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Owing to the high sponsorship fees and category exclusivity of sponsorship rights in the major events, ambush marketing activities are increasingly planned and practiced in order to capitalize on the benefits associated with the event. As a result, the integrity of the sponsorship‘s rights is broken and the sponsor‘s investment is undermined, which has the potential to threaten the financial viability of the events. In order to maintain event integrity and protect official sponsors from attack by ambushers, the International Olympic Committee introduced a "Name and Shame" campaign to create public awareness of companies‘ ambushing efforts. This study aims to explore consumers‘ response to ambush marketing disclosure by using a survey questionnaire approach. Balance theory and attribution theory are incorporated into an integrated model illustrating how the factors, including the event-related factor (event involvement), the sponsor-related factor (consumer attitude towards the sponsor), the ambusher-related factor (prior brand knowledge and perceived corporate social responsibility), and consumers‘ perceived motives for sponsorship and ambush marketing, have an impact on the degree of blame consumers place on ambushing attempts and thus their attitudes towards ambushing companies. Eight hundred questionnaires were collected in the UK and structural equation modelling was adopted to analyse the data. The model was tested respectively under two different types of ambushing contexts, that is, predatory ambushing (n=400) and associative ambushing (n=400). In both contexts, the results shows that event involvement and consumer attitude towards the sponsor have a positive influence on consumer blame, while prior brand knowledge of the ambusher are negatively related to consumer blame. However, consumers‘ perceived CSR of the ambusher can negatively influence consumer blame only in an associative ambushing context, but not in a predatory ambushing context. In addition, consumers‘ perceived motives are confirmed to play a critical role in affecting consumers‘ response to a company‘s ambushing practice.

Fearful temperament represents one of the robust predictors of the development of child and adolescent anxiety. Not all children with fearful temperament unvaryingly develop anxiety, however. Diverse processes resulting from the interplay among attention, cognitive control, and motivational system drive the trajectories toward more adaptive or maladaptive directions. In this study, I examined various factors that underlie the association between fearful temperament at age 9 and adolescent anxiety symptoms including attention biases, different components of effortful control, and frontal EEG asymmetry. 78 children participated in this study. Results indicate that fearful temperament at age 9 significantly predicted adolescent anxiety symptoms. This association, however, was moderated by children's effortful control and frontal EEG asymmetry at age 9. Specifically, fear at 9 years predicted adolescent anxiety only when children had low attentional control, low inhibitory control, low activation control, and exhibited greater right activation from baseline to task. The associations between AB and fearful temperament as well as anxiety were not significant. The association between fear at 9 years and sustained AB during adolescence, however, was moderated by children's attentional control, inhibitory control, and frontal EEG asymmetry at age 9. Specifically, fear predicted attention biases away from threat when children had high attentional control, high inhibitory control, and showed greater left activation. The findings will be discussed in terms of the roles of attention biases in the development of anxiety and how different components of effortful control and frontal EEG asymmetry contribute to the resilience process.

Polybenzimidazoles, a class of aromatic heterocyclic polymers, are well known due to their remarkable thermal stability, mechanical properties and chemical resistance which are often required in extreme operation conditions. Because of these properties, polybenzimidazoles are excellent candidates in various application areas including proton exchange membrane fuel cells, gas separation membranes, reverse osmosis and nanofiltration, and high performance coatings. The following studies are focused on the synthesis, characterization and related properties of polybenzimidazoles and polybenzimidazole based materials. A novel sulfonyl-containing tetraamino-substituted monomer (3,3',4,4'-tetraaminodiphenylsulfone) was synthesized and polymerized with three different diacid monomers to make polybenzimidazoles. The new monomer synthesis route with reduced steps relative to the existing literature method increased the overall yield by a factor of three. The sulfonyl-containing polybenzimidazoles have enhanced solubilities in common organic solvents including dimthylsulfoxide, dimethylacetamide and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone in comparison with the commercial polybenzimidazole, Celazole®, poly(2,2'-(m-phenylene)-5,5'-bibenzimidazole). The improvements in solubility are attributed to the introduction of polar sulfonyl linking moiety in the monomer. Remarkable thermal stabilities (high Tg, > 428 °C) were demonstrated through Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA). A well designed film casting process was investigated and established. Polybenzimidazoles were fabricated into transparent thin films (20-30 μm thick) for gas transport measurements. These novel polybenzimidazole films exhibited extraordinary gas separation properties, especially for H₂/CO₂ separation. There is a trade-off relationship between gas permeability and selectivity through dense, non-porous polymer membranes that was discovered by Robeson in 1991. The ultimate goal for developing gas separation membranes is to improve both permeability and selectivity simultaneously. Gas permeability is related to the free volume between polymer chains. In order to improve gas permeability, we hypothesized a concept that increasing free volume could be achieved by thermally degrading sacrificial components and volatilizing their byproducts from a glassy matrix. Volatile components were introduced into the films to preoccupy the spaces between polymer chains. Once they were degraded and removed through the thermal treatment, it was hypothesized that the preoccupied spaces would remain empty due to the glassy nature of the matrix at the heat treatment temperature, thus resulting in more free volume. Two post- modification strategies including grafting and blending were utilized to incorporate the volatile components, poly(propylene oxide) and poly(ethylene oxide). Post-modified polybenzimidazole films impressively showed significant enhancements in both gas permeability and selectivity for H₂/CO₂ separation. The H₂ permeability of the post-modified TADPS-OBA polybenzimidazole increased from 3.1-6.2 Barrers to 5.2-7.5 Barrers (up to 66% increase). The selectivity for H₂/CO₂ increased from 7.5-10.5 to 10.1-13.0 (up to 33% increase). The study on the potential effects of water vapor on the separation performance of PBI membranes was discussed in the appendix.

Mobile payments as a critical service supporting mobile businesses have received significant attention from enterprises. The rapid spread of COVID-19 resulted in the closure of many restaurants, shopping malls, and supermarkets. Meanwhile, mobile payments directly replace cash payment (Yin, Gong, and Pan 2019) and change people's consumption habits (Yin et al. 2019). Thus, it played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic period when isolation measures were encouraged. With the booming mobile payments, the Chinese market has cultivated two giants and other mobile payments providers. In the competitive market environment, how to understand users' requirements, enhance users' product experience and enhance users' stickiness is the key for enterprises to gain competitive advantages. The commercial value of mobile payments depends on the participation of more users and more using. Retaining existing mobile payment users would be subject to more attention from academic researchers and practitioners in this field. This research aims to apply the value-based adoption model (VAM), expectation-confirmation theory (ECM), and habit theory to investigate the factors affecting the usage continuance of mobile payments in China. A mixed-method approach, which combined qualitative and quantitative research, is selected for this study. Qualitative research employed the critical incident technique (CIT) method in exploratory analysis to explore the dimensions and connotations of the perceived value of mobile payments. From the perspective of user-perceived benefits, it contains five dimensions: utilitarian value, hedonic value, social value, ecological value and health value. From the perspective of user-perceived sacrifices, it includes three dimensions: risk cost, based on mobile and low-level pain of payment. Quantitative research employed structural equation modelling (SEM) to identify the factors affecting the mobile payments continuance use in China under different constructs, both habit-related factors and product-related factors (i.e., utilitarian, hedonic, social and health). Results showed that the significant factors directly affecting the intention to continue to use mobile payment services are habit and perceived utilitarian value. The findings also show that perceived hedonic value, perceived social value, and perceived health value all boost consumers' desire to continue using mobile payments indirectly via the mediation of customers' habits. These findings provide a direction for companies and developers of mobile payment services to encourage users' continuance intention. The theoretical, methodological and practical contributions of this study, the generalisation aspects and limitation of this study, and the contexts of future research are discussed.

Shyness is highly related to internalizing problems. However, not all shy children develop serious internalizing problems (IP). The aim of the current study was to identify the endogenous factors that might contribute to the resilience process from a self-regulation perspective. Participants included 73 children (33 boys; 40girls) who visited the lab at 6 and 9 years of age. Shyness, attentional control (AC), inhibitory control (IC), frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry were measured at both 6 and 9 years using age appropriate questionnaires and tasks. Results indicated that age 6 shyness did not directly predict age 9 IP; instead it indirectly predicted IP through age 9 shyness. Neither AC, IC, frontal EEG asymmetry, nor the stability of frontal EEG asymmetry moderated the association between age 6 shyness and age 9 IP. However, there was a positive concurrent association between shyness and IP at 9 years. In addition, AC and IC moderated the shyness-IP association at age 9. Shyness was significantly associated with IP only when children had low AC or IC, but not when children had high AC or IC.

Nanowires and nanotubes with single component such as gold and nickel were fabricated by electrochemical deposition method directed by the Anodic Alumina Membrane (AAO) as a template. A so called "polymer-free" method has been investigated to make striped nanowires with superlattice structure. Various methods have been used to characterize these nanomaterials, including SEM, FESEM TEM, STM and Optical Microscope. The aggregation of the nanowires and their alignment under the magnetic force were observed under the optical microscope.