Textured Crystallization of Ultrathin Hafnium Oxide Films on Silicon Substrate

The effects of rapid thermal annealing are reported here on the structure of 2 nm thick hafnium oxide films grown on silicon (100) substrates. The films grown by atomic layer deposition have a 1 nm SiO2 transition layer between silicon and the HfO2 layer. The amorphous structure of the as-deposited films is retained after annealing at 600°C. The HfO2 films crystallized into an orthorhombic phase with an out-of-plane texture after annealing at 800°C or higher. In contrast, films grown on thick amorphous SiO2 substrates crystallize without any texture. The authors attribute the texture of HfO2 on Si (100) to the role of interfacial SiO2 transition layer

Optimal moral-hazard-free reinsurance under extended distortion premium principles

We study an optimal reinsurance problem under a diffusion risk model for an insurer who aims to minimize the probability of lifetime ruin. To rule out moral hazard issues, we only consider moral-hazard-free reinsurance contracts by imposing the incentive compatibility constraint on indemnity functions. The reinsurance premium is calculated under an extended distortion premium principle, in which the distortion function is not necessarily concave. We first show that an optimal reinsurance contract always exists and then derive two sufficient and necessary conditions to characterize it. Due to the presence of the incentive compatibility constraint and the nonconcavity of the distortion, the optimal contract is obtained as a solution to a double obstacle problem. At last, we apply the general result to study three examples and obtain the optimal contract in (semi)closed form

Who Will Buy in the Next Visit?

Increased propensity of consumers directly visiting the e-commerce website is the most prominent effect of display advertising. Therefore, understanding consumers’ directed revisit behaviors is important for advertisers to arrange their advertising delivering activity. In this paper, authors used an e-commerce website’s consumers browsing data and advertising clicking data to examine the relationship between consumers’ previous shopping behaviors and their direct revisit. Besides, they also consider the visit channels (i.e., direct visit, generic advertising, and retargeting advertising). The results show that for consumers entering the website through different channels, their previous behaviors have different effect on the probability of revising directly in the future. The findings extend previous direct visit studies and can help website to advertise

The Mediating Role of Cognitive Flexibility in the Influence of Counter-Stereotypes on Creativity

The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between counter-stereotypes and creativity, and further explore the mechanism underlying the impact of priming counter-stereotypic information on individual creativity. More importantly, here we have proposed cognitive and emotional dual processing pathways, which may mediate the influences of counter-stereotypes on creativity. Two experiments examined how counter-stereotypes impacted creativity through the dual processing pathways. A total of 152 university students were recruited to test their creativity performance. In Experiment 1, we replicated results of past studies. Participants were randomly allocated to different priming conditions (stereotype or counter-stereotype), in which descriptions of male governors and female nurses served as priming of stereotypes, whereas descriptions of male nurses and female governors served as priming of counter-stereotypes. Measurements of creativity were based on the poster paradigm. The poster paradigm required participants to design a poster for a college fellowship party. In Experiment 2, we recruited 104 participants to examine the mediating roles of emotions and cognitive flexibility. The procedure of Experiment 2 was similar to that of Experiment 1, except for the measurement of creativity, which was Chinese idiom riddle test. Participants who selected more creative answers were more creative, based on the criteria of our experimental design. Also, we included measurements of emotions (i.e., surprise and delight) and cognitive flexibility (using the Cognitive Flexibility Scale) after priming of stereotypes and counter-stereotypes in Experiment 2. We also verified the credibility of our counter-stereotype measurements. The results of Experiment 1—which replicated previous studies—demonstrated that priming of counter-stereotypes promoted creative performance compared with priming of stereotypes in the poster paradigm. However, our proposed dual processing pathways were not fully verified by Experiment 2. The results of this experiment showed that neither surprising nor delighted emotion mediated the influence of counter-stereotypes on creativity, whereas cognitive flexibility did. In conclusion, our current study reveals a mechanism of creative performance in terms of cognitive flexibility, and further inspires us to focus on the positive influence of counter-stereotypes on creativity