Search results

Having described the list of suggested experiments for Engineering Science S.1 and S.2 in his last two articles, Mr Easton now considers the experiments for the third year Applied Mechanics course. Attention is given to the sequence in which the experiments are performed and to correlation with other teaching.

This study describes a series of experiments investigating the upper hot layer temperature profile in a confined space under different ventilation conditions for porosity-controlled wood crib fires for pre-flashover conditions.

Full-scale compartment (4 m × 4 m × 4 m) experiments were carried out for four-door openings, i.e. 100%, 75%, 50% and 25% of the total vent area (2 m × 1 m) with the wood crib as a fuel load. The temperature of the upper hot smoke layers of the compartment was recorded with the help of four layers of thermocouples for varying vent areas.

The effect of ventilation on the properties, i.e. mass loss rate, enclosure temperature, heat release rate and carbon monoxide (CO) gas concentration, has been measured and analyzed. The effect of ventilation on heat flux and flame temperature has also been studied. Compartment gas temperature has been examined by five wood crib burning stages: Ignition, growth, steady burning, recess and collapse.

Findings demonstrate that the influence of vent openings varies for the burning parameters and upper layer temperature of the compartment. The current results are beneficial in analyzing thermal risks concerning compartment fire and fire safety engineering projects.

University students often enter physical laboratory sessions with minimal knowledge of the experiments to be conducted and little or no understanding of the underlying concepts that govern the investigations. As a result, lab time is used inefficiently; motivated students lose interest and routine procedures are followed with minimal learning. The authors have developed a set of multimedia modules meant to enhance, not replace, the technical laboratory experience. The modules are akin to well‐conceived laboratory manuals applying multimedia tools, such as digital images and video clips, to better prepare the students for upcoming laboratory sessions. The modules are accessible through the Internet and include mechanisms for exchanging information.

The purpose of this article is to explore the ability of a novel psychological theory of how people make decisions, narrative‐based decision theory, to help explain people's decisions about whether to continue investment in a research and development (R&D) project (R&D progress decisions).

The paper applies the new theory to an empirical finding of existing research on R&D progress decisions; the finding that instruction in the sunk cost principle seems to mitigate the sunk cost effect in R&D progress decision‐making.

By interpreting the empirical finding in terms of narrative‐based decision theory, the paper is able to clarify and extend an earlier explanation for the empirical finding. More specifically, by drawing on narrative‐based decision theory the paper is able to provide a more detailed explanation of how the predictor variable (sunk cost) and the moderator variable (instruction in the sunk cost principle) may exert an influence.

Based on the result of the exploration, the authors call for further investigations into narrative‐based decision theory's value in explaining R&D progress decisions, and other management decisions.

Furthermore, the authors call for investigations into how narrative‐based decision theory may help decision‐makers in improving the quality of R&D progress decisions.

Narrative‐based decision theory is a recent theory from the field of naturalistic decision‐making. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first article that, by using an example, illustrates how the theory may help in explaining the findings of empirical research on management decisions.

This study aims to examine the nonidentical impacts of identical panel information that discloses cosmetic ingredients by their English (i.e. low jargon; e.g. vitamin E) versus scientific names (i.e. high jargon; tocopherol instead) presented in short versus crowded panel on young consumers’ confidence in processing ingredients information and product judgements. In the same context, this study also explores the effects of declarative aids provided within the ingredients panel.

This study conducted four experiments by using a 2 (jargon: high, low) × 2 (ingredients list: short, long) between-subjects analysis of variance design.

Young consumers’ processing-confidence and product evaluations increase (decrease) when the panel is brief (crowded) and presents cosmetic ingredients in low (high) jargon (Experiments 1, 2). However, when it discloses a factual aid [i.e. ingredient functions; e.g. tocopherol (antioxidant)], confidence in processing even the high-jargon information, as well as product judgements, increases irrespective of the panel’s length (Experiment 3). Moreover, a fictitious aid (e.g. dryness-fighting “atomic robots”) stimulates the same effect and bolsters processing confidence and product evaluations irrespective of both jargon and panel’s length (Experiment 4).

Despite their heavy use of over-the-counter beauty/cosmetic products, little do we know how young consumers consult and use on-pack ingredients information provided in one format versus the other. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first experimental work investigating the cosmetics-consuming youth’s reactions to panel format and aids to processing.

The creativity-based facilitation effect, well documented by previous research, shows that creative advertisements (ads) are more memorable than regular (or less creative) ads, that is, creativity facilitates memory. This current research aims to extend our understanding by investigating the impact of creativity on regular ads and competitive advertising. It examines whether creative ads impair the memorability of regular ads to determine whether a “creativity-based impairment effect” exists.

Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 tested creativity-based impairment effects in brand recall. Experiment 2 replicated and validated the impairment effect in recall, using a different presentation order of ads. In Experiment 3, effects of creative ads on competing vs non-competing brands were examined.

Results found that creative ads impaired the brand recall of regular ads, creative ads impaired the recall of competing brands more than non-competing brands and creative ads were recalled earlier in top-of-mind recall positions.

Future research may look at whether different memory measures (e.g. recognition), different proportions of creative ads, and ads of familiar vs unfamiliar brands produce differential impairment effects.

One suggestion from this research could be to not only copy-test your own brand’s advertising, but also test the advertising of other brands so that the target ad’s relative levels of creativity can be assessed before media buying. As a result of this testing, when the brand identifies any potential impairment effects, the identified creative ads could then be tracked in terms of media placement, providing a guide of where “not to schedule” advertising.

This research makes an important theoretical contribution as the first to explore impairment effects in the context of creative advertising. In doing so, it offers important managerial insights for regular and competitive advertising.

Mobile users increasingly employ location-based map searches in their daily lives. However, it is still relatively unknown about mobile users’ map related search behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to discover the interactions between the users and mobile map search systems, to reveal the shortcomings of existing mobile map search functions, and to propose improvement suggestions.

Based on a set of controlled user experiments performed on the Baidu mobile phone map, this paper empirically examines users’ location-based mobile search behaviors, such as timing, metering, judging and so on. This paper also conducts statistical correlation tests to generate relation tables and diagrams regarding each variable, for example, the relation between the retrieval time and the retrieval steps.

The results indicate that mobile map users have two important characteristics in their search behaviors: first, mobile map users always follow the single search path. Second, the mobile map search efficiency of users is always low.

The situation simulation testing method is mainly used for the construction of a mobile information search behavior environment, which may make the users be nervous and have some effect on the search efficiency.

Based on the identification of user behaviors, this paper provides suggestions to optimize and improve mobile map search systems.

This paper studies users’ mobile map search behavior based on location and explores the features of user behavior from the perspective of human-computer interaction.

Investigates the potential of demand artefacts in country‐of‐origin studies using three alternative methodological approaches: hetero‐method replication, non‐experiment and post‐experimental inquiry. The results converge in their support of the plausibility of demand artefacts in the single and multi‐cue list format conditions. However, in the multi‐cue ad format condition, demand artefacts are found to be a less plausible alternative explanation for the experimental results. Discusses the implications of these results and future research directions.

The success of a supply chain is highly reliant on effective inventory and ordering decisions. This paper systematically reviews and analyzes the literature on inventory ordering decisions conducted using behavioral experiments to inform the state-of-the-art.

This paper presents the first systematic review of this literature. We systematically identify a body of 101 papers from an initial pool of over 12,000.

Extant literature and industry observations posit that decision makers often deviate from optimal ordering behavior prescribed by the quantitative models. Such deviations are often accompanied by excessive inventory costs and/or lost sales. Understanding how humans make inventory decisions is paramount to minimize the associated consequences. To address this, the field of behavioral operations management has produced a rich body of research on inventory decision-making using behavioral experiments. Our analysis identifies primary research clusters, summarizes key learnings and highlights opportunities for future research in this critical decision-making area.

The findings will have a significant impact on future research on behavioral inventory ordering decisions while informing practitioners to reach better ordering decisions.

Previous systematic reviews have explored behavioral operations broadly or its subdisciplines such as judgmental forecasting. This paper presents a systematic review that specifically investigates the state-of-the-art of inventory ordering decisions using behavioral experiments.

Nowadays there are a large number of XML documents on the web. This means that information retrieval techniques for searching XML documents are very important and necessary for internet users. Moreover, it is often said that users of search engines want to browse only relevant content in each document. Therefore, an effective XML element search aims to produce only the relevant elements or portions of an XML document. Based on the demand by users, the purpose of this paper is to propose and evaluate a method for obtaining more accurate search results in XML search.

The existing approaches generate a ranked list in descending order of each XML element's relevance to a search query; however, these approaches often extract irrelevant XML elements and overlook more relevant elements. To address these problems, the authors' approach extracts the relevant XML elements by considering the size of the elements and the relationships between the elements. Next, the authors score the XML elements to generate a refined ranked list. For scoring, the authors rank high the XML elements that are the most relevant to the user's information needs. In particular, each XML element is scored using the statistics of its descendant and ancestor XML elements.

The experimental evaluations show that the proposed method outperforms BM25E, a conventional approach, which neither reconstructs XML elements nor uses descendant and ancestor statistics. As a result, the authors found that the accuracy of an XML element search can be improved by reconstructing the XML elements and emphasizing the informative ones by applying the statistics of the descendant XML elements.

This work focused on the effectiveness of XML element search and the authors did not consider the search efficiency in this paper. One of the authors' next challenges is to reduce search time.

The paper proposes a method for improving the effectiveness of XML element search.