Social network sites,marriage well-being and divorce: Survey and state-level evidence from the United States

This study explores the relationship between using social networks sites (SNS), marriage satisfaction and divorce rates using survey data of married individuals and state-level data from the United States. Results show that using SNS is negatively correlated with marriage quality and happiness, and positively correlated with experiencing a troubled relationship and thinking about divorce. These correlations hold after a variety of economic, demographic, and psychological variables related to marriage well-being are taken into account. Further, the findings of this individual-level analysis are consistent with a state-level analysis of the most popular SNS to date: across the U.S., the diffusion of Facebook between 2008 and 2010 is positively correlated with increasing divorce rates during the same time period after controlling for all time-invariant factors of each state (fixed effects), and continues to hold when time-varying economic and socio-demographic factors that might affect divorce rates are also controlled. Possible explanations for these associations are discussed, particularly in the context of pro- and anti-social perspectives towards SNS and Facebook in particular.     

Is internet the cherry on top or a crutch? Offline social support as moderator of the outcomes of online social support on Problematic Internet Use

The study is part of a research whose goal is identifying what predictors determine either a positive or a dysfunctional use of Internet. The factor at stake is here social support. Specifically our study, carried out through an online questionnaire, hypothesized a moderation of Offline Social Support in the relationship between Online Social Support, Problematic Internet Use, and Life Satisfaction. The study found that while Offline Social Support reduces the chances of developing a Problematic Internet Use, Online Social Support increases them. Furthermore the data supported the moderation of Offline Social Support in the outcomes of Online Social Support: when the first is low, as the latter increases the Problematic Internet Use gets higher; when Offline Social Support is high, an increase in Online Social Support determines a decrease in Problematic Internet Use. By contrast the moderation of Offline Social Support on the relationship between Online Social Support and Life Satisfaction was not confirmed. Our research show that when investigating psychological constructs related to Internet activity these must be considered in their offline and online variations to provide an answer to the debate on psychological outcomes of undertaking social interactions in Internet land. Our results suggest that the usage of the Web may become dysfunctional when it is meant to compensate for lacks of the “offline life”.     

Key values driving continued interaction on brand pages in social media: An examination across genders

Brand pages in social media provide companies with a competitive marketing tool to create added value for their firms and customers. Past studies suggest that understanding what customers really value in brand pages is the most vital step in promoting their continued interaction, and that the relative impacts of customer values on continued interaction are contingent on individual demographic factors such as gender. However, little research has examined the relationships between customer values and their intention to engage in continued interaction, and how these relationships are moderated by gender, in the context of brand pages. This study identified eight value factors to measure customer values on brand pages, then examined their impacts on customers' continued interaction intention, and studied gender effects on the latter relationship. Our proposed hypotheses are mostly supported by data collected from users of Sina Microblog brand pages and analyzed by partial least squares.     

The role of disclosure of personal information in the evaluation of risk and trust in young peoples’ online interactions

This study examined the relationship between the evaluation of risk, trust and disclosure of personal information in young peoples’ online interactions. A series of 18 focus groups were conducted with young people aged 9–19 years old. The results suggested that the majority of young people have a high level of awareness of the risks and potential outcomes associated with their online behaviour. Participants perceived disclosure of personal information to be important for the development of online relationships, and discussed associated strategies for evaluating trust and verifying identity. The study suggests that the perceived benefits associated with the disclosure of personal information and interacting with ‘strangers’ online may outweigh the perceived risks associated with these behaviours as the result of the importance of peer relationships and the exploration of identity during adolescence. Identified age-related differences and similarities in relation to the themes are explored, and areas for future research discussed.     

Conceptual modeling of cardinality constraints in social publishing

Recent years have witnessed a rise of social publishing, which is a new type of social networking service. Social publishing has certain new features that call for a new way of managing and providing a large volume of documents. A fine data model is expected to evolve dynamically with the up‐to‐date knowledge, especially the associations that emerge in the context of social publishing. This paper first presents a conceptual schema of social publishing, which evolves to combine the association knowledge that reflects hidden associations in the data. A major constraint of concern is cardinality constraint. During the process of enriching a schema, the constraints to be specified should conform to the existing ones. A set of inference rules is presented for modeling with cardinality constraints. The rules are proven to be sound and complete, which helps to derive cardinality constraints from existing ones. The derived cardinality constraints are also proven to be consistent. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Selected product ion monitoring for quantification of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural in food products by capillary zone electrophoresis-tandem ion trap mass spectrometry

5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is an important marker of food processing and storage widely recognized as an important parameter of food freshness and quality. Its amount depends on the composition of a food product and on the thermal treatments to which the food is subjected. The aim of this work was to propose for the first time the optimization and validation of an innovative CE-MS² method for the quantification of HMF in food products exploiting selected product ion monitoring as acquisition mode. The method was applied to the analysis of different kind of samples: cereal-based baby foods, coffee, soft beverages and vinegars. In order to show the reliability of the proposed method, results were compared with those obtained by RP-HPLC-UV, and a good accordance between the two sets of data was found.     

番茄PIN基因家族的生物信息学分析及其表达模式

PIN蛋白是生长素输出蛋白,具有多个跨膜结构域,能够介导生长素在整个植物体内的流动。番茄作为一种具有重要经济价值的果蔬,对其生长发育调控的研究具有重要的意义。研究表明,PIN蛋白对植物果实的生长发育起着重要的调控作用。本研究通过生物信息学的方法对番茄PIN基因组中10个SlPINs的核酸和氨基酸序列进行分析,构建番茄Sl PINs的进化树,并分析番茄SlPINs在不同组织和果实生长发育过程中的表达量变化,为进一步研究SlPINs的生物学功能提供理论依据。     

Optimisation of one-stop delivery scheduling in online shopping based on the physical Internet

The circulation of online shopping commodities generally involves many entities, such as online manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and customers. Goods from manufacturers to consumers undergo several exchange stages involving different economic entities. The logistics cost increases in certain supply chain nodes and the risk of backlog or running out of stock is high because of the different income and risk expectations of entities, as well as the varying degrees of information sharing between them. Clearly, a one-stop delivery mode crossing numerous transaction links in online shopping can effectively solve these problems and save social resources. However, realising this one-stop mode requires a series of specific premises, appropriate software and hardware technology support. This study introduces the Physical Internet into the one-stop delivery mode as an important logical and technical support, analyses the operating mechanism of the Physical Internet and discusses the operating conditions of one-stop delivery. It analyses the optimisation contents and objectives of one-stop delivery scheduling to construct a multi-objective optimisation mathematical model and propose a solving algorithm. Finally, this study uses an application case to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the optimisation mechanism and algorithm.     

Development of a superhydrophobic polyurethane-based coating from a two-step plasma-fluoroalkyl silane treatment

A method of achieving a superhydrophobic surface based upon a highly filled polyurethane (PU) paint coating has been demonstrated through the use of a combined oxygen/argon plasma pretreatment and a fluoroalkyl silane (FAS) final treatment.The combined plasma-FAS treated PU surface has been investigated and characterised using: field emission gun secondary electron microscope (FEG-SEM); X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS); energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX); water contact angle analysis (WCA); atomic force microscopy (AFM), and; Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR).It was found that the oxygen/argon plasma treatment increased both the surface roughness (R_a) and surface free energy (SFE) of the PU paint coating from approximately 60–320 nm, and, from ~52 to ~80 mN/m respectively. It was also found that the plasma process created a multiscale roughened texture through the process of differential ablation between the PU polymer and the barium sulphate solid content, which is present in the paint as an extender, and other additives. In addition, the process also imparted favourable polar groups into the PU surface from the ionised and radical oxygen species in the plasma.When the FAS coating was subsequently applied to the PU without prior plasma treatment, there was a significant increases in water contact angles. This parameter increased from approximately 60° on untreated PU to around 130° with FAS applied. In this case, the SFE decreased to ~7.5 mN/m and showed 42.0 at% fluorine present as indicated by XPS.However, subsequently applying the FAS polymer after plasma pretreatment takes advantage of the known synergistic relationship that exists between surface roughness and low surface free energy coatings. The two processes combined to create superhydrophobicity with a surface that exhibited water contact angles up to 153.1°. With this optimised process, the apparent SFE was 0.84 mN/m with a more highly fluorinated surface present. In this case 47.2 at% surface fluorine was observed by XPS.In addition to changes in SFE, plasma treatment was also observed to alter levels of surface gloss and colour. After exposure to 600 s of plasma gloss levels are shown to reduce from values of from ~50 to ~21 (GU), with small but significant corresponding increases in the lightness and yellowness of the surface.