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A systematic review on fitness testing in adult male basketball players : tests adopted, characteristics reported and recommendations for practice

- Morrison, Matthew, Martin, David, Talpey, Scott, Scanlan, Aaron, Delaney, Jace, Halson, Shona, Weakley, Jonathon

  • Authors: Morrison, Matthew , Martin, David , Talpey, Scott , Scanlan, Aaron , Delaney, Jace , Halson, Shona , Weakley, Jonathon
  • Date: 2022
  • Type: Text , Journal article , Review
  • Relation: Sports Medicine Vol. 52, no. 7 (2022), p. 1491-1532
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  • Description: Background: As basketball match-play requires players to possess a wide range of physical characteristics, many tests have been introduced in the literature to identify talent and quantify fitness in various samples of players. However, a synthesis of the literature to identify the most frequently used tests, outcome variables, and normative values for basketball-related physical characteristics in adult male basketball players is yet to be conducted. Objective: The primary objectives of this systematic review are to (1) identify tests and outcome variables used to assess physical characteristics in adult male basketball players across all competition levels, (2) report a summary of anthropometric, muscular power, linear speed, change-of-direction speed, agility, strength, anaerobic capacity, and aerobic capacity in adult male basketball players based on playing position and competition level, and (3) introduce a framework outlining recommended testing approaches to quantify physical characteristics in adult male basketball players. Methods: A systematic review of MEDLINE, PubMed, SPORTDiscus, Scopus, and Web of Science was performed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines to identify relevant studies. To be eligible for inclusion, studies were required to: (1) be original research articles; (2) be published in a peer-reviewed journal; (3) have full-text versions available in the English language; and (4) include the primary aim of reporting tests used and/or the physical characteristics of adult (i.e., ≥ 18 years of age) male basketball players. Additionally, data from the top 10 draft picks who participated in the National Basketball Association combined from 2011–12 to 2020–21 were extracted from the official league website to highlight the physical characteristics of elite 19- to 24-year-old basketball players. Results: A total of 1684 studies were identified, with 375 being duplicates. Consequently, the titles and abstracts of 1309 studies were screened and 231 studies were eligible for full-text review. The reference list of each study was searched, with a further 59 studies identified as eligible for review. After full-text screening, 137 studies identified tests, while 114 studies reported physical characteristics in adult male basketball players. Conclusions: Physical characteristics reported indicate a wide range of abilities are present across playing competitions. The tests and outcome variables reported in the literature highlight the multitude of tests currently being used. Because there are no accepted international standards for physical assessment of basketball players, establishing normative data is challenging. Therefore, future testing should involve repeatable protocols that are standardised and provide outcomes that can be monitored across time. Recommendations for testing batteries in adult male basketball players are provided so improved interpretation of data can occur. Clinical Trial Registration: This review was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews and allocated registration number CRD42020187151 on 28 April, 2020. © 2022, The Author(s).

Mining outlying aspects on healthcare data

- Samariya, Durgesh, Ma, Jiangang

On computation of optimal strategies in oligopolistic markets respecting the cost of change

- Outrata, Jiri, Valdman, Jan

  • Authors: Outrata, Jiri , Valdman, Jan
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Mathematical Methods of Operations Research Vol. 92, no. 3 (2020), p. 489-509
  • Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP160100854
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  • Description: The paper deals with a class of parameterized equilibrium problems, where the objectives of the players do possess nonsmooth terms. The respective Nash equilibria can be characterized via a parameter-dependent variational inequality of the second kind, whose Lipschitzian stability, under appropriate conditions, is established. This theory is then applied to evolution of an oligopolistic market in which the firms adapt their production strategies to changing input costs, while each change of the production is associated with some “costs of change”. We examine both the Cournot-Nash equilibria as well as the two-level case, when one firm decides to take over the role of the Leader (Stackelberg equilibrium). The impact of costs of change is illustrated by academic examples. © 2020, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Adverse shocks, household expenditure and child marriage : evidence from India and Vietnam

- Trinh, Truong-Anh, Zhang, Quanda

  • Authors: Trinh, Truong-Anh , Zhang, Quanda
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Empirical Economics Vol. 61, no. 3 (2021), p. 1617-1639
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  • Description: Child marriage is associated with negative outcomes in regard to education, health and economic empowerment in later life. While the consequences of child marriage have been studied extensively, there has been limited discussion on the drivers of child marriage. This paper examines the impact of adverse shocks on child marriage. We use a sample of 886 girls between 12 and 18 years of age from India and Vietnam involved in the Young Lives project. The potential endogeneity problem is addressed by using rainfall deviation as the instrument. We find that in Vietnam, where bride price payment is a common practice in the event of expenditure reduction resulting from adverse shocks, a household may consider marrying off their daughter as a possible coping strategy. In contrast, in India where dowry payments are common, shocks may reduce the probability of child marriage, possibly, because a girl’s family is unable to meet the dowry requirements. These findings are robust to alternative ways of measuring child marriage, expenditure and rainfall deviation. We recommend that policies designed to reduce child marriage are considered in the context of cultural and social norms. © 2020, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Capital structure of SMEs : a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis

- Kumar, Satish, Sureka, Riya, Colombage, Sisira

  • Authors: Kumar, Satish , Sureka, Riya , Colombage, Sisira
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Management Review Quarterly Vol. 70, no. 4 (2020), p. 535-565
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  • Description: Capital structure is the outcome of market conditions, financial decisions taken by the firm, and credit rationing of fund providers. Research on the capital structure of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has gained momentum in recent years. The present study aims to identify key contributors, key areas, current dynamics, and suggests future research directions in the field of the capital structure of SMEs. This paper adopts a systematic literature review methodology along with bibliometric, network, and content analysis on a sample of 262 studies taken from the Web of Science database to examine the research activities that have taken place on this topic. Most influential papers are identified based on citations and PageRank, along with the most influential authors. The co-citation network is developed to see the intellectual structure of this research area. Applying bibliometric tools, four research clusters have been identified and content analysis performed on the papers identified in the clusters. It is found that the major research focus in this area is around theory testing—mainly, pecking order theory, trade-off theory, and agency theory. Determinants of capital structure, trade credit, corporate governance, and bankruptcy are also the prominent research topics in this field. Also, this study has identified the research gaps and has proposed five actionable research directions for the future. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Solving ESL sentence completion questions via pre-trained neural language models

- Liu, Qiongqiong, Liu, Tianqiao, Zhao, Jiafu, Fang, Qiang, Ding, Wenbiao, Wu, Zhongqin, Xia, Feng, Tang, Jiliang, Liu, Zitao

An intelligent heart disease prediction system based on swarm-artificial neural network

- Nandy, Sudarshan, Adhikari, Mainak, Balasubramanian, Venki, Menon, Varun, Li, Xingwang, Zakarya, Muhammad

  • Authors: Nandy, Sudarshan , Adhikari, Mainak , Balasubramanian, Venki , Menon, Varun , Li, Xingwang , Zakarya, Muhammad
  • Date: 2023
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Neural Computing and Applications Vol. 35, no. 20 (2023), p. 14723-14737
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  • Description: The accurate prediction of cardiovascular disease is an essential and challenging task to treat a patient efficiently before occurring a heart attack. In recent times, various intelligent healthcare frameworks have been designed with different machine learning and swarm optimization techniques for cardiovascular disease prediction. However, most of the existing strategies failed to achieve higher accuracy for cardiovascular disease prediction due to the lack of data-recognized techniques and proper prediction methodology. Motivated by the existing challenges, in this paper, we propose an intelligent healthcare framework for predicting cardiovascular heart disease based on Swarm-Artificial Neural Network (Swarm-ANN) strategy. Initially, the proposed Swarm-ANN strategy randomly generates predefined numbers of Neural Networks (NNs) for training and evaluating the framework based on their solution consistency. Additionally, the NN populations are trained by two stages of weight changes and their weight is adjusted by a newly designed heuristic formulation. Finally, the weight of the neurons is modified by sharing the global best weight with other neurons and predicts the accuracy of cardiovascular disease. The proposed Swarm-ANN strategy achieves 95.78% accuracy while predicting the cardiovascular disease of the patients from a benchmark dataset. The simulation results exhibit that the proposed Swarm-ANN strategy outperforms the standard learning techniques in terms of various performance matrices. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.

Application of slope mass rating and kinematic analysis along road cut slopes in the Himalayan terrain

- Siddique, Tariq, Sazid, Mohammed, Khandelwal, Manoj, Varshney, Harsh, Irshad, Sayem

  • Authors: Siddique, Tariq , Sazid, Mohammed , Khandelwal, Manoj , Varshney, Harsh , Irshad, Sayem
  • Date: 2022
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: International Conference on Geotechnical challenges in Mining, Tunneling and Underground structures, ICGMTU 2021, Virtual, Online, 20-21 December 2021, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering Vol. 228, p. 697-708
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  • Description: Hundreds of fatalities are being reported every year due to rampant slope failures along road-cut engineered slopes in the Himalayan region. Prevailing perilous conditions of cut slopes are mainly due to adverse geological attributes and ever-rising anthropogenic factors. To procure a landslide resilient design along roads in mountainous regions, a systematic geotechnical investigation is required. In this regard, the characterization of vulnerable slopes through empirical classification systems is of paramount importance for geotechnical appraisal. Eleven vulnerable road cut slopes along national highway-5 (NH-5), from Solan to Shimla have been studied herein. The present study incorporates the application of Slope Mass Rating (SMR) and its extensions, including Continuous Slope Mass Rating (CSMR) and Chinese Slope Mass Rating (ChSMR) to study various slopes. The outcomes of SMR and its extensions are used to classify cut slopes into different stability grades. In addition, prevailing structurally controlled failures have also been assessed by kinematic analysis. The majority of slopes are liable to undergo planar and wedge failures. The outcomes obtained by kinematic analysis, SMR and its extensions are used to propose adequate remedial measures. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Community structure and ecological responses to hydrological changes in benthic algal assemblages in a regulated river : application of algal metrics and multivariate techniques in river management

- Atazadeh, Ehsan, Gell, Peter, Mills, Keely, Barton, Andrew, Newall, Peter

  • Authors: Atazadeh, Ehsan , Gell, Peter , Mills, Keely , Barton, Andrew , Newall, Peter
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Environmental Science and Pollution Research Vol. 28, no. 29 (2021), p. 39805-39825
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  • Description: The flow regime of the Wimmera River was substantially modified due to the construction of a water supply reservoir. Samples of diatoms and soft algae and measurements of water quality were analysed at ten sampling sites for 3 years (between February 2012 and November 2014) along the MacKenzie River, a tributary of the Wimmera River, in different seasons and under different flow regimes, to understand the spatial and temporal variation in the relationship between algal communities, water quality and stream condition. Baseline information on algal communities and water quality was collected during base flow conditions, while experiments on the effect of water releases on algal communities were based on flow regime variations (manipulated flow regimes), specifically on the algae community structure, water quality and ecosystem function. Algal species composition changed along the river under different flow regimes and different seasons. Under base flow, Bacillariophyta (diatoms) were more abundant upstream, and filamentous green algae were more abundant downstream. The results showed that the algal composition shifted downstream after water release events. Chlorophyta (green algae), Cyanophyta (blue-green algae) and Chrysophyta gradually increased from upstream to downstream under base flow conditions and before water releases, whereas diatoms were greater upstream and increased downstream after water releases. The results are presented to tailor discharge and duration of the river flows by amalgamation of consumptive and environmental flows to improve the condition of the stream thereby supplementing the flows dedicated to environmental outcomes. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

DQN-based resource allocation for NOMA-MEC-aided multi-source data stream

- Ling, Jing, Xia, Junjuan, Zhu, Fusheng, Gao, Chongzhi, Lai, Shiwei, Balasubramanian, Venki

  • Authors: Ling, Jing , Xia, Junjuan , Zhu, Fusheng , Gao, Chongzhi , Lai, Shiwei , Balasubramanian, Venki
  • Date: 2023
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Eurasip Journal on Advances in Signal Processing Vol. 2023, no. 1 (2023), p.
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  • Description: This paper investigates a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-aided mobile edge computing (MEC) network with multiple sources and one computing access point (CAP), in which NOMA technology is applied to transmit multi-source data streams to CAP for computing. To measure the performance of the considered NOMA-aided MEC network, we first design the system cost as a linear weighting function of energy consumption and delay under the NOMA-aided MEC network. Moreover, we propose a deep Q network (DQN)-based offloading strategy to minimize the system cost by jointly optimizing the offloading ratio and transmission power allocation. Finally, we design experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Specifically, the designed strategy can decrease the system cost by about 15% compared with local computing when the number of sources is 5. © 2023, The Author(s).

Knowledge mapping of research progress in blast-induced ground vibration from 1990 to 2022 using CiteSpace-based scientometric analysis

- Zhang, Yulin, He, Haini, Khandelwal, Manoj, Du, Kun, Zhou, Jian

  • Authors: Zhang, Yulin , He, Haini , Khandelwal, Manoj , Du, Kun , Zhou, Jian
  • Date: 2023
  • Type: Text , Journal article , Review
  • Relation: Environmental Science and Pollution Research Vol. 30, no. 47 (2023), p. 103534-103555
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  • Description: Blasting constitutes an essential component of the mining and construction industries. However, the associated nuisances, particularly blast vibration, have emerged as significant concerns that pose threats to operational stability and the safety of the surrounding areas. Given the increasing emphasis on sustainability, ecological responsibility, safety, and geo-environmental practices, the impact of blast vibration has garnered heightened attention and scrutiny. Nevertheless, the field still lacks comprehensive phase analysis studies. Therefore, it is imperative to elucidate the research progress on blast vibration and discern its current frontiers of investigation. To address this need, this study employs bibliometric methods and the CiteSpace 6.1.R2 software to analyze 3093 papers from the Web of Science database. Through this comprehensive analysis, the study aims to chronicle the developmental trajectory, assess the present research status, and identify future trends in the field of blast vibration. The findings of this study reveal that research on “blasting vibration” is advancing rapidly, with the number of citations exhibiting a J-shaped growth curve over time. China emerges as the leading contributor to this research, followed by India, and the foremost institution in this field is Central South University in China. Cluster analysis identifies the effects of ground vibration, numerical simulation, blast load, blasting vibration and rockburst hazard as the most prominent research areas presently. The primary research directions in this domain revolve around the rock fragmentation, compressive strength, particle swarm optimization, and ann. The emergence of these keywords underscores a dynamic shift towards a more holistic and multidisciplinary approach in the field of blasting-induced ground vibration. Furthermore, this study provides a concise overview of blast vibration, discusses prediction techniques, and proposes measures for its control. Additionally, the discussion delves into the social significance of intelligent blasting systems within the context of artificial intelligence, aiming to address the hazards associated with blast-induced ground vibrations. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Decision behavior based private vehicle trajectory generation towards smart cities

- Chen, Qiao, Ma, Kai, Hou, Mingliang, Kong, Xiangjie, Xia, Feng

  • Authors: Chen, Qiao , Ma, Kai , Hou, Mingliang , Kong, Xiangjie , Xia, Feng
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: 18th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Applications, WISA 2021 Vol. 12999 LNCS, p. 109-120
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  • Description: In contrast with the condition that the trajectory dataset of floating cars (taxis) can be easily obtained from the Internet, it is hard to get the trajectory data of social vehicles (private vehicles) because of personal privacy and government policies. This paper absorbs the idea of game theory, considers the influence of individuals in the group, and proposes a decision behavior based dataset generation (DBDG) model of vehicles to predict future inter-regional traffic. In addition, we adopt simulation tools and generative adversarial networks to train the trajectory prediction model so that the private vehicle trajectory dataset conforming to social rules (e.g., collisionless) is generated. Finally, we construct from macroscopic and microscopic perspectives to verify dataset generation methods proposed in this paper. The results show that the generated data not only has high accuracy and is valuable but can provide strong data support for the Internet of Vehicles and transportation research work. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

API based discrimination of ransomware and benign cryptographic programs

- Black, Paul, Sohail, Ammar, Gondal, Iqbal, Kamruzzaman, Joarder, Vamplew, Peter, Watters, Paul

Deep reinforcement-based conversational ai agent in healthcare system

- Kulkarni, Pradnya, Stranieri, Andrew, Mahableshwarkar, Ameya, Kulkarni, Mrunalini

  • Authors: Kulkarni, Pradnya , Stranieri, Andrew , Mahableshwarkar, Ameya , Kulkarni, Mrunalini
  • Date: 2022
  • Type: Text , Book chapter
  • Relation: Studies in Computational Intelligence p. 233-249
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  • Description: Conversational AI is a sub-domain of artificial intelligence that deals with speech-based or text-based AI agents that have the capability to simulate and automate conversations and verbal interactions. A Goal Oriented Conversational Agent (GOCA) is a conversational AI agent that attempts to solve a specific problem for the users as per their inputs. The development of Reinforcement Learning algorithms has opened up new opportunities in research related to conversational AI, due to the striking similarity the algorithm bears to the way a conversation takes place. This chapter aims to describe a novel, hybrid conversational AI architecture using Deep Reinforcement Learning that can give state-of-the-art results on the tasks of Intent Classification, Entity Recognition, Dialog Management, State Tracking, Information Retrieval and Natural Language Response Generation. The architecture also consists of external AI modules, focused on carrying out intelligent tasks pertaining to the healthcare sector. The AI tasks that the conversational agent is capable of performing are—Text-based Question Answering, Text Summarization and Visual Question Answering. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Experimental investigation and theoretical analysis of indentations on cuboid hard rock using a conical pick under uniaxial lateral stress

- Wang, Shaofeng, Sun, Licheng, Li, Xibing, Zhou, Jian, Du, Kun, Wang, Shanyong, Khandelwal, Manoj

  • Authors: Wang, Shaofeng , Sun, Licheng , Li, Xibing , Zhou, Jian , Du, Kun , Wang, Shanyong , Khandelwal, Manoj
  • Date: 2022
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Geomechanics and Geophysics for Geo-Energy and Geo-Resources Vol. 8, no. 1 (2022), p.
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  • Description: Abstract: Stress conditions are critical in deep hard rock mining and significantly influence hard rock cuttability. The peak cutting force (PCF), cutting work (CW), and specific energy (SE) can reflect rock cuttability and determine the feasibility and saving of mechanized mining to some extent. In this paper, the influence of uniaxial lateral stress on rock cuttability was investigated by an indentation experiment on cuboid rock using a conical pick, and a theoretical model was proposed to analyze the PCF and associated factors. The PCF, CW, and SE were used as indices to measure hard rock cuttability. The regression analyses show that rock cuttability presents as decreasing followed by increasing as uniaxial lateral stresses increases. The theoretical model was established by simplifying rock fragments into three-dimensional ellipse cones, and a formula was derived based on the elastic fracture mechanics theory. The error between the calculated and experimental values is 3.8%, which confirms the accuracy of the prediction formula. Finally, rock fragmentation by using conical picks was successfully applied on the field mining stope by inducing high geostresses to promote adjustments in stress and improve ore-rock cuttability. Highlights: (1)The influences of uniaxial lateral stress on rock cuttability have been investigated.(2)The peak cutting force, cutting work and specific energy can reflect the rock cuttability.(3)A new theoretical model has been proposed to analyze the peak cutting force.(4)The rock fragmentation using conical picks was successfully applied in deep hard rock mining. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Sensitivity of the stability assessment of a deep excavation to the material characterisations and analysis methods

- Ghadrdan, Mohsen, Shaghaghi, Tahereh, Tolooiyan, Ali

  • Authors: Ghadrdan, Mohsen , Shaghaghi, Tahereh , Tolooiyan, Ali
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Geomechanics and Geophysics for Geo-Energy and Geo-Resources Vol. 6, no. 4 (2020), p.
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  • Description: Due to the spatial variability of material characterisations in deep and large scale excavations, stability assessment is often a challenging task. Numerous slope stability analysis methods based on a range of assumptions and principles are implemented in commercial software packages to ease the process of stability assessment of non-homogeneous and multi-layered slopes. However, the selection of a suitable method remains crucial as the application of an unrealistic or unsuitable method may lead to catastrophic consequences. Besides material shear strength parameters, and analysis methods, non-strength characterisations such as permeability and creep can affect the result of slope stability analysis significantly. In this study, the sensitivity of the stability assessment of a deep excavation in Australia to material characterisations such as friction angle, cohesion and permeability and creep is investigated by the use of different formulations and assumptions of the Limit Equilibrium Method (LEM) and the Finite Element Method (FEM) as the two most common slope stability methods. The results show that the stability assessment is highly sensitive to the applied method and assumptions. Moreover, the role of material strength and non-strength parameters and the selection of a suitable constitutive model in slope stability assessment is presented. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Corrosion and coating defect assessment of Coal Handling and Preparation Plants (CHPP) using an ensemble of deep convolutional neural networks and decision-level data fusion

- Yu, Yang, Hoshyar, Azadeh, Samali, Bijan, Zhang, Guang, Rashidi, Maria, Mohammadi, Masoud

  • Authors: Yu, Yang , Hoshyar, Azadeh , Samali, Bijan , Zhang, Guang , Rashidi, Maria , Mohammadi, Masoud
  • Date: 2023
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Neural Computing and Applications Vol. 35, no. 25 (2023), p. 18697-18718
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  • Description: In view of the problems of ineffective feature extraction and low detection accuracy in existing detection system, this study presents a novel machine vision-based approach composed of an ensemble of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and improved Dempster-Shafer (D-S) theory-based data fusion to evaluate corrosion and coating defect of coal handling and preparation plants. To start with, the structural surface image is sent to each transferred CNN for initial defect identification. Then, an improved D-S fusion algorithm is proposed to combine the identification results from different CNNs, which are vectors consisting of statistical indicators of all the potential damage severity categories. The decision-level fusion of different CNNs can effectively improve image classification. To validate the performance of the proposed method, a dataset made of 3593 surface images with different defect severities captured from mining infrastructure in field is established together with data augmentation. The validation result demonstrates that the proposed method is able to effectively improve the recognition accuracy of defect severity and reduce the wrong recognition rate. Finally, the robustness of the proposed approach is also appraised by polluting the images with different types and intensities of noise, with satisfactory results. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.

Insect abundance patterns on vertebrate remains reveal carrion resource quality variation

- Dawson, Blake, Wallman, James, Evans, Maldwyn, Barton, Philip

  • Authors: Dawson, Blake , Wallman, James , Evans, Maldwyn , Barton, Philip
  • Date: 2022
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Oecologia Vol. 198, no. 4 (2022), p. 1043-1056
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  • Description: Resource quality is a key driver of species abundance and community structure. Carrion is unique among resources due to its high nutritional quality, rapidly changing nature, and the diverse community of organisms it supports. Yet the role resource quality plays in driving variation in abundance patterns of carrion-associated species remains poorly studied. Here we investigate how species abundances change with a measure of resource change, and interpret these findings to determine how species differ in their association with carrion that changes in quality over time. We conducted field succession experiments using pigs and humans over two winters and one summer. We quantified the effect of total body score, an objective measure of resource change, on adult insect abundance using generalised additive models. For each species, phases of increasing abundance likely indicated attraction to a high-quality resource, and length of abundance maxima indicated optimal oviposition and feeding time. Some species such as the beetle Necrobia rufipes had a rapid spike in abundance, suggesting a narrow window of opportunity for carrion resource exploitation, while species like the wasp Nasonia vitripennis had a gradual change in abundance, indicating a wide window of resource exploitation. Different abundance patterns were also observed between species occurring on pigs and humans, suggesting cadaver type is an important aspect of resource quality. Our findings show that species abundances, unlike species occurrences, can reveal additional detail about species exploitation of carrion and provide information about how resource quality may drive competition and variation in insect community succession. © 2022, The Author(s).

An investigation of the drivers of social commerce and e-word-of-mouth intentions : elucidating the role of social commerce in e-business

- Goraya, M. Awals, Jing, Zhu, Shareef, Mahmud, Imran, Muhammad, Malik, Aneela, Akram, M. Shakaib

  • Authors: Goraya, M. Awals , Jing, Zhu , Shareef, Mahmud , Imran, Muhammad , Malik, Aneela , Akram, M. Shakaib
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Electronic Markets Vol. 31, no. 1 (2021), p. 181-195
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  • Description: Building on social commerce (s-commerce) perspectives and the trust transfer theory, this study develops a theoretical model that explains the indirect effects of two types of s-commerce attributes (community and platform) on behavioral outcomes (s-commerce intentions and e-Word-of-Mouth (e-WOM) intentions) through trust in community and platform. We analyze data collected from s-commerce users on travel booking websites using structural equation modeling technique. Results confirm that s-commerce intentions and e-WOM intentions are contingent upon s-commerce community and platform attributes. Moreover, the results provide evidence for the mediating effects of trust in community and platform on the relationship between s-commerce attributes and behavioral outcomes. The study provides further insights about the impact of s-commerce experience on s-commerce intention and e-WOM intention. Moreover, this study contributes to s-commerce research and practice by developing and validating the role of s-commerce community and platform attributes in forming consumers’ s-commerce behavioral outcomes. © 2019, Institute of Applied Informatics at University of Leipzig.

Stress–strain relationship of sandstone under confining pressure with repetitive impact

- Wang, Shiming, Xiong, Xianrui, Liu, Yunsi, Zhou, Jian, Khandelwal, Manoj

  • Authors: Wang, Shiming , Xiong, Xianrui , Liu, Yunsi , Zhou, Jian , Khandelwal, Manoj
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Geomechanics and Geophysics for Geo-Energy and Geo-Resources Vol. 7, no. 2 (2021), p.
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  • Description: Abstract: A series of triaxial repetitive impact tests were conducted on a 50-mm-diameter split Hopkinson pressure bar testing device to reveal the characteristics of dynamic stress–strain of sandstone under confining pressure, and the confining pressure in this study was set as 5 and 10 MPa. The results showed that sandstone is very sensitive to confining pressure and strain rate. As the confining pressure and strain rate increases, the dynamic strength, critical strain and absorbed energy also increases, however with the increases in number of impacts, they decrease. With impact numbers increases, the stress–strain curve of sandstone gradually transits from a Class I to a Class II. The dynamic statistical damage constitutive model used in the paper can describe the dynamic response of sandstone under confining pressure with repetitive impact. Various influencing factors, such as material characteristics, confining pressure, strain rate and damage on the dynamic mechanical behavior of sandstone are also fully considered in the model. The damage curve changes from concave to convex as the F/ F increase. When the F/ F exceed 0.5, the damage curve appears convex, and the damage is obvious. By comparing with the variation of the reflected wave waveform with the impact numbers, it is found that damage evolution law of the rock under confining pressure with the impact numbers is similar to that of the reflected wave waveform with the impact numbers, can reflect the damage degree of the rock specimen without other auxiliary equipment, which has been verified. Article Highlights: The stress-strain curve of sandstone under confining pressure with repeated impact changes from Class I to Class II, and it will become less obvious as the confining pressure increases.The constitutive model used in the article can well describe the dynamic mechanical properties, strain rate effect and its turning point of rock under confining pressure with repeated impact.The damage curve changes from concave to convex, and the damage evolution law is similar to that of the reflected wave waveform with the impact numbers. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Manoj Khandelwal” is provided in this record**