Consumer adoption of online music services: the influence of perceived risks and risk relief strategies

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to offer insights into what consumers are looking for when downloading music and what different consumer groups might look for in commercial online music services, based on their current level of music downloading, and their likelihood of purchasing music online in the near future. Design/methodology/approach - The literature review focused on the risk and adoption theories. Interviews were used to help derive variables used in the design of a questionnaire. A web survey of 211 samples was used as a data collection method for this study. Findings - The results suggest that performance and time-loss aspects of perceived risks are playing an important role, while social and psychological aspects of risks are of the least concern to consumers. Where different types of users are concerned, those with the most experience of downloading music are the least profitable segment to target. Non and Light downloaders, on the other hand, should be the focus of marketing activities, although their needs are different. Originality/value - This paper highlighted that different groups have different behaviours towards downloading music. The finding helps the online music providers to focus on and capture the new age downloaders

Soil Detection using Panchromatic and Infrared Films

Efforts have been made in the soil survey program to improve soil mapping quality. Three types of aerial films were tested to determine if tonal differences exist among the three film types either singularly or in combination which would allow discrimination of soil series within a landscape across several land covers. The imagery consisted of panchromatic (600-700 nm), panchromatic (SOQ-700 nm), and black and white infrared (70Q-900 nm). The utility of these film types for discrimination of the components of soil mapping unit complexes was also tested. Differences were detected between films in the accuracy of discriminating soils due to land cover. The panchromatic (60Q-700 nm) film appeared to be most useful in areas with no land cover, crop residue, and small grain. In areas planted to alfalfa, the greatest accuracy was obtained using panchromatic (60Q-700 nm) or (500-700 nm) film. Generally, the infrared (70Q-900 nm) appeared to be most useful in areas used for pasture-where reflectance characteristics of the grasses are contrasting. Combinations of films improve accuracy in discriminating soils, in areas with no land cover and no crop residue. The combination of panchromatic (600-700 nm) and panchromatic (SOQ-700 nm) films were most useful in improving accuracy on landscape units with no land cover. Combinations of the panchromatic (60Q-700 nm) and infrared (700-900 nm) films were useful within soil groupings with more contrasting soil components. Over-all accuracy in discriminating soils was greater for soils within mapping units than for landscapes

Perturbation of strong Feller semigroups and well-posedness of semilinear stochastic equations on Banach spaces

We prove a Miyadera-Voigt type perturbation theorem for strong Feller semigroups. Using this result, we prove well-posedness of the semilinear stochastic equation dX(t) = [AX(t) + F(X(t))]dt + GdW_H(t) on a separable Banach space E, assuming that F is bounded and measurable and that the associated linear equation, i.e. the equation with F = 0, is well-posed and its transition semigroup is strongly Feller and satisfies an appropriate gradient estimate. We also study existence and uniqueness of invariant measures for the associated transition semigroup.Comment: Revision based on the referee's comment

Scrub-resistance Characteristics of Kitchen and Bathroom Wall-surfacing Materials.

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Quantum Theory Approach for Neutron Single and Double-Slit Diffraction

We provide a quantum approach description of neutron single and double-slit diffraction, with specific attention to the cold neutron diffraction ($\lambda \approx 20$\AA) carried out by Zeilinger et al. in 1988. We find the theoretical results are good agreement with experimental data.Comment: 10 page

Exponential splitting of bound states in a waveguide with a pair of distant windows

We consider Laplacian in a straight planar strip with Dirichlet boundary which has two Neumann ``windows'' of the same length the centers of which are $2l$ apart, and study the asymptotic behaviour of the discrete spectrum as $l\to\infty$. It is shown that there are pairs of eigenvalues around each isolated eigenvalue of a single-window strip and their distances vanish exponentially in the limit $l\to\infty$. We derive an asymptotic expansion also in the case where a single window gives rise to a threshold resonance which the presence of the other window turns into a single isolated eigenvalue

Initial Conditions and the Structure of the Singularity in Pre-Big-Bang Cosmology

We propose a picture, within the pre-big-bang approach, in which the universe emerges from a bath of plane gravitational and dilatonic waves. The waves interact gravitationally breaking the exact plane symmetry and lead generically to gravitational collapse resulting in a singularity with the Kasner-like structure. The analytic relations between the Kasner exponents and the initial data are explicitly evaluated and it is shown that pre-big-bang inflation may occur within a dense set of initial data. Finally, we argue that plane waves carry zero gravitational entropy and thus are, from a thermodynamical point of view, good candidates for the universe to emerge from.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, epsfig. 3 figures included. Minor changes; paragraph added in the introduction, references added and typos corrected. Final version published in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Mid-infrared diagnostics of starburst galaxies: clumpy, dense structures in star-forming regions in the Antennae (NGC 4038/4039)

Recently, mid-infrared instruments have become available on several large ground-based telescopes, resulting in data sets with unprecedented spatial resolution at these long wavelengths. In this paper we examine 'ground-based-only' diagnostics, which can be used in the study of star-forming regions in starburst galaxies. By combining output from the stellar population synthesis code Starburst 99 with the photoionization code Mappings, we model stellar clusters and their surrounding interstellar medium, focusing on the evolution of emission lines in the N- and Q-band atmospheric windows (8-13 and 16.5-24.5 micron respectively) and those in the near-infrared. We address the detailed sensitivity of various emission line diagnostics to stellar population age, metallicity, nebular density, and ionization parameter. Using our model results, we analyze observations of two stellar clusters in the overlap region of the Antennae galaxies obtained with VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid Infrared (VISIR). We find evidence for clumpy, high density, ionized gas. The two clusters are young (younger than 2.5 and 3 Myr respectively), the surrounding interstellar matter is dense (10^4 cm^-3 or larger) and can be characterized by a high ionization parameter (logU > -1.53). Detailed analysis of the mid-infrared spectral features shows that a (near-)homogeneous medium cannot account for the observations, and that complex structure on scales below the resolution limit, containing several young stellar clusters embedded in clumpy gas, is more likely.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures (3 in color), accepted for publication in Ap

Bianchi VIII Empty Futures

Using a qualitative analysis based on the Hamiltonian formalism and the orthonormal frame representation we investigate whether the chaotic behaviour which occurs close to the initial singularity is still present in the far future of Bianchi VIII models. We describe some features of the vacuum Bianchi VIII models at late times which might be relevant for studying the nature of the future asymptote of the general vacuum inhomogeneous solution to the Einstein field equations.Comment: 22 pages, no figures, Latex fil

High-Resolution Imaging of Molecular Gas and Dust in the Antennae (NGC 4038/39): Super Giant Molecular Complexes

We present new aperture synthesis CO maps of the Antennae (NGC 4038/39) obtained with the Caltech Millimeter Array. These sensitive images show molecular emission associated with the two nuclei and a partial ring of star formation to the west of NGC 4038, as well as revealing the large extent of the extra-nuclear region of star formation (the ``overlap region''), which dominates the CO emission from this system. The largest molecular complexes have masses of 3-6x10^8 M_sun, typically an order of magnitude larger than the largest structures seen to date in more quiescent galaxy disks. The extremely red luminous star clusters identified previously with HST are well-correlated with the CO emission, which supports the conclusion that they are highly embedded young objects rather than old globular clusters. There is an excellent correlation between the CO emission and the 15 micron emission seen with ISO, particularly for the brightest regions. The most massive complexes in the overlap region have similar [NeIII]/[NeII] ratios, which implies that all these regions are forming many massive stars. However, only the brightest mid-infrared peak shows strong, rising continuum emission longward of 10 microns, indicative of very small dust grains heated to high temperatures by their proximity to nearby luminous stars. Since these grains are expected to be removed rapidly from the immediate environment of the massive stars, it is possible that this region contains very young (< 1 Myr) sites of star formation. Alternatively, fresh dust grains could be driven into the sphere of influence of the massive stars, perhaps by the bulk motions of two giant molecular complexes. The kinematics and morphology of the CO emission in this region provide some support for this second scenario.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, 13 pages, 5 figures, higher quality color images available at http://www.astro.cornell.edu/staff/vassilis/papers/ngc4038_co.ps.g