Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of perceived risk on information search for innovative products and services.

Purpose The purpose of the study is to explore the effects of two dimensions of perceived risk (functional and emotional risk) on two types of consumer information search (ongoing and pre-purchase search) in the context of innovative products and services and examine the moderating effect of innate consumer innovativeness. Design/methodology/approach The findings in this study are generated with a quantitative design using a multiple linear regression model and a residual centering method on data-collected survey responses related to tablet PC adoption in an online community and laboratory experiment on online bike-renting services. Findings The results show that functional and emotional risks influence on-going and pre-purchase search differently in innovative products and services context. On the one hand, functional risk affects on-going search negatively, whereas emotional risk affects on-going search positively; on the other hand, the effect of functional risk on pre-purchase search is not significant, and the effect of emotional risk on pre-purchase search is positive. Furthermore, these relationships are moderated by innate consumer innovativeness. For on-going search, consumer innovativeness moderates the negative effect of functional risk negatively and moderates the positive effect of emotional risk positively; for pre-purchase search, consumer innovativeness moderates the positive effect of emotional risk negatively on pre-purchase search. Originality/value Unlike established products and services, innovative products and services possess some elements that are unfamiliar to consumers. Companies typically pre-release innovative products and services long before officially launching them in the market, enabling consumers to assess potential risks and seek information in advance, thereby priming the market. Since innovative products and services are becoming more ubiquitous, research on the impact of perceived risk on information search is crucial for marketers. The present work is designed to be the first to consider the effects of two dimensions of perceived risk (functional and emotional risk) on two types of consumer information search (ongoing and pre-purchase search) and the moderating effect of innate consumer innovativeness. The present research is, therefore, intended to make contributions to the literature on perceived risk, information search and innovation management.
Neuropsychological and Neurological Deficits in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: The Role of Comorbid Depression

Past research has found a high prevalence of neuropsychological deficits and neurological soft signs in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). A close relationship between OCD and depression has also been indicated in the literature. However, many aspects of this association remain unclear. In this study we compared neuropsychological functioning and neurological soft signs of 46 OCD patients who were off psychotropic medication (21 with significant depressive symptoms and 25 without) with 25 non-patient comparison subjects. The patients were matched to the comparison group with regard to age, sex, education, marital status and handedness. There were significant differences between OCD patients and the non-patient comparison group on neuropsychological functioning but not on neurological soft signs. As far as working memory concerns there was a significant difference between the OCD depressed and nondepressed groups. But we found no evidence that the neuropsychological functions such as cognitive flexibility, problem solving and spatial perception in OCD to be attributable to comorbid depression. The pattern of neuropsychological deficits in this sample of OCD patients is suggestive of orbito-frontal as well as dorso-lateral prefrontal cortical dysfunction.
Microlensing of central images in strong gravitational lens systems

We study microlensing of the faint images that form close to the centres of strong gravitational lens galaxies. These central images, which have finally begun to yield to observations, naturally appear in dense stellar fields and may be particularly sensitive to fine granularity in the mass distribution. The microlensing magnification maps for overfocused (i.e. demagnified) images differ strikingly from those for magnified images. In particular, the familiar ‘fold’ and ‘cusp’ features of maps for magnified images are only present for certain values of the fraction f of the surface mass density contained in stars. For central images, the dispersion in microlensing magnifications is generally larger than for normal (minimum and saddle) images, especially when the source is comparable to or larger than the stellar Einstein radius. The dispersion depends in a complicated way on f; this behaviour may hold the key to using microlensing as a probe of the relative densities of stars and dark matter in the cores of distant galaxies. Quantitatively, we predict that the central image C in PMN J1632−0033 has a magnification dispersion of 0.6 mag for Rsrc/RE 1, or 0.3 mag for Rsrc/RE = 10. For comparison, the dispersions are 0.5‐0.6 mag for image B and 0.05‐0.1 mag for image A, if Rsrc/RE 1; and just 0.1 mag for B and 0.008 mag for A if Rsrc/RE = 10. (The dispersions can be extrapolated to larger sources sizes as σ ∝ R −1 src .) Thus, central images are more susceptible than other lensed images to microlensing and hence good probes for measuring source sizes.
A Political Economy Model of Sovereign Debt Repayment

Bulow and Rogoff (1989) show that a country that has access to a sufficiently rich asset market cannot commit to repay its debts and therefore should be unable to borrow. This is because for any debt contract, there exists a time at which the country is made better off by defaulting and replicating the payoffs of the debt contract through savings in the asset market. This paper provides an answer to this paradox based on a political economy model of debt. It shows that the presence of political uncertainty reduces the ability of a country to save, and hence to replicate the original debt contract after default. In a model where different parties alternate in power, an incumbent party with a low probability of remaining in power has a high shortterm discount rate and is therefore unwilling to save. The current incumbent party realizes that in the future whoever achieves power will be impatient as well, making the accumulation of assets unsustainable. This time-inconsistency is shown to be equivalent to the problem faced by a hyperbolic consumer. Because of their inability to save, politicians demand debt ex-post and the desire to borrow again in the future enforces repayment today.
Probabilistic Sequence Translation-Alignment Model for Time-Series Classification

We tackle the time-series classification problem using a novel probabilistic model that represents the conditional densities of the observed sequences being time-warped and transformed from an underlying base sequence. We call it probabilistic sequence translation-alignment model (PSTAM) since it aims to capture both feature alignment and mapping between sequences, analogous to translating one language into another in the field of machine translation. To deal with general time-series, we impose the time-monotonicity constraints on the hidden alignment variables in the model parameter space, where by marginalizing them out it allows effective learning of class-specific time-warping and feature transformation simultaneously. Our PSTAM, thus, naturally enjoys the advantages from two typical approaches widely used in sequence classification: 1) benefits from the alignment-based methods that aim to estimate distance measures between non-equal-length sequences via direct comparison of aligned features, and 2) merits of the model-based approaches that can effectively capture the class-specific patterns or trends. Furthermore, the low-dimensional modeling of the latent base sequence naturally provides a way to discover the intrinsic manifold structure possibly retained in the observed data, leading to an unsupervised manifold learning for sequence data. The benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated on a comprehensive set of evaluations with both synthetic and real-world sequence data sets.
Social media in the context of academic marketing: Case study: Evaluation of the Umwelt-Campus campaign

Recently, more and more German universities have decided to pursue an active marketing strategy for student recruitment. Given the fact that the target group of these marketing efforts, i.e. potential students, belong to the generation of so-called "digital natives“, it seems indisputable that the integration of social media channels in academic marketing campaigns is indispensable. German institutions of higher education have increasingly been acknowledging this trend by creating official profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube or by hosting a blog. Looking at this process from a longterm perspective, this should be considered as a first phase. As online activities are becoming more professional and habitual, a second phase has to be initiated: monitoring and evaluation. In this paper we present the results of the evaluation of a university social media marketing campaign, namely the campaign of our university, which was launched in May 2011. Now, seven months later we carried out a survey among new students to evaluate their acceptance, feedback and interaction. In this paper we discuss how the use and requirements of participants have changed over just a few months, as well as how different platforms serve different needs and target groups. In addition, we will argue that continuous monitoring and analysis of social media activities and usage is essential when carrying out successful academic marketing.
The Hypoxia-Inducible Factor Pathway in Adipocytes: The Role of HIF-2 in Adipose Inflammation and Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Under obese conditions, adipose tissue can become oxygen-deficient or hypoxic. Extensive work has been done using various diet-induced obesity models to demonstrate an important role of hypoxia-induced signaling in adipose tissue and its impact on adipose functions related to adipogenesis, insulin sensitivity, and inflammation. We have recently identified a new mechanism connecting activation of the hypoxia-sensing pathway manifested by hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) 2α to adipose tissue inflammation and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Interestingly, this observation is consistent with the clinical evidence showing that obesity is often associated with ventricular hypertrophy and dysfunction as well as congestive heart failure independent of other well-established risk factors including diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease. This brief review will discuss the currently published genetic mouse models to determine the role of the HIF pathway in adipose tissue-associated diseases with a focus on the newly identified role of adipocyte HIF-2 in the development of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
A decentralized authorization scheme for DRM in P2P file-sharing systems

To enable secure content trade between peers with good scalability and efficiency in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing systems, we propose a decentralized authorization scheme for Digital Rights Management (DRM). Based on proxy re-encryption mechanism, our scheme deploys authorization functions on semi-trusted authorization proxy peers who re-encrypt the ciphertext of content keys and issue licenses to content user peers. A trusted server ensures that content users are properly charged for authorization. Our scheme has no alteration to the structure of P2P network and can be implemented with a wide range of proxy re-encryption algorithms. Compared with authorization schemes in existing DRM solutions, our scheme relieves the server from intense authorization processing, and achieves reliable decentralized authorization with good scalability and efficiency.
Building up Trusted Identity Management in Mobile Heterogeneous Environment

Mobile Internet enables mobile users to access Internet services through mobile networks. Currently, cellular networks are converging with various wireless networks, e.g., WLAN, MANET, which forms a heterogeneous mobile environment. In such environment, it has been a big challenge for mobile operators and mobile service providers to offer seamless roaming and services among the networks. Previous work on solving the problem falls in specific network circumstance, which cannot be easily and widely applied in the heterogeneous environment. In this paper, we foresee the future of mobile networks into mobile cloud environment. Thus, we propose a generic and flexible solution based on cloud computing technology that can achieve various benefits, such as robustness, high availability, and so on. We present the architecture and procedures for building up the trusted identity management to achieve seamless roaming.
Consumer-Centered Energy System for Electric Vehicles and the Smart Grid

This article proposes the consumer-centered energy system (CCES), a cyber-physical-social system that integrates the power grid (physical), communications and computing (cyber), and consumer interactions (social). The authors introduce some basic features of the CCES, provide a CCES architecture for electric vehicles and smart grid, and propose a request-and-schedule energy management protocol.
A Bayesian Survival Analysis of a Historical Dataset: How Long Do Popes Live?

ABSTRACT University courses in statistical modeling often place great emphasis on methodological theory, illustrating it only briefly by means of limited and repeatedly used standard examples. Unfortunately, this approach often fails to actively engage and motivate students in their learning process. The teaching of statistical topics such as Bayesian survival analysis can be enhanced by focusing on innovative applications. Here, we discuss the visualization and modeling of a dataset of historical events comprising the post-election survival times of popes. Inference, prediction, and model checking are performed in the Bayesian framework, with comparisons being made with the frequentist approach. Further opportunities for similar statistical investigations are outlined. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Control development for a hybrid-electric sport-utility vehicle: strategy, implementation and field test results

The control strategy presented and evaluated was developed for a parallel hybrid vehicle designed for the FutureTruck 2000 competition. The control strategy implemented focuses on fuel efficiency optimization in the context of charge-sustaining operation. It is based on an equivalent consumption minimization strategy, accounting for both the actual fuel cost and a suitably formulated equivalent fuel cost for the electric machine. This formulation leads to an instantaneous univariate minimization, which allows one to minimize the fuel consumption while meeting the driver demand and nominally maintaining the state of charge. Actual road test results are presented, demonstrating significant fuel economy gains and charge-sustaining operation. The same formalism is then extended for emission reduction by use of suitably designed penalty function to account for the engine-out emissions added to the equivalent fuel cost. The results indicate that it is possible to reduce NO/sub x/ emissions by more than 10% without significantly degrading fuel economy.
Effective properties of textile composites: application of the Mori–Tanaka method

An efficient approach to the evaluation of effective elastic properties of plain weave textile composites using the Mori–Tanaka method is presented. The method proves its potential even if applied to real material systems with various types of imperfections including the non-uniform waviness of the fiber-tow paths, both along its longitudinal direction and through the laminate thickness. The influence of the remaining geometrical parameters is accounted for by optimal calibration of the shape of the equivalent ellipsoidal inclusion. An application of the method to a particular sample of the carbon–carbon composite laminate demonstrates not only its applicability but also its efficiency particularly when compared with finite element simulations.
Acoustic aspects of segmental and suprasegmental productions of Greek hearing-impaired speech: A qualitative analysis

Hearing-impaired speech presents a number of characteristics deviating from normal, which concern both the segmental level, i.e. vowel and consonant errors, and the suprasegmental level, i.e. stress, intonation, resonance, voice quality etc. Errors on both levels can compromise speech intelligibility, that is, the ability of being understood. The current paper presents a qualitative analysis of the main segmental and suprasegmental errors observed in the speech of 10 Greek adult speakers with profound prelingual hearing impairment and of various intelligibility levels. Audio files and/or spectrographic displays, useful to clinicians, teachers and researchers, are provided to illustrate the above features and to help clarify acoustic measurement issues pertaining to the acoustic analysis of hearing-impaired speech.
Virtual enterprise brokerage: a structure-driven strategy to achieve build to order supply chains

This paper proposes the concept of the virtual enterprise broker as an innovative model to design and create build to order supply chains. The build to order supply chain responds to the demands of new global manufacturing economy offering high level of customisation, high customer driven design, volume flexibility, short cycle time, no inventory costs, minimal total cost and supply chain integration. A review of different manufacturing operational models, including make to stock, make to order, assembly to order, engineer to order and configure to order, is presented to set the context for the requirements of build to order operations. The virtual enterprise broker is proposed as a structure driven strategy to support the creation of dynamic supply chains to satisfy build to order requirements. The virtual enterprise broker strategy is described in terms of core processes and competencies. We also demonstrate of how the virtual enterprise broker strategy has been implemented in various industrial scenarios related to supply maintenance tooling for the aerospace industry, standard parts for capital goods equipment, and design and manufacturing of medical devices.
The Extend to Which Organisms Construct their . . .

Those interested in the relationship between environment structure and behavior—the topic of this special issue of Adaptive Behavior —will find much of value in Peter Godfrey-Smith's new book, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (hereafter CFMN; all page citations are to CFMN unless otherwise indicated). The writing is clear and concise, aptly balancing precision and breadth, and a host of relevant issues are raised and advanced. Although my comments here will focus only on the book's fundamental conceptual framework for how organisms relate to their environments, I enthusiastically recommend the entire book. My primary concern is the extent to which organisms construct their environments. Some definitions from CFMN will help us pursue this topic. Externalist explanations are "explanations of properties of organic systems in terms of properties of their environments", while internalist explanations explain "one set of organic properties in terms of other internal or intrinsic properties of the organic system" (p. 30). Constructivist explanations (the converse of externalist explanations) are "explanations of environmental properties in terms of properties of an organic system" (p. 30). To insure that constructivism and externalism are compatible, Godfrey-Smith adheres to a narrow conception of constructivism which requires that "an organic system changes or determines the intrinsic properties of objects external to it" (Godfrey-Smith, this issue, p. XXX; see also CFMN, pp. 145f). In other words, for an organic system to construct its environment in this narrow sense, it is not sufficient that the system's faculties determine what constitutes its environment; more than this, the organic system must actually intervene causally in the external world. This narrow conception of constructivism allows Godfrey-Smith to make a sharp contrast between, on the one hand, an organism constructing its environment and, on the other hand, an organism changing itself rather than its environment and so merely accommodating its environment (p. 147). (Hereafter I will always use "construct" and its cognates in Godfrey-Smith's preferred narrow sense.) Classifying explanations into these categories involves some subtleties. For one thing, although the definitions might suggest that the distinction between externalist and internalist explanations is dichotomous, Godfrey-Smith is clear that the distinction defines the poles of a continuous range of positions. The explanations of most organic systems invoke both internal and external factors (p. 51), so the degree to which an explanation is externalist or internalist depends on "[t]he amount of emphasis placed on the
Global identification of the genetic networks and cis-regulatory elements of the cold response in zebrafish

The transcriptional programs of ectothermic teleosts are directly influenced by water temperature. However, the cis- and trans-factors governing cold responses are not well characterized. We profiled transcriptional changes in eight zebrafish tissues exposed to mildly and severely cold temperatures using RNA-Seq. A total of 1943 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, from which 34 clusters representing distinct tissue and temperature response expression patterns were derived using the k-means fuzzy clustering algorithm. The promoter regions of the clustered DEGs that demonstrated strong co-regulation were analysed for enriched cis-regulatory elements with a motif discovery program, DREME. Seventeen motifs, ten known and seven novel, were identified, which covered 23% of the DEGs. Two motifs predicted to be the binding sites for the transcription factors Bcl6 and Jun, respectively, were chosen for experimental verification, and they demonstrated the expected cold-induced and cold-repressed patterns of gene regulation. Protein interaction modeling of the network components followed by experimental validation suggested that Jun physically interacts with Bcl6 and might be a hub factor that orchestrates the cold response in zebrafish. Thus, the methodology used and the regulatory networks uncovered in this study provide a foundation for exploring the mechanisms of cold adaptation in teleosts.
Phase Changes of Monosulfoaluminate in NaCl Aqueous Solution

Monosulfoaluminate (Ca4Al2(SO4)(OH)12∙6H2O) plays an important role in anion binding in Portland cement by exchanging its original interlayer ions (SO42− and OH−) with chloride ions. In this study, scanning transmission X-ray microscope (STXM), X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were used to investigate the phase change of monosulfoaluminate due to its interaction with chloride ions. Pure monosulfoaluminate was synthesized and its powder samples were suspended in 0, 0.1, 1, 3, and 5 M NaCl solutions for seven days. At low chloride concentrations, a partial dissolution of monosulfoaluminate formed ettringite, while, with increasing chloride content, the dissolution process was suppressed. As the NaCl concentration increased, the dominant mechanism of the phase change became ion exchange, resulting in direct phase transformation from monosulfoaluminate to Kuzel’s salt or Friedel’s salt. The phase assemblages of the NaCl-reacted samples were explored using thermodynamic calculations and least-square linear combination (LC) fitting of measured XANES spectra. A comprehensive description of the phase change and its dominant mechanism are discussed.