The Effect of Social Word-of-Mouth on Brand Switch Intention: From Cognitive Learning Perspective

Previous literature has examined the effect of WOM on innovation adoption or sale dynamics of a single product/brand, but few have explored its effect under a competitive market where consumers can switch their brand in response to WOM from social media friends. Drawing on cognitive learning theory, this study focuses on social media users’ brand switch decision and explores how external and internal influencing factors (social WOM of rival brand vs. satisfaction of adopted brand) combine to shape switch decision

Many cells make life work-multicellularity in stem cell-based cardiac disease modelling

Cardiac disease causes 33% of deaths worldwide but our knowledge of disease progression is still very limited. In vitro models utilising and combining multiple, differentiated cell types have been used to recapitulate the range of myocardial microenvironments in an effort to delineate the mechanical, humoral, and electrical interactions that modulate the cardiac contractile function in health and the pathogenesis of human disease. However, due to limitations in isolating these cell types and changes in their structure and function in vitro, the field is now focused on the development and use of stem cell-derived cell types, most notably, human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived CMs (hiPSC-CMs), in modelling the CM function in health and patient-specific diseases, allowing us to build on the findings from studies using animal and adult human CMs. It is becoming increasingly appreciated that communications between cardiomyocytes (CMs), the contractile cell of the heart, and the non-myocyte components of the heart not only regulate cardiac development and maintenance of health and adult CM functions, including the contractile state, but they also regulate remodelling in diseases, which may cause the chronic impairment of the contractile function of the myocardium, ultimately leading to heart failure. Within the myocardium, each CM is surrounded by an intricate network of cell types including endothelial cells, fibroblasts, vascular smooth muscle cells, sympathetic neurons, and resident macrophages, and the extracellular matrix (ECM), forming complex interactions, and models utilizing hiPSC-derived cell types offer a great opportunity to investigate these interactions further. In this review, we outline the historical and current state of disease modelling, focusing on the major milestones in the development of stem cell-derived cell types, and how this technology has contributed to our knowledge about the interactions between CMs and key non-myocyte components of the heart in health and disease, in particular, heart failure. Understanding where we stand in the field will be critical for stem cell-based applications, including the modelling of diseases that have complex multicellular dysfunctions

Point-PC: Point Cloud Completion Guided by Prior Knowledge via Causal Inference

Point cloud completion aims to recover raw point clouds captured by scanners from partial observations caused by occlusion and limited view angles. Many approaches utilize a partial-complete paradigm in which missing parts are directly predicted by a global feature learned from partial inputs. This makes it hard to recover details because the global feature is unlikely to capture the full details of all missing parts. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to point cloud completion called Point-PC, which uses a memory network to retrieve shape priors and designs an effective causal inference model to choose missing shape information as additional geometric information to aid point cloud completion. Specifically, we propose a memory operating mechanism where the complete shape features and the corresponding shapes are stored in the form of ``key-value'' pairs. To retrieve similar shapes from the partial input, we also apply a contrastive learning-based pre-training scheme to transfer features of incomplete shapes into the domain of complete shape features. Moreover, we use backdoor adjustment to get rid of the confounder, which is a part of the shape prior that has the same semantic structure as the partial input. Experimental results on the ShapeNet-55, PCN, and KITTI datasets demonstrate that Point-PC performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods

Quantum diffusion of microcavity solitons

Coherently pumped (Kerr) solitons in an ideal optical microcavity are expected to undergo random quantum motion that determines fundamental performance limits in applications of the soliton microcombs. Here this random walk and its impact on Kerr soliton timing jitter are studied experimentally. The quantum limit is discerned by measuring the relative position of counter-propagating solitons. Their relative motion features weak interactions and also presents common-mode suppression of technical noise, which typically hides the quantum fluctuations. This is in contrast to co-propagating solitons, which are found to have relative timing jitter well below the quantum limit of a single soliton on account of strong correlation of their mutual motion. Good agreement is found between theory and experiment. The results establish the fundamental limits to timing jitter in soliton microcombs and provide new insights on multisoliton physics

Excitatory nucleo-olivary pathway shapes cerebellar outputs for motor control

The brain generates predictive motor commands to control the spatiotemporal precision of high-velocity movements. Yet, how the brain organizes automated internal feedback to coordinate the kinematics of such fast movements is unclear. Here we unveil a unique nucleo-olivary loop in the cerebellum and its involvement in coordinating high-velocity movements. Activating the excitatory nucleo-olivary pathway induces well-timed internal feedback complex spike signals in Purkinje cells to shape cerebellar outputs. Anatomical tracing reveals extensive axonal collaterals from the excitatory nucleo-olivary neurons to downstream motor regions, supporting integration of motor output and internal feedback signals within the cerebellum. This pathway directly drives saccades and head movements with a converging direction, while curtailing their amplitude and velocity via the powerful internal feedback mechanism. Our finding challenges the long-standing dogma that the cerebellum inhibits the inferior olivary pathway and provides a new circuit mechanism for the cerebellar control of high-velocity movements.</p

Rolling circle transcription-amplified hierarchically structured organic-inorganic hybrid RNA flowers for enzyme immobilization

Programmable nucleic acids have emerged as powerful building blocks for the bottom-up fabrication of two- or three-dimensional nano- and microsized constructs. Here we describe the construction of organic–inorganic hybrid RNA flowers (hRNFs) via rolling circle transcription (RCT), an enzyme-catalyzed nucleic acid amplification reaction. These hRNFs are highly adaptive structures with controlled sizes, specific nucleic acid sequences, and a highly porous nature. We demonstrated that hRNFs are applicable as potential biological platforms, where the hRNF scaffold can be engineered for versatile surface functionalization and the inorganic component (magnesium ions) can serve as an enzyme cofactor. For surface functionalization, we proposed robust and straightforward approaches including in situ synthesis of functional hRNFs and postfunctionalization of hRNFs that enable facile conjugation with various biomolecules and nanomaterials (i.e., proteins, enzymes, organic dyes, inorganic nanoparticles) using selective chemistries (i.e., avidin–biotin interaction, copper-free click reaction). In particular, we showed that hRNFs can serve as soft scaffolds for β-galactosidase immobilization and greatly enhance enzymatic activity and stability. Therefore, the proposed concepts and methodologies are not only fundamentally interesting when designing RNA scaffolds or RNA bionanomaterials assembled with enzymes but also have significant implications on their future utilization in biomedical applications ranging from enzyme cascades to biosensing and drug delivery

Revision of Solar Spicule Classification

Solar spicules are the fundamental magnetic structures in the chromosphere and considered to play a key role in channelling the chromosphere and corona. Recently, it was suggested by De Pontieu et al. that there were two types of spicules with very different dynamic properties, which were detected by space- time plot technique in the Ca ii H line (3968 A) wavelength from Hinode/SOT observations. 'Type I' spicule, with a 3-7 minute lifetime, undergoes a cycle of upward and downward motion; in contrast, 'Type II' spicule fades away within dozens of seconds, without descending phase. We are motivated by the fact that for a spicule with complicated 3D motion, the space-time plot, which is made through a slit on a fixed position, could not match the spicule behavior all the time and might lose its real life story. By revisiting the same data sets, we identify and trace 105 and 102 spicules in quiet sun (QS) and coronal hole (CH), respectively, and obtain their statistical dynamic properties. First, we have not found a single convincing example of 'Type II' spicules. Secondly, more than 60% of the identified spicules in each region show a complete cycle, i.e., majority spicules are 'Type I'. Thirdly, the lifetime of spicules in QS and CH are 148 s and 112 s, respectively, but there is no fundamental lifetime difference between the spicules in QS and CH reported earlier. Therefore, the suggestion of coronal heating by 'Type II' spicules should be taken with cautions. Subject headings: Sun: chromosphere Sun:transition region Sun:coronaComment: accepted by Ap

Co-methylated Genes in Different Adipose Depots of Pig are Associated with Metabolic, Inflammatory and Immune Processes

It is well established that the metabolic risk factors of obesity and its comorbidities are more attributed to adipose tissue distribution rather than total adipose mass. Since emerging evidence suggests that epigenetic regulation plays an important role in the aetiology of obesity, we conducted a genome-wide methylation analysis on eight different adipose depots of three pig breeds living within comparable environments but displaying distinct fat level using methylated DNA immunoprecipitation sequencing. We aimed to investigate the systematic association between anatomical location-specific DNA methylation status of different adipose depots and obesity-related phenotypes. We show here that compared to subcutaneous adipose tissues which primarily modulate metabolic indicators, visceral adipose tissues and intermuscular adipose tissue, which are the metabolic risk factors of obesity, are primarily associated with impaired inflammatory and immune responses. This study presents epigenetic evidence for functionally relevant methylation differences between different adipose depots