Taste matters most: Effects of package design on the dynamics of implicit and explicit product evaluations over repeated in-home consumption

Package design influences consumers’ expectations of a product’s sensory properties and expected healthiness and/or tastiness, and potentially also changes actual product perception during consumption. The robustness of these effects is far from clear, however. This study investigated the influence of package cues signalling either hedonic or healthy product properties on expectations and subsequent product evaluation over repeated consumption.In a between-subjects design, 92 participants evaluated product expectations and taste perceptions of a chocolate-sesame flavoured biscuit with a package emphasizing either its healthy (n = 44) or hedonic (n = 48) aspects, both at a central location (CLT) and during six home use tests (HUT), using both explicit (questionnaires) and implicit (IAT) measures.Package design significantly affected (p < 0.05) consumers’ expectations of the product. They expected the biscuit to be tastier, less attractive and less healthy in the hedonic package condition, and less tasty, more attractive and healthier in the healthy package condition. However, these effects did not transfer to actual product evaluations upon tasting, either blind or tasting in combination with viewing the package during the HUTs. Implicit attitudes did change as a result of repeated exposures, depending on the package consumers were provided with, indicating product-package interactions over time (p < 0.05).In conclusion, package design influences product expectations and associations with its healthiness and attractiveness, which is of relevance in product choice and purchase settings. However, at the stage of (repeated) consumption, intrinsic (sensory) properties become the dominant drivers of products’ sensory and hedonic evaluations, and the impact of package cues seems less potent.     

Cloud based cyber-physical systems: Network evaluation study

In recent years, the Industry 4.0 concept brings new demands and trends in different areas; one of them is distributing computational power to the cloud. This concept also introduced the Reference Architectural Model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). The efficiency of data communications within the RAMI 4.0 model is a critical issue. Aiming to evaluate the efficiency of data communication in the Cloud Based Cyber-Physical Systems (CB-CPS), this study analyzes the periods and data amount required to communicate with individual hierarchy levels of the RAMI 4.0 model. The evaluation of the network properties of the communication protocols eligible for CB-CPS is presented. The network properties to different cloud providers and data centers’ locations have been measured and interpreted. To test the findings, an architecture for cloud control of laboratory model was proposed. It was found that the time of the day; the day of the week; and data center utilization have a negligible impact on latency. The most significant impact lies in the data center distance and the speed of the communication channel. Moreover, the communication protocol also has impact on the latency. The feasibility of controlling each level of RAMI 4.0 through cloud services was investigated. Experimental results showed that control is possible in many solutions, but these solutions mostly cannot depend just on cloud services. The intelligence on the edge of the network will play a significant role. The main contribution is a thorough evaluation of different cloud providers, locations, and communication protocols to provide recommendations sufficient for different levels of the RAMI 4.0 architecture.     

基于时间延迟的多类型维修与经济生产批量联合优化研究

针对目前未能较好的综合考虑多维修类型与经济生产批量联合优化的问题，首先考虑多类型维修关系，基于时间延迟理论求出故障和缺陷次数的表达式；其次，在此基础上，综合考虑生产费用和维修费用的基础上，构建了多类型维修和经济生产批量联合优化模型，以单位时间内总费用最小为优化目标，获得最优检查间隔期和经济生产批量；最后，通过算例分析验证了模型的有效性，说明了第一类缺陷检查次数的多少对费用和经济生产批量影响不大。     

基于模糊综合评判和层次分析法的中子管故障风险评估

中子管是一种用途广泛的关键部件，然而目前国产中子管的可靠性水平与国外相比还有一定差距，难以满足各行业的使用需求。本文分析了中子管的主要故障模式，采用模糊综合评判和层次分析法对中子管故障进行了多级模糊综合评判，并对中子管故障风险进行了评估。结果表明，中子管总体故障风险水平中等，故障风险前3位的部件为靶、氘氚储存器和加速极，在设计和使用中应重点关注靶释放氦气，靶膜氧化，氘氚储存器吸气剂局部破损，绝缘瓷管破损，加速极离子加速、聚焦不稳定等故障。     

Integrated rough VIKOR for customer-involved design concept evaluation combining with customers’ preferences and designers’ perceptions

Customer-involved design concept evaluation (DCE) allows customers to take part in evaluating the design alternatives to get more popular design concept. Traditional customer-involved DCE methods still focus on the collection of customer responses and only consider cost and benefit characteristics of design criteria in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) based evaluation process. Few studies have customized the decision-making algorithms specifically aimed at customers’ preferences. This paper further explores the customers’ influences in the early stages of the product design development, and proposes a new rough number based MCDM model (i.e., VIKOR) incorporating customers’ preferences for design specifications along with designers’ perceptions for the characteristics of design criteria (cost and benefit) to perform concept evaluation under subjective environment, and this proposed method is named as integrated rough VIKOR (IR-VIKOR). The objective of this study is to identify the best design concept which maximizes the satisfactions of expectations from most customers as well as conforms to the characteristics of design criteria. Firstly, Shannon entropy is used to obtain the weightings and relative importance ratings of design criteria from the customers’ preferences. Secondly, the customers’ preferences for design attribute values, the importance ratings of design criteria and the characteristics of design criteria are combined together to define the ideal solutions to calculate the rough evaluation index of each design alternative in IR-VIKOR, and finally the ranking result is provided by IR-VIKOR to determine the best design concept. A practical design example is introduced to illustrate the evaluation process of this proposed method, and the empirical comparisons are further carried out to validate its superiority for DCE. Through the sensitivity analysis experiments including i) inside IR-VIKOR, and ii) between IR-VIKOR and other classical MCDM methods, the proposed method is proved to be a reliable and feasible customer-involved DCE approach.     

Bracketing or reinforcing? Socio-economic status,network power,and online deliberation

The extent to which the deliberative scenario brackets socio-economic inequalities (i.e., functioning as an ideal public sphere) has been long-debating. This study empirically addresses this question in the online setting. We test whether offline advantages (i.e., economic and cultural capitals) can be translated into power in online deliberation and how their dynamic relations further influence interlocutors’ deliberation experience (i.e., perceived procedural fairness and validity claim). Power is conceptualized as network power, including prestige (indegree), leadership (outdegree), and brokering power (betweenness). A national sample of Singaporeans participated in a three-week online deliberation, and network power is measured based on the web log. The participants answered a two-wave (i.e., pre- and post-deliberation) survey to indicate individual attributes. Structural equation modeling finds that online deliberation brackets as well as reinforces offline status. Economic capital is suppressed while cultural capital translates into network power, which further influences interlocutors’ evaluation of the deliberation.     

不同熄焦方式对40kg焦炉焦炭质量的影响

不同熄焦方式对焦炭的冷态强度、热态强度以及生产焦炉的工艺特点均有影响,为了更好地指导40 kg试验焦炉的生产,需对比分析水熄焦、干熄焦方式对焦炭质量的影响。选用4种不同炼焦煤和1种生产配合煤,利用40 kg级实验焦炉炼制焦炭,分别采用蒸汽熄焦与水熄焦方式对40 kg焦炉炼制的焦炭进行冷却,检测熄焦后焦炭的工业分析、机械强度及热性质等性能指标,对比分析2种熄焦方式对焦炭质量的影响,并研究2种熄焦方式下焦炭与生产干熄焦的焦炭质量关系。结果表明,相对水熄焦,蒸汽熄焦的焦炭水分较稳定(小于1%)、成焦率有所提升,改善了焦炭质量,其中1/3焦煤冷强度的改善最为明显,气煤与1/3焦煤的热性质改善最为明显,肥煤的成焦率提升最大;蒸汽熄焦与生产干熄焦的焦炭质量指标更接近,机械强度M 40一致、M 10数据高出2.5个百分点,热性质CRI数据高出8.1个百分点、CSR低出10.4个百分点。焦化企业可参照试验结果,进一步优化40 kg实验焦炉熄焦工艺及调整生产与试验焦炉的相关性。     

中国智能机械制造评价及发展研究

以中国规模以上工业企业数据库为基础，结合在智能制造主要区域调研的结果，筛选出15145家智能制造企业，经同行评议后，生成322家候选企业名单；再由资深产业专家从“开发式创新”和“探索式创新”两个方面去考察候选企业的能力，得到中国智能制造百强排行榜；随后根据行业分类，得到智能机械制造企业排行榜。在概述了智能机械制造上榜企业的基本情况后，着重分析了前20强企业，并提出了中国智能机械制造发展路径和未来的发展趋势。     

Catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 from 600 MW supercritical coal power plant to produce methanol: A techno-economic analysis

Electricity and water from renewable hydropower plant are used as input for electrolysis unit to generate hydrogen, while CO₂ is captured from 600 MW supercritical coal power plant using post-combustion chemical solvent based technology. The captured CO₂ and H₂ generated through electrolysis are used to synthesize methanol through catalytic thermo-chemical reaction. The methanol synthesis plant is designed, modeled and simulated using commercial software Aspen Plus^®. The reactor is analyzed for two widely adopted kinetic models known as Graaf model and Vanden-Bossche (VB) model to predict the methanol yield and CO₂ conversion. The results show that the methanol reactor based on Graaf kinetic model produced 0.66 tonne of methanol per tonne of CO₂ utilized which is higher than that of the VB kinetic model where 0.6 tonne of methanol is produced per tonne of CO₂ utilized. The economic analysis reveals that 1.2 billion USD annually is required at the present cost of both H₂ production and CO₂ abatement to utilize continuous emission of 3.2 million tonne of CO₂ annually from 600 MW supercritical coal power unit to synthesize methanol. However, sensitivity analysis indicates that methanol production becomes feasible by adopting anyone of the route such as by increasing methanol production rate, by reducing levelised cost of hydrogen production, by reducing CO₂ mitigation cost or by increasing the current market selling price of methanol and oxygen.     

陕西田市镇及周边地质环境质量评价模型的构建及应用研究

鉴于地质环境质量在城市建设管理与规划中的重要性,文章从水文地质、工程地质和环境地质3个方面,确定了田市镇及周边地区地质环境质量评价指标体系,采用熵权法确定指标权重,构建了模糊加权模式评价模型,对田市镇及周边地区地质环境质量进行了评价与分区,并提出了针对性建议,以期为探索合适的评价方法及推进城镇建设的可持续发展提供地学依据。