Local vs. Global Brands: Country-of-Origin’s Effect on Consumer-based Brand Equity among Status-Seekers

This paper examines the local and global automotive brands in conjunction with country-oforigin effect on consumer-based brand equity. Consumer’s level of status-seeking motivation is considered when analysing the effect of brand’s country-of-origin on consumer-based brand equity. Study conducted on 181 respondents showed that consumers generally prefer Asian than European automotive brands. Asian brands also ranked highest in perceived quality and brand loyalty, followed by European brands and local brands. The main difference of high and low status-seeking consumers is found in brand association, perceived quality, and brand loyalty of local brands. Low status-seeking consumers tend to rate brand association, perceived quality, and brand loyalty of local brands higher than high statusseeking consumers. This paper exhibits that the theory of consumer ethnocentrism and global branding strategies are not mutually exclusive

The Dual-mediation Effect of Perceived Accuracy and Perceived Connectedness on Consumer Attitude Toward Social Network Advertising

Drawing on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, this paper investigates the dual mediation effect of perceived accuracy and perceived connectedness in the effect of endorsement from satisfied customers, review credibility, and social influence on consumers’ social media advertising attitudes. A study was conducted and received 1597 returned surveys with 1031 valid surveys. The results show that endorsement from satisfied customers, review credibility, and social influence are antecedents of perceived accuracy and perceived connectedness. These five variables are also antecedents of consumer attitude toward social network advertising. Furthermore, perceived accuracy and connectedness are partially mediating these relationships between endorsement from satisfied customers/review credibility/social influence and consumer attitude toward social network advertising

Based on lacing wires influence of coupling vibration of a multi flexible disks turbine rotor system by two methods

This paper explored the blade-bending, disk-transverse and shaft-torsion coupling vibrations phenomenon of a multi flexible disc rotor system, whose blades subsystem was grouped with spring. Being different from the author’s previous researches, here we used two methods: one is the assumed mode method (AMM) and the other is the finite element method (FEM), the proposed former one is main, and the latter one is complementary. Then compared the two results generated from them. According to the authors’ previous definition, a flexible disc rotor system displays three coupling vibrations’ types, inter-blade (BB), shaft-disk-blade (SDB) and disk-blade (DB) modes. In this paper, the authors additionally defined two new types, which were called lacing wires-blade (LB) and lacing wires-disk-blade (LDB) mode. The system change rules of natural frequencies and that of mode shapes would be discussed. Some interesting results are shown in this paper. Firstly, the author pointed out the change rules of the mode shapes and natural frequencies by using the AMM and FEM (including three kinds of softwares). Secondly, numerical calculation results also showed that the distance of disk, the disk with flexible, the constant of spring, and location of spring four phenomena would affect the natural frequencies

Based on lacing wires influence of coupling vibration of a multi flexible disks turbine rotor system by two methods

This paper explored the blade-bending, disk-transverse and shaft-torsion coupling vibrations phenomenon of a multi flexible disc rotor system, whose blades subsystem was grouped with spring. Being different from the author’s previous researches, here we used two methods: one is the assumed mode method (AMM) and the other is the finite element method (FEM), the proposed former one is main, and the latter one is complementary. Then compared the two results generated from them. According to the authors’ previous definition, a flexible disc rotor system displays three coupling vibrations’ types, inter-blade (BB), shaft-disk-blade (SDB) and disk-blade (DB) modes. In this paper, the authors additionally defined two new types, which were called lacing wires-blade (LB) and lacing wires-disk-blade (LDB) mode. The system change rules of natural frequencies and that of mode shapes would be discussed. Some interesting results are shown in this paper. Firstly, the author pointed out the change rules of the mode shapes and natural frequencies by using the AMM and FEM (including three kinds of softwares). Secondly, numerical calculation results also showed that the distance of disk, the disk with flexible, the constant of spring, and location of spring four phenomena would affect the natural frequencies

Mechanical regulation of cancer cell apoptosis and autophagy: Roles of bone morphogenetic protein receptor, Smad1/5, and p38 MAPK

AbstractMechanical forces induced by interstitial fluid flow in and surrounding tissues and by blood/lymphatic flow in vessels may modulate cancer cell invasion and metastasis and anticancer drug delivery. Our previous study demonstrated that laminar flow-induced shear stress induces G2/M arrest in tumor cells. However, whether shear stress modulates final cell fate remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the role of flow-induced shear stress in modulating the survival of four human tumor cell lines, i.e., Hep3B hepatocarcinoma cells, MG63 osteosarcoma cells, SCC25 oral squamous carcinoma cells, and A549 carcinomic alveolar basal epithelial cells. Laminar shear stress (LSS) ranging from 0.5 to 12dyn/cm2 induced death of these four tumor cell lines. In contrast to LSS at 0.5dyn/cm2, oscillatory shear stress (OSS) at 0.5±4dyn/cm2 cannot induce cancer cell death. Both LSS and OSS had no effect on human normal hepatocyte, lung epithelial, and endothelial cells. Application of LSS to these four cell lines increased the percentage of cells stained positively for annexin V–FITC, with up-regulations of cleaved caspase-8, -9, and -3, and PARP. In addition, LSS also induced Hep3B cell autophagy, as detected by acidic vesicular organelle formation, LC3B transformation, and p62/SQSTM1 degradation. By transfecting with small interfering RNA, we found that the shear-induced apoptosis and autophagy are mediated by bone morphogenetic protein receptor type (BMPR)-IB, BMPR-specific Smad1 and Smad5, and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase in Hep3B cells. Our findings provide insights into the molecular mechanisms by which shear stress induces apoptosis and autophagy in tumor cells

Octahedral and polar phase transitions in freestanding films of SrTiO3

From extreme strain to bending, the possibilities in the manipulation of freestanding films of oxide perovskites bring a novel landscape to their properties and brings them one step closer to their application. It is therefore of great importance to fully understand the inherent properties of such films, in which dimensionality and surface effects can play a major role in defining the properties of the materials ground state. This paper reports the properties of freestanding (FS) films of the canonical oxide, SrTiO3 (STO) with thicknesses 20, 30, 40 and 80 nm. We show that the relaxed ultrathin STO FS films become polar at temperatures as high as 85 K, in contrast to the quantum paraelectric behavior of bulk. Our findings are based on the softening of the ferroelectric mode towards the ferroelectric transition temperature Tc and its consecutive hardening below Tc with further decreasing temperature, probed with THz time domain spectroscopy in transmission mode. We find almost no thickness dependence in Tc. Moreover, we characterize the antiferrodistortive (AFD) phase transition in STO FS by X-ray diffraction (XRD) probing superlattice reflections characteristic for the rotation of the TiO6 octahedra. Our results point to a higher phase transition temperature in comparison to bulk STO, as well as an unbalanced domain population favoring the rotation axis to be in plane. X-ray linear dichroism results further show a preferential Ti xz/yz orbital occupancy at the surface, but with a complete degeneracy in the t2g states in the inner part of the film indicating that the AFD distortion does not strongly affect the t2g splitting. These findings demonstrate that STO FS films have clearly different properties than bulk.Comment: 12pages, 4 figure

Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase plays an important role in intermittent hypoxia-induced cell death in rat cerebellar granule cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Episodic cessation of airflow during sleep in patients with sleep apnea syndrome results in intermittent hypoxia (IH). Our aim was to investigate the effects of IH on cerebellar granule cells and to identify the mechanism of IH-induced cell death.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Cerebellar granule cells were freshly prepared from neonatal Sprague-Dawley rats. IH was created by culturing the cerebellar granule cells in the incubators with oscillating O₂concentration at 20% and 5% every 30 min for 1-4 days. The results of this study are based on image analysis using a confocal microscope and associated software. Cellular oxidative stress increased with increase in IH. In addition, the occurrence of cell death (apoptosis and necrosis) increased as the duration of IH increased, but decreased in the presence of an iron chelator (phenanthroline) or poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors [3-aminobenzamide (3-AB) and DPQ]. The fluorescence of caspase-3 remained the same regardless of the duration of IH, and Western blots did not detect activation of caspase-3. However, IH increased the ratio of apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF) translocation to the nucleus, while PARP inhibitors (3-AB) reduced this ratio.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>According to our findings, IH increased oxidative stress and subsequently leading to cell death. This effect was at least partially mediated by PARP activation, resulting in ATP depletion, calpain activation leading to AIF translocation to the nucleus.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We suggest that IH induces cell death in rat primary cerebellar granule cells by stimulating oxidative stress PARP-mediated calpain and AIF activation.</p

The Number Of Titrated Microrna Species Dictates Cerna Regulation

microRNAs (miRNAs) play key roles in cancer, but their propensity to couple their targets as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) has only recently emerged. Multiple models have studied ceRNA regulation, but these models did not account for the effects of co-regulation by miRNAs with many targets. We modeled ceRNA and simulated its effects using established parameters for miRNA/mRNA interaction kinetics while accounting for co-regulation by multiple miRNAs with many targets. Our simulations suggested that co-regulation by many miRNA species is more likely to produce physiologically relevant context-independent couplings. To test this, we studied the overlap of inferred ceRNA networks from four tumor contexts-our proposed pan-cancer ceRNA interactome (PCI). PCI was composed of interactions between genes that were coregulated by nearly three-times as many miRNAs as other inferred ceRNA interactions. Evidence from expression-profiling datasets suggested that PCI interactions are predictive of gene expression in 12 independent tumor-and non-tumor contexts. Biochemical assays confirmed ceRNA couplings for two PCI subnetworks, including oncogenes CCND1, HIF1A and HMGA2, and tumor suppressors PTEN, RB1 and TP53. Our results suggest that PCI is enriched for context-independent interactions that are coupled by many miRNA species and are more likely to be context independent