Green practices-IS alignment and environmental performance: The mediating effects of coordination

The problem of environmental sustainability has been growing in recent years with an interest from both researchers and practitioners. A major gap that exists is the absence of empirical studies that addressed business value of green IS (information systems). Thus, drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and IT (information technology) business value literature, this study aims to develop a comprehensive research model of green practice-IS alignment, the key cross-functional coordination of green practices with manufacturing and marketing functions, and firm performance. The study provides a better understanding of the relationship between green practice-manufacturing coordination and green practice-marketing coordination, and how both variables mediated the relationship between green practices-IS alignment and environmental performance. The data used in this study were collected from manufacturing firms. The results show that a firm’s green practices-IS alignment had a positive effect on both green practices-manufacturing coordination and green practices-marketing coordination. In turn, both green practices-manufacturing coordination and green practices-marketing coordination are the significant predictors of environmental performance. Meanwhile, green practices-IS alignment had an indirect effect on environmental performance via both green practices-manufacturing coordination and green practices-marketing coordination. Moreover, the findings of this study show that environmental performance is an important predictor of economic performance.     

Forward kinematic singularity avoiding design of a Schönflies motion generator by asymmetric attachment of subchains

In most of the previous studies on parallel mechanisms (PMs), architectural design mainly relying on symmetric geometry was investigated without in-depth analysis of its performance. This work demonstrates that such a symmetric geometry of multiple subchains sometimes induces a forward kinematic singularity which degrades the overall kinematic performance of PMs within the desired workspace and claims that an asymmetric attachment of those subchains on a moving platform can effectively resolve such a singularity problem. A 4-Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) PM exhibiting Schönflies motions is examined as an example device. First, its mobility analysis and kinematic modeling via screw theory are conducted. Then a singularity analysis based on Grassmann line geometric conditions is carried out, and the forward kinematic singularities of the mechanism are identified and verified by simulations. Based on these analysis and simulations, a forward kinematic singularity-free design is suggested. To show the high potential of the device in practical applications, its output stiffness and dynamic motion capability are examined. Then a prototype is built and its motions capability is verified through experiments.     

Development of a nanofluidic preconcentrator with precise sample positioning and multi-channel preconcentration

A nanofluidic preconcentrator with the capability of rapidly preconcentrating and precisely positioning protein bands in multiple microchannels has been developed for highly sensitive detection of biomolecules. A novel electrical resistive network model is developed to guide the design of the nanofluidic preconcentrator which consists of a PDMS slab bonded with a glass slide. In the prototype design, two microchannels (23 mm long, 25–50 μm wide, and 5–15 μm deep), one preconcentration microchannel and one ground microchannel are connected in the middle via 16 nanochannels (25–50 μm long, 25 μm wide, and 50–80 nm deep). With two sets of optimal voltage settings applied on the opposite ends of the nanofluidic chip, the ion depletion region and electrokinetic trapping were generated to carry out the preconcentration. With the optimal voltage settings (30–30 V) predicted by the model, the ionic current of the nanochannel in our optimized preconcentrator was adjusted to be greater than the threshold value (3.9 nA) needed for the occurrence of the preconcentration, and a preconcentration factor >10⁵ was achieved in 5 min. The sample positioning capability of the preconcentrator was demonstrated by adjusting the applied voltages and moving the preconcentrated protein bands to multiple sites by a distance from several micrometers to several millimeters in the preconcentration channel. The multi-channel preconcentration capability was also demonstrated by preconcentrating two protein bands in two separate microchannels. In this work, the resistive network model was developed and validated to optimize nanofluidic preconcentrators for rapid, high throughput and highly sensitive sensing of low abundance analytes.     

Diameter variability of cycles and tori

The diameter of a graph is an important factor for communication as it determines the maximum communication delay between any pair of processors in a network. Graham and Harary [N. Graham, F. Harary, Changing and unchanging the diameter of a hypercube, Discrete Applied Mathematics 37/38 (1992) 265-274] studied how the diameter of hypercubes can be affected by increasing and decreasing edges. They concerned whether the diameter is changed or remains unchanged when the edges are increased or decreased. In this paper, we modify three measures proposed in Graham and Harary (1992) to include the extent of the change of the diameter. Let D^-k(G) is the least number of edges whose addition to G decreases the diameter by (at least) k, D⁺⁰(G) is the maximum number of edges whose deletion from G does not change the diameter, and D^+k(G) is the least number of edges whose deletion from G increases the diameter by (at least) k. In this paper, we find the values of D^-k(C_m), D^-1(T_m,n), D^-2(T_m,n), D⁺¹(T_m,n), and a lower bound for D⁺⁰(T_m,n) where C_m be a cycle with m vertices, T_m,n be a torus of size m by n.     

Latent-space variational bayes

Variational Bayesian Expectation-Maximization (VBEM), an approximate inference method for probabilistic models based on factorizing over latent variables and model parameters, has been a standard technique for practical Bayesian inference. In this paper, we introduce a more general approximate inference framework for conjugate-exponential family models, which we call Latent-Space Variational Bayes (LSVB). In this approach, we integrate out model parameters in an exact way, leaving only the latent variables. It can be shown that the LSVB approach gives better estimates of the model evidence as well as the distribution over latent variables than the VBEM approach, but in practice, the distribution over latent variables has to be approximated. As a practical implementation, we present a First-order LSVB (FoLSVB) algorithm to approximate this distribution over latent variables. From this approximate distribution, one can estimate the model evidence and the posterior over model parameters. The FoLSVB algorithm is directly comparable to the VBEM algorithm and has the same computational complexity. We discuss how LSVB generalizes the recently proposed collapsed variational methods [20] to general conjugate-exponential families. Examples based on mixtures of Gaussians and mixtures of Bernoullis with synthetic and real-world data sets are used to illustrate some advantages of our method over VBEM.     

Improving children’s reading comprehension and use of strategies through computer-based strategy training

In this study, the attention–selection–organization–integration–monitoring (ASOIM) model, revised from Mayer’s [Mayer, R. E. (1996). Learning strategies for making sense out of expository text: The SOI model for guiding three cognitive processes in knowledge construction. Educational Psychology Review, 8, 357–371] SOI model of text comprehension, was used as a foundation to design a multi-strategy based system, which was named Computer Assisted Strategy Teaching and Learning Environment (CASTLE). CASTLE aims to enhance learners’ abilities of using reading strategies and text comprehension. The effects of CASTLE on students with different reading abilities were empirically evaluated. 130 sixth graders took part in an 11-week computer-based reading strategies course. The results show that CASTLE helps to enhance the students’ use of strategies and text comprehension at all ability levels.     

Collapse-free thermal bonding technique for large area microchambers in plastic lab-on-a-chip applications

Bonding is an essential step to form microchannels or microchambers in lab-on-a-chip applications. In this paper, we present a novel plastic thermal bonding technique to seal and form large area microchambers (planar characteristic width and length on the order of 1 mm and characteristic thickness on the order of 10–100 μm) without collapse by introducing a holed pressure equalizing plate (HPEP) that includes holes of the same size and shape as the microchambers. To demonstrate the proposed technique, two types of large area microchambers [(1) 20 × 10 mm and 40 μm thick and (2) 12 × 2.5 mm and 120 μm thick] with microchannels were designed and replicated on plastic substrates by means of hot embossing and injection molding processes with prepared two nickel mold inserts. The replicated large area microchambers as well as the microchannels in the plastic lab-on-a-chip were successfully sealed (i.e., no leakage) and formed without any collapse by the proposed thermal bonding technique with the help of the HPEP.     

A study of roll‐printing technology for TFT‐LCD fabrication

Abstract— Recently, potential breakthrough technologies for low‐cost processing of TFT‐LCDs and new process developments for flexible‐display fabrication have been widely studied. A roll‐printing process using etch‐resist material as a replacement for photolithographic patterning was investigated. The characterization of the properties of patterns formed in roll printing, a method to fabricate cliché plates for fine patterns, and the design of a new formulation for resist printing ink is reported. The pattern position accuracy, which is one of the most important issues for the successful application of printing processes in display manufacturing was studied and how it can be improved by optimizing the blanket roll structure is explained. New design rules for the layout of the thin‐film‐transistor array was derived to improve the compatibility of roll printing. As a result, a prototype 15‐in.‐XGA TFT‐LCD panel was fabricated by using printing processes to replace all the photolithographic patterning steps conventionally used.     

3-D manipulation of millimeter- and micro-sized objects using an acoustically excited oscillating bubble

This communication describes novel 3-D manipulations of objects using an acoustically excited oscillating bubble deposited on a hydrophobic rod tip. The oscillating bubble captures various millimeter- and micron-sized neighboring objects including glass and polystyrene beads (~100 μm), fish egg, and live water flea (~1 mm). The captured objects are carried in a 3-D space by traversing the bubble tip, and released at desired positions by simply turning off the oscillation. Carrying performance is characterized along with high-speed imaging of oscillating bubbles by varying the frequency and amplitude of the acoustic excitation and the carrying speed. The higher the oscillation amplitude, the higher the carrying efficiency. The maximum carrying speed is measured at over 3 mm/s. This method is effective with a low-level acoustic excitation (bubble oscillation amplitude relative to the diameter ≤5%), possibly providing a cost-effective, soft-contact manipulating tool for handling biological objects.     

Robust background maintenance by estimating global intensity level changes for dynamic scenes

The maintenance of relevant backgrounds under various scene changes is very crucial to detect foregrounds robustly. We propose a background maintenance method for dynamic scenes including global intensity level changes caused by changes of illumination conditions and camera settings. If the global level of the intensity changes abruptly, the conventional background models cannot discriminate true foreground pixels from the background. The proposed method adaptively modifies the background model by estimating the level changes. Because there are changes caused by moving objects as well as global intensity level changes, we estimate the dominant level change over the whole image regions by mean shift. Then, the problem caused by saturated pixels are handled by an additional scheme. In the experiments for dynamic scenes, our proposed method outperforms previous methods by adaptive background maintenance and handling of saturated pixels.