Identity Interruption on Social Media

This study aims to understand how online identity interruption can impact psychological distress and how psychological distress drives avoidance intention in using online social networks. Results of the experiment indicate that the effect of content dispersion on feelings of betrayal is amplified when network similarity is low but the effect is nullified when network similarity is high. More interestingly, results reveal that the interaction between content dispersion and network similarity on feelings of betrayal is moderated by social readership. Responses from the participants also reveal that higher feelings of betrayal lead to higher avoidance intention. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Generalised framework of limit equilibrium methods for slope stability analysis

A generalised framework is proposed in this paper incorporating almost all of the existing limit equilibrium methods of slices for slope stability analysis with general slip surfaces. The force and moment equilibrium equations are derived in terms of the factor of safety and the initially assumed normal stress distribution over the slip surface, multiplied by a modification function involving two auxiliary unknowns. These equations are then analytically solved to yield explicit expressions for the factor of safety. Various assumptions regarding the interslice forces can be transformed into a unified form of expression for the normal stress distribution along the slip surface. An iterative procedure is developed to expedite the convergence of the solution for the factor of safety. Experience to date indicates that the process generally converges within a few iterations. Computation schemes are suggested to avoid numerical difficulty, especially in computing the factor of safety associated with the rigorous Janbu method. The present framework can be readily implemented in a computer program, giving solutions of slope stability associated with a number of conventional methods of slices.published_or_final_versio

Privacy Utility and Privacy Disutility Expectancy: An Empirical Study on Social App Usage

Social apps fundamentally transform the way individuals manage their online identities through proxy-disclosure. While individuals do enjoy the potential enhancement to reputation that is realized through social app postings, they could have their privacy threatened when these apps make posting in an uncontrolled fashion. Drawing on the APCO model, this research elucidates the impact of the two key aspects of online proxy-disclosure on privacy expectancy formulation, which in turn influence usage intention of social apps. A survey was conducted to operationalize the research model. Results provide strong evidence that the two determinants of privacy expectancy strongly influence individuals’ perceptions of privacy utility and privacy disutility. Furthermore, the two types of privacy utility powerful drive usage intention of social apps. The implications of the findings are discussed

SOCIAL NETWORK PRIVACY DISPOSITIONS: AN OBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT SCALE AND A CAUSAL MODEL

The Information Systems literature has substantially advanced understanding of privacy in both offline contexts and online environments. Despite the rich understanding, existing studies predominately focused on elucidating privacy issues specific to individuals. The increasingly popular usage of mobile apps with social media integration has fundamentally challenged current understanding and conceptualization of information privacy. In particular, mobile apps allow information collection beyond individuals’ personal scope (i.e., his/her personal information) and extend the scope of acquisition into individuals’ online social networks (i.e., his/her list of friends on Facebook). To fill this gap in the literature, drawing on the Communication Privacy Management Theory, this proposal focuses on three unique dimensions of social network privacy dispositions, namely permeability, ownership, and linkage. Second, we propose to operationalize these three dimensions of social network privacy dispositions using a second-order reflective construct, and we plan to develop an objective measurement scale for it. Lastly, we plan to validate the construct using a nomological network

Shear Modulus of a Carbonate Sand–Silt Mixture with THF Hydrate

The maximum shear modulus (Gmax) is an important factor determining soil deformation, and it is closely related to engineering safety and seafloor stability. In this study, a series of bender element tests was carried out to investigate the Gmax of a hydrate-bearing carbonate sand (CS)–silt mixture. The soil mixture adopted a CS:silt ratio of 1:4 by weight to mimic the fine-grained deposit of the South China Sea (SCS). Tetrahydrofuran (THF) was used to form the hydrate. Special specimen preparation procedures were adopted to form THF hydrate inside the intraparticle voids of the CS. The test results indicate that hydrate contributed to a significant part of the skeletal stiffness of the hydrate-bearing CS–silt mixture, and its Gmax at 5% hydrate saturation (Sh) was 4–6 times that of the host soil mixture. Such stiffness enhancement at a low Sh may be related to the cementation hydrate morphology. However, the Gmax of the hydrate-bearing CS–silt mixture was also sensitive to the effective stress for an Sh ranging between 5% and 31%, implying that the frame-supporting hydrate morphology also plays a key role in the skeletal stiffness of the soil mixture. Neither the existing cementation models nor the theoretical frame-supporting (i.e., Biot–Gassmann theory by Lee (BGTL)), could alone provide a satisfactory prediction of the test results. Thus, further theoretical study involving a combination of cementation and frame-supporting models is essential to understand the effects of complicated hydrate morphologies on the stiffness of soil with a substantial amount of intraparticle voids

A numerical study of the bearing capacity factor Nγ

Values of the bearing capacity factor Nγ are numerically computed using the method of triangular slices. Three assumptions of the value of ψ, the base angle of the active wedge, are analyzed, corresponding to the following three cases: (1) ψ = φ, the internal friction angle; (2) ψ = 45° + φ/2; and (3) ψ has a value such that Nγ is a minimum. The location of the critical failure surface is presented and the numerical solutions to Nγ for the three cases are approximated by simple equations. The influence of the base angle on the value of Nγ is investigated. Comparisons of the present solutions are made with those commonly used in foundation engineering practice.published_or_final_versio

Generalised median of a set of correspondences based on the hamming distance.

A correspondence is a set of mappings that establishes a relation between the elements of two data structures (i.e. sets of points, strings, trees or graphs). If we consider several correspondences between the same two structures, one option to define a representative of them is through the generalised median correspondence. In general, the computation of the generalised median is an NP-complete task. In this paper, we present two methods to calculate the generalised median correspondence of multiple correspondences. The first one obtains the optimal solution in cubic time, but it is restricted to the Hamming distance. The second one obtains a sub-optimal solution through an iterative approach, but does not have any restrictions with respect to the used distance. We compare both proposals in terms of the distance to the true generalised median and runtime

Protecting digital legal professional privilege LPP data

The Best Paper AwardTo enable free communication between legal advisor and his client for proper functioning of the legal system, certain documents, known as Legal professional privilege (LPP) documents, can be excluded as evidence for prosecution. In physical world, protection of LPP information is well addressed and proper procedure for handling LPP articles has been established. However, there does not exist a forensically sound procedure for protecting 'digital' LPP information. In this paper, we try to address this important, but rarely addressed, issue. We point out the difficulties of handling digital LPP data and discuss the shortcomings of the current practices, then we propose a feasible procedure for solving this problem. © 2008 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 3rd International Workshop on Systematic Approaches to Digital Forensic Engineering (IEEE/SADFE 2008), Oakland, CA., 22 May 2008. In Proceedings of the 3rd SADFE, 2008, p. 91-10

Defects recognition of microlens array using gabor filters and supported vector machine

2009-2010 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Disentangled Representations for Domain-generalized Cardiac Segmentation

Robust cardiac image segmentation is still an open challenge due to the inability of the existing methods to achieve satisfactory performance on unseen data of different domains. Since the acquisition and annotation of medical data are costly and time-consuming, recent work focuses on domain adaptation and generalization to bridge the gap between data from different populations and scanners. In this paper, we propose two data augmentation methods that focus on improving the domain adaptation and generalization abilities of state-to-the-art cardiac segmentation models. In particular, our "Resolution Augmentation" method generates more diverse data by rescaling images to different resolutions within a range spanning different scanner protocols. Subsequently, our "Factor-based Augmentation" method generates more diverse data by projecting the original samples onto disentangled latent spaces, and combining the learned anatomy and modality factors from different domains. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the importance of efficient adaptation between seen and unseen domains, as well as model generalization ability, to robust cardiac image segmentation.Comment: Accepted by STACOM 202