Despite growing research interest in consumer health, well-being and beauty, little is known about factors influencing consumer purchase decisions for female fitness devices. This study focuses on Kegel exercises – exercise routines developed by Dr. Kegel to strengthen pelvic floor muscles – that are recommended by health professionals for patients experiencing health ailments such as urinary incontinence, sexual dysfunction, and dissatisfaction. Despite the benefits, women are not well aware of the role of pelvic floor muscles. The diffusion and acceptance of Kegel exercise and devices among women are likely determined by how comfortable women are about obtaining such benefits. For this reason, feminism should play an important role in shaping women’s desire to engage in Kegel exercises. Thus, this research investigates how feminism is related to Millennial women’s engagement with fitness products, particularly Kegel devices. Drawing on the literatures about sexuality, health, and marketing, we propose that feminism positively influences women’s health-related attitudes (i.e., attitudes towards fitness, fitness opinion leadership, attitude toward core strength, and desire to control sex life), which in turn positively impacts women’s fitness engagement. Fitness engagement, in turn, is expected to predict attitudes towards Kegel exercise and Kegel device purchase intentions. On the other hand, women’s attitudes toward core strength and desire to control sex life are proposed to have a direct, positive impact on attitude towards Kegel exercise. Analysis of PLS-SEM shows general support for the hypotheses. We discuss how interest in Kegel devices could, in turn, lead to positive effects on overall physical and psychological health and provide implications for marketing practitioners.

The world-wide need to reduce the energy used and the greenhouse gases emitted during cement manufacture has led to the pursuit of more eco-efficient materials, such as ground granulated blastfurnace slag(GGBS) and fly ash. Especially, GGBS is a by-product generated during the manufacture of pig ions. GGBS can be divided into water-cooled slag(WS) and air-cooled slag(AS). With comparison of WS, the AS is formed by allowing the molten slag to cool relatively slowly under ambient conditions. This study presents experimental findings on the mechanical and durability performance of cement concrete pavement with replacement of cement by WS and/or AS. In order to produce concrete specimens, total replacement of cement by GGBS(WS+AS) was fixed at 40% by mass. Concrete specimens were regularly monitored for the variation of mechanical properties such as flexural strength, compressive strength and initial surface absorption. In addition, in order to assess durability of concrete pavement with WS and/or AS, the chloride ion penetration resistance and scaling resistance tests were adopted, and the corresponding results were compared to those of plain concrete pavement. The test results indicated that the performance of concrete pavement was significantly dependent on the replacement level of WS by AS. Concrete specimens incorporating 20% replacement level of AS showed a poor mechanical performance, while 5% replacement of AS showed a beneficial effect both mechanical and durability performance. Especially, the 5% AS replacement led to the higher resistance of concrete pavement against frost-salt action. Based on the experimental results, the present study would be helpful to design high-performance cement concrete pavement.

Clothing longevity supports sustainability, but the paper questions the implementation of this strategy. The research, based on industry and expert experiences, posits the technical possibility of achieving longer-lasting clothing, but identifies norms of agency and interaction within the global clothing supply chain as factors limiting the business case and processes.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of estrus synchronization to altrenogest regumate (progesterone), PMSG/hCG, and artificial insemination (AI) on galectin-3, FGF-9 gene and protein expression. The morpho-metrical parameters of the endometrium and the number of corpora lutea (CL) were recorded. RNA was isolated from endometrial, oviduct and ovary tissues of non-synchronized (Control; n = 7) and AI synchronized (regumate, PMSG/hCG; n = 7) sows. The total number of CL was higher (P<0.05) in pigs treated with regumate/PMSG/hCG. The content of gelactin-3 and FGF-9 mRNA in pre-embryonic development stages increased on particular days, in control and studied in regumate/PMSG/hCG administered pigs. Gelactin-3 and FGF-9 were affected by regumate/PMSG/hCG treatment in the both pre-embryonic development stages (P<0.001, P<0.05) and encdometrial tissue (P<0.001, P<0.01). The regumate/PMSG/hCG treatment resulted in elevated expression of gelactin-3 (P<0.001) and FGF-9 (P<0.005) in oviduct and ovary tissues in comparison to control sows. Moreover, oviduct amount of gelectin-3 mRNA was higher in regumate/PMSG/hCG sows in comparison to the control group (P<0.05), whereas, expression characteristics of gelactin-3 and FGF-9 were investigated by hematoxylin and eosin stained and immunohistochemical staining. The results showed that galectin-3 and FGF-9 were significantly shown in the endometrium, oviduct and ovary tissues of the regumate/PMSG/ hCG. Presented data show that exogenous hormones administration can affect gene and protein expression in the sow reproductive tract.

We have identified 22 quasars in the AKARI far-infrared all-sky Bright Source Catalogue, using a matching radius of < 10", and excluding matches which are close to foreground extended sources or cirrus. We have confirmed a relation between quasar optical luminosity and far-infrared luminosity which was found in an earlier study. In addition, we have found that the 11 sources which are at redshift z > 1 are magnified with respect to the predicted far-infrared luminosity, and consider this may be due to gravitational lensing. If confirmed, this would provide a new way to identify lenses; if not, we may have identied an interesting new population of extreme starbursting quasars.

We built a 8 μm selected sample of galaxies in the NEP-AKARI eld by defining 4 redshift bins with the four AKARI bands at 11, 15, 18 and 24 microns (0:15 < z < 0:49, 0:75 < z < 1:34, 1:34 < z < 1:7 and 1:7 < z < 2:05) . Our sample contains 4079 sources, 599 are securely detected with Herschel/PACS. Also adding ultraviolet (UV) data from GALEX, we fit the spectral energy distributions using the physically motivated code CIGALE to extract the star formation rate, stellar mass, dust attenuation and the AGN contribution to the total infrared luminosity (LIR). We discuss the impact of the adopted attenuation curve and that of the wavelength coverage to estimate these physical parameters. We focus on galaxies with a luminosity close the characteristic L* IR in the different redshift bins to study the evolution with redshift of the dust attenuation in these galaxies.

The recent updates of the North Ecliptic Pole deep (0.5 deg2, NEP-Deep) multi-wavelength survey covering from X-ray to radio-wave is presented. The NEP-Deep provides us with several thousands of 15 μm or 18 μm selected galaxies, which is the largest sample ever made at these wavelengths. A continuous filter coverage in the mid-infrared wavelength (7, 9, 11, 15, 18, and 24 μm) is unique and vital to diagnose the contributions from starbursts and AGNs in the galaxies out to z=2. The new goal of the project is to resolve the nature of the cosmic star formation history at the violent epoch (e.g. z=1{2), and to find a clue to understand its decline from z=1 to present universe by utilizing the unique power of the multiwavelength survey. The progress in this context is brie y mentioned.

The natural gas market has been expanding in size and has attracted particular attention across the global energy market. Although most natural gas transportation is carried out through pipelines, almost one third of it is done with the help of merchant vessels, capable of carrying liquefied natural gas. These LNG carriers have a special design and thus can be treated as a separate class of global fleet. New vessels are huge capital investments by vessel owning companies and just like other vessel classes; the new shipbuilding prices for the LNG segment continue to be a key aspect in the decision making of business players. Additionally these prices can be volatile as new ship building prices fluctuate with time. This paper attempts to analyse the volatility of new ship building prices of LNG carriers. For the study, the average ship building prices for all the LNG carriers having volume carrying capacity is between 160,000 – 173,000 cbm to be delivered between 2016 – 2019 were taken into account. For the analysis, GARCH and EGARCH methods were applied on the data set. The analysis concluded that there is a great deal of volatility in the new ship building prices of LNG vessels. It was also identified that negative shocks were more persistent the positive shocks.