An empirical analysis of the determinants of 3G adoption in China

The main aim of this study is to examine the factors that affect Chinese consumers’ intention to adopt 3G. This study has extended the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by incorporating the determinants of perceived usefulness, cost, trust, and demographic profiles of Chinese consumers. Data is collected from Chinese consumers via self-administered questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the research model proposed. Our result showed that social influence, service quality and perceived ease of use have a direct and significant relationship with perceived usefulness of 3G, and this in turn affects the consumers’ decision to adopt 3G. Contrary to existing TAM research, perceived ease of use was not found to have a direct and significant influence with Chinese consumers’ intention to adopt 3G. Our study also revealed that those with higher educational level are more likely to adopt 3G. Based on the findings, this research is able to propose several practical recommendations to 3G providers in China, such as enhancing the variety of services provided through collaborations with mobile software and content developers. Furthermore, 3G providers can focus on promoting 3G through services such as “Friends and Family” packages as Chinese consumers’ 3G adoption decisions is influenced by their social network. In terms of theoretical contributions, this study has answered many calls from past researchers to investigate the determinants of perceived usefulness. This research was also conducted in China, which is one of the largest telecommunication markets in the world.     

Reducing aliasing in images: a PDE-based diffusion revisited

In this paper, we introduce a new diffusion algorithm that can be used for reducing aliasing on both step edges and lines. It derives from the diffusion model of Perona and Malik, and works as an adaptive level-curve method in which diffusion is carried out in the normal direction of the gradient for step edges, while the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix are used for lines. To get sharp images, we use high-pass filters to preserve as much as possible the high frequency content while diffusing. Experimental tests using grayscale and colour images show that our algorithm efficiently reduces aliasing.     

Stereoelective polymerization of β-butyrolactone

Racemic β-butyrolactone was polymerized using chiral initiators obtained from the reaction of organometallic derivatives (ZnEt₂, CdMe₂, AlEt₃) with R(−) 3,3 dimethyl-1,2 butanediol. With the zinc initiator, R(+) enantiomer is preferentially incorporated in the polymer chain with a stereoelectivity ratio r_R equal to 1.6. Crude polymer was fractionated into a crystalline, predominantly isotactic, part and an amorphous heterotactic part, both optically active. Sites of different stereospecificities, present in the initiator, are all active for the stereoelective polymerization. With the cadmium initiator, S(−) enantiomer is preferentially polymerized (r_s = 1.01), extending homosteric-antisteric rules previously established for thiiranes. Aluminium initiator leads to an homosteric process (r_R = 1.1). Chiroptical properties (o.r.d. and c.d.) of polymers prepared with zinc initiator show a predominance of R-configurational units, indicating that ring-opening occurs by O-acyl cleavage with retention of configuration.     

BiNem® manufacturing process for mass production

Abstract— As the need for high‐resolution ultra‐low‐power bistable displays grows, it is important to rapidly implement the mass‐production manufacturing of BiNem® LCDs. The cost‐effective approach for BiNem® manufacturing is based on using STN manufacturing process technologies since BiNem® and STN displays have a similar internal structure. The key differences between BiNem® and STN displays from a manufacturing point of view will be discussed. We show that industrial STN manufacturing equipment can be used to produce BiNem® LCDs at competitive costs. Reflective e‐book display modules with VGA resolution are produced in the pilot‐production series.     

UNION: underwater intelligent operation and navigation

The main goal of the UNION ESPRIT Basic Research Action is to develop methods for increasing the autonomy and intelligence of underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). The project focuses mainly on the development of coordinated control and sensing strategies for combined manipulator and vehicle systems. Both fundamental theories and methods for the design of these heterogeneous systems are investigated. A complex canonical mission in the field of offshore inspection maintenance and repair tasks was chosen as an integration guideline of all the results     

Inferential Queueing and Speculative Push

Communication latencies within critical sections constitute a major bottleneck in some classes of emerging parallel workloads. In this paper, we argue for the use of two mechanisms to reduce these communication latencies: Inferentially Queued locks (IQLs) and Speculative Push (SP). With IQLs, the processor infers the existence, and limits, of a critical section from the use of synchronization instructions and joins a queue of lock requestors, reducing synchronization delay. The SP mechanism extracts information about program structure by observing IQLs. SP allows the cache controller, responding to a request for a cache line that likely includes a lock variable, to predict the data sets the requestor will modify within the associated critical section. The controller then pushes these lines from its own cache to the target cache, as well as writing them to memory. Overlapping the protected data transfer with that of the lock can substantially reduce the communication latencies within critical sections. By pushing data in exclusive state, the mechanism can collapse a read-modify-write sequences within a critical section into a single local cache access. The write-back to memory allows the receiving cache to ignore the push. Neither mechanism requires any programmer or compiler support nor any instruction set changes. Our experiments demonstrate that IQLs and SP can improve performance of applications employing frequent synchronization.     

Morphological and chemical studies of pathological human and mice brain at the subcellular level: correlation between light, electron, and nanosims microscopies

Neurodegenerative diseases induce morphological and chemical alterations in well-characterized regions of the brain. Understanding their pathological processes requires the use of methods that assess both morphological and chemical alterations in the tissues. In the past, microprobe approaches such as scanning electron microscopy combined with an X-ray spectrometer, Proton induced X-ray emission, secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), and laser microprobe mass analysis have been used for the study of pathological human brain with limited success. At the present, new SIMS instruments have been developed, such as the NanoSIMS-50 ion microprobe, that allow the simultaneous identification of five elements with high sensitivity, at subcellular spatial resolution (about 50-100 nm with the Cs(+) source and about 150-200 nm with O(-) source). Working in scanning mode, 2D distribution of five elements (elemental maps) can be obtained, thus providing their exact colocalization. The analysis can be performed on semithin or ultrathin embedded sections. The possibility of using transmission electron microscopy and SIMS on the same ultrathin sections allows the correlation between structural and analytical observations at subcellular and ultrastructural level to be established. Our observations on pathological brain areas allow us to establish that the NanoSIMS-50 ion microprobe is a highly useful instrument for the imaging of the morphological and chemical alterations that take place in these brain areas. In the human brain our results put forward the subcellular distribution of iron-ferritin-hemosiderin in the hippocampus of Alzheimer disease patients. In the thalamus of transgenic mice, our results have shown the presence of Ca-Fe mineralized amyloid deposits.     

Applying chemical engineering concepts to non-thermal plasma reactors

Process scale-up remains a considerable challenge for environmental applications of non-thermal plasmas.Undersanding the impact of reactor hydrodynamics in the performance of the process is a key step to overcome this challenge.In this work,we apply chemical engineering concepts to analyse the impact that different non-thermal plasma reactor configurations and regimes,such as laminar or plug flow,may have on the reactor performance.We do this in the particular context of the removal of pollutants by non-thermal plasmas,for which a simplified model is available.We generalise this model to different reactor configurations and,under certain hypotheses,we show that a reactor in the laminar regime may have a behaviour significantly different from one in the plug flow regime,often assumed in the non-thermal plasma literature.On the other hand,we show that a packed-bed reactor behaves very similarly to one in the plug flow regime.Beyond those results,the reader will find in this work a quick introduction to chemical reaction engineering concepts.     

A differential inclusion approach for modeling and analysis of dynamical systems under uncertainty

In this paper we deal with the application of differential inclusions to modeling nonlinear dynamical systems under uncertainty in parameters. In this case, differential inclusions seem to be better suited to modeling practical situations under uncertainty and imprecision than formulations by means of fuzzy differential equations. We develop a practical algorithm to approximate the reachable sets of a class of nonlinear differential inclusion, which eludes the computational problems of a previous set-valued version of the Heun’s method. Our algorithm is based on a complete discretization (time and state space) of the differential inclusion and it suits hardware features, handling the memory used by the method in a controlled fashion during all iterations. As a case of study, we formulate a differential inclusion to model an epidemic outbreak of dengue fever under Cuban conditions. The model takes into account interaction of human and mosquito populations as well as vertical transmission in the mosquito population. It is studied from the theoretical point of view to apply the Practical Algorithm. Also, we estimate the temporal evolution of the different human and mosquito populations given by the model in the Dengue 3 epidemic in Havana 2001, through the computation of the reachable sets using the Practical Algorithm.     

Electroseparation of an antibacterial peptide fraction from snow crab by-products hydrolysate by electrodialysis with ultrafiltration membranes

Recently, a snow crab by-products hydrolysate has demonstrated antibacterial properties due to a peptide with a molecular weight of about 800 Da, but only at high concentration. Consequently, peptide hydrolysate has been fractionated to obtain peptides in a more purified form. The aim of this work was to separate a snow crab by-products hydrolysate by electrodialysis with ultrafiltration membranes (EDUF). EDUF, which allows separation of molecules according to their charges and molecular weights, was used to recover and concentrate the active antibacterial fraction. Two different ultrafiltration membranes (20 and 50 kDa) and two electrical field strengths (2 and 14 V/cm) were used as separation parameters. After EDUF separation, the 300-600 Da peptide molecular weight range was the most recovered with an abundance of 94%. Moreover, fractionation at 14 V/cm with ultrafiltration membranes of 50 kDa allowed the recovery of an anionic fraction which showed antibacterial properties on Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and Listeria innocua HPB 13.