A Formal Study of Distributed Meeting Scheduling

Automating routine organizational tasks, such as meeting scheduling, requires a careful balance between the individual (respecting his or her privacy and personal preferences) and the organization (making efficient use of time and other resources). We argue that meeting scheduling is an inherently distributed process, and that negotiating over meetings can be viewed as a distributed search process. Keeping the process tractable requires introducing heuristics to guide distributed schedulers' decisions about what information to exchange and whether or not to propose the same tentative time for several meetings. While we have intuitions about how such heuristics could affect scheduling performance and efficiency, verifying these intuitions requires a more formal model of the meeting schedule problem and process. We present our preliminary work toward this goal, as well as experimental results that validate some of the predictions of our formal model. We also investigate scheduling in overconstrained situations, namely, scheduling of high priority meetings at short notice, which requires cancellation and rescheduling of previously scheduled meetings. Our model provides a springboard into deeper investigations of important issues in distributed artificial intelligence as well, and we outline our ongoing work in this direction.     

The influence of personal and social identity on the clothing consumption of adolescents

We consider the influence of personal and social identity among adolescents on the importance they attach to clothing products and brands. The conceptual framework includes more conventional variables such as socialization (family, peers, media, and celebrities) and individual characteristics (gender and grade level). Based on a sample of 1,596 French high school adolescents, our results highlight: (i) the influence of identity on the importance attached to product and brand; (ii) the mediating effects of personal and social identities; and (iii) the moderating effects of gender and grade level. We conclude with an analysis of theoretical contributions, practical implications, and future research directions. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Forecasting artificial intelligence on online customer assistance: Evidence from chatbot patents analysis

The main goal of this research is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the actual progresses in artificial intelligence, with emphasis on chatbots as emerging forms of customer assistance in online retailing. Drawing upon an analysis of the chatbot patents in the past 20 years, our findings show the increasing technology push towards the adoption of new conversational agents based on natural language. Findings also highlight the extent to which the research and development efforts are attempting to improve artificial intelligence systems that characterize chatbots. To this end, technology advancements are mainly focusing on: (i) improving chatbot ability to automatically draw inferences on users starting from multiple data sources, and (ii) using consumers’ knowledge adaptively to provide more customized solutions. Finally, results show the tight relationship between the digital assistants’ analytical skills and their ability to automatically interact with the users.     

氟喹诺酮药物中间体合成研究进展

介绍了合成喹诺酮药物-些重要中间体所取得的新进展,这些中间体包括：2,3,4-三氟～4-硝基苯、2,4-二氯-5-氟苯甲酸、4-丁酰氯、2,6-二氯-5-氟烟酰乙酸乙酯、2,4-二氯-5-氟苯乙酮、2,4-二氯氟苯等。另外,对某些合成方法的改进作了较详细叙述,如：2,4-二氯氟苯、2,4-二氯-5-氟苯甲酸等。如其中以1,2,3-三氯苯为起始原料,经硝化、氟化两步反应制得的1,2,3-三氟-硝基苯产品质量分数大于99％,收率达60％。     

Consumer self‐construal and trust as determinants of the reactance to a recommender advice

Commercial recommendation agents (RAs) represent an important type of the decision support systems (DSSs) that are widely used by online retailers and firms. To date, little is known about the factors that shape the user's decision making and reactance toward the recommendations of these agents. Building on theories from psychology and information systems domains, this research proposes that a user's self‐construal and trust are two relevant factors that interact to shape the behavior toward the RA advice. Two studies, the first conducted using potential online customers and the second conducted at a behavioral laboratory, provided support to this proposition. The first study considered RA trust and showed that activating the interdependent self leads users with low (high) trust to exhibit high reactance behavior toward the RA advice. The second study variated trust using trust cues and corroborated the latter finding, while showing no important impact for the psychological reactance trait. As expected, in both studies the reactance behavior of independent users was not affected by trust. These results contribute by underscoring that social interdependence extends to RAs because the role of trust becomes salient when the interdependent self is activated for a user.     

The Impact of Personality Variables,Prior Experience,and Training on Sales Agents' Internet Utilization and Performance

ABSTRACT

Emerging literature on the impact of the Internet on business-to-business (B2B) marketing has primarily focused on examining this issue from the perspective of manufacturers and buyers. This study focuses on the sales agent, a third prominent actor in B2B markets, and tests a conceptual model that relates a sales agent's personality, demographic, and user-situational constructs to that sales agent's Internet utilization for selling activities. Further, the model tested in this study relates a sales agent's Internet utilization to perceived sales performance. Findings in this study indicate that internal locus of control, learning orientation, and sales related Internet training relate positively to a sales agent's Internet utilization, and that a sales agent's age relates negatively to Internet utilization. Further, the results support a positive relationship between a sales agent's Internet utilization and sales performance. This study emphasizes that the Internet can be a productive tool for sales agents. The implications of the results of this study for sales agents with respect to training and recruitment are discussed and avenues for future research are suggested.     

辩护人、诉讼代理人毁灭、伪造证据，妨害作证罪考察

现行刑法第306条——判处辩护人、诉讼代理人毁灭、伪造证据,妨害作证罪的立法根据在于,该罪行具有侵害国家司法作用的高度危险。由于辩护人、诉讼代理人在刑事诉讼中的特殊作用,决定了该罪行应当从重处罚。引诱行为的实质内容在于使证人违背事实改变证言或者作伪证,而不在于引诱的具体行为方式,即使是诱导式询问的某些特别类型也存在构成刑法第306条罪行的余地。刑法第306条与第307条是特别犯与一般犯的关系。辩护人、诉讼代理人藏匿、隐避证人的,属于本罪的毁灭证据的行为;辩护人、诉讼代理人明知是他人伪造、变追的证据而使用的,应当属于本罪的伪造证据的行为。     

荧光增白剂的毒性

荧光增白剂的毒性一直是大家关注的问题,本文根据国外大量的文献报道,就荧光增白剂对动物及人体的急性毒性、慢性毒性、致癌性、诱变性、刺激性等方面提供给读者一系列较为完整的数据。     

工程项目全方位动态成本控制

未来激烈的市场竞争注定企业要想生存发展就必须全面提升自己的竞争力,传统的建筑行业也不例外。过去那种单凭施工管理人员经验进行成本控制的做法已经不适合现代新型管理模式了。通过对常见工程项目管理中成本失控原因的分析,总结出了成本控制中应注意的几点问题,最后结合成本控制中容易出现的问题,提出了一种全新的全方位动态成本控制体系。     

Asset allocation and multivariate position based trading

I add a second risky asset and a risk free bond to the univariate artificial market investigated by Lux and Marchesi (Int J Theor Appl Finance 3(4):675–702, 2000), keeping track of traders aggregate positions and wealth. Asset allocation and security selection are modeled as separate decision processes, as is common practice in financial institutions. Introducing position based trading avoids inconsistencies in traders inventories resulting from the order based setup of the original model, while preserving its ability to reproduce the stylized facts of financial return series.