Consumers\u27 Correspondence Inference on Celebrity Endorsers: The Role of Correspondence Bias and Suspicion

The main purpose of this study is to find out whether celebrity endorsers’ behaviors, such as large endorsement contract and multiple product endorsement, will influence consumers’ correspondence inferences on those celebrities’ genuine attitudes towards the endorsed products in print advertisements and how such attributional inferences will differ according to the perceived level of product congruence with the endorser. For meaningful analysis and interpretation, the differential effects were examined in terms of correspondence bias and suspicion of ulterior motives. The bias refers to people’ attributional inference tendency to relying on other persons’ dispositions; whereas, the suspicion of ulterior motives accounts for people’s suspending such inferential tendency to the bias. The moderating roles of individual need for cognition and implicit theory of personality were also scrutinized along with the inferential process. Lastly, the mediating role of correspondence inference to attitudinal and behavioral measures of advertising effectiveness was tested. Results support the differential effects of suspicion by perceived product congruence on persuasiveness of celebrity endorsement advertising. Consumers did bias their correspondence inferences when the product was not perceived to be highly congruent with the image of the celebrity endorser; however, consumers did not bias their correspondence inferences when they were highly suspicious of the endorser’s ulterior motives whether the product is perceived to be highly matched with the image of the endorser or not. Those effects were also found to be moderated by consumers’ level of need for cognition, but not the implicit theory of personality. Irrespective of their suspicion levels, low need for cognition consumers did bias their correspondence inferences whether the product was perceived to be highly matched with the image of the endorser or not. An additional investigation on the mediating role of correspondence inference confirmed its positive effects on consumers’ attitudes toward the ad and the brand, and behavioral intentions. Based upon the empirical findings from the experiment, theoretical and managerial implications as well as limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed

Uncertainty-Aware Shared Autonomy System with Hierarchical Conservative Skill Inference

Shared autonomy imitation learning, in which robots share workspace with humans for learning, enables correct actions in unvisited states and the effective resolution of compounding errors through expert's corrections. However, it demands continuous human attention and supervision to lead the demonstrations, without considering the risks associated with human judgment errors and delayed interventions. This can potentially lead to high levels of fatigue for the demonstrator and the additional errors. In this work, we propose an uncertainty-aware shared autonomy system that enables the robot to infer conservative task skills considering environmental uncertainties and learning from expert demonstrations and corrections. To enhance generalization and scalability, we introduce a hierarchical structure-based skill uncertainty inference framework operating at more abstract levels. We apply this to robot motion to promote a more stable interaction. Although shared autonomy systems have demonstrated high-level results in recent research and play a critical role, specific system design details have remained elusive. This paper provides a detailed design proposal for a shared autonomy system considering various robot configurations. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate the system's capability to learn operational skills, even in dynamic environments with interference, through pouring and pick-and-place tasks. Our code will be released soon.Comment: Submitted to ICRA 2024 and currently under revie

Overturned Time and Space: Drastic Changes in the Daily Lives of North Koreans during the Korean War

This article analyzes the overturning of time and space in the daily lives of North Koreans during the Korean War. The overturning was caused by the aerial bombings by the United States Air Force that lasted for three years. In particular, after the execution of the scorched earth policy, in November 1950, which destroyed all the cities and villages in North Korea, most people lost their dwellings and had to endure living underground, in dugouts or mud-huts; they were also mobilized at night to restore industries and transportation facilities. This article describes the miserable daily lives of North Korean civilians during the war, a topic that has rarely been discussed, and explains how this experience continues to affect the worldview of the North Korean people

ROLE OF ADP RIBOSYL HYDROLASE AND BINDING ACTIVITIES OF THE ALPHAVIRUS NSP3 MACRODOMAIN IN VIRAL REPLICATION IN ASTROCYTES

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a positive-sense, enveloped, single-stranded RNA virus belonging to the Alphavirus genus. Our studies identified that alphavirus nonstructural protein-3 (nsP3) phosphoprotein includes a macrodomain (MD) which binds and removes ADP ribose groups from mono ADP ribosylated substrates. As a post-translational protein modification, ADP ribosylation transfers ADP ribose from NAD+ to the targeted protein by ADP-ribosyltransferases known as poly ADP ribose polymerases (PARPs). To determine the role of the alphavirus nsP3 MD (nsP3MD) ADP ribose-binding and hydrolase activities in viral infection, CHIKVs with point mutations in the nsP3MD were generated and used to infect C8-D1A murine astrocytes. The G32S mutant has less binding and hydrolase activities, while the Y114A mutant has more binding but less hydrolase activities, as compared to wildtype (WT). Infection induced little or no ADP ribosylation of proteins in astrocytes, although there was increased interferon-stimulated PARP gene expression. The G32S mutant was less efficient at initiating infection and making replication complexes than WT virus. Production of viral RNA, nonstructural proteins (nsPs), and infectious virus by G32S was decreased compared to WT at early time points. The Y114A mutant was also less efficient at initiating infection but had a higher number of dsRNA positive cells compared to WT. Levels of Y114A RNA, nsPs, and infectious virus were the same or higher compared to WT. However, in contrast to observations for infection in neuronal cells, in astrocytes the nsP3MD mutants made more structural proteins than WT. In addition, CHIKV infection induced production of type I IFN in astrocytes, but, inhibition of type I IFN signaling did not affect virus replication. Therefore, ADP ribosyl hydrolase and binding activities of the alphavirus nsP3 MD are critical for viral replication in astrocytes as well as neurons, but cellular responses are distinct. To further compare CHIKV-mediated innate immune signaling pathways, NSC34 neuronal cells that do not produce IFN and C8 astrocytic cells that do produce IFN were infected with CHIKV WT. RIG-I like receptors (RLR) and toll-like receptors (TLRs) were tested, and RLRs were identified as the key innate immune pathway inducing type I IFN in astrocytes, but not in neurons

The Differential Choice Of Chaebol In Earnings Management

This study examines the methods of the differential choice of Korean “chaebol” in earnings management. Consistent with our prediction, we find a negative association between chaebols’ ownership and accrual-based earnings management, whereas there is no clear difference between chaebols’ ownership and real-based earnings management. Furthermore, we find evidence that chaebols exhibit a strongly positive relationship with overproduction-based real activities manipulation, indicating that chaebols prefer overproduction as a method of real earnings management. From additional analyses, we also find that abnormal cash flow from operations is negatively associated with suspect chaebol firm-years that just met zero

The Value Relevance of Earnings and the Prediction of One-Year-Ahead Cash Flows

In this paper we examine the validity of using one-year-ahead cash flows prediction tests as a substitute for the value relevance test of earnings. We show theoretically that the R2 of the cash flows prediction regression is contaminated by the presence of (1) noise in the cash flows and (2) spurious, i.e., value-unrelated, correlation between one-year-ahead cash flows and current earnings. We test if either of the above two factors contribute to the result of Kim and Kross (2005) that the ability of earnings to predict one-year-ahead cash flows has increased over the recent decades, in contrast to the evidence of decreasing value relevance of earnings. We find empirical evidence that both factors contributed to their result and conclude that the cash flows prediction test is a poor substitute for the value relevance test of earnings

Maximum Activation 3D Cube Transition System for Virtual Emotion Surveillance

The concept of barrier coverage has been utilized for with various applications of surveillance, object tracking in smart cities. In barrier coverage, it is desirable to have large number of active barriers to maximize lifetime of UAV-assisted application. Because existing studies primarily focused on the formation of barriers in two-dimensional area with limited applicability, it is indispensable to extend the barrier constructions in three-dimensional area. In this letter, a cube transition barrier system using smart UAVs is designed for three-dimensional space. Then, we formally define a problem whose goal is to maximize the number of cube transition barriers by applying a two-dimensional theory to a three-dimensional spaces. To solve this problem, we propose two algorithms to return the number of barriers and evaluate their performances based on numerical simulation results

Optical excitation and detection of neuronal activity

Optogenetics has emerged as an exciting tool for manipulating neural activity, which in turn, can modulate behavior in live organisms. However, detecting the response to the optical stimulation requires electrophysiology with physical contact or fluorescent imaging at target locations, which is often limited by photobleaching and phototoxicity. In this paper, we show that phase imaging can report the intracellular transport induced by optogenetic stimulation. We developed a multimodal instrument that can both stimulate cells with high spatial resolution and detect optical pathlength changes with nanometer scale sensitivity. We found that optical pathlength fluctuations following stimulation are consistent with active organelle transport. Furthermore, the results indicate a broadening in the transport velocity distribution, which is significantly higher in stimulated cells compared to optogenetically inactive cells. It is likely that this label-free, contactless measurement of optogenetic response will provide an enabling approach to neuroscience.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

The Association Between Audit Fees and Accounting Restatement Resulting from Accounting Fraud and Clerical Errors

Restatements of financial reporting arise from many sources including changes in accounting rules, changes in reporting entity, accounting errors, and fraud (or “irregularities”). Theory predicts that audit effort (measured by audit fees) and financial report restatements should be negatively associated because more audit effort means that auditors should be more likely to find errors or other issues that could lead to later restatement (Shibano 1990; Matsumura and Tucker, 1992; Lobo and Zhao, 2013). However, other studies have found either a positive association or no association between audit fees and subsequent restatements (Kinney et al., 2004; Stanley and DeZoort, 2007; Cao et al., 2012; Hribar, Kravet, and Wilson, 2014). There is an ongoing inconsistency between the theory and empirical findings in this area (Lobo and Zhao, 2013). In this study, we investigate the relationship between audit fees and two specific types of restatements: those caused by either fraud or errors. Whereas errors are unintentional misapplications of GAAP, or mistakes in data analysis, fraud is intentional and deliberate misreporting. Prior research provides evidence that investors differentiate between errors and irregularities (e.g., Palmrose, et al., 2004) and market reaction is greater to irregularities than to errors