During the past decade New Zealand has introduced far-reaching reforms in the struc-ture and operation of government departments and agencies. This model has attracted interest in developing countries because it promises significant gains in operational effi-ciency. But developing countries, which are dominated by informal markets, are risky candidates for applying the New Zealand model. The author suggests that basic reforms to strengthen rule-based government and pave the way for robust markets should be under-taken first. Developing and transitional countries have an understandable desire to accelerate public sector reform by adopting the most advanced innovations devised by indus-trial countries. This interest has been stimulated by the New Zealand model, which gives public managers broad discretion to operate within an accountability frame-work that specifies the results to be achieved and closely monitors performance. During the past decade, dozens of countries have sent delegations to New Zealand to observe its avant garde management practices and to interview government officials on how the new systems and procedures have affected the cost and delivery of public services. The World Bank and other international organizations have showcased New Zealand's reforms at various conferences, and some of the architects of the reforms have crisscrossed the globe extolling the virtues and portability of their country's version of results-oriented public management. Despite the interest and the sales efforts, only a few developed countries (such as Iceland and Singapore) have adopted selected features of the model; others (such as Sweden and the United Kingdom) have embraced a managerial ethic without sub-scribing to the hard-edged contractualism that differentiates New Zealand's reforms from those tried elsewhere. To this writer's knowledge, however, not a single devel-oping or transitional country has installed the full New Zealand model, although quite a few have been enchanted by the prospect of leapfrogging to the front ranks in the international reform sweepstakes. A few countries (such as Mongolia) are in the
Many applications depend on efficient management of large sets of distinct strings in memory. For example, during index construction for text databases a record is held for each distinct word in the text, containing the word itself and information such as counters. We propose a new data structure, the burst trie, that has significant advantages over existing options for such applications: it uses about the same memory as a binary search tree; it is as fast as a trie; and, while not as fast as a hash table, a burst trie maintains the strings in sorted or near-sorted order. In this paper we describe burst tries and explore the parameters that govern their performance. We experimentally determine good choices of parameters, and compare burst tries to other structures used for the same task, with a variety of data sets. These experiments show that the burst trie is particularly effective for the skewed frequency distributions common in text collections, and dramatically outperforms all other data structures for the task of managing strings while maintaining sort order.
There has been a notable interest in the organization of routing information to enable fast lookup of IP addresses. The interest is primarily motivated by the goal of building multigigabit routers for the Internet, without having to rely on multilayer switching techniques. We address this problem by using an LC-trie, a trie structure with combined path and level compression. This data structure enables us to build efficient, compact, and easily searchable implementations of an IP-routing table. The structure can store both unicast and multicast addresses with the same average search times. The search depth increases as /spl Theta/(log log n) with the number of entries in the table for a large class of distributions, and it is independent of the length of the addresses. A node in the trie can be coded with four bytes. Only the size of the base vector, which contains the search strings, grows linearly with the length of the addresses when extended from 4 to 16 bytes, as mandated by the shift from IP version 4 to IP version 6. We present the basic structure as well as an adaptive version that roughly doubles the number of lookups/s. More general classifications of packets that are needed for link sharing, quality-of-service provisioning, and multicast and multipath routing are also discussed. Our experimental results compare favorably with those reported previously in the research literature.
Current model free learning-based robot grasping approaches exploit human-labeled datasets for training the models. However, there are two problems with such a methodology: (a) since each object can be grasped in multiple ways, manually labeling grasp locations is not a trivial task; (b) human labeling is biased by semantics. While there have been attempts to train robots using trial-and-error experiments, the amount of data used in such experiments remains substantially low and hence makes the learner prone to over-fitting. In this paper, we take the leap of increasing the available training data to 40 times more than prior work, leading to a dataset size of 50K data points collected over 700 hours of robot grasping attempts. This allows us to train a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for the task of predicting grasp locations without severe overfitting. In our formulation, we recast the regression problem to an 18-way binary classification over image patches. We also present a multi-stage learning approach where a CNN trained in one stage is used to collect hard negatives in subsequent stages. Our experiments clearly show the benefit of using large-scale datasets (and multi-stage training) for the task of grasping. We also compare to several baselines and show state-of-the-art performance on generalization to unseen objects for grasping.
We present a new question set, text corpus, and baselines assembled to encourage AI research in advanced question answering. Together, these constitute the AI2 Reasoning Challenge (ARC), which requires far more powerful knowledge and reasoning than previous challenges such as SQuAD or SNLI. The ARC question set is partitioned into a Challenge Set and an Easy Set, where the Challenge Set contains only questions answered incorrectly by both a retrieval-based algorithm and a word co-occurence algorithm. The dataset contains only natural, grade-school science questions (authored for human tests), and is the largest public-domain set of this kind (7,787 questions). We test several baselines on the Challenge Set, including leading neural models from the SQuAD and SNLI tasks, and find that none are able to significantly outperform a random baseline, reflecting the difficult nature of this task. We are also releasing the ARC Corpus, a corpus of 14M science sentences relevant to the task, and implementations of the three neural baseline models tested. Can your model perform better? We pose ARC as a challenge to the community.
Pre-trained large language models (“LLMs”) like GPT-3 can engage in fluent, multi-turn instruction-taking out-of-the-box, making them attractive materials for designing natural language interactions. Using natural language to steer LLM outputs (“prompting”) has emerged as an important design technique potentially accessible to non-AI-experts. Crafting effective prompts can be challenging, however, and prompt-based interactions are brittle. Here, we explore whether non-AI-experts can successfully engage in “end-user prompt engineering” using a design probe—a prototype LLM-based chatbot design tool supporting development and systematic evaluation of prompting strategies. Ultimately, our probe participants explored prompt designs opportunistically, not systematically, and struggled in ways echoing end-user programming systems and interactive machine learning systems. Expectations stemming from human-to-human instructional experiences, and a tendency to overgeneralize, were barriers to effective prompt design. These findings have implications for non-AI-expert-facing LLM-based tool design and for improving LLM-and-prompt literacy among programmers and the public, and present opportunities for further research.
Investors hold a substantially larger proportion of their wealth portfolios in domestic assets than standard portfolio theory would suggest, a phenomenon called “equity home bias.” In the absence of this bias, investors would optimally diversify domestic output risk using foreign equities. Therefore, consumption growth rates would tend to co-move across countries even when output growth rates do not. Empirically, however, consumption growth rates tend to have a lower correlation across countries than do output growth rates, a phenomenon I call “consumption home bias.” In this paper, I discuss these two biases and their potential relationship as suggested by the literature.
Abstract Plant traits – the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants and their organs – determine how primary producers respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, influence ecosystem processes and services and provide a link from species richness to ecosystem functional diversity. Trait data thus represent the raw material for a wide range of research from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology to biogeography. Here we present the global database initiative named TRY, which has united a wide range of the plant trait research community worldwide and gained an unprecedented buy‐in of trait data: so far 93 trait databases have been contributed. The data repository currently contains almost three million trait entries for 69 000 out of the world's 300 000 plant species, with a focus on 52 groups of traits characterizing the vegetative and regeneration stages of the plant life cycle, including growth, dispersal, establishment and persistence. A first data analysis shows that most plant traits are approximately log‐normally distributed, with widely differing ranges of variation across traits. Most trait variation is between species (interspecific), but significant intraspecific variation is also documented, up to 40% of the overall variation. Plant functional types (PFTs), as commonly used in vegetation models, capture a substantial fraction of the observed variation – but for several traits most variation occurs within PFTs, up to 75% of the overall variation. In the context of vegetation models these traits would better be represented by state variables rather than fixed parameter values. The improved availability of plant trait data in the unified global database is expected to support a paradigm shift from species to trait‐based ecology, offer new opportunities for synthetic plant trait research and enable a more realistic and empirically grounded representation of terrestrial vegetation in Earth system models.
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This article proposes a methodology for addressing three long-standing problems of near synonym research. First, we show how the internal structure of a group of near synonyms can be revealed. Second, we deal with the problem of distinguishing the subclusters and the words in those subclusters from each other. Finally, we illustrate how these results identify the semantic properties that should be mentioned in lexicographic entries. We illustrate our methodology with a case study on nine near synonymous Russian verbs that, in combination with an infinitive, express TRY. Our approach is corpus-linguistic and quantitative: assuming a strong correlation between semantic and distributional properties, we analyze 1,585 occurrences of these verbs taken from the Amsterdam Corpus and the Russian National Corpus, supplemented where necessary with data from the Web. We code each particular instance in terms of 87 variables (a.k.a. ID tags), i. e., morphosyntactic, syntactic and semantic characteristics that form a verb's behavioral profile. The resulting co-occurrence table is evaluated by means of a hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis and additional quantitative methods. The results show that this behavioral profile approach can be used (i) to elucidate the internal structure of the group of near synonymous verbs and present it as a radial network structured around a prototypical member and (ii) to make explicit the scales of variation along which the near synonymous verbs vary.
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Social inclusion, recovery, and community reintegration have been interchangeably touted as the main principles of the mental health system in the new millennium 1,2,3,4. Common to these ideas is accomplishing self-determined goals that enhance one's sense of well being. These kinds of goals are defined in the here and now, and are framed in terms of real interests of all adults, those with as well as without disabilities. Relevant domains include: vocation, housing, education, health and wellness, relationships and recreation, and faith-based aspirations. Functional limitations due to one's disability negatively impact the ability to fully achieve goals in these domains. Participation in evidence-based practices supports the achievement of life goals. Stigma seems to perniciously affect goal attainment and undermines positive effects of evidence-based practices. How does stigma affect personal life goals? Stigma and its effects are distinguished into two forms, public and self-stigma. Consistent with a social psychological model, public stigma has been described in terms of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Social psychologists view stereotypes as knowledge structures that are learned by most members of one social group about people in different groups 5. Stereotypes about mental illness include blame, dangerousness, and incompetence 6. The fact that most people have knowledge of a set of stereotypes does not imply that they agree with them 5,7. People who are prejudiced endorse these pejorative stereotypes (“That's right; all persons with mental illness are violent!”) and generate negative emotional reactions as a result (“They all scare me!”) 8,9. Prejudice leads to discrimination, the behavioral reaction 10. Discrimination that comes from public stigma emerges in three ways: loss of opportunities (e.g., not being hired or leased an apartment), coercion (an authority makes decisions because the person is believed to be unable to do so), and segregation (what was previously moving people to state hospitals has now manifested itself as mental illness ghettos, especially pronounced in many urban settings) 11. This chain of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination is public stigma, the way in which the general public conceives of and reacts to people with serious mental illness. This is to be distinguished from self-stigma and the “why try” effect which is at the heart of this paper. The “why try” effect includes three components: self-stigma that results from stereotypes; mediators such as self-esteem and self-efficacy; and life goal achievement, or lack thereof. An important program of research has framed self-stigma and parts of the “why try” effect as modified labeling theory 12,13. People who internalize stereotypes about mental illness experience a loss of self-esteem and self-efficacy 12,14,15,16,17,18. People labeled with mental illness who live in a culture with prevailing stereotypes about mental illness may anticipate and internalize attitudes that reflect devaluation and discrimination. Devaluation is described as awareness that the public does not accept the person with mental illness. A subsequent body of research has sought to expand modified labeling theory 19,20,21. Self-devaluation is more fully described by what are called the “three A's” of self-stigma: awareness, agreement, and application. To experience self-stigma, the person must be aware of the stereotypes that describe a stigmatized group (e.g., people with mental illness are to blame for their disorder) and agree with them (that's right, people with mental illness are actually to blame for their disorder). These two factors are not sufficient to represent self-stigma, however. The third A is application. The person must apply stereotypes to one's self (I am mentally ill so I must be to blame for my disorder) 21. This perspective represents self-stigma as a hierarchical relationship; a person with mental illness must first be aware of corresponding stereotypes before agreeing with them and applying self-stigma to one's self. Note that the definition of self-stigma presented in Figure 1 is limited to perceptual-cognitive processes. As Goffman 22 argued, stigma is fundamentally a cue that elicits subsequent prejudice and discrimination. The “why try” effect Consistent with modified labeling theory, the demoralization that results from self-stigma leads to reduced self-esteem. In turn, the mediating role of self-esteem on several proxies of goal attainment has been tested and confirmed in four studies 23,24,25,26; goal attainment proxies include symptom reduction and quality of life. Measures of contingent self-worth were positively associated with financial and academic problems 25. Rosenfield and Neese-Todd 25 also showed that specific domains of quality of life — satisfaction with work, housing, health, and finance — were associated with self-stigma as well as self-esteem. Self-stigma and self-esteem have also been associated with actual help-seeking behavior, an important focus of research because of its implications 26. The “why try” effect further develops modified labeling theory by including another important mediator, which is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a cognitive construct that represents a person's confidence in successfully acting on specific situations 27. Low self-efficacy has been shown to be associated with the failure to pursue work or independent living opportunities at which people with mental illness might otherwise succeed 12,13,18,20,25,28,29. Consider findings from two studies as examples. In the first, Carpinello et al 30 showed that people with mental illness with low degrees of confidence in managing various circumstances related to their mental illness were found to be unsuccessful in discrete attempts to realize corresponding goals. Second, a path between stigma, efficacy, and goal attainment was implied in a study of people with serious psychiatric disabilities 29. Results showed that a measure of self-stigma was associated with self-efficacy, which then corresponded with low quality of life, the goal proxy. Modified labeling theory outlines the behavioral consequence of devaluation; namely the person may avoid situations where he/she is going to feel publicly disrespected because of self-stigma and low self-esteem. Behavioral consequences in the “why try” model exceed notions such as social avoidance. People who agree with stigma and apply it to themselves may feel unworthy or unable to tackle the exigencies of specific life goals. One might think that beliefs like these arise because the person indeed lacks basic social and instrumental skills to accomplish a specific aspiration. Alternatively, lack of confidence may reflect doubts thrown up by agreeing with specific stereotypes and defining one's self in terms of those stereotypes. “Why should I even try to get a job? Someone like me − someone who is incompetent because of mental illness − could not successfully accomplish work demands”. Self-stigma effects on one's sense of self-esteem also yield “why try” responses. A person who has internalized stereotypes like “the mentally ill have no worth because they have nothing to offer and are only drains on society” will struggle to maintain a positive self-concept. Self-worth here is more than the kind of negative self-statements that are observed in people with depressive symptoms. It is directly linked to applying a derogatory stereotype to one's self. “Why should I even try to live independently? Someone like me is just not worth the investment to be successful”. Unclear is whether these constructs − self-esteem and self-efficacy − overlap considerably as evaluative components of self-stigma or are independent in their effects. Findings from one study supported the latter, namely that self-esteem and self-efficacy were independently associated with satisfaction in financial goals 15. It is conceivable that a person can feel efficacious in a particular situation that has no effect on self-esteem. A person may be confident in getting to work each day but feel this is not an especially important part of work; as a result these efficacy effects will have little impact on self-esteem 27. To this point, the model of self-stigma and social psychological constructs describes negative processes that arise from self-stigma. Personal empowerment is a parallel positive phenomenon conceived as a mediator between self-stigma and behaviors related to goal attainment. Results of an exploratory factor analysis of 261 responses yielded five factors that describe the construct 31,32,33. Four of these factors delineate the content of the idea: power and powerlessness; community activism; righteous anger about discrimination; and optimism and control over the future. A fifth factor — good self-esteem and self-efficacy — shows empowerment to anchor one end of a self-stigma continuum, with self-esteem and self-efficacy at the other. This evinces a fundamental paradox that explains the two ends of the continuum 34. Some people internalize the stigmatized message and suffer diminished self-esteem and lowered self-efficacy. Others seem to be energized by the same stereotypes and become empowered in reaction to them 31,35. People with this sense of power are more confident about the pursuit of individual goals. They also play a more active role in treatment, crafting interventions that meet their perceptions of strengths, weaknesses, and needs. What evidence is there that empowerment is the obverse of self-stigma? Several studies have examined correlations between empowerment and other psychosocial measures including self-esteem, self-efficacy, and measures of hope and recovery. Rogers et al 31 found empowerment to be associated with high self-esteem, quality of life, social support and satisfaction with mutual-help programs. Another study 35 found a link between self- and community orientations to empowerment and intact self-esteem. Self-orientation was in addition related to social support and quality of life. In a Swedish study, empowerment was associated with quality of life, intact social networks and high social functioning 36. Empowerment was further related to most aspects of recovery from serious mental illness 37,38 and inversely correlated with self-esteem decrement due to self-stigma and social withdrawal after controlling for depression 20. Two factors seem to explain why some people respond to stigma with low self-esteem while others react with righteous indignation 34. People who view the stereotype that corresponds with self-stigma as legitimate suffer greater harm to self-esteem and self-efficacy. Those who do not agree with stereotypes are likely to be indifferent or righteously angry in place of self-stigma. Group identity also affects reactions to stigma. One might think that persons who identify with or otherwise belong to stigmatized groups may internalize the negativity aimed at that group and hence have worse effects to self-stigma. Research shows, however, that persons who develop a positive identity by interacting with members of their ingroup can develop more positive self-perceptions 39,40. They are less likely to experience diminished self-esteem and self-efficacy as a result. Up to now, Figure 1 frames goal attainment rather simplistically as a direct outcome of either diminished self-esteem and self-efficacy, or enhanced empowerment. Absent from this model has been the concomitant impact of services that, based on sufficient research, are expected to facilitate many goals. Self-stigma, however, is also likely to impact evidence-based practices. Research from a variety of mental health disciplines have defined evidence-based priorities, including psychiatry 41,42, social work 43, and psychology 44. Interventions for adults with mental illness that have survived rigorous reviews include medication use, assertive community treatment (which helps people with psychiatric disabilities live independently) 45, supported employment and education (provide the person with basic resources and support so he or she might obtain/retain work or achieve educational goals) 46, and family psychoeducation and support (help family members develop methods that diminish stressful interactions among relatives) 47. Evidence-based practices also include integrated treatment for dual diagnosis of mental illness and substance abuse 48,49. How might stigma mediate with the ideas laid out in Figure 1? “Why try” once again elaborates on modified labeling theory by outlining the effects of low self-esteem and self-efficacy on service participation 26. “Why should I try vocational rehabilitation? I am unable to participate in this kind of service”. “Why should I pursue education? Someone like me is not worthy of such a goal”. Similarly, empowerment enhances service utilization and goal attainment. People who determine their own goals and self-select from life opportunities as a result are likely to be more energized and hopeful about their treatment and personal aspirations. Collaborative and self-directed services support empowerment and advance goal attainment 50. Advocates have long recognized the pernicious effects of stigma and have begun to develop strategies meant to counter them. Researchers have then partnered with advocates to evaluate the impact of specific strategies. The “why try” model outlined herein may also be a useful heuristic for identifying and subsequently evaluating self-stigma modification approaches. Empowerment is an especially relevant and important mechanism for change, because it prescribes what “might be done” to influence goals, rather than “what should not be done” to achieve these goals. This kind of affirmative approach to behavior change is typically more successful than a dysfunction-focus to change 27. The goal here is not to take away stigma, but instead to foster empowerment which enhances the pursuit of life goals and the participation in evidence-based practices related to these goals. Research has begun to examine strategies and interventions that facilitate empowerment in this fashion 51,52. Some examples are discussed here. Empowerment is endorsed as central to consumer operated services, with its relationship to these services being complex and recursive. Two ingredients of consumer operated services have obvious relevance to empowerment and the “why try” effect. The peer principle represents relationships among members without any sense of hierarchy. As peers, no one is viewed as subordinate and all are encouraged to participate in the consumer operated service in ways that best meet their needs and interests. Related to this perspective is the helper principle. Individuals as helpers are aides, sharing with peers the strategies and resources that they have found useful in addressing life goals blocked by the mental illness. These kinds of experiences enhance the person's self-efficacy; the person is reminded that he or she is competent in many important social situations because of life experience. The helper principle also augments self-esteem; the person has successful experiences which enhance his or her sense of worth in the community. Consumer operated services typically assume one of three forms 53. The first is drop-in centers 54,55. These kinds of programs offer venues where people with mental illness can come and go without the threats and demands of more traditional outpatient services. A second type of consumer operated services is peer support and mentoring services 56,57. One such example is GROW, which has developed a 12-step written program that guides members through various “stages on the way to recovery”. The third type of consumer operated services is educational programs which seek to teach participants the basic social and coping skills needed for personal success 58. These kinds of programs often have a special focus on advocacy, the skills people need to affect their individual services plan as well as the profile of services in their community 59. Overall, research has shown that the frequency of different kinds of consumer operated services across the US has exploded, with one recent national survey identifying 7467 individual examples 60. As suggested earlier in the paper, another way to influence self-stigma and the “why try” effect is through group identity. People engage in activities that directly implicate their group identity in everyday life, e.g. participate in treatment, mutual-help groups, or mental health advocacy activities. A recent study 21 found a positive correlation between group identification and self-efficacy in people with mental illness. The same study failed to show such a correlation with self-esteem. These are complex relationships, however. In another study 61, group identification did not predict self-esteem or empowerment after controlling for depression, but group identification was negatively related to self-esteem. Data from other social psychological research support the idea that group identification can be a two-edged sword, in this case, for members of stigmatized ethnic minorities 62. In one study 63, women who received negative feedback on a speech from a male evaluator were subsequently told that the evaluator was either sexist or non-sexist. Women with low gender-identification showed higher self-esteem in the sexist condition, because they could attribute negative feedback to the sexism of their evaluator. However, this did not help highly gender-identified women who showed low self-esteem in both conditions. Therefore, when social identity is a core aspect of one's self-concept, individuals seem to become more vulnerable to stigmatizing threats related to this group identity. In a second study 63, Latin American students were randomly exposed to a text describing pervasive prejudice against their ingroup, or to a control article. In the control group, baseline ethnic group identification was positively related to self-esteem. However, in the group experiencing the stigmatizing threat, group identification was associated with depressed affect and low self-esteem. Different could explain these people identify with their ingroup and at the same it in high group identification is likely to be associated with high self-esteem. on the an individual a negative view of ingroup, group identification may to self-esteem. These positive and negative may reflect In terms of self-stigma and empowerment among persons with mental it is important to the of identifying with a negatively the goal should be to a positive group identity. the is likely to help individuals self-stigma. people with serious psychiatric to avoid self-stigma, the “why try” by their experience with mental illness and corresponding treatment a to participate in consumer operated services a personal about out into the public with one's mental illness This may be a only the of people in the consumer operated service of one's it may be one in being where the person with serious mental illness Note that out may not only include about one's personal experiences with mental but also about with the treatment that someone a for mental can be as stigmatizing as awareness that the person is The and of out based on personal goals and only persons by these decisions are to the and to out include from and others when they become aware of the person's psychiatric In turn, this leads to social avoidance. include the sense of that when the person no he or she must in the This is not meant to be an people are likely to identify consequences when the and out is not a or based on the that the person is either out or out decisions can be by an of In an study of people with mental several specific ways in which people might on other research with mental health advocates her work four of the most people may in the through social avoidance. This away from situations where people may out about one's mental illness. they only with other persons who have mental illness. A second group may not to avoid social situations but instead to their experiences a from people a group of others with is a group from this is People with mental illness may peers at work of their disabilities but to not like these to there may be of such as an in peers, it is a that could represent a of 20. People who the They to any of the negative consequences of people out about their mental illness. they no active to try to their mental health and one's experience and people about mental illness. The goal here is to seek out people to and experiences with mental illness. has to it a sense of power over the experience of mental illness and stigma. “Why try” is a complex construct which has been defined here in terms of four interacting processes. It as the personal reaction to the stereotypes of mental people who in some way internalize these The of self-stigma on whether people are aware of and agree with these attitudes and then apply the stereotypes to personal the person's sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy. These kinds of to the person's of behaviors related to life goals. As a people with mental illness not to engage in opportunities that work, housing, and other personal aspirations. “Why try” is also useful for to mental health services affects life Alternatively, reactions to stigma may personal the that these stereotypes are not going to the pursuit of goals. these of self-stigma are for change strategies meant to principles of empowerment to the person and the mental health system which self-stigma and goal attainment. These include consumer operated services that the of personal identity with peers with mental illness. They also include decisions about was supported by a of the
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Grounded in the theory of trying, this study examines the influence of the work environment and gender on trying to innovate with information technology. The study extends the innovation diffusion literature by offering a theory-driven explanation for examining trying to innovate with IT and a parsimonious measure for this construct. Drawing on the theory of reasoned action, we argue that work environment impediments render intentions inadequate for examining post-adoption IT use. Instead of examining intentions, we introduce the goal-based construct of trying to innovate with IT as an appropriate dependent variable for examining post-adoption IT use. Statistical analysis supports the reliability and validity of a parsimonious measure of trying to innovate with IT. The study focuses on two research questions. First, do perceptions of the work environment such as overload and autonomy influence individuals’ trying to innovate with IT? Second, does gender influence the relationship between perceptions of the environment and trying to innovate with IT? The model articulates how perceptions of the environment moderated by gender may influence trying to innovate with IT. Results provide evidence that overload and autonomy are antecedents to trying to innovate with information technology. Further, findings confirm that autonomy interacts with overload to determine trying to innovate with IT and that these relationships vary by gender. Implications for research and practice are offered.
An important but relatively neglected area of consumer behavior--the pursuit of goals--is addressed. Two recent modifications of the Fishbein model are discussed, and an extension is introduced to better explain goal pursuit. Major revisions include (1) specification of three dimensions of attitude--toward success, failure, and the process of trying, (2) the incorporation of self-efficacy judgments as expectations of success and failure, and (3) refinement in the specificity of referents and their correspondence to reflect trying as the focal explanatory concept. Recency and frequency of past trying are independent variables in three models tested with weight loss data. Copyright 1990 by the University of Chicago.
Few systematic reviews containing meta-analyses are complete without a forest plot. But what are forest plots, and where did they come from? #### Summary points Forest plots show the information from the individual studies that went into the meta-analysis at a glance They show the amount of variation between the studies and an estimate of the overall result Forest plots, in various forms, have been published for about 20 years During this time, they have been improved, but it is still not easy to draw them in most standard computer packages In a typical forest plot, the results of component studies are shown as squares centred on the point estimate of the result of each study. A horizontal line runs through the square to show its confidence interval—usually, but not always, a 95% confidence interval. The overall estimate from the meta-analysis and its confidence interval are put at the bottom, represented as a diamond. The centre of the diamond …
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We present an image-based VIirtual Try-On Network (VITON) without using 3D information in any form, which seamlessly transfers a desired clothing item onto the corresponding region of a person using a coarse-to-fine strategy. Conditioned upon a new clothing-agnostic yet descriptive person representation, our framework first generates a coarse synthesized image with the target clothing item overlaid on that same person in the same pose. We further enhance the initial blurry clothing area with a refinement network. The network is trained to learn how much detail to utilize from the target clothing item, and where to apply to the person in order to synthesize a photo-realistic image in which the target item deforms naturally with clear visual patterns. Experiments on our newly collected Zalando dataset demonstrate its promise in the image-based virtual try-on task over state-of-the-art generative models.
Virtual try-on technology (referred to in this article as Virtual Try-on) can deliver product information that is similar to the information obtained from direct product examination. In addition, the interactivity and customer involvement created by Virtual Try-on can enhance the entertainment value of the online shopping experience. We used focus group interviews and an online national survey to investigate online apparel shoppers’ use of Virtual Try-on to reduce product risks and increase enjoyment in online shopping.We also examined the impact of two important external variables (innovativeness and technology anxiety) that are not included in the electronic Technology Acceptance Model (e-TAM) but were expected to influence adoption of Virtual Try-on and whether or not gender differences existed in the Virtual Try-on adoption process. We examined this dual (functional and hedonic) role of Virtual Try-on by applying a modified e-TAM model to the Virtual Try-on technology adoption process and tested model invariance among male and female shoppers using Virtual Try-on in a simulated online shopping experience. The extended research model was validated in the context of Virtual Try-on adoption.Technology anxiety and innovativeness had significant moderating effects on the relationship between attitude and use of Virtual Try-on technology; however, there was no significant gender difference in the overall adoption process for Virtual Try-on.