Online-offline activities and game-playing behaviors of avatars in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game

Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are very popular in China, which provides a potential platform for scientific research. We study the online-offline activities of avatars in an MMORPG to understand their game-playing behavior. The statistical analysis unveils that the active avatars can be classified into three types. The avatars of the first type are owned by game cheaters who go online and offline in preset time intervals with the online duration distributions dominated by pulses. The second type of avatars is characterized by a Weibull distribution in the online durations, which is confirmed by statistical tests. The distributions of online durations of the remaining individual avatars differ from the above two types and cannot be described by a simple form. These findings have potential applications in the game industry.Comment: 6 EPL pages including 10 eps figure

Study on the Impact of Private Enterprises\u27 Participation in the Mixed Reform of State-owned Enterprises on the Value Preservation and Appreciation of State-owned Assets

State-owned listed companies in the commercial category in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2013 to 2020 were selected as the research sample. Data related to the shareholding and delegated behavior of private shareholders among the top ten shareholders are utilized. Using a fixed-effects model, we empirically analyze the impact of private companies\u27 participation in the mixed reform of state-owned enterprises on the value preservation and appreciation of state-owned assets at the equity level and the management right level. Explore the moderating effects of internal control and the level of market-oriented development on the above relationships. The study shows that the participation of private enterprises in the mixed reform of SOEs can effectively contribute to the value preservation and appreciation of state-owned assets, both at the equity level and at the management level. Meanwhile, the level of internal control of SOEs has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between the participation of private firms in SOEs\u27 mixed reform and the value-added of SOEs\u27 assets; The participation of private firms can effectively compensate for the impact of insufficient market development on the value-added of SOEs\u27 assets

Division of labor, skill complementarity, and heterophily in socioeconomic networks

Constituents of complex systems interact with each other and self-organize to form complex networks. Empirical results show that the link formation process of many real networks follows either the global principle of popularity or the local principle of similarity or a tradeoff between the two. In particular, it has been shown that in social networks individuals exhibit significant homophily when choosing their collaborators. We demonstrate, however, that in populations in which there is a division of labor, skill complementarity is an important factor in the formation of socioeconomic networks and an individual's choice of collaborators is strongly affected by heterophily. We analyze 124 evolving virtual worlds of a popular "massively multiplayer online role-playing game" (MMORPG) in which people belong to three different professions and are allowed to work and interact with each other in a somewhat realistic manner. We find evidence of heterophily in the formation of collaboration networks, where people prefer to forge social ties with people who have professions different from their own. We then construct an economic model to quantify the heterophily by assuming that individuals in socioeconomic systems choose collaborators that are of maximum utility. The results of model calibration confirm the presence of heterophily. Both empirical analysis and model calibration show that the heterophilous feature is persistent along the evolution of virtual worlds. We also find that the degree of complementarity in virtual societies is positively correlated with their economic output. Our work sheds new light on the scientific research utility of virtual worlds for studying human behaviors in complex socioeconomic systems.Comment: 14 Latex pages + 3 figure

The Fumigating Activity of Litsea cubeba oil and Citral on Solenopsis invicta

This paper studied the fumigating activity of Litsea cubeba oil and citral on Solenopsis invicta, identified and analyzed the chemical constituents and volatile components of L. cubeba oil via solid-phase microextraction which were then identified via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The results showed that citral and (z)-3,7-dimethylocta-2,6-diena were the main components of L. cubeba oil, as well as its volatile compounds. According to the experimental results, L. cubeba oil and citral had good fumigating activity on workers, and also had significant inhibition on the walking ability and climbing ability of workers. At the same time, the effects of the two agentia on the fumigating activity and behavioral inhibition of microergate were stronger than those of macroergate. After treating with L. cubeba oil and citral for 24 hours, the walking rate and grasping rate of microergate were both 0 %. The results showed that L. cubeba oil and citral had good control effect on S. invicta

Longitudinal optical conductivities in tilted Dirac bands

We report a unified theory based on linear response, for analyzing the longitudinal optical conductivity (LOC) of materials with tilted Dirac cones. Depending on the tilt parameter $t$, the Dirac electrons have four phases, untilted, type-I, type-II, and type-III; the Dirac dispersion can be isotropic or anisotropic; the spatial dimension of the material can be one-, two-, or three-dimensions. The interband LOCs and intraband LOCs in $d$ dimension (with $d\ge2$) are found to scale as to $\sigma_{0}\omega^{d-2}$ and $\sigma_{0}|\mu|^{d-1}\delta(\omega)$, respectively, where $\omega$ is the frequency and $\mu$ the chemical potential. The interband LOCs always vanish in one dimension due to lacking of extra spatial dimension. The angular dependence of LOCs is found to characterize the band tilting, and the constant asymptotic background values of LOC reflect features of the Dirac bands. The LOCs in the anisotropic tilted Dirac cone can be connected to its isotropic counterpart by a ratio that consists of Fermi velocities. The findings are valid for a great many Dirac materials in the spatial dimensions of physical interests.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

catena-Poly[[[tetra­aqua­cobalt(II)]-μ-4,4′-bipyridine-κ2 N:N′] 2-[4-(2-carboxyl­ato­eth­yl)phen­oxy]acetate]

In the title complex, {[Co(C10H8N2)(H2O)4](C11H10O5)}n, the unique CoII ion lies on an inversion center and is coordinated by two N atoms from two 4,4′-bipyridine ligands and four O atoms from four water mol­ecules in a slightly distorted octa­hedral coordination geometry. The 4,4′-bipyridine ligands bridge CoII ions into a one-dimensional chain structure. In the crystal structure, inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link cations and anions into a three-dimensional network. The dianions are completely disordered about an inversion center

Catalyst size dependent growth of Pd-catalyzed one-dimensional InAs nanostructures

In this study, Pd was used as catalyst to grow one-dimensional InAs nanostructures on GaAs (111)(B) substrates in order to explore the growth mechanism and the effect of non-gold catalysts in growing epitaxial III-V nanostructures. With detailed morphological, structural, and chemical characterizations using electron microscopy, coupled with analysis of the Pd-In binary phase diagram, it was found that size of Pd nanoparticles plays a key role in determining the growth mechanism of one-dimensional InAs nanostructures. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC