PURPOSES : There has been increasing interest in South Korea on warm-mix asphalt (WMA) and cold-mix asphalt (CMA) technologies that allow production of asphalt pavement mixtures at comparatively lower temperatures than those of hot-mix asphalt (HMA) for use in pavement engineering. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of replacing HMA pavement with WMA pavement with the goal of reducing CO2 emissions associated with asphalt production for road construction. METHODS : Changes in the dynamic modulus characteristics of WMA and HMA according to short-term and long-term aging were evaluated. In addition, the effects of water damage were evaluated for short- and long-term aging stages. RESULTS : For WMA, in the process of mixing and short-term aging, early-age dynamic modulus decreased owing to low temperature and reduced short-term aging (STA) time. This could result in early damage to the asphalt pavement depending on the applied traffic load and environmental load. CONCLUSIONS : Mastercurves of the dynamic modulus were used for comparative analysis of WMA and HMA. Compared to the dynamic modulus after STA of HMA, the estimated aging time determined by experiments for WMA to achieve the required stiffness was more than 48 hours, which is equiva-lent to approximately 4 to 5 years real service life when converted. It is considered that further studies are needed for performance optimization to achieve early-age performance of the asphalt mixes.

With the dramatic advance in artificial intelligence, the use of an AI anchor in the news industry is a subject of great interest. An AI anchor is a computer-generated news anchor that mimics the human voice, appearance, and facial expressions to present the news. As the focus of this study is to investigate how the news media utilize an AI anchor in the news program, the research questions are as follows: (1) What are the differences in news topics between AI and human anchors? (2) How does the viewership differ based on these topic choices, with a focus on the emotional impact?

In response to the increasing deployment of brand chatbots in the service sector, this study developed a conceptual framework to examine the psychological processes through which brand chatbots contribute to relationship building efforts. A 2 (interactivity: high vs. low) X 2 (anthropomorphic conversation style: warm vs. competent) between-subject design was conducted in the context of the coffee service business. The levels of interactivity in the chatbots were operationalized by altering the subdimensions of interactivity: modality (i.e., media richness, response latency), message (i.e., interdependency in message exchanges), and source (i.e., customization of content flow). Different linguistic elements (e.g., terms of address, vocabulary, punctuation, emoticons) were used to construct two sets of scripts that emphasized either warmth or competence of the chatbots. Based on the results of the pretests, four brand chatbots via Facebook Messenger were developed using the platform provided by GoSky AI Inc.

In this study, waste corrugated paper was used as carbon precursor with KOH-NaOH mixture (mole ratio was 51:49 and the melting point is 170 °C) as activator to prepare porous carbon at different reaction temperature and different mass ratio of KOH-NaOH mixture/waste corrugate paper fiber. The micro-morphology, pore structure information and composition of porous carbon were analyzed, and the formation mechanism of pores was investigated. The effect of activator amount and pyrolysis temperature on the morphology and structure of porous carbon were studied. The adsorption capacity of porous carbon was evaluated with the methylene blue as model pollutant. The effect of adsorbent amount, adsorption time and temperature on the adsorption performance of the porous carbon were analyzed. The maximum specific surface area is 1493.30 m2 ·g−1 and the maximum adsorption capacity of methylene blue is 518 mg·g−1. This study provides a new idea for efficient conversion and utilization of waste paper.

In recent years, globalisation has fostered ever more frequent and intimate interactions between states and societies in the Asia-Pacific region. Unfortunately, this has also increased the potential for disputes, particularly regarding international trade and human rights. The Asia-Pacific Dispute Resolution Program, which is run jointly by the Institute of Asian Research and the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia, seeks to better understand, explain and predict when such disputes will arise, combining stateof- the-art approaches from law, political science, communications, sociology, international relations, economics and business. To manage-and ideally preventsuch disputes, the world is in urgent need of resolution approaches that meet the needs and expectations of the different cultures involved. The objective of the Program is to propose innovative interdisciplinary approaches to dispute resolution that international communities of scholars and policymakers can use to promote intercultural communication and reconciliation.

Foodborne disease caused by pathogenic bacteria is one of main concerns in food industry. To supply safe food products, chemical and thermal intervention technologies have been widely applied in food industry, however these treatments have their own limitations. The concept of biopreservation has recently received increased attention in response to industrial and consumer demands. The biopreservation technologies mainly include bacteriocin, bacteriophage, bacteriophage-encoded enzymes, and endolysins. Among them, bacteriocins have been widely recognized as a main biopreservative and have also been most studied. Bacteriocins, mainly consisting of antibacterial peptides, may have bactericidal or bacteriostatic effect which could prolong the shelf-life as well as maintain safety of foods. This review article offers a brief research trend about bacteriocins, focusing on microbial food safety. The antimicrobial mechanism of bacteriocins has been discussed and some efforts to inactivate foodborne pathogens have been analyzed in this review article. The challenges facing the application of bacteriocins have also been evaluated. Thus, this review will provide insights for researchers working in bacteriocin as well as industry personnel looking for a new method for fighting foodborne pathogens.

Although there are many international treaties and conventions offering protection for generic human rights that implicitly refer to older persons, these relevant provisions are scattered, porous and lack of practical operability, which fail to provide explicit, tailored, comprehensive and binding protection to older persons. In addition, there are some soft law provisions that guide the application of law and add to the overall protection of older people. However none of the documents contains legally binding obligations. Therefore, the protection of the rights of the elderly must be formulated as the “hard law” which defines the responsibilities of the state and clarifies the implementation mechanism at the international and domestic level. In other words, a legal system ought to be established to comprehensively protect the rights of the elderly, which is just the Convention on the Rights of the Elderly. This article attempts to present a proposal to create the right system of the Convention, which represents the core of this potential international treaty.

The recent fentanyl dispute between China and the US adds the academic value to the efforts to examine the respective legal regime of public international law and the WTO law on narcotics trafficking. On the one hand, public international law offers a comprehensive framework to address narcotics trafficking but as demonstrated by Chinese proofs, its function is undermined by weak enforcement. On the other hand, there exist some useful mechanisms in the WTO law to combat narcotics trafficking but their weaknesses can also be easily spotted. More importantly, the alarm of the global threat of illicit trade is ringing, which requires our raising awareness to it. Recently, the UNCTAD and the OECD have already taken the initiative to discuss the collective actions, by means of conferences or reports, to deal with illicit trade. In the long run, it will be indispensable to establish an operational governance framework on the international level to effectively curb illicit trade.

The act of refusal takes place in everyday lives, but it has been discussed to be a difficult speech act for nonnative speakers. This study seeks to investigate Korean EFL learners’ refusals in extended discourse along with their pragmatic perceptions. Sixteen college students were engaged in oral role-plays with two native English speakers and instructed to refuse the interlocutor’s request. The refusal performances were analyzed using conversation analysis framework with respect to the interlocutors’ different powers and the learners’ proficiency levels. Learners also participated in retrospective verbal reports. Findings depict different verbal and nonverbal features illustrating learners’ sensitivity towards higher status and their different linguistic abilities. Furthermore, their verbal reports revealed that despite their pragmatic awareness, learners were not fully equipped with appropriate L2 pragmatic knowledge.

독일 괴팅겐 대학교 동아시아 연구소 한학과 학생들은 첫 해에 번체자를 배우고, 다음 학년 학기에는 번체자를 계속 쓰거나 간체자로 전환하는 것 둘 중 하나를 선택할 수 있도록 규정하고 있다. 간체자를 선택한 학생은 이 때 쓰기에서 번체를 간체자로 전환하는 것을 학습하였는데, 이 때 이들만의 독특한 한자 오류가 나타남을 확인할 수 있다. 예를 들어, 전에 배운 번체자의 영향을 받아 여행을 뜻하는 간체자 旅游를 번체자인 旅遊로 쓰거나, 亲眼을 親見眼 으로 쓰는 것과 같은 예이다. 필자는 이 전환 시기에 출현한 한자 쓰기 오류가 외국 국적의 학습자가 범하는 오류와 상이함을 발견하였고, 이것이 필자의 연구 동기가 되었다. 본 연구는 중국어를 학습한 독일 국적 학습자들이 번체자에서 간체자로 한자 사용이 전환되는 시기에 발생하는 다양한 한자 오류 현상을 위주로 연구를 진행하였다. 대상은 독일 괴팅겐대학교 동아시아 연구소의 한학과 학생이었으며, 연구 자료는 대상 학습자가 매주 한 편씩 지은 글 총 42편을 대상으로 하였다. 본 연구의 문제의식은 두 가지이다. 하나는 '이러한 과도기에 생긴 한자 오류 현상은 무엇?'이며, '먼저 번체자 학습을 완료한 학습자가 다시 간체자를 학습할 경우, 건의할 학습 방법이 어떤 것이 있는가?'이다. 연구 절차는 대상 학생이 간체자를 이용하여 한 달 내에 쓴 글을 수집하고 쓰기에서 나타난 한자 오류들을 분석하여 귀납하는 방법을 사용하였으며, 마지막으로 이를 토대로 교학 건의를 도출하였다. 연구 결과는 다음과 같다. 한자 오류 유형은 필기오류, 부건 오류, 同音字와 音近字의 잘못된 대체 오류, 번체자의 잘못된 대체 오류, 그 외 다양한 종류의 기타 오류들이다.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is viewed as an internal marketing strategy (Bhattacharya, Sen, & Korschun, 2007; Shabnam, & Sarker, 2012). Research indicate that CSR implementation has a positive impact on employees, and enhance working satisfaction, corporate identity and organizational commitment （Koh and El’fred, 2001;Valentine et al., 2006; Martinez & Rodríguez del Bosque, 2013; Lee, Song, Lee, Lee, & Bernhard, 2013）. However, some studies suggest that CSR will not directly influence employee, related mediating factors and moderating factors need to be more discussed. The study apply regulatory focus theory as a framework for explaining moderator effect of promotion and prevention focus on employee perceived CSR and working satisfaction, organizational identity and trust. Promotion focus means that employees consider CSR promoting a better society and environment, and prevention focus represent CSR is for preventing falling behind industry, and public criticism. A questionnaire survey was employed in hospitality industry, questionnaire is design based on related literature (VandeWalle, 1997; Higgins et. al., 2001; Craig et.al., 2009; Huimin, & Ryan, 2011; Martínez, Pérez, & Rodríguez del Bosque, 2013; Paek, Xiao, Lee & Song, 2013; Fu, Ye & Law, 2014). And five subscales are contained in the questionnaire, including perceived CSR、regulatory focus、 working satisfaction 、organizational commitment and organizational trust. To analyse the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, a pilot study was conducted in September 2017. 120 questionnaires were collected, 105 valid questionnaires were subjected to a preliminary analysis, the official investigation was conducted during January and February in 2017. 450 questionnaires were distributed, and 389 valid questionnaires were collected, a recovery rate of 86.4%. A significant partial correlation was found between perceived CSR and working satisfaction(ΔR2=.31, p<.000)、organizational commitment (ΔR2=.22,p<.000) and organizational trust (ΔR2=.27, p<.000). Hierarchical regression analysis was further used to estimate moderation effect of regulatory focus, the study find that moderation effect on the relationship between CSR and and working satisfaction(ΔR2=.02, p<.01)、organizational commitment (ΔR2=.06, p<.01) and organizational trust (ΔR2=.06, p<.01). The research finding shows that working satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational trust are more influenced by the organization's CSR implementation while employees have positive interpretation and recognition of CSR. Therefore, the organization should fully communicate about the purpose and value of CSR, so that employees can identify with and support the organization's CSR, and then CSR can achieve the function of internal marketing. If employees think that the organization's implementation of CSR is only an obligation or only satisfies the social perception, there may be less positive impact of CSR on employees. Regulatory focus theory is suggested to apply on future consumer study.

Offering an apology is one of the common service failure recovery strategies. Previous studies focused on examining the effectiveness of apology from the customer perspective. It is not clear whether and how customers perceive firm remorse after an apology influence their blame attribution and coping behaviors. Integrating a cognitive-emotive model and an empathy model, this research proposes and empirically tests a remorse-empathy-coping model to explain how customers respond to apology after mobile application service failures occur. Specifically, this research examines how perceived firm remorse influences blame attribution and emotional empathy, which subsequently affects coping behaviors (revenge and avoidance) in the mobile app service recovery context. The moderating role of technology anxiety in the proposed model is also identified. Four hundred and fifty-two mobile application service users were recruited for a survey study and the Structural Equation Modeling was used in order to test the research hypotheses. Our findings show that perceived firm remorse negatively influences blame attribution but positively influences empathy. Empathy negatively affects revenge and avoidance behaviors. In addition, technology anxiety moderates the effect of perceived firm remorse on blame attribution. The negative effect of perceived firm remorse on blame attribution becomes weaker when technology anxiety increases.

Introduction Frontline employees (FLEs) play a very important role in service delivery due to the interactive nature of the service encounter. They span the boundary between the firm and its customers and service firms rely on their FLEs to deliver their promise and create a favorable company image to customers (e.g., Bitner et al., 1990). Considerable previous research addresses how effective management practices and supportive work environments will induce positive attitudinal and behavioral responses of FLEs, which will, in turn, contribute to the positive customer perceptions of the service providers (e.g., Hartline and Ferrell 1996). In other words, the relationship quality or the exchange quality of the employee-organization interface will have a spillover effect on that of the customer-organization interface. But the question examined here is: can this spillover effect occur in an opposite way? In other words, will firms’ treatment of customers shape the employees’ relationship with their firms? With a few exceptions, limited research has paid attention to this inverse relationship. The purpose of our research is threefold: (1) to investigate whether employee perception of customer injustice can influence employees’ psychological contract violation with the firm, (2) to examine whether role conflict mediates the relationship between customer injustice and psychological contract violation, and (3) to explore the moderating impacts of customer identification on the mediation effect of role conflict. Method We conducted an experiment using a 2 (customer injustice: high vs. low) x 2 (customer identification: high vs. low) between-subjects factorial design. Two hundred participants were recruited from Amazon Mturk. Twelve responses were deemed unusable and excluded from the study, resulting in a final sample size of 188 (53.7 % female; age ranging from 18 to 65). Each participant was randomly assigned to one of the four experimental scenarios that corresponded to a combination of the two manipulated factors at either high or low level. All manipulations worked as intended. To analyze the moderating effect of customer identification via role conflict, we used the procedure of Hayes (2013) to estimate a conditional process model. We also controlled for the effects of empathy, income, and ethnicity. To test whether the indirect effect of injustice on contract violation is moderated by customer identification, an index of moderated mediation proposed by Hayes (2014) was calculated. To test whether this index is statistically significantly from zero, a 95% confidence interval was calculated for this index by bootstrapping 5,000 samples. The confidence interval of this index is .0162 to 1.1105, indicating the indirect effect is significantly moderated by identification. The results showed that the indirect effect of customer injustice via role conflict on contract violation is only significant (p< .05) when customer identification is high. In other words, when customer identification is low, the effect of injustice on contract violation is not mediated through role conflict. Research implications Our research provides empirical evidence that FLEs are sensitive to the treatment of customers by the firm. The traditional wisdom in the sales literature is that “if you treat your employees well, they will treat your customers well.” Our study complements this “trickle-down effect” in the extant literature and demonstrates a “bottom-up effect” that the firm’s unfair treatment of customers will adversely influence employees’ relationship with their firm. Our research also offers important insights into why customer injustice may lead to FLEs’ perceived psychological contract violation with the firm. Previous sales research suggests that role conflict can be influenced by an organization’s structure and culture as well as salespeople’s job characteristics (Singh 1998; Barnes et al. 2006). Our study complements these findings and identifies perceived customer injustice as a new role stressor of FLEs. In addition, our research reveals that the mediating effect of role conflict is moderated by customer identification. Customer identification increases the likelihood that customer injustice would manifest in a psychological contract violation via increased role conflict. The findings of this research also have several managerial implications. First, service and sales managers should be aware of the negative consequence of unfair customer treatment by the firm and how it may eventually jeopardize employees’ relationship with the firm. Second, managers should consult with their FLEs when implementing any new customerfacing policies to understand how these policies would impact FLEs’ other duties of serving customers. Finally, FLEs may form strong identification with their customers, which may amplify the negative consequence of customer injustice on psychological contract violation. Managers should try to counteract FLEs’ over-identification with customers by increasing organizational identification.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among the service quality, professional competence and loyalty of China tourists visiting Taiwan. A crosssectional survey was used to collect usable data from the China tourists who participate in group tourism to Taiwan. The result indicate that the China tourists felt the service quality of “meal” in Taiwan is the best and good feeling in “professional knowledge” of tour guide. In addition, this study found that the professional competence of tour guide has an intermediary effect between the quality of tourist services and tourist loyalty. The quality of tourism service can positively influence the loyalty of China tourists to Taiwan, meanwhile, the quality of tourism service can positively affect the professional competence of tour guide and the professional competence of tour guide can positively affect the loyalty of China tourists travel to Taiwan. According to the results, the study found that travel agencies should focus on the training of tour guide, which help travel agencies to raise the value of travels product and attract more tourist.

Foods play important roles in Chinese gift giving behavior; they contain abundant symbolic and semiotics meanings. Typical food products are exchange during festivals, commercial intercourse, and other social intercourse occasion. The purpose of study is to investigate how the meanings and values of food gifts affect gift-giving behavior under Chinese cultural context. Qualitative in-depth interviews are applied, eighteen participants from food gift industry, academic field and consumers are invited in the study, and qualitative data analysis framework is designed based on Sheth’s consumption values theory. We find that food gifts cover function value, emotional value, social value, epistemic value and conditional value. Gift values are explained by givers and recipients during gift-giving process. Gift-giving occasion, gift-giving purpose, relationship between givers and recipients are influence the value of gift. Study provides some practical recommendation for food products design and marketing.

The rapid developments of research and teaching of international law in China have attracted the attention of international law academics of the world, who have looked over the landscape of international law in China with great interest. Unfortunately, existing literature has yet to completely satisfy their interests in this aspect. This article is intended to compensate for this gap by introducing representative international lawyers, publications, academic associations and research funding schemes on international law in China. More concretely, this paper will show the mainstream research sources of their Chinese counterparts as well as embrace teaching as part of the research system of international law in China. It is expected that, with their more attention into the holistic research methodology and the “One Belt, One Road” strategy, the Chinese academia of international law will contribute more to the international rule of law.

The global apparel market is estimated to increase from US$1,105 billion in 2012 to US$2,110 billion in 2025 (Statista, 2014), with women’s wear accounting for approximately 55% of the total within the United Kingdom (UK) (Verdict, 2015). In 2013 and 2014 market research performed by Mintel identified the ‘shopping experience’ as one of the key factors in women’s shopping habits, noting that consumers aged 16-24, in particular, tended to browse online but to buy in-store, still seeing shopping for clothes as a day out with friends (Mintel, 2013). Nevertheless, the growing influence of social media was noted, and by 2015 this age group had overtaken the 25-34 year olds to become the main online clothes shoppers. Despite this, young people aged 16-24, all of whom potentially qualify as digital natives, still show a preference for shopping in-store (Mintel, 2015), although preliminary research indicates that more of them are now shopping alone than with friends. This suggests that there has been a shift in consumer shopping habits within the youth sector, with less importance being placed on the shopping experience. Given that, this study aims to explore the social media behaviours of the youngers aged between 18-24 with a particular focus on fashion consumption. Crowd sourcing has been identified as an emerging practice found in several sectors including fashion (Yeomans, 2013). Preliminary research suggests that the shift is just a perceived one and that technology savvy young fashion consumers are using smart-technology to upload ‘chelfies’ (‘selfies direct from the changing rooms’) to crowd source opinion about proposed purchases (Soar and Torn, 2015), using social media to replace ‘physical friends’ with ‘digital friends’. To explore this phenomenon further, this study employs qualitative research method and uses semi-structured interviews. The result of this research provides evidence of crowd sourcing behaviours via social media, as well as indicates the complex communication mechanism that embeds within fashion consumption among the generation of the youth.