Search results

This paper aims to present a new design for removable partial dentures (RPDs) for partially edentulous patients to improve the efficiency and quality of RPD manufacturing. Additive and subtractive manufacturing technologies and zirconium silicate micro-ceramic bonding in the aesthetic zone are used herein.

A case was presented. First, RPD digital definitive casts were acquired, and then digital frameworks with crown retainers and digital crowns were obtained by computer-aided design (CAD). The titanium alloy frameworks and resin crowns were fabricated by three-dimensional (3D) printing and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) processes, respectively. The crowns adhered to the crown retainers. Ceramage bonding was used to reform the gingival anatomy in the aesthetic zone during the fabrication of the RPDs. The finished RPDs were assessed by a clinician and delivered to the patient.

The RPDs were conventionally assessed by a clinician, were deemed to be accurate and satisfied both the patient and clinician.

This novel method provides a way to fabricate RPDs with a combination of additive and subtractive manufacturing technologies. The design of the framework was different from that of a conventional framework because it contained the crown retainers, and the traditional base retainer no longer existed. Ceramage bonding was used to replicate the gingival anatomy in the aesthetic zone. The new RPDs provided accuracy and were less time-consuming to produce than those produced with the traditional method. The new method enables the digital manufacturing of nearly the entire RPDs.

Although interdisciplinary research is an increasing trend in scientific funding projects, they are suffering from a lower probability of being funded. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current situation on successful case of funding application and provides suggestions on how libraries can expand services to help scientific funding application.

This paper utilizes the co-occurrences of disciplinary application codes to construct an interdisciplinary knowledge flow network. Based on 193517 sponsored projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the authors study the interdisciplinary flow of knowledge and investigate the evolution of network structure using social network analysis.

Results show that the interdisciplinary knowledge flow network is not only a small-world network but also a scale-free network. Two main knowledge flow paths across scientific departments exist, showing the heterogeneity of knowledge distributions across scientific disciplines. The authors also find that if two disciplines in the same scientific department both have a wide influence to other disciplines, they are more prone to link together and create a knowledge chain.

Funding consultation currently has not occupied an advisory role either in library services or in the research team. This paper conducts a co-occurrences network analysis of interdisciplinary knowledge flow in scientific funding projects. Considering the complexity of funding application and the advantage of traditional library services on information collection, integration, and utilization, the authors conclude the possibility and necessity of embedding funding consultation in traditional library services.

Knowledge sharing, as a kind of social behavior that incorporates collective intelligence to achieve a certain goal, has become a remarkable developing trend in recent years. Under the context of traditional teaching, this study aims to explore the manner in which students become effective in sharing knowledge to help optimize course design and improve our existing education.

Among 195 university students taking an elective, the effects of different incentives on group performance in completing tasks is explored on the basis of a randomized experiment.

Results show that intra-group cooperation can be helpful to student performance, whereas intra-group competition neither improves nor worsens student performance. The former is mainly driven by reciprocity, especially for that stimulated by inter-group competition, whereas the latter is stimulated by egoism. Thus, proper reciprocity can promote student behavior to increase voluntary contribution. In addition, intra-group differences do not interfere with group performance, especially task-oriented groups.

Certain suggestions are proposed to improve the curriculum design in large classrooms. Forming groups is the best way to strengthen student knowledge sharing. Within task-oriented groups, the incentives of inter-group competition can encourage students to deepen intra-group cooperation and thus effectively improve group performance under the conditions of external competition.

Employees play a central role in firms’ knowledge transferal, but knowledge-sharing brings significant costs for employees. Thus, this study aims to explore the components of firms’ incentive systems and how these influence employees’ knowledge-sharing, and also to test whether employees’ knowledge-sharing intentions transform into better knowledge transfer performance at the firm level.

This study collected data in China, and 219 usable questionnaires were collected. Then, this study used a structure equation model by LISREL for hypotheses testing.

This study finds that positive economic incentives, positive relational incentives and negative relational incentives all increase employees’ knowledge-sharing intentions, contributing to firms’ improved knowledge-transfer performance. Thus, both positive and negative incentives and both economic and relational incentives exert influences on employees’ knowledge-sharing activities.

Because employees have both material and emotional needs and always want to approach good things and avoid bad things, firms should take measures to make their incentive systems more comprehensive. Then, employees can be motivated to share their knowledge effectively.

Existing studies have mainly explored the effects of positive economic incentives on knowledge transferal. Because individuals have both a promotion self-regulatory focus associated with an approach motivation and a prevention self-regulatory focus associated with an avoidance motivation, and because they have both material and emotional needs, this study classifies incentives into three types and confirms their effectiveness for motivating employees to share knowledge.

The tribological properties of muscovite and its thermal-treated products as lubricant additives in lithium grease were investigated. The effect of thermal temperature on the crystal structure and tribological properties of muscovite was studied. This study aims to explore the tribological mechanism of muscovite and optimize a proper thermal activation temperature, thus further improving the tribological properties.

The crystal structure of muscovite samples was characterized by SEM, TG-DSC, XRD and FTIR. The tribological properties of grease samples were investigated using a four-ball tribotester and the worn surface was analyzed by SEM and EDS.

The excellent tribological properties of muscovite can be ascribed to the layer structure and lubricant film formed on the worn surface. Thermal temperature at 500-600°C increases the surface activity and oxygen releasing capability, and thus favors the formation of lubricant film and accordingly further improves the tribological properties. However, the layer structure is destroyed and hard phases such as alumina and amorphous appear after thermal temperature activated beyond 1000°C, as it results in the aggravation of friction and wear.

To the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to study the effect of thermal temperature on the crystal structure and tribological properties of muscovite. The tribological mechanism of muscovite particle and its thermal-treated products was disclosed.

The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework to explore the influence of green packaging on green purchase intention in the context of online-to-offline (O2O) commerce and to discuss the indirect effects of perceived value, perceived risk and green satisfaction.

To cast light on the factors affecting consumers’ intention to purchase in the context of O2O commerce, 295 valid questionnaire responses of O2O consumers in China were collected via an online survey. Data analysis was performed based on structural equation modeling.

The empirical results indicated that green packaging significantly affects consumers’ green purchase intention in the O2O commerce context indirectly through perceived value, perceived risk and green satisfaction. Moreover, green loyalty positively and significantly moderates the effects of perceived value, perceived risk and green satisfaction on green purchase intention.

Research on product packaging has mainly focused on investigating packaging materials, designs, functions and applications but has rarely examined how product packaging affects consumers’ purchase intention in the context of O2O commerce. Moreover, although previous studies have explored the roles of perceived value and perceived risk on purchase intention, they have not investigated the effects of environmental concerns and commerce context. This study attempts to fill these research gaps.

The aim of this study is to propose an efficient rule extraction and integration approach for identifying phishing websites. The proposed approach can elucidate patterns of phishing websites and identify them accurately.

Hyperlink indicators along with URL-based features are used to build the identification model. In the proposed approach, very simple rules are first extracted based on individual features to provide meaningful and easy-to-understand rules. Then, the F-measure score is used to select high-quality rules for identifying phishing websites. To construct a reliable and promising phishing website identification model, the selected rules are integrated using a simple neural network model.

Experiments conducted using self-collected and benchmark data sets show that the proposed approach outperforms 16 commonly used classifiers (including seven non–rule-based and four rule-based classifiers as well as five deep learning models) in terms of interpretability and identification performance.

Investigating patterns of phishing websites based on hyperlink indicators using the efficient rule-based approach is innovative. It is not only helpful for identifying phishing websites, but also beneficial for extracting simple and understandable rules.

Trust has been widely recognized as the crucial factor of consumer purchase intention when shopping on peer-to-peer short-term rental platforms where hosts and renters are strangers. However, the specific attributes of hosts that help build trust with potential renters and drive their purchase of short-term rentals remain unknown. This study aims to explore the effects of host attributes on renter purchases made on Xiaozhu.com, one of the top short-term rental platforms in China, while controlling for short-term rental characteristics.

A crawler program was developed by Python to collect the host attributes and their short-term rental characteristics of 935 hosts in Beijing from November 18, 2015 to February 14, 2016. The authors use Poisson regression models to estimate the effects of host attributes on renter reservations. They also conduct a series of robustness checks for the estimated results.

The authors found that host attributes such as the time of reservation confirmation, the acceptance rate of renter reservations, the number of listings owned, whether a personal profile page is disclosed and gender of the host significantly affect renter reservations, whereas the response rate of the host does not influence renters when purchasing short-term rentals online.

This study identifies which host attributes are perceived as trustworthy and affect renters’ purchase decisions, a topic of both theoretical and practical importance but currently less researched. The findings add to emerging literature by providing insights on trust-building in the peer-to-peer economy. Useful suggestions are also provided on strengthening the trust mechanism on short-term rental platforms to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions. Notably, the study is the first attempt to examine the perception of Chinese users toward short-term rentals despite its global prevalence. The analytical insights revealed from large scale but granular online observations data of host attributes and actual renter reservations greatly supplement findings of extant literature using survey and experiment approaches.

This study aims to focus on peer-to-peer accommodation services in the sharing economy. Adopting construal level theory as the theoretical foundation, this study investigates the main and interaction effects of social and spatial distances on guest loyalty toward peer-to-peer accommodation.

This study uses a secondary source of online observational data archived on Xiaozhu, a leading peer-to-peer accommodation sharing platform in China. It consists of 2,612 observations of 1,304 unique travelers who stayed at 559 listings managed by 281 hosts in four major metropolitan areas of China over four years from August 2012 to August 2016. Non-linear binary choice panel models of probability regressions were used to estimate the effects of psychological distances (social and spatial) between hosts and guests on the likelihood of repeat purchase. The software used for the econometric analyses is STATA 14.

The results indicate that social distance negatively affects guest loyalty toward the listing hosts, while spatial distance has a positive influence on guest loyalty. The results also show significant interactions between the two psychological distance dimensions in influencing loyalty. The findings provide important insight into the influences of psychological distances on travelers’ repeat purchase behavior toward peer-to-peer accommodation providers.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence that supports the importance of psychological distances in forming a loyal relationship between hosts and guests in the peer-to-peer accommodation sector of the sharing economy.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of host attributes and travelers’ frequency of past stays and their interaction on the likelihood of repeat purchase of home-sharing services at both the host and listing levels.

A combination of econometrics analyses using a large-scale, granular online observational data set collected from a home-sharing platform was performed.

Travelers exhibit salient loyalty to home-sharing services. At the host level, host attributes including acceptance rate and listing capacity positively affect travelers’ likelihood of repeat purchase; such effects diminish as travelers’ frequency of past stays with a host/listing increases. At the listing level, confirmation efficiency and acceptance rate are critical, and travelers’ frequency of past stays matters.

Responding to the call for more research on customer loyalty of sharing economy, this study instantiated on a home-sharing website in China and adds a unique perspective to the research domain, but its findings may not be generalized in other settings.

This study identifies the factors affecting customers’ repeat purchase behaviors at both the host and listing levels, allowing the hosts, webmasters of home-sharing websites and even hoteliers to advance specific tactics to promote repeat purchase among travelers.

Loyalty was measured with real-time internet-enabled observational data about travelers’ actual repeat purchase behavior on a home-sharing website, rather than assessing consumers’ behavioral intentions through the conventional survey method. Two specific levels of customer loyalty were analyzed, including the ones towards a service provider (host) and a service product (listing).