Retracted: Antecedents and Consequences of Gender Swapping in Online Games

This study examines the reasons underlying gender swapping and its impacts on online gaming behavior. While previous studies considered gender swapping to be an abnormal or rare exception in one's self‐presentation, this study hypothesized that people swap genders as a rational choice based on practical benefits. An online survey was conducted with 318 male players of MMORPGs in Korea. Players swapped gender in games to gain benefits from other players under the condition of anonymity rather than to represent their own gender identity. Men playing female avatars displayed more socially amiable behaviors conventionally characterized as more feminine. Moreover, players were more willing to purchase virtual goods to decorate their gender swapped avatars, mediated by their emotional attachment to their avatar.     

Gaming Social Capital: Exploring Civic Value in Multiplayer Video Games

Recent research suggests that social interactions in video games may lead to the development of community bonding and prosocial attitudes. Building on this line of research, a national survey of U.S. adults finds that gamers who develop ties with a community of fellow gamers possess gaming social capital, a new gaming‐related community construct that is shown to be a positive antecedent in predicting both face‐to‐face social capital and civic participation.     

Pricing Loss Leaders Can be Hard

Consider the problem of pricing n items under an unlimited supply with m single minded buyers,each of which is interested in at most k of the items.The goal is to price each item with profit margin p1,p2,...,pn so as to maximize the overall profit.There is an O(k)-approximation algorithm by Balcan and Blum when the price on each item must be above its margin cost;i.e.,each pi > 0.We investigate the above problem when the seller is allowed to price some of the items below their margin cost.It was shown by Balcan et al.that by pricing some of the items below cost,the seller could possibly increase the maximum profit by Ω(log n) times.These items sold at low prices to stimulate other profitable sales are usually called loss leader.It is unclear what kind of approximation guarantees are achievable when some of the items can be priced below cost.Understanding this question is posed as an open problem by Balcan and Blum.In this paper,we give a strong negative result for the problem of pricing loss leaders .We prove that assuming the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC),there is no constant approximation algorithm for item pricing with prices below cost allowed even when each customer is interested in at most three items.Conceptually,our result indicates that although it is possible to make more money by selling some items below their margin cost,it can be computationally intractable to do so.     

Smart Playing Cards: A Ubiquitous Computing Game

We present the ‘Smart Playing Cards’ application, a ubiquitous computing game that augments a classical card game with information technological functionality by attaching RFID tags to the cards. We also mention requirements that such an application makes on a supporting software infrastructure for ubiquitous computing. Correspondence to: Nr K. R?mer or Ms S. Domnitcheva, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland. Email: roemer@inf.ethz.ch, or domnitch@ inf.ethz.ch     

Speculative Behaviour in Immature Real Estate Markets, Lessons of the 1997 Asia Financial Crisis

This article investigates speculative behaviour and focuses on developer and banker behaviour in Asian real estate markets at the time of the 1997 Asia financial crisis. Over-optimism and over-investment are exacerbated when the financial infrastructure is incomplete and real estate markets are immature. The article identifies improvements in the real estate market infrastructure needed to lower the amplitude and cost of future episodes of volatility.     

从忠县,石柱县传统民居建筑的文化内涵：谈三峡工程地面文物的保护

文章对三峡工程淹没区的古镇、民居、文物有所介绍、分析，呼吁进行有效的保护，并对保护的途径措施提出了有益的建议     

建筑师过元熙

作者以过元熙的五篇著作以及相关史料为依据,辨析了过元熙的基本经历;阐发了过元熙的建筑思想;还原了过元熙建筑师担任1933 ～ 1934年在美国芝加哥举办的世博会中国专馆“热河全亭”督工监造、1935 ～ 1937年在广东省立勷勤大学任教、1945年9月出任中国驻印军新一军印缅抗战阵亡将士广州公墓建筑师,负责建造新一军公墓等事迹.     

楚服在现代网络游戏中的应用研究

民族文化与网络游戏文化的跨界融合,既是一种流行趋势,更是一种新型文化产业链形成的标志。文章将博大精深的楚服艺术特征与现代网络游戏相结合,通过大量楚文化背景的网络游戏的调研与分析,重点研究楚服在现代网络游戏中的应用现状以及主要表现形式。可以看出,楚服在现代网络游戏中的应用广泛却又不够严谨,同时出现表现手法单一,应用形式肤浅等问题。如何在符合现代玩家审美的前提下,有效地、正确地传承传统文化是现代网络游戏开发中必须重视的问题。