Yiran Li, Liyi Zhang, Wen-Lung Shiau, Liyang Xu and Qihua Liu
Reading represents a basic way by which humans understand the world and acquire knowledge; it is also central to learning and communicating. However, with the rapid development of…
Abstract
Purpose
Reading represents a basic way by which humans understand the world and acquire knowledge; it is also central to learning and communicating. However, with the rapid development of mobile reading, an individual's cognition of objective facts may be affected by the reading environment and text genre, resulting in limited memorization and understanding of the reading material. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the influence of the reading environment and text genre on individuals' cognitive activities from the perspective of motivational activation level using evidence from electroencephalography (EEG) signals.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employed a mixed design experiment with two reading environments (quiet and distracting) between subjects, two text genres (entertaining and scientific) within subjects and two reading tasks (memory recall and comprehension) within subjects. There were 50 participants in the experiment, and the data obtained from 44 participants while they read the materials and completed the reading tasks were analyzed.
Findings
The results showed that readers are more positively motivated to read in a quiet reading environment than in a distracting reading environment when facing the memory recall tasks of entertaining genre passages and comprehension tasks of scientific genre passages. Entertaining genres are more likely to arouse readers' reading interest but hinder the memory recall of the content details. While scientific genres are not easy to understand, they are helpful for working memory.
Originality/value
This study not only applies a new technology to mobile reading research in the field of library science and addresses the limitations of self-report data, but also provides suggestions for the further improvement of mobile reading service providers. Additionally, the results may provide useful information for learners with different learning demands.
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Liyi Zhang, Pinghao Ye, Qihua Liu and Lijun Rao
The information behavior of National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) electronic resources users in China has not been researched extensively. This paper aims to help…
Abstract
Purpose
The information behavior of National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) electronic resources users in China has not been researched extensively. This paper aims to help producers and providers collect information on user behavior and develop more electronic resources.
Design/methodology/approach
The study investigates NSTL users' behavior from seven “211 projects” universities in Wuhan, a city in central China. The questionnaire includes questions about respondents' basic information (i.e. educational level, discipline, etc.) and their information service requirements. Correlations among users' educational level, academic discipline, retrieval method, and literature use, among other variables, were analyzed.
Findings
The results show that most NSTL users are graduate students and young staff members. The number of users who use advanced retrieval and choose the criterion “literature's citation” to judge the literature's value increases slightly with the improvement of the educational level. There is higher demand for literature written in English in the disciplines of natural science, medicine, and engineering, and a certain proportion of demand for materials written in Japanese in the disciplines of medicine and engineering.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that electronic resource producers should offer more foreign literature and that providers should improve the quality of services.
Originality/value
The paper provides suggestions for further improvement of the NSTL to fulfil the information needs and requirements of users.
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Qihua Liu and Liyi Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to examine information cascades in the context of users’ e-book reading behavior and differentiate it from alternative factors that lead to herd…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine information cascades in the context of users’ e-book reading behavior and differentiate it from alternative factors that lead to herd behavior, such as network externalities and word-of-mouth effects.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper constructed panel data using information concerning 226 e-books in 30 consecutive days from Sina.com’s reading channel (Book.Sina.com.cn) from October 2, 2013, to October 31, 2013 of the same year in China. A multinomial logit market-share model was employed.
Findings
E-books’ ranking has a significant impact on their market share, as predicted by informational cascades theory. Higher ranking e-books’ clicks will see a greater increase as a result of an increase in clicks ranking. Due to the information cascades effect, review volume had no impact on the market share of popular e-books. Total votes had a powerful impact on the market share of e-books, showing that once information cascade occurred, it could be enhanced by the increase in total votes. The total clicks of e-books had a significant impact on their market share, suggesting that online reading behavior would be influenced by network externalities.
Practical implications
As important information, the ranking or popularity of e-books should be carefully considered by online reading web sites, publishers, and authors. It is not enough for the authors and publishers of e-books to simply pay attention to the content. They should design their marketing strategies to allow network externalities and informational cascades to work for them, not against them. Online reading web sites should also focus on eliminating certain behavior, such as “brush clicks” and “brush votes,” in order to prevent an undesirable information cascade due to false information.
Originality/value
To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to examine information cascades in the context of users’ e-book reading behavior. Moreover, this study can help other researchers by utilizing a large sample of daily data from one of the earliest online reading platforms in China.
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Liyi Zhang, Pinghao Ye and Qihua Liu
The purpose of this paper is to report on users' information behaviour in China, a topic which has not been researched extensively. The aim is to help producers and providers…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on users' information behaviour in China, a topic which has not been researched extensively. The aim is to help producers and providers collect and develop more electronic resources.
Design/methodology/approach
The study investigates users' information behaviour at seven “211 Project” universities in Wuhan, a city in central China. These universities all have access to the resources of the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL). The questionnaire includes questions about respondents' basic identifying information (educational level, job, etc.) and their information service requirements. Correlations among users' education level, users' jobs, users' retrieval methods, literature use, etc. were analysed.
Findings
The results show that most NSTL users are graduate students and young staff members. and the number of male users surpasses female ones slightly. The purpose of the utilisation of electronic resources for customers is scientific research, teaching and the need for self‐development. During a year, the demand of users is the highest in March and the lowest in August. The users' knowledge service types include learning the progress of science and technology, citation retrieval and analysis, statistical analysis, intelligent retrieval and knowledge aggregation.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that electronic resource producers should offer more foreign literature and providers should improve the quality of services.
Originality/value
The paper provides suggestions for the further improvement of NSTL to fulfill the information needs and requirements of users.
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Min Zhong, Yuchun Zhu, Qihui Chen, Tianjun Liu and Qihua Cai
The purpose of this paper is to examine how households’ engagement in concurrent business (CB), which is measured by the contribution of off-farm income to household income…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how households’ engagement in concurrent business (CB), which is measured by the contribution of off-farm income to household income, affects the farm size–technical efficiency (TE) relationship in Northern China.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper applies a stochastic frontier analysis method to analyze data on 1,006 rural households collected from four major wheat-producing provinces in Northern China, adopting a translog specification for the underlying production function.
Findings
The analysis yields three findings. First, the farm size–TE relationship is inverted U-shaped for all CB engagement levels higher than 5 percent, and the most technically efficient farm size increases with the level of household CB engagement. Second, how TE varies with the level of CB engagement depends on farm size: an inverted-U relationship for relatively small farms (<10μ), a positive relationship for middle-size farms (10–20μ), and a negative relationship for large farms (>20μ). Finally, the overall TE score, 0.88, suggests that wheat output can be increased by 12 percent in Northern China if technical inefficiency were eliminated.
Originality/value
Unlike most previous studies that examine the impacts of farm size and households’ off-farm business involvement separately, this paper examines how these two factors interact with each other.
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Qihua Cai, Yuchun Zhu and Qihui Chen
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles social networks play in households’ contribution to the provision of small hydraulic facilities (SHFs) in rural China.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles social networks play in households’ contribution to the provision of small hydraulic facilities (SHFs) in rural China.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts a sample-selection ordered probit model (Greene and Hensher, 2010) to estimate the impacts of overall social-network intensity, of the number of strong ties (relatives), and of the number of weak ties (friends), using data on 1,064 representative households collected from three provinces (Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Shandong).
Findings
The numbers of strong ties and weak ties both have significant impacts on households’ willingness to contribute to SHFs provision, but only the latter has a significant impact on their level of contribution. More specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the number of weak ties (i.e. friends) is associated with a 6.6 percent increase in households’ propensity of contributing more than 550 yuan and a 8.2 percent decrease in their propensity of contributing less than 100 yuan.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to examine the impacts of social networks on households’ contribution to SHFs provision in rural China. Its finding is of great policy relevance-fostering and maintaining social networks (e.g. through rural cooperatives) can significantly increase households’ contribution to public-good provision.
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Xiangman Zhou, Qihua Tian, Yixian Du, Yancheng Zhang, Xingwang Bai, Yicha Zhang, Haiou Zhang, Congyang Zhang and Youlu Yuan
The purpose of this paper is to find a theoretical reference to adjust the unsymmetrical arc shape and plasma flow of overlapping deposition in wire arc additive manufacturing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to find a theoretical reference to adjust the unsymmetrical arc shape and plasma flow of overlapping deposition in wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) and ensure the effect of the gas shielding and stable heat and mass transfer in deposition process. The multiphysical numerical simulation and physical experiment are used for validation.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, welding torch tilt deposition and external parallel magnetic field–assisted deposition are presented to adjust the unsymmetrical arc shape and plasma flow of overlapping deposition, and a three-dimensional numerical model is developed to simulate the arc of torch tilt overlapping deposition and external parallel magnetic field–assisted overlapping deposition.
Findings
The comparison of simulated results indicate that the angle of welding torch tilt equal to 20° and the magnetic flux density of external transverse magnetic field equal to 0.001 Tesla are capable of balancing the electric arc and shielding gas effectively, respectively. The arc profiles captured by a high-speed camera match well with simulated results.
Originality/value
These studies of this paper can provide a theoretical basis and reference for the calibration and optimization of WAAM process parameters.
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Qihua Ma, Qilin Li, Wenchao Wang and Meng Zhu
This study aims to achieve superior localization and mapping performance in point cloud degradation scenarios through the effective removal of dynamic obstacles. With the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to achieve superior localization and mapping performance in point cloud degradation scenarios through the effective removal of dynamic obstacles. With the continuous development of various technologies for autonomous vehicles, the LIDAR-based Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system is becoming increasingly important. However, in SLAM systems, effectively addressing the challenges of point cloud degradation scenarios is essential for accurate localization and mapping, with dynamic obstacle removal being a key component.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper proposes a method that combines adaptive feature extraction and loop closure detection algorithms to address this challenge. In the SLAM system, the ground point cloud and non-ground point cloud are separated to reduce the impact of noise. And based on the cylindrical projection image of the point cloud, the intensity features are adaptively extracted, the degradation direction is determined by the degradation factor and the intensity features are matched with the map to correct the degraded pose. Moreover, through the difference in raster distribution of the point clouds before and after two frames in the loop process, the dynamic point clouds are identified and removed, and the map is updated.
Findings
Experimental results show that the method has good performance. The absolute displacement accuracy of the laser odometer is improved by 27.1%, the relative displacement accuracy is improved by 33.5% and the relative angle accuracy is improved by 23.8% after using the adaptive intensity feature extraction method. The position error is reduced by 30% after removing the dynamic target.
Originality/value
Compared with LiDAR odometry and mapping algorithm, the method has greater robustness and accuracy in mapping and localization.