The Technology Integration Model (TIM): predicting the continued use of technology

The human-computer relationship is often convoluted and despite decades of progress, many relation- ships relating to continued use are unclear and poorly defined. This may be due to a lack of interdisci- plinary collaboration, especially from a theoretical standpoint between computer science and psychology. Following a review of existing theories that attempt to explain continued technology use, we developed the Technology Integration Model (TIM). In sum, the main objective of TIM is to outline the processes behind continued technology use in an individual's everyday life. Here we present the model alongside a description of its scope and the relationships between constructs. This can help generate research questions relating to technology use while simultaneously addressing many previous short- comings of existing models. As a unifying theory, TIM can quickly be adopted by researchers and developers when designing and implementing new technologie

InfoSyll: A Syllabary Providing Statistical Information on Phonological and Orthographic Syllables

here is now a growing body of evidence in various languages supporting the claim that syllables are functional units of visual word processing. In the perspective of modeling the processing of polysyllabic words and the activation of syllables, current studies investigate syllabic effects with subtle manipulations. We present here a syllabary of the French language aiming at answering new constraints when designing experiments on the syllable issue. The InfoSyll syllabary provides exhaustive characteristics and statistical information for each phonological syllable (e.g. /fi/) and for its corresponding orthographic syllables (e.g. fi, phi, phy, fee, fix, fis). Variables such as the type and token positional frequencies, the number and frequencies of the correspondences between orthographic and phonological syllables are provided. As discussed, such computations should allow precise controls, manipulations and quantitative descriptions of syllabic variables in the field of psycholinguistic research.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Transient electromagnetic field radiated by grounding systems caused by lightning strike in a dissipative half-space

In this work, a method is proposed for the calculation of the electromagnetic field radiated by a grounding system in a semi-infinite dissipative medium subjected to a current excitation generated by the lightning strike. The assessment of the induced current distribution on the grounding system due to a transient excitation is obtained by solving Pocklington’s equation using the method of moments. A new method for the calculation of the transient electromagnetic field following the injection of a lightning current or short circuit is also developed. This method is based on the concept of the hertzian dipoles and the asymptotic expansion of a single dipole. A MATLAB computer program has been developed for the determination of the induced currents. The program is validated by comparing its results with those obtained with the commercial software NEC 4

Phonological and semantic priming: evidence for task-independent effects.

International audienceThe questions asked in the present experiments concern the generality of semantic and phonological priming effects: Do these effects arise automatically regardless of target task, or are these effects restricted to target tasks that specifically require the retrieval of the primed information? In Experiment 1, subjects produced faster color matching times on targets preceded by a masked rhyming prime than on targets preceded by an orthographic control or an unrelated prime. This result suggests that automatic priming effects on the basis of phonological similarity can be obtained even when the target task does not make use of phonological information. This claim was reinforced in Experiment 2 in which a rhyme priming effect and a semantic priming effect were found in a semantic categorization task. In Experiment 3, the target task was phonological (rhyme detection), and, again, both phonological and semantic priming effects were observed. Finally, in Experiments 4 and 5, in a replication and an extension of Experiment 1, phonological and semantic priming effects were found in a color matching task, a task involving neither phonological nor semantic processing. These results are most straightforwardly interpreted by assuming that both semantic and phonological priming effects are, at least in part, due to automatic activation of memorial representations

A Prototype Analysis of Self-Gratitude: Towards a Broadening of the Concept of Gratitude

In the past two decades, gratitude has been shown to be closely related to mental health and well-being. However, there is no consensus about its definition, and self-gratitude was hastily dismissed. This research aimed to analyze how self-gratitude is considered by laypersons. We conducted three online studies to test the hypothesis according to which self-gratitude is prototypically organized. In Study 1, participants (N = 152) listed the features of self-gratitude: 55 categories emerged from the data processing. In Study 2, participants (N = 146) significantly distinguished the features according to their degree of centrality. In Study 3 (N = 108), the analysis showed that the centrality of features influenced cognition through a recognition task. The results provide preliminary evidence of the internal structure of self-gratitude. Overall, this study showed the lay conceptions, allowing us to define self-gratitude as acknowledgment and appreciation of meaningful benefits involving the self

Photoactivity Performance of TiO2/cellulose and ZnO/polystyrene; Intensified Effect of Oxidants on Degradation Efficiency of Acetaminophen

International audienceThe photoactivity of TiO2 nanoparticles and ZnO nanofibers deposited on cellulose and polystyrene was investigated. The synthesized catalysts were characterized by SEM, XRD and FT-IR. The X-rays diffraction pattern showed that the TiO2 materials are mainly composed of anatase phase with a small amount of rutile phase. Peaks found for ZnO are assigned to well crystallized ZnO oxides. The SEM images confirmed the dispersion of TiO2 nanoparticles and ZnO nanofibers on cellulose and polystyrene, respectively. The photoactivity of the two catalysts was tested for the degradation of acetaminophen. Results showed that for an initial drug concentration of 10 mg l(-1), the removal of the pollutant under UV light in the presence of TiO2/cellulose reached 80%. Under the same conditions, ZnO/polystyrene was inactive under UV, visible and solar radiations. The study of the effect of H2O2 and K2S2O8 as oxidants showed an intensified effect of peroxydisulfate (S2O82-) on degradation efficiency of the pollutant; in fact, in the presence of TiO2/cellulose and ZnO/polystyrene, 85.4 and 93.1% of acetaminophen were respectively removed from the contaminated solutions after adding 1 mM of S2O82-. The present findings reveal that under UV light the photocatalytic systems TiO2-K2S2O8/cellulose and ZnO-K2S2O8/polystyrene show promising results for treating effluents charged with acetaminophen

Disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential by ferulenol and restoration by propolis extract: Antiapoptotic role of propolis

This paper reports an investigation of the ability of propolis extract (a resinous substance collected by honeybees from various plant sources) to restore the collapse of mitochondrial membrane potential induced by ferulenol, a sesquiterpene prenylated coumarin derivative isolated from the plant Ferula vesceritensis . We show that ferulenol was able to induce the permeability transition pore (PTP) opening. This effect is caused by the interaction of the compound with the mitochondrial respiratory chain, more particularly by the fall of membrane potential and the inhibition of complex II. We have previously demonstrated that this inhibition results from a limitation of electron transfers involved in the respiratory chain and initiated by the reduction of ubiquinone. We hypothesized that the protective effect of propolis could be due to a direct action on mitochondrial functions. So we have investigated in vitro the mitochondrial effects of Algerian propolis using rat liver mitochondria, by analysing their effects on membrane potential, mitochondrial respiration and mitochondrial swelling. We show that propolis extract was able to restore the fall of mitochondrial membrane potential. Taken together these data reveal that propolis extract may be an interesting inhibitor of PTP and provide an additional mechanism by which the natural product propolis extract may restore the mitochondrial membrane potential and to prevent apoptotic process