A model of customer relationship management and business intelligence systems for catalogue and online retailers

As more retailers evolve into customer-centric and segment-based business, business intelligence (BI) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems are playing a key role in achieving and maintaining competitive advantage. For the past ten years, the authors have had the rare opportunity of observing and interviewing employees and managers of three different management teams at three separate Fingerhut companies as they experimented with various ITs for their companies. When the first Fingerhut company peaked in 1998, as many as 200 analysts and 40 statisticians mined the database for insights that helped predict consumer shopping patterns and credit behaviour. Data mining and BI helped Fingerhut spot shopping patterns, bring product offerings to the right customers, and nurture customer relationships. By 1998, Fingerhut was the second largest catalogue retailer in the U.S. with revenues nearing $2 billion. However, after Federated acquired Fingerhut in 1999 and made it a subsidiary, Fingerhut Net, it suffered great losses and was eventually liquidated. Finally, a new company, Fingerhut Direct Marketing, was resurrected in 2002 under a new management team, and it once again became successful. What went right? What went wrong? The paper concludes with CRM and BI systems success factors and a discussion of lessons learned.     

Significance tests of automatic machine translation evaluation metrics

Automatic evaluation metrics for Machine Translation (MT) systems, such as BLEU, METEOR and the related NIST metric, are becoming increasingly important in MT research and development. This paper presents a significance test-driven comparison of n-gram-based automatic MT evaluation metrics. Statistical significance tests use bootstrapping methods to estimate the reliability of automatic machine translation evaluations. Based on this reliability estimation, we study the characteristics of different MT evaluation metrics and how to construct reliable and efficient evaluation suites.     

Does the use of social networking sites increase children’s risk of harm?

Although research findings have been equivocal as to whether the use of social networking sites (SNSs) increases experiences of online risk among children, the affordances of SNS lend support to this possibility, attracting much policy and public concern. The present article examines whether the use of such services increases the risks that children and young people encounter by analyzing data from a random stratified sample of approximately 1000 internet-using children aged 9–16 years in each of 25 European countries. Four hypotheses were formulated and tested. The first hypothesis, namely that children who use social networking sites will encounter more risks online than those who do not, is supported by the data. The second hypothesis stated that SNS users with more digital competence will encounter more online risk than those with less competence; this was also supported, despite being counter to common assumptions. Thirdly, we hypothesized that SNS users with more risky SNS practices (e.g. a public profile, displaying identifying information, with a very large number of contacts) will encounter more online risk than those with fewer risky practices: this too was supported by the data; thus what matters for risk is how SNS are used, a useful point for awareness-raising initiatives. The fourth hypothesis stated that SNS users with more digital competence in using the internet will experience less harm associated with online risk. The data did not support this hypothesis, since digital competence did not reduce the probability of children saying that they have been bothered or upset by something on the internet. Finally, the study found that, although this had not been predicted, whether or not risks are experienced as harmful depends on the specific relation between risks and platforms (website, instant messaging, gaming or social networking). We call on future research to explore how particular affordances sustain particular communicative conditions and, in turn, are responded to differently by children. The research and policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Multi-way set enumeration in weight tensors

The analysis of n-ary relations receives attention in many different fields, for instance biology, web mining, and social studies. In the basic setting, there are n sets of instances, and each observation associates n instances, one from each set. A common approach to explore these n-way data is the search for n-set patterns, the n-way equivalent of itemsets. More precisely, an n-set pattern consists of specific subsets of the n instance sets such that all possible associations between the corresponding instances are observed in the data. In contrast, traditional itemset mining approaches consider only two-way data, namely items versus transactions. The n-set patterns provide a higher-level view of the data, revealing associative relationships between groups of instances. Here, we generalize this approach in two respects. First, we tolerate missing observations to a certain degree, that means we are also interested in n-sets where most (although not all) of the possible associations have been recorded in the data. Second, we take association weights into account. In fact, we propose a method to enumerate all n-sets that satisfy a minimum threshold with respect to the average association weight. Technically, we solve the enumeration task using a reverse search strategy, which allows for effective pruning of the search space. In addition, our algorithm provides a ranking of the solutions and can consider further constraints. We show experimental results on artificial and real-world datasets from different domains.     

Toward a theory of perceived benefits,affective commitment,and continuance intention in social virtual worlds: cultural values (indulgence and individualism) matter

In this study we examine the contingent effects of two cultural values, indulgence and individualism, on the relationships between perceived benefits (utilitarian value, hedonic value, and relational capital), affective commitment, and continuance intention in social virtual worlds. We test our theoretical model in multi-group analyses using SmartPLS 2.0, based on a sample of 414 Second Life users from the U.S.A., Great Britain, and numerous other countries. By comparing the high- vs the low-indulgence subsamples, we find that indulgence weakens the effect of utilitarian value, but strengthens the effect of hedonic value, on affective commitment. Furthermore, compared with low-individualism users, the users with high-individualism showed a weaker effect of relational capital on affective commitment, as well as a weaker effect of affective commitment on continuance intention. The theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.     

The Impact of Hypergravity and Vibration on Gene and Protein Expression of Thyroid Cells

Experiments in space either on orbital missions on-board the ISS, or in suborbital missions using sounding rockets, like TEXUS as well as parabolic flight campaigns are still the gold standard to achieve real microgravity conditions in the field of gravitational biology and medicine. However, during launch, and in flight, hypergravity and vibrations occur which might interfere with the effects of microgravity. It is therefore important to know these effects and discriminate them from the microgravity effects. This can be achieved by ground-based facilities like centrifuges or vibration platforms. Recently, we have conducted several experiments with different thyroid cancer cell lines. This study, as part of the ESA-CORA-GBF 2010-203 project, focused on the influence of vibration and hypergravity on benign human thyroid follicular epithelial cells (Nthy-ori 3-1 cell line). Gene and in part protein expression regulation under both conditions were analyzed for VCAN, ITGA10, ITGB1, OPN, ADAM19, ANXA1, TNFA, ABL2, ACTB, PFN2, TLN1, EZR, RDX, MSN, CTGF, PRKCA, and PRKAA1 using quantitative real-time PCR and Western Blot. We found that hypergravity and vibration affected genes and proteins involved in the extracellular matrix, the cytoskeleton, apoptosis, cell growth and signaling. Vibration always led to a down-regulation, whereas hypergravity resulted in a more heterogeneous expression pattern. Overall we conclude that both conditions can influence gene regulation and production of various genes and proteins. As a consequence, it is important to perform control experiments on hypergravity and vibration facilities in parallel to flight experiments.     

Optimisation of the broiler production supply chain

In this paper, we propose a mixed integer programming (MIP) model for the Chicken Flock Sizing, Allocation and Scheduling Problem (CFSASP), which is an important planning problem in the broiler production supply chain. To solve the CFSASP efficiently, two variants of rolling horizon heuristics (RHHs) have been developed and applied on the case of a Norwegian broiler production company. Computational results show that the RHHs successfully obtain high-quality solutions within a reasonable time. The value of optimisation is verified through comparison with the case company's plans, where the solutions from optimisation outperforms the current solutions. Sensitivity analyses are also conducted to provide managerial insights regarding certain strategic decisions, such as how many and which days to use for hatching of chickens. Due to the promising results, the case company is now implementing an optimisation-based decision support system based on the MIP model and solution methods shown in this paper.     

Exact Complexity of the Winner Problem for Young Elections

In 1977 Young proposed a voting scheme that extends the Condorcet Principle based on the fewest possible number of voters whose removal yields a Condorcet winner. We prove that both the winner and the ranking problem for Young elections is complete for \p _|| ^NP , the class of problems solvable in polynomial time by parallel access to NP. Analogous results for Lewis Carroll's 1876 voting scheme were recently established by Hemaspaandra et al. In contrast, we prove that the winner and ranking problems in Fishburn's homogeneous variant of Carroll's voting scheme can be solved efficiently by linear programming.     

Enantiomeric ratios of pantolactone, solerone, 4-carboethoxy-4-hydroxy-butyrolactone and of sotolon, a flavour impact compound of flor-sherry and botrytized wines

Summary The enantiomers of sotolon (2), a flavour impact compound of flor-sherry and botrytized wines, were synthesized to determine the Chromatographic behaviour of the enantiomers (R)-2 and (S)-2 on permethylated-cyclodextrin as the chiral stationary phase. Using enantioselective multidimensional gas chromatography (column combination: DB 1701/permethyl--cyclodextrin) the enantiomeric ratios of the chiral-lactones pantolactone (1), sotolon (2), solerone (3) and 4-carboethoxy-4-hydroxy butyrolactone (4) in flor-sherry and botrytized wines were evaluated. High enantiomeric excess in favour of the (4R)-configurated mirror images was detected for lactones1 and4. The measured enantiomeric ratios of sotolon (2) and solerone (3) were too low and unspecific to be useful in authenticity control of2 and3.

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Enantiomerenverhältnisse von Pantolacton, Soleron, 4-Carbethoxy-4-hydroxy-butryolacton und Sotolon, einer Aromaleitsubstanz von Flor-Sherry und Botrytris-Weinen

Zusammenfassung Die Synthese der Enantiomeren des Sotolons (2), einer Aromaleitsubstanz für Flor-Sherryund Botrytis-Weine, wird aufgezeigt und das chromatographische Verhalten der Enantiomeren (R)-2 und (S)-2 an permethyliertem-Cyclodextrin bestimmt. Mittels enantioselektiver multidimensionaler Gaschromatographie (Säulenkombination: DB 1701/Permethyl--Cyclodextrin) werden die Enantiomerenverhältnisse der chiralen-Lactone Pantolacton (1), Sotolon (2), Soleron (3) und 4-Carbethoxy-4-hydroxybutyrolactone (4) in Flor-Sherry- und Botrytis-Weinen ermittelt. Während für die Lactone1 und4 hohe Enantiomerenüberschüsse zugunsten der (4R)-konfigurierten Spiegelbildisomere nachgewiesen werden, können aus dem für Soleron (3) bzw. Sotolon (2) ermittelten Enantiomerenverhältnissen keine Rückschlüsse auf die Authentizität dieser Verbindungen abgeleitet werden.

     

Influence of the plant antifeedant,pinosylvin, on suppression of feeding by snowshoe hares

This study investigated the influence of the plant antifeedants, pinosylvin and pinosylvin methyl ether (PME), on suppression of feeding by snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus). Screening bioassays showed clearly that pinosylvin suppressed feeding by hares when sprayed directly on coniferous tree seedlings. Pinosylvin odor, when associated with food (but not mixed with it), also significantly reduced consumption of rabbit chow by hares. Large pen bioassays indicated that both pinosylvin and PME significantly reduced feeding on tree seedlings by hares when the antifeedants were sprayed directly on trees. In field bioassays near Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, pinosylvin sprayed on trees and encapsulated in controlled-release devices of PVC plastic, with an internal wire as a twist-tie for attachment to tree, significantly reduced feeding by hares. Thus, pinosylvin will generate an avoidance response in terms of feeding by snowshoe hares. This response is likely triggered by an olfactory pathway based on positive results with controlledrelease devices attached to seedlings. Our study reports the first practical utilization of plant antifeedants for forest crop protection and wildlife management.