A new look at software piracy: Soft lifting primes an inauthentic sense of self,prompting further unethical behavior

Soft lifting refers to the process whereby a legally licensed software program is installed or copied in violation of its licensing agreement. Previous research on this pervasive kind of unethical computer use has mainly focused on the determinants of this unethical act, which are rooted in personal, economic, technological, cultural, socio-political, or legal domains. However, little is known about the symbolic power that soft lifting has on the sense of self. Based on recent advances in behavioral priming, we hypothesized that soft lifting can influence the signals one sends to oneself; more specifically, soft lifting may prime individuals to experience an inauthentic sense of self, which, in turn, prompts further unethical behavior. In Study 1, we showed that participants, primed with the memory of a recent soft lifting experience, cheated more than participants recalling a recent experience of purchasing authentic software or than control participants. Moreover, feelings of inauthenticity mediated the priming effect of soft lifting on dishonest behavior. In Study 2, participants primed with soft lifting showed a greater willingness to purchase a wide range of counterfeit products over authentic products. Besides those antecedents or correlates of soft lifting already identified in the literature, educators should pay more attention to the negative impact of soft lifting on the self-images of users, which may go beyond computer-related behaviors. Priming may provide a new direction for HCI researchers to examine the impact of computer-use-related factors on users' perceptions, motivations, and behaviors.     

Effect of nitrogen and nickel on the stability of an Fe-12Cr-23Mn austenitic steel

The effect of nitrogen and nickel on the austenite stability and the structural changes as a result of cold work of an Fe-12Cr-23Mn alloy steel has been examined by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray analysis. Prestrain was performed either at room temperature or at 200° C. Final strain was carried out at liquid nitrogen temperature. The volume fraction of strain-induced martensite decreased by 40% and 12% due to the addition of 2.43% Ni and 0.11% N, respectively, despite whether prestrain was performed or not. The mechanisms are discussed in terms of the phase, stacking faults, dislocation cells and dislocation tangles induced by prestrain and final strain.     

Surface morphology and nodule formation mechanism of cellulose acetate membranes by atomic force microscopy

By the use of atomic force microscopy (AFM), formation mechanism of nodular structure in cellulose acetate membranes was systematically investigated. Elementary factors affecting the nodule formation were delineated on the basis of both kinetic and thermodynamic considerations. It was shown that (1) the exact nature of nodular structure is thermodynamic equilibrium glassy state; nodular structure will vanish in the rubbery state; (2) the thermodynamic factor affecting nodule formation is the membrane formation temperature; with the membrane formation temperature decreasing, more chain segments are able to form nodular structures; (3) nodule formation is dependent on the segment rearrangement; variation of the solvent environment is the major kinetic factor affecting the segment rearrangement and nodule formation. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 88: 1328–1335, 2003     

Photochemical degradation of glassy polyesters of low softening point

The photodegradation of polyesters prepared by the reaction of o-phthalic, adipic, and “dimer” acids with ethylene glycol has been studied. The polyesters softened at temperatures in the range of 25–50°C. Polymer films were irradiated in air by means of a medium pressure mercury lamp and the extent of formation of COOH groups determined by infrared spectroscopy. The films were also irradiated in vacuo and in air by means of a high-pressure mercury lamp, and the volatile products, consisting mainly of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, were determined by gas chromatography. The results are interpreted in terms of simultaneous Norrish type I and type II decompositions of the polyesters. The type I process accounts for the formation of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in the absence of air. The enhanced yield of carbon dioxide in irradiations performed in air is ascribed to the formation of hydroperoxide which undergoes further photolysis. The type II process accounts for the formation of COOH groups. The photodegradation of these glassy polyesters parallels that of crystalline poly(ethylene terephthalate) and is relatively unaffected by changes in composition of the aromatic polyester.     

Impacts of new technologies on media usage and social behaviour in domestic environments

Technological infrastructure at home is changing continuously and is becoming increasingly interconnected. Media devices, including the TV set, provide access to the Internet and offer manifold opportunities to consume media on demand. Additionally, personal devices, such as smartphones, also enable flexible consumption and sharing of media. Questions about how these technologies change the user's media usage and how these changes affect the social structure of a household, however, remain largely unanswered. In order to gain insight into the adoption of new technologies into daily routines, we explored these changes in respect of people's media usage in a qualitative long-term Living Lab study. We will present findings regarding personal routines, flexible integration of new devices into existing practices, influences on households as social systems and related issues in device access and collective use. We will highlight potentials and conflicts regarding device shifts and roles; restrictions in device access; social influences in the living room; and individual changes in media consumption.     

抗日战争时期的青年心理探析

抗日战争是中华民族历史上的一次大浩劫,中国人民为此承受了太多的痛苦与磨难,特别是对于肩负着国家与民族振兴使命的青年更是如此.分析战时青年的心理变化及原因,指出政府和社会对青年人的心理没有采取恰当的方法进行有效的疏导,提出要总结和吸取历史的经验教训,为我们今天应对大灾难提供借鉴.     

Effects of Copper Coating on the Crystalline Structure of Fine Barium Titanate Particles

We have investigated the effect of a metal coating—copper—on the tetragonal structure of fine barium titanate (BaTiO₃) particles. The BaTiO₃ particles were synthesized by a sol-gel method and heat treated at temperatures >900°C for various amounts of time before coating. The copper coating was achieved by an electroless coating technique. The transmission electron microscopy micrographs revealed that the coated powder contained fine BaTiO₃ particles that were embedded in copper patches. The X-ray diffractometry patterns showed that the copper coating increased the c/a ratio of the fine BaTiO₃ particles. For powders that were heat treated at 900°C for 10 h and were initially cubic, the copper coating changed the c/a ratio, from 1 to 1.0034. For powders that were calcined at 900°C for 20 h and were initially tetragonal, the copper coating further enhanced the c/a ratio, from 1.0028 to 1.0043. When the copper-coated BaTiO₃ particles were oxidized, the c/a ratio was reduced to a value that was approximately equal to or below that of the uncoated powders. A conductive coating can eliminate the depolarization energy of an insulating polar particle. The fact that the copper coating promoted the polar tetragonal phase but the nonconductive copper-oxide coating did not was consistent with the interpretation that the presence of the cubic phase (nonpolar) in small BaTiO₃ particles was caused by the depolarization effect.     

论焊接结构生产的技术改造

本文讨论了焊接结构生产技术改造的有关问题，包括总思路及总目标、自动化的基本框架、按低成本自动化的原则设计生产线和关键技术问题的论述。     

Video summarization via minimum sparse reconstruction

The rapid growth of video data demands both effective and efficient video summarization methods so that users are empowered to quickly browse and comprehend a large amount of video content. In this paper, we formulate the video summarization task with a novel minimum sparse reconstruction (MSR) problem. That is, the original video sequence can be best reconstructed with as few selected keyframes as possible. Different from the recently proposed convex relaxation based sparse dictionary selection method, our proposed method utilizes the true sparse constraint L₀ norm, instead of the relaxed constraint _L2,1$L_{2,1}$ norm, such that keyframes are directly selected as a sparse dictionary that can well reconstruct all the video frames. An on-line version is further developed owing to the real-time efficiency of the proposed MSR principle. In addition, a percentage of reconstruction (POR) criterion is proposed to intuitively guide users in obtaining a summary with an appropriate length. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets with various types of videos demonstrate that the proposed methods outperform the state of the art.     

Perceptual image preview

Image preview is a convenient way to browse large or multiple images on small displays. However, current signal-level image resampling algorithms may remove many features of interest in the preview image. In this paper, we propose perceptual image preview which retains more perceptual features such that users can inspect features of interest by viewing the preview image only and without zooming in. This technology has two components, structure enhancement and perceptual feature visualization. Structure enhancement enhances the image structure while suppressing subtle details using a gradient modulation method, thus making the succedent perceptual features more apparent. For perceptual feature visualization, features of interest detected in the picture is visualized on the structure enhanced preview image. We demonstrate with two examples of most commonly used image quality features, image blur and noise. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by experimental results.