Determinants of Information Technology Usage Habit

Habit has been investigated as an antecedent of the information systems usage in a few literatures recent years. But little effort has been found on the determinants of habit itself in the information systems research. Drawing upon the insights from goal-directed behavior, habit/automaticity perspective, and IS continuance model, this paper proposes a research model for understanding the antecedents of the individual information technology usage habit. This study suggest that individual satisfaction, perceived enjoyment and user experience positively influence the strength of usage habit, and that perceived usefulness, confirmation of expectation and perceived enjoyment positively affect satisfaction. The implications are discussed, and contributions of this study are presented

Advanced Electrical Machines and Machine-Based Systems for Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

The paper presents a number of advanced solutions on electric machines and machine-based systems for the powertrain of electric vehicles (EVs). Two types of systems are considered, namely the drive systems designated to the EV propulsion and the power split devices utilized in the popular series-parallel hybrid electric vehicle architecture. After reviewing the main requirements for the electric drive systems, the paper illustrates advanced electric machine topologies, including a stator permanent magnet (stator-PM) motor, a hybrid-excitation motor, a flux memory motor and a redundant motor structure. Then, it illustrates advanced electric drive systems, such as the magnetic-geared in-wheel drive and the integrated starter generator (ISG). Finally, three machine-based implementations of the power split devices are expounded, built up around the dual-rotor PM machine, the dual-stator PM brushless machine and the magnetic-geared dual-rotor machine. As a conclusion, the development trends in the field of electric machines and machine-based systems for EVs are summarized

Product Integration Formats and Consumers’ Evaluations of the Online Extended Product: a Product Integration Perspective

After launching new products, firms are spending substantial amount of resources into cross-product integration to attract traffic. While customers place increasing value on product integration, little is known about the influence of product integration on consumers’ evaluation of extended product. Based on the product presentation perspective, this study proposed and validated a research model through a scenario-based experiment. The findings suggest that value added integration, rather than the data interface and add-on module integration, is associated with a higher level of perceived diagnosticity. Perceived diagnosticity had a significant influence on consumers’ evaluations of the extended product. This study contributes to the research and practice by providing insights about product promotion within the online context

Aquaporin-1 Deficiency Protects Against Myocardial Infarction by Reducing Both Edema and Apoptosis in Mice

Many studies have determined that AQP1 plays an important role in edema formation and resolution in various tissues via water transport across the cell membrane. The aim of this research was to determine both if and how AQP1 is associated with cardiac ischemic injury, particularly the development of edema following myocardial infarction (MI). AQP1+/+ and AQP1−/− mice were used to create the MI model. Under physiological conditions, AQP1−/− mice develop normally; however, in the setting of MI, they exhibit cardioprotective properties, as shown by reduced cardiac infarct size determined via NBT staining, improved cardiac function determined via left ventricular catheter measurements, decreased AQP1-dependent myocardial edema determined via water content assays and decreased apoptosis determined via TUNEL analysis. Cardiac ischemia caused by hypoxia secondary to AQP1 deficiency stabilized the expression of HIF-1α in endothelial cells and subsequently decreased microvascular permeability, resulting in the development of edema. The AQP1-dependent myocardial edema and apoptosis contributed to the development of MI. AQP1 deficiency protected cardiac function from ischemic injury following MI. Furthermore, AQP1 deficiency reduced microvascular permeability via the stabilization of HIF-1α levels in endothelial cells and decreased cellular apoptosis following MI

Adaptive backstepping position tracking control of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle system

In this work, an adaptive backstepping position tracking control using neural network (NN) approximation mechanism is proposed with respect to the translational system of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (QUAV). Concerning the translational system of QUAV, on the one hand, it does not satisfy the matching condition and is an under-actuation dynamic system; on the other hand, it is with strong nonlinearity containing some uncertainty. To achieve the control objective, an intermediary control is introduced to handle the under-actuation problem, then the backstepping technique is combined with NN approximation strategy, which is employed to compensate the uncertainty of the system. Compared with traditional adaptive methods, the proposed adaptive NN position control of QUAV can alleviate the computation burden effectively, because it only trains a scalar adaptive parameter instead of the adaptive parameter vector or matrix. Finally, according to Lyapunov stability proof and computer simulation, it is proved that the control tasks can be accomplished

Real-time visualization of clustering and intracellular transport of gold nanoparticles by correlative imaging.

Mechanistic understanding of the endocytosis and intracellular trafficking of nanoparticles is essential for designing smart theranostic carriers. Physico-chemical properties, including size, clustering and surface chemistry of nanoparticles regulate their cellular uptake and transport. Significantly, even single nanoparticles could cluster intracellularly, yet their clustering state and subsequent trafficking are not well understood. Here, we used DNA-decorated gold (fPlas-gold) nanoparticles as a dually emissive fluorescent and plasmonic probe to examine their clustering states and intracellular transport. Evidence from correlative fluorescence and plasmonic imaging shows that endocytosis of fPlas-gold follows multiple pathways. In the early stages of endocytosis, fPlas-gold nanoparticles appear mostly as single particles and they cluster during the vesicular transport and maturation. The speed of encapsulated fPlas-gold transport was critically dependent on the size of clusters but not on the types of organelle such as endosomes and lysosomes. Our results provide key strategies for engineering theranostic nanocarriers for efficient health management

Functional Coefficient Moving Average Model with Applications to forecasting Chinese CPI

This article establishes the functional coefficient moving average model (FMA), which allows the coefficient of the classical moving average model to adapt with a covariate. The functional coefficient is identified as a ratio of two conditional moments. Local linear estimation technique is used for estimation and asymptotic properties of the resulting estimator are investigated. Its convergence rate depends on whether the underlying function reaches its boundary or not, and asymptotic distribution could be nonstandard. A model specification test in the spirit of Hardle-Mammen (1993) is developed to check the stability of the functional coefficient. Intensive simulations have been conducted to study the finite sample performance of our proposed estimator, and the size and the power of the test. The real data example on CPI data from China Mainland shows the efficacy of FMA. It gains more than 20% improvement in terms of relative mean squared prediction error compared to moving average model