“When Is Short,Sweet?” Selection Uncertainty and Online Review Presentations

Online customer reviews are an important part of e-commerce product selection. When used effectively, online reviews may reduce the uncertainty inherent in making product selection decisions online, but how best to deal with thousands of online customer reviews? Past research considers online review summarization, where reviews are reduced to numeric ratings, key phrases, keywords or product characteristics. However, in their original form, online reviews contain the carefully crafted narratives of past customers, elements of which may not be amenable to summarization. In this research, we present findings of a laboratory experiment which examines the impact of review summarization when evaluating different types of products online. Key findings include evidence that perceptions of product selection uncertainty depend on online review presentation format and the category of the product under consideration. Additionally, the study provides evidence that the e-commerce retailers may benefit from varying online review presentations across specific types of products.     

Hydroxyapatite–Polyphosphazane Composites Prepared at Low Temperatures

Owing to their similarities to bone apatite, calcium phosphate bioceramics, such as hydroxyapatite (HAp), are used as biomaterials for hard tissue replacements. Composites of bioceramics and biomedical polymers can mimic bone structure and properties. The characteristics of composites comprising HAp and a biomedical polymer and prepared at low temperatures are described. The kinetics of HAp formation in the presence of a polyphosphazene polymer that carries carboxylic acid moieties (acid-PCPP) were established at temperatures from 25° to 50°C. Evolution in the compositions of the solids present, solution chemistry, and microstructure development were established as functions of reaction time and temperature. The polymer participated in HAp formation affecting its rates of nucleation and growth through the formation of calcium cross links. The presence of polymer also enhanced ductility.     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: An Energy Efficient Framework for Densely Distributed WSNs IoT Devices Based on Tree Based Robust Cluster Head

With the development of the internet of things, which is widely applied not only to everyday objects but also to industrial areas, the production of big data is accelerating. To provide intelligent services without human intervention in the internet of things environment, intelligent communication between objects becomes the key, and since the failure of the mechanical equipment attached to the sensor causes malfunction of the object and product failure, big data analysis to predict equipment failure is becoming more important. The purpose of this study is to propose a model for predicting mechanical equipment failure from various sense data collected in the manufacturing process. This study constructed a RHadoop-based big data platform to distribute a large amount of datasets for research, and performed logistic regression modeling to predict the main variables causing the failure from various collected variables. As a result of the study, the main variables in the manufacturing process that cause equipment failure were derived from the collected sense data, and the fitness and performance evaluation for the prediction model were made using the ROC curve. As a result of the performance evaluation of the prediction model, the ROC curve showed a fairly high prediction accuracy with AUC close to 1. The results of this study are expected to be applicable to the prediction of malfunctions, product failure, or abnormal communication between objects due to miscellaneous product faults in our daily lives in the internet of things environment.     

Cause of flow distributor on flow uniformity in open waterway stream passage velocity comparisons

In an open waterway flow passage, the inclusion of flow distributor paves a way to understand the idea of flow uniformity of the water along the upstream side and prevents non-uniform flow of water besides the passage length as a function of flow rate. The interesting idea in the flow distributor is its length and porosity. The essential conditions that should be satisfied are: there should not be any turbulence and there should be a possibility of achieving uniform circumferential flow in the flow passage. The other critical issue is the accurate measurement of low velocity of water. In this paper, a propeller-turbine-type anemometer is specially designed, fabricated and calibrated to measure the local velocity of water in the range of 0.001–0.01 m/s. This paper signifies how the flow uniformity is achieved by varying the size and porosity of the flow distributor.     

A novel fed-batch digestion system for biomethanation of plant biomasses

Plant biomasses, which in the absence of adequate pretreatment pose serious operational problems in biogas production using conventional domestic flow-through digesters, can be successfully digested in a novel fedbatch digestion system that produces a steady rate of biogas. Basically, the system is a batch digestion operated with a regular input of a calculated amount of feed based on first order decay kinetics in order to maintain a regular biogas production rate. For nearly three years the system was tested in a laboratory-scale fed-batch digester (10 l) using dried water hyacinth as feed providing the desired biogas production rate. A field-scale domestic digester of masonry construction with a working volume of 10 m3 was designed and tested for about 9 months by feeding a mixture of dried water hyacinth or banana stem along with sugarcane press mud, yielding an average biogas production of 90-100% of the expected rate calculated on the basis of the feed rate.     

The Potential Roles of Dec1 and Dec2 in Periodontal Inflammation

Periodontal inflammation is a common inflammatory disease associated with chronic inflammation that can ultimately lead to alveolar attachment loss and bone destruction. Understanding autophagy and pyroptosis has suggested their significant roles in inflammation. In recent years, studies of differentiated embryo-chondrocyte expressed genes 1 and 2 (Dec1 and Dec2) have shown that they play important functions in autophagy and in pyroptosis, which contribute to the onset of periodontal inflammation. In this review, we summarize recent studies on the roles of clock genes, including Dec1 and Dec2, that are related to periodontal inflammation and other diseases.     

One-pot synthesis of conjugated nitroalkenes by diamino-functionalised mesoporous material

Nitroalkenes are synthesised for the first time in a one-pot liquid-phase procedure from carbonyl compounds and nitroalkanes using organic-diamine-functionalised mesoporous material (MCM-41) as the catalyst. The yields are reasonable to excellent and the reaction conditions are mild. The hybrid solid base catalyst can be recycled several times with consistent activity. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Friedel–Crafts catalysis using supported reagents. Synthesis, characterization and catalytic application of ZnCl2 supported on fluoride‐modified sol–gel‐derived aluminosilicates

ZnCl₂–aluminosilicate catalysts were prepared via a sol–gel route involving fluoride‐catalyzed hydrolysis of aluminum and silicon alkoxides in the presence of NaF, KF, NH₄F and ZnF₂. The catalysts were characterized by employing ²⁹Si, ²⁷Al and ¹⁹F solid‐state MAS NMR. The dependence of the activities of the catalysts on the nature and amount of fluoride present in the catalysts were investigated using Friedel–Crafts alkylation reaction of benzene with benzyl chloride. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Transesterification of β ‐keto esters catalysed by transition metal complexes in a novel heterogeneous way

β‐keto esters have been successfully transesterified with primary, secondary, tertiary, allyl and alkynic alcohols by recyclable Mn(III) salen or vanadyl(IV) acetate catalysts realised while conducting the reaction deliberately for the first time in a novel heterogeneous media to afford good to excellent yields. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Convenient synthesis of (thiocyanomethyl)-thio heteroaromatics as antifungal agents

Synthesis of some (thiocyanomethyl)-thio heteroaromatic derivatives by reacting metal salts of (mercapto) heteraromatics with chloromethylthiocyanate using methanol or acetone as cosolvent, reported. All the synthesized derivatives were identified by conventional methods, IR-, ¹H NMR and mass spectral data. All the prepared compounds were tested for their antifungal activity. © 1998 SCI