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We developed an interdisciplinary model to examine how online consumers '

I nternet fraud has been on the rise in online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auction markets, posing serious challenges to people's trust in electronic markets. Among various remedies to promote trust and reduce trader's risk, online escrow service has been proposed as a trusted third party to protect online transactions from Internet fraud. However, whether an escrow service constitutes a viable business model for a trusted third party to effectively block Internet fraud remains an open question. This research proposes a dynamic game model for online traders and a profit maximization model for the escrow service provider. Through the investigation of the optimal strategies of online traders, we explore the relationships among traders' decision making, escrow service fee rates, and adoption rates. We reveal the demand for escrow services and establish the optimal pricing rule for the escrow service provider. A numerical study based on the theoretical analysis is conducted to provide detailed guidelines of the model application for an escrow service provider and to explore if the escrow service is a viable business model in C2C auction markets.

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Fiber-based artificial muscles with excellent actuation performance are gaining great attention as soft materials for flexible actuators; however, current advances in fiber-based artificial muscles generally suffer from high cost, harsh stimulation regimes, limiting deformations, chemical toxicity, or complex manufacturing processing, which hinder the widespread application of those artificial muscles in engineering and practical usage. Herein, a facile cross-scale processing strategy is presented to construct commercially available nontoxic viscose fibers into fast responsive and humidity-driven yarn artificial muscles with a recorded torsional stroke of 1752°cm −1 and a maximum rotation speed up to 2100 rpm, which are comparable to certain artificial muscles made from carbon-based composite materials. The underlying mechanism of such outstanding actuation performance that begins to form at a mesoscale is discussed by theoretical modeling and microstructure characterization. The as-prepared yarn artificial muscles are further scaled up to large-sized fabric muscles through topological weaving structures by integrating different textile technologies. These fabric muscles extend the simple motion of yarn muscles into higher-level diverse deformations without any composite system, complex synthetic processing, and component design, which enables the development of new fiber-based artificial muscles for versatile applications, such as smart textiles and intelligent systems.

We show that between 1999 and 2008 the percentage of articles with more than one corresponding author or with several authors that contributed equally, leading to so-called "equal first authors," has steadily been on the rise. Increasing numbers of corresponding authors and equally contributing authors may lead to increased stress on teamwork if not properly acknowledged in research evaluation exercises.