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This paper aims to offer an approach to cyborg composing with artificial intelligence (AI). The author posits that the hybridity of the cyborg, which amalgamates human and artificial elements, invites a cascade of creative and emancipatory possibilities. The author critically examines the biases embedded in AI systems while gesturing toward the generative potential of AI–human entanglements. Drawing on Bakhtinian theories of dialogism, the author contends that crafting found poetry with AI could inspire writers to problematize the ideologies embedded into the corpus while teasing apart its elisions or contradictions, sparking new forms of expression at the interface of the organic and the artificial.

To illustrate this approach to human–AI composing, the author shares a found poem that she wrote using ChatGPT alongside her reflection on the poem. The author reflects on her positionality as well as the positionality of her artificial interlocutor, interrogating the notion of subjectivity in relation to Bakhtinian dialogism and multivocality.

Weaving tales of resilience in harmony or tension with AI could unravel threads of possibility as human writers enrich, deepen or complicate AI-generated texts. By composing with AI, writers can resist closure, infiltrate illusions of objectivity and “speak back” to AI and the dominant voices replicated in its systems.

By encouraging students to critically engage with, question and complicate AI-generated texts, one can open avenues for alternative ways of thinking and writing, inspiring students to imagine and compose speculative futures. Ultimately, in animating assemblages of the organic and the artificial, one can invite transformative possibilities of being and becoming.

A study to determine the effectiveness of PAC on the removal of COD and colour from dye wastewater. Factors affecting treatment efficiency were investigated and included PAC particle sizes, initial dye concentration and contact time. The adsorption parameters for Langmuir, Freundlich and Dziubek′s isotherms were determined. Results indicated that a very short contact time of one hour was needed to reach equilibrium of adsorption. A COD (chemical oxygen demand) removal efficiency of 90 per cent for disperse‐red‐60 dye wastewater was obtained with PAC (powdered activated carbon). With PAC dosage of less than 15g/l the adsorption followed both Freundlich′s and Langmuir′s isotherms. The ultimate capacity of the adsorption increased with decreasing PAC particle sizes or the initial dye concentration. The mass transfer coefficient was determined in this study.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to critically assess the theoretical underpinnings and extant progress of the research on regional multi-national enterprises (MNEs) and offer a blueprint for future research by re-conceptualizing how (regional) boundaries relate to the international diversification of MNEs.

The paper integrates key insights from the theory of the regional MNE and economic geography to re-orient the treatment of regional borders within international business (IB) literature.

The paper suggests that the (L) component within the ownership location and internalization (OLI) paradigm should be disaggregated into continuous “distance effects” and discrete “border effects”. Within this rubric, regional borders represent discrete border effects that generate discontinuities that are permeable, fluid and firm specific. Such reconceptualization opens up avenues for future research and more tightly integrates the research on regional MNEs with other research streams.

IB scholars need to make concerted effort to think of regions as one among several parameters in studying the strategy and structure of MNEs. A stronger focus on internal processes and mechanisms elucidating the main drivers of MNEs strategies is needed.

The paper offers innovative ways in which future research can advance the study of how regions matter in the internationalization strategy of MNEs.

Between 1860 and 1945, the Chinese port city of Tianjin was the site of up to nine foreign-controlled concessions, functioning side by side. Rogaski defined it as a ‘hyper-colony’, a term which reflects Tianjin's socio-political intricacies and the multiple colonial discourses of power and space. This essay focuses on the transformation of the Tianjin cityscape during the last 150 years, and aims at connecting the hyper-colonial socio-spatial forms with the processes of post-colonial identity construction. Tianjin is currently undergoing a massive renovation program: its transmogrifying cityscape unveils multiple layers of ‘globalizing’ spatialities and temporalities, throwing into relief processes of power and capital accumulation, which operate via the urban regeneration's experiment. This study uses an ‘interconnected history’ approach and traces the interweaving ‘worlding’ nodes of today's Tianjin back to the global connections established in the city during the hyper-colonial period. What emerges is Tianjin's simultaneous tendency towards ‘world-class-ness’ and ‘China-class-ness’.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between consumers' alliance encounter satisfaction (AES) and their behavioral intentions toward standalone platforms of host and guest partners, and the moderating effects of consumer AES attributions on AES-to-behavioral intention relationships.

This paper extends attribution theory and satisfaction literature to the brand alliance context. The study used 1,470 survey responses from consumers, each having had purchase experiences with one of 16 brand alliances, to test hypotheses.

AES spills over to favorable behavioral intentions toward each alliance partner as a standalone brand. This spillover effect is strengthened by a carryover effect. Intriguingly, if a partner outshines the other and solely receives AES attributions, there is a significant contrast effect adversely affecting the spillover effect for the non-attributed partner.

The findings provide advice on partner selection and alliance resource commitments. Choosing partners well and working synergistically to attain AES is essential for gaining behavioral intention uplift for alliance partners. Brand managers are advised to select partners with comparable rather than superior capabilities. Also, since outcomes of alliance encounters lead to greater gains (or losses) for host brands, hosts are called to be particularly thorough when making alliance resource commitments.

There are few studies of actual consumer experiences with alliances, since most consumer-focused alliance research uses experimental designs. This paper is among the first to examine the effects of actual consumer alliance encounters on behavioral intentions toward each alliance partner as a standalone firm.

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of research and developments relating to the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education. As opposed to early educational uses of the Internet involving publication of static information on web pages, Web 2.0 tools offer a host of opportunities for educators to provide more interactive, collaborative, and creative online learning experiences for students. The chapter starts by defining Web 2.0 tools in terms of their ability to facilitate online creation, editing, and sharing of web content. A typology of Web 2.0 technologies is presented to illustrate the wide variety of tools at teachers’ disposal. Educational uses of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, and microblogging are explored, in order to showcase the variety of designs that can be utilized. Based on a review of the research literature the educational benefits of using Web 2.0 technologies are outlined, including their ability to facilitate communication, collaborative knowledge building, student-centered activity, and vicarious learning. Similarly, issues surrounding the use of Web 2.0 tools are distilled from the literature and discussed, such as the possibility of technical problems, collaboration difficulties, and plagiarism. Two case studies involving the use Web 2.0 tools to support personalized learning and small group collaboration are detailed to exemplify design possibilities in greater detail. Finally, design recommendations for learning and teaching using Web 2.0 are presented, again based on findings from the research literature.

Online review bias research has predominantly focused on self-selection biases on the user’s side. By collecting online reviews from multiple platforms and examining their biases in the unique digital environment of “Chinanet,” this paper aims to shed new light on the multiple sources of biases embedded in online reviews and potential interactions among users, technical platforms and the broader social–cultural norms.

In the first study, online restaurant reviews were collected from Dianping.com, one of China's largest review platforms. Their distribution and underlying biases were examined via comparisons with offline reviews collected from on-site surveys. In the second study, user and platform ratings were collected from three additional major online review platforms – Koubei, Meituan and Ele.me – and compared for possible indications of biases in platform's review aggregation.

The results revealed a distinct exponential-curved distribution of Chinese users’ online reviews, suggesting a deviation from previous findings based on Western user data. The lack of online “moaning” on Chinese review platforms points to the social–cultural complexity of Chinese consumer behavior and online environment that goes beyond self-selection at the individual user level. The results also documented a prevalent usage of customized aggregation methods by review service providers in China, implicating an additional layer of biases introduced by technical platforms.

Using an online–offline design and multi-platform data sets, this paper elucidates online review biases among Chinese users, the world's largest and understudied (in terms of review biases) online user group. The results provide insights into the unique social–cultural cyber norm in China's digital environment and bring to light the multilayered nature of online review biases at the intersection of users, platforms and culture.

Marketing managers have strategic choices when forming brand alliances. One such choice is integration, defined as the extent to which the offering is a fusion in the form and function of the partner brands. The paper aims to investigate how integration affects consumer attribution of responsibility to brand alliance partners.

This paper builds on the previous study on brand alliances and attribution theory. Multiple experiments are used to test three hypotheses.

This research shows that consumers are sensitive to the level of alliance integration, which, in turn, affects attributions of responsibility for the joint offering. Consistent with attribution theory, results show that responsibility for each brand varies systematically by integration and lead brand status vis-à-vis the alliance: while consumers perceive both brands as equally responsible for higher integration brand alliances, responsibility attributions diverge in lower integration alliances based on whether the brand is the alliance host. This pattern also holds for product-harm events.

It is important to explore brand alliance characteristics and to date, the level of integration between the partners has not been considered from a consumer standpoint. Consumers are sensitive to the level of partner brand integration and this perception influences perceptions of responsibility.

Managers should be aware that the level of brand alliance integration and lead brand status lead to different attributions of responsibility, which is strategically important, as brands seek to take credit in positive contexts and avoid blame for negative events.

This paper explores brand alliances via the level of integration and leads brand status, which are key determinants of consumer attributions of responsibility.