Exploring human image appeal similarity in website design

Trust is an important factor for improving e-commerce purchase intention. Nonetheless, the study of information technology (IT) artifact design and evaluation as a direct predictor to trust still remains at a preliminary stage. This research attempts to suggest and examine a model of cognitive and emotional trust in human image as one type of IT artifact. Referring to the similarity-attraction theory, we develop a research model. The model depicts that customer’s purchase intention is influenced by two dimensions of web interactivity, namely active control and reciprocal communication, which is mediated by a newly proposed construct, called perceived human image appeal similarity (PHIAS). This novel construct also helps to improve the formation of cognitive trust, emotional trust and eventually customer’s purchase intention. We plan to conduct an empirical study to test the hypotheses

Understanding Perceived Price Fairness in Online Shopping

Price fairness is an important factor that influences online shopper dropout rate in online shopping. This research attempts at understanding the factors that influence perceived price fairness. Based on the equity theory, we argue that perceived promotion fairness plays an important role in influencing perceived price fairness. We further argue that perceived promotion fairness is in turn significantly influenced by the shopper’s search efforts, contingent upon whether or not the promoted price is realized. A research model was developed that incorporates the equity theory, the motivation literature, and website design features. We developed a plan to conduct experiments to test the hypotheses

The Sphere of Influence of Information Systems Journals: A Longitudinal Study

The paper examines the issue of the information systems (IS) discipline’s influence as represented by its key journals. We examine the well-studied topics of cumulative tradition and reference disciplines from two unique perspectives: cohesion and stability. We demarcate journals into “IS journals” and “non-IS journals that are receptive to IS work” and examine the sphere of influence of these journals based on citations over time. Specifically, we compute a log-multiplicative model to identify subareas in the IS discipline and assess journal influence using the index of structural influence based on citations from a basket of 42 IS and IS-related journals over four periods: 1999-2000, 2004-2005, 2009-2010, and 2013-2014. Results indicate that the IS discipline has established a stable and cohesive knowledge underpinning, which converges with emerging (newer) journals and diverges with non-IS journals during the late period. These results suggest that the discipline has developed boundary conditions and a strong cumulative tradition. Furthermore, based on our analysis, pure IS journals gradually gained dominance in their own network and even started to exert influence in the broader network of journals. These findings provide a unique complement to other recent studies that signify the IS discipline’s influence

Physiology and Pathology of Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria: Phage-Related Therapy

Multidrug-resistant bacteria (MDR) are spreading rapidly across the world that outpace development of new antibiotics. Options other than antibiotics treatment are urgently needed. In this chapter, we review the current status of nonantibiotics-based strategies including phage therapy and phage-derived protein therapy for targeting Gram-positive strains (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium) and MDR Gram-negative strains (Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa)

How Search Cost Reduction Impacts Consumers’ Decision Quality: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Online platforms actively introduce search cost reduction technologies to facilitate consumers to make high-quality decisions. Scholars have examined the positive effect of search cost reduction on decision making. This study investigates the cognitive miser issues generated by search cost reduction tool on online platforms. We conduct a natural experiment at leading online review platforms (Yelp and TripAdvisor), wherein Yelp introduced a search cost reduction tool (sorted image) in August 2015. By constructing a unique panel dataset based on matched pairs of restaurants across the two platforms and using deep learning models, we apply a difference-in-difference (DID) model to assess the impact of sorted image as a search cost reduction tool. We find that displaying sorted images have a negative effect on consumer decision quality, and the decline in decision quality is mainly attributed to the lack of information in service, which is difficult to present through visual cues but is better learned from textual reviews. Our findings demonstrate that search cost reduction tools might induce consumers to have excessive reliance on the information presented by the tools, while spending less efforts on other related information on the platform that requires higher cognitive efforts to process. We discuss the implications of these findings as they are related to consumer decision-making and online platform design

Lamellar thickness and stretching temperature dependency of cavitation in semicrystalline polymers

Polybutene-1 (PB-1), a typical semicrystalline polymer, in its stable form I shows a peculiar temperature dependent strain-whitening behavior when being stretched at different temperatures where the extent of strain-whitening weakens with the increasing of stretching temperature reaching a minima value followed by an increase at higher stretching temperatures. Correspondingly, a stronger strain-hardening phenomenon was observed at higher stretching temperatures. The strain-whitening phenomenon in semicrystalline polymers has its origin of cavitation process during stretching. In this work, the effect of crystalline lamellar thickness and stretching temperature on the cavitation process in PB-1 has been investigated by means of combined synchrotron ultrasmall-angle and wide-angle X-ray scattering techniques. It was found that, with respect to the cavitation process, three modes of cavitation during the stretching process can be identified, namely no cavitation for sample with the thinnest lamellae where only shear yielding occurred, cavitation with reorientation for the samples stretched at lower temperatures and samples with thicker lamellae, and cavitation without reorientation for samples with thinner lamellae stretched at higher temperatures. The mode cavitation with reorientation occurs before yield point where the plate-like cavities start to be generated within the lamellar stacks with normal perpendicular to the stretching direction due to the blocky substructure of the crystalline lamellae and reorient gradually to the stretching direction after strain-hardening. The mode of cavitation without reorientation appears after yield point where ellipsoidal shaped cavities are generated in those lamellae stacks with normal parallel to the stretching direction followed by an improvement of their orientation at larger strains.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figure

Tensile Deformation of Oriented Poly(ε-caprolactone) and Its Miscible Blends with Poly(vinyl methyl ether)

The structural evolution of micromolded poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) and its miscible blends with noncrystallizable poly(vinyl methyl ether) (PVME) at the nanoscale was investigated as a function of deformation ratio and blend composition using in situ synchrotron smallangle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and scanning SAXS techniques. It was found that the deformation mechanism of the oriented samples shows a general scheme for the process of tensile deformation: crystal block slips within the lamellae occur at small deformations followed by a stressinduced fragmentation and recrystallization process along the drawing direction at a critical strain where the average thickness of the crystalline lamellae remains essentially constant during stretching. The value of the critical strain depends on the amount of the amorphous component incorporated in the blends, which could be traced back to the lower modulus of the entangled amorphous phase and, therefore, the reduced network stress acting on the crystallites upon addition of PVME. When stretching beyond the critical strain the slippage of the fibrils (stacks of newly formed lamellae) past each other takes place resulting in a relaxation of stretched interlamellar amorphous chains. Because of deformation-induced introduction of the amorphous PVME into the interfibrillar regions in the highly oriented blends, the interactions between fibrils becomes stronger upon further deformation and thus impeding sliding of the fibrils to some extent leading finally to less contraction of the interlamellar amorphous layers compared to the pure PCLNational Natural Science Foundation of China (21204088 and 21134006). This work is within the framework of the RCUK/EPSRC Science Bridges China project of UK−China Advanced Materials Research Institute (AMRI)

Evaluation of a computer-aided diagnostic model for corneal diseases by analyzing in vivo confocal microscopy images

ObjectiveIn order to automatically and rapidly recognize the layers of corneal images using in vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM) and classify them into normal and abnormal images, a computer-aided diagnostic model was developed and tested based on deep learning to reduce physicians’ workload.MethodsA total of 19,612 corneal images were retrospectively collected from 423 patients who underwent IVCM between January 2021 and August 2022 from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University (Wuhan, China) and Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University (Wuhan, China). Images were then reviewed and categorized by three corneal specialists before training and testing the models, including the layer recognition model (epithelium, bowman’s membrane, stroma, and endothelium) and diagnostic model, to identify the layers of corneal images and distinguish normal images from abnormal images. Totally, 580 database-independent IVCM images were used in a human-machine competition to assess the speed and accuracy of image recognition by 4 ophthalmologists and artificial intelligence (AI). To evaluate the efficacy of the model, 8 trainees were employed to recognize these 580 images both with and without model assistance, and the results of the two evaluations were analyzed to explore the effects of model assistance.ResultsThe accuracy of the model reached 0.914, 0.957, 0.967, and 0.950 for the recognition of 4 layers of epithelium, bowman’s membrane, stroma, and endothelium in the internal test dataset, respectively, and it was 0.961, 0.932, 0.945, and 0.959 for the recognition of normal/abnormal images at each layer, respectively. In the external test dataset, the accuracy of the recognition of corneal layers was 0.960, 0.965, 0.966, and 0.964, respectively, and the accuracy of normal/abnormal image recognition was 0.983, 0.972, 0.940, and 0.982, respectively. In the human-machine competition, the model achieved an accuracy of 0.929, which was similar to that of specialists and higher than that of senior physicians, and the recognition speed was 237 times faster than that of specialists. With model assistance, the accuracy of trainees increased from 0.712 to 0.886.ConclusionA computer-aided diagnostic model was developed for IVCM images based on deep learning, which rapidly recognized the layers of corneal images and classified them as normal and abnormal. This model can increase the efficacy of clinical diagnosis and assist physicians in training and learning for clinical purposes

Prediction Tool for Consumer Decision Making in E-Commerce: Exploring “If not†type of Explanation Facilities on Trust

Prediction tools as one type of online decision aid (DA) has gained popularity worldwide due to their facilitating role in consumers’ online decision-making. However, consumers still have concerns about trusting its predictions because of agency problem. One solution is to provide explanation facilities on its interface. In IS literature, more types of explanations other than well studied “how explanation†and “why explanation†have been called to study. Thus, we propose a new type of explanation facilities (i.e., “if not explanationsâ€). Building on prior works in this vein and a classic expectancy view of trust, we develop a theoretical model, which delineates the impacts of three types of explanation facilities (i.e., how explanations, why explanations and if not explanations) on users’ trusting beliefs via two assessments of DAs (i.e., perceived prediction process transparency and perceived advice quality). An experimental study is designed to test the hypothesized model

Price Transparency and Purchase Intention in The Context of Online Shopping

Electronic market provides more price transparency than conventional market due to its lower search cost, easier access to price information. However, after examining previous work, empirical research on the effect of price transparency on online consumer’s purchase behavior is extremely rare. Based on the stimulus– organism–response model and equity theory, we develop a theoretical model. Specifically, we investigate the impact of price transparency of lower price on purchase intention through perceived website diagnosticity and perceived price unfairness. In addition, we also examine the moderating impact of explanation facilities as a website design feature on the relationship between price transparency and perceived price unfairness. An experimental study is designed to test the hypothesized model