No abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a widely hyped concept, with its focus on the connection of smart devices to the Internet rather than on people. IoT for consumers is often called the smart home market, and a large part of that market consists of home security devices. Consumers are often motivated to purchase smart home security devices to prevent burglaries, which they fear may lead to damage to their property or threats to their families. However, they also understand that IoT home security devices may be a threat to the privacy of their personal information. To determine the relative roles of fear and privacy concerns in the decision to purchase IoT home security devices, we conducted a survey of American consumers. We used the Theory of Reasoned Action as the theoretical basis for the study. We found that fear positively affected consumer attitudes toward purchasing smart home security devices, while concerns about privacy negatively affected attitudes. We found that attitudes toward purchase, the opinions of important others, and experience with burglaries all affected intent to purchase. We also found that the relationship between privacy concerns and intent to purchase is completely mediated by attitudes, while fear has both direct and indirect effects on intent.

Constructing hierarchical heterostructures is considered a useful strategy to regulate surface electronic structure and improve the electrochemical kinetics. Herein, the authors develop a hollow architecture composed of MoC1‐x and WC1‐x carbide nanoparticles and carbon matrix for boosting electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution and lithium ions storage. The hybridization of ultrafine nanoparticles confined in the N‐doped carbon nanosheets provides an appropriate hydrogen adsorption free energy and abundant boundary interfaces for lithium intercalation, leading to the synergistically enhanced composite conductivity. As a proof of concept, the as‐prepared catalyst exhibits outstanding and durable electrocatalytic performance with a low overpotential of 103 and 163 mV at 10 mA cm−2, as well as a Tafel slope of 58 and 90 mV dec−1 in alkaline electrolyte and acid electrolyte, respectively. Moreover, evaluated as an anode for a lithium‐ion battery, the as‐resulted sample delivers a rate capability of 1032.1 mA h g−1 at 0.1 A g−1. This electrode indicates superior cyclability with a capability of 679.1 mA h g−1 at 5 A g−1 after 4000 cycles. The present work provides a strategy to design effective and stable bimetallic carbide composites as superior electrocatalysts and electrode materials.

In a real uniformly convex and p-uniformly smooth Banach space, a modified forward-backward splitting iterative algorithm is presented, where the computational errors and the superposition of perturbed operators are considered. The iterative sequence is proved to be convergent strongly to zero point of the sum of infinite m-accretive mappings and infinite -inversely strongly accretive mappings, which is also the unique solution of one kind variational inequalities. Some new proof techniques can be found, especially, a new inequality is employed compared to some of the recent work. Moreover, the applications of the newly obtained iterative algorithm to integro-differential systems and convex minimization problems are exemplified.