I won't touch money because it is dirty: examining customer's loyalty toward M-payment

PurposeSeveral industries including banking are booming because of COVID-19. However, it is still unknown whether this growth is momentary or permanent in nature. Hence, this study aims to identify the role of health-related concerns and trust as stimuli on M-payment loyalty.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through Google Forms from 431 participants. Subjects were M-payment users. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equational modeling.FindingsResults of the study indicate that perceived severity and trust act as stimuli for M-payment loyalty. Further, trust not only influences loyalty directly but also through intimacy. Additionally, no linear relationship was found between perceived usefulness and M-payment loyalty.Originality/valueThis work is an early attempt to consider health-related concerns and trust as stimuli to predict M-payment loyalty. Further, this study focused on three new constructs, namely perceived severity, perceived susceptibility and intimacy, that are underexplored in digital banking literature.

Multi-Tier Approaches to the Resolution of International Disputes

Multi-tier dispute resolution (MDR) entails an early attempt at mediation followed by arbitration or litigation if mediation is unsuccessful. Seemingly, everyone acknowledges MDR's attractiveness as a means of resolving disputes due to its combination of the flexibility and informality of mediation with the rigour and formality of arbitration or litigation. Yet, the question is why, except in China and some Asian jurisdictions, MDR is not resorted to around the world and MDR clauses in commercial contracts remain relatively uncommon. This book responds to that question by (1) surveying global regulatory approaches frameworks for MDR, (2) comparing MDR trends in Asia and the wider world, (3) identifying MDR's strengths and weaknesses, and (4) prescribing ways to address MDR's weaknesses (the enforceability of MDR clauses, the difficulties arising when the same person acts as mediator and decision-maker in the same dispute, and the enforcement of mediated settlement agreements resulting from MDR).

Supercarnal Productions

Anchoring this chapter is Philip Roth’s London life with Bloom and a set of new friends: Al Alvarez, critic, Harold Pinter, playwright, R. B. Kitaj, painter, Michael Herr, journalist, and Edna O’Brien, novelist. Roth enjoyed a culturally rich and satisfying life with Bloom, while working on The Professor of Desire. But he soon sensed the fraying of his relationship as Bloom became increasingly dependent on her daughter, the opera singer Anna Steiger. He soon began to work on adaptations, principally for Bloom but also for himself: one early attempt was his effort to adapt Eugenia Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind, her Gulag autobiography. Another, new development was Roth’s involvement with Janet Hobhouse, novelist, their affair transposed to The Counterlife. And by the late 1970s, Roth turned to the experiences of an isolated writer in the countryside and the impact of the Holocaust through the possible afterlife of Anne Frank expressed in The Ghost Writer. Roth’s relationship with the New Yorker editor Veronica Geng and the continued importance of his editor Aaron Asher are also formidable figures. Comments on Roth’s enigmatic relationship with his mother (who died suddenly in 1981) end the chapter but not before a detailed accounting of Roth’s many illnesses (including a 1989 quintuple bypass) and the debilitating impact of illness on his physical and mental health.

Living your Best Life and Radiating Positivity: Exploratory Conceptions of Wholesome Memes as The New Sincerity

From commercial advertising to political messaging, internet memes have proven to be among the most prevalent and pervasive forms of communication online. The so-called “wholesome meme” is a subversive genre of meme that arose in early 2016 as a reaction to increasing geopolitical turbulence and cultural polarization. Wholesome memes are defined by their bold positivity and feature loving friendships, cute animals, and heartwarming stories. As an early attempt to theorize this emerging phenomenon, this paper argues that wholesome memes can be considered part of the larger post-postmodernist literary movement, The New Sincerity. Synthesizing expressions of irony and sincerity, these memes may signal a shift in the character and attitude of internet culture from anti- to pro-social and speak to the desire of people to seek meaning and fulfillment. De la publicité aux message politiques, les mèmes s'avèrent désormais être parmi les formes de communication en ligne les plus répandues. Le soi-disant « wholesome meme » (mème sain) est un genre subversif de mèmes qui a surgi au début de 2016 en réaction à la turbulence géopolitique croissante et à la polarisation culturelle. Les mèmes sains se caractérisent par leur positivité audacieuse et démontre des situation amicales, des animaux adorables et des histoires réconfortantes. En tant que première tentative de théoriser ce phénomène émergent, cet article soutien que les mèmes sains peuvent être considérés comme faisant partie du mouvement littéraire post-postmoderniste du New Sincerity. Synthétisant des expressions d'ironie et de sincérité, ces mèmes peuvent signaler un changement dans le caractère et l'attitude de la culture Internet, passant d'anti- à prosocial et d'aborder le désir des gens de trouver un sens et de se réaliser en tant que personne.

A new elasmosaurid plesiosaurian from the Early Cretaceous of Russia marks an early attempt at neck elongation

Plesiosaurian marine reptiles evolved a wide range of body shapes during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, including long-necked forms. Many Late Cretaceous members of the clade Elasmosauridae epitomized this part of the plesiosaurian morphological spectrum by evolving extremely long necks through somitogenesis (resulting in an increase in the number of cervical centra) and differential growth (resulting in the elongation of cervical centra). However, the early evolution of elasmosaurids remains poorly understood because of a generally poor Lower Cretaceous fossil record. We describe a new elasmosaurid, Jucha squalea gen. et sp. nov., from the upper Hauterivian (Lower Cretaceous) of Ulyanovsk (European Russia), in addition to other elasmosaurid remains from the same area. Jucha squalea is one of the oldest and basalmost elasmosaurids known and lacks a series of features that otherwise characterize the group, such as the heart-shaped intercoracoid fenestra and the median pectoral bar. However, Jucha squalea marks an early attempt at cervical elongation through differential growth. The data we gathered on the shape of cervical centra among elasmosaurids suggest multiple episodes of elongation and shortening. However, the precise patterns are obscured by an unstable phylogenetic signal.

Unjust pains: the impact of COVID-19 on children in prison

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the treatment of children in penal custody. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a viewpoint piece that analyses the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for children in custody, drawing on published information where available. Findings This paper argues that imprisoned children are an extremely vulnerable group, whose experience of incarceration exacerbates that vulnerability at the best of times. Responses to COVID-19 are particularly painful for children in those settings, and the consequences are manifestly unjust. Originality/value This paper provides an early attempt to consider the impact of COVID-19 on children in prison.

Responsibility Rationalized

Three tetralogies attributed to Antiphon survive, and while all three depict trials for homicide, the second and third are often treated en bloc. Antiphon’s third tetralogy describes a case in which the defendant is accused of intentional homicide. Though commentators typically read the tetralogy as a discussion of causation as such, “Responsibility Rationalized: Action and Pollution in Antiphon’s Tetralogies” reconstructs it as an early attempt to deal with issues of intention and action surrounding around what twentieth-century philosophy came to call the doctrine of double effect. While Antiphon does not articulate the doctrine, he develops a nuanced view that addresses the same concerns about responsibility for consequences that motivate its defenders.