Institutional Entrepreneurship and Acquiring Legitimacy of Social Commerce Platform

Research on social commerce has ignored the process and mechanism of institutional entrepreneurship. Based on the institutional theory, we use qualitative research methods to study the process of institutional entrepreneurship of social commerce. This paper also analyzes the legitimacy acquisition process of social commerce from the perspective of institutional contradiction and institutional logic. We found that, firstly, institutional contradictions existing in traditional e-commerce organization field are the fundamental motivation for institutional entrepreneurship of social commerce platform. Secondly, social commerce entrepreneur proposed new institutional logics which are the solutions according to the institutional contradictions existing in traditional e-commerce organization field. Thirdly, because of the new institutional logics proposed by institutional entrepreneur, social commerce platform acquired cognitive legitimacy and normative legitimacy. Finally, the factors of organizational field influence the whole process of institutional entrepreneurship of social commerce

Inhibition effect of choline and parecoxib sodium on chronic constriction nerve injury-induced neuropathic pain in rats

Abstract Purpose The simultaneous use of drugs with different mechanisms of analgesic action is a strategy for achieving effective pain control while minimizing dose-related side effects. Choline was described to potentiate the analgesic action of parecoxib sodium at small doses in several inflammatory pain models. However, these findings are still very limited, and more associated data are required to confirm the effectiveness of the combined choline and parecoxib sodium therapy against inflammatory pain. Methods Adult rats were randomly divided into 9 groups (N = 6/group). The sham surgery group received an intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of saline. Rats with chronic constriction injury (CCI) of the sciatic nerve received saline, choline (cho, 6, 12 and 24 mg/kg), parecoxib sodium (pare, 3, 6, and 12 mg/kg), or a combination of choline 6 mg/kg and parecoxib sodium 3 mg/kg. Mechanical and heat pain thresholds were measured at 30 min after drug treatment at Days 3, 5, 7, 10, and 14 after CCI. Another 30 rats were divided into 5 groups (N = 6/group): the sham, CCI + saline, CCI + cho-6 mg/kg, CCI + pare-3 mg/kg, and CCI + cho-6 mg/kg + pare-3 mg/kg groups. After repeated drug treatment for 7 days, five rats were randomly selected from each group, and the lumbar dorsal root ganglia (DRGs) (L4–6) were harvested for western blot analysis. Results Choline significantly attenuated mechanical and heat hypersensitivity in CCI rats at 12 and 24 mg/kg doses (P < 0.05) but was not effective at the 6 mg/kg dose. Parecoxib sodium exerted significant pain inhibitory effects at the 6 and 12 mg/kg doses (P < 0.05) but not at the 3 mg/kg dose. Combining a low dose of choline (6 mg/kg) and parecoxib sodium (3 mg/kg) produced significant pain inhibition in CCI rats and reduced the expression of high mobility group protein 1 (HMGB1) and nuclear factor-kappa Bp65 (NF-κBp65) in L4–6 DRGs. Conclusion 1. In a rat model of chronic neuropathic pain (CCI), at a certain dose, choline or parecoxib sodium can alleviate mechanical pain and thermal hyperalgesia caused by CCI. 2. The combination of choline and parecoxib sodium in nonanalgesic doses can effectively relieve neuropathic pain, and its mechanism may be related to the inhibition of the high mobility group protein 1 (HMGB1)/Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)/nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) pathway

An Improved Design of the Engine Bench Test Tool for the Dual Mass Flywheel (DMF)

At present, a lot of passenger cars and light trucks are equipped with the dual mass flywheel, which can decrease the non-uniformity of the indicated engine torque. In engine bench test, the secondary mass of the dual mass flywheel can’t be fixed because there is no transmission system on the test bench. As a result, the secondary mass of the dual mass flywheel will have radial and circumferential movements, which may lead to a damage to the dual mass flywheel. This paper presents an improved design of the crafting tool for the dual mass flywheel to protect the secondary mass during the engine bench test. For the improved design, the cylinder body is used for the positioning of the crafting tool, and a spline shaft and a ball bearing of centripetal adjustment are chosen to fix the secondary mass. Through this tool, the dual mass flywheel engine can be tested on the test bench without a starting shaft, and the disassembling of the engine flywheel bolts during the hot test can be avoided

High Precision Multiplier for RNS {2n−1,2n,2n+1}

The Residue Number System (RNS) is a non-weighted number system. Benefiting from its inherent parallelism, RNS has been widely studied and used in Digital Signal Processing (DSP) systems and cryptography. However, since the dynamic range in RNS has been fixed by its moduli set, it is hard to solve the overflow problem, which can be easily solved in Two’s Complement System (TCS) by expanding the bit-width of it. For the multiplication in RNS, the traditional way to deal with overflow is to scale down the inputs so that the result can fall in its dynamic range. However, it leads to a loss of precision. In this paper, we propose a high-precision RNS multiplier for three-moduli set 2n−1,2n,2n+1, which is the most used moduli set. The proposed multiplier effectively improves the calculation precision by adding several compensatory items to the result. The compensatory items can be obtained directly from preceding scalers with little extra effort. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first one to propose a high-precision RNS multiplier for the moduli set 2n−1,2n,2n+1. Simulation results show that the proposed RNS multiplier can get almost the same calculation precision as the TCS multiplier with respect to Mean Square Error (MSE) and Signal-to-Noise Ratio(SNR), which outperforms the basic scaling RNS multiplier about 2.6–3 times with respect to SNR

Ambient Engineering for High-Performance Organic–Inorganic Perovskite Hybrid Solar Cells

Considering the evaporation of solvents during fabrication of perovskite films, the organic ambience will present a significant influence on the morphologies and properties of perovskite films. To clarify this issue, various ambiences of <i>N</i>,<i>N</i>-dimethylformamide (DMF), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), and chlorobenzene (CBZ) are introduced during fabrication of perovskite films by two-step sequential deposition method. The results reveal that an ambient CBZ atmosphere is favorable to control the nucleation and growth of CH₃NH₃PbI₃ grains while the others present a negative effect. The statistical results show that the average efficiencies of perovskite solar cells processed in an ambient CBZ atmosphere can be significantly improved by a relatively average value of 35%, compared with those processed under air. The efficiency of the best perovskite solar cells can be improved from 10.65% to 14.55% by introducing this ambience engineering technology. The CH₃NH₃PbI₃ film with large-size grains produced in an ambient CBZ atmosphere can effectively reduce the density of grain boundaries, and then the recombination centers for photoinduced carriers. Therefore, a higher short-circuit current density is achieved, which makes main contribution to the improvement in efficiency. These results provide vital progress toward understanding the role of ambience in the realization of highly efficient perovskite solar cells

Simultaneous blockade of VEGF-B and IL-17A ameliorated diabetic kidney disease by reducing ectopic lipid deposition and alleviating inflammation response

Abstract The pathogenesis of diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is complicated. Current clinical treatments fail to achieve satisfactory efficacy in the prevention of DKD progression, it urgently needs novel and effective treatment for DKD. In this study, we firstly demonstrated that renal lipid metabolism abnormality and inflammation significantly changed in DKD conditions by mining public transcriptomic data of DKD patient samples. KEGG analysis further exhibited the critical role of vascular endothelial growth factor B (VEGF-B) and interleukin 17A (IL-17A) signal pathways in DKD progression, indicating that VEGF-B and IL-17A might be the promising targets for DKD treatment. Then the potential of a novel combination therapy, anti-VEGF-B plus anti-IL-17A antibody, was evaluated for DKD treatment. Our results demonstrated that simultaneous blockade of VEGF-B and IL-17A signaling with their neutralizing antibodies alleviated renal damage and ameliorated renal function. The therapeutic effectiveness was not only related to the reduced lipid deposition especially the neutral lipids in kidney but also associated with the decreased inflammation response. Moreover, the therapy alleviated renal fibrosis by reducing collagen deposition and the expression of fibronectin and α-SMA in kidney tissues. RNA-seq analysis indicated that differential expression genes (DEGs) in db/db mice were significantly clustered into lipid metabolism, inflammation, fibrosis and DKD pathology-related pathways, and 181 of those DEGs were significantly reversed by the combinatory treatment, suggesting the underlying mechanism of administration of anti-VEGF-B and anti-IL-17A antibodies in DKD treatment. Taken together, this study identified that renal lipid metabolism abnormality and inflammation were critically involved in the progression of DKD, and simultaneous blockade of VEGF-B and IL-17A signaling represents a potential DKD therapeutic strategy

Triethylsilane introduced precursor engineering towards efficient and stable perovskite solar cells

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are believed to be optimistic for commercial deployment soon since the power conversion efficiency of PSCs presently reaches up to 26.10 % due to the intensive efforts these years. The two-step method is comparatively more suitable for scalable perovskite films, where lead halides and ammonium salts are prepared in separate precursors and deposited sequentially. Therefore, the reactivity between these two precursors governs the quality of final perovskite films and the intrinsic non-radiative recombination (NRR) at the perovskite's interfaces. Herein, we empowered both types of precursors, one by one and then simultaneously, with triethylsilane (TES) to investigate its effect on the (FAPbI3)1-x (MAPbBr3)x perovskite's morphological and optoelectronic properties. TES, with ethyl moieties and metalloid center, in ammonium salts delivers homogeneous perovskites' crystals and inhibits the NRR of perovskite films by reducing the defects and trap states. As a result, the optimized devices exhibit not only improved device performance (particularly for the increased fill factors and open circuit voltages) but also enhanced stabilities