Essays on Alternative Perspectives on Cross-Border B2B Trust and Commitment

The relationship marketing literature suggests trust and commitment are two central facets in business-to-business (B2B) relationships. However, extant studies criticize how relationship marketing literature theorizes B2B trust and commitment. This dissertation aims to draw various perspectives from disciplines of Sociology, Psychology, and Management Sciences to examine the cultivation of B2B trust and commitment to shed lights on the literature. In Essay 1, I reported empirical findings on 202 international buyer-seller relationships. Essay 1 reveals that, within bilateral asset specificity, (1) achieving goodwill reciprocity always enhances trust, regardless of the duration contingency; (2) violating equivalence reciprocity impairs trust over the duration. Essay 1 resolves inconsistent findings of how relationship duration influence on B2B trust in the relationship marketing literature. Indeed, another contribution of Essay 1 is to extend the field’s understandings on bilateral asset specificity by proposing the underlying reciprocity in addition to economic-based explanation. In Essay 2, I argued that, in the triadic business relationship among exporter, importer, and host market buyers, importers are threatened by the risk of disintermediation and face the conundrum between to support and to against the supplier’s global marketing in the host market. I reported findings from 164 triadic business. Essay 2 empirically identifies that, from the importer’s view, the three focal dyadic business relationships (i.e. exporter-importer, importer-buyer, and exporter-buyer) are interconnected with each other. Importers employ the reference point approach to manage the multi-dyadic business relationships. The results reveal that, importers holistically evaluate the buyer’s relative commitment to the importer themselves than to the upstream exporter to form their host market strategies

Global and Seasonal Scintillation Morphology in the Equatorial Region Derived from ROCSAT-1 In-situ Data

The global/seasonal distributions of the scintillation occurrence rate are obtained from the in-situ density measurement of the ROCSAT-1 using a modified procedure reported by Wernik et al. (2007). A least-squares curve fitting in the optimal trust region is used to obtain the spectral slope for the density irregularity structure and the outer scale of the scintillation. The distribution of the S4 index for the weak scintillation (S4 < 0.3) is almost identical to that of the equatorial irregularity distribution reported in the literature. However, as the scintillation becomes stronger (0.3 < S4 < 0.6), the latitudinal distribution moves to the equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) region. In addition, the distributions of the outer scale values that are useful for the study of the physical evolution of the irregularity structure are also obtained. The occurrence distribution of scintillation activity with several parameters such as dip-latitude, longitude, local time, solar activity, and geomagnetic activity during different seasons are presented and discussed in this paper

Mechanisms of Hard-to-Cook Defect in Cowpeas: Verification Via Microstructure Examination

It has been hypothesized that part of the hard-to-cook (HTC) defect in cowpeas is due to decreases in solubility and thermal stability of intracellular proteins during storage since coagulated proteins would limit water to starch and prevent full swelling during cooking. To verify this hypothesis, effects of soaking and heating temperature on texture, water absorption, protein water extractability and microstructure of control and HTC cowpea seeds (aged or treated) were studied. Scanning electron microscopy showed no structural difference between dry control and dry aged seeds. However, after soaking, in contrast to the control, aged seeds exhibited a coarse protein matrix with tightly embedded starch granules and resistance to fracture. Treated seeds also showed ti ght embedment of starch granules. This indicates that storage proteins had coagulated or aggregated during aging or treatments , as evidenced also by very low extractability. Unlike 60°C, heating at 85°C dramatically decreased protein extractability and led starch granules to swell partially in control seeds and little in HTC seeds. When cooked (IOO \u27 C), HTC seeds showed lack of cell separation and restricted starch swelling, all of which were in sharp contrast with the control. Results not only verified the aforementioned hypothesis but also reaffirmed the role of cell middle lamella, implying involvements of multiple mechanisms in bean hardening

Automatic Fall Risk Detection based on Imbalanced Data

In recent years, the declining birthrate and aging population have gradually brought countries into an ageing society. Regarding accidents that occur amongst the elderly, falls are an essential problem that quickly causes indirect physical loss. In this paper, we propose a pose estimation-based fall detection algorithm to detect fall risks. We use body ratio, acceleration and deflection as key features instead of using the body keypoints coordinates. Since fall data is rare in real-world situations, we train and evaluate our approach in a highly imbalanced data setting. We assess not only different imbalanced data handling methods but also different machine learning algorithms. After oversampling on our training data, the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) algorithm achieves the best performance. The F1 scores for three different classes, Normal, Fall, and Lying, are 1.00, 0.85 and 0.96, which is comparable to previous research. The experiment shows that our approach is more interpretable with the key feature from skeleton information. Moreover, it can apply in multi-people scenarios and has robustness on medium occlusion

Comparison of the Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome Between the Criteria for Taiwanese and Japanese and the Projected Probability of Stroke in Elderly Hypertensive Taiwanese

SummaryBackgroundThe cutoff of abdominal circumference for metabolic syndrome (MS) defined by the Bureau of Health Promotion (BHP) of Taiwan for Taiwanese (men, 90cm; women, 80cm) and by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) for Japanese (men, 85cm; women, 90cm) differs. This study aimed to examine the impact of this difference on the prevalence of MS and the impact of an MS diagnosis on the projected risk of stroke in hypertensive Taiwanese.MethodsMS was examined in a sample of 3,472 hypertensive patients (aged 55–80 years; 1,709 women) across Taiwan. The 10-year probability of stroke estimated from the Framingham equation was compared between MS and non-MS patients.ResultsThe prevalence of MS using the BHP criteria was 59.2% using the BHP criteria (95% confidence interval, CI, 57.6–60.8%; men, 52.5%; women, 66.1%) and 48.9% by the IDF criteria (95% CI, 47.2–50.5%; men, 61.3%; women, 36.1%). Both criteria showed that, compared with non-MS, MS has higher predicted 10-year probability of stroke (BHP, 0.153 ± 0.115 vs. 0.133 ± 0.105; IDF, 0.159 ± 0.109 vs. 0.132 ± 0.112; both p < 0.001) because of the difference in women (BHP, 0.143 ± 0.124 vs. 0.102 ± 0.091; IDF, 0.147 ± 0.121 vs. 0.118 ± 0.110; both p < 0.001) rather than men (BHP, p = 0.21; IDF, p = 0.29).ConclusionBoth criteria demonstrate that MS is highly prevalent in elderly hypertensive patients in Taiwan. Additionally in women, but not men, the predicted probability of stroke is higher in MS than in non-MS patients. The diagnosis of MS is potentially useful for identifying elderly hypertensive females with an elevated risk of stroke in Taiwan

Antibacterial properties of silver nanoparticles in three different sizes and their nanocomposites with a new waterborne polyurethane

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are strong bactericidal agents but they are also cytotoxic. Embedding them in a polymer matrix may reduce their cytotoxic effect. In the present study, AgNPs in three average sizes were tested for their antibacterial activities and cytotoxicity. Nanocomposites from a new waterborne polyetherurethane (PEU) ionomer and AgNPs were prepared without the use of any crosslinker. It was observed that the antibacterial activity of AgNPs against Escherichia coli started at the effective concentration of 0.1–1 ppm, while that against Staphylococcus aureus started at higher concentrations of 1–10 ppm. Cytotoxicity of AgNPs was observed at the concentration of 10 ppm. AgNPs with smaller average size showed greater antibacterial activity as well as cytotoxicity. The PEU synthesized in this study showed high tensile strength, and the addition of AgNPs at all sizes further increased its thermal stability. The delicate surface features of nanophases, however, were only observed in nanocomposites with either small-or medium-sized AgNPs. PEU-Ag nanocomposites had a strong bacteriostatic effect on the growth of E. coli and S. aureus. The proliferation of endothelial cells on PEU-Ag nanocomposites was enhanced, whereas the platelet adhesion was reduced. The expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase gene was upregulated on PEU-Ag containing small-sized AgNPs (30 ppm) or medium-sized AgNPs (60 ppm). This effect was not as remarkable in nanocomposites from large-sized AgNPs. Overall, nanocomposites from the PEU and 60 ppm of the medium-sized (5 nm) AgNPs showed the best biocompatibility and antibacterial activity. Addition of smaller or larger AgNPs did not produce as substantial an effect in PEU, especially for the larger AgNPs