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.

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.

As a key element in the RED process, the membrane influences the overall power output of the RED stack. Especially, the membrane resistance is one of important properties of the membrane. In this study, CEM(cation exchange membrane) and AEM(anion exchange membrane) consisting of cross-linked polymers in a porous polyolefin substrate were developed to simultaneously satisfy high performance and cost-down of the applied RED system. Physico-chemically stable and ultrathin ion exchange pore filling membranes (cation exchange membranes and anion exchange membranes) with high ion transfer coefficients have been developed for reverse electrodialysis as an energy conversion system. The polymer electrolytes in both cases of cation exchangeable and anion exchangeable ones consisting of the whole hydrocarbon materials were introduced into porous hydrocarbon substrates and crosslinked by radical polymerization in this work. The thickness of the prepared pore filling membranes was controlled between 16 and 23 micrometers to extremely lower membrane resistance and to increase ion transfer. All the properties of the prepared membranes were compared with commercial membranes obtained from Tokuyama, Fuji, and Fuma-Tech. Furthermore, RED cell performance and energy efficiency using the prepared pore filling membranes were also evaluated.

La1-xBaxMnO3 (x = 0.30, 0.35 and 0.40) samples have been prepared by solid-state reaction method. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) study showed that all the samples crystallized in a rhombohedral structure with an R-3c space group. Variation of the magnetization as a function of the temperature and applied magnetic field was carried out. All the samples revealed ferromagnetic to paramagnetic (FM-PM) phase transition at the Curie temperature TC ~ 342 K. The magnetic entropy change was also studied through examination of the measured magnetic isotherms M(H, T) near TC. The magnetocaloric effect was calculated in terms of the isothermal magnetic entropy change. The maximum entropy change reaches a value of 1.192 J/ kgK under a magnetic field change of 2.5T for the La0.6Ba0.4MnO3 composition. The relative cooling power (RCP) is 79.31 J/ kg for the same applied magnetic field.