Facebook and Google Usage in Taiwan’s College Students

This study proposes and tests a research model which was developed based on the uses-and-gratifications theory. The aim of this study was to investigate if selected factors have differential predicting power on the use of Facebook and Google service in Taiwan. This study employed seven constructs: purposive value, hedonic value, social identity, social support, interpersonal relationship, personality traits, and intimacy as the factors predicting Facebook and Google usage. An electronic survey technique was used to collect data from Internet. The results showed that hedonic value and social identity constructs can significantly predict Facebook usage and purposive value has significant predicting power on Google usage. The construct intimacy is the most significant factor for both Google and Facebook usages. Our findings make suggestions for social network sites (SNSs) providers that to differentiate their SNSs quality from others’, both functional aspects and emotional factors need to be taken into consideration

Set voltage distribution stabilized by constructing an oxygen reservoir in resistive random access memory

In this letter, the instability mechanism of RRAM was investigated, and a technique was developed to stabilize the distribution of high resistance state (HRS) and better concentrate the SET voltage. In previous research, we found that an interface-type switching characteristic was observed on the I-V curve beneath the filament-type switching behavior, owing to the oxygen accumulation effect. In this letter, this interface-type switching characteristic is used to fit the natural distribution of HRS for an analysis of the instability mechanism. According to the results, the reason for the HRS distribution is the accumulation of extra oxygen ions which are left over from a lower degree of oxygen and oxygen vacancy recombination during the reset process. We propose a solution which creates an extra oxygen reservoir by changing the surface topography of the electrode to store the surplus oxygen ions from the reset process, eliminating the accumulation effect, and indeed improving stability. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Applying Information Integration Theory on the Modeling of Price Forecasting – An Example of Online Trading on Ebay

Because of the booming of internet technology and the great promotion internet portal, on-line exchange is more popular in the recent years. This study attempts to integrate concepts of Information Integrate Theory; Anchoring and Adjustment Method to explore the buyer’s trade behavior between two different cultures. After observing the historical data on Yahoo’s Taiwan and Yahoo’s America, the anchoring effect and order effect during the process of a C2C auction is proposed in this study. Chinese buyers seem willing to pay much their attention on pricing during the whole process of an auction than American people do. But, the same phenomenon does exist for American doing a bid on a higher-priced luxury commodity. It sounds for a luxury product, there is a common pricing strategy existed between people of two different cultures. The results provide a very promised direction for knowledge capture and decision analysis for trading, and more works for data mining on pricing for different commodities, cultures, or other kinds of variables related to products and members of market might be a possible future approach for building a knowledge management system for a pricing mechanism for the market

Lutein Protects against Methotrexate-Induced and Reactive Oxygen Species-Mediated Apoptotic Cell Injury of IEC-6 Cells

Purpose High-dose chemotherapy using methotrexate (MTX) frequently induces side effects such as mucositis that leads to intestinal damage and diarrhea. Several natural compounds have been demonstrated of their effectiveness in protecting intestinal epithelial cells from these adverse effects. In this paper, we investigated the protection mechanism of lutein against MTX-induced damage in IEC-6 cells originating from the rat jejunum crypt. Methods: The cell viability, induced-apoptosis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, and mitochondrial membrane potential in IEC-6 cells under MTX treatment were examined in the presence or absence of lutein. Expression level of Bcl2, Bad and ROS scavenging enzymes (including SOD, catalase and Prdx1) were detected by quantitative RT-PCR. Results: The cell viability of IEC-6 cells exposed to MTX was decreased in a dose- and time-dependent manner. MTX induces mitochondrial membrane potential loss, ROS generation and caspase 3 activation in IEC-6 cells. The cytotoxicity of MTX was reduced in IEC-6 cells by the 24 h pre-treatment of lutein. We found that pre-treatment of lutein significantly reduces MTX-induced ROS and apoptosis. The expression of SOD was up-regulated by the pre-treatment of lutein in the MTX-treated IEC-6 cells. These results indicated that lutein can protect IEC-6 cells from the chemo-drugs induced damage through increasing ROS scavenging ability. Conclusion: The MTX-induced apoptosis of IEC-6 cells was shown to be repressed by the pre-treatment of lutein, which may represent a promising adjunct to conventional chemotherapy for preventing intestinal damages