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Customer demand is driving the evolution of electronic equipment towards smaller devices with increased performance and more features. At the same time, product price should remain at a sufficiently low level with assembly process yields and throughput high. These somewhat contradictory requirements are difficult to fulfil with conventional SMD technology. Therefore, much attention is paid to packages offering small‐size and high I/O counts as well as excellent electrical properties, such as chip scale packages (CSP) and flip‐chip. CSP offers an IC in a package, which provides robustness for handling and, in some cases, decreases thermally induced stresses, and, most importantly, is SMT compatible. On the other hand, flip‐chip has the ultimate electrical performance and the smallest “package” size, with the capability of very high I/O counts. In this paper, the impacts of both CSP and flip‐chip technologies on product development and manufacturing processes is addressed.

Two members of ISHM‐Hungary, Professor Zsolt Illyefalvi‐Vitéz, ELC representative, and Professor Gábor Harsányi, president and TPC representative, attended the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on MCM‐C/Mixed Technologies in Florida, USA, in May co‐sponsored by ISHM‐US and organised by:

‘Soldering and Cleaning in Electronics’ international conference, including an exposition, took place in Brno on 12–13 October 1993. The conference was organised by SMT‐Info, together with the ISHM‐Czech and Slovak Chapter. The purpose of this common action was to bring together the professionals in surface mount technology and thick film technology. In the framework of the conference, in which 130 home and foreign delegates participated, the annual meeting of the ISHM‐Czech and Slovak Chapter took place.

The purpose of this paper is to operationalise and verify a cognitive motivation model that has been adapted to information seeking. The original model was presented within the field of psychology.

An operationalisation of the model is presented based on the theory of expectancy-value and on the operationalisation used when the model was first developed. Data for the analysis were collected from a sample of seven informants working as consultants in Danish municipalities. Each participant filled out a questionnaire, kept a log book for a week and participated in a subsequent interview to elicit data regarding their information source behaviour and task motivation.

Motivation affected source use when the informants search for information as part of their professional life. This meant that the number of sources used and the preference for interpersonal and internal sources increased when the task had high-value motivation or low-expectancy motivation or both.

The study is based on a relatively small sample and considers only one motivation theory. This should be addressed in future research along with a broadening of the studied group to involve other professions than municipality consultants.

Motivational theories from the field of psychology have been used sparsely in studies of information seeking. This study operationalises and verifies such a theory based on a theoretical adaptation of this model made by Savolainen (2012c).

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the picture of the motivators for information seeking by comparing two cognitive psychological approaches to motivation: self-determination theory (SDT) and expectancy-value theories (EVTs).

The study draws on the conceptual analysis of 31 key investigations characterizing the nature of the above theories. Their potential is examined in light of an illustrative example of seeking information about job opportunities.

SDT approaches motivation by examining the degree to which one can make volitional choices while meeting the needs of autonomy and competence. Information-seeking behaviour is most volitional when it is driven by intrinsic motivation, while such behaviours driven by extrinsic motivation and amotivation are less volitional. Modern EVTs approach the motivators for information seeking by examining the individual’s beliefs related to intrinsic enjoyment, attainment value, utility value and relative cost of information seeking. Both theories provide useful alternatives to traditional concepts such as information need in the study of the motivators for information seeking.

As the study focusses on two cognitive psychological theories, the findings cannot be generalised to all represent all categories relevant to the characterisation of triggers and drivers of information seeking.

Drawing on the comparison of two cognitive psychological theories, the study goes beyond the traditional research approaches of information behaviour research confined to the analysis of information needs.

The purpose of this article is to elaborate the picture of the motivators for information seeking by comparing the conceptualizations of task‐based information needs and expectancy‐value theories.

The article is a conceptual analysis of major articles characterising task‐based information needs and expectancy‐value theories developed in psychology since the 1950s.

The conceptualizations of task‐based information needs approach the motivators for information seeking in terms of the informational requirements posed by tasks at hand. However, the ways in which such needs trigger and drive information seeking have not been specified in detail. Expectancy‐value theories provide a more elaborate picture of motivational factors by focusing on actors' beliefs about the probability of success in information seeking and the perceived value of the outcome of this activity.

The findings are based on the comparison of two research approaches only.

So far, information scientists have largely ignored the psychological theories of motivation. This study demonstrates the potential of such approaches by discussing an established psychological theory. The findings indicate that such theories hold a good potential to elaborate the models of task‐based information seeking in particular.

This systematic literature review aims to elaborate the research progress of information practices to help other researchers attain a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of the field.

Following a systematic review protocol, 123 research articles from nine academic databases were included in the analysis.

Four separate results can be outlined. First, practice theory, social constructionist theory and activity theory are often used as the theoretical basis for the study of information practices. Second, people will engage in specific information practice activities in different external and internal contexts. The external contexts include social and needs contexts. The internal contexts include information source horizons, user's affection and user's cognition. Third, the existing information practice models can be divided into static and dynamic types. These models mainly reflected activities and influencing factors of information practices. Fourth, qualitative methods were the most used in information practice research.

The field of information practices is a vast, expanding research field. This research will focus only on a specific section, namely concepts, activities, contexts and models. Researchers could contribute to exploring the concepts, components and mechanisms of information practices by combining theories from various disciplines, such as sociology and behavioral science.

This is the first study to reveal the general picture of information practices. It also elaborates the characteristics of people's information practices and shows the potential development direction for future research.

To specify the nature of experiential information by examining how such information is articulated and shared in online discussion.

Experiential information is approached by identifying two constitutive aspects: (1) sensory information that an individual obtains from noticeable events lived through by means of human senses such as sight and touch and (2) cognitive–affective information that is indicative of how the individual interprets such events by means of cognitive operations like comparison and evaluation, as well as appraises the affective valence of such events. To examine the nature of experiential information, an empirical study was made by analysing how people articulate sensory and cognitive–affective information in online discussion about the COVID-19 epidemic. To this end, a sample of 1773 messages posted to the online forum hosted by the Canadian Broadcasting Company was scrutinized by means of descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis.

Experiential information was mainly articulated in the depiction of visual observations of lived-through events, as well as in their comparison and evaluation. Experiential information was often articulated in conjunction with information of other types, most notably topic-related opinions, neutral descriptions of COVID-19 related issues and suggestions offered to fellow participants.

As the study concentrated on the sharing of experiential information about the COVID-19 epidemic in an online discussion forum, the findings cannot be extended to concern the exchange of experiential information in other contexts.

The study is among the first to characterize empirically the nature of experiential information by examining the articulations of online discussants.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the conceptual picture of the relationships between the affective and cognitive factors in information seeking and use.

Conceptual analysis focusing on the ways in which the affective and cognitive factors and their interplay are approached in the Information Search Process model developed by Carol Kuhlthau, and the Social-Biological Information Technology model elaborated by Diane Nahl.

Kuhlthau’s model approaches the cognitive factors (thoughts) and affective factors (feelings) and affective-cognitive factors (mood) as integral constituents of the six-stage information search process. Thoughts determine the valence of feelings (positive or negative), while mood opens or closes the range of possibilities in a search. Nahl’s taxonomic model defines the affective and cognitive factors as components of a biologically determined process serving the ends of adaptation to information ecology. The interplay of the above factors is conceptualized by focusing on their mutual roles in the cognitive and affective appraisal of information.

The findings are based on the comparison of two models only.

So far, information scientists have largely ignored the study of the interplay between affective and cognitive factors in information seeking and use. The findings indicate that the examination of these factors together rather than separately holds a good potential to elaborate the holistic picture of information seeking and use.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the development needs and opportunities in the distribution system operators’ (DSO) tariff structures in the smart-grid environment.

The impacts of the distribution pricing schemes for the stakeholders and their requirements for the tariff structures are evaluated by qualitative analyses. Furthermore, there is a case analysis concerning the practical development possibilities of the DSO tariff structures in Finland.

Major finding of the paper is that the demand-based power band tariff is the optimal solution for the DSO pricing structure, when taking into account the real-life limitations and the requirements of the stakeholders.

Outcomes of the paper can be applied in practice in design of the pricing schemes in the electricity distribution. Incentive provision impacts and cost reflectivity of the DSO tariffs can be improved by implementing the suggested pricing structure.

The paper provides a novel viewpoint on the study of the DSO tariff design by considering the impacts of the pricing for the stakeholders and their requirements for tariff structure. Furthermore, the real-life limitations in the tariff design have been taken into account by analyzing the development options in Finland. Results are useful, especially for the DSOs, regulators and academics, who are working with the tariff development issues.