Nature vs. Nurture: The Genetic Basis of Behavioral Security

This research-in-progress project seeks to explain persistent user resistance to security behavior from a biological perspective using the behavioral genetics paradigm. A synthesis of current literature on deception detection, cognitive neuroscience, decision making, and fraud victimization suggests that there may potentially be genetic basis for user susceptibility to security risks such as phishing scams. An ongoing study is being conducted to estimate the heritability of behavioral security by comparing correlation between 143 pairs of monozygotic (MZ) twins and that between 51 pairs of same-sex dyzygotic (DZ) twins. Zygosity of the twin pairs serves as the primary independent variable in the behavioral genetics analysis. Online security settings on the social media site Facebook and behavioral responses to simulated phishing scams are being collected as dependent measures of security behavior. Data have also been collected on potential mediating factors, such as personality traits, risk propensity, information technology usage, and protection motivation. By employing twin design, the classic methodology of behavioral genetics research, this study will be among the first to unpack the genetic versus environmental determinants of individual differences in behavioral security. Implications will be discussed with respect to security research as well as managerial practices

The Impact of Person-Organization Fit and Psychological Ownership on Turnover in Open Source Software Projects

Open source software (OSS) projects represent an alternate form of software production by relying primarily on voluntary contributions. Despite the immense success of several mainstream OSS projects such as Mozilla, Linux, and Apache, a vast majority of such projects fail to sustain their development due to high levels of developer turnover. While existing research in the area has offered a rich foundation, we know little about how developers’ perceptions of fit with the project environment may be moderated by the sense of ownership they have toward the project and how it may impact their turnover intentions. Using survey data from 574 GitHub developers, we tested a model to examine the impact of Person-Organization fit and psychological ownership on developers’ turnover intentions. Our results suggest that two relevant dimensions of fit, namely, value and demands-abilities fit, negatively impact turnover intentions and that their sense of ownership moderates these effects

Promoting consumers’ online brand attention: The study of spatiotemporal analysis in regional apples

With the application and promotion of agricultural products e-commerce, it is of great significance to increase the popularity of brand recognition to promote the market value of agricultural products. Online attention is an important form of regional brand awareness of agricultural products on the Internet. Taking the apple industry as an example, this paper uses 6 years of data from the Baidu search index to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of apple brands in China. The study has demonstrated a way to analyze online brand attention and its relationship with regional brands. Further studies are to be made in more detailed attributes associated with the forming of attention to enhance the online brand attention and promote agricultural products

Large-scale functional inference for skin-expressing lncRNAs using expression and sequence information

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) regulate the expression of protein-coding genes and have been shown to play important roles in inflammatory skin diseases. However, we still have limited understanding of the functional impact of lncRNAs in skin, partly due to their tissue specificity and lower expression levels compared with protein-coding genes. We compiled a comprehensive list of 18,517 lncRNAs from different sources and studied their expression profiles in 834 RNA-Seq samples from multiple inflammatory skin conditions and cytokine-stimulated keratinocytes. Applying a balanced random forest to predict involvement in biological functions, we achieved a median AUROC of 0.79 in 10-fold cross-validation, identifying significant DNA binding domains (DBDs) for 39 lncRNAs. G18244, a skin-expressing lncRNA predicted for IL-4/IL-13 signaling in keratinocytes, was highly correlated in expression with F13A1, a protein-coding gene involved in macrophage regulation, and we further identified a significant DBD in F13A1 for G18244. Reflecting clinical implications, AC090198.1 (predicted for IL-17 pathway) and AC005332.6 (predicted for IFN-γ pathway) had significant negative correlation with the SCORAD metric for atopic dermatitis. We also utilized single-cell RNA and spatial sequencing data to validate cell type specificity. Our research demonstrates lncRNAs have important immunological roles and can help prioritize their impact on inflammatory skin diseases.</p

ASCOT: a text mining-based web-service for efficient search and assisted creation of clinical trials

Clinical trials are mandatory protocols describing medical research on humans and among the most valuable sources of medical practice evidence. Searching for trials relevant to some query is laborious due to the immense number of existing protocols. Apart from search, writing new trials includes composing detailed eligibility criteria, which might be time-consuming, especially for new researchers. In this paper we present ASCOT, an efficient search application customised for clinical trials. ASCOT uses text mining and data mining methods to enrich clinical trials with metadata, that in turn serve as effective tools to narrow down search. In addition, ASCOT integrates a component for recommending eligibility criteria based on a set of selected protocols

Executive cash compensation and tax aggressiveness of Chinese firms

We examine the influence of corporate compensation policies on firms’ tax aggressiveness in an emerging market where executive compensation is primarily in cash form. Based on a hand-collected dataset of 958 firm-year observations of Chinese listed firms for the 2006-2012 period, we find that firms paying higher executive cash compensation are associated with lower tax aggressiveness. This relationship also holds for the excess cash compensation measures which control for executive shareholding, firm profitability, size, growth opportunity, and board independence. We further document that mutual funds ownership pressure firms paying higher compensation to reduce their tax aggressiveness, suggesting adverse selection by mutual funds on firms exhibiting risky tax avoidance activities. High leverage offsets the negative link between cash compensation and tax aggressiveness, indicating a complementary effect between debt and tax avoidance, and, hence, suggesting that creditor monitoring is weak. These results are robust to the system-GMM estimation, which simultaneously account for the endogeneity of executive compensation, tax aggressiveness, ownership and control, leverage, and corporate governance. Our findings on Chinese firms have important policy implications for developing countries around the world with concentrated ownership structure, weak institutional environment, widespread corruption, ineffective rule of law, and ongoing significant social and political transformation

A Modeling-Derived Hypothesis on Chronicity in Respiratory Diseases: Desensitized Pathogen Recognition Secondary to Hyperactive IRAK/TRAF6 Signaling

Several chronic respiratory diseases exhibit hyperactive immune responses in the lung: abundant inflammatory mediators; infiltrating neutrophils, macrophages, lymphocytes and other immune cells; and increased level of proteases. Such diseases include cystic fibrosis (CF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and severe/neutrophilic asthma. Paradoxically, patients with these diseases are also susceptible to detrimental bacterial infection and colonization. In this paper, we seek to explain how a positive feedback mechanism via IL-8 could lead to desensitization of epithelial cells to pathogen recognition thus perpetuating bacterial colonization and chronic disease states in the lung. Such insight was obtained from mathematical modeling of the IRAK/TRAF6 signaling module, and is consistent with existing clinical evidence. The potential implications for targeted treatment regimes for these persistent respiratory diseases are explored