LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Consumer-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce: A Distinct Research Stream

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce is a growing area of e-commerce. However, according to a meta-analysis of critical themes of e-commerce , C2C e-commerce was only represented in the area of online auctions (Wareham, Zheng, & Straub, 2005). C2C e-commerce can encompass much more than just auctions. The question then becomes, " is C2C e-commerce a different research area that deserves its own stream of research? " This study adapts constructs from a business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce study of satisfaction (Devaraj, Fan, & Kohli, 2002) to determine what, if any, the differences are in the C2C e-commerce arena. The constructs include elements of the technology acceptance model (TAM), which includes perceived ease of use and usefulness; transaction cost analysis (TCA), which includes uncertainty, asset specificity, and time; and service quality (SERVQUAL), which includes reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Participants in the study answered questions regarding these various constructs in relation to their experiences with C2C e-commerce. The findings indicate that TAM, TCA, and SERVQUAL all impact satisfaction in C2C e-commerce. Reliability and responsiveness (areas of service quality) were found to influence C2C e-commerce satisfaction, where as they were not found to be an influence in the B2C study. These findings warrant further research in the C2C e-commerce arena. The study provides implications for future research and practice.
Exponential Stability of Linear Delay Impulsive Differential Equations

Corresponding author: Elena Braverman Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Department of Mathematics, 32000, Haifa, Israel e-mail : maelena@tx.technion.ac.il Abstract For an impulsive delay differential equation with bounded delay and bounded coefficients the following result is established. If each solution is bounded on [0,∞) together with its derivative for each bounded right-hand side then the equation is exponentially stable. A coefficient stability theorem is presented.
Hyperglycemia and prostate cancer recurrence in men treated for localized prostate cancer

Background:Obesity is consistently linked with prostate cancer (PCa) recurrence and mortality, though the mechanism is unknown. Impaired glucose regulation, which is common among obese individuals, has been hypothesized as a potential mechanism for PCa tumor growth. In this study, we explore the relationship between serum glucose at time of treatment and risk of PCa recurrence following initial therapy.Methods:The study group comprised 1734 men treated with radical prostatectomy (RP) or radiation therapy (RT) for localized PCa between 2001–2010. Serum glucose levels closest to date of diagnosis were determined. PCa recurrence was determined based on PSA progression (nadir PSA+2 for RT; PSA⩾0.2 for RP) or secondary therapy. Multivariate Cox regression was performed to determine whether glucose level was associated with biochemical recurrence after adjusting for age, race, body mass index, comorbidity, diagnosis of diabetes, Gleason Sum, PSA, treatment and treatment year.Results:Recurrence was identified in 16% of men over a mean follow-up period of 41 months (range 1–121 months). Those with elevated glucose (⩾100 mg/dl) had a 50% increased risk of recurrence (HR 1.5, 95% CI: 1.1–2.0) compared with those with a normal glucose level (<100 mg/dl). This effect was seen in both those undergoing RP (HR 1.9, 95% CI: 1.0–3.6) and those treated with RT (HR 1.4, 95% CI: 1.0–2.0).Conclusions:Glucose levels at the time of PCa diagnosis are an independent predictor of PCa recurrence for men undergoing treatment for localized disease.
Generalization Performance of Some Learning Problems in Hilbert Functional Spaces

We investigate the generalization performance of some learning problems in Hilbert functional Spaces. We introduce a notion of convergence of the estimated functional predictor to the best underlying predictor, and obtain an estimate on the rate of the convergence. This estimate allows us to derive generalization bounds on some learning formulations.
Comparison of antianginal actions of verapamil and propranolol.

Verapamil is a slow calcium channel blocker that has been in clinical use for almost 20 years as an antiarrhythmic agent. It also has an antianginal action,' but inconsistent results have been obtained in clinical trials owing to insufficient dosage.2 We found that the drug produced a significant decrease in the number of anginal attacks and the consumption of glyceryl trinitrate with improvement in exercise tolerance and ST changes when used in a dose of 360 mg daily.3 We have now compared the potency and mode of action of verapamil with those of propranolol, a standard beta-adrenergicreceptor-blocking drug, using fixed high doses of each.
The kitchen as a graphical user interface

Everyday objects can become computer interfaces by the overlay of digital information. This paper describes scenarios and implementations in which imagery is digitally painted on the objects and spaces of a kitchen. Five augmented physical interfaces were designed to orient and inform people in the tasks of cleaning, cooking, and accessing information: Information Table, Information Annotation of Kitchen, HeatSink, Spatial Definition, and Social Floor. Together, these interfaces augment the entire room into a single graphical user interface.
Parental discipline behaviours and beliefs about their child: associations with child internalizing and mediation relationships.

INTRODUCTION
Internalizing disorders of childhood are a common and disabling problem, with sufferers at increased risk of subsequent psychiatric morbidity. Several studies have found associations between parenting styles and children's internalizing, although few have considered the role of parental discipline. Parental discipline style may exert an effect on children's internalizing symptoms. Anxiety and depression are reliably found to run in families and parental anxiety has been shown to effect parenting behaviour. This study set out to examine the links between parental anxiety, parental discipline style and child internalizing symptoms.


METHOD
Eighty-eight parents of children aged 4-10 years were recruited through primary schools. All parents completed questionnaires including measures relating to: adult anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory - Trait version, Penn State Worry Questionnaire), parental depression (Beck Depression Inventory - Fastscreen), parental discipline (The Parenting Scale), parenting-related attributions (Parenting Attitudes, Beliefs and Cognitions Scale) and child psychological morbidity (Child Behaviour Checklist 4-18 version).


RESULTS
Significant correlations were found between both parental anxiety and child internalizing symptoms with ineffective discipline and negative beliefs about parenting. Particularly strong correlations were found between parental anxiety and child internalizing symptoms with harsh discipline. Parents of anxious/withdrawn children were more likely to hold negative beliefs about their child. The link between parental anxiety and child internalizing symptoms was mediated by harsh discipline. The link between parental anxiety and harsh discipline was mediated by parental beliefs about the child.


CONCLUSION
Discipline style may be an important factor in the relationship between parent anxiety and child internalizing symptoms.
The state of CRM adoption by the financial services in the UK: an empirical investigation

In recent years, organisations have begun to realise the importance of knowing their customers better. Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach to managing customer related knowledge of increasing strategic significance. The successful adoption of IT-enabled CRM redefines the traditional models of interaction between businesses and their customers, both nationally and globally. It is regarded as a source for competitive advantage because it enables organisations to explore and use knowledge of their customers and to foster profitable and long-lasting one-to-one relationships. This paper discusses the results of an exploratory survey conducted in the UK financial services sector; it discusses CRM practice and expectations, the motives for implementing it, and evaluates post-implementation experiences. It also investigates the CRM tools functionality in the strategic, process, communication, and business-to-customer (B2C) organisational context and reports the extent of their use. The results show that despite the anticipated potential, the benefits from such tools are rather small. # 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.
The use of allograft (and avoidance of autograft) in anterior lumbar interbody fusion: a critical analysis

The aim of this report is to analyze the validity of allograft in anterior lumbar interbody fusion. Forty-three patients underwent anterior lumbar interbody fusion using allograft in the period between 1995 and 1998. All suffered from crippling chronic low back pain with or without sciatica. Discogenic disease was verified in 40 cases by discography. All patients were investigated preoperatively with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The surgical technique is described. Follow-up radiographs were performed postoperatively, then at 1.5, 3, 6 and 12 months, as required. Radiological fusion was confirmed in all single-level fusions (100%, n=24). In two-level fusions the rate was 93% (n=28/30). However, radiological union could only be confirmed in 11 of the 12 levels in the three-level fusions. Allograft offers a better alternative to autograft for anterior lumbar interbody fusion. Donor site morbidity is avoided, hospital stay is shorter and fusion rates are satisfactory.
Relationship Between Soil Properties and Patterns of Bacterial β-diversity Across Reclaimed and Natural Boreal Forest Soils

Productivity gradients in the boreal forest are largely determined by regional-scale changes in soil conditions, and bacterial communities are likely to respond to these changes. Few studies, however, have examined how variation in specific edaphic properties influences the composition of soil bacterial communities along environmental gradients. We quantified bacterial compositional diversity patterns in ten boreal forest sites of contrasting fertility. Bulk soil (organic and mineral horizons) was sampled from sites representing two extremes of a natural moisture-nutrient gradient and two distinct disturbance types, one barren and the other vegetation-rich. We constructed 16S rRNA gene clone libraries to characterize the bacterial communities under phylogenetic- and species-based frameworks. Using a nucleotide analog to label DNA-synthesizing bacteria, we also assessed the composition of active taxa in disturbed sites. Most sites were dominated by sequences related to the α-Proteobacteria, followed by acidobacterial and betaproteobacterial sequences. Non-parametric multivariate regression indicated that pH, which was lowest in the natural sites, explained 34% and 16% of the variability in community structure as determined by phylogenetic-based (UniFrac distances) and species-based (Jaccard similarities) metrics, respectively. Soil pH was also a significant predictor of richness (Chao1) and diversity (Shannon) measures. Within the natural edaphic gradient, soil moisture accounted for 32% of the variance in phylogenetic (but not species) community structure. In the boreal system we studied, bacterial β-diversity patterns appear to be largely related to “master” variables (e.g., pH, moisture) rather than to observable attributes (e.g., plant cover) leading to regional-scale fertility gradients.
The potential of Virtual Reality as anxiety management tool: a randomized controlled study in a sample of patients affected by Generalized Anxiety Disorder

BACKGROUND
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by a constant and unspecific anxiety that interferes with daily-life activities. Its high prevalence in general population and the severe limitations it causes, point out the necessity to find new efficient strategies to treat it. Together with the cognitive-behavioural treatments, relaxation represents a useful approach for the treatment of GAD, but it has the limitation that it is hard to be learned. To overcome this limitation we propose the use of virtual reality (VR) to facilitate the relaxation process by visually presenting key relaxing images to the subjects. The visual presentation of a virtual calm scenario can facilitate patients' practice and mastery of relaxation, making the experience more vivid and real than the one that most subjects can create using their own imagination and memory, and triggering a broad empowerment process within the experience induced by a high sense of presence. According to these premises, the aim of the present study is to investigate the advantages of using a VR-based relaxation protocol in reducing anxiety in patients affected by GAD.


METHODS/DESIGN
The trial is based on a randomized controlled study, including three groups of 25 patients each (for a total of 75 patients): (1) the VR group, (2) the non-VR group and (3) the waiting list (WL) group. Patients in the VR group will be taught to relax using a VR relaxing environment and audio-visual mobile narratives; patients in the non-VR group will be taught to relax using the same relaxing narratives proposed to the VR group, but without the VR support, and patients in the WL group will not receive any kind of relaxation training. Psychometric and psychophysiological outcomes will serve as quantitative dependent variables, while subjective reports of participants will be used as qualitative dependent variables.


CONCLUSION
We argue that the use of VR for relaxation represents a promising approach in the treatment of GAD since it enhances the quality of the relaxing experience through the elicitation of the sense of presence. This controlled trial will be able to evaluate the effects of the use of VR in relaxation while preserving the benefits of randomization to reduce bias.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
NCT00602212 (ClinicalTrials.gov).
Spin: lexical semantics, transitivity, and the identification of implicit sentiment

Title of Document: SPIN: LEXICAL SEMANTICS, TRANSITIVITY, AND THE IDENTIFICATION OF IMPLICIT SENTIMENT Stephan Charles Greene Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor Philip Resnik, Department of Linguistics and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies Current interest in automatic sentiment analysis i motivated by a variety of information requirements. The vast majority of work in sentiment analysis has been specifically targeted at detecting subjective state ments and mining opinions. This dissertation focuses on a different but related pro blem that to date has received relatively little attention in NLP research: detect ing implicit sentiment , or spin, in text. This text classification task is distinguished from ther sentiment analysis work in that there is no assumption that the documents to b e classified with respect to sentiment are necessarily overt expressions of opin ion. They rather are documents that might reveal a perspective . This dissertation describes a novel approach to t e identification of implicit sentiment, motivated by ideas drawn from the literature on lexical semantics and argument structure, supported and refined through psycholinguistic experimentation. A relationship pr edictive of sentiment is established for components of meaning that are thou g t to be drivers of verbal argument selection and linking and to be arbiters o f what is foregrounded or backgrounded in discourse. In computational experim nts employing targeted lexical selection for verbs and nouns, a set of features re flective of these components of meaning is extracted for the terms. As observable p roxies for the underlying semantic components, these features are exploited using mach ine learning methods for text classification with respect to perspective. After i nitial experimentation with manually selected lexical resources, the method is generaliz d to require no manual selection or hand tuning of any kind. The robustness of this lin gu stically motivated method is demonstrated by successfully applying it to three d istinct text domains under a number of different experimental conditions, obtain ing the best classification accuracies yet reported for several sentiment class ification tasks. A novel graph-based classifier combination method is introduced which f urther improves classification accuracy by integrating statistical classifiers wit h models of inter-document relationships. SPIN: LEXICAL SEMANTICS, TRANSITIVITY, AND THE IDENTIFICATION OF IMPLICIT SENTIMENT
Carotid artery diameter correlates with risk factors for cardiovascular disease in a population of 55-year-old subjects.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
We investigated whether, in a randomly selected population of 55-year-old men and women, there is a relationship between common carotid artery (CCA) diameter and intima-media (IM) thickness and conventional risk factors for cardiovascular disease such as gender, smoking, elevated blood lipids, and high blood pressure.


METHODS
CCA diameter and IM thickness of the distal right and left CCAs were measured by high-frequency ultrasound methods. Fifty-seven men (73% of the invited men) and 47 women (62% of the invited women) participated.


RESULTS
In the whole group the CCA diameter was correlated with gender (P<0.001), cholesterol (P=0.007), triglycerides (P<0.001), apoB (P<0.001), apoB/A-1 (P<0.001), systolic blood pressure (P=0. 001), and glucose (P=0.006). HDL was inversely correlated with mean CCA diameter (P=0.003). In men the CCA diameter was correlated with a combined risk factor score (P=0.005), systolic blood pressure (P=0. 011), platelet count (P=0.033), apoB (P=0.025), and occurrence of plaque (P=0.003). In women the CCA diameter was correlated with a combined risk factor score (P=0.010), systolic blood pressure (P=0. 033), body mass index (P<0.001), cholesterol (P=0.009), triglycerides (P=0.14), apoB (P=0.002), and apoB/A1 (P=0.003). IM thickness was correlated with systolic blood pressure (P<0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
There are correlations between risk factors for cardiovascular disease and carotid artery diameter and IM thickness in both women and men in a population of 55-year-old subjects. The increased vessel diameter in subjects with cardiovascular risk factors may be a sign of attenuated vasoregulation, which could be an important factor during the development of atherosclerosis.
Focused Activities and the Development of Social Capital in a Distributed Learning "Community"

This study examined the development of individual social capital in a distributed learning community. Feld’s theory of focused choice predicts that the formation of network ties is constrained by contextual factors that function as foci of activities. In our research, we examined how group assignment and location could function as such foci to influence the development of individual social capital in a distributed learning community. Given that networks with different content flows may possess different properties, we examined two different types of networks—task-related instrumental networks and non-task-related expressive networks. A longitudinal research design was used to evaluate the evolution of networks over time. Hypotheses were tested using a sample of 32 students enrolled in a distributed learning class. The results show strong support for Feld’s theory. While serving as foci of activities to organize social interactions, both group assignment and geographic separation can also function to fragment a learning community.
The elimination of severe slugging—experiments and modeling

-Severe slugging can occur in a pipdine-riser system operating at low liquid and gas rates. The flow of gas into the riser can be blocked by liquid accumulation at the base of the riser. This can cause formation of liquid slugs of a length equal to or longer than the height of the riser. A cyclic process results in which a period of no liquid production into the separator occurs, followed by a period of very high liquid production. This study is an experimental and theoretical investigation of two methods for eliminating this undesirable phenomenon, using choking and gas lift. Choking was found to effectively eliminate or reduce the severity of the slugging. However, the system pressure might increase to some extent. Gas lift can also eliminate severe slugging. While choking reduces the velocities in the riser, gas lift increases the velocities, approaching annular flow. It was found that a relatively large amount of gas was needed before gas injection would completely stabilize the flow through the riser. However, gas injection reduces the slug length and cycle time, causing a more continuous production and a lower system pressure. Theoretical models for the elimination of severe slugging by gas lift and choking have been developed. The models enable the prediction of the flow behavior in the riser. One model is capable of predicting the unstable flow conditions for severe slugging based on a static force balance. The second method is a simplified transient model based on the assumption of a quasi-equilibrium force balance. This model can be used to estimate the characteristics of the flow, such as slug length and cycle time. The models were tested against new severe slugging data acquired in this study. An excellent agreement between the experimental data and the theoretical models was found. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.
LCDet: Low-Complexity Fully-Convolutional Neural Networks for Object Detection in Embedded Systems

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are the state-of-the-art performers for the object detection task. It is well known that object detection requires more com- putation and memory than image classification. In this work, we propose LCDet, a fully-convolutional neural net- work for generic object detection that aims to work in em- bedded systems. We design and develop an end-to-end TensorFlow(TF)-based model. The detection works by a single forward pass through the network. Additionally, we employ 8-bit quantization on the learned weights. As a use case, we choose face detection and train the proposed model on images containing a varying number of faces of different sizes. We evaluate the face detection perfor- mance on publicly available dataset FDDB and Widerface. Our experimental results show that the proposed method achieves comparative accuracy comparing with state-of- the-art CNN-based face detection methods while reducing the model size by 3× and memory-BW by 3 - 4× compar- ing with one of the best real-time CNN-based object de- tector YOLO [23]. Our 8-bit fixed-point TF-model pro- vides additional 4× memory reduction while keeping the accuracy nearly as good as the floating point model and achieves 20× performance gain compared to the floating point model. Thus the proposed model is amenable for em- bedded implementations and is generic to be extended to any number of categories of objects.