User satisfaction with business-to-employee portals: conceptualization and scale development

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate the business-to-employee portal user satisfaction (B2EPUS) measure. Five sequential stages of scale development were undertaken to achieve this purpose: conceptual model development, item generation, content validation, exploratory study, and confirmatory study. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the five dimensions of the B2EPUS, namely Usefulness, Confidentiality, Ease of Use, Convenience of Access, and Portal Design as the dimensions of the construct. Competing model analysis indicates that the second-order factor model is the better fitting for the B2EPUS construct. The theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as directions for future research are discussed in the concluding sections of this paper.     

Density functional and microkinetic study of CO2 hydrogenation to methanol on subnanometer Pd cluster doped by transition metal (M= Cu,Ni, Pt,Rh)

We study the CO₂ hydrogenation to methanol on subnanometer Pd₇ and transition metal doped Pd₆M (M = Cu, Ni, Pt, and Rh) clusters using a combination of density functional theory and microkinetic calculations. We find that, in general, the inclusion of transition metal dopants could decrease the activation energy of several important elementary reactions. This condition results in a significant improvement in the activity of the catalyst, especially for the Pd₆Ni cluster. We find that the Pd₆M clusters are more selective toward the formate pathway than the RWGS + CO hydrogenation pathway. We also compare the turnover frequency profiles of the clusters with that of the Cu(111) surface, representing the standard industrial catalyst. We find that the Pd₆Ni cluster can successfully overcome the TOF of Cu(111) surface, even at the low-pressure condition.     

Personal research idea recommendation using research trends and a hierarchical topic model

Scientometrics - In the era of rapid technological advance, it is an important task for all researchers to keep up with trends when performing research. How to efficiently find suitable research...     

Vacuole segregation in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae vac2-1 mutant: structural and biochemical quantification of the segregation defect and formation of new vacuoles

The conditional vacuolar segregation mutant vac2-1 [Shaw and Wickner (1991) EMBO J. 10, 1741-1748] shifted to non-permissive temperature (37 degrees C), forms large-budded cells without a vacuole in the bud, and daughter cells without an apparent vacuole. Some cells still contain normal segregation structures. Structural and biochemical quantification of the segregation defect showed that (i) about 10% of the full-grown buds did not contain a vacuole, (ii) about 15% of the small cells washed out of a population growing in an elutriation chamber at 37 degrees C, did not contain a visible vacuole, and (iii) 15% of the cells per generation lost carboxypeptidase Y activity after proteinase A depletion. Thus, 10-15% of the daughter cells did not inherit vacuolar structures or vacuolar proteolytic activity from the mother cell. To investigate the fate of vacuole-less daughters, these cells were isolated by optical trapping. The isolated cells formed colonies on agar plates that consisted of cells with normal vacuoles, both at 23 and 37 degrees C. Thus, the vacuole-less cells that failed to inherit proteolytic activities from the mother cell apparently give rise to progeny containing structurally normal vacuoles. Time-lapse experiments showed that vacuole-less daughter cells formed vacuolar vesicles that fused into a new vacuole within 30 min. Although new buds only emerged after a vacuole had formed in the mother cell, the temporary lack of a vacuole had little effect on growth rate. The results suggest that an alternative pathway for vacuole formation exists, and that yeast cells may require a vacuole of some minimal size to initiate a new round of budding.     

Optimizing Drying Conditions for Microwave-Vacuum (MIVAC®) Drying of Russet Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum)

MIVAC® combines microwave heating with vacuum drying. Microwave power is modulated based upon product temperature and can limit overheating compared to other microwave-vacuum methods. Blanched potatoes were dried at 50, 60, and 70°C for 0 to 150 min. Potatoes dried at 70°C had a lower moisture content in less time compared to potatoes dried at 50 and 60°C, but the color of the dehydrated potatoes was affected due to overheating. Drying at 60°C for 150 min resulted in dried potatoes with acceptable color. Drying at 50°C resulted in dehydrated potatoes of acceptable color; however, it required more time.     

Word reordering on multiple pivots for the Japanese and Indonesian language pair

Machine Translation - We investigated multiple pivot approaches for the Japanese and Indonesian (Ja–Id) language pair in phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT). We used four...     

Peer-assisted adaptation in periodic broadcasting of videos for heterogeneous clients

The increasing use of streaming applications and wide variety of devices, such as handheld personal organizers, have raised new challenges, such as the provision of access to multimedia content for devices with limited computing and bandwidth capabilities. In this paper, we propose a technique for periodic broadcasting. Our technique allows clients with low bandwidth capability to be served in the same period as high-bandwidth clients, using peer-to-peer streaming between clients, and also works for clients with downstream capability below the video bit rate. In the proposed system, the server builds multicast trees of clients that allow clients with low bandwidth to be served by other clients with sufficient upstream bandwidth. Clients below the video bit rate will suffer additional, but only moderately noticeable, delays that occur as video is converted to lower quality. We performed extensive simulation and showed that our system can provide improved service performance for heterogeneous clients on periodic broadcasting protocols.     

Critical roasting level determines bioactive content and antioxidant activity of Robusta coffee beans

Food Science and Biotechnology - Indonesian Lampung Robusta coffee green beans were roasted at eight roasting levels (green bean, early yellow, brown, 1st crack done, very light, light, medium, and...