Introduction Drawing from Kahneman and Tversky’s, (1979) prospect theory, this conceptual paper attempts to go beyond our knowledge of how consumers understand, perceive, use, and apply nutritional information on nutritional labels especially at the point of purchase (Cowburn & Stockley, 2005; Grunert & Wills, 2007; Miller & Cassady, 2015) to examine whether a health-conscious consumer’s food product choice decision will largely be based on negative or positive nutrients on the nutritional label. This has become necessary because of the criticality of consumers’ decisions regarding nutrition issues to marketers and policymakers (Chen, 2013; Clare & Burghardt, 2015; Ellison et al., 2013) which has resulted in a growing interest in nutritional information issues among researchers. A review of the extant relevant literature also shows that, studies examining how consumers place value on the positive nutrients (those that enhance and improve their health – e.g. Vitamins) and negative nutrients (those that have deteriorating effect on their health – e.g. Fats) and how they affect their purchasing decision are scarce. Conclusion This paper argues that, it is not enough to know how consumers understand, perceive, use and apply the nutritional information especially at the point of purchase etc. shown in the literature. There is the need to go further to examine the influence the nutrient content claim (both positive and negative nutrients) have on consumer nutritional choice decision when purchasing a food product. There is also a need to go beyond the dieting and ill consumers who because of their conditions seek specific nutrients in their foods and consider the larger consumer segment who are health-conscious by taking Burton and Andrews (1996) and Baltas’ (2001) research a step further. The study provides evidence for the use of prospect theory in nutritional label issues and go a long way to reinforce its application in this regard. The study enables marketers to: gain understanding of what nutrient content claim will cause a consumer to decide to purchase a food product when seen on a nutritional label; shape the format of the nutritional information on nutritional labels for easy use by consumers; and know what to emphasize in communicating nutritional information to their consumers.

Introduction Although hotel employees are trained to deliver the best service, service failures may happen at any time because service is delivered by people to people (Susskind, 2002). Moreover, customers are more impressed by failed services than good services (Titz, 2001). According to the recovery paradox, customers have higher satisfaction level after experiencing a service failure if they receive satisfactory service recovery or compensation (McCollough & Bharadwaj, 1992). With the development of information communication technology and mobile device, customers can receive personalized services in recent days (Migacz, Zou, & Petrick, 2018). They also can easily share their experience on the online review platforms such as TripAdvisor, as well as select hotels based on shared online reviews (Liu & Park, 2015; Nieto-Garaía, Muñoz-Gallego, & González-Benito, 2017). Therefore, it is important for hotel managers to understand the mechanisms for service failure and recovery strategy. Thus, this study aims to examine the relationship between different emotion, customer engagement and brand loyalty under the context from the luxury hotels in China that different service failure compensation strategies are adopted. Particularly, the following two research questions are aimed to be addressed: First, do emotions (anger, regret and helplessness) significantly affect hotel brand loyalty through customer engagement? Second, does compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) significantly affect customer engagement and hotel brand loyalty based on customers’ emotions? The results of this study will benefit industry practitioners for formulating effective service failure recovery strategies. Theoretical frameworks and hypotheses development Stimulus-Organism-Response framework Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework is a commonly used form of behavioral research in which events or occurrences are said to be the result of certain stimulus leading to a certain response, following a set of organism processes (Kim & Lennon, 2013; Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). In behavioral research, the S-O-R theory explains “how” something happens and a variance theory describes “why” (Chiles, 2003). We adopted the S-O-R framework in an attempt to explain the effect of the compensation types (immediate vs. delayed) on hotel brand loyalty. In our research model, customer engagement is used an intervening construct on the causal relationship between emotions of customer (anger and regret as a retrospective emotions, helplessness as a prospective emotion) (Gelbrich, 2010) and hotel brand loyalty. Customer engagement is composed of multidimensional concepts of identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction (So, King, & Spark, 2014). Our model thus explains four basic processes of relationship impact on service failure as “stimulus”, emotions and customer engagement as “organism”, and hotel brand loyalty as “response”. This study also emphasizes compensation type as “moderator”. The model shows how to enhance the understanding of emotions that affect hotel brand loyalty through customer engagement based on the moderating effect of compensations type. Customer engagement It is important for a firm to manage customers to improve a firm’s performance. Customer management has transformed from customer transactions, to relationship marketing, and then engaging customers (Pansari and Kumar 2017). There are different definition about customer engagement and most of them define customer engagement as the activity of the customer toward the firm. For example, Pansari and Kumar (2017) define customer engagement as how customer contributes to the firm by “the mechanics of a customer’s value addition to the firm, either through direct or/and indirect contribution.” Vivek et al. (2012) define customer engagement as “the intensity of an individual’s offerings or organizational activities, which either the customer or the organization initiates” (p.127). It has been discussed that customer engagement has been affected by customer emotion and also has significant impact on behaviour intention and brand loyalty. However it has not been discussed under service failure context and when different types of compensation strategies are employed. This study therefore aims to explore this mechanics. Under hospitality context, So, King and Sparks (2014) develop five factors to measure customer engagement: identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction. Since this study also examine hotel guest customers, we adopt the scale of So et al. (2014) due to its comprehensiveness and consistent context. Service failure and emotion Customer emotion is an important antecedent of customer engagement. Currently firms have been shifted their focus from selling products to emotional connection with their customers (Pansari and Kumar 2017). Positive emotion may enhance customer engagement and thereby improve customer loyalty. But when service failure occurs, customers have different negative emotions including anger, frustration, helplessness, regret amongst others. These negative emotions of customers disappoint customers themselves and reduce customer loyalty. Different emotions may have different impact on customer engagement. Anger often refers to the attributes of others such as the service providers (Weiner, 1985) whereas regret often refers to the service failure locus of customer himself/herself such as the customer is regret to choose this service provider (Roseman, 1991). Both anger and regret refer to retrospective emotions and when customer would like to solve questions they may also negative emotion of helplessness which is called prospective emotions (Davidow, 2003; Gelbrich, 2010). This study aims to examine and differentiate the impact of two retrospective emotions of anger and regret and one prospective emotions of helplessness. The first hypothesis is therefore proposed: H1: Anger has negative impact on customer engagement. H2: Regret has negative impact on customer engagement. H3: Helplessness has negative impact on customer engagement. Service failure compensation Though service providers aim to deliver zero fault service, it is inevitable service failure may occur that may bring customers anger and dissatisfaction and damage the customer loyalty thereby. It is found that compensation is an effective way to comfort and delight the dissatisfied customers. Therefore, it is important to formulate effective compensation strategy when service failure occurs. Different compensation strategies such as monetary or nonmonetary (Fu et al. 2015), immediate or delayed compensation (Boshoff, 1997; Davidow, 2003), may be suitable to different contexts/situations. According to prospect theory, a customer is risk-reverse in case of gains. A customer may value products available now more than products obtained in the future due to the higher certainty of the former. Similarly, immediate compensation has less uncertainty than delayed compensation, and therefore is supposed to have higher value. Therefore customers with anger are assumed to have higher customer engagement when immediately compensated. On the other hand, regret customers attribute failure to himself/herself and therefore less expect compensation. The immediate compensation may lead to unfair and thereby less effect than delayed compensation. Therefore immediate compensation may not always be superior over the delayed one under different contexts. We therefore propose the second hypothesis: H1a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between anger and customer engagement. H2a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between regret and customer engagement. H3a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between helplessness and customer engagement. Brand loyalty Brand loyalty refers to the loyalty of a customer toward the brand both behaviourally and attitudinally (Dick and Basu 1994; Li and Petrick 2008; So, King, Sparks, and Wang 2013). It is a key goal of marketing activities, and its antecedents have been extensively examined such as satisfaction, perceived quality, received value, and brand trust, amongst others. Customer engagement, as the activity of a customer toward to a firm, is naturally viewed to influence brand loyalty. This study therefore adopts brand loyalty as the consequence of customer engagement. Furthermore, we would like to examine if compensation types have moderating effect between customer engagement and brand loyalty. We therefore propose below two hypotheses: H4: customer engagement has positive impact on brand loyalty. H4a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between customer engagement and brand loyalty. The research model is shown in Figure 1 where all hypotheses are demonstrated. Our research model is developed based on the S-O-R framework in which emotions are antecedent of customer engagement, and customer engagement impacts hotel brand loyalty. This research model also shows the moderating effects of compensation types has on causal relationships between the aforementioned constructs. Methodology Scenario design Scenario based questionnaire is designed to obtain quantitative data for analysis. Based on the interview with hotel managers/operators, one service failure scenario and two compensation scenarios (immediate and delayed) are designed. In-depth interviews with a couple of hotel managers and guests were conducted to verify the realisation of the scenarios formulated. The questionnaire begins with a screening question: in the previous 12 months have you ever had experience staying in a four- or five-star hotel? The survey would only continue if the answer is “yes”. Then the participant is asked to write down the name of this hotel and read the below service failure scenario thereby. Service failure scenario: Imagine you have checked into this hotel again. During your stay in hotel, you send your coat for laundry. It is a nice coat and you bought it a year ago with the price of 1000RMB. However when you collect the cleaned coat, you notice that there is a damage on your coat which makes you cannot dress this coat anymore. You therefore call the service counter for complain. Immediate and delayed compensation scenarios were designed as follows: Immediate compensation scenario: after 15 minutes, the duty manager of the hotel went to our hotel and expressed his sincere apology. You showed him about the damage and informed him the original price of your coat. The manager offered you the cash compensation with the original price of your coat and you agree with this. After half an hour you received 1000RMB cash as the compensation. Delayed compensation scenario: after 15 minutes, the duty manager of the hotel went to your room and expressed his sincere apology. You showed him about the damage and informed him the original price of your coat. The manager said according to the hotel policy, they need to check how this happened and confirm the price of your coat first before making the compensation for you. After two weeks you left the hotel, you received 1000RMB compensation which is transferred into your bank account directly. Participant emotion is measured after the participants read the service failure scenario and before they read the compensation scenario. Each participant is randomly assigned to be involved in one compensation scenario only. Customer engagement and hotel brand loyalty are measured after the compensation happened. Variable measurement Customer engagement is measured using 25-item scale developed by So et al. (2014) in which five factors are involved: identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction. Particularly, identification is measured by four attributes: “When someone criticizes this brand, it feels like a personal insult”, “When I talk about this brand, I usually say we rather than they”. “This brand’s successes are my successes”. “When someone praises this brand, it feels like a personal compliment”. Enthusiasm is measured by five attributes: “I am heavily into this brand”. “I am passionate about this brand” “I am enthusiastic about this brand” “I feel excited about this brand” “I love this brand”. Attention is measured by five attributes: “I like to learn more about this brand” “I pay a lot of attention to anything about this brand” “Anything related to this brand grabs my attention” “I concentrate a lot on this brand” “I like learning more about this brand” . Absorption is measured by five attributes: “When I am interacting with the brand, I forget everything else around me” “Time flies when I am interacting with the brand” “When I am interacting with brand, I get carried away” “When interacting with the brand, it is difficult to detach myself” “In my interaction with the brand, I am immersed” “When interacting with the brand intensely, I feel happy”. Interaction is measure by five attributes: “In general, I like to get involved in brand community discussions” “I am someone who enjoys interacting with likeminded others in the brand community” “I am someone who likes actively participating in brand community discussions” “In general, I thoroughly enjoy exchanging ideas with other people in the brand community” “I often participate in activities of the brand community”. Three emotion of anger, regret and helplessness are included as the measurement of emotion. Particularly, according to Gelbrich (2010), three attributes are adopted to measure anger “I would feel angry with the hotel/hotel employees”, “I would feel mad with the hotel/hotel employees”, and “I would feel furious about the hotel/hotel employees”. Three statements are employed to measure regret (Tsiros & Mittal 2000): “I would feel sorry for choosing this hotel”, “I regretted choosing this hotel”, and “I should have chosen another hotel”. Four statements are used to measure helplessness (Gelbrich 2010): “I would feel helpless”, “I would feel lost”, “I would feel defenceless”, and “I would feel stranded.” Five statements are used to measure brand loyalty (So, King, Sparks, & Wang 2013): “I would say positive things about this brand to other people.” “I would recommend this brand to someone who seeks my advice.” “I would encourage friends and relatives to do business with this brand.” “I would consider this brand my first choice to buy services.” “I would do more business with this brand in the next few years.” A seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (=disagree strongly) to 7 (=agree strongly) is adopted for all measurement. Data collection and analysis method In-depth interview with managers from upscale hotels and customers will be used to finalize scenarios. Opinions of academic experts will be used to revise variable measurements and questionnaires. Convenience sampling method will be adopted to obtain about 400 respondents who has experience of staying at four- or five-stars hotels in China in the previous year. Regarding with data analysis, Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used to test the hypotheses proposed. Expected results The manipulation check has been conducted to verify the scenarios designed. The negative relationship between emotions and customer engagement are expected and compensation timing (delayed or immediate) may moderate this relationship. Most importantly, it is expected that this moderating effect varies when different emotions and customer engagement are examined. Contributions The theoretical contributions have three folders. Firstly, this study first considers compensation timing into the examination of relationship between different negative emotions and customer engagement, after service failure occurs. Secondly, this study adopts stimulus-organism-response theory to explore the mechanism how service failure could be well recovered by relationships of different negative emotions, effective compensation type, customer engagement, and brand loyalty. Thirdly, this study applies second order factor for the measurement of customer engagement and also divides negative emotions into retrospective and prospective ones to shed light on customer engagement in the context of service failure and compensation. The practical implication of this study will benefit industry practitioners for their formulation of compensation strategies. Especially as the development of big data, hotel industry is able to adopt different strategies for individuals to maximize customer experience. The findings of this study could propose different strategies for different situations/individuals thereby.

The present research is seeking to enhance their customers’ brand attitudes, especially in terms of which type of products should be their focus for customers with varying storytelling elements. Storytelling in marketing is critical for business, because it is a cornerstone for building strong relationship in the modern world. Storytelling elements also influence consumers’ emotional responses to brand. Besides, organization of information in an advertising narrative might influence the consumer's choice of an appropriate information-processing strategy (Mattila 2000), the narrative message of a story will affect consumer’s preference for a brand, thereby affects consumer’s purchase intention. However, despite some elements have been discussed in previous studies related to narratives (Chatman 1978; Papadatos 2006), we do not understand exactly why or when customers respond to stories. Therefore, to examine the storytelling effectives of different types of reversal factors, this research investigates the influence of different types of stories on brand attitudes in marketing. In sum, by studying the elements of reversal stories, this expected outcomes of this research intends to provide researchers and practitioners implications: 1. design a successful brand story can enhance corporate image and attract more consumers. 2. In practice, marketers need to combine storytelling factors with different products, and manipulate them with different weights to design the optimal advertisements or marketing campaign. 3. This study would be aroused the interesting to investigate other story elements and how these elements to affect brand attitudes.

This study was conducted to examine the influences of two human chorion gonadotrophins (hCGs) being injected into young or aged (45- to 65-week old) outbred (ICR) mice on developmental capacity of oocytes retrieved. In vitro-culture and parthenogenetic activation of oocytes retrieved were employed for the assessment. Superovulation was determined as being induced when more than 25 oocytes were retrieved. No aged mice were superovulated, while in contrast, 67-100% were superovulated in the 6- to 8-week-old (young) mice. In the aged, hCG injection yielded better retrieval (5 vs. 13 to 14.8 oocytes/mouse). Overall, no significant difference between two hCGs was detected but between the young and aged, significant differences in maturational arrest (0% vs. 39% MI arrest and 46% vs. 15% degeneration) and developmental capacity (24% vs. 46% 8-cell embryo development) were detected. In conclusion, hCG injection contributes to increasing oocyte retrieval from aged outbred mice, but the kinds of gonadotrophin influenced the efficiency of hyperstimulation induction in specific ages.

Soybean straw (SS)-based activated carbon was employed as a precursor to prepare carbon molecular sieves (CMSs) via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique using methane as carbon source. Prior to the CVD process, SS was activated by 0.5 wt% ZnCl2, followed by a carbonization at 500°C for 1 h in N2 atmosphere. N2 (77 K) adsorption-desorption and CO2 (273 K) adsorption tests were carried out to analyze the pore structure of the prepared CMSs. The results show that increasing the deposition temperature, time or methane flow rate leads the decrease in N2 adsorption capacity, micropore volume and average pore diameter of CMSs. The adsorption selectivity coefficient of CO2/CH4 achieves as high as 20.8 over CMSs obtained under the methane flow rate of 30 mL min–1 at 800°C for 70 min. The study demonstrates the prepared CMSs are a candidate adsorbent for CO2/CH4 separation.

Large-size graphene samples are successfully prepared by combining ultrosonic assisted liquid phase exfoliation process with oxidation-deoxidation method. Different from previous works, we used an ultrasound-treated expanded graphite as the raw material and prepared the graphene via a facile oxidation-reduction reaction. Results of X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy confirm the crystal structure of the as-prepared graphene. Scanning electron microscopy images show that this kind of graphene has a large size (with a diameter over 100 μm), larger than the graphene from graphite powder and flake graphite prepared through single oxidation-deoxidation method. Transmission electron microscopy results also reveal the thin layers of the prepared graphene (number of layers ≤3). Furthermore, the importance of preprocessing the raw materials is also proven. Therefore, this method is an attractive way for preparing graphene with large size.

Education is undoubtedly the greatest instrument which man has devised for his own progress. All societies have one form of education or another but the use to which it is put varies. This study investigated study habits, academic locus of control and self-efficacy as correlates of academic achievement among undergraduate students of the University of Lagos, Nigeria. A descriptive research survey was utilised for the study. The sample consisted of 524 undergraduate students selected from five faculties through proportional stratified random sampling technique. Three research questions and corresponding hypotheses were tested at .05 significant level while data were generated using standardized psychological tests which are Internal Control Index (ICI), Self-Efficacy Scale (SES), Study Habit Inventory (SHI) and Cumulative Grade point Average (CGPA) of the participants. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient Statistics was used to analyse the data. Results obtained showed a significant relationship between study habits, locus of control, self-efficacy and academic achievement among undergraduate students of the University of Lagos, Nigeria. It was recommended that parents, lecturers and the stakeholders on the campus and in the society at large should empower the undergraduate students to match both external and internal locus of control by self-efficacy, competence and effective study habits to achieve their academic goals.

With the rapid development of the global economy, transport safety and security have become the key issues in maritime transportation all over the world. In practical applications, the Automatic Identification System (AIS)-based measurement of similarities between different vessel trajectories plays an important role in improving maritime transportation, e.g., maritime navigation, maritime supervision and management. However, the received AIS datasets are usually composed of a large amount of redundant information which could significantly increase the computational complexity. To deal with this problem, a Douglas-Peucker (DP)-based calculation method is introduced in this paper to accurately compress the spatio-temporal AIS trajectories while preserving the main geometrical structures. Based on the compressed trajectories, it is able to accelerate the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm for the measurement of similarities between different vessel trajectories. In particular, the combination of DP and DTW has the capacity of significantly reducing the computational cost and guaranteeing the accuracy of similarity measures. The experimental results have demonstrated the superior performance of the proposed method in terms of computational cost and accuracy of similarity measures.

β-glucosidase is an enzyme that hydrolyzes glycosidic bonds to generate terminal non-reducing residues in β-D-glucosides and oligosaccharides. These enzymes are used to degrade the plant cell walls of plant biomass. The 170 lactic acid bacteria isolated from beachu kimchi were examined for their β-glucosidase activity(E.C. 3.2.1.21.). Among the tested lactic acid bacteria, 48 strains utilized cellobiose as a carbon source. The highest β-glucosidase activity was 0.0537±0.0021(U/mg protein) in MSE129. MSE129 was identified to be Weissella koreenisis using 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis.

With special condition in the geography, maritime industry is improvement rapidly in the planet, which is covered by approximately 360,000,000 km2 of Saline water. Together with the development of this field, freight transportation industry becomes one of the most important service in the world as well as in Hai Phong. Meanwhile the number of company and quality of service increased due to the demanding of citizen, the price for this activities also raised.

The comstock mealybugs had been occurred at a Muscat of Alexandria’ organic vineyard in Okcheon. They had beenfound in the vines’s trunk since mid-June and moved to cane and leaves since early July, and also had been found ingrape clusters since late-July. The number of comstock mealybug and the grape’s fruit damage in Eco-friendly vineyardswere higher than in conventional culture vineyard. And the marketability of green variety grape was more damaged fromcomstock mealybug than the black variety grape. Toxicities of 8 organic agricultural materials(OAM) were evaluated tocomstock mealybug at the recommended concentration. As a results, Lightyellow sophora and Derris extracts exhibitedstrong insecticidal activity with 100% mortality. When the Lightyellow sophora extract was uniformly distributed on thevine from early-July to mid-July, commercial grapes could be harvested. Therefore, I thought that we can control comstockmealybug by spraying OAM in a timely period.

Hypsizygus marmoreus (Peck) H.E. Bigelow is a typical white-rot fungus and is widely cultivated in China and Japan. In this study, the genome of a monokaryon strain HM26-F1 was sequenced using Illumina and Pacbio platforms. The genome sequences of 32,238,363 bp with 49.40% G+C content were obtained and 14,443 gene models coding for proteins were determined. The divergence time was 144 million years ago (MYA) and diverged from other fungi belonging to Agaricales around the late of Jurassic Period. 363 carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) genes were detected in this genome. And there were higher number of class II peroxidases (11) and multicopper oxidases (22) for degrading lignin. In addition, 418 genes were enriched involving in purine metabolism for IMP and GMP synthesis. And, there were 7 secondary metabolite clusters in the genome, including 3 terpene, 2 polyketide biosynthase, 1 nonribosomal peptide synthetase and 1 siderophore. Combining Hiseq 2500 and Pacbio platforms resulted in a more complete and less fragmented genome. H. marmoreus had high abilities to degrade lignocellulose. IMP and GMP may be the basis of the crab flavor. Information obtained from this study enhances our knowledge about degradation mechanisms of lignocellulose and secondary metabolism.

Mushrooms have been valued as a traditional source of natural bioactive compounds for centuries and have recently been exploited for potential components in cosmetics industry. Numerous mushrooms and their ingredients have been known to be beneficial to the skin and hair. The representative ingredients are as follows: phenolics, polyphenolics, terpenoids, selenium, polysaccharides, vitamins and volatile organic compounds. These compounds show excellent antioxidant, anti-aging, anti-wrinkle, skin whitening, and moisturizing effects which make them ideal candidates for cosmetics products. This review provides some perspectives of mushrooms (and/or extracts) and their ingredients presently used, or patented to be used, in both cosmeceuticals for topical administration and nutricosmetics for oral administration. With the small percentage of mushrooms presently identified and utilized, more mushroom species will be discovered, verified, and cultivated in the future, boosting the development of relevant industry. Combining with progress in genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and systems pharmacology, mushrooms can find their way into cosmetics with multiple approaches.

This study develops a framework that links commitment, relationship investment, relationship learning, functional conflict and innovation orientation to innovation. This framework has three main features. First, it examines the direct effects of commitment and relationship investment on relationship learning. Second, it examines the direct effect of relationship learning on innovation. Third, it investigates the moderating effects of functional conflict and innovation orientation on the relationship between relationship learning and innovation.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is the technique which generates embryos by transferring diploid nucleus into an enucleated oocyte, it has produced specific animals successfully in a variety of species. However, the developmental capacity of SCNT embryos is still relatively lower than that of embryos produced in vivo. Oocyte is a kind of lipid rich cells, its quality limits the efficiency of embryo production. L-carnitine is a co-enzyme facilitating the transportation of long chain fatty acids across the inner mitochondria membrane where fatty acids are used for generating adenosine triphosphate (ATP) via beta-oxidation. It also has antioxidant actions which may protect mitochondrial membranes and DNA against damage induced by reactive oxygen species (ROS). Whether L-carnitine is functional in bovine SCNT embryos are unknown. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the effects of L-carnitine on oocyte maturation and developmental competence of subsequent SCNT embryos. L-carnitine was supplemented during IVM, then intracellular ROS and GSH levels, mitochondrial activity, gene expression of COCs were analyzed at the end of IVM. SCNT embryos were produced subsequently, apoptosis detection and gene expression evaluation were performed in blastocysts. In the results, treatments with 1.5 mM and 3 mM L-carnitine significantly improved maturation rates (P<0.05). Treatments with 3 mM L-carnitine effectively induced improvement in nuclear maturation, intracellular GSH levels and mitochondrial activity, as well as a reduction in intracellular ROS levels (P<0.05). mRNA levels of CPT1A, ACAA1, ACAA2, AREG, EREG, SOD1, GPX4, GLUT1 and CDC2 transcripts were effectively up-regulated by 3 mM L-carnitine treatments (P < 0.05). Similarly, 3mM L-carnitine induced an increase in blastocyst developmental rates and an improvement in blastocyst quality (P<0.05). Our study indicates that L-carnitine treatment during IVM improves oocyte nuclear maturation and subsequent SCNT embryo development.