A network centrality method for the rating problem

We propose a new method for aggregating the information of multiple reviewers rating multiple products. Our approach is based on the network relations induced between products by the rating activity of the reviewers. We show that our method is algorithmically implementable even for large numbers of both products and consumers, as is the case for many online sites. Moreover, comparing it with the simple average, which is mostly used in practice, and with other methods previously proposed in the literature, it performs very well under various dimension, proving itself to be an optimal trade--off between computational efficiency, accordance with the reviewers original orderings, and robustness with respect to the inclusion of systematically biased reports.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure

Research on the Impact of Human Capital Investment and Enterprise Innovation Performance Based on the Perspective of Enterprise Heterogeneity

Purpose: This study aims to analyze the Impact of Human Capital Investment and Enterprise Innovation performance on the basis of the perspective of enterprise heterogeneity.   Theoretical framework:  Nowadays, Enterprises want to gain a foothold in the fierce competition of globalization. Therefore, the ability and level of developing new technologies and research and development of new products have become important factor in determining the long -term development of enterprises.   Design/methodology/approach: The article is sampled by the data of China GEM1 listed companies from 2009 to 2020 to study the relationship between human capital investment and innovative performance, and empirical inspection of the heterogeneity of the scale and age of enterprises on human capital investment and innovative performance. The study also adopts panel OLS regression.   Findings: The research results show that: First of all, the stock of human capital is being promoted to innovative performance, and human capital training is being promoted to innovative performance; Secondly, compared with young enterprises, the human capital stock of older enterprises has a greater impact on enterprise innovation performance.   Research, Practical & Social implications: In young enterprises, human capital training has no significant impact on enterprise innovation performance, but in older enterprises, human capital training has a positive impact on innovation performance.   Originality/value: After an enterprise develops to a certain stage, human capital can become an important factor restricting its development. Thus, strengthening human capital investment at this stage can effectively promote innovation

Efficacy of consensus interferon in treatment of HbeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B: a multicentre, randomized controlled trial

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Consensus interferon (CIFN) is a newly developed type I interferon.</p> <p>Aims</p> <p>This multicentre, controlled trial was conducted to determine the efficacy of CIFN and to compare it with alpha-1b-interferon (IFN-α1b) in the treatment of patients with hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-positive chronic hepatitis B.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>144 Patients were randomly assigned to receive 9 μg CIFN (CIFN group) or 50 μg INF-α1b (IFN-alpha group) subcutaneously 3 times weekly for 24 weeks, followed by 24 weeks of observation. Efficacy was assessed by normalization of serum alanine transaminase (ALT) levels and the non-detectability of serum hepatitis B virus DNA or HBeAg at the end of treatment and 24 weeks after stopping treatment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was no statistically significant difference in the serological, virological and biochemical parameters between CIFN and IFN-α1b groups at the end of the therapy and follow-up period (p > 0.05). Overall, at the end of treatment, 7.0% (5/71) and 35.2% (25/71) of patients in the CIFN group showed a complete or partial response compared with 7.4% (5/68) and 33.8% (23/68) of the IFN-alpha group (p = 0.10). At 24 weeks after stopping treatment, 6.9% (5/72) and 37.5% (27/72) of patients in the CIFN group showed complete response or partial response compared with 7.1% (5/70) and 34.3% (24/70) of the IFN-alpha group (p = 0.10).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These findings suggest that 9 μg CIFN is effective in the treatment of patients with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B. It can gradually induce ALT normalization and HBV DNA clearance and HBeAg loss or HBeAg/HBeAb seroconversion.</p

How Does Market Network Structure Affect Participants' Benefits?

A mathematical model is made to answer the question of how market network structure affects market participants’ benefits. In this paper, one monopoly, one kind of goods, and n consumers are assumed to form the market. The market network structure is defined as the mutual influences among consumers on purchase behaviors, and the benefits are defined as the sum of each consumer’s utility as well as the profit of the monopoly. By completely knowing or not knowing the market network structure, the monopoly is designed to make decisions on price in such two cases. As a result, this paper finds that (1) when the market network structure is symmetric, completely knowing or not knowing the market structure network structure does not change the participants’ benefits; (2) when the market network structure is asymmetric, knowing the network structure can help to improve the monopoly’s profit, and meanwhile the consumers’ benefits are identical on average in the statistical sense; (3) the increasing degree of the network structure matrix’s asymmetry leads to the increasing benefits of the monopoly with fixing its original structure. Besides, policy implications and further work are also discussed

Photo-Otto engine with quantum correlations

We theoretically prose and investigate a photo-Otto engine that is working with a single-mode radiation field inside an optical cavity and alternatively driven by a hot and a cold reservoir, where the hot reservoir is realized by sending one of a pair of correlated two-level atoms to pass through the optical cavity, and the cold one is made of a collection of noninteracting boson modes. In terms of the quantum discord of the pair of atoms, we derive the analytical expressions for the performance parameters (power and efficiency) and stability measure (coefficient of variation for power). We show that quantum discord boosts the performance and efficiency of the quantum engine, and even may change the operation mode. We also demonstrate that quantum discord improves the stability of machine by decreasing the coefficient of variation for power which satisfies the generalized thermodynamic uncertainty relation. Finally, we find that these results can be transferred to another photo-Otto engine model, where the optical cavity is alternatively coupled to a hot thermal bosonic bath and to a beam of pairs of the two correlated atoms that play the role of a cold reservoir

A Dense Point-to-Point Alignment Method for Realistic 3D Face Morphing and Animation

We present a new point matching method to overcome the dense point-to-point alignment of scanned 3D faces. Instead of using the rigid spatial transformation in the traditional iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm, we adopt the thin plate spline (TPS) transformation to model the deformation of different 3D faces. Because TPS is a non-rigid transformation with good smooth property, it is suitable for formulating the complex variety of human facial morphology. A closest point searching algorithm is proposed to keep one-to-one mapping, and to get good efficiency the point matching method is accelerated by a KD-tree method. Having constructed the dense point-to-point correspondence of 3D faces, we create 3D face morphing and animation by key-frames interpolation and obtain realistic results. Comparing with ICP algorithm and the optical flow method, the presented point matching method can achieve good matching accuracy and stability. The experiment results have shown that our method is efficient for dense point objects registration