Determinants and outcomes of electronic data interchange diffusion

Protagonists of electronic data interchange (EDI), a specific form of inter organizational systems (IOS), claim that it has the potential to dramatically alter the exchange of business documents and business operations (particularly material procurement and sales functions) in a number of industries. Drawing upon past research on innovation diffusion and information systems (IS) implementation, this study examines the role of key innovation and organizational factors in influencing the extent to which EDI is diffused within organizations, and whether more extensive diffusion leads to improved organizational outcomes. Two senior executives (one from the IS and the other from selling/buying function) from over 200 large American companies participated in the field study. The path analyses results indicate that compatibility and relative advantage (two of the three classical innovation attributes), championing, scope for use of EDI within the firm's task environments, and being an early adopter determine the extent to which EDI gets internally diffused through greater integration with other IS applications within the organization. Technical compatibility, top management support and being an early adopter emerge as the key variables influencing the extent to which EDI gets externally diffused through greater external diffusion of business transactions with trading partners. The results also indicate that greater internal as well as external diffusion of EDI facilitates improved organizational outcomes that was measured on six dimensions such as implementation success, organizational performance, influence on market structure, standardization of transactions, etc     

Clones: what is that smell?

Clones are generally considered bad programming practice in software engineering folklore. They are identified as a bad smell?(Fowler et?al. 1999) and a major contributor to project maintenance difficulties. Clones inherently cause code bloat, thus increasing project size and maintenance costs. In this work, we try to validate the conventional wisdom empirically to see whether cloning makes code more defect prone. This paper analyses the relationship between cloning and defect proneness. For the four medium to large open source projects that we studied, we find that, first, the great majority of bugs are not significantly associated with clones. Second, we find that clones may be less defect prone than non-cloned code. Third, we find little evidence that clones with more copies are actually more error prone. Fourth, we find little evidence to support the claim that clone groups that span more than one file or directory are more defect prone than collocated clones. Finally, we find that developers do not need to put a disproportionately higher effort to fix clone dense bugs. Our findings do not support the claim that clones are really a “bad smell”?(Fowler et?al. 1999). Perhaps we can clone, and breathe easily, at the same?time.     

合成煤中钠对煤燃烧及灰特性影响

准东煤中钠含量高，燃用时锅炉会出现严重结渣问题。通过向准东煤为原料制取的超纯煤中添加灰的模型化合物，得到合成煤。并在此基础上利用热重-差示扫描量热分析法（TG/DTG/DSC）、X射线衍射仪（XRD）和灰熔融温度测定分析手段，研究Na₂O含量对煤燃烧特性和灰熔融性的影响。结果表明：钠主要影响合成煤的着火温度（T_i）与焦炭燃烧阶段，钠含量增加使T_i升高，并且Na₂O在灰中质量分数由5%升高至8%后，钠含量增加使焦炭燃烧速率先减小后加快，并能够改善煤粉燃尽特性。钠能够降低灰熔融温度，并在Na₂O质量分数高于5%后，温度下降更加明显。在三元相图中钠对莫来石的助熔作用是造成灰熔融温度降低的重要原因。XRD分析表明Na₂O含量增加，充当骨架作用的石英在钠的助熔作用下与难熔矿物硅钙石、MgO等生成低熔点长石类矿物，这类矿物在高温下有助熔作用，能够降低灰熔融温度。同时还生成助熔性含钠矿物霞石，加剧了灰熔融。     

Internet messaging: An examination of the impact of attitudinal,normative, and control belief systems

While instant messaging (IM) has been very popular among teenagers and college students for social and recreation communication, its use in corporate settings has been limited. We examined the factors that influence the intention to use and actual use of IM. A research model was developed based on diffusion of innovation and Socio-psychological theories. The model examined the influence of seven variables in three belief structures (the attitudinal, normative, and control). The model was empirically validated using a field survey of 349 respondents. The results indicated that five of the seven variables explained about 41% of the variance in the intention to use IM. The five significant variables were: utilitarian beliefs, hedonic beliefs, subjective norms, critical mass, and ease of use. Affiliation motivation was not significant and social belief had a negative impact on intention. As expected, intention to use had a significant influence on actual usage.     

先进检测与5G通信技术在燃煤锅炉运行监测中的应用研究

为构建以新能源为主体的新型电力系统,火电机组在保电供热的同时要承担灵活运行、深度调峰的任务。但传统检测和通信技术受限于实时性差、传输慢、投资高等问题,难以支撑火电机组新需求。先进检测技术和以5G为代表的通信技术通过构建完整的检测传输链条,为以锅炉燃烧系统为代表的火电机组状态研判、运行调整等提供了坚实的技术支撑,但也面临建设投资高、专业人才和标准匮乏等问题。只有从生产实际出发,健全机制、转变观念,才能做实先进检测及通信技术的应用效果。作为智慧电厂的重要组成部分,先进检测和5G通信技术必将为火电整体智能化水平提升提供坚实的基础。     

Effect of phase maldistribution on performance of two-phase catalytic monolith reactor and its comparison with trickle bed reactor

Monolith reactors are widely considered as an alternative to the conventional trickle bed reactor. For the commercial deployment of monolith reactors, comparative performance studies are required. Reliable comparative and performance studies require a detailed understanding of the effect of phase distribution/maldistribution on the performance studies. In this work, performance and comparative studies were carried out in a relatively large column that was 4.8 cm in diameter. Experiments were performed in the same conditions that were used in studies for which phase distribution data were available. Since the properties of the catalyst used were different in both the reactors, the apparent kinetics were studied to facilitate the comparison. The hydrogenation of alpha-methyl styrene (AMS) was used as a test reaction. From the performance studies, it was found that the effect of maldistribution on the performance was stronger than the catalyst availability. From the comparative studies, it was found that the monolith reactor with maldistributed flow conditions provides higher productivity than the trickle bed reactor.     

Phospholipid Cyclosporine Prodrugs Targeted at Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Treatment: Design,Synthesis, and in Vitro Validation

Novel phospholipid (PL)-cyclosporine conjugates were prepared and studied as potential prodrugs for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Our approach relies on phospholipase A₂ (PLA₂), which is overexpressed in the inflamed intestinal tissues, as the prodrug activator to potentially release cyclosporine at the site of inflammation. PL-cyclosporine prodrug conjugates with methylene linkers of various lengths between the sn-2 position of the PL and cyclosporine were synthesized and evaluated for in vitro activation. Surprisingly, despite previous work indicating that conjugates with six methylene linkers between the lipid and drug would suffer rapid enzymatic hydrolysis, with cyclosporine this was not observed. However, compounds with longer linkers (n=10, 12 methylene units) display complete release of the drug by PLA₂-catalyzed hydrolysis, thus demonstrating the importance and profound impact of structural fine-tuning. This study represents a proof-of-concept for our hypothesis and a first step towards a truly targeted IBD treatment with cyclosporine that could be administered throughout the GI tract.     

Microwave Preparation of SiO2-B2O3-Na2O-K2O-CaO-Fe2O3-TiO2 Glass System

This study reports preparation of glass composition （54.50 wt.%） SiO2, （10.80 wt.%） B2O3, （14.20 wt.%） Na2O, （1.20 wt.%） K2O, （6.00 wt.%） CaO, （4.00 wt.%） Fe2O3 and （9.30 wt.%） TiO2 by melt quenching method using direct microwave heating and conventional resistive heating. Study of dielectric loss factor of the glass as function of temperature illustrated increasing loss factor above 370 ℃, 550 ℃, 650 ℃ and 900 ℃, indicating enhanced microwave absorption by the glass at above these temperatures. Chemical analysis results of both the glasses depicted more volatilization loss of volatile ingredients in conventional heating. The study of chemical durability was performed from leachate analysis describing less leaching of Na2O, K2O and other constituents from glass melted in microwave furnace. Glass transition temperatures （Tg） were found to be 576.3 ℃ and 569.5 ℃ for glass melted in conventional and microwave heating route, respectively. Laboratory experiment of glass melting utilizing microwave energy as an alternate heating source demonstrated 70%-75% electrical power saving.     

Non‐dominated sorting particle swarm optimization (NSPSO) and network security policy enforcement for Policy Space Analysis

Network operators depend on security services with the aim of safeguarding their IT infrastructure. Various types of network security policies are employed on a global scale and are disseminated among several security middleboxes implemented in networks. But, owing to the complications in security policies, it is not quite efficient to directly use the path‐wise enforcement schemes that are prevalent. The major motivation of this work is to improve security levels and solve the policy enforcement problem. For the first time, this work reports the issue of policy enforcement on middleboxes. The major contribution of this work is to design security policy enforcement as a Weighted K Set Covering Problem, and we designed a Policy Space Analysis (PSA) tool intended for a group of operations in the security policy. This PSA tool was developed based on range‐signified hyper‐rectangles, which are indexed by the Hilbert R‐tree. Leveraging the PSA, we first investigated the topological features of various kinds of policies. Balancing the PSA tool in a non‐dominated sorting particle swarm optimization technique exposes the intrinsic difficulties of this security strategy and provides guidance for designing the enforcement approach. In addition, in this research, a new fuzzy rule‐based classification system is introduced for packet classification. A scope‐wise policy enforcement algorithm was proposed, which chooses a moderate number of enforcement network nodes for deploying multiple policy subsets in a greedy manner. This scheme is much quicker compared with the first one and therefore has found its application in real‐time deployments.     

Effect of annealing temperature on structural,optical and humidity sensing properties of indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films

Tin doped indium oxide (ITO) thin films were prepared by sol–gel spin coating method with In (NO₃)·3H₂O and SnCl₄·5H₂O as indium and tin sources, respectively. The as deposited samples were annealed at various temperature such as, 300, 400, 500 and 600?°C for 2 h in ambient atmosphere. The grown ITO thin films are polycrystalline in nature with cubic structure of In₂O₃ with the space group La3 and the results are in good agreement with the standard JCPDS data (card no#06-0416). In addition crystalline size increases with increasing annealing temperature from 25 to 55 nm. Polycrystalline with uniform smooth surface was observed by SEM micrographs. The optical band gap energy was found to be decreased from 3.85 to 3.23 eV as the annealing temperature is increased from 300 to 600?°C. The humidity sensing performance (high sensitivity and fast response time) was significantly improved for 600?°C thin films samples, which is probably due to smaller energy band gap and physisorption between the water molecules and the surface of the thin films. The films were further characterized by PL and EDS analysis. The effect of temperature on humidity sensing mechanism of ITO thin films is also discussed.