right to challenge the legality of their detentions through habeas corpus petitions, limitations still exist as to the lack of extraterritorial application of rights protections as well as the domestic judicial failure to redress detainees’ subjection to torture and other abusive treatment.