Do whole-body vibrations affect spatial hearing?

To assist the human operator, modern auditory interfaces increasingly rely on sound spatialisation to display auditory information and warning signals. However, we often operate in environments that apply vibrations to the whole body, e.g. when driving a vehicle. Here, we report three experiments investigating the effect of sinusoidal vibrations along the vertical axis on spatial hearing. The first was a free-field, narrow-band noise localisation experiment with 5- Hz vibration at 0.88 ms^? 2. The other experiments used headphone-based sound lateralisation tasks. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of vibration frequency (4 vs. 8 Hz) at two different magnitudes (0.83 vs. 1.65 ms^? 2) on a left–right discrimination one-interval forced-choice task. Experiment 3 assessed the effect on a two-interval forced-choice location discrimination task with respect to the central and two peripheral reference locations. In spite of the broad range of methods, none of the experiments show a reliable effect of whole-body vibrations on localisation performance.     

Do moods affect programmers’ debug performance?

There is much research that shows people’s mood can affect their activities. This paper argues that this also applies to programmers, especially their debugging. Literature-based framework is presented linking programming with various cognitive activities as well as linking cognitive activities with moods. Further, the effect of mood on debugging was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, programmers (n = 72) saw short movie clips selected for their ability to provoke specific moods. Afterward, they completed a debugging test. Results showed the video clips had a significant effect on programmers’ debugging performance; especially, there was a significant difference after watching low- and high-arousal-evoking video clips. In the second experiment, programmers’ mood was manipulated by asking participants (n = 19) to dry run algorithms for at least 16 min. They performed some physical exercises before continuing dry running algorithms again. The results showed a significant increase in arousal and valence that coincided with an improvement in programmers’ task performance after the physical exercises. Together, this suggests that programmers’ moods influence some programming tasks such as debugging.     

Estimating and mapping grass cover and biomass from low-level photographic sampling†

A method of estimating the quantity of biomass in the ground layer of semi-arid rangeland is described and applied to a region of 700?km² in Botswana. Vertical true colour diapositives, each covering approximately 60 × 90?m, were taken at 1?km intervals from a light aircraft flying at about 120?m above the ground along transects 1·6?km apart. The results of four seasonal surveys are presented. The ground layer cover, as a percentage, was estimated on each diapositive. It ranged mainly from 10 to 60 percent. A set of sampling plots on which the cover and biomass were measured on the ground provided standards for the air photograph estimates and a calibration equation of exponential form from which to convert estimates of cover to those of biomass. The values obtained were analysed spatially. Sample semi-variograms were computed and modelled as anisotropic power functions to lags of 10?km by least squares approximation, and validated by kriging. The grass cover and biomass were mapped from the sample data by first interpolating a figure field of cover on a fine mesh grid by kriging, and then contouring the figure field. The maps were converted to ones of biomass using the exponential calibration equation. A strong regional pattern emerged that remained fairly constant at different seasons and that matched the pattern in the underlying geology. Four fairly distinct sub-regions were delineated, and the average cover and total biomass were estimated, again by kriging, for each seasonal survey. Biomass in the sub-regions ranged from 185 to 1700?kg/ha.     

Do UML object diagrams affect design comprehensibility? Results from a family of four controlled experiments

Objective: The main objective of our study is to assess whether the use of UML (Unified Modeling Language) object diagrams improves comprehensibility of software design when this kind of diagrams is added to UML class diagrams.Method: We have conducted a family of four controlled experiments. We involved groups of bachelor and master students.Results: Results suggest that the use of object diagrams does not always introduce significant benefits in terms of design comprehensibility. We found that benefits strongly depend on the experience of participants and their familiarity with UML. More experienced participants achieved better design comprehensibility when provided with both class and object diagrams, while less experienced seemed to be damaged when using class and object diagrams together. Results also showed the absence of substantial variations in the time needed to comprehend UML models, with or without object diagrams.Implications: Our results suggest that it is important to be aware and take into account experience and UML familiarity before using object diagrams in software modeling.     

Do online reviews affect product sales? The role of reviewer characteristics and temporal effects

Online product reviews provided by consumers who previously purchased products have become a major information source for consumers and marketers regarding product quality. This study extends previous research by conducting a more compelling test of the effect of online reviews on sales. In particular, we consider both quantitative and qualitative aspects of online reviews, such as reviewer quality, reviewer exposure, product coverage, and temporal effects. Using transaction cost economics and uncertainty reduction theories, this study adopts a portfolio approach to assess the effectiveness of the online review market. We show that consumers understand the value difference between favorable news and unfavorable news and respond accordingly. Furthermore, when consumers read online reviews, they pay attention not only to review scores but to other contextual information such as a reviewer’s reputation and reviewer exposure. The market responds more favorably to reviews written by reviewers with better reputation and higher exposure. Finally, we demonstrate that the impact of online reviews on sales diminishes over time. This suggests that firms need not provide incentives for customers to write reviews beyond a certain time period after products have been released.

Do player performance,real sport experience,and gender affect movement patterns during equivalent exergame?

This study compared the movement patterns of forty-six college students, playing bouts of swimming exergame, while categorized based on their playing performance, gender, and prior experience of real swimming and exergames. Swimming events were divided into normal (controlled by visual feedback) and fast (no feedback) phases and upper limb kinematics were monitored during front crawl event. Those who performed better, completed the game with fewer upper limb cycles and in a shorter time (p < 0.003). Prior exergame experience resulted in higher start velocity (p = 0.019) and those who were familiarized with this swimming exergame, completed the front crawl event with fewer cycles (p = 0.022). Gender and real swimming experience did not affect biomechanical variables. With various playing styles and differences to real swimming movements, the data suggest that the motion capture device is not able to detect complex movements of swimming and previous knowledge of real swimming do not necessarily transfer into better exergame performance. These changes might have happened due to higher adaptation to the exergame. Understanding these patterns may help in the development of more realistic sport exergames and meaningful gameplay.     

Do the allocation and quality of intellectual assets affect the reputation of open source software projects?

We study the effect exerted by intellectual asset quality, social interaction, and the (re) allocation of intellectual assets on the reputation of open source software projects by analyzing 3196 software games over twelve months. Our main findings are as follows: (1) the aggregate performance of the individuals involved in a project increases the project's reputation, (2) changes in individual commitment affect project reputation, (3) social interaction increases project reputation, (4) reputation is more sensitive to the performance of individuals than to social interaction, and (5) the quality of intellectual assets and the project's social interaction both moderate the negative effect of changes in individual commitment.     

Using MODIS time series data to estimate aboveground biomass and its spatio-temporal variation in Inner Mongolia’s grassland between 2001 and 2011

It is critical to understanding grassland biomass and its dynamics to study regional carbon cycles and the sustainable use of grassland resources. In this study, we estimated aboveground biomass (AGB) and its spatio-temporal pattern for Inner Mongolia’s grassland between 2001 and 2011 using field samples, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer normalized difference vegetation index (MODIS-NDVI) time series data, and statistical models based on the relationship between NDVI and AGB. We also explored possible relationships between the spatio-temporal pattern of AGB and climatic factors. The following results were obtained: (1) AGB averaged 19.1 Tg C (1 Tg = 10¹² g) over a total area of 66.01 × 10⁴ km² between 2001 and 2011 and experienced a general fluctuation (coefficient of variation = 9.43%), with no significant trend over time (R² = 0.05, p > 0.05). (2) The mean AGB density was 28.9 g C m^?2 over the whole study area during the 11 year period, and it decreased from the northeastern part of the grassland to the southwestern part, exhibiting large spatial heterogeneity. (3) The AGB variation over the 11 year period was closely coupled with the pattern of precipitation from January to July, but we did not find a significant relationship between AGB and the corresponding temperature changes. Precipitation was also an important factor in the spatial pattern of AGB over the study area (R² = 0.41, p < 0.001), while temperature seemed to be a minor factor (R² = 0.14, p < 0.001). A moisture index that combined the effects of precipitation and temperature explained more variation in AGB than did precipitation alone (R² = 0.45, p < 0.001). Our findings suggest that establishing separate statistical models for different vegetation conditions may reduce the uncertainty of AGB estimation on a large spatial scale. This study provides support for grassland administration for livestock production and the assessment of carbon storage in Inner Mongolia.     

Do Rules and Patterns Affect Design Maintainability?

At the present time, best rules and patterns have reached a zenith in popularity and diffiusion, thanks to the software community’s efforts to discover, classify and spread knowledge concerning all types of rules and patterns. Rules and patterns are useful elements, but many features remain to be studied if we wish to apply them in a rational manner. The improvement in quality that rules and patterns can inject into design is a key issue to be analyzed, so a complete body of empirical knowledge dealing with...     

Do IT freelancers increase their entrepreneurial behavior and performance by using IT self-efficacy and social capital? Evidence from Bangladesh

This study applies entrepreneurship theory and social capital perspective to IT freelancing to facilitate a better understanding of it. Our model hypothesizes that both IT self-efficacy and social capital obtained through social media interactions contribute to IT freelancers’ entrepreneurial behavior and then this entrepreneurial behavior influences their performance. We collected primary data from one of the leading online freelancing marketplaces, oDesk.com (currently Upwork.com). Our empirical findings confirm the core assertion of our research model. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. Directions for future research are also provided.     

Do blending and offsetting commute for Dupin cyclides?

A common method for constructing blending Dupin cyclides for two cones having a common inscribed sphere of radius r>0 involves three steps: (1) computing the (−r) -offsets of the cones so that they share a common vertex, (2) constructing a blending cyclide for the offset cones, and (3) computing the r -offset of the cyclide. Unfortunately, this process does not always work properly. Worse, for some half-cones cases, none of the blending cyclides can be constructed this way. This paper studies this problem and presents two major contributions. First, it is shown that the offset construction is correct for the case of ≠−r , where is the signed offset value; otherwise, a procedure must be followed for properly selecting a pair of principal circles of the blending cyclide. Second, based on Shene's construction in “Blending two cones with Dupin cyclides”, CAGD, 15 (1998) 643–673, a new algorithm is available for constructing all possible blending cyclides for two half-cones. This paper also examines Allen and Dutta's theory of pure blends, which uses the offset construction. To help overcome the difficulties of Allen and Dutta's method, this paper suggests a new algorithm for constructing all possible pure blends. Thus, Shene's diagonal construction is better and more reliable than the offset construction.     

How do presence,flow, and character identification affect players’ empathy and interest in learning from a serious computer game?

This study develops and tests an integrated model of how three psychological variables—presence, flow, and character identification—contribute to interest in learning and empathy with people from other cultures through a simulation game. U.S. college students played one of two roles (an American journalist or Haitian survivor) in the game that dealt with the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Presence was a powerful predictor of flow, character identification, and empathy felt during the games. Furthermore, empathy experienced by game play significantly predicted interest in learning more about the game topics. Flow and identification made secondary contributions to learning outcomes, with flow mediating the effect of presence on males’ empathy and identification contributing to females’ interest in learning. While the proposed model was generally successful at predicting outcomes, it did a better job of accounting for the experience of participants who played a role rooted in their own culture (the journalist) than in a different culture (the survivor), and for female than male players. Our results suggest that serious game designers should prioritize inducing empathy and immersive presence in players, giving secondary attention to designing for flow and character identification.     

Do activity lifecycles affect the validity of a business rule in a business process?

Traditional process mining techniques offer limited possibilities to analyze business processes working in low-predictable and dynamic environments. Recently, to close this gap, declarative process models have been introduced to represent process mining results since they allow for describing complex behaviors as a compact set of business rules. However, in this context, activities of a business process are still considered as atomic/instantaneous events. This is a strong limitation for these approaches because often, in realistic environments, process activities are not instantaneous but executed across a time interval and pass through a sequence of states of a lifecycle. This paper investigates how the existing techniques for the discovery of declarative process models can be adapted when the business process under analysis contains non-atomic activities. In particular, we base our proposed approach on the use of discriminative rule mining to determine how the characteristics of the activity lifecycles in a business process influence the validity of a business rule in that process. The approach has been implemented as a plug-in of the process mining tool ProM and validated on synthetic logs and on a real-life log recorded by an incident and problem management system called VINST in use at Volvo IT Belgium.     

The IT Professional Outlook: Where Do We Go from Here?

IT Pro's new editor in chief, Simon Liu, lays out his plans for the magazine's articles and departments for the year ahead, describing an editorial calendar that promises to be as diverse as it is relevant.     

Do reviewers’ words affect predicting their helpfulness ratings? Locating helpful reviewers by linguistics styles

Locating helpful reviewers in opinion-sharing communities is an important issue. Numerous studies that examine this using social relations have some shortcomings. This study investigates language use, differing from person to person, and develops a novel prediction model to alleviate the problems. We identify four stylistic aspects and explore their impacts on predicting reviewers’ helpfulness ratings. The analyses show that the proposed model can more accurately locate helpful reviewers than the baseline model. In addition, reviewers’ words impact more than social relations do, although a combination of these will boost prediction performance to a greater extent than one alone.     

Do age and gender differences exist in selfie-related behaviours?

Recently scholars have started examining selfie-related behaviour, with an emphasis on young women. However, little is known about age and gender differences in selfie-taking and posting patterns. To address this gap, an online survey of a sample of 3763 Norwegian social media users was carried out. This study provides the first empirical evidence on how adolescents (aged 12 to 19), young adults (20–30) and adults (31–50) differ in terms of selfie behaviour. Females were more likely to take personal and group selfies, post personal selfies, crop photos and use photographic filters compared to males. Adolescents were found to be more likely than young adults to take own and group selfies, post own selfies, and use photographic filters. Similarly, young adults were more likely to take own and group selfies, post and edit photos than older adults. The predictive effect of age was stronger among women than among men regarding selfie taking, posting and editing behaviour. The interpretations and implications of the study findings are discussed in the light of previous literature.     

Do starting and ending effects in fixed-price group-buying differ?

With the growing popularity of group-buying websites, a plethora of group-buying options is available to consumers. Given this range of choices, information diffusion in group-buying can greatly influence consumers’ purchase decisions. Our study uses large-scale datasets from the top two group-buying websites in China, to explore the diffusion process and examine mass media communication (MMC) and interpersonal communication (IPC) during different periods of the buying process. The analysis results indicate that MMC and IPC at the start of the process can positively affect the sales, while it leads to fewer sales during the ending period in fixed-price group-buying, which contradicts the results of previous studies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore information diffusion in group- buying. This study provides a number of theoretical insights into group-buying from a new perspective, as well as practical management implications.     

Do red objects enhance sexual attractiveness? No evidence from two large replications

Color has been argued to exert a powerful effect on motivation and behavior. This has led researchers, most notably in social psychology, to examine the effects of color on perceptions of (sexual) attractiveness. Building on a body of work on the ‘romantic red effect’, Lin (2014) found evidence that the color of a laptop influenced ratings of a woman’s sexual attractiveness. If this holds true, then color effects could have profound importance for the marketing of consumer products such as laptops. Here we present two replications, one in the Netherlands and one in China, investigating whether red products increase perceived attractiveness. Across two studies, totaling 481 participants, we found no support for the claim that red products enhance sexual attractiveness. We discuss the implications for research on color and attractiveness and its implications for consumer research.