Athlete Endorser’s Transgression and Sport Consumer’s Moral Reasoning Strategy: Moral Coupling and Boundary Conditions.

Despite the benefit of athlete endorsement as a viable marketing communication strategy, the potential risks of such campaigns and their consequences have received little attention from scholars. In particular, the various moral reasoning processes of sport consumers, which are triggered by athletes’ moral transgressions, deserve greater attention, as these psychological mechanisms can affect consumers’ perceptions of brands associated with morally contaminated athletes. The moral reasoning strategies of sport consumers play a crucial role in enabling researchers and practitioners to better understand diverse responses toward the moral transgressions of athlete endorsers. Contemporary research on moral disengagement seems to suggest that this reasoning approach enables the individuals to support of a wrongdoer. However, there still exist situations in the sport marketplace that cannot be explained with moral decoupling (separate performance judgments from morality judgments) and moral rationalization (justify immoral behavior in evaluating a wrongdoer). For instance, some people may find it difficult to either separate performance judgments, or justify immoral behavior of a wrongdoer, and then may tend to conflate both performance and morality judgments when they process celebrity ethical transgressions of athletes. In order to address this theoretical gap, this dissertation mainly focuses on identifying and validating ‘moral coupling’ (the integration of morality and performance judgments) as a distinctive yet important moral reasoning process that uniquely functions in the athlete endorsement context. By presenting a series of four experiments, this research and analysis is intended to provide an expanded theoretical framework that facilitates a better understanding of diverse moral reasoning processes, and subsequent responses. Study 1 theorizes and validates the existence of moral coupling as an alternative reasoning process. In addition, this dissertation examines the impact of several potential boundary conditions of moral reasoning strategies and consumer evaluations such as transgression type; the functional fit between athlete and brand (Study 2); and the sociocultural background of sport consumers (Study 3). Finally, causal relationships between fan identification, moral emotions, moral reasoning strategies, and consumer evaluations of an athlete in relation to an associated brand are examined via an actual transgression case involving a celebrity athlete (Study 4).PhDKinesiologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111466/1/joonslee_1.pd

Hydraulic Strategy of Cactus Trichome for Absorption and Storage of Water under Arid Environment

Being an essential component in various metabolic activities, water is important for the survival of plants and animals. Cacti grown in arid areas have developed intrinsic water management systems, such as water collection through spines, water absorption through trichome, and water storage using mucilage. The water collection method of cactus is well-documented, but its water absorption and storage strategies remain to be elucidated. Thus, this study analyzed the morphology and wettability of cactus trichomes by using advanced bio-imaging techniques and by performing in vitro experiments on an artificial system mimicking these structures, respectively. In addition, the in situ water absorption process through the trichome cluster was quantitatively visualized. This paper proposes a new bio-inspired technique for dew collection based on information about the water management strategies of cactus. This study discusses the underlying water absorption and storage strategies of cactus and provides the experimental database required to develop a biomimetic water management device.114Ysciescopu

EFFECTS OF LANDING HEIGHT ON LOWER EXTREMITY JOINT BIOMECHANICS DURING UNILATERAL AND BILATERAL LANDINGS

The aim of this study was to examine the lower extremity kinematics and kinetics during landing phase, in response to the effects of landing height during unilateral and bilateral landing. Ten young healthy male subjects (age: 26.1±1.8yr, height: 183.2±4.4cm, weight: 76.1±6.9kg) participated in this study. Each subject performed the unilateral and bilateral landing from a 30cm and 45cm wooden platform. The results showed the peak vertical ground reaction force (PVGRF) was increased during unilateral landing and at greater landing height (

A method of measuring the amplitude-modulated vacuum field near a conducting mirror

Electromagnetic fields of the vacuum mode near a conducting mirror are modified with respect to those in free space, with their amplitudes having a sinusoidal spatial dependence from the mirror. Therefore if we combine this spatially amplitude-modulated vacuum field mode and intense coherent light with a beam splitter, we may detect this fluctuation of the vacuum mode in a homodyne detection scheme. It will give a new method to produce squeezed states of light with a single mirror placed close to an unused port of a beam splitter. We show that the amplitude fluctuation of the combined light can be reduced by a factor of 2 below that of the coherent light. We also discuss the limitations due to the finite line width of the laser and the effective absorption length of the photodiodes