Judging online peer-to-peer lending behavior: A comparison of first-time and repeated borrowing requests

The past decade has witnessed a growing number of business models that facilitate economic exchanges between individuals with limited institutional mediation. One of the important innovative business models is online peer-to-peer lending, which has received wide attention from government, industry, and researchers. Using the signaling theory, we compare the effects of various signals on the likelihood of successful funding in three models (i.e., first-time borrowing, repeated borrowing without prior lending, and repeated borrowing with prior lending). Using data collected from PPDAI.com, we verify the three proposed models by employing logistic regression. Results and implications are analyzed and discussed.     

Representations of lesbian and bisexual women’s sexual and relational health in online video and text-based sources

The Internet is the preferred source of health information followed by healthcare providers, friends and family, print media, and television (Baxter & Egbert, 2008). Yet, previous research about online sexual health resources for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer) groups, especially lesbian and bisexual (LB) women, primarily consists of introductions and reviews of related websites rather than critique of the quality of the information present (e.g. Clark, 2003; Finlon, 2002; McKay, 2011). Thus, the goals of this study were to examine the LB women’s sexual and relational health content in online sources and identify the degree to which the online sources considered LB women’s identity and standpoint when presenting sexual and relational health messages. The analysis includes a comparison of text-based and video-based online messages related to LB women’s sexual and relational health. We argue that there is an overall lack of quality in the online sexual and relational health messages for LB women, and that websites are not comprehensive enough in their coverage of LB women’s sexual and relational health.     

Wald's mighty maximin: a tutorial

Ever since its appearance on the scene in the 1940s, in the then nascent field of statistical decision theory, Wald's maximin paradigm has played a vital role in many disciplines in the treatment of nonprobabilistic uncertainty, both as a tool of thought and as a practical instrument. In fact, in some fields, such as modern robust optimization, Wald's paradigm dominates the scene. It is important to note that this paradigm's preeminence in many fields continues unabated, despite its obvious limitations and the criticism that had been and continues to be leveled at it. So, in this tutorial we examine the methodological aspects of this stalwart of decision theory from the viewpoint of robust decision‐making, paying special attention to its obvious and not so obvious limitations and to its relation to other maximin paradigms.     

A review on cost allocation methods in collaborative transportation

Collaboration in transportation between two or more agents is becoming an important approach to find efficient solutions or plans. Efficiency can be measured in, for example, lower cost or more flexibility. An important aspect of the collaboration is to decide on how to share the benefits—for example, cost, profit, or resources. There are many sharing mechanisms or cost allocations proposed in the literature. Some are based on simple proportional rules and others are based on theoretical concepts found in game theory. We provide a survey on cost allocation methods found in the literature on collaborative transportation, including problems on planning, vehicle routing, traveling salesman, distribution, and inventory. A total of 55 scientific articles compose the main part of the survey, most of them published between 2010 and 2015. We identify more than 40 cost allocation methods used in this stream of literature. We describe the theoretical basis for the main methods as well as the cases where they are used. We also report savings from the collaborations when they are based on industrial data. Some directions for future research are discussed.     

Board-Level Information Technology Governance Effects on Organizational Performance: The Roles of Strategic Alignment and Authoritarian Governance Style

ABSTRACT

We report on two empirical studies that explore key factors that help translate information technology governance by the board of directors into organizational performance. The first study shows that strategic alignment partially mediates the effect of board-level information technology governance on performance. The second study demonstrates that authoritarian governance style negatively moderates the effect of board-level information technology governance on performance. Together, these studies open up the black box between board-level information technology governance and organizational performance.     

Exploring the potential of boron-doped nanographene as efficient charge transport and nonlinear optical material: A first-principles study

Owing to their excellent electrochemical properties, graphenes found applications in several fields ranging from semiconductors, solar cells, field effect transistors, and nanoscale electronic devices as well as in nonlinear optical (NLO) applications. The structural features, electro-optical, charge transport and nonlinear optical properties of the boron-doped graphene (BG) compound 1 were studied using density functional theory methods The BG compound comprises a central electron deficient site of boron atoms, which can serve as electron acceptor while terminal alkoxy groups as donors leading to powerful donor-π-acceptor (D-π-A) configuration. The experimental crystal structure was successfully reproduced by optimized ground state geometry at PBE0/6-311G* level of theory for isolated molecule. The experimental lattice parameters, geometries, crystal presentation and alignment of molecules in the unit cells as well as their packing orientation of BG compound 1 was also efficiently reproduced by applying periodic boundary conditions (PBC) at PBE level. The comprehensive intramolecular charge transfer (CT) was realized from terminal rings of the HOMO to the electron deficient sites of boron atoms of the LUMO. The nature of BG compound 1 might be more towards hole transport even though its hole reorganization energy is twice than that of the electron one due to the significant higher hole transfer integral values. The superior hole transfer integrals and intrinsic mobility values of the BG compound 1 might lead remarkable hole transport contender as compared to many other organic materials. The narrow band gap, density of states profile, dielectric function, uniform conductivity functions and noteworthy electronic as well as CT properties revealed that the BG compound 1 might be proficient optoelectronic contestant having intermolecular CT as well as intramolecular CT with optimal stability. A comparison of static third-order polarizability <γ> of BG compound 1, as calculated in present investigation, was also performed with some standard NLO molecules as well as graphene nanoflakes. Moreover, longitudinal component γ_zzzz of parent compound has been found 12 and 4 times larger than those of previously reported open-shell poly aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Interestingly, by increasing the donor ability, i.e., introduction of C₂H₂PhNH₂ groups in place of OC₄H₉ groups (BG compound 3) at terminal positions boosts the <γ> amplitude ∼ 8 times than that of its parent BG compound 1.     

DFT and TD-DFT theoretical studies on photo-induced electron transfer process on [Cefamandole].C60 nano-complex

The C₆₀ fullerene displays a considerable electronegativity. It has a unique photophysical and electrochemical behavior that can be used as a suitable drug carrier. In the present study, the interaction of C₆₀ fullerene as an electron recipient with the Cefamandole antibiotic was investigated in both ground and excited states using DFT and TD-DFT methods. The study of the interaction of C₆₀ and Cefamandole via electron localization function (ELF) and reduced density gradient (RDG) revealed that the complex formation is of van der Waals type. The data from natural bonding orbitals (NBO) analysis also confirmed the interaction type. The study of absorption and emission spectrum via CAM-B3LYP in the TD-SCF state showed that the emission peak of C₆₀ fullerene in the 591.73 nm after the complex formation results in the extinction of this emission spectrum due to charge transfer (CT) from chelator to fluorophore. The photoinduced electron transfer (PET) process was investigated using the electron hole theory.     

Density functional theory study of adsorption geometries and electronic structures of azo-dye-based molecules on anatase TiO2 surface for dye-sensitized solar cell applications

Structural and electronic properties of eight isolated azo dyes (ArNNAr′, where Ar and Ar′ denote the aryl groups containing benzene and naphthalene skeletons, respectively) were investigated by density functional theory (DFT) based on the B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) and TD-B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) methods The effect of methanol solvent on the structural and electronic properties of the azo dyes was elucidated by employing a polarizable continuum model (PCM). Then, the azo dyes adsorbed onto the anatase TiO₂ (101) slab surface through a carboxyl group. The geometries and electronic structures of the adsorption complexes were determined using periodic DFT based on the PWC/DNP method. The calculated adsorption energies indicate that the adsorbed dyes preferentially take configuration of the bidentate bridging rather than chelating or monodentate ester-type geometries. Furthermore, the azo compounds having two carboxyl groups are coordinated to the TiO₂ surface more preferentially through the carboxyl group connecting to the benzene skeleton than through that connecting to the naphthalene skeleton. The dihedral angles (Φ_B-N) between the benzene- and naphthalene-skeleton moieties are smaller than 10° for the adsorbed azo compounds containing one carboxyl group. In contrast, Φ_B-N > 30° are obtained for the adsorbed azo compounds containing two carboxyl groups. The almost planar conformations of the former appear to strengthen both π-electrons conjugation and electronic coupling between low-lying unoccupied molecular orbitals of the azo dyes and the conduction band of TiO₂. On the other hand, such coupling is very weak for the latter, leading to a shift of the Fermi level of TiO₂ in the lower-energy direction. The obtained results are useful to the design and synthesize novel azo-dye-based molecules that give rise to higher photovoltaic performances of the dye-sensitized solar cells.     

Chaotic gravitational constants for the gravitational search algorithm

In a population-based meta-heuristic, the search process is divided into two main phases: exploration versus exploitation. In the exploration phase, a random behavior is fruitful to explore the search space as extensive as possible. In contrast, a fast exploitation toward the promising regions is the main objective of the latter phase. It is really challenging to find a proper balance between these two phases because of the stochastic nature of population-based meta-heuristic algorithms. The literature shows that chaotic maps are able to improve both phases. This work embeds ten chaotic maps into the gravitational constant (G) of the recently proposed population-based meta-heuristic algorithm called Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA). Also, an adaptive normalization method is proposed to transit from the exploration phase to the exploitation phase smoothly. As case studies, twelve shifted and biased benchmark functions evaluate the performance of the proposed chaos-based GSA algorithms in terms of exploration and exploitation. A statistical test called Wilcoxon rank-sum is done to judge about the significance of the results as well. The results demonstrate that sinusoidal map is the best map for improving the performance of GSA significantly.     

Evidential grammars: A compositional approach for scene understanding. Application to multimodal street data

Automatic scene understanding from multimodal data is a key task in the design of fully autonomous vehicles. The theory of belief functions has proved effective for fusing information from several sensors at the superpixel level. Here, we propose a novel framework, called evidential grammars, which extends stochastic grammars by replacing probabilities by belief functions. This framework allows us to fuse local information with prior and contextual information, also modeled as belief functions. The use of belief functions in a compositional model is shown to allow for better representation of the uncertainty on the priors and for greater flexibility of the model. The relevance of our approach is demonstrated on multi-modal traffic scene data from the KITTI benchmark suite.