Thermodynamics of Modified Cosmic Chaplygin Gas

In this paper, we examine the thermodynamic features of an exotic fluid known as modified cosmic Chaplygin gas in the context of homogeneous isotropic universe model. For this purpose, the behavior of physical parameters are discussed that help to analyze nature of the universe. Using specific heat formalism, the validity of third law of thermodynamics is checked. Furthermore, with the help of thermodynamic entities, the thermal equation of state is also discussed. The thermodynamic stability is explored by means of adiabatic, specific heat and isothermal conditions from classical thermodynamics. It is concluded that the considered fluid configuration is thermodynamically stable and expands adiabatically for an appropriate choice of parameters.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, to appear in AHE

Efficient algorithms for dilated mappings of binary trees

The problem is addressed to find a 1-1 mapping of the vertices of a binary tree onto those of a target binary tree such that the son of a node on the first binary tree is mapped onto a descendent of the image of that node in the second binary tree. There are two natural measures of the cost of this mapping, namely the dilation cost, i.e., the maximum distance in the target binary tree between the images of vertices that are adjacent in the original tree. The other measure, expansion cost, is defined as the number of extra nodes/edges to be added to the target binary tree in order to ensure a 1-1 mapping. An efficient algorithm to find a mapping of one binary tree onto another is described. It is shown that it is possible to minimize one cost of mapping at the expense of the other. This problem arises when designing pipelined arithmetic logic units (ALU) for special purpose computers. The pipeline is composed of ALU chips connected in the form of a binary tree. The operands to the pipeline can be supplied to the leaf nodes of the binary tree which then process and pass the results up to their parents. The final result is available at the root. As each new application may require a distinct nesting of operations, it is useful to be able to find a good mapping of a new binary tree over existing ALU tree. Another problem arises if every distinct required binary tree is known beforehand. Here it is useful to hardwire the pipeline in the form of a minimal supertree that contains all required binary trees

Investigating Evaluation Measures in Ant Colony Algorithms for Learning Decision Tree Classifiers

Ant-Tree-Miner is a decision tree induction algorithm that is based on the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) meta- heuristic. Ant-Tree-Miner-M is a recently introduced extension of Ant-Tree-Miner that learns multi-tree classification models. A multi-tree model consists of multiple decision trees, one for each class value, where each class-based decision tree is responsible for discriminating between its class value and all other values present in the class domain (one vs. all). In this paper, we investigate the use of 10 different classification quality evaluation measures in Ant-Tree-Miner-M, which are used for both candidate model evaluation and model pruning. Our experimental results, using 40 popular benchmark datasets, identify several quality functions that substantially improve on the simple Accuracy quality function that was previously used in Ant-Tree-Miner-M

Monetary policy restriction and dividend behavior of Pakistani firms: an empirical analysis

Studies upon impact of macro variables on firm’s dividend policy are very limited and specifically rare in Pakistan perspective. Main purpose of this research paper is to observe impact of restricted monetary policy on dividend behavior of Pakistani firms. During restricted monetary policy, cost of external funds increases and firms prefer to utilize internal funds leading to reduction in dividend payout. Behaviour of 100 listed firms, selected purposefully, has been observed for the period from 2001 to 2009 by using Lintner’ modified model.. During the research period of nine years, monetary policy has been gone through both loose and tight phases. Proposed model is dynamic one as lagged dependent variable has been used as explanatory variable. Due to certain limitations with selection of monetary policy instrument, overall stance of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in its annual reports has been used as a dummy variable in the model. Results of all the three estimations reveal almost same results. First lagged dividend has been proved to be most deterministic factor of dividend policy followed by current earnings. Monetary policy and lagged dividends interactive variables provide mixed results. First interactive variable has negative coefficients in all three, fixed effect, random effects and GMM, models but with insignificant p values. Second monetary policy interactive variable has positive coefficients with significant values in random effects and GMM model. Firms seem to follow relatively stable dividend policies with lower adjustment factor. As model is dynamic, GMM estimation is preferred. Monetary policy has not been observed as significant determinant of dividend policy of Pakistani firms.Dividend payment, Monetary Policy

Efficient algorithms for a class of partitioning problems

The problem of optimally partitioning the modules of chain- or tree-like tasks over chain-structured or host-satellite multiple computer systems is addressed. This important class of problems includes many signal processing and industrial control applications. Prior research has resulted in a succession of faster exact and approximate algorithms for these problems. Polynomial exact and approximate algorithms are described for this class that are better than any of the previously reported algorithms. The approach is based on a preprocessing step that condenses the given chain or tree structured task into a monotonic chain or tree. The partitioning of this monotonic take can then be carried out using fast search techniques

Can Higher Prices Stimulate Product Use? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Zambia

The controversy over whether and how much to charge for health products in the developing world rests, in part, on whether higher prices can increase use, either by targeting distribution to high-use households (a screening effect), or by stimulating use psychologically through a sunk-cost effect. We develop a methodology for separating these two effects. We implement the methodology in a field experiment in Zambia using door-to-door marketing of a home water purification solution. We find that higher prices screen out those who use the product less. By contrast, we find no consistent evidence of sunk-cost effects.

The Mediation Effect of Trusting Beliefs on the Relationship Between Expectation-Confirmation and Satisfaction with the Usage of Online Product Recommendation

Online Product Recommendations (OPRs) are increasingly available to onlinecustomers as a value-added self-service in evaluating and choosing a product.Research has highlighted several advantages that customers can gain from usingOPRs. However, the realization of these advantages depends on whether and towhat extent customers embrace and fully utilise them. The relatively low OPR USAgerate indicates that customers have not yet developed trust in OPRs’ performance.Past studies also have established that satisfaction is a valid measure of systemperformance and a consistent significant determinant of users’ continuous systemusage. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the mediation effect of trustingbeliefs on the relationship between expectation-confirmation and satisfaction. Theproposed research model is tested using data collected via an online survey from626 existing users of OPRs. The empirical results revealed that social-psychologicalbeliefs (perceived confirmation and trust) are significant contributors to customersatisfaction with OPRs. Additionally, trusting beliefs partially mediate the impactof perceived confirmation on customer satisfaction. Moreover, this study validatesthe extensions of the interpersonal trust construct to trust in OPRs and examinesthe nomological validity of trust in terms of competence, benevolence, andintegrity. The findings provide a number of theoretical and practical implications.&nbsp

Factors Affecting the Behavioral Intention to Use Standalone Electronic Personal Health Record Applications by Adults in Egypt

Standalone electronic personal health record can be a useful tool that enables individuals to store, arrange and share their health information easily and they can build a history of their health timeline which is crucial for raising healthcare quality and better self-management, the adoption rate of these applications has been identified in several countries to be low and slowly progressing.Although there are some applications of standalone ePHR available in the market for usage free of charge but it’s almost not adopted at all, this study will investigate some of the factors that might affect the adoption of ePHR technology by adults in Egypt and provide business professionals a better picture for what can motivate or hinder the adoption process to achieve better adoption rates and eliminate the barriers.In order to ensure a comprehensive contextual analysis, researchers analyzed the research in hand with the perspective of the proposed contextual framework, the Nine Elements Framework/Model (Elsafty, 2018) that analyzes social studies research in general, and business/management reseaerches as well.Using the nine elements framework, the authors used it to discover the underlying factors that are causing the problems faced by the research in hand, and resulted in the coming contextual analysis defining the research scope and focus, which in the case of this paper is on Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were adapted from TAM that was initially developed by Fred Davis (1989) and they proved to have a high predictive power of behavioral intention in CHI context, The extensions of TAM including UTAUT & UTAUT2 seems to be irrelevant to this research context since UTAUT is more oriented towards the organizational context (Venkatesh et al., 2012) and UTAUT2 added factors, Price value seems to be irrelevant in this research context as we are already studying platforms that are provided free of charge, Hedonic motivation maybe irrelevant to this context as healthcare related service is mostly associated with seriousness and urgency, also testing unimplemented platforms that are not yet adopted makes from the habit unrealistic experience that may be inaccurate to measure.Since other several researches recommended extending these factors with other additional factors to make it more relevant to the healthcare consumer context (Kim & Park, 2012), these factors may include health-related factors, technology-related factors and personal-related factors. Findings in this research revealed that adoption rate in Egypt is still very low and high demand for this service which makes this research is significant as it’s trying to find out the reasons behind this gap, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, (privacy and security), eHealth literacy, personalization and awareness had a significant impact on behavioral intention to use standalone ePHR applications. Personalization was found to have the strongest effect on behavioral intention followed by perceived usefulness. Health status was found to have an insignificant effect on behavioral intention which indicates the interest of people with different health statuses in standalone ePHR

Flowfield-dependent variant method for moving-boundary problems

A novel numerical scheme using the combination of flowfield-dependent variation method and arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian method is developed. This method is a mixed explicit–implicit numerical scheme, and its implicitness is dependent on the physical properties of the flowfield. The scheme is discretized using the finite-volume method to give flexibility in dealing with complicated geometries. The formulation itself yields a sparse matrix, which can be solved by using any iterative algorithm. Several benchmark problems in two-dimensional inviscid and viscous flow have been selected to validate the method. Good agreement with available experimental and numerical data in the literature has been obtained, thus showing its promising application in complex fluid–structure interaction problems