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

Anomalous Electron Trajectory in Topological Insulators

We present a general theory about electron orbital motions in topological insulators. An in-plane electric field drives spin-up and spin-down electrons bending to opposite directions, and skipping orbital motions, a counterpart of the integer quantum Hall effect, are formed near the boundary of the sample. The accompanying Zitterbewegung can be found and controlled by tuning external electric fields. Ultrafast flipping electron spin leads to a quantum side jump in the topological insulator, and a snake-orbit motion in two-dimensional electron gas with spin-orbit interactions. This feature provides a way to control electron orbital motion by manipulating electron spin.Comment: 5 pages and 4 figures for the letter, 6 pagers for the online supplemental materia

Unified Gas-kinetic Wave-Particle Methods III: Multiscale Photon Transport

In this paper, we extend the unified gas-kinetic wave-particle (UGKWP) method to the multiscale photon transport. In this method, the photon free streaming and scattering processes are treated in an un-splitting way. The duality descriptions, namely the simulation particle and distribution function, are utilized to describe the photon. By accurately recovering the governing equations of the unified gas-kinetic scheme (UGKS), the UGKWP preserves the multiscale dynamics of photon transport from optically thin to optically thick regime. In the optically thin regime, the UGKWP becomes a Monte Carlo type particle tracking method, while in the optically thick regime, the UGKWP becomes a diffusion equation solver. The local photon dynamics of the UGKWP, as well as the proportion of wave-described and particle-described photons are automatically adapted according to the numerical resolution and transport regime. Compared to the $S_n$ -type UGKS, the UGKWP requires less memory cost and does not suffer ray effect. Compared to the implicit Monte Carlo (IMC) method, the statistical noise of UGKWP is greatly reduced and computational efficiency is significantly improved in the optically thick regime. Several numerical examples covering all transport regimes from the optically thin to optically thick are computed to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the UGKWP method. In comparison to the $S_n$ -type UGKS and IMC method, the UGKWP method may have several-order-of-magnitude reduction in computational cost and memory requirement in solving some multsicale transport problems.Comment: 27 pages, 15 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1810.0598

Behavior Participation in Virtual Worlds: A Triandis Model Perspective

Emerging virtual technology suggests that we are moving into a new age of technology, Web 3.0, in which social networks and 3D virtual environments are prominent. Many new business opportunities present themselves in this context. However, business success in the new virtual world requires an understanding of how people behave in virtual worlds so that they can be effectively and efficiently managed. This paper examines how people behave in virtual worlds by using a Triandis interpersonal behavior model. The data were collected in Cyworld, and the results were tested by Lisrel 8.70. We examined two types of behaviors, giving information and obtaining information. We show that although behavioral intention plays a role in shaping virtual world behavior, habit plays a major role in determining whether people will give information and obtain information. What is more interesting is that behavior related to obtaining information is a strong antecedent of behavior related to giving information in virtual worlds. The conclusion provides several implications for both researchers and virtual world developers

A Case Report of a Metastatic Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor Occurring in Femur

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are mesenchymal neoplasms that most commonly affect the stomach or small intestine, but can occur anywhere throughout the gastrointestinal tract. To the best of our knowledge, few cases have been reported in the literature about the femur metastasis of GIST. This paper describes a metastasis of a gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST) to the femur in a 62-year-old male, 2 years after treatment for a gastric primary. There were no signs of tumor recurrence at followup after 12 mo. This case suggests that the femur can be a potential metastatic site of GIST