Usability Evaluation of Mobile Commerce Website on Internet – An empirical study

Mobile network creates an environment that is convenient with fast communication and no localization restriction in which it is a perfect network environment for mobile commerce websites in developing business information applications and services. Two Shopping Malls also launched many mobile commerce website services to capture the gradually growing market. Depending on how convenient and fast these services that the website provides consumers, the quality of these services will determine the consumers’ decision to leave or stay on the website, and the usability of the website will be their deciding factor. This study reviewed how a website with better usability that offers consumers high efficiency and effectiveness with the ease of learning and memorizing have a strong influence over the buying behavior of consumers. This study used experimental questionnaire method to evaluate the usability in different Shopping Mall websites. Before the experiment, this study analyzed what would the expected processes and problems would be for these websites. After the experiment, this study compared the data retrieved from the questionnaires with the experiments of actual problems. The results showed that the psychology in the questionnaire and the physiology in the real-life situation of subjects corresponded with each other. In the usability guidelines, there are significant differences between Two Shopping Malls in the area of effectiveness and learning abilities. After the cross examination of the speculated expectation of the processes and problems on these websites with the actual problems in real-time, the results showed top three issues that were found on second Shopping Mall’s Registration Process played huge influences on the consumer’s behavior. This study proposed various ways of website improvements for better usability after analyzing the problems resulted from poor user interface design with the services provided on this website

Effects of environment and nutritional conditions on mycelial growth of Ganoderma boninense

The Basal Stem Rot disease is caused by the soil-borne pathogen, Ganoderma boninense. It is an annihilating and widespread disease in oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.). The nutritional studies were conducted to know the best sources of carbon and nitrogen, ideal pH regimes, the best humidity and optimum temperature required for the mycelial growth of G. boninense. Out of six carbon sources tested, fructose and glucose proved to be the best carbon sources for the mycelial growth of G. boninense. Out of five nitrogen sources tested, ammonium citrate and ammonium nitrate were noticeably found as the best nitrogen sources for the mycelial growth. Studies on different pH regimes in medium with 83% potatoes and 75% lignocellulosic materials revealed that the ideal pH regimes for the mycelial growth were 4-5. The best humidity for mycelial growth of G. boninense was found between 50-60%. It is suitable to grow between 25 and 32°C, while the optimum temperature is 32°C. This information can be used as a guideline for Ganoderma’s disease prevention study and control strategies in the oil palm plantation in the future

Clinical characteristics of central diabetes insipidus in Taiwanese children

Background/PurposeData on the clinical features of children with central diabetes insipidus (CDI) are lacking in Taiwan. This study investigated the clinical manifestations and etiology of CDI in Taiwanese children.MethodsFrom 1983 to 2012, 62 children with permanent diabetes insipidus were enrolled in the study. They were diagnosed at the Department of Pediatrics of National Taiwan University Hospital. Their medical records were thoroughly reviewed and their clinical symptoms and signs, laboratory data, and etiologies were analyzed.ResultsThe patients’ median age at diagnosis was 10 years and the median interval between initial manifestations and diagnosis was 0.5 years. The most common symptoms and signs were polyuria, polydipsia, nocturia, and growth retardation. Most patients had low urine osmolality and elevated plasma osmolality on diagnosis. Absence of a posterior pituitary hyperintense signal and thickening of the pituitary stalk were common findings on magnetic resonance imaging. Approximately 80% of the patients had anterior pituitary hormone deficiency and all patients had growth hormone deficiency. Approximately 60% of patients had intracranial lesions, the most common causes of which were germ cell tumor and Langerhans cell histiocytosis. Two patients were initially believed to have idiopathic CDI but intracranial lesions were detected during the follow-up period.ConclusionBecause a delayed diagnosis of CDI is common in Taiwanese children, a high index of suspicion is important. The underlying etiology of CDI in children may not initially be obvious. Long-term surveillance is therefore necessary, especially for the early detection of evolving treatable intracranial lesions

Determining a subsidy rate for Taiwan's recycling glass industry: an application of bi-level programming

[[abstract]]This study attempts to optimize the operations of the Recycling Fund Management Board (RFMB), founded by the Environmental Protection Administration of the R.O.C. Government (on Taiwan), through the decision of a subsidy rate for the domestic glass recycling industry. The hierarchical and interactive nature between the two parties is modelled by bi-level programming, where the RFMB plays the upper-level decision unit while the recycling industry is the lower-level counterpart. In order to solve the problem by optimization software, the bi-level formulation is transformed to a single-level problem via Karush-Kuhn-Tucker optimality conditions and is further transformed to a 0—1 mixed integer programming problem by variable substitution. The problem is solved with real-world data, and the obtained solutions are analysed and compared with the RFMB's current operations. The results suggest that the proposed approach can improve the operations of the RFMB.[[notice]]補正完畢[[journaltype]]國外[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]紙本[[countrycodes]]GB

Dynamic Transcript Profiling of Candida Albicans Infection in Zebrafish: a Pathogen-Host Interaction Study

Candida albicans is responsible for a number of life-threatening infections and causes considerable morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised patients. Previous studies of C. albicans pathogenesis have suggested several steps must occur before virulent infection, including early adhesion, invasion, and late tissue damage. However, the mechanism that triggers C. albicans transformation from yeast to hyphae form during infection has yet to be fully elucidated. This study used a systems biology approach to investigate C. albicans infection in zebrafish. The surviving fish were sampled at different post-infection time points to obtain time-lapsed, genome-wide transcriptomic data from both organisms, which were accompanied with in sync histological analyses. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to analyze the dynamic gene expression profiles of significant variations in both C. albicans and zebrafish. The results categorized C. albicans infection into three progressing phases: adhesion, invasion, and damage. Such findings were highly supported by the corresponding histological analysis. Furthermore, the dynamic interspecies transcript profiling revealed that C. albicans activated its filamentous formation during invasion and the iron scavenging functions during the damage phases, whereas zebrafish ceased its iron homeostasis function following massive hemorrhage during the later stages of infection. This was followed by massive hemorrhaging toward the end stage of infection. Most of the immune related genes were expressed as the infection progressed from invasion to the damage phase. Such global, inter-species evidence of virulence-immune and iron competition dynamics during C. albicans infection could be crucial in understanding control fungal pathogenesis

Electrical behaviour, characteristics and properties of anodic aluminium oxide films coloured by nickel electrodeposition

Porous anodic films on 1050 aluminium substrate were coloured by AC electrodeposition of nickel. Several experiments were performed at different deposition voltages and nickel concentrations in the electrolyte in order to correlate the applied electrical power to the electrical behaviour, as well as the characteristics and properties of the coatings. The content of nickel inside the coatings reached 1.67 g/m2, depending on the experimental conditions. According to the applied AC voltage in comparison with the threshold voltage Ut, the coating either acted only as a capacitor when U\Ut and, when U[Ut, the behaviour during the anodic and cathodic parts of the power sine wave was different. In particular, due to the semi-conducting characteristics of the barrier layer, additional oxidation of the aluminium substrate occurred during the anodic part of the electrical signal, whilst metal deposition (and solvent reduction) occurred during the cathodic part; these mechanisms correspond to the blocked and pass directions of the barrier layer/electrolyte junction, respectively

AV-SUPERB: A Multi-Task Evaluation Benchmark for Audio-Visual Representation Models

Audio-visual representation learning aims to develop systems with human-like perception by utilizing correlation between auditory and visual information. However, current models often focus on a limited set of tasks, and generalization abilities of learned representations are unclear. To this end, we propose the AV-SUPERB benchmark that enables general-purpose evaluation of unimodal audio/visual and bimodal fusion representations on 7 datasets covering 5 audio-visual tasks in speech and audio processing. We evaluate 5 recent self-supervised models and show that none of these models generalize to all tasks, emphasizing the need for future study on improving universal model performance. In addition, we show that representations may be improved with intermediate-task fine-tuning and audio event classification with AudioSet serves as a strong intermediate task. We release our benchmark with evaluation code and a model submission platform to encourage further research in audio-visual learning.Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 2024; Evaluation Code: https://github.com/roger-tseng/av-superb Submission Platform: https://av.superbbenchmark.or

Quantitative determination of interlayer electronic coupling at various critical points in bilayer Mo S 2

Tailoring interlayer coupling has emerged as a powerful tool to tune the electronic structure of van der Waals (vdW) bilayers. One example is the usage of the “moiré pattern” to create controllable two-dimensional electronic superlattices through the configurational dependence of interlayer electronic couplings. This approach has led to some remarkable discoveries in twisted graphene bilayers, and transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) homo- and hetero-bilayers. However, a largely unexplored factor is the interlayer distance, d, which can impact the interlayer coupling strength exponentially. In this letter, we quantitatively 2 determine the coupling strengths as a function of interlayer spacing at various critical points of the Brillouin zone in bilayer MoS2. The exponential dependence of the coupling parameter on the gap distance is demonstrated. Most significantly, we achieved a 280% enhancement of K-valley coupling strength with an 8% reduction of the vdW gap, pointing to a new strategy in designing a novel electronic system in vdW bilayers. gning a unique electronic system in vdW bilayers.This research was primarily supported by the NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) under DMR-1720595. We also acknowledge support from the Welch Foundation (F-1672 and F-1662), the US NSF (DMR-1808751) and the U.S. Air Force (FA2386-18-1-4097). C.-R.P., P.-J.C., and M.-Y.C. acknowledge the support from Academia Sinica, Taiwan. W.-H.C. acknowledges the support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST-110-2119-M-A49-001-MBK) and the support from the Center for Emergent Functional Matter Science (CEFMS) of NYCU supported by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan. W.-T.H. acknowledges the support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST-110-2112-M-007-011-MY3) and the Yushan Young Scholar Program from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan. C.K.S. also acknowledge the Yushan Scholar Program from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan.Center for Dynamics and Control of Material