Exploring the effects of consumers’ trust : a predictive model for satisfying buyers’ expectations based on sellers’ behaviour in the marketplace

In recent years, Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) marketplaces have become very popular among Internet users. However, compared to traditional Business-to-Consumer (B2C) stores, most modern C2C marketplaces are reported to be associated with stronger negative sentiments among consumers. These negative sentiments arise from the inability of sellers to meet certain buyers’ expectations and are linked to the low trust relationship among sellers and buyers in C2C marketplaces. The growth of these negative emotions might jeopardize buyers’ decisions to opt for C2C marketplaces in their future purchase intentions. In the present study, we extend the definition of trust as an emotion to cover the digital world and demonstrate the trust model currently used by most online stores. Based on the buyer’s behaviour in the C2C marketplace, we propose a conceptual framework to predict trust between the buyer and the seller. Given that C2C marketplaces are rich sources of data for trust mining and sentiment analysis, we perform text mining on Airbnb to predict the trust level in host descriptions of offered facilities. The data are acquired from the US city of Ashville, Alabama, and Manchester in the UK. The results of the analysis demonstrate that guest negative feedback in reviews are high when the description of the host’s property has the emotion of joy only. By contrast, guest negative sentiments in reviews are at a minimum when the host’s sentiment has mixed emotions (e.g., joy and fear)

Modeling of Meteorological Parameters for United Arab Emirates

There has been an increasing world interest in clean renewable energies (mainly solar radiation and wind energies) due to the minimal environmental problems resulting from their uses. The continuous depletion of traditional and conventional energy resources and the growing world concern about the environment have led to an extensive research and development efforts in order to improve the energy conversion efficiencies and economics of utilization solar energy devices. However, it is important to identify the potential of available energy resources on the site where renewable energy is to be utilized. Meteorological information is critical to the assessment of the energy resources available and to the performance of many different types of renewable energy systems. Potential of the renewable energy available is strongly influenced by climatic factors such as air temperature, relative humidity, sunshine duration and natural energy supply. Solar radiation is strongly weather dependent. In the United Arab Emirates weather conditions are monitored by meteorological stations across the country and weather data are collected by various meteorological agencies

Multiple input modality mobile application for pilgrims

Hajj consists of several rituals, which require the pilgrims to recite specific dua and zikr for each of them.Since there are so many dua and zikr involved, pilgrims who are not well versed in Arabic have difficulties to memorize them. This paper discusses the incorporation of voice recognition in an application that helps pilgrims to recite dua and zikr while performing all Hajj rituals, called Mobile Doa and Zikir for Hajj (MDZ4H).Android platform has been chosen due to the dramatic increased in the Android mobile phone users worldwide.MDZ4H displays the Arabic text, the translation in Malay and also the Arabic audio files of the dua and zikr, which has been gathered, compiled, and verified before the application could be developed using J2ME. After that it has been evaluated by experts.The findings show some of the limitations of incorporation the Google speech to text function and suggest the solutions and the future work.It is hoped that the developed application could be made available in order to help Hajj pilgrims to easily and conveniently recite the dua and zikr towards achieving Hajj Mabrur

Design of the usability measurement tool for multimodal mobile applications

Nowadays, mobile phones provide not just voice call and messaging services, but plethora of other services.Those computational capabilities allow mobile phones to serve people in various areas including education, banking, commerce, travelling, and other daily life aspects. Meanwhile, the number of mobile phone users has increased dramatically in the last decade.On the other hand, the usability of an application can usually be verified through the user interface. Therefore, this paper aims to design a measurement tool to evaluate the usability of mobile applications based on the usability attributes and dimensions that must be considered in the interface.To obtain the appropriate attributes, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been conducted and the Goal Question Metric (GQM) has been used to design the tool. From 261 related works only 18 most relevant ones were selected, through four SLR. 25 dimensions were found through the SLR, but some of these dimensions are synonymous or a part of other dimensions. Consequently, three dimensions must be included in any usability evaluation instrument, which is broken down into ten sub dimensions

Personal digital Mutawwif: A multi-modal mobile Hajj assistance using the location based services

Many efforts have been initiated and many techniques and approaches have been developed to facilitate the difficulties faced by pilgrims. However, those studies focus on acquiring initial perspective and background knowledge about Hajj before going to Makkah.In conjunction to that, this study utilizes A-GPS in mobile phone to assist the pilgrims during Hajj.The main aim of this paper is to discuss about the development of a multi-modal mobile application called the Personal Digital Mutawwif (PDM), using location based services to assist pilgrims while performing all the rituals of Hajj.Android platform has been chosen due to the dramatic increased in the Android mobile phone users worldwide. PDM displays the Arabic text, the translation in Malay and also the Arabic audio files of the dua and zikr, which has been gathered, compiled, and verified before the development using Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME). The application has been proven to be useful in helping the pilgrims to easily and conveniently recite the dua and zikr towards achieving Hajj Mabrur

Isolation and characterization of native Bacillus thuringiensis strains from Saudi Arabia with enhanced larvicidal toxicity against the mosquito vector Anopheles gambiae (s.l.).

BACKGROUND: Worldwide, mosquito vectors are transmitting several etiological agents of important human diseases, including malaria, causing millions of deaths every year. In Saudi Arabia, as elsewhere, vector-control is based mostly on chemical insecticides which may be toxic and cause environmental deprivation. Here, to support the development of bio-pesticide alternatives, a study was conducted to identify native Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) isolates with improved toxicity against the malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae (s.l.). METHODS: Sixty-eight Bt isolates were obtained from 300 soil and other samples collected from 16 sites across Saudi Arabia. Bt identification was based on morphological characteristics of colonies, shape of parasporal crystals and biochemical profiles. After characterization of their mosquitocidal activity, larvicidal strains were described through 16S ribosomal DNA gene sequencing, cry, cyt and chi genes PCR-amplification profiles, and SDS-PAGE protein analyses. RESULTS: Spherical Bt crystals were predominant amongst the 68 isolates (34%), while irregular, bi-pyramidal and spore-attached crystals were found in 32, 13 and 21% of strains, respectively. LC50 and LC90 bioassays showed that 23/68 isolates were larvicidal, with distinct biochemical activity profiles compared to non-larvicidal Bt strains. Eight larvicidal strains showed larvicidal activity up to 3.4-fold higher (LC50 range: 3.90-7.40 μg/ml) than the reference Bti-H14 strain (LC50 = 13.33 μg/ml). Of these, 6 strains had cry and cyt gene profiles similar to Bti-H14 (cry4Aa, cry4Ba, cry10, cry11, cyt1Aa, cyt1Ab, cyt2Aa). The seventh strain (Bt63) displaying the highest larvicidal activity (LC50 = 3.90 μg/ml) missed the cry4Aa and cyt1Ab genes and had SDS-PAGE protein profiles and spore/crystal sizes distinct from Bti-H14. The eight strain (Bt55) with LC50 of 4.11μg/ml had cry and cyt gene profiles similar to Bti-H14 but gave a chi gene PCR product size of 2027bp. No strains harbouring cry2, cry17 + 27, cry24 + 40, cry25, cry29, cry30, or cyt2Ba were detected. CONCLUSION: This study represents the first report of several Saudi indigenous Bt strains with significantly higher larvicidal efficacy against An. gambiae than the reference Bti-H14 strain. The very high toxicity of the Bt63 strain, combined with distinct cry and cyt genes and SDS-PAGE-protein profiles makes it a promising candidate for future applications in mosquito bio-control

Ultrastructural pathology of the upper respiratory tract of rabbits experimentally infected with Pasteurella multocida A:3

Twenty-four 8 to 9 week-old Pasteurella multocida-free rabbits were divided into three equal groups, the first group was pretreated with hydrocortisone and inoculated intranasally with pasteurella multocida serotype A:3. The second group was inoculated intranasally with P. multocida without hydrocortisone treatment. The third group was inoculated with phosphate buffered saline only and used as a control group. Pasteurella multocida was isolated from the nasal cavity of all infected rabbits in group 1 and 2 and from the trachea of seven rabbits in group 1 and five rabbits in group 2. This study was conducted to observe the ultrastructural changes of the upper respiratory tract of hydrocortisone treated and non-treated rabbits infected with P. multocida serotype A:3. The ultrastructural changes detected in infected rabbits were ciliary destruction and deciliation of the ciliated epithelial cells, cellular swelling, goblet cell hyperplasia and endothelial cell damage. Pasteurella multocida was observed attached to the degenerated cilia,microvilli and mucus. Pasteurella multocida infection was associated with inflammatory responses, which may have caused tissue damage. It is possible that hydrocortisone modulates the severity of infection as an immune suppressor and an inhibitor of goblet cell secretion

A reduced-reference perceptual image and video quality metric based on edge preservation

In image and video compression and transmission, it is important to rely on an objective image/video quality metric which accurately represents the subjective quality of processed images and video sequences. In some scenarios, it is also important to evaluate the quality of the received video sequence with minimal reference to the transmitted one. For instance, for quality improvement of video transmission through closed-loop optimisation, the video quality measure can be evaluated at the receiver and provided as feedback information to the system controller. The original image/video sequence-prior to compression and transmission-is not usually available at the receiver side, and it is important to rely at the receiver side on an objective video quality metric that does not need reference or needs minimal reference to the original video sequence. The observation that the human eye is very sensitive to edge and contour information of an image underpins the proposal of our reduced reference (RR) quality metric, which compares edge information between the distorted and the original image. Results highlight that the metric correlates well with subjective observations, also in comparison with commonly used full-reference metrics and with a state-of-the-art RR metric. © 2012 Martini et al