Users' social-interaction needs while shopping via online sales configurators

The growing adoption of social web technologies such as social software (SSW) in online configuration environments has enabled the possibility of supporting configurator users in interacting digitally with real people while they are shopping for customized products. Previous research has identified that online sales configurators (OSCs) are currently connected to SSW with different modalities to provide configurator users with a variety of options to digitally interact with real people. Enriching the configuration environment with social-interaction tools has engendered the phenomenon of social-product customization. Recent studies considered the social product-customization by investigating the impact that community feedback and social comparisons has on configurator user. However, the OSCs users' need to interact with different referents during their configuration process, and whether the SSW-OSCs connections respond to this need are still unsearched. To address this gap, the present study explores (a) whether users experience the need to interact with different referents while shopping via OSCs and (b) which interaction modalities users are looking for. By considering 943 configuration experiences from 189 users of 378 OSCs for various consumer goods, the present study finds that the need for social interaction by OSC users is highly relevant. Moreover, OSC users perceive the need to interact with different referents during different stages of the configuration process, and, depending on the referent with whom they wish to interact, they are interested in different interaction modalities in terms of how and where those interactions take place. These findings imply that mass customizers may leverage their customers' need to interact with real people while shopping online via OSCs in order to better engage their actual and potential customers

Obstacle-induced perturbations on turbulent quantities measured in airflows over the sea

An experimental campaign, aiming to investigate the perturbation effects induced by fixed obstacles on turbulence measurements in airflows at the air-sea interface, was carried out at the marine platform of the Italian Navy, located in the harbour of La Spezia (North Ligurian Sea, Italy), near Lerici, on 28th, 29th, and 30th June 1994. This study was prompted by the ever-growing interest in more reliable estimates of energy, mass, and momentum exchanges between water surfaces and atmosphere, whose measurements are severely limited by the geometrical constraints of floating or fixed platforms where they are installed. Two types of meteorological instruments have been used: fast response (20 and 21 Hz) ultrasonic anemometers and fluxmeters to measure turbulent momentum, sensible, and latent heat fluxes and slow-response sensors (less than 4 Hz and sampled at a rate of 1022 Hz) to measure average wind and temperature vertical profiles in the perturbed boundary layer. Both fast- and slow-response instruments have been located a few meters apart from each other, along horizontal and vertical directions, so as to establish also an upper limit to the reliability of horizontal and vertical divergences and gradients of average and turbulent quantities in the obstacle wake. It has been observed that, in the airflow perturbed by the marine platform and its fixed structures, the fast-response instruments of the same type and made by the same manufacturers gave results that compared well with each other, even if they were located at different positions and heights (except for the vertical component of turbulent wind speed), while the comparison among different types of fast instruments gave more uncertain results. On the contrary, as far as mean values of the physical quantities were concerned, the measurements of slow-response instruments in the perturbed airflow were always in good agreement with the averaged data of fast instruments, irrespective of their factory or construction features

Analysis of Quality in Brazilian E-Commerce (B2C)

The business world has changed the way how people think and act on products and services. In this context, the most recent amendment of the scenarios of retail operations has been the use of technology in sales and distribution. The internet has revolutionized the way people communicate, and moreover as they purchase their goods and services. Thus, the e-commerce, specifically the relation business to customer, or simply B2C, has acted so convincingly in this change of paradigm, namely the purchases in the physical location for the virtual site. Quotes online, ease of payment, price, speed of delivery, have become real order winners of applications for companies that compete in this segment. With the focus on quality of services on e-commerce, the research examines the dimension related to the quality of services, and looks for what of these factors are winners of applications. © 2010 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

Wind generated rogue waves in an annular wave flume

We investigate experimentally the statistical properties of a wind-generated wave field and the spontaneous formation of rogue waves in an annular flume. Unlike many experiments on rogue waves, where waves are mechanically generated, here the wave field is forced naturally by wind as it is in the ocean. What is unique about the present experiment is that the annular geometry of the tank makes waves propagating circularly in an {\it unlimited-fetch} condition. Within this peculiar framework, we discuss the temporal evolution of the statistical properties of the surface elevation. We show that rogue waves and heavy-tail statistics may develop naturally during the growth of the waves just before the wave height reaches a stationary condition. Our results shed new light on the formation of rogue waves in a natural environment

Analysis of test beam data taken with a prototype of TPC with resistive Micromegas for the T2K Near Detector upgrade

In this paper we describe the performance of a prototype of the High Angle Time Projection Chambers (HA-TPCs) that are being produced for the Near Detector (ND280) upgrade of the T2K experiment. The two HA-TPCs of ND280 will be instrumented with eight Encapsulated Resistive Anode Micromegas (ERAM) on each endplate, thus constituting in total 32 ERAMs. This innovative technique allows the detection of the charge emitted by ionization electrons over several pads, improving the determination of the track position. The TPC prototype has been equipped with the first ERAM module produced for T2K and with the HA-TPC readout electronics chain and it has been exposed to the DESY Test Beam in order to measure spatial and dE/dx resolution. In this paper we characterize the performances of the ERAM and, for the first time, we compare them with a newly developed simulation of the detector response. Spatial resolution better than 800 ${\mu \rm m}$ and dE/dx resolution better than 10% are observed for all the incident angles and for all the drift distances of interest. All the main features of the data are correctly reproduced by the simulation and these performances fully fulfill the requirements for the HA-TPCs of T2K

Characterization of Charge Spreading and Gain of Encapsulated Resistive Micromegas Detectors for the Upgrade of the T2K Near Detector Time Projection Chambers

An upgrade of the near detector of the T2K long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment is currently being conducted. This upgrade will include two new Time Projection Chambers, each equipped with 16 charge readout resistive Micromegas modules. A procedure to validate the performance of the detectors at different stages of production has been developed and implemented to ensure a proper and reliable operation of the detectors once installed. A dedicated X-ray test bench is used to characterize the detectors by scanning each pad individually and to precisely measure the uniformity of the gain and the deposited energy resolution over the pad plane. An energy resolution of about 10% is obtained. A detailed physical model has been developed to describe the charge dispersion phenomena in the resistive Micromegas anode. The detailed physical description includes initial ionization, electron drift, diffusion effects and the readout electronics effects. The model provides an excellent characterization of the charge spreading of the experimental measurements and allowed the simultaneous extraction of gain and RC information of the modules