Background: Recently, the single-step genomic best linear unbiased prediction (ssGBLUP) method, which incorporates not only genomic information but also phenotypic information of pedigree, is under study. In this study, we performed a ssGBLUP analysis on a commercial Hanwoo population using phenotypic, genotypic, and pedigree data. Methods: The test population comprised Hanwoo 1,740 heads raised in four regions of Korea, while the reference population used Hanwoo 18,499 heads raised across the country and two-generation pedigree data. Analysis was performed using genotype data generated by the Hanwoo 50 K SNP beadchip. Results: The mean Genome estimated breeding values (GEBVs) estimated using the ssGBLUP methods for carcass weight (CWT), eye muscle area (EMA), back fat thickness (BFT), and marbling score (MS) were 7.348, 1.515, -0.355, and 0.040, respectively, while the accuracy of each trait was 0.749, 0.733, 0.769, and 0.768, respectively. When the correlation analysis between the GEBVs as a result of this study and the actual slaughter performance was confirmed, CWT, EMA, BFT, and MS were reported to be 0.519, 0.435, 0.444, and 0.543, respectively. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the ssGBLUP method enables a more accurate evaluation because it conducts a genetic evaluation of an individual using not only genotype information but also phenotypic information of the pedigree. Individual evaluation using the ssGBLUP method is considered effective for enhancing the genetic ability of farms and enabling accurate and rapid improvements. It is considered that if more pedigree information of reference population is collected for analysis, genetic ability can be evaluated more accurately.

Background: Copy number variation (CNV) can be identified using next-generation sequencing and microarray technologies, the research on the analysis of its association with meat traits in livestock breeding has significantly increased in recent years. Hanwoo is an inherent species raised in the Republic of Korea. It is now considered one of the most economically important species and a major food source mainly used for meat (Hanwoo beef). Methods: In this study, CNVs and the relationship between the obtained CNV regions (CNVRs) can be identified in the Hanwoo steer samples (n = 473) using Illumina Hanwoo SNP 50K bead chip and bioinformatic tools, which were used to locate the required data and meat traits were investigated. The PennCNV software was used for the identification of CNVs, followed by the use of the CNV Ruler software for locating the different CNVRs. Furthermore, bioinformatics analysis was performed. Results: We found a total of 2,575 autosomal CNVs (933 losses, 1,642 gains) and 416 CNVRs (289 gains, 111 losses, and 16 mixed), which were established with ranged in size from 2,183 bp to 983,333 bp and 10,004 bp to 381,836 bp, respectively. Upon analyzing the restriction of minor alleles frequency > 0.05 for meat traits association, 6 CNVRs in the carcass weight, 2 CNVRs in the marbling score, 3 CNVRs in the backfat thickness, and 2 CNVRs in the longissimus muscle area were related to the meat traits. In addition, we identified an overlap of 347 CNVRs. Moreover, 3 CNVRs were determined to have a gene that affects meat quality. Conclusions: Our results confirmed the relationship between Hanwoo CNVR and meat traits, and the possibility of overlapping candidate genes, annotations, and quantitative trait loci that results depended on to contribute to the greater understanding of CNVs in Hanwoo and its role in genetic variation among cattle livestock.

The war in Ukraine found numerous global brands publicly taking stances on the issue. They turned to their social media channels to disclose their initiatives, which ranged from simple statements through to actions of greater substantiality such as donations and divestments and triggered a lively conversation and opposing consumer reactions. The phenomenon of brands advocating for crucial but polarising socio-political matters is known as brand activism and is a concept still under-conceptualised. Our study extends the knowledge of brand activism in two ways. First, we address literature calls for investigating the ways through which the marketplace endorses peace by exploring how brand activism serves as a peace marketing tool. We, therefore, term brands’ stance-taking promoting peace or in relation to war as “peace brand activism” and embark on fully unpacking it as a concept. Second, extending the understanding of the concept of brand activism that stands as mostly unidimensional, we proceed in developing a comprehensive conceptualisation of peace brand activism that tracks the range of forms it can take and accounts for its different types and characteristics. Our work employs an exploratory qualitative analysis to unravel how global brands become peace activists, as disclosed in their social media channels across different platforms. Our data captures the activities of a sample of global brands across social media channels. Our findings reveal the range of brand activism forms that can be employed by brands. We also unearth the types of peace brand activism approaches that can be adopted when disclosing peace brand activism initiatives on social media channels. Our work contributes to theory by providing a holistic understanding of the concept of brand activism for peace and explicates important implications for managers and policy makers alike.

Many retailers and food service providers offer programs as part of their loyalty programs in which customers are given stamps for each purchase of a qualifying product or service and redeemed for a reward once a certain number of stamps have been accumulated. We identify which stimuli in such goal-directed motivational promotions induce customers to participate in the program.

This research investigates the structure of psychological ownership of people and the antecedents and results. Although research on psychological ownership is prevalent in Marketing and consumer behavior, there are a few works on psychological ownership of people. Recently, regardless of age and sex, people have been more actively engaging in activities that support their favorite celebrities, idols, and animation characters. They invest their time and money in the objects by participating in events, purchasing goods, recommending to others, etc. These behaviors would contribute to their life satisfaction and happiness. Based on previous research on psychological ownership in the field of organizational behavior and interview with idol fans, we built a model and tested it with data from 550 idol fans. The model contains two dimensions of the psychological ownership of consumers’ favorite idols, two factors as antecedents, two moderators relating to other fans, and two outcomes. The result shows that psychological identity positively affects a sense of community with other fans, and psychological responsibility positively influences territoriality toward them. While a sense of community with other fans positively affects their well-being and intention to continue support behaviors, territoriality negatively influences intention to continue support behaviors and positively impacts well-being.

Disinformation can distort real-world events and influence individuals’ decisions, posing a serious threat to society. However, moderating disinformation is still a major challenge for social network operators, as they are omnipresent, and social media’s ease-of-use, anonymity, and interconnectedness enables their rapid diffusion. Additionally, there is a lack of clear guidance on prioritizing content for censorship efforts. Until now, existing literature focuses on the virality of traditional online content, such as marketing campaigns, which are generally driven by positive emotions and arousal. Nevertheless, this type of content is vastly dissimilar from the hate-filled, misleading, and malicious content on social media platforms, rendering literature findings inapplicable when it comes to disinformation diffusion. So, what makes disinformation go viral? Using a unique dataset of ~400 million live-crawled messages on Twitter surrounding the US presidential election in 2020, our study analyzes which content and context characteristics drive the virality of disinformation. We classify ~10 million disinformation spread over ~50,000 distinct disinformation stories and (1) identify different diffusion trajectories of virality with the help of time series shape clustering. Moreover, to investigate the differing diffusion patterns, we (2) use state-of-the-art natural language processing to analyze linguistic and meta-level features. With that, this work provides ex-ante guidance to policymakers and network operators to help identify the most critical content on social media to curb the spread of threatening disinformation online. Furthermore, this study advances the overall understanding of disinformation diffusion by focusing exclusively on misleading content and the differences among them. Lastly, this work can add a new perspective to existing research by extensively quantifying the effects of viral disinformation online with a large-scale social media analysis.

Рrecipitation of platinum group metals (Rh, Ru, Pd, so-called MPG) from the melt essentially affects the reliability of installations for vitrification of high-level liquid radioactive waste (HLW). To date, it is difficult to find an approach which allows simultaneous recovery of all three metals. The aim of our work was to select a sorbent that would provide simultaneous up to complete recovery of given metals. The following inorganic materials were tested as sorbents – yellow blood salt (YBS).and hexacyanoferrates of iron, aluminum, copper and nickel. The degree of metal recovery was studied is influenced by the temperature and concentration of nitric acid. Only palladium was completely recovered using YBS. At the same time, specially prepared iron hexacyanoferrate (HCF-Fe) under optimal experimental conditions recovers almost all Pd and more than 95% and 90% of Rh and Ru, respectively. The behavior of fission products, including the main dose-forming components of HLW (Cs, Sr) and Mo, U, Ag, REE) in the course of MPG recovery was studied. The experiments were carried using both multicomponent model solutions and real raffinates. Options for further management of the recovered metals have been worked out. Thus, the proposed method of metal recovery seems promising for the development of a technology for the removal of MPG from nitric HLW during the reprocessing of the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) before vitrification. The recovered metals can be probably used in various technological processes. Also, this method can provide the MPG recovery from low-concentration tail solutions.

We report the result of a high-resolution spectroscopic study on seven magnesium (Mg) enhanced stars. The high Mg abundances in these stars imply that they were born in an environment heavily affected by the nucleosynthesis products of massive stars. We measure abundances of 16 elements including Mg and they show various abundance patterns implying their diverse origin. Three of our program stars show a very high Mg to Si ratio ([Mg/Si] ≈ 0.18–0.25), which might be well explained by fall-back supernovae or by supernovae with rapid rotating progenitors having an initial mass higher than about 20 𝑀⊙. Another three of our program stars have high light to heavy s-process element ratios ([Y/Ba] ≈ 0.30–0.44), which are consistent with the theoretical prediction of the nucleosynthesis in rapidly rotating massive stars with an initial mass of about 𝑀 = 40 𝑀⊙. We also report a star having both high Y ([Y/Fe] = 0.2) and Ba ([Ba/Fe] = 0.28) abundance ratios, and it also shows the highest Zn abundance ratio ([Zn/Fe] = 0.27) among our sample, implying the nucleosynthesis by asymmetric supernova explosion induced by very rapid rotation of a massive progenitor having an initial mass between 20 𝑀⊙ ≲ 𝑀 ≲ 40 𝑀⊙. A relative deficiency of odd-number elements, which would be a signature of the pair-instability nucleosynthesis, is not found in our sample.

The structural transformationss of oriented poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) fibers impregnated with potassium bisulfate (PBS) were studied in detail on the way from PVA precursor fibers till carbonized at a temperature of 1000 °C fibers. It has been shown that the impregnation of PVA fibers with a sulfur-containing compound (PBS) is an efficient technique to decrease the thermoplasticity of PVA fibers during heat treatment at high temperatures in air and argon and contributes to a high yield of coke residue after heat treatment up to 1000 °C. TMA, TGA, DSC, mass spectrometry, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, SEM, WAXS and SAXS were used to study the structural transformations of oriented PVA fibers impregnated with PBS at the stages of their preliminary thermal stabilization (215 °C), thermal stabilization (215–400 °C) and carbonization (400–1000 °C). A reaction scheme has been proposed that fully describes carbonization chemistry in the entire studied temperature range. The processing temperature of 215 °C was found to be optimal for preliminary thermal stabilization of PVA fibers impregnated with PBS. The heat treatment in an inert medium can be recommended as the optimal for thermal stabilization of fibers impregnated with PBS. The characteristics of the carbonized PVA fibers, such as strength, modulus and electrical conductivity, were close to the characteristics of commercial cellulose-based carbon fibers yarns.

We report the discovery of a giant exoplanet in the microlensing event OGLE-2017-BLG-1049, with a planet―host star mass ratio of q = 9.53 ± 0.39 × 10-3 and a caustic crossing feature in Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) observations. The caustic crossing feature yields an angular Einstein radius of θE = 0.52 ± 0.11 mas. However, the microlens parallax is not measured because the time scale of the event, tE ≃ 29 days, is too short. Thus, we perform a Bayesian analysis to estimate physical quantities of the lens system. We find that the lens system has a star with mass Mh = 0.55+0.36 -0.29 M⊙ hosting a giant planet with Mp = 5.53+3.62 -2.87 MJup, at a distance of DL = 5.67+1.11 -1.52 kpc. The projected star{planet separation is aㅗ = 3.92+1.10 -1.32 au. This means that the planet is located beyond the snow line of the host. The relative lens{source proper motion is μrel ~ 7 mas yr-1, thus the lens and source will be separated from each other within 10 years. After this, it will be possible to measure the flux of the host star with 30 meter class telescopes and to determine its mass.

Many electronic applications require magnetic materials with high permeability and frequency properties. We improve the magnetic permeability of soft magnetic powder by controlling the shape magnetic anisotropy of the powders and through the preparation of amorphous nanoparticles. For this purpose, the effect of the shape magnetic anisotropy of amorphous Fe-B-P nanoparticles is observed through a magnetic field and the frequency characteristics and permeability of these amorphous nanoparticles are observed. These characteristics are investigated by analyzing the composition of particles, crystal structure, microstructure, magnetic properties, and permeability of particles. The composition, crystal structure, and microstructure of the particles are analyzed using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and focused ion beam analysis. The saturation magnetization and permeability are measured using a vibrating sample magnetometer and an LCR meter, respectively. It is confirmed that the shape magnetic anisotropy of the particles influences the permeability. Finally, the permeability and frequency characteristics of the amorphous Fe-B-P nanoparticles are improved.