An adoption model to assess e-service technology acceptance

As the world today is witnessing the remarkable growth of information and communication technology development and the Internet popularity, the widespread use of the electronic service (e-service) is becoming inevitable. Many e-service projects have been developed but since they are not used by users, they cannot help to improve organizational performance. As the user adoption of an e-service is an essential key for a successful and an effective implementation of any e-service project, there is a need to access the user acceptance of the system. This research developed the E-Service Technology Acceptance Model (ETAM) to assess the user acceptance of an e-service technology. According to the literature review in the field of e-service technology and the acceptance theories, this research identified the main factors influencing the acceptance of e-services, namely; satisfaction and quality where the dimensions of these factors were extracted from the previous studies. In order to categorise the dimensions, an exploratory survey was developed and conducted among the university students and then, the Exploratory Factor Analysis was applied using the SPSS Software. Then, a confirmatory survey was designed and tested to test the validity (content and construct) and the reliability of the instrument, before it was used to evaluate the ETAM. The survey was conducted among the e-service users in Malaysia and 426 questionnaires were collected. Finally, the Structural Equation Modelling using Lisrel was applied to validate the casual relations between the constructs and to assess the goodness-of-fit for the ETAM. The result of this study revealed that quality, security and satisfaction significantly influenced the intention to use an e-service and consequently the acceptance of the e-service technology. The ETAM model developed in this study can be used as a foundation for e-service providers to develop strategies to encourage people to use e-service and to increase the usage and the acceptance of e-services in Malaysia. Moreover, the ETAM which explains 71.8% of variance can help to evaluate and predict how users will respond to an e-service before starting to develop an e-service project. This model can also be applied it to improve the provided e-service to increase the usage rate

An Investigation into the Role of Nano-Silica in Improving Strength of Lightweight Concrete

Development of technology and human’s access to nanotechnology brings about the necessity to use nanotechnology in the concrete industry. Since the decrease of particles size leads to new properties, and unusual mechanical, electrical, and magnetic properties which are inaccessible in usual state, nanotechnology is highly considered. The emergence of nanotechnology in concrete industry has made great changes in many of the concrete properties. Dead load resulted from weight of ceilings and separation walls is one of the fundamental problems in seismic design and structures implementation especially in tall buildings. Obviously, using the lightweight materials could decrease the dead load, weight of beams, columns, and foundation. However, low compressive resistance of lightweight concrete mostly has a direct ratio with the specific gravity of it. Lightweight concrete has a low resistance as a result of its low specific weight. Silica nanoparticles (SNs) have a high surface energy as a result of their high specific surface.  Therefore, they are supposed to have a high pozzolanic reaction and they accelerate hydration reactions. Since the increase of concrete compressive strength is highly noticeable in the new technology, the increase of effective materials with the purpose of increasing compressive strength of concrete could increase the life circle of concrete structures. The present paper intends to investigate the effect of silica nanoparticles on compressive strength, tensile strength, bending strength, contraction of lightweight concrete, and concrete microstructure

An Investigation of Factors Affecting the Employees' Quality of Work Life and Assessment of the Status of These Factors

The present study investigated the factors affecting the quality of work life of employees and assessed the status of these components in Mazandaran Gas Company. The population of this study included the employees of this company, and statistical sample involved 329 employees. Walton model was used to study the quality of work life components. To analyze data, test research hypotheses, and assess the status of components, the Chi-square test, Wilcoxon, Friedman, and confirmatory factor analysis were used. The results revealed that fair and appropriate compensation, providing opportunities for continued growth and safety, social  relevance of work life, and development of human capacities were at a good status, and healthy and safe environment as well as  social cohesion and integration were at an average status,  and total space of life and constitutionalism were at an adverse status

Mechanical properties of copper/cotton core-spun yarns produced by siro and ring spinning methods

Copper/cotton core-spun yarns have been produced using siro and conventional ring methods, and their mechanicalproperties and cover factor are analyzed. The results indicate that the cover factor and tensile properties of copper/cottoncore-spun yarns decrease with an increase in copper core diameter. Nevertheless, the siro copper/cotton core-spun yarnsexhibit higher tensile properties as compared to conventional ring copper/cotton core-spun yarns

Designing a Robust Decentralized Energy Transactions Framework for Active Prosumers in Peer-to-Peer Local Electricity Markets

In this paper, a fully decentralized local energy market based on peer-to-peer(P2P) trading is proposed for small-scale prosumers. In the proposed market, the prosumers are classified as buyers and sellers and can bilaterally engage in energy trading (P2P) with each other. The buyer prosumers are equipped with electrical storage and can participate in a demand response (DR) program while protecting their privacy. In addition to bilateral negotiating with the local sellers, these players can compensate for their energy deficiency from the upstream market as the retail market at hours without local generation. In this paper, the retail market price is assumed uncertain. Robust optimization is applied to model this uncertainty in the buyer prosumers model. The proposed decentralized robust optimization guarantees the solution’s existence for each realization of uncertainty components. Furthermore, it performs optimization to realize the hard worse case from uncertainty components. A fully decentralized approach known as the fast alternating direction method of multipliers (FADMM) is employed to solve the proposed decentralized robust problem. The proposed approach does not require third-party involvement as a supervisory node nor disclose the players’ private information. Numerical studies were carried out on a small distribution system with several prosumers. The numerical results suggested the operationality and applicability of the proposed decentralized robust framework and the decentralized solving method