Determinants and outcomes of electronic data interchange diffusion

Protagonists of electronic data interchange (EDI), a specific form of inter organizational systems (IOS), claim that it has the potential to dramatically alter the exchange of business documents and business operations (particularly material procurement and sales functions) in a number of industries. Drawing upon past research on innovation diffusion and information systems (IS) implementation, this study examines the role of key innovation and organizational factors in influencing the extent to which EDI is diffused within organizations, and whether more extensive diffusion leads to improved organizational outcomes. Two senior executives (one from the IS and the other from selling/buying function) from over 200 large American companies participated in the field study. The path analyses results indicate that compatibility and relative advantage (two of the three classical innovation attributes), championing, scope for use of EDI within the firm's task environments, and being an early adopter determine the extent to which EDI gets internally diffused through greater integration with other IS applications within the organization. Technical compatibility, top management support and being an early adopter emerge as the key variables influencing the extent to which EDI gets externally diffused through greater external diffusion of business transactions with trading partners. The results also indicate that greater internal as well as external diffusion of EDI facilitates improved organizational outcomes that was measured on six dimensions such as implementation success, organizational performance, influence on market structure, standardization of transactions, etc     

Clones: what is that smell?

Clones are generally considered bad programming practice in software engineering folklore. They are identified as a bad smell?(Fowler et?al. 1999) and a major contributor to project maintenance difficulties. Clones inherently cause code bloat, thus increasing project size and maintenance costs. In this work, we try to validate the conventional wisdom empirically to see whether cloning makes code more defect prone. This paper analyses the relationship between cloning and defect proneness. For the four medium to large open source projects that we studied, we find that, first, the great majority of bugs are not significantly associated with clones. Second, we find that clones may be less defect prone than non-cloned code. Third, we find little evidence that clones with more copies are actually more error prone. Fourth, we find little evidence to support the claim that clone groups that span more than one file or directory are more defect prone than collocated clones. Finally, we find that developers do not need to put a disproportionately higher effort to fix clone dense bugs. Our findings do not support the claim that clones are really a “bad smell”?(Fowler et?al. 1999). Perhaps we can clone, and breathe easily, at the same?time.     

Internet messaging: An examination of the impact of attitudinal,normative, and control belief systems

While instant messaging (IM) has been very popular among teenagers and college students for social and recreation communication, its use in corporate settings has been limited. We examined the factors that influence the intention to use and actual use of IM. A research model was developed based on diffusion of innovation and Socio-psychological theories. The model examined the influence of seven variables in three belief structures (the attitudinal, normative, and control). The model was empirically validated using a field survey of 349 respondents. The results indicated that five of the seven variables explained about 41% of the variance in the intention to use IM. The five significant variables were: utilitarian beliefs, hedonic beliefs, subjective norms, critical mass, and ease of use. Affiliation motivation was not significant and social belief had a negative impact on intention. As expected, intention to use had a significant influence on actual usage.     

Effect of annealing temperature on structural,optical and humidity sensing properties of indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films

Tin doped indium oxide (ITO) thin films were prepared by sol–gel spin coating method with In (NO₃)·3H₂O and SnCl₄·5H₂O as indium and tin sources, respectively. The as deposited samples were annealed at various temperature such as, 300, 400, 500 and 600?°C for 2 h in ambient atmosphere. The grown ITO thin films are polycrystalline in nature with cubic structure of In₂O₃ with the space group La3 and the results are in good agreement with the standard JCPDS data (card no#06-0416). In addition crystalline size increases with increasing annealing temperature from 25 to 55 nm. Polycrystalline with uniform smooth surface was observed by SEM micrographs. The optical band gap energy was found to be decreased from 3.85 to 3.23 eV as the annealing temperature is increased from 300 to 600?°C. The humidity sensing performance (high sensitivity and fast response time) was significantly improved for 600?°C thin films samples, which is probably due to smaller energy band gap and physisorption between the water molecules and the surface of the thin films. The films were further characterized by PL and EDS analysis. The effect of temperature on humidity sensing mechanism of ITO thin films is also discussed.     

Structure and stability of the B2 phase in Ti–25Al–25Zr alloy

This paper reports the formation of an ordered B2 phase in the alloy Ti–25Al–25Zr. The structure of the B2 phase has been confirmed by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopic techniques. The B2 phase transforms to two phases (Ti₂AlZr and Al₃Zr₅) and an orthorhombic phase during aging and mechanical polishing, respectively. The instability of B2 phase has been attributed to higher heat of formation of the B2 phase than that of Ti₂AlZr (D0₁₉) structure.     

Antlion Algorithm Optimized Fuzzy PID Supervised On-line Recurrent Fuzzy Neural Network Based Controller for Brushless DC Motor

In this paper, Antlion algorithm optimized Fuzzy PID supervised on-line Recurrent Fuzzy Neural Network based controller is proposed for the speed control of Brushless DC motor. Learning parameters of the supervised on-line recurrent fuzzy neural network controller, i.e., learning rate (η), dynamic factor (α), and number nodes (N_i) are optimized using Genetic algorithm, Particle Swarm optimization, Ant colony optimization, Bat algorithm, and Antlion algorithm. The proposed controller is tested with different operating conditions of the Brushless DC motor, such as varying load conditions and varying set speed conditions. The time domain specifications such as rise time, overshoot, undershoot, settling time, recovery time, and steady state error and also integral performance indices such as root mean square error, integral of absolute error, integral of squared error, and integral of time multiplied absolute error are measured and compared for above optimized controller. Simulation results show Antlion algorithm optimized Fuzzy PID supervised on-line recurrent fuzzy neural network based controller has proved to be superior than other considered controllers in all aspects. In addition, the experimental verification of proposed control system is presented to test the effectiveness of the proposed controller with different operating conditions of the Brushless DC motor.     

Determinants of EDI adoption in the transportation industry

This study examines the impact of various environmental, organizational, and technological factors on the adoption of innovation in the context of electronic data interchange (EDI). Based on research in information technology (IT) adoption, organizational studies and marketing a comprehensive research model is developed. The model identifies eleven variables, under three broad categories (environmental, organizational, and innovation characteristics), that could potentially influence the adoption of EDI. The research variables are operationalised using multi-item indicators and data collected from a large scale field survey of 950 firms in the trucking industry. A total of 181 firms responded to the survey with near equal number of adopters and non-adopters. Multivariate discriminant analysis is used to determine the impact of each of these variables on EDI adoption. The results of data analysis indicate that four factors are important to discriminate adopters from non-adopters of EDI in the transportation industry. They are: size of the firm, competitive pressure, customer support, and top management support.     

Association between bleomycin hydrolase and Alzheimer's disease in caucasians

A recent study showed modest evidence for an increased frequency of the bleomycin hydrolase (BH) V/V genotype in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients compared with non-demented controls. To test this hypothesis, we examined this polymorphism in 621 rigorously evaluated patients and 502 control subjects (all caucasian) but were unable to detect an association between BH and AD even after controlling for age, gender, and apolipoprotein E (ApoE) genotype. We conclude that this polymorphism does not account for inherited susceptibility to AD in the populations represented in this sample.