Proactive Privacy Practices In The Trend Of Ubiquitous Services: An Integrative Social Contracts Perspective

Privacy is a strategic issue that deserves great attention from enterprises because the convergence of customer information and advanced technologies that they engage in diverse business processes in response to competitive pressure, particularly when businesses promote their traditional e-services to ubiquitous services (u-services). The underlying vision of u-services is to overcome spatial and temporal boundaries in traditional services, such as m-services and e-services. U-services will be the next wave and can be recognized as a logical extension of traditional e-services because u-services are initiated by e-services based on current potential customer pool and further propagated by m-services. In the context of u-services, customers are always connected seamlessly in context-awareness networks so that a higher degree of customized and personalized services can be timely provided. While people are served with more convenience and efficiency, they may also well be aware of privacy threats behind that. Hence, privacy concerns have been recognized as a critical impediment for boosting u-services. Drawing upon integrative social contracts theory, this study undertakes to explore a proactive privacy practices framework that embraces technical and non-technical elements such as human, legal, and economic relevant perspectives. The results of this study are expected to shed light on privacy practices

Spin Transport in Organic Semiconductors

The unique physical properties and low temperature solution processability of organic semiconductors have enabled many applications such as light emitting diodes, flexible logic and solar cells, they are unexploited in their potential for use in solid state devices for spintronics and spin-based information processing. Organic semiconductors composed of mainly light elements appeal to the field of spintronics due to their long spin lifetime originating from their weak spin-orbit coupling. The significant progress in improving carrier mobility of organic semiconductors in the past decade may lead to organic spin transport materials with both long spin diffusion length and spin lifetime which is important for spintronics applications. This dissertation explores the spin transport in organic semiconductors using a variety of experimental techniques from all electrical spin injection and detection to ferromagnetic resonance spin pumping and ISHE spin detection. Non-local spin valves and novel all electrical spin transport device architectures based on high mobility conjugated polymers were studied systematically. The intrinsic roadblocks for electrical spin injection-based measurements were identified as the current spreading effect (electrical cross-talk between the injector and detector electrodes) and the hopping conduction in organic semiconductors which makes all electrical nonlocal spin injection and detection measurements extremely challenging if not impossible for organic semiconductors. In addition, spin current transmission in the out of plane direction of organic semiconductors was studied by tri-layer spin pumping technique where the spin transport properties of organic semiconductors are correlated with their molecular structure and charge transport properties. Spin pumping, a charge-free spin injection method together with ISHE spin detection successfully overcome the impedance mismatch problem and the intrinsic roadblocks imposed by electrical spin injection-based techniques and enabled lateral spin current transport in organic semiconductors to be detected electrically. The lateral spin diffusion length of up to a micrometre was observed in doped conjugated polymers in agreement with theoretical calculations based on exchange mediated spin diffusion model and parameters obtained from first principle. Moreover, this non-local spin transport device structure provides a platform for studying spin transport in a wide range of organic semiconductors where the spin current propagates along the high mobility direction and could potentially be used as building blocks for high performance flexible spintronics devices

Why Do Players Stick to a Specific Online Game? The Users and Gratifications Perspective

Driven by the dominant Internet usage and the prospective profits from the game industry, especially from the thriving and robust free-to-play model of online games, there is a need to realize players’ behaviors. Playing online games is experienceoriented but rare studies further explore what reactions of initial (trial) experiences in game playing are and how they will further influence players’ behaviors. Uses and gratification theory can be seen in cases such as online games selection. Players select an online game not only to fit particular interests but also to attempt to show empowerment or other socially conscience motives. This study, therefore, seeks to explore the important antecedents (i.e. gratifications, presence, service mechanisms, and continuance motivation) of stickiness intention on the online game and examine the associated relationships among them. The implications of findings to both researchers and practitioners are also discussed

The Effect of Affordance on Ubiquitous Commerce Consumption

The rapid development of ubiquitous technologies and mobile devices has made ubiquitous commerce (U-commerce) the next business wave. U-commerce enabled merchants with new opportunities to provide personalized services and novel shopping experiences to customers. Applying affordance theory, this study builds a research model that explains the consumer cognitive assimilation process in U-commerce and explores hedonic and impulsive consumption. This study played the U-commerce video for participants before they answered the questionnaires. The empirical results show that context-aware facilitation and social facilitation contribute equally in explaining cognitive assimilation. Meanwhile, cognitive assimilation significantly influences both hedonic consumption and impulsive consumption. This study sheds light on the two important facilitations derived from the U-commerce environment and also reveals the determinants for two types of interesting purchase behaviors in the U-commerce context

Essential Points of a Support Network Approach for School Counselors Working with Children Diagnosed with Asperger’s

Asperger Syndrome (AS) presents unique challenges to both families and schools. Children diagnosed with Asperger’s possess unparalleled characteristics in cognitive functioning and behavioral pattern. These children need extra attention and assistance in schools. School counselors require a strategy to successfully engage and support these children and to deal with multiple phases of difficulties. A support network approach is proposed in this article to assist school counselors coordinating resources in schools, families, and the community. This approach is discussed with essential points that will help school counselors reach out to families and the community and create a friendly and supportive environment for children diagnosed with Asperger’s

Cross-National Emailing as Cultural Immersion in Multicultural Counselor Training: A Pilot Study

Multicultural counselor training has utilized cultural immersion to stimulate students’ multicultural competency development. This article discussed a pilot study which experimented with a new instructional strategy of cultural immersion in a multicultural counseling class. This strategy intended to study the effectiveness of a cross-national emailing project (CNE) on students’ multicultural competency development. Multicultural Counseling Inventory (MCI; Sodowsky, Taffe, Gutkin, & Wise, 1994) was used to measure the multicultural competencies of 13 female counseling students from the United States in this semester-long project. Both quantitative and qualitative results supported the positive development of multicultural competency in cross-national emailing

Animal Models of Burn Wound Management

Burn injury is known as the most traumatic wound. In the clinical, most patients with burn injury suffer from extreme pain during wound management; hence, the effective treatment that involved advanced medication is needed. In the evaluation of burn wound care devices, the use of animal model is considered suitable as valuable tools to investigate the burn pathophysiology as well as the efficacy of treatment strategies due to the complexity and heterogeneous nature of the burn. This chapter aimed to review the preclinical small and large animal models of burn injury for translational applications and to highlight their benefits and limitations for the burn treatment design that are clinically applicable to humans

Semitransparent Perovskite Solar Cells with an Evaporated Ultra-Thin Perovskite Absorber

Metal halide perovskites are of great interest for application in semitransparent solar cells due to their tunable bandgap and high performance. However, fabricating high-efficiency perovskite semitransparent devices with high average visible transmittance (AVT) is challenging because of their high absorption coefficient. Here, a co-evaporation process is adopted to fabricate ultra-thin CsPbI3 perovskite films. The smooth surface and orientated crystal growth of the evaporated perovskite films make it possible to achieve 10 nm thin films with compact and continuous morphology without pinholes. When integrated into a p-i-n device structure of glass/ITO/PTAA/perovskite/PCBM/BCP/Al/Ag with an optimized transparent electrode, these ultra-thin layers result in an impressive open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 1.08 V and a fill factor (FF) of 80%. Consequently, a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.6% with an AVT above 50% is demonstrated, which is the first report for a perovskite device of a 10 nm active layer thickness with high VOC, FF and AVT. These findings demonstrate that deposition by thermal evaporation makes it possible to form compact ultra-thin perovskite films, which are of great interest for future smart windows, light-emitting diodes, and tandem device applications