Search results for "Application"

Mobile Semantics: Defining Concepts and their Interrelationships

2006

Abstract As service offerings and technologies constantly develop there seems to be confusion over what we are actually talking about when we talk about mobile services. A requirement for constructing an organized body of knowledge in a specific area of research is the clarity of its basic concepts. Often, we are not specifically interested in defining things but to examine and discuss the subjects of our primary interest we need unambiguous and shared definitions of our key concepts. Although many relevant concepts undoubtedly have clear definitions in the minds of experienced scholars working in the field of mobile offerings, for some reason these definitions are not well articulated or e…

Consumers in Information Technology Enabled Service Encounters: Perceptions and Tradeoffs in Multi-Channel Interactions

2015

This study examines information technology enabled, multi-channel service context from the end-user's perspective and, more specifically, from the perspective of a consumer, in particular the extent to which the multi-channel interaction experience results in consumer satisfaction and any tradeoffs that consumers make in the evaluation of the context of service. Empirical results from our online survey with mobile consumers indicate that the variables included in the model have a direct impact on consumer satisfaction when considered individually. There are, however, tradeoffs between variables (e.g., problem-handling and record accuracy; scalability and usability of service) when considere…

Identifying patterns in channel usage across the search, purchase and post-sales stages of shopping

2015

Different motivations explain channel choice for search, purchase and post-sales.Channel choice is affected by the product category: search/purchase goods.Product involvement is the most relevant variable explaining multichannel behavior.Cross-channel synergies as consumers use both channels at each shopping stage.Meaningful segments based on the choice of channel are identified and characterized. Consumers today are using various channels to complete their purchase process. As shoppers pursue different goals at each stage of the process, channel choice may be explained by different drivers for search, purchase and post-sales activities. Our research framework is based on an extension of th…

Facebook brand community bonding: The direct and moderating effect of value creation behaviour

2019

Abstract The present research deepens in the understanding of brand bonding in Facebook brand communities, drawing on value creation behaviours, the parasocial interaction paradigm and the attachment theory. Building up on these theories, our proposed conceptual model posits a direct relationship between value creation behaviour and brand community bonding, resulting from users’ interactions with other community members. The study also examines the moderating role of value co-creation behaviour on community members’ predispositions to develop emotionally based relationships with brands. The sample of the study consisted of 370 followers of brand Facebook pages and the model was assessed usi…

On simfitting MER Mössbauer data to characterize Martian hematite

2010

Mossbauer spectra of Eagle Crater outcrop rocks in Meridiani Planum were acquired by the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity. Sixty spectra, containing ~20 to 60% hematite by area, were simultultaneously fit (simfit) in a self-consistent manner to a single chi-squared minimum, where relations among parameters from different spectra were defined for both sol (Martian day) and acquisition temperature (200–280 K). Different spectral models were compared, hematite being modeled optimally with two sextets. Sextet S1 (~35% of total sextet area) has narrower linewidths, a larger magnetic hyperfine field, and a quadrupole shift that changes smoothly from positive to negative values as the temp…

A Theoretical Approach to the Shift Mechanics of Rubber Belt Variators

2008

This paper proposes a theoretical description of the mechanical behavior of rubber belt variators during the speed ratio shift. Comparing with the steady operation, the mass conservation of the belt is completely reformulated considering an elementary dihedral control volume between two planes through the pulley axis and balancing the inside mass variation with the total mass flux through the control surface. On the other hand, the belt equilibrium conditions are similar to the steady case, as the inertia forces due to the shifting motion are negligible with respect to the other forces. Assuming a one-dimensional belt model, it is shown that adhesive regions may appear inside the arc of con…

Sensitivity of Estimators for Measuring Information Amount in Web-Based Medical Documents

2018

Nowadays, communication between patient and doctor during an appointment has changed significantly owning to the opportunity that medical portals provide. Whether or not necessarily appreciated by the doctors, the patients became more aware of the first symptoms’ suggesting a particular disease and the medical procedures that apply as a standard. Estimating amount of reliable factual medical information in a document is carried out by parametrizing space of digital documents and dividing it into subsequent layers that represent distribution of the system responses computed as random variables to a query about medical information. Analyzed are the following attributes: dynamism of decrease o…

Robot passes the mirror test by inner speech

2021

Abstract The mirror test is a well-known task in Robotics. The existing strategies are based on kinesthetic-visual matching techniques and manipulate perceptual and motion data. The proposed work attempts to demonstrate that it is possible to implement a robust robotic self-recognition method by the inner speech, i.e. the self-dialogue that enables reasoning on symbolic information. The robot self-talks and conceptually reasons on the symbolic forms of signals, and infers if the robot it sees in the mirror is itself or not. The idea is supported by the existing literature in psychology, where the importance of inner speech in self-reflection and self-concept emergence for solving the mirror…

2019

The ability to respond flexibly to changing environmental circumstances is a hallmark of goal-directed behavior, and compromised flexibility is associated with a wide range of psychiatric conditions in humans, such as addiction and stress-related disorders. To identify neural circuits and transmitter systems implicated in the provision of cognitive flexibility, suitable animal paradigms are needed. Ideally, such models should be easy to implement, allow for rapid task acquisition, provide multiple behavioral readouts, and permit combination with physiological and pharmacological testing and manipulation. Here, we describe a paradigm meeting these requirements and employ it to investigate th…

Degradable poly(amidoamine) hydrogels as scaffolds for in vitro culturing of peripheral nervous system cells.

2012

This paper reports on the synthesis and physico-chemical, mechanical, and biological characterization of two sets of poly(amidoamine) (PAA) hydrogels with potential as scaffolds for in vivo peripheral nerve regeneration. They are obtained by polyaddition of piperazine with N,N′-methylenebis(acrylamide) or 1,4-bis(acryloyl)piperazine with 1,2-diaminoethane as cross-linking agent and exhibit a combination of relevant properties, such as mechanical strength, biocompatibility, biodegradability, ability to induce adhesion and proliferation of Schwann cells (SCs) preserving their viability. Moreover, the most promising hydrogels, that is those deriving from 1,4-bis(acryloyl)piperazine, allow the …