Investigating the Relationship among Characteristics of Social Commerce, Consumers’ Trust and Trust Performance

Social commerce as a subset of e-commerce, popularizes rapidly with an increasing number of users, and consumers’ trust has become a crucial factor in the success of social commerce firms, and impacts on their decision on purchasing. In this regard, the study tries to research the characteristics of social commerce (transaction safety, concentration and enjoyment, communication and information quality) that influence consumers’ trust and assess the effects of trust on trust performance (purchase and word-of-mouth intentions), and trust performance will provides a basis for consumers to decide to purchase, and put forward feasible suggestions to social commerce firms. The results of an empirical analysis based on a sample of 133 users indicate that all the characteristics of social commerce involved had significant effects on trust, and then will positively influence trust performance

Research on Static Triaxial Mechanical Properties of New CementSoil Reinforced with Polypropylene Fiber

Through the laboratory test, the mechanical properties of cementsoil with adding desulfurization gypsum, fly ash, and polypropylene fiber were studied. Three different percentages (0%, 0.5%, and 1.0%) of polypropylene fiber were mixed into new cementsoil for which the cement content is 15% of the dry soil weight, the desulfurization gypsum content is 2% of the dry soil weight, and the fly ash content is 1.0% of the dry soil weight. The new cementsoil strength reinforced with polypropylene fiber was studied by triaxial test under different polypropylene fiber mixing ratio, different age, and different confining pressure. The experimental results show that, compared with ordinary soil, the deviatoric stress and the peak shear strength reinforced with polypropylene fiber have different amplitude increase. At the same time, the internal friction angle of new cementsoil with polypropylene fiber increases slightly with the growth of the age. The stress-strain curve of the polypropylene fiber cementsoil has the typical work hardening characteristic and has the characteristics of bulge fracture

Spatiotemporal Changes in Mulberry-Dyke-Fish Ponds in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area over the Past 40 Years

Mulberry-dyke-fish pond ecosystems are a representative traditional eco-agriculture in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). Investigations about the changes in the systems and their relevant water environments under the background of rapid urbanization can provide valuable information to formulate sustainable protection and development strategies. Using the Landsat images obtained after 1986, this study combined supervised classification and visual interpretation approaches, as well as water intensity index and synthesized index to identify the spatial patterns of changes in the ponds in the GBA over the past 40 years. The results indicated that during the period 1986–2013, the total surface area of the ponds in the GBA increased significantly and peaked in 2013 with a total increase of 84.63%; After that, the total surface area showed a downward trend with a total decrease of approximately 31.34%. The year of 2013 was identified as the milestone of the changes. The results proved that human activities have continuously influenced the spatial distribution and size of fish ponds in the past 40 years. The fish ponds had transformed from near-natural ponds with different sizes and a near-natural random distribution in the early stage into an artificial distribution and an artificial shape. Land use changes, industrial transfer, Government guidance and financial motives were the major drivers to the changes. If no effective measures are taken, this shrinking trend in the ponds will remain in the future

Fabrication of NiO/NiCo2O4 Mixtures as Excellent Microwave Absorbers

Abstract The NiO/NiCo2O4 mixtures with unique yolk-shell structure were synthesized by a simple hydrothermal route and subsequent thermal treatment. The elemental distribution, composition, and microstructure of the samples were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscope (SEM), respectively. The microwave absorption property was investigated by using vector network analysis (VNA). The results indicated that the excellent electromagnetic wave absorption property of the NiO/NiCo2O4 mixtures was achieved due to the unique yolk-shell structure. In detail, the maximum reflection loss (RL) value of the sample reached up to − 37.0 dB at 12.2 GHz and the absorption bandwidth with RL below − 10 dB was 4.0 GHz with a 2.0-mm-thick absorber. In addition, the NiO/NiCo2O4 mixtures prepared at high temperature, exhibited excellent thermal stability. Possible mechanisms were investigated for improving the microwave absorption properties of the samples

Enhanced Phase Transition Properties of VO2 Thin Films on 6H-SiC (0001) Substrate Prepared by Pulsed Laser Deposition

For growing high quality epitaxial VO2 thin films, the substrate with suitable lattice parameters is very important if considering the lattice matching. In addition, the thermal conductivity between the substrate and epitaxial film should be also considered. Interestingly, the c-plane of hexagonal 6H-SiC with high thermal conductivity has a similar lattice structure to the VO2 (010), which enables epitaxial growth of high quality VO2 films on 6H-SiC substrates. In the current study, we deposited VO2 thin films directly on 6H-SiC (0001) single-crystal substrates by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and systematically investigated the crystal structures and surface morphologies of the films as the function of growth temperature and film thickness. With optimized conditions, the obtained epitaxial VO2 film showed pure monoclinic phase structure and excellent phase transition properties. Across the phase transition from monoclinic structure (M1) to tetragonal rutile structure (R), the VO2/6H-SiC (0001) film demonstrated a sharp resistance change up to five orders of magnitude and a narrow hysteresis width of only 3.3 °C

Facile and green preparation of solid carbon nanoonions via catalytic co-pyrolysis of lignin and polyethylene and their adsorption capability towards Cu(ii)

Carbon nanomaterials, such as carbon nanoonions (CNOs), possess promising applications in various fields. There are urgent demands to synthesize carbon nanomaterials from a green and renewable carbon source. In this study, solid CNOs with relatively uniform size distribution (with diameters of about 30–50 nm), abundant structure defects and oxygen-containing surface functional groups (such as –OH and –COOH) are developed from co-pyrolysis of lignin (LG) and polyethylene (PE) in the presence of Ni-based catalysts. The type of catalyst, the concentration of catalyst and catalytic co-pyrolysis temperature play important roles in the morphologies and properties of CNOs as confirmed by TEM and SEM. Furthermore, the produced CNOs can act as a low-cost and highly-efficient adsorbent to remove Cu(ii) from aqueous solution according to a homogeneous monolayer, chemical action-dominated, endothermic and spontaneous process. The theoretical maximum adsorption capacity of CNOs calculated from the Langmuir model is 100.00 mg g(−1). Surface deposition, complexation, π electron–cation interaction and electrostatic interaction are responsible for the adsorption of Cu(ii) using the prepared CNOs

41 mW High Average Power Picosecond 177.3 nm Laser by Second-Harmonic Generation in KBBF

We report on the generation of high average power, high repetition rate, and picosecond (ps) deep-ultraviolet (DUV) 177.3 nm laser. The DUV laser is produced by second-harmonic generation of a frequency-tripled mode-locked Nd: YVO4 laser (ps, 80 MHz) with KBBF nonlinear crystal. The influence of different fundamental beam diameters on DUV output power and KBBF–SHG conversion efficiency are investigated. Under the 355 nm pump power of 7.5 W with beam diameter of 145 μm, 41 mW DUV output at 177.3 nm is obtained. To our knowledge, this is the highest average power for the 177.3 nm laser. Our results provide a power scaling by three times with respect to previous best works