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Architecture as a discipline has gone through a serious change since the post-war period and became a recognized profession focusing on human needs in the physical environments. The issue of educating new practitioners for the transforming field has turned out to be the subject of a lively debate for the last 10-20 years.

The current position and approach in design studios of Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design of Bahçeşehir University, were thought to be worth putting forth and sharing with the design community to initiate a discussion for the future of the discipline in general. Consequently, this study was structured to present a paradigm in Interior Architecture Education by focusing on the case of Bahçeşehir University (BAU) Interior Architecture and Environmental Design Department design studio education. The four-year program consisting of eight academic semesters, is addressing the combination of two methods; namely, horizontally organized design studios (HODS), and vertically organized studio groups (VODS). Currently, this approach is subject to many discussions within the department due to many aspects. This approach was tested, evaluated and criticized through student and instructor comments collected via questionnaires. Results were collected and interpreted through three main issues of learning, teaching and assessment.

Study moving from general design studio education to the case of Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design of Bahçeşehir University, concludes with general comments, mentioning the lack of literature on design studio education, and the significance of sharing different approaches and applications. Lastly and specifically, the revisions following the completion of the experiment in the department was put forth. With reference to the case of BAU, initiating a discussion regarding current design studio education was intended.

Free movement of persons is one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by European laws. For workers, this freedom was set up since the beginning of the European selforganization by the European Council and the Economic Community. When this Community was established in 1957, that free dom became one of its leading principles. Since the Treaty of Maastricht, it is an essential element of European citizenship, and there fore an element of the civil community and of the democracy of the Union, too. Today, this freedom is guaranteed in Article 18 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community as a civil right and especially in Article 39 of that Treaty as a fundamental freedom. Because of this connection of a right for individuals and a status defining a corporation and community, I will discuss the thesis that free movement of workers can build or change the European society.

Based on persuasion theories, the purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between four types of interactive consumer activities (viewing, liking, sharing and commenting) on hotel brand social networking sites (SNSs) and their cognitive and emotional responses to understand the psychological states underlying such actions and assess their influence on brand attitude and the brand–consumer relationship.

A survey was administrated using an online platform. Participants who had been following a hotel brand on any of its SNSs were screened to fill out the questionnaire. Eventually, 226 valid responses were collected and analyzed using structure equation modeling.

The findings suggest that although both emotional and cognitive involvement can enhance a consumer’s hotel brand attitude, cognitive involvement is associated with a slightly stronger effect in the context of SNSs. Three of the four interactive actions – viewing, liking and sharing – were found to be positively associated with emotional involvement, but only two actions – viewing and liking – were found to be positively related to cognitive involvement. No connection was identified for commenting.

The study suggests that practitioners should turn their attention to the emotional and cognitive responses their SNSs provoke in consumers, rather than simply on the number of likes, shares and comments they induce.

A recent research trend indicates widespread interest in the button functions offered by SNSs (such as “like,” “share” and “comment”) and many studies have tested means of stimulating such physical actions. This study is one of the few to explore the psychological states behind such actions and assess their influence on brand attitude and the self-brand connection.

This study aims to differentiate the brand personality of four basic hotel categories (e.g. limited-service, selected-service, full-service and luxury hotels) to draw an overall landscape of the lodging industry on symbolic attributes.

An online survey was conducted to assess the brand personality of eight popular hotel brands competing in the US market (two brands for each price category) by using Aaker’s (1997) brand personality scale. The categorical difference in brand personality was compared at both of the dimensional and individual trait level.

This study draws a picture of brand personality for four prevailing hotel categories in the US market. It suggests exciting luxury hotels, sincere select-service hotels and rugged limited-service hotels, but no distinctive personality for full-service hotels. This study positions the pros and cons of each hotel category. For instance, it shows at the dimensional level, full-service hotels advance select-service hotels in excitement but fall behind in sincerity. At the individual trait level, full-service hotels strike customers as contemporary, up-to-date and good-looking, but disappoint customers on the features like honest and wholesome.

This study informs hotel brand companies and hotel investors with the pros and cons of each hotel category to assist them to improve their marketing or investment strategies.

Although brand personality has been often used to assess hotel brand’s difference, it has been rarely used to capture the categorical difference. This study adds new insights to hotel banding practice by comparing different categories on symbolic attributes.

This study aims to obtain the speed and angle during safe and comfortable standing of elderly people. With the advancement of society, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the elderly to sit-to-stand (STS) independently and comfortably in a safe and comfortable manner. Safety is essentially a prerequisite for the elderly to achieve a comfortable STS. The speed, angle and power of the STS process can all affect safe STS. From the standpoint of health-care delivery and administration, comfortable STS can be realized easily by addressing the safety issues during STS.

This paper summarizes the research progress on speed and angle during safe and comfortable standing of older people. The authors analyzed the speed and angle of the STS using the Vicon optical gait acquisition system and plantar pressure sensor to find the appropriate angle and speed thresholds.

The center of gravity movement is a prerequisite for the elderly to achieve a comfortable STS. The authors found that the standing speed during the STS process should not be higher than 103.8 mm/s so that the elderly can stand comfortably and safely (safe and dangerous speeds are 72.8 mm/s and 125.2 mm/s). The limitations of waist angle, waist angle speed and the acceleration are also obtained.

This paper analyzes and summarizes the research status of speed and angle during safe and comfortable standing of elderly people, which is essentially a prerequisite for the elderly to achieve a comfortable STS. These results can lay the foundation for the development of assistive devices and related technologies that meet the needs of older adults.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interactive effect of social crowding and solo consumers’ sense of power on attitudes toward the restaurant menu with popularity and scarcity cues.

In total, 181 US consumers were recruited. Using a quasi-experimental design, social crowding and promotional cues on a restaurant menu were manipulated and solo consumers’ sense of power was measured.

Low-power individuals exhibited more favorable attitudes toward the menu with a popularity cue at a crowded restaurant. High-power individuals’ attitudes toward the menu were equally favorable across the two promotional cues and crowding levels.

Restaurant managers might want to leverage popularity cues on the menu during peak hours to appeal to solo diners. After diners indicate their dining type (alone vs with others) in kiosks and tablets, restaurants can tailor promotional cues accordingly. Restaurants can also embed more popularity cues in dinner (vs lunch) menus because dinner is more hedonic and social in nature.

This study contributes to the crowding literature by examining promotional cues on the menu and sense of power as moderators of consumer responses to crowding. This study further adds to the solo consumption literature by extending the notion of power and social crowding to ethnic dining contexts.

Migration is defined as movement of people, especially of whole groups, from one place, region, or country to an other, particularly with the intention of making permanent settlement in a new location (Microsoft Encarta). Migration is as old as the beginnings of human evolution, and in the distant past migrations were localized, slow, and gradual processes taking centuries or even longer to establish significant populations in a given region or country. The populations, therefore, possessed unique and highly homogeneous characteristics of race, religion, culture, traditions, or language. From the oldest periods of civiliza tion, India attracted migrants from different parts of the neighboring regions and continents (notably, Middle east, China, and Africa) owing to its warm weather, wealth of natural resources, spices, and so forth. Like wise, India also be came a prominent country from where people migrated to different parts of the world, first to the neighboring lands (Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Bali) and then to distant countries (several African countries, for example, Uganda, South Africa, Mauritius). More recently, migration of Indians has been mostly to the Western Europe and USA.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Outlines the basic development of sexual legislation using case history to show how arbitration can influence a court’s decision. Covers investigation of claims and risk mitigation techniques.

Outlines the development of globalization and related research; and takes the Middle East as a basis for examining regionalization in more depth. Discusses the definition of boundaries in economic, geographic and political terms; the impact of various types of regional trade associations and trade and investment; and five factors affecting regionalization in the Middle East; peace, political will, economic compatibility, socio‐cultural similarity and geographical proximity. Considers the implications for the corporate strategy of multinationals, e.g. market segmentation, integration, strategic sourcing etc.