Free-standing hybridized electrode consisting of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) and activated carbon have been fabricated for flexible supercapacitor applications. The xanthan-gum, used in our methodology, showed high ability in dispersing the strongly bundled DWNTs, and was then effectively converted to activated carbon with large surface area via chemical activation. The homogeneously dispersed DWNTs within xanthan-gum derived activated carbon acted as both electrical path and mechanical support of electrode material. The hybridized film from highly dispersed DWNTs and activated carbon was mechanically strong, has high electrical conductivity, and exhibited high specific capacitance of 141.5 F/g at the current density of 100 mV/s. Our hybridized film is highly promising as electrode material for flexible supercapacitors in wearable device.

In this work, α-Fe2O3 nanocrystals are synthesized by co-precipitation method and used as adsorbent to remove Cr6+, Cd2+, and Pb2+ from wastewater at room temperature. The prepared sample is evaluated by XRD, BET surface area, and FESEM for structural and morphological characteristics. XRD patterns confirm the formation of a pure hematite structure of average particle size of ~ 40 nm, which is further supported by the FESEM images of the nanocrystals. The nanocrystals are found to have BET specific surface area of ~ 39.18 m2 g−1. Adsorption experiments are carried out for the different values of pH of the solutions, contact time, and initial concentration of metal ions. High efficiency Cr6+, Cd2+, and Pb2+ removal occur at pH 3, 7, and 5.5, respectively. Equilibrium study reveals that the heavy metal ion adsorption of the α-Fe2O3 nanocrystals followed Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. The Cr6+, Cd2+, and Pb2+ adsorption equilibrium data are best fitted to the Langmuir model. The maximum adsorption capacities of α-Fe2O3 nanocrystals related to Cr6+, Cd2+, and Pb2+ are found to be 15.15, 11.63, and 20 mg g−1, respectively. These results clearly suggest that the synthesized α-Fe2O3 nanocrystals can be considered as potential nano-adsorbents for future environmental and health related applications.

Food and agricultural production sector, especially livestock production is vital for Mongolia’s economic and social development. Domestic sheep play key roles for Mongolians, providing food (meat, milk) and raw materials (wool, sheepskin), but genetic diversity, origin of sheep populations in Mongolia have not been well studied. Studies of population genetic diversity is important research field in conservation and restoration of animal breeds and genetic resources. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate genetic characteristics and estimate origin through the analysis of mitochondrial DNA control region D-loop and Cytochrome b of Mongolian indigenous sheep (Mongolian native, Orkhon and Altanbulag) and one Europe sheep (Suffolk). As a result of there were found, 220 SNPs (Single nucleotide polymorphism) in the D-loop region, 28 SNPs in the Cytochrome B region, furthermore, 77 Haplotypes. The nucleotide diversity was only found in D-loop region (n = 0.0184). Phylogenetic analysis showed that 3 (A, B, and C) of 5 haplogroups of sheep have been identified in our research. Haplogroup C was only found in Mongolian indigenous sheep. Haplogroup D and E were not observed. As a result of haplogroups, haplogroup A was dominant (n = 46 of 94 sheeps), followed by haplogroup B (n = 36) and haplogroup C (n = 12). Sequence analysis showed that T deletion, insertion and heteroplasmy in D-loop region occurred at a high rate in Mongolian indigenous sheep population (T insertion = 47, T deletion = 83). The heteroplasmy, which has never been found in Mongolian sheep, has been newly discovered in this study. As a result, the Mongolian sheep varieties, which mainly derived from Asia, were in hybridization with European sheep varieties.

PURPOSES : Asphalt pavements are damaged by various causes, such as cracks, potholes due to climate, and traffic environment. Asphalt aging has a significant effect on cracks, which may also form potholes. The purposes of this study are to estimate the change in asphalt binder and mixture performance and to correlate the physicochemical changes of the asphalt binder and mixture performance with aging. METHODS : The aging process of the asphalt was determined in the laboratory, based on the methods used in previous studies. In terms of consistency (stiffness), crack-resistance performance, moisture susceptibility, SK investigated the binder part, and Shoreki investigated the mixture part depending on the aging time. RESULTS : The consistency (stiffness) and brittleness of both the asphalt binder and mixture tended to increase with aging. In particular, the crack-resistance performance of the asphalt binder (G*sinδ, ductility, and ΔTc) and mixture (flexural fatigue test and Cantabro test) deteriorated because of asphalt aging. Furthermore, the aging mechanisms (oxidation and polymerization) were identified based on the chemical structure analysis. CONCLUSIONS : It is confirmed that the aging affected the chemical composition change and the physical properties of the asphalt. Asphalt pavements are significantly affected by the aging characteristics of the binder. It is concluded that the crack-resistance performance of the mixture decreases with aging due to these physical and chemical changes.

Severe damages will result in human society, when several different critical natural phenomena coincide. One example relates to the resting cysts of Alexandrium species (dinoflagellates that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning), which are preserved in surface sediments throughout Osaka Bay, Japan. These cysts have been found to accumulate particularly densely in shallow areas in the inner parts of Osaka Bay, where a tsunami caused by an earthquake could occur any time. Damage by a tsunami could cause a change of the coastal ecosystems at Osaka Bay including the resuspension of surface sediments containing resting Alexandrium tamarense cysts and the subsequent redistribution of the cysts in newly deposited sediment. Under certain environmental conditions, these cysts could germinate and form dense blooms, leading to paralytic shellfish poisoning. Such a scenario could also affect other coastal areas, including the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula.

The purpose of this study is to reveal differences towards conspicuous consumption of the hard-hit by the recession Greeks and foreign consumers. For the purposes of this research a survey was carried out in Greece. Tandem cluster analysis was performed in order to separate consumers based on their conspicuous consumption patterns and tendencies. The analysis resulted in a three cluster solution and deduced that the recession-hit Greeks buy branded luxury goods, as hypothesized and expected.

The KVN(Korean VLBI Network)-style simultaneous multi-frequency receiving mode is demonstrated to be promising for mm-VLBI observations. Recently, other Very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) facilities all over the globe start to implement compatible optics systems. Simultaneous dual/multi-frequency VLBI observations at mm wavelengths with international baselines are thus possible. In this paper, we present the results from the first successful simultaneous 22/43 GHz dualfrequency observation with KaVA(KVN and VERA array), including images and astrometric results. Our analysis shows that the newly implemented simultaneous receiving system has brought a significant extension of the coherence time of the 43 GHz visibility phases along the international baselines. The astrometric results obtained with KaVA are consistent with those obtained with the independent analysis of the KVN data. Our results thus confirm the good performance of the simultaneous receiving systems for the non-KVN stations. Future simultaneous observations with more global stations bring even higher sensitivity and micro-arcsecond level astrometric measurements of the targets.

Although people generally do not pay much attention to scent, background music (BGM), color, etc. in retail or service environments, these in-store factors could potentially have a subtle yet powerful influence on customers. Through two experiments, this research examined whether the scent and music made people feel physically warm or cool, and their effect on the participants’ perception of space and social density. Regarding to participants’ subjective perception of temperature, between the warm scent (vanilla) and the cool scent (peppermint), and between the warm music (Träumerei by Schumann) and the cool music (Vocalise by Rachmaninov) are not significantly different. But I could observe that people in warm conditions felt physically warm compare to cool conditions. And there was a significant difference on participants’ perception of space and density. People in the vanilla-scented environment felt that the capacity of the room was smaller, the space was tighter, and the social density was higher. In the case of the music, the results were the same. People in the room with Träumerei as a BCM felt that the room was smaller, the space was tighter, and the social density was higher. Moreover, people in warm conditions chose a cold or room temperature drink when I offered three drink options (cold, warm, room temperature) as a token of my gratitude. In addition to the effect to perception, I found that people in warm conditions (both scent and music) were more persuaded by commercial message than in cool conditions. These results would contribute to expand our knowledge of store atmospherics and customer experience through ambient scent and BGM.

Researchers have yet to investigate whether it is beneficial for exporters to engage in greater levels of product adaptation in their export operations, or whether there is some limit to the amount of adaptation exporters should engage in. We posit that customer value creation, a central marketing concept and a mechanism to achieving market and financial goals in business to business markets, is a core outcome of export product adaptation activities. In order to explore the routes by which adaptation may shape export customer value creation, we adopt a multi-faceted conceptualization of firm-level product adaptation, comprising export product adaptation (i) quantity, (ii) intensity and (iii) novelty. Drawing on survey data from 249 Finnish exporters involved in business-to-business activities, we find evidence to support the claim that the impact of export product adaptation on export customer value creation is contingent on various factors, and we identify instances where greater adaptation is beneficial for export customer value creation, and instances where greater export product adaptation is potentially harmful for export customer value creation.

Consumers tend to anthropomorphize brands and treat products under the anthropomorphized brands as if they were human beings. Previous research has pointed out that there could be two kinds of anthropomorphized brands, i.e., servant and partner brands and claimed that typical consumers (non-materialists) prefer brands-as-partner, whereas materialists prefer brands-as-servant. However, there is room for improvement: (1) Previous studies have examined only brands-as-servant and brands-as-partner and brands-as-master have been ignored; and (2) they have regarded materialists as a unidimensional construct, though it can be divided into instrumental and terminal materialists. Thus, we conducted multiple comparison tests among the three kinds of anthropomorphized brands with a dataset of three kinds of consumers. The results showed that non-materialists, instrumental materialists, and terminal materialists prefer, brands-as-partner, brands-as-servant, and brands-as-master, respectively.

Social media have altered the communication landscape and significantly impacted brand communications in the luxury fashion industry. Research suggests that with the rise of social media, brand communication has been democratised, and the power has shifted from those in marketing to the individuals and communities that create and consume content, redistributing it across a variety of channels (Kozinets, Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010; Kumar & Sundaram, 2012). Yet the implications of social media are still largely unknown among practitioners and managers. Moreover, there is a lack of effective frameworks for developing, analysing and comparing social-media strategies (Effing & Spil, 2016). Scholars have just started giving their attention to the subject of ‘social-media strategy’ as such, highlighting a gap in our knowledge, which this study seeks to address. The aim of this research is to understand the role of social media as a strategic brand-communications tool in the luxury fashion industry. Firstly, the main theoretical contribution is the development of a conceptual framework that enables an understanding, explanation and description of the process of building a social-media strategy. There has been a call for this type of research from a managerial perspective, across multiple platforms and objectives, and this work provides much-needed insights. Secondly, the findings provide valuable managerial insights. The conceptual framework emerging from this research is a managerial tool that can be used to tackle the process of building a social-media strategy and to identify its key elements. In particular, the framework can be deployed to guide and evaluate the process of creating a social-media strategy. With the help of the framework, managers can harness their resources successfully and identify the factors that need to be considered. Moreover, the framework aims to guide managerial action towards a sustainable social-media approach that helps to build competitive advantage for global luxury fashion brands in the longer term.

Global ecommerce continues to flourish and consumers across the world are constantly connected to the Internet. This poses growing opportunities for the digital transformation of businesses and their expansion to international markets succeeding to reach and engage with potential customers abroad. The objective of this paper is to study the internationalization process of digital enterprises and to explore business challenges and opportunities arising from the use of innovative technologies and tools. More specifically, we aim to review the recent related literature and propose a conceptual framework introducing tools and practices regarding strategy, infrastructure technology and on- line marketing & communication needed to assure increased chances of success when digitally expanding abroad. Each country has specific features associated with the business environment, the penetration of ecommerce, as well as, specific cultural and social characteristics. These peculiarities require specific internationalization strategies and dictate parallel adjustments in IT infrastructure, as well as a suitable digital marketing & promotion that need to be followed which are thoroughly analyzed and can become a valuable tool for digital enterprises.

The growth of capitalism plays the crucial role in consumers’ consumption that drive businesses to employ new technologies to increase the efficiency of production process. It is inevitable that consumers have to take responsibility for this movement, because they are the central of market system in which most businesses have to provide choices of purchasing. It causes the impacts to overconsumption in natural resources and also affects to social and environment problems. Sheth et al. (2011) provide alternative framework for developing sustainable consumption through the concept of mindful consumption. It is in line with the Consumer Culture Theory which consumers co-create the meaning of consumption, experience, or activity in all cycles of consumption – acquisition, consumption, possession, and disposition (Arnould and Thompson, 2005). Sheth et al. (2011)’ mindful consumption is demonstrated as the strategy how consumers can control their desires, behavior, and consumption. However, there is little interest to study how to develop mindful behavior. Therefore, this paper has shed the light on how consumption provides less impact to society whereby consumers are conscious and concerns the results of their consumption. The qualitative research was employed to collect data in regarding to mindful consumers who live in harmony with nature, environment, and mind. Participant observations and in-depth interviews were conducted to make understanding of mindful consumption in Thai culture. Practice of mind and body were found in Thai culture that play an important role in co-creating well-being and sustainable society.

Introduction The concept of “processing fluency” has been widely discussed in various areas, including marketing and consumer behavior (Janiszewski and Meyvis, 2001; Labroo et al., 2008; Herrmann et al., 2013; Shen and Rao, 2016). Processing fluency is defined as the ease with which people process information, and it has been found that experiencing fluency while processing information has a positive effect on decision making. Many researchers have shown that fluency elicits positive evaluation. For example, the mere-exposure effect has been explained by processing fluency; repeated exposure to a stimulus increases processing fluency and the fluency, in turn, increases positive affect (Arkes, 2013; Janiszewski and Meyvis, 2001). Many factors have been examined in fluency studies. Among them, the most common method to affect fluency is font manipulation (e.g., Alter et al., 2007; Alter and Oppenheimer, 2008). In these studies, researchers examined processing fluency of objects with clear fonts or unclear fonts and found the former enhanced processing fluency and thus caused positive evaluation for the objects. There are many other factors related to visual perceptual fluency, such as contrast of letters and background, exposure time, and so on. Processing fluency can be influenced by eye movement. For example, Shen and Rao (2016) focused on the relation between fluency of eye movements and product evaluation. They found that repetition of an eye movement could enhance perceived fluency and that this perceived fluency could increase product evaluation. In their second experiment, they manipulated participants’ eye movement by moving a ball on the computer screen and found that the consistency between the direction of eye movement and the direction of products (pen and sports shoe) could enhance processing fluency and product evaluation. Similar to the study of Shen and Rao, we focus on the relation between the direction of products and processing fluency. Shen and Rao focused on eye movement, whereas our study concentrated on human body movement—namely, walking and riding. There are many advertisements in stores, trains, buses and on the roads. Consumers often see these advertisements while walking or riding. In these cases, they move to certain directions, and sometimes products in advertisements convey direction (e.g., automobiles, shoes, pens, and so on). At the time of exposure, consistency between two directions (consumer’s movement and product) may influence processing fluency and product evaluation. In a walking condition, the direction of physical body movement of the participants can be related to their eye movements. However, in a riding condition, the moving direction of a vehicle the participant rides does not always coincide with the direction of participant’s eye movement. We can therefore assume that if consistency of the two directions affects the product evaluation positively not only in a walking condition but in a riding condition, it is possible to verify the existence of the effects of human body movement. Based on the above considerations, we conducted two experiments. Empirical Studies In two experiments, all participants were undergraduate students at a major university in Tokyo. They were recruited at a university campus or via social network services. The experiments were conducted in two conditions: participants looking at the advertisement while walking or riding on the bus. In prior research focused on eye movement (Shen and Rao, 2016), the researchers examined the relation between eye movement and product location (left side or right side on the advertisements) as well as product direction (directed toward the left or toward the right). They showed that the participants preferred the product directed toward the right (pen or sports shoe) or located on the right side (cupcake) when their eyes moved from left to right. Conversely, the participants liked the product directed toward the left or located on the left better when their eyes moved from right to left. Based on their study, we also chose two types of products, sports shoe and bottled water. Sports shoe has a horizontal direction, so we can place the product in the advertisement with a particular direction (toward the left or toward the right). On the other hand, bottled water does not have horizontal direction, thus we use the product with a particular location (placed on the left side or right side in the advertisements). We hypothesize that the participants will experience processing fluency and express a greater preference towards the products in the advertisement when its direction or location matches the moving direction of the participants. Experiment 1 One-hundred-and-twenty students participated in a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design. Participants were randomly assigned into four groups: 2 moving direction × 2 product layouts. The experiment was set up in a classroom where the advertisements were displayed on the walls. On the wall to the left side of the classroom, the advertisement for sports shoe was displayed with the direction either toward the left or the right. On the wall to the right, the advertisement for bottled water was displayed with the product location either on the left or right side. On the front wall of the classroom, an advertisement for hamburger which had neither particular direction nor location was displayed as a dummy stimulus. The participants were asked to walk around the classroom either clockwise or counter-clockwise. They walked by the wall without stopping while looking at an advertisement and then rated preference and processing fluency regarding the product shown in the advertisement immediately afterwards one by one. For the participants who walked around the classroom clockwise, the products directed toward the right (or located on the right side) might appear more natural and thus enhance their processing fluency. On the other hand, the participants who walked counter-clockwise felt fluency regarding the products directed toward the left (or located on the left side). The results supported our hypotheses. There were significant differences between matched groups and unmatched groups in both preference and processing fluency. Participants who walked around the classroom clockwise showed a higher preference and fluency regarding sports shoe directed toward the right and bottled water located on the right side in the advertisements. Similarly, participants who walked around the classroom counter-clockwise presented a higher preference and fluency regarding sports shoe directed toward the left and bottled water located on the left side. Experiment 2 In experiment 2, we used school buses running between campuses as the vehicle in which the participants looked at the advertisements. We set up two situations of placing the advertisements for considering the effect of the moving scenery outside the bus window on the perception of the participants. We placed one near the ceiling, where participants can barely see the scenery outside the window, and the other on the window, where the participants can easily see scenery moving right behind the advertisement. The participants either stood or sat on the buses and then rated preference and processing fluency regarding the products on the advertisements right after getting off the bus. One-hundred-and-two students participated in a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design. The participants were randomly assigned into matched-above, unmatched-above, matched-window, and unmatched-window groups. The matched condition meant that the moving direction and product layouts were consistent. When the moving direction of the bus and the product layout (direction of sports shoe and location of bottled water) were consistent, we defined matched condition. Otherwise, we defined unmatched condition. The results supported our hypotheses. For the advertisements placed near the ceiling, there were significant differences between matched and unmatched groups in both preference and processing fluency for both sports shoe and bottled water. On the other hand, for the advertisements placed on the window, there were no significant differences between matched and unmatched groups. When the advertisements were placed on the window, the direction of the moving scenery outside the bus window was opposite to the direction of the bus. This might have cancelled out the effects of moving direction. Discussion and Conclusion The empirical studies showed that for the condition of participants walking, the orientation and the location of the product pointing in the same direction as the moving direction of the participants resulted in higher processing fluency, and led to higher product preference. Meanwhile, for the condition of participants moving towards a certain direction by passive means, such as taking a bus, product preference and processing fluency increase when the advertisement is placed up near to the ceiling, and the orientation or the location of the product match the moving direction of the participants. At the same time, there is no significant difference in product preference or processing fluency when the advertisement is placed on the window. In closing, our research has provided an initial look at how consistency between two directions (consumer’s movement and product) can have significant effects on consumers’ processing fluency and product evaluation. Consumers often look at the advertisements while walking or riding and advertisers can know the main direction of consumers’ movement. In these cases, they can determine the direction or the location of the products in the advertisements considering the consistency with the moving direction of consumers. Recently, digital signage in trains and buses has become popular and advertisers can easily adjust the direction or the location of the products in the advertisements on it. Therefore, the knowledge extracted from our research may be readily available for advertisers.