Stuck in the Past? The Moderation Effect of Personal Nostalgia on the Attitude Behavior Relationship in IS Adoption Contexts

Even though evidence shows that emotions influence individuals’ information processing and decision making, emotions have been merely an afterthought in IS. Indeed, few studies have investigated their influence on behavior, and those that have considered only a handful of different emotions (e.g., anxiety, enjoyment, satisfaction, or pleasure). Until recently, researchers have investigated only simple and uniformly positive (e.g., pleasure) or negative emotions (e.g., anxiety). More complex emotions such as nostalgia can be valuable additions to our understanding of technology choice because they offer a window into short-term decisions, which are subject to change in one way or another. In particular, the coping function of nostalgia can help one to understand behavior in the context of IT because some users perceive changes to their familiar environment and routine as a threat and as a stressful event. As such, we investigate the impact of nostalgia on users’ choices between two different technologies to accomplish one particular goal or task. Our study is the first to provide evidence of nostalgia’s influence on technology usage and suggests that nostalgia can provide reassurance to some users when faced with overcoming big challenges

Horchen statt Röntgen : Vibration Response Imaging – Chancen und Möglichkeiten

Viele Patienten, die zum Radiologen geschickt werden, um eine Röntgenaufnahme ihrer Lunge machen zu lassen, fragen besorgt: Aber die Röntgenstrahlen sind doch schädlich, muss das denn wirklich sein? Solche Einwände kommen selbst von langjährigen Rauchern und Menschen, die ansonsten bereit sind, gesundheitliche Gefährdungen auf sich zu nehmen. Bald könnte es jedoch eine Alternative zur Röntgenuntersuchung der Lunge geben. In der Abteilung Pneumologie des Universitätsklinikums Frankfurt wird derzeit ein Verfahren zur bildhaften Darstellung der Lunge erprobt, das sich an den Luftschwingungen in der Lunge orientiert und ganz auf Röntgenstrahlen verzichtet

Convincing Business Partners to Adopt – Results from a Field-Experimental Setting on Organizational IOS Adoption

Organizations striving to compete in today’s harsh economic environment are forced to continuously innovate to retain competitiveness over time. The use of inter-organizational systems (IOS) is one way for organizations to gain competitive advantage. This paper attempts to investigate the adoption of IOS by means of a controlled field-experiment on organizational level. Relevant scientific literature on this topic largely agrees that two main factors of influence – circumstantial information, and institutional pressure – are assumed to have a strong influence on adoption intention of organizations. By conducting a field experiment across 504 business partners of a larger German organization, we find evidence for the relationship between institutional pressure and IOS adoption, while no support is found for the relation between circumstantial information and IOS adoption

Micro-Firms Need to be Addressed Differently – an Empirical Investigation of IOS Adoption Among SMEs

Inter-organizational information systems (IOS) play a critical role in today’s organizations and their relationships with business partners. While large organizations began utilizing such systems since their dawn in the 1970’s, SMEs have largely been reluctant to adopt and use these technologies. Given their relative commonness among enterprises, SMEs and micro-firms are particularly well suited to provide the critical mass of adopters needed to exploit network externalities exhibited by IOS. However, studies on adoption of IOS featuring micro-firms have remained scarce. Hence, a special focus on adoption decisions in micro-firms can be of great value to advance the understanding of IOS adoption. A survey is conducted on the influence of inhibitors on adoption of IOS for electronic invoice exchange among German SMEs and micro-firms. Several inhibitors are identified from extant literature restraining SMEs from adopting. In particular, results show that reasons restraining micro-firms are significantly different from reasons restraining larger SMEs

The effect of a nonresonant radiative field on low-energy rotationally inelastic Na++N2\text{Na}^{+} + \text{N}_2 collisions

We examine the effects of a linearly polarized nonresonant radiative field on the dynamics of rotationally inelastic $\text{Na}^{+} + \text{N}_2$ collisions at eV collision energies. Our treatment is based on the Fraunhofer model of matter wave scattering and its recent extension to collisions in electric fields [arXiv:0804.3318v1]. The nonresonant radiative field changes the effective shape of the target molecule by aligning it in the space-fixed frame. This markedly alters the differential and integral scattering cross sections. As the cross sections can be evaluated for a polarization of the radiative field collinear or perpendicular to the relative velocity vector, the model also offers predictions about steric asymmetry of the collisions.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Int. J. Mass Spe

Memory for nonadjacent dependencies in the first year of life and its relation to sleep

Grammar learning requires memory for dependencies between nonadjacent elements in speech. Immediate learning of nonadjacent dependencies has been observed in very young infants, but their memory of such dependencies has remained unexplored. Here we used event-related potentials to investigate whether 6- to 8-month-olds retain nonadjacent dependencies and if sleep after learning affects this memory. Infants were familiarised with two rule-based morphosyntactic dependencies, presented in sentences of an unknown language. Brain responses after a retention period reveal memory of the nonadjacent dependencies, independent of whether infants napped or stayed awake. Napping, however, altered a specific processing stage, suggesting that memory evolves during sleep. Infants with high left frontal spindle activity show an additional brain response indicating memory of individual speech phrases. Results imply that infants as young as 6 months are equipped with memory mechanisms relevant to grammar learning. They also suggest that during sleep, consolidation of highly specific information can co-occur with changes in the nature of generalised memory

An analytic model of rotationally inelastic collisions of polar molecules in electric fields

We present an analytic model of thermal state-to-state rotationally inelastic collisions of polar molecules in electric fields. The model is based on the Fraunhofer scattering of matter waves and requires Legendre moments characterizing the "shape" of the target in the body-fixed frame as its input. The electric field orients the target in the space-fixed frame and thereby effects a striking alteration of the dynamical observables: both the phase and amplitude of the oscillations in the partial differential cross sections undergo characteristic field-dependent changes that transgress into the partial integral cross sections. As the cross sections can be evaluated for a field applied parallel or perpendicular to the relative velocity, the model also offers predictions about steric asymmetry. We exemplify the field-dependent quantum collision dynamics with the behavior of the Ne-OCS($^{1}\Sigma$) and Ar-NO($^2\Pi$) systems. A comparison with the close-coupling calculations available for the latter system [Chem. Phys. Lett. \textbf{313}, 491 (1999)] demonstrates the model's ability to qualitatively explain the field dependence of all the scattering features observed

Hydrogen atom in crossed electric and magnetic fields: Phase space topology and torus quantization via periodic orbits

A hierarchical ordering is demonstrated for the periodic orbits in a strongly coupled multidimensional Hamiltonian system, namely the hydrogen atom in crossed electric and magnetic fields. It mirrors the hierarchy of broken resonant tori and thereby allows one to characterize the periodic orbits by a set of winding numbers. With this knowledge, we construct the action variables as functions of the frequency ratios and carry out a semiclassical torus quantization. The semiclassical energy levels thus obtained agree well with exact quantum calculations

On possible skewon effects on light propagation

We start from a local and linear spacetime relation between the electromagnetic excitation and the field strength. Then we study the generally covariant Fresnel surfaces for light rays and light waves. The metric and the connection of spacetime are left unspecified. Accordingly, our framework is ideally suited for a search of possible violations of the Lorentz symmetry in the photon sector of the extended standard model. We discuss how the skewon part of the constitutive tensor, if suitably parametrized, influences the Fresnel surfaces and disturbs the light cones of vacuum electrodynamics. Conditions are specified that yield the reduction of the original quartic Fresnel surface to the double light cone structure (birefringence) and to the single light cone. Qualitatively, the effects of the real skewon field can be compared to those in absorbing material media. In contrast, the imaginary skewon field can be interpreted in terms of non-absorbing media with natural optical activity and Faraday effects. The astrophysical data on gamma-ray bursts are used for deriving an upper limit for the magnitude of the skewon field.Comment: Revtex, 29 pages, 10 figures, references added, text as in the published versio

Laser interferometry with translucent and absorbing mechanical oscillators

The sensitivity of laser interferometers can be pushed into regimes that enable the direct observation of quantum behaviour of mechanical oscillators. In the past, membranes with subwavelength thickness (thin films) have been proposed as high-mechanical-quality, low-thermal-noise oscillators. Thin films from a homogenous material, however, generally show considerable light transmission accompanied by heating due to light absorption, which typically reduces the mechanical quality and limits quantum opto-mechanical experiments in particular at low temperatures. In this work, we experimentally analyze a Michelson-Sagnac interferometer including a translucent silicon nitride (SiN) membrane with subwavelength thickness. We find that such an interferometer provides an operational point being optimally suited for quantum opto-mechanical experiments with translucent oscillators. In case of a balanced beam splitter of the interferometer, the membrane can be placed at a node of the electro-magnetic field, which simultaneously provides lowest absorption and optimum laser noise rejection at the signal port. We compare the optical and mechanical model of our interferometer with experimental data and confirm that the SiN membrane can be coupled to a laser power of the order of one Watt at 1064 nm without significantly degrading the membrane's quality factor of the order 10^6, at room temperature