Modeling the stimulators of the behavioral intention to use mobile entertainment: Does gender really matter?

This research aims to empirically examine the stimulators that influence consumers’ behavioral intention to use (IU) mobile entertainment (ME) in Malaysia. The proposed stimulators are perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), social influence (SI), perceived self-efficacy (PSE) and perceived enjoyment (PE). PU and PEOU were derived from TAM, SI was taken from the TRA, TPB and DOI model, PE was obtained from the extended-TAM model and PSE was taken from Bandura’s theory. This is among the first study that uses a model consisting of integrated constructs from TAM, extended-TAM, TRA, TPB, DOI and Bandura’s theory in predicting acceptance of ME. Empirical data were analyzed by employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. Gender moderating effect was examined via multiple group analysis (MGA). The findings revealed that PU, PEOU, SI and PE are positively associated with consumer IU of ME. Surprisingly, there were no significant moderating effects of gender. The control variables (i.e. age, marital status, education level, number of mobile phone and experience) were found to have no confounding effects on the ME adoption. The findings have contributed theoretical and managerial implications to ME providers, mobile phone manufacturers, the music, movie and gaming industry players.     

Prediction of Online Students Performance by Means of Genetic Programming

ABSTRACT

Problem: Online higher education (OHE) failure rates reach 40% worldwide. Prediction of student performance at early stages of the course calendar has been proposed as strategy to prevent student failure.

Objective: To investigate the application of genetic programming (GP) to predict the final grades (FGs) of online students using grades from an early stage of the course as the independent variable

Method: Data were obtained from the learning management system; we performed statistical analyses over FGs as dependent variable and 11 independent variables; two statistical and one GP models were generated; the prediction accuracies of the models were compared by means of a statistical test.

Results: GP model was better than statistical models with confidence levels of 90% and 99% for the training testing data sets respectively. These results suggest that GP could be implemented for supporting decision making process in OHE for early student failure prediction.     

Micropatterning PEDOT:PSS layers

PEDOT:PSS is a conductive polymer that is used as electrodes in organic electronic devices, but also in neuronal probes and implantable devices. This material can also be used for building deformable electrodes in soft substrates for several sensing applications. However, this material being sensitive to several chemicals and moisture it is difficult to pattern microstructures using standard lithography techniques. This paper will review and show some techniques developed for patterning PEDOT:PSS thin films using both soft lithography, such as microcontact printing and shadow masking, and conventional lithography techniques. In addition of this review we present a new lithography technique using silicon nitride protection layer and an analysis and comparison of ICP RIE dry plasma etch rates of PEDOT:PSS with different gases.     

A residual-based compact scheme of optimal order for hyperbolic problems

A new fourth-order dissipative scheme on a compact 3 × 3 stencil is presented for solving 2D hyperbolic problems. It belongs to the family of previously developed residual-based compact schemes and can be considered as optimal since it offers the maximum achievable order of accuracy on the 3 × 3-point stencil. The computation of 2D scalar problems demonstrates the excellent accuracy and efficiency properties offered by this new RBC scheme with respect to existing second- and third-order versions.     

Tracking the dynamics of translation and absolute orientation of a sphere in a turbulent flow

We study the six-dimensional dynamics--position and orientation--of a large sphere advected by a turbulent flow. The movement of the sphere is recorded with two high-speed cameras. Its orientation is tracked using a novel, efficient algorithm; it is based on the identification of possible orientation "candidates" at each time step, with the dynamics later obtained from maximization of a likelihood function. Analysis of the resulting linear and angular velocities and accelerations reveal a surprising intermittency for an object whose size lies in the inertial range, close to the integral scale of the underlying turbulent flow.     

Reservoirs Effects on the Interannual Variability of Winter and Spring Streamflow in the St-Maurice River Watershed (Quebec,Canada)

The aim of this study was to test three main hypotheses about the interannual variability of streamflow downstream from dams: (1) an almost similar long-term trend in interannual variability, (2) low variability of flow, and (3) its independence (no link) from climate variability. To test these hypotheses, the interannual variability of winter and spring streamflow downstream from three reservoirs (Gouin, Manouane, and Matawin) which induce an inversion of the natural cycle of streamflow (maximum flows in winter and minimum flows in spring) was compared to the interannual variability of streamflow in natural rivers (measured at the Matawin and Vermillon stations) over the period from 1932 to 2008 in the St-Maurice River watershed. As far as the interannual variability of flow is concerned, its long-term trend is not homogeneous downstream from the three reservoirs in both seasons. However, downstream from two reservoirs, changes in streamflow were observed to be different from those in natural rivers (no significant trend downstream from the Taureau reservoir, on the Matawin River, and significant decrease in spring flow downstream from the Manouane reservoir). Finally, coefficient of variation values for minimum flows are higher downstream from reservoirs than in natural rivers, despite the fact that watershed surface area is larger for regulated rivers than for natural ones. As for the link with climate variability, analysis of the correlation between climate variables (temperature and precipitation) and mean winter and spring daily streamflow reveals that winter streamflow downstream from the Taureau reservoir is not correlated with any climate variable, whereas spring streamflow is positively correlated with rainfall and negatively correlated with maximum temperature. Thus, downstream from reservoirs, the interannual variability of streamflow depends on climate during the spring, but not during winter.     

Towards Palm-Size Autonomous Helicopters

muFly EU project started in 2006 with the idea to build an autonomous micro helicopter, comparable in size and weight to a small bird. Several scientific and technological objectives were identified. This spanned from system-level integration, high efficiency micro-actuation, highly integrated micro vision sensors and IMUs and also low processing power navigation algorithms. This paper shows how most of these objectives were reached, describing the approach and the role of each partner during the whole project. The paper describes also the technological developments achieved like the 80 g, 17 cm micro robotic-helicopter, the 8 g omnidirectional and steady-state laser scanner, the uIMU, the highly efficient micro motors, the high power-density fuel-cell and the successful graph-based navigation algorithms.     

Autonomous rigid body attitude synchronization

Control laws to synchronize attitudes in a swarm of fully actuated rigid bodies, in the absence of a common reference attitude or hierarchy in the swarm, are proposed in [Smith, T. R., Hanssmann, H., & Leonard, N.E. (2001). Orientation control of multiple underwater vehicles with symmetry-breaking potentials. In Proc. 40th IEEE conf. decision and control (pp. 4598-4603); Nair, S., Leonard, N. E. (2007). Stable synchronization of rigid body networks. Networks and Heterogeneous Media, 2(4), 595-624]. The present paper studies two separate extensions with the same energy shaping approach: (i) locally synchronizing the rigid bodies’ attitudes, but without restricting their final motion and (ii) relaxing the communication topology from undirected, fixed and connected to directed, varying and uniformly connected. The specific strategies that must be developed for these extensions illustrate the limitations of attitude control with reduced information.     

Evaluating long-term service performance under short-term forecast updates

Managing product availability in a cost-effective way has always been a major challenge faced by inventory managers. We study the problem of a firm selling a perishable product with short-term demand patterns and a long-term service target using the newsvendor framework. The newsvendor determines his long-term order at the first stage, and revises the order according to a short-term forecast update at the second stage. He also evaluates a long-term service target for his overall performance on product availability across all possible forecast updates. We characterise his optimal inventory policy that minimises the expected inventory cost while meeting the long-term service target. Both in-stock rate and fill rate targets are examined.     

Secure Data Collection with Updates

This paper describes a protocol to protect data collected by mobile agents roaming through a set of potentially malicious hosts. This protocol is based on an original secure cryptographic technique that assures the integrity of a sequence of data segments regardless of the order of each segment in the sequence. The protocol allows each host to update the data it previously submitted in a way that is suitable for free competition scenarios like comparative shopping or distributed auction and for highly dynamic environments like stock markets. The set of hosts can be visited several times in random order and a short message digest allows for the integrity verification of all the collected data.