A Generalized Jarque-Bera Test of Conditional Normality

We consider testing normality in a general class of models that admits nonlinear conditional mean and conditional variance functions. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the skewness and kurtosis coefficients of the model’s standardized residuals and propose an asymptotic x2 test of normality. This test simplifies to the Jarque-Bera test only when: (i) the conditional mean function contains an intercept term but does not depend on past errors, and (ii) the errors are conditionally homoskedastic. Beyond this context, it is shown that the Jarque-Bera test has size distortion but the proposed test does not.conditional heteroskedsaticity, conditional normality, Jarque-Bera test

Why people adopt VR English language learning systems: An extended perspective of task-technology fit

Virtual Reality (VR) techniques involving immersion, interaction, and imagination, not only can improve conventional teaching methods, but also can enhance the transmission of education training contents through the interaction and simulation characteristics of VR. Incorporating information technology (IT) with English teaching has become an important issue in the academic field. Emerging after computer-assisted teaching, interactive network learning, distance education, and mobile learning in the early days, virtual reality techniques have been regarded as a new trend of merging technology with education. To explore the factors affecting users’ adoption intention of VR English language learning systems (VRELLS), this study has sought to build a theoretical framework based on the task-technology fit theory (extrinsic motivation) combining users’ needs (internal and external needs) and satisfaction to put forward an integrated research model (perceived needs-technology fit model), which explicates people’s adoption behaviors of VRELLS. An online questionnaire was employed to collect empirical data. A total of 291 samples were analyzed using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The results of the study showed that both perceived needs-technology fit and satisfaction play a significant role in the user’ adoption intention of VRELLS services. In addition, the utilitarian and hedonic needs have a positive impact on the user’s perceived needs-technology fit. Also, it was found that relative advantage, service compatibility and complexity are important factors in influencing individuals’ perceived needs-technology fit. The implications of these findings are discussed along with suggestions for future research

What Drives Continued Intention for Mobile Payment? - An Expectation Cost Benefit Theory with Habit

The number of smartphone users has increased rapidly in recent years as the mobile networking becomes more mature, which not only gives rise to a new lifestyle but also facilitates the development of mobile application services. Smartphones thus become an indispensable device of people’s daily contact. Today people from all walks of life set their attention on mobile payments amongst smartphone mobile application services. To explore the factors affecting users’ continued use of mobile payments, this study has sought to build a theoretical framework based on the cost-benefit theory and add habit as a factor to put forward an integrated research model, which explicates people’s continued use of mobile payment services. An online questionnaire was employed to collect empirical data. A total of 295 samples were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The results showed that both perceived value and habit played an important role in users’ continued intention to use mobile payment services. Also, the perceived benefits (mobile convenience and service compatibility) and perceived costs (security risk and perceived fee) are crucial factors that determine users’ perceived value. In addition, the study also found that perceived value had a positive impact on users’ habit, showing that in the context of a mobile-oriented information system, whether mobile payment services satisfied users’ perceived value influenced the formation of habit of using such services. The implications of these findings are discussed

Promoting Customers’ Augmented Reality Immersion in Restaurants

With the rapid growth of augmented reality (AR) applications, AR is set to influence companies and organizations in every industry. This study focuses on identifying how AR technology enhances memorable experiences through the lens of customer immersion. An AR 3D food ordering platform that included an AR food ordering app for customers and a restaurant management system for restaurants was implemented as part of the study, and the concept of AR immersion was further introduced. The investigation involved an empirical examination of the effects of perceived playfulness and personal innovativeness on three dimensions of AR immersion: engagement, engrossment, and total immersion. The results of an analysis of data collected from 343 restaurant customers who experienced using the AR food ordering app indicated that engagement and engrossment had direct effects on customer satisfaction, but total immersion did not. Perceived playfulness directly affected engagement, engrossment, and total immersion and indirectly affected customer satisfaction through its direct effects on engagement and engrossment. Similarly, personal innovativeness influenced customer satisfaction indirectly through its direct effects on engagement. In terms of the effects of AR immersion, engrossment should be the target, engagement is insufficient, and total immersion is unnecessary. A practical implication of our findings is that it is possible to increase customer satisfaction directly by increasing the levels of engagement and engrossment with an AR food ordering app

Alternative Ingredient Recommendation: A Co-occurrence and Ingredient Category Importance Based Approach

As many people will refer to a recipe when cooking, there are several recipe-sharing websites that include lots of recipes and make recipes easier to access than before. However, there is often the case that we could not get all the ingredients listed on the recipe. Prior research on alternative ingredient substitution has built a recommendation system considering the suitability of a recommended ingredient with the remained ingredients. In this paper, in addition to suitability, we also take the diversity of the ingredient categories and the novelty of new combination of ingredients into account. Besides, we combine suitability with novelty as an index, to see whether our method could help find out a new combination of ingredients that is possibly to be a new dish. Our evaluation results show that our proposed method attains a comparable or even better performance on each perspective

Understanding the antecedents of consumer brand engagement by managing brand communities on social media

As social media provide companies with opportunities to create touch-points by enabling consumers to interact with brands in new ways, a key issue for organizations is how to use brand communities to engage customers and enhance their relationships with brands. Brand community interactivity is one of the latest developments to engage consumers in online brand communities. The objective of brand communities is not only to attract potential customers, but also to retain loyal consumers and gain advocates. Thus, brands and companies’ social media activity should be appropriately organized and managed for high-level consumer brand engagement (CBE), which is a comprehensive construct that allow companies to examine the bond between their brands and consumers. The essence of this CBE bond is related to the involvement of consumers, as it increases the touch-points between them and the brand. This study examined perceived interactivity as a driving factor in the context of a brand community on social media with the purpose of encouraging consumer community engagement, community satisfaction, and consumer brand engagement (CBE). Two second-order constructs were operationalized in the research model. Communication, responsiveness, and control were treated as reflective factors to create the second-order construct “perceived interactivity,” while the other second-order construct “CBE” comprised cognitive processing, affection, and activation as reflective indicators. The results, based on data collected from 328 social media users who are followers of a smartphone brand’s Facebook page, indicated that perceived interactivity is likely to significantly affect consumer community engagement and community satisfaction, which in turn foster brand engagement. Successful social media marketing practices for companies should take responsibility for transforming consumer community engagement into CBE, as it is imperative for organizations building brand communities to enhance their consumer community satisfaction through proper community management to achieve high CBE

An Enhanced Screenshot Interaction with Animated Stickers to Promote Learning Transfer

This study has implemented a platform, namely piniton.tw, rolling out a redesign of user interaction with screenshot. It is an excellent environment for students’ collaborative learning, as students upload screenshots and interact with each other to complete assignments by using animated stickers. As the study intended to investigate how to promote learning transfer by means of such enhanced screenshot interaction with animated stickers, task difficulty, online participation, and learning transfer were chosen as the basis for the research model. By applying the technology acceptance model, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and behavioral intention were included. The results indicated that students’ perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are likely to significantly affect their behavioral intention, which in turn promote learning transfer. An implication is that students’ learning transfer could be prompted greatly by enhancing their intention to use such platform that provides enhanced screenshot interaction with animated stickers

How Does Social Media Interactivity Affect Brand Loyalty?

As social media has become a prominent platform for networking, many organizations have begun to establish more than one brand community, as a set of supplements to their branded websites. Once most online brand interactions take place on social networking sites rather than branded sites, such customer-oriented interactions will become much more complicated and unpredictable. It is a real challenge for organizations to build successful customer-brand relationships through social networking sites. Hence, organizations that wish to enhance brand loyalty by running brand communities face the challenge of effectively conducting social customer relationship management (CRM) tactics. As social media users are susceptible to highly interactive features, understanding the nature of social media interactivity in brand communities is the key to building successful social CRM. The aim of the study is to investigate not only the effect of social media interactivity on community benefits, but also the effect of community benefits on brand loyalty. In addition to measuring the direct effects of social influence and media richness on brand loyalty, the study assessed the indirect effect of responsiveness on brand loyalty by means of community benefits, including knowledge gains and sense of membership. The results, based on data collected from 229 social media users who are followers of a Super Basketball League (SBL) team’s Facebook page, indicated that media richness had a strong, positive, and direct effect on brand loyalty, and that responsiveness had direct effects on their knowledge gains and their sense of membership, which in turn affected brand loyalty indirectly

Sixteen years post radiotherapy of nasopharyngeal carcinoma elicited multi-dysfunction along PTX and chronic kidney disease with microcytic anemia

BACKGROUND: The hypothalamic–pituitary (h-p) unit is a particularly radiosensitive region in the central nervous system. As a consequence, radiation-induced irreversible, progressively chronic onset hypopituitarism (RIH) commonly develops after radiation treatments and can result in variably impaired pituitary function, which is frequently associated with increased morbidity and mortality. CASE PRESENTATION: A 38-year-old male subject, previously having received radiotherapy for treatment of nasopharygeal carcinoma (NPCA) 16 years ago, appeared at OPD complaining about his failure in penile erection, loss of pubic hair, atrophy of external genitalia: testicles reduced to 2×1.5 cm; penile size shrunk to only 4 cm long. Characteristically, he showed extremely lowered human growth hormone, (HGH, 0.115 ng/mL), testosterone (<0.1 ng/mL), total thyroxine (tT4: 4.740 g/mL), free T4 (fT4, 0.410 ng/mL), cortisol (2.34 g/dL); lowered LH (1.37 mIU/mL) and estradiol (22 pg/mL); highly elevated TSH (7.12 IU/mL). As contrast, he had low end normal ACTH, FSH, total T3, free T3, and estriol; high end normal prolactin (11.71 ng/mL), distinctly implicating hypopituitarism-induced hypothyroidism and hypogonadism. serologically, he showed severely lowered Hb (10.6 g/dL), HCT (32.7%), MCV (77.6 fL), MCH (25.3 pg), MCHC (32.6 g/dL), and platelet count (139×103/L) with extraordinarily elevated RDW (18.2%), together with severely lowered ferritin (23.6 ng/mL) and serum iron levels; highly elevated total iron binding capacity (TIBC, 509 g/dL) and transferrin (363.4 mg/dL), suggesting microcytic anemia. Severely reduced estimated glomerular filtration rate (e-GFR) (89 mL/mim/1.73 m2) pointed to CKD2. Hypocortisolemia with hyponatremia indicated secondary adrenal insufficiency. Replacement therapy using androgen, cortisol, and Ringer’s solution has shown beneficial in improving life quality. CONCLUSIONS: To our believe, we are the first group who report such complicate PTX dysfunction with adrenal cortisol insufficiency concomitantly occurring in a single patient

Studying antibiotic–membrane interactions via X-ray diffraction and fluorescence microscopy

AbstractAntibiotic drug resistance is a serious issue for the treatment of bacterial infection. Understanding the resistance to antibiotics is a key issue for developing new drugs. We used penicillin and sulbactam as model antibiotics to study their interaction with model membranes. Cholesterol was used to target the membrane for comparison with the well-known insertion model. Lamellar X-ray diffraction (LXD) was used to determine membrane thickness using successive drug-to-lipid molar ratios. The aspiration method for a single giant unilamellar vesicle (GUV) was used to monitor the kinetic binding process of antibiotic–membrane interactions in an aqueous solution. Both penicillin and sulbactam are found positioned outside the model membrane, while cholesterol inserts perpendicularly into the hydrophobic region of the membrane in aqueous solution. This result provides structural insights for understanding the antibiotic–membrane interaction and the mechanism of antibiotics