This paper aims to expand our understanding on the success factors of small businesses, which comprise of more than 90 percent of all businesses in U.S. in 2016. One of the most critical issues behind small business success is the competition, which becomes increasingly intense. Not only small businesses fiercely compete with larger competitors (e.g. Emergence of mega-retailers such as Wal-Mart has intensified the competition in the grocery industry, and, as a result, many mom and pop stores have gone out of business.), but also the competition against each other (i.e. competition between small businesses) becomes increasingly aggressive. Yet, the current literature in marketing have less investigated the issue of competition between small businesses, while issues on competition between small and large businesses have been somewhat explored. Another phenomenon in small business that has not received much attention is the competition between generalist and specialist firms. This phenomenon of specialist versus generalist competition is in fact frequently observed in many industries. Therefore, we study competition between small businesses, focusing on the competition between generalist and specialist small businesses. We examine how competitive intensity, as well as market environmental factors, affect the performance of small businesses. Specifically, we decompose the competitive intensity into two types, one between generalists and the other between specialists, in order to identify the differential effects of competition between generalist and specialist, and examine their impacts on the generalist and specialist performance. Given the research questions above, we develop the following hypotheses based on the past research in marketing. First, we expect competition has a positive effect on generalist performance, while we expect the opposite effect on specialist performance. We also expect that the effect of competition becomes weaker, as the competition becomes more intense. That is, the positive (negative) impact of competition on generalist (specialist) performance becomes less significant as there are more competitors in the market. We further expect that competition between the same type of businesses (e.g. between generalists) has a positive effect on their performance, while competition between the difference types (e.g. between generalist and specialist) has a negative effect on their performance. Moreover, we expect that market environmental factors have differential effects on the performance of generalist and specialist. To test the aforementioned hypotheses on the small business competition between generalist and specialist, we collected data from the health care industry on private physician practices (offices) in Korea. Out data contain, for each practice, monthly sales, number of doctors, number of nurses, type of practice, number of beds and zip code it is located in. We also have data on average consumer spending, average medical spending, percentage of patients over sixty years old for each zip code. Moreover, we have data on competition between the same type of offices (e.g. between generalists and between specialists) and competition between different types (e.g. between generalist and specialist). Note that our data collected from the Korean health care industry fit our research questions well. First, the majority of medical service providers in Korea are small private practices with an average number of two doctors, and the share of generalist and specialist practices are about half-and-half. Second, unlike the U.S. health care industry, generalist physicians in Korea usually practice a number of different fields, while specialist physicians focus on their own specialties. Third, patients in Korea do not usually distinguish between generalist and specialist offices, and they do not usually have a primary care physician. As a result, patients can easily switch between physicians, and in fact the switching is highly likely, as all medical information is centralized by government. Our main findings are as follows. First, we find that competition has a positive effect on generalist performance, while it has a negative effect on specialist performance. Specifically, we find that generalist benefits from competition with both generalist and specialist, while specialist suffers from the competition with both specialist and generalist. As competition becomes intense, meaning the number of physician offices increases, it would attract more patients to visit the area where physician offices are clustered (clustering effect), while it becomes easier for patients to switch from one to the other nearby offices. In particular, as generalist usually treats multiple fields (specialties), generalist tends to benefit from the patients who switch from specialist. In other words, generalists benefit from competition, as they free ride on clustering of physicians including specialists, while specialists would suffer from competition. Second, our findings show that as the competition becomes more intense, its effect on business performance becomes weaker. That is, a high level of competition weakens the benefits and damages imposed on the performance of generalist and specialist, respectively. When there are more physician offices to switch, the effect of free riding becomes weaker, as patients have more options to choose from. Thus, the benefit of generalist from free riding becomes weaker, as well as the negative effect on specialist performance. Moreover, our findings suggest that market environmental factors do influence the business performance. Specifically, the performance of both generalist and specialist improves as the number of doctors increases. However, an increase in the number of nurses has a different effect on generalist and specialist. Employing a larger group of nurses has a negative effect on generalist because it might cause the operation of the office to be less efficient. However, since specialist’s practice usually involves a more technical and sophisticated processes, a larger group of nurses could make the office more efficient having a positive impact on the sales performance. Similarly, we find the effects of other environmental factors have differential impacts on the performance of specialist versus generalist.

The influential role other customers play in forming a customer's service experience has gained growing academic and managerial attention recently. We intend to extend this stream of the research by proposing the effect of the interactions with other customers on the customer's quality perception of the service provided by the service firm. Through our findings we suggest that service firms should look beyond service personnel and consider other customers as a human factor influential on customer perceptions of service quality. Specifically, we propose that the perceived quality of C2C interactions indirectly affect customer perceptions of service quality through the mediation by the perceived social-emotional support. Using the selective halo effect theory, we theorize that the perceived quality of C2C interactions influence perceived quality of the assurance and empathy dimensions of SERVQUAL. We also suggest that the strength of the effect depends on customer role types. In order to fill the gap in the customer interaction research, which is mostly centered around experiential service settings, we choose a service setting in which functional benefits are more valued (i.e. healthcare services). Our study findings will help service managers become more aware of the importance of managing C2C interactions and learn specifically which aspects of C2C interactions to manage.

Taxonomic resolution of the Nosema/Vairimorpah clade has been augmented with DNA sequences of the small subunit (SSU) and large subunit (LSU) ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and the arrangement of SSU and LSU. Based on the two characteristics, the clade is largely divided into two, i.e. 'true' Nosema sub-group and 'non-true' Nosema sub-group within the clade. Our study shows that a novel Nosema species isolated from Pieris rapae has mixed characteristics of the 'true' and non 'true' Nosema sub-group based on the topology of SSU and LSU sequences, and rRNA of the isolate is normally organized. Additionally, the length of ITS can be a diagnostic tool to distinguish 'true' Nosema from non 'true' Nosema in the Nosema/Vairimorpha clade based on its nucleotide length as reported before. To our knowledge, this is the first report of recombination event in the Nosema/Vairimorpha clade.

This study was conducted to investigate insect fauna in the four insect garden sites of Suwon, Yeongyang, Buyeo and Yecheon from 2005 to 2007. Seasonal population size of insects was largest from June to August in all the four sites. In the four sites, Coleopteran insects were dominant followed by Hemiptera and Orthoptera. Unique education/learning programs are successfully run at the insect gardens based on the three geographic types (i.e. urban, mountainous and rural). These activities will help preserve insect biodiversity in the area and visitors better understand life forms such as insects found in the areas.

The Wolbachia bacterium, one of the most prevalent endosymbiotic bacteria, is known to induce reproductive anomalies such as cytoplasmic incompatibility, feminization, male killing and parthenogenesis in various arthropod species. The bacterium is considered to have had huge impacts on hosts' reproductive biology, immunity, evolution, and molecular machineries. Infection surveys on the bacterium have rather been limited to specific taxa that are mainly of economical importance or conducted with randomly collected organisms. Here we investigated infection frequency of Wolbachia in 206 Coleopteran insects collected from Korea. Among them 28 species (13.59%) across families proved to harbor Wolbachia. The phylogenetic trees based on the partial 16s rRNA gene and the partial Wolbachia surface protein (wsp) gene of Wolbachia show that all the Wolbachia strains belong to either Supergroup A or B and Wolbachia evolved independently from its hosts. In addition, the cophylogenetic analysis of the 16s rRNA gene and wsp gene implies that there have been horizontal DNA transfers and recombination events within and between divergent Wolbachia supergroups.

Microsporidia are obligate fungal intracellular parasites of all animal taxa. Among them the genus Nosema (Nosematidae) is known as the most common entomopathogen. Of these parasites, the ribosomal organization is one of the most pronounced molecular characteristics. One type is the normalarrangement of small subunit (SSU)-internal transcribed spacer (ITS)-large subunit (LSU) in the DNA sequence order. The other is the reverse arrangement of LSU-ITS-SSU. The latter is assigned to be the ‘true’ Nosema in the Nosema/Vairimorpha clade. However, we found that the SSU sequence of a strain of Nosema species having the normal arrangement of its rRNA sequence seemed to be more closely related to the ‘true’ Nosemagroup. Consequently we have further analyzed the complete sequence of rRNA. The results imply that there might be arecombination event in its rRNA evolution and/or the strain may form a novel group near the ‘true’ Nosema group. Interestingly both SSU and LSU of the ‘true’ Nosema and others may be under different selection pressure. We have also found that the size of ITS is distinct between the ‘true’ Nosema and other microsporidian species within the Nosema/Vairimorpha clade. This feature should be a useful diagnostic tool to distinguish the ‘true’ Nosema from others in the clade.

비전통 저류층에서 에너지 자원의 회수율을 높이기 위해서는 저류층 내의 미세 공극 형태와 연결도 등을 포함하는 공극 구조 연구가 필수적이다. 본 연구에서는 셰일 저류층 내 나노스케일의 공극 구조 연구에 적합한 조건과 방법을 찾기 위해 집속 이온 빔 시스템(Focused Ion Beam, FIB)과 이온 밀링 시스템(Ion Milling System, IMS)을 이용하여 분석을 진행하였다. 셰일 저류층 내 공극 구조 연구를 위해 리아드 분지에서 획득된 A-068 시추공의 시료를 사용하였다. 각 시료마다 특성이 다르기 때문에 시료 전처리 방법과 조건을 달리하여 최적의 조건을 찾았고 FE-SEM을 이용하여 공극 이미지를 획득하였다. 연구 결과 국소 부위의 공극구조를 관찰하기 위해서는 FIB를 사용하여 시표 표면을 밀링 후 바로 공극 이미지를 얻는 것이 효율적이고 반면에 넓은 면적을 단시간에 밀링하여 여러 공극 구조를 관찰하기 위해서는 IMS를 이용해야 한다는 것을 확인했다. 특히 탄산염 광물 함량이 높고 강도가 큰 암석에 대해서는 FIB보다는 IMS를 활용하여 밀링을 수행해야 공극 구조 관찰이 가능하다는 사실이 밝혀졌다. 본 연구를 통해 셰일 저류층 내 공극 구조 관 찰을 위한 방법이 정립되었으며 향후 이를 이용한 셰일 가스 저류층 시료 분석을 통해 공극의 크기나 형태 가 셰일가스 회수 증진에 미치는 영향을 밝힐 수 있을 것이다.