The Japanese pine bast scale, Matsucoccus matsumurae (Kuwana, 1905), is a destructive pest of pine trees in America, East Asia and Northern Europe. The spread of damage to black pine trees, Pinus thunbergii, of M. matsumurae was reported from all southern, and some eastern and west costal regions in Korea, under the name of M. thunbergianae which was newly described by Miller & Park (1987) as a new species. Historically, M. thunbergianae was synonymized with M. matsumurae by Booth & Gullan (2006), on the basis of molecular sequence data. However, the supporting data for the synonym is unavailable in any DNA database, such as GenBank and BOLD. Moreover, M. thunbergianae have been still used to the resent scientific studies in Korea. Here, we performed morphological and molecular comparison to review the result of Booth & Gullan (2006), using M. matsumurae from Fukuoka, Japan and topotype materials of M. thunbergianae from Goheung, Korea. Our data supported the opinion of Booth & Gullan (2006) following results: The morphological features of adult female and male of M. thunbergianae are identical to those of M. matsumurae. Also, DNA sequences (COI, 18S rDNA and 28S rDNA) of M. thunbergianae showed identical or very low genetic distances with those of M. matsumurae. From the regional sampling in Korea, M. matsumurae was newly found in Jeju and Seoul.

Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) and its vector insect, the sweet potato whitefly Bemisia tabaci, are major threats to tomato and pepper production in all around world. Since the last three decades, both B. tabaci and TYLCV have been invaded into many countries via different routes. Our studies showed that various geminiviruses including TYLCV can be transmissible by seeds as well as whiteflies. Furthermore, commercially developed resistant tomato strains against TYLCV infection can serve as TYLCV reservoirs and potentially influence on TYLCV epidemics. Therefore, transmission pathways through both insect vectors and seeds should be concerned for suitable management of geminiviruses and whiteflies.

Geminiviruses are plant-infecting viruses with monopartite or bipartite single-stranded circular DNA genomes. They are known to be mediated by insects such as whiteflies, treehoppers, leafhoppers or aphids and can cause devastating plant diseases in a wide range of economically significant crops worldwide. In Korea, occurrence of geminiviruses were reported officially after the 2000s. Although Honeysuckle yellow vein virus (HYVV) and Sweet potato leaf curl virus (SPLCV) were identified from honeysuckle and sweet potato in 2004 and 2006 respectively, these viruses did not spread and cause much concern for geminiviruses. In 2008, Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) that has caused severe tomato production loss in many subtropical and tropical countries was first reported in tomato plants cultivated in Tongyeong. TYLCV rapidly spread through the country and has been continuously reported from tomato cultivating areas in Korea. In addition to TYLCV, Tobacco leaf curl virus and Sweet potato golden vein associated virus have occurred. In recent years, new geminiviruses including Papaya leaf curl Guangdong virus (PaLCGdV) and Euphorbia leaf curl virus (EuLCV) have been introduced. Newly emerging geminiviruses from tropical and subtropical countries are due to increased demand for various fruits and vegetables, and climate change. In addition, there are reports that some geminiviruses including TYLCV can be transmitted by infected seeds. Therefore it is important to study on epidemiology of virus introduction and spread among the countries and within country.

Four new species of the genus Alloclubionoides collected from mountain litter and hillock litter around the agricultural ecosystem of Korea are described in the present work with appropriate body measurements and morphological illustrations; A. hwaseongensis sp. nov., A. imi sp. nov., A. namhansanensis sp. nov. and A. nasuta sp. nov. Females of A. hwaseongensis sp. nov., A. namhansanensis sp. nov. and A. nasuta sp. nov. can be distinguished based on the epigyne shape and structure of internal genitalia from previously described species. Males of A. imi sp. nov. can also be distinguished based on the shapes of retrolateral tibial apophysis, embolus tip and conductor from previously described species. Also, a key to the Korean Alloclubionoides spiders is provided. Alloclubionoides gajiensis Seo, 2014 is newly synonymized with Alloclubionoides cochlea (Kim et al. 2007).

Li-Cd 합금을 이용한 환원추출방식을 LiCl-KCl 기반의 drawdown 공정에 적용하게 되면, LiCl-KCl 공융염의 조성이 파괴되므로 공정온도를 높여야 하며, 전해정련 및 전해제련과 같은 공정에 LiCl-KCl 용융염을 재사용할 수 없게 된다. 따라서, 본 연구에서는 공융염 조성에 적합한 Li-K-Cd 합금을 제조하였으며, 이를 이용하여 U와 Nd가 포함된 LiCl-KCl 염에 투입하여 용 융염 내 UCl3의 제거가 가능한지 평가하였다.

Cold, salt and heat are the most critical factors that restrict full genetic potential, growth and development of crops globally. However, clarification of genes expression and regulation is a fundamental approach to understanding the adaptive response of plants under unfavorable environments. In this study, we applied an annealing control primer (ACP) based on the GeneFishing approach to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in Italian ryegrass (cv. Kowinearly) leaves under cold, salt and heat stresses. Two-week-old seedlings were exposed to cold (4°C), salt (NaCl 200 mM) and heat (42°C) treatments for six hours. A total 8 differentially expressed genes were isolated from ryegrass leaves. These genes were sequenced then identified and validated using the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database. We identified several promising genes encoding light harvesting chlorophyll a/b binding protein, alpha-glactosidase b, chromosome 3B, elongation factor 1-alpha, FLbaf106f03, Lolium multiflorum plastid, complete genome, translation initiation factor SUI1, and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. These genes were potentially involved in photosynthesis, plant development, protein synthesis and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. However, this study provides new insight regarding molecular information about several genes in response to multiple abiotic stresses. Additionally, these genes may be useful for enhancement of abiotic stress tolerance in fodder crops as well a crop improvement under unfavorable environmental conditions.

Glutathione S-transferase (GST) is a key gene involved in multiple stress tolerance in all living organisms, though it is still to be disclosed the gene function in teff grass [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.)Trotter].The objectives of this study were to clone and molecular characterization of GST gene in teff grass. We characterized GST1 from teff grass (EtGST1), it composed of a 645-bp open reading frame (ORF) that encoded 195 amino acid residue. Further, we transformed EtGST1 in E.coli BL21 (DE3) cells. This recombinant EtGST1 in E.coli BL21(DE3) induced at 37°C temperature. In addition, Growth of cells overexpressing EtGST1 rapidly increased in the presence of polyethylene glycol (5%), heat (46°C), NaCl (0.6%), and arsenic (1 mM) than that of cells harboring an empty vector. These results suggest that EtGST1 would be suitable candidate for improving tolerance in forages and/or grasses species against multiple abiotic stresses.

Cold, salt and heat are most critical factors that restrict full genetic potential, growth and development of crops worldwide.. In this study, we applied an annealing control primer (ACP) based GeneFishing approach to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in annual ryegrass (cv. Kowinearly) leaves under cold, salt and heat stresses. Two-week-old seedlings were exposed to cold (4°C), salt (NaCl 200 mM) and heat (42 °C) treatments for 6 h. A total 8 differentially expressed genes were isolated form ryegrass leaves. These genes were sequenced then identified and validated form National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database. We identified several promising genes encoding light harvesting chlorophyll a/b binding protein, alpha-glactosidase b, chromosome 3B, elongation factor 1-alpha, FLbaf106f03, complete genome, translation initiation factor SUI1, and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. These genes were potentially involved in photosynthesis, plant development, protein synthesis and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. These genes might be useful for the enhancement of abiotic stress tolerance in fodder crops along with crop improvement under unfavorable environmental conditions.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is a useful biotechnological tool for animal cloning. Until now, SCNT has been inefficient, especially in dog. It is believed that an embryo developmental block in SCNT embryos is cause of low production efficiency. However, no studies have been performed on canines for embryo developmental block. In this study, we attempted to evaluate the beneficial role of EDTA in canine parthenogenic (PA) embryos development to overcome embryo developmental block. The PA embryos were divided into 0.01 mM EDTA treated and non-treated groups. Embryo developmental efficiency was measured by activating chemically parthenote. After EDTA induction, PA embryos were evaluated for embryonic development, Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) activity, mitochondrial integrity, ATP production and genomic activation. The EDTA treated PA embryos showed significantly higher survival rate and improved cavity formation compared to non-treated. Furthermore, cytoplasmic ROS level was mitigated and mitochondrial membrane potential was found significantly higher in EDTA treated group followed by higher ATP production. Moreover, major embryonic genomic activation specific markers/factors were also elevated in EDTA treated group. Conclusively, we elucidated that EDTA showed substantially positive effect to overcome embryo developmental block in canine.

One of the most performed action in daily life is standing up from sitting position. As the population of the world is aging at the high rates, people may face problems with reduced muscle strength as well as psychological changes. This can lead elderly people having difficulties with standing up from chair. Now, with the aging trend worldwide, products are being developed that can support the lives of the elderly. This study examines the distribution of hip pressure in relation to the seating positions of the standing assistance seats under development to prevent standing up accidents in older adults. The currently developing standing assistant chair designed to tilt to a maximum angle of 25 degrees. At over 25°, design considers that older people are at risk of thrown back out of that force and that the forces exerted on their arms and legs can be a significant burden to older people. By considering danger of higher than 25° for older people which is experimented in the basis of static capturing approach in previous papers, it is experimented people with age group of 20~60 on 0° to 25° tilting angle on the basis of dynamic capturing method in order to pick convenient angle of inclination. Moreover, tried to find the optimum angle by comparing the hip pressure distribution when seated at the edge of the seat and at the center of the seat with the pressure distribution sensor.

As social media penetrates more deeply into people’s everyday lives, social commerce (a type of commerce that combines SNS features and possibility for commercial transactions) has enjoyed unprecedented growth. Shopping on Facebook is a representative example of social commerce platform that allows consumers to interact with other users, exchange information and purchase products without leaving a Facebook page. Social commerce presents great opportunities for marketers in terms of leveraging social aspects of shopping experience. It also offers a large potential for Korean companies to reach various target markets, as well as establish their presence abroad. Yet, acceptance of social commerce as a legitimate shopping channel has been slow, and consumers are still hesitant to shop via Facebook. This study draws on uses and gratification theory and the concept of perceived risk to examine how different motives for SNS use and the associated types of perceived risks can affect the purchase intention on the platform. Empirical data from 288 young users of Facebook were analyzed. Findings identified two main motives for SNS use: information-related motive and communication-related motive. Information-related motive significantly affected the intention to shop on Facebook, whereas communication- related motive did not have any significant influence. Risks associated with shopping via Facebook included delivery risk, security risk, social risk and economic risk. Overall, consumers perceived a higher level of security and social risk associated with shopping on Facebook. However, only social risk had a significant negative influence on the purchase intention. Awareness and previous experience of buying via social commerce platform positively affected consumers’ purchase intention.

Firms cooperate not only with complementary partners such as their suppliers and customers, but also increasingly with their competitors which can result in a simultaneous pursuit of cooperation and competition – coopetition (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 2011). Coopetition is a paradox as it involves firms interacting with two contradictory logics – cooperation and competition, which their contradictory, yet interrelated, demands seem logical in isolation, but absurd and irrational when appearing simultaneously (Peng et al., 2017). The extant research on the role of the competitor as an NPD partner also throws conflicting results; positive and negative NPD performance. This variance could be related to the firm’s internal capability to manage the partnership in NPD activities. This research aims to investigate these issues: Part I examines ‘the paradox of coopetition’ by investigating how firm’s experience of coopetitive relationship influence on firm’s coopetition capability. Part II investigates the key antecedents and outcomes of coopetition capability on the competitor partnership for new product development. The findings suggest a balanced-strong coopetition and alliance management capability are useful to build coopetition capability. In turn, coopetition capability has direct and indirect effects on NPD performances.

This research provides empirical support to the understanding of the consumers’ public self-consciousness and its impact on the luxury brand attachment. A self-administered survey questionnaire was distributed to an online consumer panel in Australia. The results show that both actual and ideal self-congruity positively influence the consumers’ luxury brand attachment. The impact of actual self-congruence on luxury brand attachment is stronger than that of the ideal self-congruence for privately consumed luxury products. The impact is non-significant for publicly consumed luxury products. Moreover, highly attached consumers tend to advocate the luxury brands to other consumers. The research also reveals that public self-consciousness does not moderate the relationship between consumers’ perceived self-congruence and luxury brand attachment. The results suggest that luxury brand advertisers should incorporate the consumers’ actual and ideal self into the advertising message to strengthen the attachment. Future research may validate the hypothesised relationships within different luxury product and service category to enhance the generalisability of the findings.

How do consumed objects move through the journey from possession to dispossession? Where do consumers find happiness in this process? Prior research seems to focus on the two extreme ends: on one end, happiness can be found in consumption; on the other end, mindful consumer behaviour such as conscious dispossession has also proven to influence consumer happiness. However, little is known about how the consumed items moving through different stages from ‘possession’ to ‘dispossession,’ and how happiness is generated and influences the decisions during the practices. More importantly, consumption patterns are often heavily influenced by cultural contexts. Focusing on a decluttering approach, KonMari Method, this research aims to yield insights on object-subject relationships beyond what is currently available in the literature via the lens of multicultural comparison. The analysis of 10 English and 10 Mandarin blog narratives reveal that it is an interactive process to redefine the place of an object in one’s heart and one’s house. In line with the prior study, our results suggest that the classifying method and the object-subject relations seem to be an essential element in defining consumer happiness. However, while the KonMari steps are linear with a rigid procedure, depending on participants’ symbolic classification and how flexible it can be, they may experience a different level of challenges; hedonic, eudaimonic and spiritual well-being are differently activated during the decluttering process. Contrary to the previous belief that organizing can be daunting and tedious, the setup of the KonMari method creates an extraordinary experience that often results in a high level of happiness activated differently in the Eastern and Western cultures. In particular, Western English speaking consumers mostly experience a feeling of excitement. For Eastern Mandarin speaking consumers, the peacefulness of the experience is underlined.

This research was conducted in order to examine the effect of brand status and brand crisis types on consumers’ forgiveness intention. In this research, we proposed and found that the favorable attitude toward the underdog referred as underdog effect (Paharia, Keinan, Avery, & Schor, 2011) would be diluted especially in relational-related failure. When relationship efforts and perceived warmth of the brand are particularly critical, service failure caused by highly identified underdog brand can be perceived to be more serious (Vandello, Goldschmied, & Richards, 2007). Four of the studies consistently demonstrated our assumption in that people expressed less forgiveness intention on underdog brands when the crisis is in a service failure (vs. product failure): study1 and 2, service process failure (vs. service outcome failure): study 3, and human service process failure (vs. non-human service process failure): 4. Further, the mechanism underlying this negative effect toward the underdog was revealed as perceived anger. These findings can give insights to marketers that the types of crisis and the way of brand positioning are very critical to influence customer’s forgiveness intention.

Introduction Advertorials promote products by appealing-to and entertaining audiences. These ads increasingly target children aged 5 and younger, a segment of growing importance due to their influence on family buying decisions (McNeal, 1999). A new type of advertorial can be described as video advertisements (videotisements) and currently appear in online channels like YouTube that receive little regulation. They feature products like the Minecraft game or Barbie doll as the main story-line element, with many being viewed tens of millions of times. Videotisement hosts may produce thousands of episodes that feature the same game/doll, forming miniseries encouraging children to return and watch. Videotisements differ from “online influencers”, they exclusively promote one product over a long period (years) and use storylines to demonstrate product use. Advertisers have long promoted products through entertainment shows. This format has been stable for a long time, only recently morphing into videotisements. In the 1950s, TV shows like The Mickey Mouse Club carried embedded persuasive messages (Palmer & Carpenter, 2006). In the 60s, children’s TV featured products like toys. By the 70s, companies were conducting research into ways to attract children, trying to convert their interest into sales. This led the FTC to suggest, in 1978, banning children’s advertising. This proposal accelerated academic research into how children processed TV programs and ads (Ward, Wackman, & Wartella, 1977). These studies investigated covert product placements in shows or movies, lyrics, books (Gupta & Gould, 1997) and online media (Balasubramanian, Karrh & Patwardhan, 2006). Product placements could increase sales, overcome consumer ad resistance and media-fragmentation (Palmer & Carpenter, 2006). This prompted studies of attitudesto (Gupta & Gould, 1997) and effectiveness-of placements (Russell, 2002). There were also unsuccessful calls to ban or disclose placements. The early 2000s saw child-targeted ads flowing to the internet; young children were consuming more web-entertainment and less TV, 80% of children below age 5 used the internet at least once a week (Gutnick, Robb, Takeuchi, & Kotler, 2011) to play games online (Marsh, 2010). The web enabled advertisers to interact directly with children by providing ads that masqueraded as games (advergames), containing commercial logos, mascots and trade characters (Mallinckrodt & Mizerski, 2007). Advergames quickly became among the top five ways to reach children (Vanwesenbeeck, Walrave, & Ponnet, 2017). Some advertisers also started “online communities where children can meet and interact with new and existing friends and play games” (Rozendaal, Slot, van Reijmersdal, & Buijzen, 2013, p.142). Some advergames are distributed through social media like Facebook (Terlutter & Capella, 2013) and its “stealthy nature” (Hudders, Cauberghe, & Panic, 2016) has attracted ethical and regulatory attention (Swanepoel, Lye, & Rugimbana, 2009). The advergame market is now cluttered and advertisers have moved to videotisements. We know very little about this format, this is the impetus for our preliminary study about how children use videotisements. These findings will lead to a more comprehensive study. A videotisement is typically posted on YouTube, Youku and Tudou. The entire video is a covert ad. A host narrates entertaining product information, as the product is used/played with. This is attractive to young children because the videotisement mimics watching other children play – just like watching their friends play games. The clips look professionally produced, suggesting some are linked to product manufacturers (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7FX_EnrW1k). A comparative format is the TV infomercial. However, infomercials declare as advertising that sells products – you can order by calling the advertised phone number – videotisements do not do this. Videotisements are produced as video-series. The episodes explore different areas or versions of a game/toy and build on earlier episodes, encouraging children to revisit to follow the story. In some cases, the host becomes a celebrity. For example, Grace Mulgrew who hosts the Grace’s World YouTube channel has over 1 billion views from more than a million subscribers (Stewart, 2018). The episodes show Grace (an “ordinary” 12-year-old) playing with her Barbie dolls. As the storylines develop, Grace displays the latest Barbie characters and accessories. Barbie provides Grace with free dolls and YouTube works with Grace to produce kid-friendly content and educational clips (House, 2015). However, Grace’s World hides these ties. She continues to create, post and promote Barbie videos. Stealthy videotisements are now common; YouTube hosts 56 million videotisements for the Minecraft game. Most of these ads are watched hundreds of thousands of times within the first week, and millions of times by the second week after release. Videotisements also contain commercials and web advertising and children are encouraged to provide personal contact information for membership, competitions or free gifts. So far, this format has not received any attention from researchers. We seem to be the first to study this media and explore children’s exposure-to and preference-for videotisements. Observation of the authors’ children suggest that there is brand preference, the children only watch videos featuring certain games with certain hosts. Socialisation to Videotisements Video sharing sites like YouTube are among the first that children below age nine visit (Holloway, Green, & Livingstone, 2013); two thirds of children watch videos on these sites (Hoh, 2017). On average, children up to age two watch games and videos online for two hours daily (Brown, 2011) and five to fifteen year olds are online for 15 hours each week (Ofcom, 2016). Typically, parents enable young children’s access to the web through their phones and tablets, socialising (Sonck, Nikken, & de Haan, 2013) and guiding (Shin & Li, 2017) them to certain content. The frequency of parental and child internet use is positively correlated (Holloway et al., 2013). Older siblings also socialise younger siblings to media and influence what the younger ones do online (Wartella, O’Keefe & Scantlin, 2000); unsurprisingly children with older siblings start using the internet at a younger age (Teuwen, De Groff, & Zaman, 2012). Consequently, three year olds are knowledgeable about multiplayer networked games like Plants vs. Zombies, Minecraft and Mario long before they attain the dexterity to play the games (Dickey, 2007). One way socialisation occurs is when siblings watch videotisements together, these videos are attractive to younger children who cannot yet play the game – they can participate by watching. This raises our research question: What is the level of young children’s exposure to videotisements? Methodology As two to five year olds cannot respond adequately about their videotisement use, we surveyed their parents/carers. Respondents were informed of the study’s purpose, providing written consent in the way approved by the University Research Ethics Team. [Insert Table 1 about here] Parents were recruited from early childhood learning centres in Singapore (n = 31), a childcare centre and a convenience sample in Australia (n = 17). They were asked about the number of media devices they had at home (access), the amount of time spent using these devices (use), whether the child observes or plays with other children when using these devices (socialisation). We also asked whether parents and siblings watched videotisements with the child (socialisation). Parents answered only about their youngest child. The children’s mean age was 3.12 (SD = 1.07), there were 19 girls (40%) and 29 boys (60%). Most parents were in full time work (Singapore 90%, Australia 88%) and university qualified (Singapore 66%, Australia 82%). All respondents possessed internet enabled devices in their homes that the child could access (Table 1). Results A chi-square analysis showed no significant differences between the Singapore and Australia children’s use of media during weekdays (X2 = 1.357, p>.5) or weekends (X2 = 2.212, p>.5), thus we combined the responses for analysis (n = 48). TV was the most popular media, 88% watched on weekdays and 94% on weekends. Videos and videotisements was ranked second and third, followed by playing video/digital games and playing online (Table 2). [Insert Table 2 about here] In our sample, 38% have watched videotisements with others, with 56% of this group watching with parents and 22% with siblings (Table 3), 66% of our sample’s parents watched videotisements with their child. Thirty three percent of the children had older siblings, 21% (n=7) of this group watched videotisements together. [Insert Table 3 about here] Conclusion This article provides one of the first looks at children younger than age five’s use of videotisements. While the sample size was small (n = 48), 100% of the parents surveyed in Singapore and Australia responded that their youngest child watched YouTube or videotisements. This gives a strong indication about the level of videotisement use by young children. Parents and siblings help socialise younger children to these ads. The unregulated and stealthy nature of this ad format calls for more investigation of the format, especially by more vulnerable young child audiences. This paper provides a starting point for research into this emerging ad format. Future research may investigate how videotisements influence children’s buying behaviour and family buying decisions; children’s susceptibility to videotisements; and international patterns of videotisement consumption.

New product entails risk, causing resistance to adoption. The recommendation system may decrease the psychological risk by guiding decision making process to be more efficient (Häubl and Trifts, 2000). AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been getting smarter and smarter and widely applied to the recommendation system. Even while you are browsing on your Facebook, AI recommends you the products that you may like based on the customized analysis of your interest. However, do people always love to adopt the smart recommends from AI? Definitely no! Then when and why people reluctantly accept AI recommendation? We assume that the product or service where the sense and feeling is important, people might be reluctant to accept the recommendation from artificial intelligence. This is because people might feel threatened when the AI challenges against human uniqueness (Gray and Wegner, 2012). Thus, in this study we investigated how the recommendation system types (AI vs. Human) affect brand attitude depending on the brand image (Symbolic vs. Functional). We found consumers are reluctant to accept a recommendation from AI in symbolic brand where human sense and feel are considered to be critical factors (Study1). This effect was further explained by uncanny-feeling toward the AI recommendation system (Study2). This research is meaningful in that it is the first attempt to apply the artificial intelligence recommendation concept to the marketing strategy by incorporating the concept of brand image. We predicted and found AI based recommendation system is reluctantly accepted for symbolic brand. Furthermore, we discovered the underlying process for this phenomenon as uncanny feeling. People seemed to have uncomfortable feelings against AI recommendation when the brand image is related to sense and feel considered as nature of human uniqueness. Thus, marketers should be very cautious when utilizing the AI recommendation system not to threaten human uniqueness area.