3D avatar seller's effect on online consumer's purchasing behavior: a trust transference perspective

The emerging 3D virtual worlds attract more and more people to participate in the virtual environment, creating a new market for business to sell their products. In 3D virtual worlds, members mainly interact with each other through avatars. The selling process is fulfilled through the shop avatars. How businesses sell their products successfully to the potential customers and eventually persuade the customer to purchase the product is an essential question. Trust played a key role in the selling process. In the general selling process, trust was established through the sales person. In the virtual world environment, could the trust be established between the sales avatars and customer avatars This paper aims at answering this question by examining the trust transference process in the 3D virtual world environment. An experiment was conducted to categorize the avatars into attractive and expert ones. The research result first suggest that trust formed in a 3D avatar seller could be transferred to a selling company and a product but for an expert 3D avatar seller, trust transferred to the company and product results in intent to purchase. Trust in a 3D avatar seller is transferred to trust in a product and a company and furthermore, an expert avatar can affect a consumer's intent to purchase. In the case of an attractive 3D avatar, although trust is transferred, it is only to the point of intent to purchase

The Possibility of Inflation in Asymptotically Safe Gravity

We examine the inflationary modes in the cubic curvature theories in the context of asymptotically safe gravity. On the phase space of the Hubble parameter, there exists a critical point which corresponds to the slow-roll inflation in Einstein frame. Most of the e-foldings are attained around the critical point for each inflationary trajectories. If the coupling constants $g_i$ have the parametric relations generated as the power of the relative energy scale of inflation $H_0$ to the ultraviolet cutoff $\Lambda$, a successful inflation with more than 60 e-foldings occurs near the critical point.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

A numerical study on manoeuvrability of wind turbine installation vessel using OpenFOAM

ABSTRACTIn this study, a numerical prediction method on manoeuvrability of Wind Turbine Installation Vessel (WTIV) is presented. Planar Motion Mechanism (PMM) captive test for the bare hull of WTIV is carried out in the model basin and compared with the numerical results using RANS simulation based on Open-source Field Operation And Manipulation (OpenFOAM) calculation to validate the developed method. The manoeuvrability of WTIV with skeg and/or without skeg is investigated using the numerical approach along with the captive model test. In the numerical calculations, the dynamic stability index which indicates the course keeping ability is evaluated and compared for three different hull configurations i.e. bare hull and other two hulls with center skeg and twin skeg. This paper proves that the numerical approach using RANS simulation can be readily applied to estimate the manoeuvrability of WTIV at the initial design stage

Split Quaterionic Representation of SDYM (SU(1,1) Instantons in \u3ci\u3eS\u3c/i\u3e\u3csup\u3e2-\u3c/sup\u3e × \u3ci\u3eS\u3c/i\u3e\u3csup\u3e2+\u3c/sup\u3e

Using split‐quaternions, we find explicit SDYM SU(1,1) instanton solutions in S2- × S2+ which is the conformal compactification of the semi‐Euclidean 4‐spacetime R2+2 of split signature (-,-,+,+). It is also shows that SDYM and ASDYM fields in S2- × S2+ can be described as simple split-quaternionic 2-forms

URANS SIMULATION OF A PARTIALLY SUBMERGED PROPELLER OPERATING UNDER THE BOLLARD CONDITION

The performance of a partially submerged propeller under the bollard condition was assessed using numerical simulations based on URANS. The simulations were performed with varying propeller rotating speed and submergence depth. The propeller rotating speed was varied from 2 rps to 8 rps with the interval of 2 rps at the submergence depths of h/R=0.0,0.5, and 1.0. Here, h is the submergence depth from the free surface to the propeller shaft center and R is the radius of the propeller. The thrust and torque losses were compared with the thrust and torque in the deep water condition. The thrust and torque decreased rapidly with increasing propeller rotating speed. The thrust and torque ratios were compared with the empirical formula showing generally good agreement. The hydrodynamic characteristics around the partially submerged propeller were investigated using numerical simulations