The influence of patient absorptive capacity and perception of technology characteristics on patients' satisfaction with medical services in Guangzhou, China: an affordance theory based approach

Background: Based on the theory of Affordance, this thesis proposes two analytical dimensions of Subjective Affordance (SA) and Behavioral Affordance (BA).The research aims to explore the influence of patients’ Absorptive Capacity (AC) and Technology Characteristics Perception (TCP) on their SA and BA of the WeChat client-side app in community hospitals so as to further evaluate the SA and BA influence on patients’ satisfaction of medical service (PS). Research subjects are patients who have used the community hospital WeChat client-side information platform in 28 community health service centers in nine districts of Guangzhou in the South of China. A questionnaire with 4 sections and 44 questions was designed and distributed. The effective questionnaire data were checked for descriptive analysis and a path model with 5 observed variables (AC,TCP, SA,BA,PS). was developed. Results: 1. A total of 410 questionnaires was distributed, of which 400 have been collected and 387 of them were valid and analyzed. 2. There is a significant difference among variable scores of patients with different ages and educational background. 3. The group of patients who use the information platform more actively have higher scores in the 5 variables. 4. TCP has a direct influence on PS while BA plays an intermediary role. It was found that the mediation effect of SA is not valid. 5. AC has no direct or indirect influence on PS. Conclusions: Age, educational background, and TCP (evaluation of the innovation characteristics of technology) play an important role in the final implementation of technology application behavior (BA), and the effective application of technology can indeed improve satisfaction with the medical services (PS)Tendo por base a teoria da Affordance, esta tese analisa duas dimensões desta teoria: a Affordance subjetiva (AS) e a Affordance comportamental (AC). A investigação tem por objetivo estudar a influência da Capacidade de Absorção (CA) e da Percepção das Características Tecnológicas (PCT) na AS e na AC dos pacientes estudados em relação à utilização da aplicação Wechat como plataforma de informação e fornecimento de serviços em Centros de Saúde, a fim de avaliar em que medida a AS e a AC influenciam a sua satisfação com os serviços médicos (SP). Os sujeitos do estudo são pacientes que utilizaram a aplicação WeChat na sua interação com Centros de Saúde. Foi administrado um questionário contendo quatro partes e um total de 44 questões em 28 destes centros localizados em 9 distritos da cidade de Cantão no sul da China. Os dados foram depois analisados tendo sido concebido um modelo com base nas 5 variáveis observadas (AS, AC, CA, PCT e PS). Resultados: 1. Dos 410 questionários distribuídos recolheram-se 400 dos quais 387 foram considerados válidos para análise; 2. Os resultados revelaram que existe uma diferença significativa entre os pacientes de diferentes idades e diferente formação académica; 3. O grupo de pacientes que mais utiliza a aplicação tem valores mais altos nas cinco variáveis analisadas; 4. A PCT tem uma influência direta na SP enquanto que a CA desempenha um papel mediador. Os resultados demonstraram ainda que o efeito moderador da AS não se verifica; 5. A AC não tem qualquer influência direta ou indireta na SP. Conclusões: A idade, a formação académica e a PCT (percepção das características inovadoras da tecnologia) desempenham um papel importante na Affordance Comportamental (AC) e a utilização efetiva da tecnologia pode contribuir para melhorar a satisfação dos pacientes com os serviços médicos (SP)

A class of fourth-order elliptic equations with concave and convex nonlinearities in RN

In this article, we study the multiplicity of solutions for a class of fourth-order elliptic equations with concave and convex nonlinearities in RN. Under the appropriate assumption, we prove that there are at least two solutions for the equation by Nehari manifold and Ekeland variational principle, one of which is the ground state solution

HyperCI: A higher order collective influence measure for hypernetwork dismantling

Network dismantling aims to scratch the network into unconnected fragments by removing an optimal set of nodes and has been widely adopted in many real-world applications such as epidemic control and rumor containment. However, conventional methods often disassemble the system from the perspective of classic networks, which have only pairwise interactions, and often ignored the more ubiquitous and nature group-wise interactions modeled by hypernetwork. Moreover, a simple network can't describe the collective behavior of multiple objects, it is necessary to solve related problems through hypernetwork dismantling. In this work, we designed a higher order collective influence measure to identify key node sets in hypernetwork. It comprehensively consider the environment in which the target node is located and its own characteristics to determine the importance of the node, so as to dismantle the hypernetwork by removing these selected nodes. Finally, we used the method to carry out a series of real-world hypernetwork dismantling tasks. Experimental results on five real-world hypernetworks demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed measure

Dynamic motion of polar skyrmions in oxide heterostructures

Polar skyrmions have been widely investigated in oxide heterostructure recently, due to their exotic properties and intriguing physical insights. Meanwhile, so far, the external field-driven motion of the polar skyrmion, akin to the magnetic counterpart, has yet to be discovered. Here, using phase-field simulations, we demonstrate the dynamic motion of the polar skyrmions with integrated external thermal, electrical, and mechanical stimuli. The external heating reduces the spontaneous polarization hence the skyrmion motion barrier, while the skyrmions shrink under the electric field, which could weaken the lattice pinning and interactions between the skyrmions. The mechanical force transforms the skyrmions into c-domain in the vicinity of the indenter center under the electric field, providing the space and driving force needed for the skyrmions to move. This study confirmed that the skyrmions are quasi-particles that can move collectively, while also providing concrete guidance for the further design of polar skyrmion-based electronic devices.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure

Study on Resource Configuration on Cloud Manufacturing

The purpose of manufacturing is to realize the requirement of customer. In manufacturing process of cloud system, there exist a lot of resource services which have similar functional characteristics to realize the requirement. It makes the manufacturing process more diverse. To develop the quality and reduce cost, a resource configuration model on cloud-manufacturing platform is put forward in this paper. According to the generalized six-point location principle, a growth design from the requirement of customers to entities with geometric constraints is proposed. By the requirement growing up to product, a configuration process is used to match the entities with the instances which the resources in the database could supply. Different from most existing studies, this paper studies the tolerance design with multiple candidate resource suppliers on cloud manufacturing to make the market play a two-level game considering the benefit of customers and the profit of resources to give an optimal result. A numerical case study is used to illustrate the proposed model and configuration process. The performance and advantage of the proposed method are discussed at the end