Effects of individuals' locus of control and computer self-efficacy on their e-learning acceptance in high-tech companies

High-tech companies encounter intense competition in today's global economy. With rapid changes in working environments, high-tech employees must learn quickly and effectively to solve difficult problems and increase their productivity. Many large high-tech companies have recently implemented electronic learning (e-learning) for employee training. However, e-learning systems are expensive and often underutilised. Therefore, understanding the factors associated with acceptance to e-learning are of priority concern. By integrating locus of control, computer self-efficacy and technology acceptance model (TAM) into one model, this study examines the feasibility of the extended TAM to explain employee acceptance of e-learning systems. Data were collected from 223 employees at five high-tech companies located in the Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan. Analytical results indicate that locus of control had significant direct effects on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Computer self-efficacy had significant direct effects on perceived ease of use and behavioural intention to use. Overall, analytical results provide strong support for using the extended TAM to explain user acceptance of e-learning systems. The research and practical implications of findings are discussed.     

Equilibrium and kinetic studies of the extraction of chelated copper(II) anions with Aliquat 336

The equilibrium and kinetics of solvent extraction of Cu²⁺ from aqueous solutions containing equimolar EDTA with Aliquat 336 in n‐decanol and kerosene at 298 K were investigated. The concentrations of Cu²⁺ (8–50 mol m^?3), Cl^? (5–60 mol m^?3), and Aliquat 336 (20–100 mol m^?3) were varied. A semi‐empirical model with three parameters was proposed to describe the equilibrium behavior, in which the non‐idealities in both aqueous and organic phases were considered. Over the ranges studied, the model agreed reasonably well with the experimental data (standard deviation, 15%). The forward and backward reaction rate constants were determined as (5.31 ± 0.16)×10^?6 m^9/4 mol^?3/4 s^?1 and (2.62 ± 0.09)×10^?7 s^?1, respectively, at 298 K. An interfacial reaction mechanism was proposed, which revealed that the reaction between the chelated anions and trimeric amine molecules at the interface was rate limiting. The derived rate laws were consistent with the experimental results. © 2002 Society of Chemical Industry     

Application of a remote image surveillance system in a robotic weapon

As one of the major steps toward a fully intelligent autonomous robotic weapon, we have made progress in three major areas, (1) design of the surveillance system by an AVR microcontroller, (2) implementation of the design mechanism, and (3) performance of the human- machine interface surveillance system via the LabVIEW graphical programming environment, so that the supervisor can control the vehicle with a keyboard or a specially adapted mouse. In order to accomplish all these achievements, there have been major additions and overhauls in both system software codes and system circuit board developments. All these developments, including a new algorithm and hardware implementation, are described in this article. The experimental results have shown the practicality of the AVR microcontroller, the LabVIEW graphical programming environment, and ZigBee wireless technology applied to a robotic weapon.     

Dietary Trans Fats Enhance Doxorubicin‐Induced Cardiotoxicity in Mice

This study investigated the combined effects of trans fat diet (TFD) and doxorubicin upon cardiac oxidative, inflammatory, and coagulatory stress. TFD increased trans fatty acid deposit in heart (P < 0.05), and decreased protein C and antithrombin‐III activities in circulation (P < 0.05). TFD plus doxorubicin treatment elevated activities of plasminogen activator inhibitor‐1, lactate dehydrogenase, and creatine phosphokinase (P < 0.05). This combination also raised xanthine oxidase activity, and enhanced cardiac levels of reactive oxygen species, interleukin (IL)‐6, IL‐10, tumor necrosis factor‐alpha, and monocyte chemoattractant protein‐1 than TFD or doxorubicin treatment alone (P < 0.05). TFD alone increased cardiac nuclear factor kappa B (NF‐κB) activity (P < 0.05), but failed to affect expression of NF‐κB and mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) (P > 0.05). Doxorubicin treatment alone augmented cardiac activity, mRNA expression, and protein production of NF‐κB and MAPK (P < 0.05). TFD plus doxorubicin treatment further upregulated cardiac expression of NF‐κB p65, p‐p38, and p‐ERK1/2 (P < 0.05). These findings suggest that TFD exacerbates doxorubicin‐induced cardiotoxicity.     

Voice conversion using duration-embedded bi-HMMs for expressive speech synthesis

This paper presents an expressive voice conversion model (DeBi-HMM) as the post processing of a text-to-speech (TTS) system for expressive speech synthesis. DeBi-HMM is named for its duration-embedded characteristic of the two HMMs for modeling the source and target speech signals, respectively. Joint estimation of source and target HMMs is exploited for spectrum conversion from neutral to expressive speech. Gamma distribution is embedded as the duration model for each state in source and target HMMs. The expressive style-dependent decision trees achieve prosodic conversion. The STRAIGHT algorithm is adopted for the analysis and synthesis process. A set of small-sized speech databases for each expressive style is designed and collected to train the DeBi-HMM voice conversion models. Several experiments with statistical hypothesis testing are conducted to evaluate the quality of synthetic speech as perceived by human subjects. Compared with previous voice conversion methods, the proposed method exhibits encouraging potential in expressive speech synthesis.     

Neural network control for position tracking of a two-axis inverted pendulum system: experimental studies.

In this paper, experimental studies of a decentralized neural network control scheme of the reference compensation technique applied to control a 2-degrees-of-freedom (2-DOF) inverted pendulum on an x - y plane are presented. Each axis is controlled by two separate neural network controllers to have a decoupled control structure. Neural network controllers are applied not only to balance the angle of pendulum, but also to control the position tracking of the cart. The decoupled control structure can compensate for uncertainties and cancel coupling effects. Especially, a circular trajectory tracking task is tested for position tracking control of the cart while maintaining the angle of the pendulum. Experimental result shows that position control of the inverted pendulum and cart is successful.