We reported a new white soybean cyst nematode, Heterodera sojae in 2016. This species is closely related to H. glycineswhich has the same host plant. Morphological observations of the cyst, female, male and second-stage juveniles indicatedthat this species is differed from those of H. glycines. Cysts of H. sojae appeared more round, shining and darker thanthat of H. glycines. The distribution of this new cyst nematode in soybean field in Korea is unknown yet. In 2016, 270soil samples were collected from soybean fields and examined the existence of H. glycines and H. sojae. Total of 111samples (41.1%) contained cysts. Among them 77% were H. glycines and 23% were H. sojae. Our results suggest thatextensive researches are required for white soybean cyst nematode.

The exosomes are the most studied nanometer-sized extracellular vesicles (40-100 nm) in eukaryotic cell. Exosomeharbors various molecular components of their cell origin, including nucleic acids and proteins, and it is involved in intraand intercellular communication. These characteristics make exosomes to be a prospective biomarkers, therapeutic agents,or drug delivery vehicles. Edible insect industry is rapidly growing up in Korea. The insect exosomes were isolated fromthe larvae of Korean rhinoceros beetle, Allomyrina dichotoma, and White-spotted flower chafer, Protaetia brevitarsis, sothat they can be used for diagnosis of insect disease. The stable preservation of exosome is very important for diagnosisand research, especially for long term storage. Here, the stable recovery of exosome isolated from hemolymph of A. dichotomalarva was evaluated by analyzing exosomal protein and RNA after storage in -70°C for three months.

Insects are attracting the attention of alternative sources of protein. In order to produce high quality insects, studieson the development of safe and nutritious feed sources are needed. Given the cost of rearing insects, agricultural andindustrial by-products were good materials of insect feed. In the current study, Citrus unshiu peel (CP), soybean curdcake (SCC), soybean oil meal (SOM), and brewers dried grain (BDG) were investigated for their effects on larval growthand development of Protaetia brevitarsis. Interestingly, larvae fed on 10% SCC increased their weight by 3.5 times. Forthe larval period, they were significantly shorter than the control. Furthermore, minerals and amino acids were recordedto be high in them. The heavy metals were not detected in any of the investigated groups. These findings provided ascientific basis for the utilization of soybean curd cake as a nutritional feed source to promote larval growth and producequality insects.

Under natural conditions, black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens (L.) (Diptera: Stratiomyidae), colonizes in warm temperateregions. Information on black soldier fly rearing, which is affected by seasonal factors in Korea, is limited. Ovipositionby black soldier flies is dependent on light intensity and wavelength. Therefore, continuous mass rearing of this fly requiresdetermination of optimal artificial conditions of illumination. In this study, we compared the number of eggs laid underan artificial light source (750 watt HPL lamp) versus nature sunlight. Our results showed that compared to ovipositionunder natural sunlight, the use of one or two lamps for 7 hours, resulted in only 43 and 76%, of the total number ofeggs laid under natural sunlight, respectively. The hatching rate under the former was much significantly lower than underthe latter.

H. mamoreus is a mushroom with abundant favor and medicinal use. However, its cultivation has problems such as the long cultivation period, low biological efficiency and microbiological contamination, so new cultivars should be developed. In this study, 55 strains of H.marmoreus were analyzed with ISSR markers to identify precise genetic information in collected germplasm as mother strains in breeding. ISSR 13 and 15 markers were confirmed polymorphism. The three strains (KMC03106, KMC03107, and KMC03108) with white cap color were close genetic relationship in the UPGMA analysis of both the ISSR 13 and 15 markers. Especially in the PCR result of the ISSR 15, the collected germplasm were differentiated to three groups following collecting year. As these results, the ISSR 15 marker would be able to classify the phylogeny of cap color and genetic variation along the collecting year. Therefore ISSR markers will confer effective selection of mother strains for breeding of H. mamoreus.

The hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a leading causative agent of acute hepatitis in humans. Zoonotic HEV strains have been isolated from several animal species, including pigs. New HEV variants have been recently isolated from camels in the Middle East. In the present study, fecal samples from fallow deer, formosan deer, alpaca, and guanaco were analyzed for the detection of HEV. One HEV strain was detected from guanaco, a species of camelids. The nucleotide sequence of guanaco HEV was identical to those of deer HEV-3 strains, which implied the cross-species transmission of HEV-3 from deer to guanaco.

The purpose of this study is to build a rural landscape industrial network system and establish the roles and relationships of stakeholders within that system. The rural landscape industrial network system was set up systematically, based on five business model components: value proposition, target customer, value chain/organization, delivery design, and revenue stream. The roles and relationships of stakeholders were established using a case study of the typical industrialization using rural landscape. The proposed rural landscape industrial network system consists of core industry, auxiliary industry, and the network service industry that connects the two. It was designed to have a system for landscapes to maintain their rurality, with the mutual effects among government agencies and local governments, specialized organizations, local residents, and visitors all described in the industries. Data from the rural landscape industrial network system proposed in this study can be used as baseline data to set the direction for industrialization using the rural landscape at villages.

We performed temperature dependent current-voltage (I-V) measurements to characterize the electrical properties of Au/Al2O3/n-Ge metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) diodes prepared with and without H2O prepulse treatment by atomic layer deposition (ALD). By considering the thickness of the Al2O3 interlayer, the barrier height for the treated sample was found to be 0.61 eV, similar to those of Au/n-Ge Schottky diodes. The thermionic emission (TE) model with barrier inhomogeneity explained the final state of the treated sample well. Compared to the untreated sample, the treated sample was found to have improved diode characteristics for both forward and reverse bias conditions. These results were associated with the reduction of charge trapping and interface states near the Ge/Al2O3 interface.

Social interactions have been established as a means to help promotions and sales for manufacturers and retailers. Word-of-mouth (WOM), in particular, is proven to increase awareness and drive purchases. Given that small offline retailers have limited resources in marketing, online WOM can play a key role for their offline business performance. In this paper, we focus on two types of online WOM, public discussion and social referral, and study their generation processes by taking into account the multichannel context of both online purchases and offline consumption. To this end, we combine data from three sources: product (or deal)-level sales from a major deal site in South Korea, social interaction records collected by web crawling, and retail revenues at a district level from Korea National Statistical Office. We use a multivariate poison lognormal model to estimate three equations in the same structure with correlated errors, which only differs by the following dependent variables: number of product discussion, number of social referral, and the number of social coupons sold. Our empirical analyses suggest the following. First, the two types of WOM respond in opposite directions for the influencers in the multichannel sales context: the greater number of co-located online deals decreases public discussion but increases social referral. Next, the larger offline retail size increases public discussion, but has no significant effect on social referral. Finally, the results provide practical insights that small offline retailers can improve sales in the multichannel context by effectively managing the generation of different types of online WOM.

The research shopping involves making use of multiple channels for a single shopping incident, such as searching from one channel and buying from another (Neslin et al. 2006, Neslin and Shankar 2009, Verhoef, Neslin and Vroomen 2007). This is an opportunistic behavior on the side of the consumers, and may result in an unfair advantage of the retailers in one channel consumers choose to purchase from. For instance, consumers may browse a product in a brick-and-mortar store, making use of the retail space and sales assistance, and proceed to buy online from another retailer which offers lower price. This is called a “showrooming” behavior (when focusing on the consumer), or channel-free riding (when focusing on the business) (Mehra, Kumar, & Raju 2013, Van Baal & Dach 2005). Offline retailers are wary of this phenomena that may lead to higher costs and lower sales, and attempt to discourage it (Rapp et al. 2015). For instance, Borders and Circuit City, the former US national chains with a substantial offline market presence, went out of business presumably due to the showrooming phenomenon (Gustin, 2012; Passariello, Kapner, & Mesco 2014). However, recent studies show that research shopping across multiple channels within one company can be managed and contributes to firm profitability in the long run (Verhoef, Kannan, & Inman 2015, Zheng et al. 2016). Kumar & Venkatesan (2005) reveal that consumers who uses multiple channels are the ones with greater customer lifetime value and with less churn intention (Blattenberg, Malthouse, & Neslin 2009, Stone, Hobbs, & Khaleeli 2002). Neslin & Shankar (2009) suggest a practical discussion on market strategy in which customers who visited offline stores can be encouraged to repeat-purchase or to foster brand involvement by maintaining contact in another channel (e.g., email newsletter). It is particularly desirable to lure online consumers to an offline site, since they tend to make greater amount of purchases in a brick-and-mortar store (Ansari, Mela, & Neslin 2008). In the age of effortless access to and switching among a plethora of channels by consumers, it is critical for a business to understand and make best of the situation. In this regard, understanding consumers in terms of who are more likely to display research shopping tendency is crucial. Depending on whether a person tends to do research shopping, business should suggest and offer different channels for different purposes (Verhoef, Kannan, & Inman 2015, Zheng et al. 2016). For instance, those with high tendency to research shop can be approached in one channel, and nudged to another for purchasing. Those with low tendency should be directed to the final purchasing channel. With this in mind, we aim to investigate research shopping behaviors and individual covariates of these shoppers using individual-level responses. We conducted an online survey in France during September 2014 in cooperation with an anonymous global marketing research firm. The survey focused mainly on exploring customers’ shopping behavior in the apparel industry, as customers’ research shopping behaviors are salient in this industry because of its experiential attributes (Girard, Silverblatt, & Korgaonkar, 2002; Klein, 1998), while traditional patterns of purchasing using only one channel is also prevalent. After a discussion with the research firm about the French apparel industry and main customers’ demographics, we restricted the respondent pool to those between the ages of 25 and 54 who have abundant experience and an active role in apparel shopping. Responses from a total of 400 participants were used in the analyses. The dataset includes individual-level shopping characteristics, demographic information, and the extent of their research shopping behavior. Specifically, each customer was asked about their apparel shopping history (purchase frequency and expenditures on apparel) over the last three months for both offline and online retailers. In addition, demographic information such as gender, age, and educational background were asked. Using multiple questions, we captured shopper’s shopping traits, such as deal-proneness, quality-consciousness, and the degree of their shopping budget flexibility. To explore the individual characteristics of research shoppers, we modeled the probability of being a research shopper using a logistic regression model. From our modeling results, we suggest two notable findings. First, customers’ qualityconsciousness significantly increases their research shopping behavior, while their deal-proneness exerts little to no influence. We conclude this is due to extensive and systematic search tendency shared by quality-conscious customers, based on previous findings in the literature. That is, quality-consciousness induces customers to search carefully across multiple channels to check on multiple quality dimensions of the options at hand, and possibly discover other similar options that may maximize their satisfaction (Lysonski, Durvasula, & Zotos 1996, Sprotles & Kendall 1986, Wesley, LeHew, & Woodside 2006). However, deal-proneness is not associated with research shopping behavior presumably because the one dimension that these customers value (i.e., price) can be easily searched in one channel—the online channel. The literature supports this finding, since studies show that deal-prone customers tend to shop more online (Close & Kukar-Kinney 2010, Devaraj, Fan, & Kohli 2002, Zhou, Dai, & Zhang 2007). We also find that the association between quality-consciousness and research shopping behavior is more pronounced when the shoppers are flexible with their shopping budget. That is, when shoppers are both quality-conscious and willing and able to consider other options or additional items beside the one they have originally planned before shopping, their research shopping tendency is enhanced. We explain that this is because consumer behaviors and decisions are made upon limited resources (e.g., time, effort, and money), and that customers with flexible resources are more likely to extend and manage their choice set (Maity, Dass, & Malhotra 2014, Malhotra 1982). These consumers do not refrain from including options that are better yet more expensive, as they can afford the superior option that suits their tastes (Becker, 1965; Ghose & Han, 2011), and without the fear of creating regrets due to discovering unaffordable options (Lenton, Fasolo, & Todd 2008). We expect our work on research shopping to provide insights to both researchers and practitioners, as today’s multi-channel environment provides opportunities for businesses to manage their customers strategically over several channels they are present in. Therefore, the research is expected to be a useful reference for understanding multi-channel shoppers for the academics, and a valuable guide to retail firms that aim to not only cope with the multi-channel environment but to become a true omni-channel player.

Organometal halide perovskite materials, due to the tunability of their electronic and optical properties by control of composition and structure, have taken a position of significant importance in optoelectronic applications such as photovoltaic and lighting devices. Despite numerous studies on the structure - property relationship, however, practical application of these materials in electronic and optical devices is still limited by their processability during fabrication. Achieving nano-sized perovskite particles embedded in a polymer matrix with high loading density and outstanding photoluminescence performance is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that the careful control of nanoparticle formation and growth in the presence of poly(methyl methacrylate) results in perovskite nanoparticle - polymer nanocomposites with very good dispersion and photoluminescence. Furthermore, this approach is found to prevent further growth of perovskite nanoparticles, and thus results in a more uniform film, which enables fabrication using the perovskite nanoparticles.

The ability of plants to endure environmental stress factors, which are going to be more severe due to global warming, is important especially for forest plants. Because obtain trait of resistance to temperature using conventional breeding for woody plants is a time consuming way. In this study, chloroplast-localized OsHSP26 gene was overexpressed in Populus alba L. to breed tolerant transgenic poplar to temperature stress. The plantlets of OsHSP26-overexpressed transgenic poplar showed more heathy phenotypic response than wild-type plants under both prolonged low- and high-temperature stress. While the SPAD value, which refers chlorophyll content, in wild-type plants decreased depending on the exposure time to the temperature stress, higher SPAD value were shown in the transgenic plants. The contents of total phenolic compounds in the transgenic plants were lower than those of the wild-type plants, and not significantly changed except in the treatment of prolonged low-temperature. However, the total flavonoids contents of the transgenic plants were dramatically increased under prolonged temperature stress. The DPPH scavenging activities of the transgenic plants were higher than those of the wild-type plants under temperature stress. Consequently, it was revealed that overexpressing OsHSP26 allow for P. alba to be tolerant to temperature stress.