What and How long: Prediction of Mobile App Engagement

User engagement is crucial to the long-term success of a mobile app. Several metrics, such as dwell time, have been used for measuring user engagement. However, how to effectively predict user engagement in the context of mobile apps is still an open research question. For example, do the mobile usage contexts (e.g., time of day) in which users access mobile apps impact their dwell time? Answers to such questions could help mobile operating system and publishers to optimize advertising and service placement. In this article, we first conduct an empirical study for assessing how user characteristics, temporal features, and the short/long-term contexts contribute to gains in predicting users’ app dwell time on the population level. The comprehensive analysis is conducted on large app usage logs collected through a mobile advertising company. The dataset covers more than 12K anonymous users and 1.3 million log events. Based on the analysis, we further investigate a novel mobile app engagement prediction problem—can we predict simultaneously what app the user will use next and how long he/she will stay on that app? We propose several strategies for this joint prediction problem and demonstrate that our model can improve the performance significantly when compared with the state-of-the-art baselines. Our work can help mobile system developers in designing a better and more engagement-aware mobile app user experience.

A Concise Binomial Model for Nonlinear Creep-Fatigue Crack Growth Behavior at Elevated Temperatures

The creep-fatigue crack growth problem remains challenging since materials exhibit different linear and nonlinear behaviors depending on the environmental and loading conditions. In this paper, we systematically carried out a series of creep-fatigue crack growth experiments to evaluate the influence from temperature, stress ratio, and dwell time for the nickel-based superalloy GH4720Li. A transition from coupled fatigue-dominated fracture to creep-dominated fracture was observed with the increase of dwell time at 600 °C, while only the creep-dominated fracture existed at 700 °C, regardless of the dwell time. A concise binomial crack growth model was constructed on the basis of existing phenomenal models, where the linear terms are included to express the behavior under pure creep loading, and the nonlinear terms were introduced to represent the behavior near the fracture toughness and during the creep-fatigue interaction. Through the model implementation and validation of the proposed model, the correlation coefficient is higher than 0.9 on ten out of twelve sets of experimental data, revealing the accuracy of the proposed model. This work contributes to an enrichment of creep-fatigue crack growth data in the typical nickel-based superalloy at elevated temperatures and could be referable in the modeling for damage tolerance assessment of turbine disks.

Practice variations in antibiotic administration for the management of peritonitis in patients on automated peritoneal dialysis in Australia and New Zealand

In the absence of guidelines on the management of peritoneal dialysis (PD)-associated peritonitis in patients on automated peritoneal dialysis (APD), variations in clinical practice potentially exist between PD units that could affect clinical outcomes. This study aimed to document the current practices of treating PD-associated peritonitis in patients on APD across Australia and New Zealand and the reasons for practice variations using a cross-sectional online survey. Of the 62 PD units, 34 medical leads (55%) responded to the survey. When treating APD-associated peritonitis, 21 units (62%) continued patients on APD and administered intraperitoneal (IP) antibiotics in manual daytime exchanges; of these, 17 (81%) considered allowing at least 6 h dwell time for adequate absorption of the IP antibiotics as an important reason for adding manual daytime exchange. Nine units (26%) temporarily switched patients from APD to continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD); of these, five (55%) reported a lack of pharmacokinetic (PK) data for IP antibiotics in APD, four (44%) reported a shortage of APD-trained nursing staff to perform APD exchanges during hospitalisation and three (33%) reported inadequate time for absorption of IP antibiotics on APD as important reasons for their practice. Four units (12%) continued patients on APD and administered IP antibiotics during APD exchanges; of these, three (75%) believed that PK data available in CAPD could be extrapolated to APD. This study demonstrates wide variations in the management of APD-associated peritonitis in Australia and New Zealand; it points towards the lack of PK on antibiotics used to treat peritonitis as an important reason underpinning practice variations.

How Cues of Being Watched Promote Risk Seeking in Fund Investment in Older Adults

Social cues, such as being watched, can subtly alter fund investment choices. This study aimed to investigate how cues of being watched influence decision-making, attention allocation, and risk tendencies. Using decision scenarios adopted from the “Asian Disease Problem,” we examined participants’ risk tendency in a financial scenario when they were watched. A total of 63 older and 66 younger adults participated. Eye tracking was used to reveal the decision-maker’s attention allocation (fixations and dwell time per word). The results found that both younger and older adults tend to seek risk in the loss frame than in the gain frame (i.e., framing effect). Watching eyes tended to escalate reckless gambling behaviors among older adults, which led them to maintain their share in the depressed fund market, regardless of whether the options were gain or loss framed. The eye-tracking results revealed that older adults gave less attention to the sure option in the eye condition (i.e., fewer fixations and shorter dwell time). However, their attention was maintained on the gamble options. In comparison, images of “watching eyes” did not influence the risk seeking of younger adults but decreased their framing effect. Being watched can affect financial risk preference in decision-making. The exploration of the contextual sensitivity of being watched provides us with insight into developing decision aids to promote rational financial decision-making, such as human-robot interactions. Future research on age differences still requires further replication.

Post-Ureteroscopy Infections Are Linked to Pre-Operative Stent Dwell Time over Two Months: Outcomes of Three European Endourology Centres

Background: The aim of this study is to investigate outcomes of pre-operative stent dwell time on infectious complications following ureteroscopy and stone treatment to identify a time cut-off. Material and Methods: Three tertiary referral centres in Europe retrospectively collected outcomes of ureteroscopy and laser fragmentation (URSL) for all patients with pre-operative indwelling ureteric stents over a period of up to 5 years. Data was collected on patient details, stone demographics, stent dwell time, complications and stone free rate (SFR). Matching for age, sex, operative time, stone size and post-operative stent insertion. To examine for a threshold effect, monthly cut-offs were used to compare post-ureteroscopic febrile UTIs. Binomial logistic regression was used (SPSS v.24) with a significance level set at 0.0036. The risk ratio (RR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) and the number needed to harm (NNH) are reported. Results: There were 467 patients with a pre-operative stent for analysis. These patients (n = 315) were matched to non-stented controls after excluding 152 patients to achieve adequate matching. There was a significant difference in rates of post-ureteroscopic febrile UTI between stented vs non-stented patients (RR = 2.67, 95% CI: 1.10–6.48, p = 0.03). On adjustment, a dwell time of more than two months was associated with an increased risk of post-ureteroscopic febrile UTI (RR = 3.94, 95% CI: 1.30–12.01, p = 0.02), this increased risk rose with longer dwell time. At stent time longer than four months was associated with a significantly increased risk of post-ureteroscopic febrile UTI (5% vs. 15%, RR = 3.09, 95% CI: 1.56–6.10, p = 0.001), with the number needed to harm at 10. Conclusions: Overall infectious complication rates from URSL are low. The risk of post-operative UTI after four months of dwell time is nearly tripled compared to less than four months.

Influence of Dwell Time and Pressure on SPS Process with Titanium Aluminides

Spark plasma sintering (SPS) or the field-assisted sintering technique (FAST) is commonly used to process powders that are difficult to consolidate, more efficiently than in the conventional powder metallurgy process route. During the process, holding time and applied holding pressure influence the product’s microstructure and subsequently its properties. In this study, in addition to the temperature impact, the influence of pressure and dwell time on the consolidation behaviour of titanium aluminide (TiAl) powders during the SPS process is investigated. Commercially available pre-alloyed TiAl48-2Cr-2Nb (GE48) and TiAl44-4Nb-0.7Mo-0.1B (TNM) powders were used, which have a high application potential in, for example, the aerospace industry. The results were evaluated based on microstructural analyses, hardness measurements and relative density calculations. It was shown that the investigated parameters significantly influence the sintering results, especially in the low temperature range. Depending on the temperature field in the sample, complete sintering is not achieved if the dwell time is too short in combination with too low a pressure. Above a certain temperature, the impact of holding pressure and holding time is significantly lower.