Legacy waste from the decommissioned A-1 nuclear power plant in the Slovak Republic is scheduled for immobilisation within a tailored alkali borosilicate glass formulation, as part of ongoing site cleanup. The aqueous durability and characterisation of a simulant glass wasteform for Chrompik III legacy waste, was investigated, including dissolution experiments up to 112 days (90°C, ASTM Type 1 water). The wasteform was an amorphous, light green glassy product, with no observed phase separation or crystalline inclusions. Aqueous leach testing revealed a suitably durable product over the timescale investigated, comparing positively to other simulant nuclear waste glasses and vitreous products tested under similar conditions. Iron and titanium rich precipitates were observed to form at the surface of monolithic samples during leaching, with the formation of an alkali deficient alteration layer behind these at later ages. Overall this glass appears to perform well, and in line with expectations for this chemistry, although longer-term testing would be required to predict overall durability. This work will contribute to developing confidence in the disposability of vitrified Chrompik legacy wastes.

Even in an era where 8-meter class telescopes are common, small telescopes are considered very valuable research facilities since they are available for rapid follow-up or long term monitoring observations. To maximize the usefulness of small telescopes in Korea, we established the SomangNet, a network of 0.4{1.0 m class optical telescopes operated by Korean institutions, in 2020. Here, we give an overview of the project, describing the current participating telescopes, its scientic scope and operation mode, and the prospects for future activities. SomangNet currently includes 10 telescopes that are located in Australia, USA, and Chile as well as in Korea. The operation of many of these telescopes currently relies on operators, and we plan to upgrade them for remote or robotic operation. The latest SomangNet science projects include monitoring and follow-up observational studies of galaxies, supernovae, active galactic nuclei, symbiotic stars, solar system objects, neutrino/gravitational-wave sources, and exoplanets.

The IMO Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP) has been established purposely to enhance the greater safety of vessel’s navigation by standardizing the language used among seafarers. However, accidents are still occurred due to communication failures among onboard merchant vessels’ crews. It is worth mentioning that the major cause of marine accidents is human error (80%) where one-third from it was due to communication failures. Ineffective communication, different culture and language among seafarers onboard are some instigators of human error that lead to accidents in marine operations. Therefore, the primary aim of this paper is to investigate and evaluate the causal factors that contributes to communication failures onboard merchant vessels. Then, this paper recommends possible solutions for minimizing the communication failures among seafarers. To achieve this research objectives, two decision-making tools which are the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Evidential Reasoning (ER) was applied. Data and judgments are obtained from domains experts from four marine training providers and eight shipowners in Malaysia. The result has shown that lack of SMCP knowledge, prejudice and dialect varieties are the most significant factors that contribute to the communication failures onboard merchant vessels. Few suggestions and opinions from the experts are proposed in this paper. This research can assist marine training providers and shipowners to identify and evaluate the causal factors of communication failures thus corrective action can be taken.

Intensive Monitoring Survey of Nearby Galaxies (IMSNG) is a high cadence observation program monitoring nearby galaxies with high probabilities of hosting supernovae (SNe). IMSNG aims to constrain the SN explosion mechanism by inferring sizes of SN progenitor systems through the detection of the shock-heated emission that lasts less than a few days after the SN explosion. To catch the signal, IMSNG utilizes a network of 0.5-m to 1-m class telescopes around the world and monitors the images of 60 nearby galaxies at distances D < 50 Mpc to a cadence as short as a few hours. The target galaxies are bright in near-ultraviolet (NUV) with MNUV < - 18.4 AB mag and have high probabilities of hosting SNe (0.06 SN yr-1 per galaxy). With this strategy, we expect to detect the early light curves of 3.4 SNe per year to a depth of R  19:5 mag, enabling us to detect the shock-heated emission from a progenitor star with a radius as small as 0.1 R. The accumulated data will be also useful for studying faint features around the target galaxies and other science projects. So far, 18 SNe have occurred in our target fields (16 in IMSNG galaxies) over 5 years, confirming our SN rate estimate of 0.06 SN yr-1 per galaxy.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that incidents like the recall of the exploding Samsung Galaxy 7 phones drive owners of other (competing) brands to experience and express feelings of joy when a rival brand fails (e.g., “the hottest phone in the streets!”). Although consumers sometimes experience brand-related schadenfreude—that is, joy out of other brand’s failure—, psychological processes driving schadenfreude are not clearly understood (Hickman & Ward, 2007; Van Dijk, Van Koningsbruggen, Ouwerkerk, & Wesseling, 2011). We propose that schadenfreude may be elicited by consumers’ tendencies to stand by their choices (Ye & Gawronski, 2016). We demonstrate that consumers show higher levels of schadenfreude if their choice is disconfirmed; for example, by a comparative product review that evaluates their chosen brand to be inferior to a rival non-chosen brand. Furthermore, this effect is moderated by the popularity of the chosen brand and mediated by feelings of self-threat. Moreover, we show that this effect is stronger for narcissists. We also find evidence that schadenfreude is a means for consumers to reaffirm their sense of self after they experience a self-threat induced by the disconfirmation of their choice.

This paper develops a conceptual model of international social media marketing strategy that describes how culture shapes consumers’ use of social media around the world. Drawing from cultural psychology, marketing, and computer information systems, we use Kietzmann et al.’s (2011) functional building blocks of social media to organize social media functions, then explicate how various dimensions of culture affect the way such social media functions are used across cultures. By delineating these complex relationships, our model and the propositions that stem from it offer directions for future research and advance understanding of cross-cultural differences with implications for businesses that provide social media or capitalize on social media for global reach in the international marketplace.

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute plans to develop a coronagraph in collaboration with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and to install it on the International Space Station (ISS). The coronagraph is an externally occulted one-stage coronagraph with a field of view from 3 to 15 solar radii. The observation wavelength is approximately 400~nm, where strong Fraunhofer absorption lines from the photosphere experience thermal broadening and Doppler shift through scattering by coronal electrons. Photometric filter observations around this band enable the estimation of 2D electron temperature and electron velocity distribution in the corona. Together with a high time cadence ($<$12~min) of corona images used to determine the geometric and kinematic parameters of coronal mass ejections, the coronagraph will yield the spatial distribution of electron density by measuring the polarized brightness. For the purpose of technical demonstration, we intend to observe the total solar eclipse in August 2017 with the filter system and to perform a stratospheric balloon experiment in 2019 with the engineering model of the coronagraph. The coronagraph is planned to be installed on the ISS in 2021 for addressing a number of questions (e.g., coronal heating and solar wind acceleration) that are both fundamental and practically important in the physics of the solar corona and of the heliosphere.

We investigate two abnormal CME-Storm pairs that occurred on 2014 September 10 - 12 and 2015 March 15 - 17, respectively. The first one was a moderate geomagnetic storm (Dstmin  -75 nT) driven by the X1.6 high speed flare-associated CME (1267 km s−1) in AR 12158 (N14E02) near solar disk center. The other was a very intense geomagnetic storm (Dstmin  -223 nT) caused by a CME with moderate speed (719 km s−1) and associated with a filament eruption accompanied by a weak flare (C9.1) in AR 12297 (S17W38). Both CMEs have large direction parameters facing the Earth and southward magnetic field orientation in their solar source region. In this study, we inspect the structure of Interplanetary Flux Ropes (IFRs) at the Earth estimated by using the torus fitting technique assuming self-similar expansion. As results, we find that the moderate storm on 2014 September 12 was caused by small-scale southward magnetic fields in the sheath region ahead of the IFR. The Earth traversed the portion of the IFR where only the northward fields are observed. Meanwhile, in case of the 2015 March 17 storm, our IFR analysis revealed that the Earth passed the very portion where only the southward magnetic fields are observed throughout the passage. The resultant southward magnetic field with long- duration is the main cause of the intense storm. We suggest that 3D magnetic field geometry of an IFR at the IFR-Earth encounter is important and the strength of a geomagnetic storm is strongly affected by the relative location of the Earth with respect to the IFR structure.

We estimate the fractal dimension of the ρ Ophiuchus Molecular Cloud Complex, associated with star forming regions. We selected a cube (v, l, b) database, obtained with J = 1−0 transition lines of 12CO and 13CO at a resolution of 22′′ using a multibeam receiver system on the 14-m telescope of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Using a code developed within IRAF, we identified slice-clouds with two threshold temperatures to estimate the fractal dimension. With threshold temperatures of 2.25 K (3σ) and 3.75 K (5σ), the fractal dimension of the target cloud is estimated to be D = 1.52–1.54, where P / AD/2 , which is larger than previous results. We suggest that the sampling rate (spatial resolution) of observed data must be an important parameter when estimating the fractal dimension, and that narrower or wider dispersion around an arbitrary fit line and the intercepts at NP = 100 should be checked whether they relate to rms noise level or characteristic structure of the target cloud. This issue could be investigated by analysing several high resolution databases with different quality (low or moderate sensitivity).