South Korea’s gendered nationhood : a case study of heavyweight weightlifter Jang Mi-ran

The research aimed to examine the androcentric nature of South Korea's nationhood. South Korea's former heavyweight weightlifter Jang Mi-ran and her sporting career exhibit the difficulties and possibilities that South Korean women are faced with. On the one hand she displays the stronghold of conservative gender order, and on the other hand she has rewritten a script for women and positioned them differently in the national imaginary. As an emphatic gender symbol, Jang compelled many participants to rethink what it means to be a woman in South Korea today, which could alter the character of the nation. A number of group interviews took place during the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics, featuring ethnically-Korean female participants exclusively - 42 in total. 22 women in 6 groups were interviewed during the Beijing Olympics and 20 in 4 groups during the London event. Their ages varied from 19 to 39, most of them had an undergraduate or post graduate degree and they were all professionals. Key words: Gender, Nation, Sport, Confucianism, South Kore

High tech vs. high touch in resort operations: How do customers adopt self-service technology?

Lodging and resort companies are motivated to adopt SST primarily to enhance customer service, achieve operational efficiency by cutting costs, differentiate from competitors by early adoption, and generate additional revenue. In the center of managerial concerns about SST-based customer service is the unproven widespread belief that SST will satisfy customers by shortening service lines, promoting customers’ independence, enhancing order accuracies, and allowing control over the service process. In balance, however, we must consider, from the customer’s perspective, potential threats of blindly adopting SST such as the customer’s indifference, skepticism, and discomfort, especially in favor of human-based customer service. The goal of our research project was to develop a conceptual and measurement model to address the critical concerns and issues of resort operators in adopting and deploying SST in their operation

Three essays on consumer choices on food

The dissertation investigates how consumer choices on food are affected by habit forming behaviors of consumers, public policy and the uncertainty of the risk from food safety hazards and strategic interaction with food processors. Three stand-alone analyses on consumer choice consist of empirical frameworks to estimate parameters of dynamic demand, the treatment effects on program participation, and an analytical approach to modeling downstream consumer\u27s and upstream firm\u27s handling of food safety risk. The first analysis focuses on dynamics in household demand. Incorporating dynamics such as habit formation in analysis of food demand can make estimation more reliable and help to explain the stickiness in consumer demand behavior. Capturing this response is important for evaluating consumers\u27 response to new information about products - whether nutrition, food safety or other event. Scanner data allow many repeated observations of the same household so are ideal for analyzing the impact of habit on food demand. In addition to that, scanner data allow us to easily observe the presence of zero purchases. The presence of zero purchases is an important econometric issue in empirical modeling on food demand in the sense that ignoring the censoring issue can lead to biased estimation results. The first study investigates the impact of state dependence on dairy food demand using 2009 and 2010 Nielsen HomeScan data. In this analysis, we take into account the censored nature of food expenditure data and employ a Bayesian procedure to estimate the dynamic demand models on dairy products. By controlling the individual heterogeneity in the model the source of endogeneity for the lagged dependent variable is removed. The empirical evidence of habitual behaviors particularly in milk demand provides support for considering a model with dynamics in a study of food demand. The second analysis examines the relationship between The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) participation and purchases of WIC related foods during the period shortly after introduction of changes in the WIC package. We use Nielsen Homescan data 2008 to 2010to assess how participation in the WIC program relates to food expenditures by WIC eligible households. The research includes analysis of select food purchases by WIC eligible households - both of those reporting participation in the WIC program and those not participating in the program. In our analysis, we concentrate our attention on selected whole grain foods in the WIC food package as these foods are prominent in the revised WIC food package and grain products are purchased by most households. A propensity score matching estimator was used for estimating treatment effects and difference-in-difference method was conducted to control the policy change in the 2009 WIC package revision. The study contributes to current literature on WIC to confirm that the WIC package change in 2009 had a significant influence on WIC participating households to encourage greater whole grain expenditures relative to non-participating households. The third analysis concerns the uncertainty of the risk from food safety hazards and strategic interaction with food processors. Domestic water consumers in many developing countries that boil water before use are presumably concerned about quality control on the part of upstream water authorities. In this third analysis, we investigate strategic incentives for food safety efforts by upstream food processors and downstream consumers. The strategic setting is where food processors move first and consumers react to perceptions about processor behavior. We consider two technological environments in which food safety is assured: i) weakest-link where both processor and consumer behavior must succeed; ii) best-shot where it suffices for efforts by either party to succeed. We study privately optimal behavior under negligence and strict liability rules, and also investigate the role of consumer risk aversion

A Review on the Computational Methods for Emotional State Estimation from the Human EEG

A growing number of affective computing researches recently developed a computer system that can recognize an emotional state of the human user to establish affective human-computer interactions. Various measures have been used to estimate emotional states, including self-report, startle response, behavioral response, autonomic measurement, and neurophysiologic measurement. Among them, inferring emotional states from electroencephalography (EEG) has received considerable attention as EEG could directly reflect emotional states with relatively low costs and simplicity. Yet, EEG-based emotional state estimation requires well-designed computational methods to extract information from complex and noisy multichannel EEG data. In this paper, we review the computational methods that have been developed to deduct EEG indices of emotion, to extract emotion-related features, or to classify EEG signals into one of many emotional states. We also propose using sequential Bayesian inference to estimate the continuous emotional state in real time. We present current challenges for building an EEG-based emotion recognition system and suggest some future directions.open

Evaluation of the Cost and Effectiveness of Direct Nutrition Education to Low-Income Audiences in Iowa: EFNEP and SNAP-Ed graduates practicing Optimal Nutritional Behaviors (ONB)

The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) and the Family Nutrition Program (FNP) (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education, or SNAP-Ed in Iowa) are community outreach programs in Iowa designed to help teens and adults who have limited income and are parenting acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and practices to improve total family diet and nutritional well-being. This study uses current information on Iowa’s EFNEP and FNP today to evaluate the costs and benefits of the two related programs and provides updated information to a study conducted in Iowa from 1998 to 2000. Full Text 0.33 M

Experience Economy Strategies: Adding Value to Small Rural Businesses

Many Extension programs designed to enhance rural economic development have focused on development of value-added goods, particularly agricultural goods. The Experience Economy perspective suggests that economic development should also include value-added consumer experiences offered by an array of small rural businesses, such as retail, hospitality, tourism, and restaurant establishments. This article introduces Experience Economy strategies and elements of business offerings that create experiential value and provides a tool to help small business operators assess and enhance their experiential offerings that generate value for consumers

An Educational Program to Enhance Experiential Aspects of Small Rural Business Websites

Building upon specialized academic expertise, an interdisciplinary group of educators from three programs have developed an externally funded program for educating rural small businesses, on ways to enhance aspects of their website designs

Unconventional Anomalous Hall Effect from Antiferromagnetic Domain Walls of Nd\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3eIr\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3eO\u3csub\u3e7\u3c/sub\u3e Thin Films

Ferroic domain walls (DWs) create different symmetries and ordered states compared with those in single-domain bulk materials. In particular, the DWs of an antiferromagnet with noncoplanar spin structure have a distinct symmetry that cannot be realized in those of their ferromagnet counterparts. In this paper, we show that an unconventional anomalous Hall effect (AHE) can arise from the DWs of a noncoplanar antiferromagnet, Nd2Ir2O7. Bulk Nd2Ir2O7 has a cubic symmetry; thus, its Hall signal should be zero without an applied magnetic field. The DWs generated in this material break the twofold rotational symmetry, which allows for finite anomalous Hall conductivity. A strong f−d exchange interaction between the Nd and Ir magnetic moments significantly influences antiferromagnetic (AFM) domain switching. Our epitaxial Nd2Ir2O7 thin film showed a large enhancement of the AHE signal when the AFM domains switched, indicating that the AHE is mainly due to DWs. Our paper highlights the symmetry-broken interface of AFM materials as a means of exploring topological effects and their relevant applications