187 research outputs found
Influence of Congruity in Store-Attribute Dimensions and Self-Image on Purchase Intentions in Online Stores of Multichannel Retailers
Online stores of multichannel retailers continue to lag pure internet retailers with reference to consumers\u27 shopping intentions and sales. This study develops and tests a framework in which (a) trust and attitude (conceptualized as a second-order construct with hedonic and utilitarian dimensions) influence purchase intentions, (b) congruity between the multichannel retailer\u27s land-based and online stores (conceptualized as a second-order constructs made up of seven dimensions: aesthetic appeal, navigation convenience, transaction convenience, atmosphere, service, price orientation, and security) influences trust in and attitude toward the online store, and (c) congruity between consumers\u27 self-image and perceived image of the online store influences trust in and attitude toward the online store. The findings provide robust support for the framework and have strong implications for theory and practice
Transference And Congruence Effects On Purchase Intentions In Online Stores Of Multi-Channel Retailers: Initial Evidence From The U.S. And South Korea
Drawing from research on retailing, online shopping behavior, and theories of cognitive psychology, we develop and test a framework that investigates purchase intentions in online stores of multi-channel retailers. The framework simultaneously examines the influence of transference of attitude and trust from the multi-channel retailer’s physical to online stores, image congruence between the multi-channel retailer’s physical and online stores, and image congruence between the multi-channel retailer’s online store and a prototypical online store. Further, recognizing that several retailers now operate as multi-channel retailers in different countries, we examine the influence of cultural differences in thought processes (i.e., holistic versus analytic thinking) on shoppers’ evaluation of online stores of multi-channel retailers. Toward this end, we test the framework using data collected from respondents in the U.S. (analytic thinkers) and South Korea (holistic thinkers). We conclude with a discussion of the findings, suggestions for future research, and potential limitations
Can ground truth label propagation from video help semantic segmentation?
For state-of-the-art semantic segmentation task, training convolutional
neural networks (CNNs) requires dense pixelwise ground truth (GT) labeling,
which is expensive and involves extensive human effort. In this work, we study
the possibility of using auxiliary ground truth, so-called \textit{pseudo
ground truth} (PGT) to improve the performance. The PGT is obtained by
propagating the labels of a GT frame to its subsequent frames in the video
using a simple CRF-based, cue integration framework. Our main contribution is
to demonstrate the use of noisy PGT along with GT to improve the performance of
a CNN. We perform a systematic analysis to find the right kind of PGT that
needs to be added along with the GT for training a CNN. In this regard, we
explore three aspects of PGT which influence the learning of a CNN: i) the PGT
labeling has to be of good quality; ii) the PGT images have to be different
compared to the GT images; iii) the PGT has to be trusted differently than GT.
We conclude that PGT which is diverse from GT images and has good quality of
labeling can indeed help improve the performance of a CNN. Also, when PGT is
multiple folds larger than GT, weighing down the trust on PGT helps in
improving the accuracy. Finally, We show that using PGT along with GT, the
performance of Fully Convolutional Network (FCN) on Camvid data is increased by
on IoU accuracy. We believe such an approach can be used to train CNNs
for semantic video segmentation where sequentially labeled image frames are
needed. To this end, we provide recommendations for using PGT strategically for
semantic segmentation and hence bypass the need for extensive human efforts in
labeling.Comment: To appear at ECCV 2016 Workshop on Video Segmentatio
The consequence of excess configurational entropy on fragility: the case of a polymer/oligomer blend
By taking advantage of the molecular weight dependence of the glass
transition of polymers and their ability to form perfectly miscible blends, we
propose a way to modify the fragility of a system, from fragile to strong,
keeping the same glass properties, i.e. vibrational density of states,
mean-square displacement and local structure. Both slow and fast dynamics are
investigated by calorimetry and neutron scattering in an athermal
polystyrene/oligomer blend, and compared to those of a pure 17-mer polystyrene
considered to be a reference, of same Tg. Whereas the blend and the pure 17-mer
have the same heat capacity in the glass and in the liquid, their fragilities
differ strongly. This difference in fragility is related to an extra
configurational entropy created by the mixing process and acting at a scale
much larger than the interchain distance, without affecting the fast dynamics
and the structure of the glass
Classical and Quantum Chaos in a quantum dot in time-periodic magnetic fields
We investigate the classical and quantum dynamics of an electron confined to
a circular quantum dot in the presence of homogeneous magnetic
fields. The classical motion shows a transition to chaotic behavior depending
on the ratio of field magnitudes and the cyclotron
frequency in units of the drive frequency. We determine a
phase boundary between regular and chaotic classical behavior in the
vs plane. In the quantum regime we evaluate the quasi-energy
spectrum of the time-evolution operator. We show that the nearest neighbor
quasi-energy eigenvalues show a transition from level clustering to level
repulsion as one moves from the regular to chaotic regime in the
plane. The statistic confirms this
transition. In the chaotic regime, the eigenfunction statistics coincides with
the Porter-Thomas prediction. Finally, we explicitly establish the phase space
correspondence between the classical and quantum solutions via the Husimi phase
space distributions of the model. Possible experimentally feasible conditions
to see these effects are discussed.Comment: 26 pages and 17 PstScript figures, two large ones can be obtained
from the Author
Pauli principle and chaos in a magnetized disk
We present results of a detailed quantum mechanical study of a gas of
noninteracting electrons confined to a circular boundary and subject to
homogeneous dc plus ac magnetic fields , with
). We earlier found a one-particle {\it classical}
phase diagram of the (scaled) Larmor frequency
{\rm vs} that
separates regular from chaotic regimes. We also showed that the quantum
spectrum statistics changed from Poisson to Gaussian orthogonal ensembles in
the transition from classically integrable to chaotic dynamics. Here we find
that, as a function of and , there are clear
quantum signatures in the magnetic response, when going from the
single-particle classically regular to chaotic regimes. In the quasi-integrable
regime the magnetization non-monotonically oscillates between diamagnetic and
paramagnetic as a function of . We quantitatively understand this behavior
from a perturbation theory analysis. In the chaotic regime, however, we find
that the magnetization oscillates as a function of but it is {\it always}
diamagnetic. Equivalent results are also presented for the orbital currents. We
also find that the time-averaged energy grows like in the
quasi-integrable regime but changes to a linear dependence in the chaotic
regime. In contrast, the results with Bose statistics are akin to the
single-particle case and thus different from the fermionic case. We also give
an estimate of possible experimental parameters were our results may be seen in
semiconductor quantum dot billiards.Comment: 22 pages, 7 GIF figures, Phys. Rev. E. (1999
Self-supervised Depth Estimation to Regularise Semantic Segmentation in Knee Arthroscopy
Intra-operative automatic semantic segmentation of knee joint structures can
assist surgeons during knee arthroscopy in terms of situational awareness.
However, due to poor imaging conditions (e.g., low texture, overexposure,
etc.), automatic semantic segmentation is a challenging scenario, which
justifies the scarce literature on this topic. In this paper, we propose a
novel self-supervised monocular depth estimation to regularise the training of
the semantic segmentation in knee arthroscopy. To further regularise the depth
estimation, we propose the use of clean training images captured by the stereo
arthroscope of routine objects (presenting none of the poor imaging conditions
and with rich texture information) to pre-train the model. We fine-tune such
model to produce both the semantic segmentation and self-supervised monocular
depth using stereo arthroscopic images taken from inside the knee. Using a data
set containing 3868 arthroscopic images captured during cadaveric knee
arthroscopy with semantic segmentation annotations, 2000 stereo image pairs of
cadaveric knee arthroscopy, and 2150 stereo image pairs of routine objects, we
show that our semantic segmentation regularised by self-supervised depth
estimation produces a more accurate segmentation than a state-of-the-art
semantic segmentation approach modeled exclusively with semantic segmentation
annotation.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure
SNE-RoadSeg: Incorporating Surface Normal Information into Semantic Segmentation for Accurate Freespace Detection
Freespace detection is an essential component of visual perception for
self-driving cars. The recent efforts made in data-fusion convolutional neural
networks (CNNs) have significantly improved semantic driving scene
segmentation. Freespace can be hypothesized as a ground plane, on which the
points have similar surface normals. Hence, in this paper, we first introduce a
novel module, named surface normal estimator (SNE), which can infer surface
normal information from dense depth/disparity images with high accuracy and
efficiency. Furthermore, we propose a data-fusion CNN architecture, referred to
as RoadSeg, which can extract and fuse features from both RGB images and the
inferred surface normal information for accurate freespace detection. For
research purposes, we publish a large-scale synthetic freespace detection
dataset, named Ready-to-Drive (R2D) road dataset, collected under different
illumination and weather conditions. The experimental results demonstrate that
our proposed SNE module can benefit all the state-of-the-art CNNs for freespace
detection, and our SNE-RoadSeg achieves the best overall performance among
different datasets.Comment: ECCV 202
Output Compression, MPC, and iO for Turing Machines
In this work, we study the fascinating notion of output-compressing randomized encodings for Turing Machines, in a shared randomness model. In this model, the encoder and decoder have access to a shared random string, and the efficiency requirement is, the size of the encoding must be independent of the running time and output length of the Turing Machine on the given input, while the length of the shared random string is allowed to grow with the length of the output. We show how to construct output- compressing randomized encodings for Turing machines in the shared randomness model, assuming iO for circuits and any assumption in the set {LWE, DDH, Nth Residuosity}.
We then show interesting implications of the above result to basic feasibility questions in the areas of secure multiparty computation (MPC) and indistinguishability obfuscation (iO):
1. Compact MPC for Turing Machines in the Random Oracle Model:
In the context of MPC, we consider the following basic feasibility question: does there exist a malicious-secure MPC protocol for Turing Machines whose communication complexity is independent of the running time and output length of the Turing Machine when executed on the combined inputs of all parties? We call such a protocol as a compact MPC protocol. Hubacek and Wichs [HW15] showed via an incompressibility argument, that, even for the restricted setting of circuits, it is impossible to construct a malicious secure two party computation protocol in the plain model where the communication complexity is independent of the output length. In this work, we show how to evade this impossibility by compiling any (non-compact) MPC protocol in the plain model to a compact MPC protocol for Turing Machines in the Random Oracle Model, assuming output-compressing randomized encodings in the shared randomness model.
2. Succinct iO for Turing Machines in the Shared Randomness Model:
In all existing constructions of iO for Turing Machines, the size of the obfuscated program grows with a bound on the input length. In this work, we show how to construct an iO scheme for Turing Machines in the shared randomness model where the size of the obfuscated program is independent of a bound on the input length, assuming iO for circuits and any assumption in the set {LWE, DDH, Nth Residuosity}
Deep Placental Vessel Segmentation for Fetoscopic Mosaicking
During fetoscopic laser photocoagulation, a treatment for twin-to-twin
transfusion syndrome (TTTS), the clinician first identifies abnormal placental
vascular connections and laser ablates them to regulate blood flow in both
fetuses. The procedure is challenging due to the mobility of the environment,
poor visibility in amniotic fluid, occasional bleeding, and limitations in the
fetoscopic field-of-view and image quality. Ideally, anastomotic placental
vessels would be automatically identified, segmented and registered to create
expanded vessel maps to guide laser ablation, however, such methods have yet to
be clinically adopted. We propose a solution utilising the U-Net architecture
for performing placental vessel segmentation in fetoscopic videos. The obtained
vessel probability maps provide sufficient cues for mosaicking alignment by
registering consecutive vessel maps using the direct intensity-based technique.
Experiments on 6 different in vivo fetoscopic videos demonstrate that the
vessel intensity-based registration outperformed image intensity-based
registration approaches showing better robustness in qualitative and
quantitative comparison. We additionally reduce drift accumulation to
negligible even for sequences with up to 400 frames and we incorporate a scheme
for quantifying drift error in the absence of the ground-truth. Our paper
provides a benchmark for fetoscopy placental vessel segmentation and
registration by contributing the first in vivo vessel segmentation and
fetoscopic videos dataset.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 202
- …