Mental distress has been consistently reported to be highly prevalent after collective traumas, alongside physical and personal damages. When left untreated, these will worsen survivors’ ability to function. Research also points to unmet needs, related to job security and a sense of belonging. Our study aims to identify a clustered-dimensional approach to people’s experiences after a massive urban violence apart from traditional categorical psychopathological assessments. This cross-sectional internet-based study included 1305 Lebanese adults, 4 months after the apocalyptic Beirut Port explosion. Emotions, attitudes and needs were assessed using iCode software, measuring explicit answers and implicit reaction time. First and foremost, explicit responses revealed alarming levels of distress (75-80%). Latent class analysis further differentiated three groups on seven different dimensions derived from principal component analysis. People who experienced the most intense emotional distress and intrusive thoughts had higher country dissatisfaction and job worries. Faith and community resilience buffered the negative emotionality of those affected in spite of avoidance and intrusion. The last group was less distressed by the trauma with a marked sense of community and an overall reduced country and job dissatisfactions. These findings suggest that integrating implicit responses helps cluster people’s experiences after a collective trauma above and beyond single demographic criteria as vulnerability to mass violence is quite variable within seemingly homogenous samples. They also provide insight onto hard-wired attitudes and needs post-trauma. It mostly taps into multi-factorial individual vulnerabilities and protective factors to better refine targeted interventions for at-risk subpopulation outreach and foster resilience in unstable environments.

There has been almost 26 years since science of marketing has developed in Mongolia and there has been significant progress in acquiring and using its findings. Business companies’ leadership have become aware of the importance of this science and see marketing as business philosophy and understand that analyzing the market, business environment and conditions by consumers is the key to success. Today’s society demands from marketing professionals’ delicacy and taking into account consumers’ needs and creating new needs and new means of consumption. Main purpose of business entities is to be aware of consumer needs, to establish its position on the market and to be successful. In order to provide consumers with the best products and keep them at the center of their attention it is important to establish optimal ratio of marketing factors that would most efficiently influence consumers with different behaviors.

Anthropomorphism is a prevalent marketing practice that fosters consumer perceptions of a brand as humanlike. In today’s hyperconnected marketplace, firms are increasingly imbuing their brands with human features with the hope that the favorable perceptions of humanlike attributes in nonhuman objects could lead to consumers’ positive evaluation of humanized products. For example, Amazon has imbued Echo, a voice-activated Bluetooth speaker, with the human name Alexa, a female voiced virtual assistant that employs familiar human speech pattern, and some advanced personality traits. Similarly, Hormel Foods has used Mr. Peanut, the advertising logo and mascot of Planters that embodies the brands’ selling points. Mr. Peanut is depicted as a humanized peanut with arms, legs, top hat, and monocle and became a vessel of brand meaning and personality, taking on the product quality that the brand aims to communicate. Prior studies that use brand anthropomorphism as a foundation have investigated the impact of brand anthropomorphism on various outcomes such as product evaluations, emotional responses, and intentions to replace a product. However, what is missing from prior work is an understanding of the impact of brand anthropomorphism on the purchase intentions for clearance products which are sold under a retailer’s promotional strategy as an inventory management tool. The lure of cheapened goods may expand the range of consumers who can afford to buy merchandise from the company or may provide existing customers with an appealing purchasing option. In light of this, clearance sales are known to be effective not only for increasing store traffic by alluring price-conscious consumers but also for reducing excess inventory in a retail location or a chain of product fulfillment. The strategic importance of clearance sales has increased since the breakdown of COVID-19 which forced retailers to close their stores and caused demand for many product categories to plunge in early 2020. After the initial shock of the pandemic, consumer spending recovered fairly quickly, giving rise to record levels later in the same year. This surprising recovery continued into the next year as consumer sentiment and spending levels surged together, resulting in consumer demand that surpassed retailers’ stock levels. However, due to inflation and amounting fears of recession, consumer spending started to slow down again in 2022, resulting in the opposite of what happened in the previous year. Such a reversal caused many retailers to face high inventory levels and declining profitability, forcing them to cut prices to move excess inventory out of stores, which increases the importance of conducting clearance sales effectively. Clearance sales are prevalent in retail markets, where considerable discounts are typically offered for leftover items (Zhang & Cooper, 2008). Retailers widely use clearance sales to liquidate their unsold products at the end of a selling season (Nocke & Peitz, 2007). They have strong incentives to get rid of the remaining items in order to make room for the new products (Sällström, 2001). Previous research suggests that anthropomorphism leads consumers to apply human schema to a product, which in turn affects their attitude toward the product (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007, 2012). In this research, we aim to identify the negative effect of anthropomorphism on consumers’ attitude toward clearance products.

Online shopping has grown exponentially in the last decade, benefiting both consumers and companies. Among several advantages, online shopping lets consumers compare values and prices from different stores on multiple mobile devices in real time. In addition, for young people, it is a way of expressing their identity and independence.

The capability for Artificial Intelligence in the beauty industry is enormous, as customers are demanding increasingly customized offers that only these strategies can offer. However, there is still a scarcity of empirical research on customer experiences enabled by AI, which highlights this research's relevance, which we intend to bridge.

The use of AI chatbots in frontline customer service is beneficial as it can provide quick service responses, cost-saving on human employees and accelerate customers’ decision-making process. However, implementing chatbots can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, companies benefit from the use of chatbots. On the other hand, it may hurt customer experience as customers perceive chatbots are less trustworthy and show less social presence. Service failures today have become more unpredictable with the increasing complexity of social environments. Aligning with the trends of online customer service, customers are most likely to encounter a chatbot when seeking online customer service to solve service failures. With most of the previous literature investigating customers’ perceptions of chatbots and chatbot-related service failures, little research has focused on the area where chatbots as service recovery agents and how customers perceive the use of chatbots handling their service requests after service failures.

A new high-tech product - lab grown meat (LGM), has been gaining media attention while initiating public discourse on social media (SM) platforms. This netnographic study is based on a dataset of selected SM public posts, comments and discussions collected during 30 days in early 2023. The findings indicate that LGM is highly contradictory, while not being fully understood how it is produced or when it will become commercially available. The findings indicate that this novel food requires carefully designed marketing strategies: when naming a new product category; must allow transparency and sensibly explain all product’s attributes; and invest time and efforts to educate consumers, leading to higher adoption rates when launched on mass consumer markets, as an alternative to conventionally grown foods.

A new type of food created in laboratories – lab grown meat (LGM) is an alternative to traditional animal farming and attracting attention of media, industry experts and consumers. Why is this new product so controversial? It is claimed that cell-based meat production is more environmentally friendly, ethical and sustainable than traditional methods that involve animals. Hence, being less harmful and potentially slowing down environmental degradation that leads to climate change. However, consumers have concerns regarding product quality, sourcing of cells used for production and use of growth serums. So many differing views are present, even before LGM is introduced as a marketable product. This paper examines what drives public discourse regarding how this new industry can be regulated, technology and how social media posts, fake news and publicly available rhetoric address consumer concerns and consumer acceptance regarding this new food category.

The purpose of this research is to better understand what factors influence on households’ waste sorting behavior at source in Mongolia. To accomplish the goal, this study conducted online survey with self-report questionnaire method and the 353 participants’ data were collected through Facebook groups and pages related to house owners’ associations and waste recycling related non-profit organizations. The results show that the underlying factors determining the intention of waste sorting at source are (1) motivational bases such as prior beliefs and social norms; (2) and an ability/knowledge about the waste sorting at source. Furthermore, the intention is crucial predictor of the real behavior of waste sorting at source, but the most important one is an opportunity to do so. The conclusions and the recommendations are provided.

This study aims to address two important questions: will advertising on mobile short-form video apps jeopardize the value perception of luxury brands (RQ1), and if so, how will self-deprecating online reviews eliminate these negative effects (RQ2). An experimental design approach was employed to investigate the proposed research questions. Three experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. SPSS was used for data analysis. The study 1 finds that compared with traditional media, advertising on mobile short-form video apps shortened the psychological distance between consumers and luxury, therefore has a more negative impact on consumers’ perception of luxury brands. The study 2 reveals that self-deprecating online reviews can eliminate the negative effects of advertising of luxury brands. On the basis of previous research, this paper proves the negative influence of social media on luxury brands in the scene of new social media-mobile short format video application. In addition, it also studies the moderating effect of online comments, especially self-deprecating comments, on consumers' perception of luxury brands. This study outlines theoretical contributions and practical implications for the luxury marketing management and made suggestions for future research in the field of luxury marketing in Social Media.

The economic recession and changes in purchasing habits of young adults (aged 18–25) has led to a decline in the sales of Japanese fashion apparel. This younger generation’s choice of fashion items is primarily based on price. They are not devoted to a favourite brand with a frequent purchase history. Thus, developing customer loyalty and strengthening brand value are essential for the fashion industry. This study explores the improvement in fashion companies’ financial performance (FP) through young generation’s behavioural brand loyalty (BBL) from two aspects: social media brand engagement (BE) and loyalty programmes (LPs). This study listed 14 popular Japanese fashion brands which belonged to 14 publicly traded companies in Japan. Further, we surveyed 183 consumers about their brand related behaviours. The findings reveal the positive and negative effects of the same variable (BE and LPs) on the outcome (short- and long-term FP), indicating that not all activities related to BE and LPs boost FP. FP is influenced by various combinations of these causal factors and complex situations, such as consumers’ demographics and shopping characteristics. The results deepen our understanding of brand loyalty formation and the linkage among BE, LPs, and FP in a realistic marketplace, and offer multiple practical solutions to achieve high levels of short- and long-term FP by targeting the right consumers based on their specific characteristics.

The Wide-Angle Polarimetric Camera (PolCam) is installed on the Korea’s lunar orbiter, Danuri, which launched on August 5, 2022. The mission objectives of PolCam are to construct photometric maps at a wavelength of 336 nm and polarization maps at 461 and 748 nm, with a phase angle range of 0◦–135◦ and a spatial resolution of less than 100 m. PolCam is an imager using the push-broom method and has two cameras, Cam 1 and Cam 2, with a viewing angle of 45◦ to the right and left of the spacecraft’s direction of orbit. We conducted performance tests in a laboratory setting before installing PolCam’s flight model on the spacecraft. We analyzed the CCD’s dark current, flat-field frame, spot size, and light flux. The dark current was obtained during thermal / vacuum test with various temperatures and the flat-field frame data was also obtained with an integrating sphere and tungsten light bulb. We describe the calibration method and results in this study.

This work presents four high-amplitude variable YSOs (≃3 mag at near- or mid-IR wavelengths) arising from the SPICY catalog. Three outbursts show a duration that is longer than 1 year, and are still ongoing. And additional YSO brightened over the last two epochs of NEOWISE observations and the duration of the outburst is thus unclear. Analysis of the spectra of the four sources confirms them as new members of the eruptive variable class. We find two YSOs that can be firmly classified as bona fide FUors and one object that falls in the V1647 Ori-like class. Given the uncertainty in the duration of its outburst, an additional YSO can only be classified as a candidate FUor. Continued monitoring and follow-up of these particular sources is important to better understand the accretion process of YSOs.

The GMT-Consortium Large Earth Finder (G-CLEF) is the first instrument for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). G-CLEF is a fiber feed, optical band echelle spectrograph that is capable of extremely precise radial velocity measurement. G-CLEF Flexure Control Camera (FCC) is included as a part in G-CLEF Front End Assembly (GCFEA), which monitors the field images focused on a fiber mirror to control the flexure and the focus errors within GCFEA. FCC consists of an optical bench on which five optical components are installed. The order of the optical train is: a collimator, neutral density filters, a focus analyzer, a reimager and a detector (Andor iKon-L 936 CCD camera). The collimator consists of a triplet lens and receives the beam reflected by a fiber mirror. The neutral density filters make it possible a broad range star brightness as a target or a guide. The focus analyzer is used to measure a focus offset. The reimager focuses the beam from the collimator onto the CCD detector focal plane. The detector module includes a linear translator and a field de-rotator. We performed thermoelastic stress analysis for lenses and their mounts to confirm the physical safety of the lens materials. We also conducted the global structure analysis for various gravitational orientations to verify the image stability requirement during the operation of the telescope and the instrument. In this article, we present the opto-mechanical detailed design of G-CLEF FCC and describe the consequence of the numerical finite element analyses for the design.

Selective doping of pyridinic nitrogen in carbon materials has attracted attention due to its significant properties for various applications such as catalysts and electrodes. However, selective doping of pyridinic nitrogen together with controlling skeletal structure is challenging in the absence of catalysts. In this work, four precursors including four fused aromatic rings and pyridinic nitrogen were simply carbonized in the absence of catalysts in order to attain mass synthesis at low cost and a high percentage of pyridinic nitrogen in carbon materials with controlled edges. Among four precursors, dibenzo[f,h] quinoline (DQ) showed an extremely high percentage of pyridinic nitrogen (96 and 86%) after heat treatment at 923 and 973 K, respectively. Experimental spectroscopic analyses combined with calculated spectroscopic analyses using density functional theory calculations unveiled that the C-H next to the pyridinic nitrogen in DQ generated gulf edge structures with controlled pyridinic nitrogen after carbonization. By comparing the reactivities among the four precursors, three main factors required for maintaining the pyridinic nitrogen in carbon materials with controlled edges, such as (1) high thermal stability of the pyridinic nitrogen, (2) the presence of one pyridinic nitrogen in one ring, and (3) the formation of gulf edges including pyridinic nitrogen to protect the pyridinic nitrogen by the C-H groups on the gulf edges, were revealed.

This study investigated durian (Durio zibethinus) peels to produce powdered activated carbon (DPAC). The influence of process variables such as carbonization temperature, activation time, contact time, CO2 flow rate, and adsorption dosage was optimized using response surface methodology (RSM). A six-factor and two levels Box–Behnken design (BBD) was used to optimize the parameters. The independent variables were activation temperature (°C), duration (min), CO2 flow rate during the activation process (L/min), irradiation of adsorbent (kGy), irradiation duration (min), and adsorbent dosage (g) while phenol removal (mg/L) was the dependent variable (response). Following the observed correlation coefficient values, the design was fitted to a quadratic model (R2 = 0.9896). The optimal removal efficiency (97.25%) was observed at an activation temperature of 900 °C, activation time of 30 min, CO2 flow rate of 0.05 L/min, irradiation dose of 100 kGy, contact time of 35 min and adsorption dosage of 0.75 g. The optimal DPAC showed a BET surface of 281.33 m2/ g. The removal efficiency was later compared with a commercially available activated carbon which shows a 98.56% phenol removal. The results show that the durian peel could be an effective precursor for making activated carbon for phenol removal, and irradiation can significantly enhance surface activation.

This work reports the fabrication of a flexible Photodetector (PD) using Carbon Dots (CDs)/Polymer composite for Deep UV (DUV) photodetection. The CDs have been prepared using a simple and inexpensive heating process. The syncretic studies reveal the disordered graphitic core with surface functional groups and the excitation-dependent character of CDs. The synthesized CDs are stabilized via Poly Vinyl Alcohol (PVA) through a synergistic effect and investigated for different compositions (2–10 weight %) of CDs. The CDs/PVA composites shows improved absorbance at 208 and 335 nm compared to pure CDs owing to the bonding between them. This advantageous property of high absorption and photo response in the DUV region is utilized by employing CDs/PVA composite as a photo-sensing layer on the ITO-coated PET substrate in the PD. The performance of the PD was measured under dark, short (254 nm) and long (365 nm) UV region. Among all the compositions, 4% CDs/PVA PD exhibits superior performance in terms of high photo-to-dark current ratio (IPh/Id), responsivity and detectivity. The PD functioning and other parameters are discussed in detail and reported.

The incorporation of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) between composites plies has been said to enhance the through-thickness strength, and it can also decrease the risk of interply delamination and reduce crack initiation. Thanks to these high mechanical performances, nano-engineered hybrid composites are seen as promising for highly demanding structural reinforcement applications. This paper is part of a study that focuses specifically on the methodology for transferring VACNTs onto a prepreg surface while maintaining their initial vertically aligned morphology. The chosen method involved bonding the VACNTs’ forest through capillary impregnation of the forest by the prepreg’s resin. Key parameters for an effective transfer and to achieve a partial capillary rise of the resin into the VACNTs will be discussed here.

Rechargeable zinc-based batteries (RZBs) with the advantages of high safety, low cost, abundant resources and environmental friendliness, are considered as advanced secondary battery systems that can be applied to large-scale energy storage. As an important cathode material for RZBs, NASICON-type Na3V2( PO4)3 (NVP) possesses three-dimensional and large-scale ion channels that facilitate the rapid diffusion of Zn2+, and has a higher average operating voltage compared with other vanadiumbased compounds, thus exhibiting the possibility of realizing RZBs with high energy density. However, NVP still has some problems, such as poor electronic conductivity and spontaneous dissolution in aqueous solution. The sluggish kinetics of Zn2+ (de)intercalation in NVP and dendritic growth on the Zn anode also contribute to the poor rate performance and short cycle life of the batteries. In this review, optimization strategies for the electrochemical performance of RZBs with NVP as cathode are systematically elaborated, including modification of NVP cathode and optimization of electrolyte. Several mainstream energy storage mechanisms and analysis methods in this battery system are sorted out and summarized. On this basis, the development direction of NVP–RZB system is further prospected.

Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is known to contribute to the modulation of insulin resistance and systemic inflammation seen in obesity and the metabolic syndrome. The present study was performed to investigate the fertility competence of TLR4 knock out male mice (TLR4 mice) on a high-fat diet (HFD), compared to a normal-chow diet (NCD). The controls included wildtype (WT) mice fed on a HFD or NCD. Six-week-old male mice were fed with either a NCD or HFD for 20 weeks. Body and organ weights, serum levels of glucose, triglycerides and hepatoxicity, sperm quality and spermatogenesis were observed after the sacrifice. Also, randomly selected male mice were mated with virgin female mice after feeding of 19 weeks. The weight of the body and organs increased in WT and TLR4 mice on a HFD compared to those of mice on a NCD. The weights of the reproductive organs did not vary among the treatment groups. The motility and concentration of the epididymal spermatozoa decreased in both WT and TLR4 mice fed a HFD. The pregnancy rate and litter size declined in the HFD-fed WT mice compared to the HFD-fed TLR4 mice. In conclusion, the HFD alters energy and steroid metabolism in mice, which may lead to male reproductive disorders. However, fertility competence was somewhat restored in HFD-fed TLR4 male mice, suggesting that the TLR4 is involved in testis dysfunction due to metabolic imbalance.