From Brand Identity to Brand Equity: A Multilevel Analysis of the Organization–Employee Bidirectional Effects in Upscale Hotels

Purpose: This study examines the mechanism of how hotel executive brand identity influences physical facility quality and customer-based brand equity (CBBE) and employee-based brand equity (EBBE). Design: The study introduces a multilevel model and collects 925 executive and 1,978 employee responses from 62 upscale hotels in China. Findings: Executive brand identity positively affects employee brand internalization, which leads to positive EBBE. Meanwhile, executive brand identity positively influences the physical facility quality, which leads to positive CBBE. Practical implications: Once hotel executives have a clear understanding of the brand identity, they will provide the necessary leadership in imparting the brand identity on their employees. Hotel executives must also convince owners of the value of physical facility quality to achieve a desirable CBBE. Originality/Value: This study considers the tangible (physical facilities) and intangible (employees) elements of hotel services to comprehensively investigate the brand equity (BE) formation. By applying multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM), the study examines the bidirectional relationship between organizations and employees in the brand value transformation process

Intracellular localization of Na+/H+ antiporter from Malus zumi (MzNHX1)

In this study, we examined the intracellular localization of the product of Na+/H+ antiporter gene (MzNHX1) cloned from Malus zumi. Analysis using yeast cells expressing a fusion protein of MzNHX1 and green fluorescent protein confirmed the localization of MzNHX1 on the tonoplast

Investigating the flow dynamics in the obstructed and stented ureter by means of a biomimetic artificial model

Double-J stenting is the most common clinical method employed to restore the upper urinary tract drainage, in the presence of a ureteric obstruction. After implant, stents provide an immediate pain relief by decreasing the pressure in the renal pelvis (P). However, their long-term usage can cause infections and encrustations, due to bacterial colonization and crystal deposition on the stent surface, respectively. The performance of double-J stents - and in general of all ureteric stents - is thought to depend significantly on urine flow field within the stented ureter. However very little fundamental research about the role played by fluid dynamic parameters on stent functionality has been conducted so far. These parameters are often difficult to assess in-vivo, requiring the implementation of laborious and expensive experimental protocols. The aim of the present work was therefore to develop an artificial model of the ureter (i.e. ureter model, UM) to mimic the fluid dynamic environment in a stented ureter. The UM was designed to reflect the geometry of pig ureters, and to investigate the values of fluid dynamic viscosity (μ), volumetric flow rate (Q ) and severity of ureteric obstruction (OB%) which may cause critical pressures in the renal pelvis. The distributed obstruction derived by the sole stent insertion was also quantified. In addition, flow visualisation experiments and computational simulations were performed in order to further characterise the flow field in the UM. Unique characteristics of the flow dynamics in the obstructed and stented ureter have been revealed with using the developed UM

Cooperation or confrontation? Exploring stakeholder relationships in rural tourism land expropriation

The current study explored the triadic relationship between the government, local residents and developers as stakeholders in rural tourism land expropriation. Unstructured interviews and non-participant observation were conducted to obtain relevant data. Social action theory was applied to delineate the complex interaction and relationships between the various stakeholders. Growth machine theory was also used to reveal the internal mechanisms of these relationships. The results showed that in land expropriation for rural tourism development in the case setting, stakeholders’ relationships were not merely cooperative or antagonistic; rather, their interests were interwoven and showed a process-based evolution with the progress of land expropriation. Finally, the local government (political elite) and the developer (economic elite) formed a growth coalition and jointly led the process of land expropriation. However, local residents failed to form an anti-growth coalition, which indicates the potential vulnerability of tourism coalition formation. These insights have implications for developing sustainable tourism, including government involvement and resident participation, particularly in the context of developing countries

Sampling strategy to develop a primary core collection of apple cultivars based on fruit traits

A total of 435 accessions of apple germplasm collected from the Xincheng National Apple Germplasm Repository and 10 morphological traits of them were used for studying the optimal sampling strategy for primary core collection of apple (Malus domestica Brokh). In order to acquire the appropriate primary core collection,.. different entire sampling ratio and sampling scheme were compared in the study. Six entire sampling ratios were tested and the sampling schemes following stratification into twolevels, including the grouping principle, sampling proportion within group were studied. The results showed that 10% should be the suitable entire sampling ratio for primary core collection of apple. Under 15% entire sampling ratio, the optimal sampling scheme was grouped based on cultivar group combining with genetic diversity based sampling proportion within group proportion. This sampling strategy was used to acquire the primary core collection of 64 accessions from 435 accessions of applecultivars, and the primary core collection could well represent the genetic diversities of the entire variety collection

WaveletKernelNet: An Interpretable Deep Neural Network for Industrial Intelligent Diagnosis

Convolutional neural network (CNN), with ability of feature learning and nonlinear mapping, has demonstrated its effectiveness in prognostics and health management (PHM). However, explanation on the physical meaning of a CNN architecture has rarely been studied. In this paper, a novel wavelet driven deep neural network termed as WaveletKernelNet (WKN) is presented, where a continuous wavelet convolutional (CWConv) layer is designed to replace the first convolutional layer of the standard CNN. This enables the first CWConv layer to discover more meaningful filters. Furthermore, only the scale parameter and translation parameter are directly learned from raw data at this CWConv layer. This provides a very effective way to obtain a customized filter bank, specifically tuned for extracting defect-related impact component embedded in the vibration signal. In addition, three experimental verification using data from laboratory environment are carried out to verify effectiveness of the proposed method for mechanical fault diagnosis. The results show the importance of the designed CWConv layer and the output of CWConv layer is interpretable. Besides, it is found that WKN has fewer parameters, higher fault classification accuracy and faster convergence speed than standard CNN

Testing gene-environment interactions in gene-based association studies

Gene-based and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) set association studies provide an important complement to SNP analysis. Kernel-based nonparametric regression has recently emerged as a powerful and flexible tool for this purpose. Our goal is to explore whether this approach can be extended to incorporate and test for interaction effects, especially for genes containing rare variant SNPs. Here, we construct nonparametric regression models that can be used to include a gene-environment interaction effect under the framework of the least-squares kernel machine and examine the performance of the proposed method on the Genetic Analysis Workshop 17 unrelated individuals data set. Two hundred simulated replicates were used to explore the power for detecting interaction. We demonstrate through a genome scan of the quantitative phenotype Q1 that the simulated gene-environment interaction effect in the data can be detected with reasonable power by using the least-squares kernel machine method

Interface induced Zeeman-protected superconductivity in ultrathin crystalline lead films

Two dimensional (2D) superconducting systems are of great importance to exploring exotic quantum physics. Recent development of fabrication techniques stimulates the studies of high quality single crystalline 2D superconductors, where intrinsic properties give rise to unprecedented physical phenomena. Here we report the observation of Zeeman-type spin-orbit interaction protected superconductivity (Zeeman-protected superconductivity) in 4 monolayer (ML) to 6 ML crystalline Pb films grown on striped incommensurate (SIC) Pb layers on Si(111) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Anomalous large in-plane critical field far beyond the Pauli limit is detected, which can be attributed to the Zeeman-protected superconductivity due to the in-plane inversion symmetry breaking at the interface. Our work demonstrates that in superconducting heterostructures the interface can induce Zeeman-type spin-orbit interaction (SOI) and modulate the superconductivity

Quantifying Inactive Lithium in Lithium Metal Batteries

Inactive lithium (Li) formation is the immediate cause of capacity loss and catastrophic failure of Li metal batteries. However, the chemical component and the atomic level structure of inactive Li have rarely been studied due to the lack of effective diagnosis tools to accurately differentiate and quantify Li+ in solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) components and the electrically isolated unreacted metallic Li0, which together comprise the inactive Li. Here, by introducing a new analytical method, Titration Gas Chromatography (TGC), we can accurately quantify the contribution from metallic Li0 to the total amount of inactive Li. We uncover that the Li0, rather than the electrochemically formed SEI, dominates the inactive Li and capacity loss. Using cryogenic electron microscopies to further study the microstructure and nanostructure of inactive Li, we find that the Li0 is surrounded by insulating SEI, losing the electronic conductive pathway to the bulk electrode. Coupling the measurements of the Li0 global content to observations of its local atomic structure, we reveal the formation mechanism of inactive Li in different types of electrolytes, and identify the true underlying cause of low Coulombic efficiency in Li metal deposition and stripping. We ultimately propose strategies to enable the highly efficient Li deposition and stripping to enable Li metal anode for next generation high energy batteries