Charles Dickens’ Benevolent Spirit as Revealed in A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities, one of Charles Dickens’ most representative work, reveals and criticizes the fact that the working people suffered the oppression from the aristocracy. Moreover, the novel showed that the revolution was bloody and cruel. Dickens revealed his benevolent spirit, namely, he showed sympathy for the poor working people and urged people to use love to dissolve hatred. Some critics thought that his spirit was unpractical fantasy. Through the analysis of Dickens’ life and times, the novel A Tale of Two Cities as well as his other works, the author points out that Dickens’ benevolent spirit has its practical meaning in modern times

Value of Autonomous Last-mile Delivery: Evidence from Alibaba

This paper provides the first empirical evidence of consumer responses to autonomous last-mile delivery using Alibaba\u27s recent implementation in Chinese university campuses as a case study. The study leverages customer-level data from three universities over three years, employing a difference-in-differences (DID) approach combined with dynamic matching to estimate the impact of autonomous delivery adoption on order quantities. The results reveal a significant increase in the number of orders following autonomous delivery adoption with a 21% growth. The efficiency and flexibility of autonomous vehicles reduce consumers\u27 travel costs, driving long-term usage and increased sales. However, the value of autonomous delivery diminishes when a fee is charged. The study contributes to our understanding of the value of autonomous last-mile delivery and its potential advantages over traditional courier delivery

Leaders’ response to employee overqualification:An explanation of the curvilinear moderated relationship

This research aimed to advance overqualification literature by examining how leaders’ perceived employee overqualification (LPEO) influences their empowering behaviour and employee work behaviours. Drawing upon the individualized leadership theory, we proposed that LPEO has an inverted U-shape relationship with their empowering behaviour such that leaders are more motivated to empower employees from low to moderate levels of overqualification, but this tendency decreases after a certain inflection point. We also predicted that the inflection point occurs at a lower level of employee overqualification when leaders perceive higher (vs. lower) status threats. Leader empowering behaviour was hypothesized to positively predict employees’ voice and negatively predict their withdrawal behaviour. Two multi-source and time-lagged studies were conducted to examine this moderated mediation curvilinear model. In Study 1, survey data from 372 leader–employee dyads supported the inverted U-shape mediation model from leaders’ perceived overqualification to empowering behaviour, then to employee outcomes (i.e., voice and withdrawal behaviour). In Study 2, we collected data from a sample of 73 team leaders and 286 employees, and the results supported the full model. Taken together, these findings offer a perspective to enrich the understanding of employee overqualification and have important practical implications.Practitioner pointsWhen leaders regard employees as overqualified, they can assist them via the means of appropriate empowerment to best utilize their skills to benefit the company.Leader empowerment can inspire employees’ voice behaviour but reduce their withdrawal behaviours.To minimize potentially negative aspects from highly overqualified employees, organizations should reduce leaders’ concern about the status threat, and encourage leaders’ proactive responses to these employees so as to achieve positive returns from overqualified employees

Leaders’ response to employee overqualification:An explanation of the curvilinear moderated relationship

This research aimed to advance overqualification literature by examining how leaders’ perceived employee overqualification (LPEO) influences their empowering behaviour and employee work behaviours. Drawing upon the individualized leadership theory, we proposed that LPEO has an inverted U-shape relationship with their empowering behaviour such that leaders are more motivated to empower employees from low to moderate levels of overqualification, but this tendency decreases after a certain inflection point. We also predicted that the inflection point occurs at a lower level of employee overqualification when leaders perceive higher (vs. lower) status threats. Leader empowering behaviour was hypothesized to positively predict employees’ voice and negatively predict their withdrawal behaviour. Two multi-source and time-lagged studies were conducted to examine this moderated mediation curvilinear model. In Study 1, survey data from 372 leader–employee dyads supported the inverted U-shape mediation model from leaders’ perceived overqualification to empowering behaviour, then to employee outcomes (i.e., voice and withdrawal behaviour). In Study 2, we collected data from a sample of 73 team leaders and 286 employees, and the results supported the full model. Taken together, these findings offer a perspective to enrich the understanding of employee overqualification and have important practical implications.Practitioner pointsWhen leaders regard employees as overqualified, they can assist them via the means of appropriate empowerment to best utilize their skills to benefit the company.Leader empowerment can inspire employees’ voice behaviour but reduce their withdrawal behaviours.To minimize potentially negative aspects from highly overqualified employees, organizations should reduce leaders’ concern about the status threat, and encourage leaders’ proactive responses to these employees so as to achieve positive returns from overqualified employees

The Existence of Periodic Orbits and Invariant Tori for Some 3-Dimensional Quadratic Systems

We use the normal form theory, averaging method, and integral manifold theorem to study the existence of limit cycles in Lotka-Volterra systems and the existence of invariant tori in quadratic systems in ℝ3

Acceptor side effects on the electron transfer at cryogenic temperatures in intact photosystem II

AbstractIn intact PSII, both the secondary electron donor (TyrZ) and side-path electron donors (Car/ChlZ/Cytb559) can be oxidized by P680+ at cryogenic temperatures. In this paper, the effects of acceptor side, especially the redox state of the non-heme iron, on the donor side electron transfer induced by visible light at cryogenic temperatures were studied by EPR spectroscopy. We found that the formation and decay of the S1TyrZ EPR signal were independent of the treatment of K3Fe(CN)6, whereas formation and decay of the Car+/ChlZ+ EPR signal correlated with the reduction and recovery of the Fe3+ EPR signal of the non-heme iron in K3Fe(CN)6 pre-treated PSII, respectively. Based on the observed correlation between Car/ChlZ oxidation and Fe3+ reduction, the oxidation of non-heme iron by K3Fe(CN)6 at 0 °C was quantified, which showed that around 50–60% fractions of the reaction centers gave rise to the Fe3+ EPR signal. In addition, we found that the presence of phenyl-p-benzoquinone significantly enhanced the yield of TyrZ oxidation. These results indicate that the electron transfer at the donor side can be significantly modified by changes at the acceptor side, and indicate that two types of reaction centers are present in intact PSII, namely, one contains unoxidizable non-heme iron and another one contains oxidizable non-heme iron. TyrZ oxidation and side-path reaction occur separately in these two types of reaction centers, instead of competition with each other in the same reaction centers. In addition, our results show that the non-heme iron has different properties in active and inactive PSII. The oxidation of non-heme iron by K3Fe(CN)6 takes place only in inactive PSII, which implies that the Fe3+ state is probably not the intermediate species for the turnover of quinone reduction

Population dynamics of bearded croaker Johnius dussumieri (Cuvier, 1830) from Pakistani waters

In this study the length frequency data of 2510 bearded croaker Johnius dussumieri (Cuvier, 1830), collected from the coast of Pakistan during 2015, were analysed. Total length of the specimens (male and female combined) varied from 4 to 25 cm with dominant individuals ranged between 12 and 15 cm whereas the body weight varied between 3 and 155 g. The length frequency data were analysed for the estimation of population dynamics and the power coefficient b of length weight relationship was estimated as 2.83. Other measurements were as follows: asymptotic length, L∞ = 26.25 cm; growth coefficient, K = 1.00 year–1; total mortality, Z = 2.43 year–1; and natural mortality, M = 1.82 year–1. The fishing mortality (F) and exploitation ratio (E) were 0.61 year–1 and 0.251 respectively. The Biological Reference Points (BRPs) with Gulland method for this fishery (Fopt) was estimated 1.82 year–1 which is higher than current fish mortality. Therefore the present study shows that the J. dussumieri fishery is safe in Pakistan

The Existence of Positive Solutions for Boundary Value Problem of the Fractional Sturm-Liouville Functional Differential Equation

We study boundary value problems for the following nonlinear fractional Sturm-Liouville functional differential equations involving the Caputo fractional derivative:   CDβ(p(t)CDαu(t)) + f(t,u(t-τ),u(t+θ))=0, t∈(0,1),  CDαu(0)= CDαu(1)=( CDαu(0))=0, au(t)-bu′(t)=η(t), t∈[-τ,0], cu(t)+du′(t)=ξ(t), t∈[1,1+θ], where   CDα,  CDβ denote the Caputo fractional derivatives, f is a nonnegative continuous functional defined on C([-τ,1+θ],ℝ), 10, and η∈C([-τ,0],[0,∞)), ξ∈C([1,1+θ],[0,∞)). By means of the Guo-Krasnoselskii fixed point theorem and the fixed point index theorem, some positive solutions are obtained, respectively. As an application, an example is presented to illustrate our main results