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Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pages With 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit http://www.informs.org

Internet retailers have been making significant investments in Web technologies, such as zoom, alternative photos, and color swatch, that are capable of providing detailed product-oriented information and, thereby, mitigating the lack of “touch and feel,” which, in turn, is expected to lower product returns. However, a clear understanding of the relationship between these technologies and product returns is still lacking. Our study attempts to fill this gap by using several econometric models to explore the said relationship. Our unique and rich data set from a women's clothing company allows us to measure technology usage at the product level for each consumer. The results show that, in this context, zoom usage has a negative coefficient, suggesting that a higher use of the zoom technology is associated with fewer returns. Interestingly, we find that a higher use of alternative photos is associated with more returns and, perhaps more importantly, with lower net sales. Color swatch, on the other hand, does not seem to have any effect on returns. Thus, our findings show that different technologies have different effects on product returns. We provide explanations for these findings based on the extant literature. We also conduct a number of tests to ensure the robustness of the results.

SYNOPSISPeroxide initiated graft copolymerization of vinyl trimethoxy silane ( VTMO ) and vinyl triethoxy silane (VTEO) onto polyethylene ( P E ) and ethylene propylene copolymer ( E P R ) was studied. The kinetics of grafting, studied by differential scanning calorimetry, are the same for all the systems and the activation energy for VTMO is 170 ? 4 KJ/mol. Activation energy for VTEO is 185 ? 5 KJ/mol. The VTMO and VTEO graft copolymers of PE and EPR were prepared by reactive processing in a Brabender extruder in the temperature range of 150-200°C. Moisture catalyzed crosslinking of the silane grafted copolymer was also studied. The influence of the structure of the catalyst, its concentration, moisture concentration, temperature, and time on degree and rate of crosslinking has been evaluated. Crosslinking reactions follow first order kinetics with respect to both catalyst and moisture concentration. Activation energy ( E , ) of the crosslinking reaction has been determined as 65 K J mol-' . The mechanism of grafting and crosslinking is discussed.

In this study, we focus on the factors that influence online innovation community members' continued participation in the context of open source software development (OSSD) communities. Prior research on continued participation in online communities has primarily focused on social interactions among members and benefits obtained from these interactions. However, members of these communities often play different roles, which have been examined extensively, albeit in a separate stream of research. This study attempts to bridge these two streams of research by investigating the joint influence of community response and members' roles on continued participation. We categorize OSSD community members into users and modifiers and empirically examine the differential effects of community response across these roles. By analyzing a longitudinal data set of activities in the discussion forums of more than 300 OSSD projects, we not only confirm the positive influence of community response on members' continued participation but also find that community response is more influential in driving the continuance behavior of users than that of modifiers. In addition, this research highlights the importance of modifiers, a key subgroup of OSSD participants that has been largely overlooked by prior research.

Despite the widespread adoption of search and recommendation technologies on the Internet, empirical research that examines the effect of these technologies is scarce. How do online consumers use these technologies? Does consumers' technology usage have an effect on the sales to them or their purchasing patterns? This paper empirically measures consumers' usage of website technologies by analyzing server log data. We match technology usage data to sales data, controlling for consumers' historical purchasing behavior. Our unique data set allows us to reveal the relationship between technology usage and online sales. Our analyses show that consumers' information technology usage has a significant effect on the sales to them, but this effect varies for different technologies and across different products. In particular, the use of directed search has a positive effect on the sales of promoted products, whereas it has a negative effect on the sales of nonpromoted products. In contrast, the use of a recommendation system has a positive effect on the sales of both promoted and nonpromoted products. Surprisingly, the use of nondirected search has an insignificant effect on online sales.electronic commerce, Internet, technology usage, online sales, search, recommendation

SYNOPSISAn attempt is made to develop a novel series of cable sheathing compounds with variation in chlorine content and sufficient fire retardance and unique low-smoke characteristics. These are prepared by blending PVC and functionalized polyolefins in different compositions. PE and EPDM have been functionalized by grafting dibutyl maleate (DBM) using DCP as initiator. FRLS compounds made from PVC-functionalized polyolefin blends possess the special characteristics of low-smoke, low-acid-gas generation, increased fire retardance, and improved volume resistivity, which are much better in comparison with a typical PVC sheathing compound. Thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) based nonhalogen FRLS compounds are also reported. The mechanisms for grafting, polymer-polymer and polymer-filler interactions have been presented. 1673