Do You Need to Pay For Online Community: A Comparison Study

Despite the importance and benefits of the online community, there is a lack of discussions in the literature about whether it is necessary for a firm to sponsor its online community economically. This study aims to answer the following research questions: what will affect consumers’ participation potential in new product development? Could leaders’ responses enhance consumers’ involvement in online communities? How will brand interact with customers’ participation potential in innovation? An online survey instrument is employed and data is collected from two online communities. Structural Equation Modeling is used to assess the research model. We find that firms are not necessary to sponsor its online brand community economically. In addition, brand trust and brand knowledge play different roles for company-initiated and consumer-initiated online brand communities. Furthermore, we find that both brand knowledge and brand trust have significant mediation effects between leaders’ responses and consumers’ participation potentials in new product developments

Design of a multiple bloom filter for distributed navigation routing

Unmanned navigation of vehicles and mobile robots can be greatly simplified by providing environmental intelligence with dispersed wireless sensors. The wireless sensors can work as active landmarks for vehicle localization and routing. However, wireless sensors are often resource scarce and require a resource-saving design. In this paper, a multiple Bloom-filter scheme is proposed to compress a global routing table for a wireless sensor. It is used as a lookup table for routing a vehicle to any destination but requires significantly less memory space and search effort. An error-expectation-based design for a multiple Bloom filter is proposed as an improvement to the conventional false-positive-rate-based design. The new design is shown to provide an equal relative error expectation for all branched paths, which ensures a better network load balance and uses less memory space. The scheme is implemented in a project for wheelchair navigation using wireless camera motes. © 2013 IEEE

Online Privacy Policy of the Thirty Dow Jones Corporations: Compliance with FTC Fair Information Practice Principles and Readability Assessment

Privacy policy in corporation’s business refers to a statement or a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer or client\u27s personal data such as name, age, address, gender, email, etc. (“Privacy Policy,” 2012). In 1998, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported a study of online privacy concerns to Congress, which described a widely-accepted Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPs) of Notice, Choice, Access, and Security (Landesberg, Levin, Curtin, & Lev, 1998). This project conducted a statistical study by examining the FIPs compliance for each Dow Jones Corporation’s (DJC’s) online privacy policy. In addition, a study by George Milne, Mary Culnan, and Henry Greene showed that online privacy had grown in length as well as had declined in readability (Milne, Culnan, & Greene, 2006). Therefore, this research assessed also the readability of DJC’s online privacy policy by measuring widely adopted Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL). Furthermore, in order to better understand the practical situations regarding privacy concerns and policy readability from a customer’s point of view, a customer survey was given to business students at the College of Business and Public Administration at California State University, San Bernardino

A mosaic of eyes

Autonomous navigation is a traditional research topic in intelligent robotics and vehicles, which requires a robot to perceive its environment through onboard sensors such as cameras or laser scanners, to enable it to drive to its goal. Most research to date has focused on the development of a large and smart brain to gain autonomous capability for robots. There are three fundamental questions to be answered by an autonomous mobile robot: 1) Where am I going? 2) Where am I? and 3) How do I get there? To answer these basic questions, a robot requires a massive spatial memory and considerable computational resources to accomplish perception, localization, path planning, and control. It is not yet possible to deliver the centralized intelligence required for our real-life applications, such as autonomous ground vehicles and wheelchairs in care centers. In fact, most autonomous robots try to mimic how humans navigate, interpreting images taken by cameras and then taking decisions accordingly. They may encounter the following difficulties

The effects of grain structure on electromigration failure of the lead-free solder bump

This paper carries out an electromigration (EM) acceleration test on ball grid array (BGA) samples with Sn96.5/Ag3.0/Cu0.5 solder bumps under constant temperature, and characterizes the structure of β-Sn grains in the lead-free solder bumps. The EM failure modes of the solder bumps of different grain structures were analysed, aiming to disclose the effect of grain structure on the EM failure. Considering the driving forces of the EM (i.e. electron wind force, stress gradient, temperature gradient and atomic density gradient), the atomic density integral (ADI) method was introduced to simulate the void formation and failure lifetime of the EM. The simulation results show that solder bump reliability and failure mode are greatly affected by grain orientation, in that the EM failure occurs rapidly when the c-axis of grain structure of the solder bump is strongly misaligned, or almost perpendicular, to the current direction. The double grain solder bump with grain boundary parallel to current direction boasts a small EM failure and thus a long lifetime

Assessing technological innovation and sustainable environment: Tourism perspective of advanced panel methods

The current study aims to analyze the influence of technological innovation, economic growth, tourism and renewable energy consumption on the carbon emissions in four South Asian economies covering the period 1990-2020. This study employed the crosssectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag model – a the third-generation estimator as it tackles the issues of slope heterogeneity, panel cross-section dependency, endogeneity, and stationarity. Also, this study uses the augmented mean group as a robustness test and Granger panel causality heterogeneity test. The results display that economic growth significantly enhances emissions level, whereas achievement of the threshold income level significantly reduces environmental degradation – validating the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in the region. Besides, tourism, renewable energy consumption, and technological innovation substantially reduces carbon emissions in the regions in short- and long-run. These findings are robust, and a bidirectional causal association exists between the explanatory variables and carbon emissions. The findings suggest policy concerning the adoption of renewable energy, considering industrial sector’s structural transformation, investment in technological innovation and promotion of tourism in the region

Should firms pay for online brand communities: Using lead user theory in analyzing two contrasting cases

Despite the importance and benefits of Online Brand Communities, there is little discussion in the literature about whether it is necessary for a firm to financially sponsor its online brand community. By incorporating brand trust, brand knowledge, and reciprocal behavior into Lead User Theory, this paper studies what influences consumers' participation potentials in new product development. Two online survey instruments are employed, and data is collected from two matchable well-known IT companies for two types of online brand communities: Company-initiated and Consumer-initiated. Two separate parallel Structural Equation Modeling analyses are conducted to test these two matchable samples and assess the research model. Our findings suggest that firms may not need to pay to sponsor their online brand communities. We infer our conclusion about company-sponsored communities from our findings that brand trust and brand knowledge play different roles for company-initiated and consumer-initiated online brand communities. Brand knowledge directly impacts consumers' participation potentials in consumer-initiated online brand communities, but only indirectly impacts through brand trust in company-initiated online brand communities.This is a manuscript of an article published as Li, Yuanxiang John, Elizabeth Hoffman, and Dan Zhu. "Should firms pay for online brand communities: Using lead user theory in analyzing two contrasting cases." Decision Support Systems (2022): 113729. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2021.113729. Posted with permission. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License

Analysis of Magnetic Field Intensity and Induced Current under Live Working Based on Charge Simulation Method

To the problem that safety distance is insufficient for 500 kV substation live working, a magnetic field analysis method for overhead line bus is given based on the charge simulation method. In the method, charge is calculated firstly, and the space field intensity distribution calculation is completed by overlying charge. The space field intensity distribution rule is carried out based on the appropriate analysis, and space field intensity distribution rule of substation is obtained. Then according to the calculation formula of inducing current, the human body induction current under a substation busbar is simulated based on MATLAB. The simulation results have a certain guidance function for actual live working

Analysis of Magnetic Field Intensity and Induced Current under Live Working Based on Charge Simulation Method

To the problem that safety distance is insufficient for 500 kV substation live working, a magnetic field analysis method for overhead line bus is given based on the charge simulation method. In the method, charge is calculated firstly, and the space field intensity distribution calculation is completed by overlying charge. The space field intensity distribution rule is carried out based on the appropriate analysis, and space field intensity distribution rule of substation is obtained. Then according to the calculation formula of inducing current, the human body induction current under a substation busbar is simulated based on MATLAB. The simulation results have a certain guidance function for actual live working

Identification of annual routines and critical stopover sites of a breeding shorebird in the Yellow Sea, China

Pied Avocets (Recurvirostra avosetta) are common migratory shorebirds in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway. From 2019 to 2021, GPS/GSM transmitters were used to track 40 Pied Avocets nesting in northern Bohai Bay to identify annual routines and key stopover sites. On average, southward migration of Pied Avocets started on 23 October and arrived at wintering sites (mainly in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and coastal wetlands) in southern China on 22 November; northward migration started on 22 March with arrival at breeding sites on 7 April. Most avocets used the same breeding sites and wintering sites between years, with an average migration distance of 1124 ​km. There was no significant difference between sexes on the migration timing or distance in both northward and southward migration, except for the departure time from the wintering sites and winter distribution. The coastal wetland of Lianyungang in Jiangsu Province is a critical stopover site. Most individuals rely on Lianyungang during both northward and southward migration, indicating that species with short migration distances also heavily rely on a few stopover sites. However, Lianyungang lacks adequate protection and is facing many threats, including tidal flat loss. We strongly recommend that the coastal wetland of Lianyungang be designated as a protected area to effectively conserve the critical stopover site