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PurposeDigital humanities aim to use a digital-based revolutionary new way to carry out enhanced forms of humanities research more effectively and efficiently. This study develops a character social network relationship map tool (CSNRMT) that can semi-automatically assist digital humanists through human-computer interaction to more efficiently and accurately explore the character social network relationships from Chinese ancient texts for useful research findings.Design/methodology/approachWith a counterbalanced design, semi-structured in-depth interview, and lag sequential analysis, a total of 21 research subjects participated in an experiment to examine the system effectiveness and technology acceptance of adopting the ancient book digital humanities research platform with and without the CSNRMT to interpret the characters and character social network relationships.FindingsThe experimental results reveal that the experimental group with the CSNRMT support appears higher system effectiveness on the interpretation of characters and character social network relationships than the control group without the CSNRMT, but does not achieve a statistically significant difference. Encouragingly, the experimental group with the CSNRMT support presents remarkably higher technology acceptance than the control group without the CSNRMT. Furthermore, use behaviors analyzed by lag sequential analysis reveal that the CSNRMT could assist digital humanists in the interpretation of character social network relationships. The results of the interview present positive opinions on the integration of system interface, smoothness of operation, and external search function.Research limitations/implicationsCurrently, the system effectiveness of exploring the character social network relationships from texts for useful research findings by using the CSNRMT developed in this study will be significantly affected by the accuracy of recognizing character names and character social network relationships from Chinese ancient texts. The developed CSNRMT will be more practical when the offered information about character names and character social network relationships is more accurate and broad.Practical implicationsThis study develops an ancient book digital humanities research platform with an emerging CSNRMT that provides an easy-to-use real-time interaction interface to semi-automatically support digital humanists to perform digital humanities research with the need of exploring character social network relationships.Originality/valueAt present, a real-time social network analysis tool to provide a friendly interaction interface and effectively assist digital humanists in the digital humanities research with character social networks analysis is still lacked. This study thus presents the CSNRMT that can semi-automatically identify character names from Chinese ancient texts and provide an easy-to-use real-time interaction interface for supporting digital humanities research so that digital humanists could more efficiently and accurately establish character social network relationships from the analyzed texts to explore complicated character social networks relationship and find out useful research findings.

A better replacement of electrocatalytic platinum on counter electrodes of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) has received increasing attention to achieve a balance between efficient charge transfer and cost-effectiveness. Using an electrochemical polymerization method, a polymeric layer of poly(2H,2′H,4H,4′H-3,3′-spirobi[thieno[3,4-b][1,4]dioxepine]), called poly(spiroBiProDOT), was fabricated on a fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) counter electrode. For comparison, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), called PEDOT, a polymer layer and Pt were also deposited on the FTO counter electrode. Photovoltaic characterizations of the fabricated solar cells based on poly(spiroBiProDOT), PEDOT, and Pt counter electrodes were performed, and maximum power conversion efficiencies of 7.9%, 6.8%, and 8.31% were achieved, respectively. Poly(spiroBiProDOT) exhibits a stronger competitiveness to replace Pt in comparison with PEDOT. The competitiveness mainly comes from the better charge transfer in poly(spiroBiProDOT) due to its ordered thiophene moiety connected by a spiro linkage, which can increase the photocurrent density, and therefore, the cell efficiency. Electron density calculation, microstructural characterization, and impedance analysis were performed to rationalize the better efficiency of poly(spiroBiProDOT).

Solder/Cu joints are important components responsible for interconnection in microelectronics. Construction of the solder/Cu joints through liquid/solid (L/S) reactions accompanies the formation of the Cu-Sn intermetallic compounds (IMCs) at the joint interface. The Cu

This study is aimed to design a novel vocabulary learning mechanism (VLM) in the previously developed video-annotated learning and reviewing system (VALRS) that allows learners to identify unfamili...

Carbapenemase-producing combined porin loss is one of the primary mechanisms for carbapenem resistance. Although mutations in ompK35 and ompK36 genes have often been identified in carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, reports on the porin protein gene disruption by insertion sequence (IS) elements are varied. The ompK36 porin protein gene disruption by IS elements and OmpK36 production loss in six blaKPC-2-carrying K. pneumoniae isolates were detected in this study. IS903, ISEc68, and IS1 insertions were noted in the 3, 2, and 1 isolates, respectively. The six K. pneumoniae isolates showed five different pulsed-field gel electrophoresis patterns and belonged to four multilocus sequence typing types, ST4, ST11, ST15, and ST39. This study increases our understanding of the genetic background of KPC-2 carbapenemases in porin-defective clinical isolates and the contribution of OmpK36 production loss to carbapenem resistance.

Due to its superior chemical stability, mechanical strength, light weight, and flexibility, polyimide (PI) has been widely used as a polymeric substrate of flexible printed circuit boards such as flexible copper clad laminates (FCCLs). The development of an adhesiveless dual-layer structure is imperative for the application of FCCLs in globalized 5G consumer electronics. In this work, autocatalytic metallization on a silane-grafted PI film was developed to fabricate a high-quality Cu/PI substrate. PI was functionalized by amine-terminated organosilanes to load polyvinylpyrrolidone-capped Pd nanoclusters (PVP-nPd) as a catalyst. The effects of organosilanes with different numbers of amine functional groups on the adsorption of the PVP-nPd catalyst and the subsequent metallization of Cu were systematically investigated. Comprehensive surface characterizations were carried out on the PI films before and after silanization. The organosilane bearing three amine groups was found to outperform its counterpart with one amine group, exhibiting a fourfold increase in catalyst adsorption, which also improved the metallization efficiency.

Analyzing learners’ learning behaviors helps teachers understand how learning behaviors of learners influence learning performance. To determine which learning behaviors influence learners’ science-based inquiry learning performance, this work develops an xAPI (Experience Application Programming Interface)-based learning record store module embedded in a Collaborative Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (CWISE) to record detailed data about students’ learning processes. This work discusses whether the significant correlation and cause-effect relationship among science inquiry competence, learning time, and learning performance exist, and examines whether remarkable shifts and differences in the learning behaviors of learners with different learning performances and inquiry competences exist by using sequential pattern mining and lag sequential analysis. The results demonstrate that inquire ability, total learning time in the designed inquiry learning course, and learning time in an inquiry buoyancy simulation experiment are positively correlated with learning performance and can predict learning performance, and the learning time in the inquiry buoyancy simulation experiment appears to be the most significant predictor. The results of lag sequential analyses indicate that learners with high learning performance and high inquiry competence re-adjust hypotheses after performing an inquiry buoyancy simulation experiment, while learners with low learning performance and low inquiry competence lack this critical inquiry learning behavior. This study presents a systematic analysis method to insight the effective learning behaviors in a web-based inquiry learning environment based on mining students’ learning processes, thus providing potential benefits in guiding learners to adjust their learning behaviors and strategies.

Silicon (Si) on-chip metallization was carried out through surface functionalization and electroless deposition of copper (Cu). Surface functionalization of Si was performed by grafting an amine (N...

Surface metallization of polymer substrate and film adhesion are crucial to the development of flexible electronics. This study demonstrates the co-silanization engineering on the polyimide (PI) film by mutual intercropping of two organosilane molecules to improve their grafting orientability and enhance the adsorbability toward the PI substrate and loaded metal atoms. The mutual intercropping-inspired co-silanization engineering is implemented by using 3-[(trimethylsilyl)ethynyl]pyridine (TEP) as a supporting organosilane to spatially confine the grafting orientation of the supported aminosilane, 3-[2-(2-aminoethylamino)ethylamino]propyl-trimethoxysilane (ETAS), leading to the formation of a well-oriented organosilane composite nanolayer as adhesion promotion layer for flexible conductors. The flexible Cu conductor electrolessly deposited on the PI film by co-silanization shows improved adhesion strength (0.9 kgf/cm) compared to those based on mono-silanization (0.51 kgf/cm) and sputtered Ta/Cu (0.4 kgf/cm). Superior deformability (bendability) was also achieved for the co-silanized Cu/PI sample by retaining good electrical property after bending cycle up to 1000.

For pursuing a more comprehensive mechanism of void formation at the Sn/Cu interface, different grain size Cu samples with and without twinned boundaries are electrodeposited for the Sn/Cu joint an...

Controlling the orientation of the dye molecules adsorbed on the TiO2 surface needs extensive attention for improving the photovoltaic parameters of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The suppression of the charge recombination and self-aggregation of dye molecules on the TiO2 surface also plays a vital role in the improvement of cell efficiency. In this report, based on the bi-anchored structure containing N-alkyl-attached 1,8-naphthalamide derivative as the donor system and spiroBiproDOT as the π-spacer, an organic dimeric dye (D-Dye) was designed and synthesized by Suzuki coupling, followed by Knoevenagel condensation. The maximum power conversion efficiency of 7.1% with a Voc and Jsc of 0.70 V and 14.6 mA cm−2, respectively, was achieved for the DSSC employing D-Dye. A monomeric dye (M-Dye) was also synthesized and the resultant cell efficiency of 4.85% was achieved with Voc and Jsc of 0.67 V and 9.93 mA cm−2, respectively, which was 33% lower than that of its dimeric analogue (D-Dye). The photo-physical experiment was carried out for both organic dyes to understand their light absorption characteristics. The incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) and electrochemical impedance measurements were also obtained to rationalize the better photovoltaic performance of DSSCs employing the dimeric D-Dye, which was due to the effective suppression of the charge recombination and self-aggregation of dye molecules. The co-adsorption of D-Dye (0.4 mM) with N-719 (0.4 mM) in the ratio of 10 : 1 v/v (D-Dye:N-719) further enhanced the cell efficiency to 8.34% (Voc of 0.77 V and Jsc of 14.9 mA cm−2).

Locknut is a critical component used in the precision machinery and its stable service performance over a long period of time in a variety of different environments presents a crucial challenge. In this study, a flank-locking precision locknut was pretreated in an immersion corrosion of 5 wt% NaCl solution to simulate the possible corrosion effects. The tightening and loosening of the locknut after 0-, 1-, 2- and 4-h corrosion treatments, respectively, was tested according to the ISO 2320 Standard. An in-house test setup with horizontal configuration was employed in measuring the torque–axial force characteristics under loading–unloading cycles. It was found that the corrosion of the locknut accelerated after 1-h immersion. The corroded specimens after 2- and 4-h treatment demonstrated more variance in measured tightening and loosening torques than their less corroded counterparts. However, after five loading–unloading cycles, the variance in measured torque decreased and the associated torque constants became more stable. Moreover, the torque constants were ∼10% higher for the 2- and 4-h corrosion-treated locknuts than their pristine counterpart. The surface morphology after corrosion and friction wear was closely related to the measured testing results.