Assessing Customer-Based Brand Equity of E-Commerce Platform Based on Promotion Benefits

The prosperity of e-commerce in China leads to large amount of businesses venturing into this marketplace. Sales promotion has been widely used to improve their advantage, while platform-based sales promotion has been confirmed more successful. This research examines the impacts of the benefits of sales promotions based on electronic commerce platforms on customer-based brand equity (platform brand awareness and platform brand association) and how their relationships are moderated by the promotion type (pre- and post-purchase promotion). Based on the two functions of sales promotions (stimulation vs. maintaining), we propose a five-benefit framework including exploration, convenience, savings, social bonds and structural bonds. We suggested that both the two types of sales promotion could provide the five benefits of sales promotions and the positive effects of the benefits on consumer-based brand equity might be significant, while the differences between pre- and post-purchase sales promotions could be also significant

Is I-Voting I-Llegal?

The Voting Rights Act was passed to prevent racial discrimination in all voting booths. Does the existence of a racial digital divide make Internet elections for public office merely a computer geek\u27s pipe dream? Or can i-voting withstand scrutiny under the current state of the law? This i-Brief will consider the current state of the law, and whether disproportionate benefits will be enough to stop this extension of technology dead in its tracks

Production of Glycopeptide Derivatives for Exploring Substrate Specificity of Human OGA Toward Sugar Moiety.

O-GlcNAcase (OGA) is the only enzyme responsible for removing N-acetyl glucosamine (GlcNAc) attached to serine and threonine residues on proteins. This enzyme plays a key role in O-GlcNAc metabolism. However, the structural features of the sugar moiety recognized by human OGA (hOGA) remain unclear. In this study, a set of glycopeptides with modifications on the GlcNAc residue, were prepared in a recombinant full-length human OGT-catalyzed reaction, using chemoenzymatically synthesized UDP-GlcNAc derivatives. The resulting glycopeptides were used to evaluate the substrate specificity of hOGA toward the sugar moiety. This study will provide insights into the exploration of probes for O-GlcNAc modification, as well as a better understanding of the roles of O-GlcNAc in cellular physiology

Di-μ-bromido-tris­(triphenyl­phosphine)-1κP,2κ2 P-disilver(I) tetra­hydro­furan 0.85-solvate

In the title binuclear silver(I) complex, [Ag2Br2(C18H15P)3]·0.85C4H8O, the two independent silver(I) ions are briged by two bromide ions. One AgI ion is coordinated by two triphenyl­phosphine groups with a square-planar geometry, while the second is coordinated by one triphenyl­phine group with a trigonal-planar geometry. The structure is very similar to that of the dichloro­methane solvate reported by Zhu, Huang & Zheng [Chin. J. Struct. Chem. (1994), 13, 325–327]. The tetrahydrofuran solvent molecule is disordered and was refined with a fixed occupancy of 0.85

Structural Behavior of Thin-Walled Concrete-Filled Steel Tube Used in Cable Tunnel: An Experimental and Numerical Investigation

One steel grid and five thin-walled concrete-filled steel tubes (CTST) used as the supports of tunnel were tested in site for investigating the mechanical behavior. The mechanical influences of thickness, node form, and concrete on CTST were gained and compared with the impacts on steel grid. It is indicated that high antideformation capacity of CTST improved the stability of surrounding rock in short time. The cementitious grouted sleeve connection exhibited superior flexibility when CTST was erected and built. Although the deformation of rock and soil in the tunnel was increasing, good compression resistance was observed by CTST with the new connection type. It was also seen that vault, tube foot, and connections were with larger absolute strain values. The finite element analysis (FEA) was carried out using ABAQUS program. The results were validated by comparison with experimental results. The FE model could be referred by similar projects

Alkaline arginine promotes the gentamicin-mediated killing of drug-resistant Salmonella by increasing NADH concentration and proton motive force

IntroductionAntimicrobial resistance, especially the development of multidrug-resistant strains, is an urgent public health threat. Antibiotic adjuvants have been shown to improve the treatment of resistant bacterial infections.MethodsWe verified that exogenous L-arginine promoted the killing effect of gentamicin against Salmonella in vitro and in vivo, and measured intracellular ATP, NADH, and PMF of bacteria. Gene expression was determined using real-time quantitative PCR.ResultsThis study found that alkaline arginine significantly increased gentamicin, tobramycin, kanamycin, and apramycin-mediated killing of drug-resistant Salmonella, including multidrug-resistant strains. Mechanistic studies showed that exogenous arginine was shown to increase the proton motive force, increasing the uptake of gentamicin and ultimately inducing bacterial cell death. Furthermore, in mouse infection model, arginine effectively improved gentamicin activity against Salmonella typhimurium.DiscussionThese findings confirm that arginine is a highly effective and harmless aminoglycoside adjuvant and provide important evidence for its use in combination with antimicrobial agents to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections

Optimal Acquisition and Inventory Control for a Remanufacturing System

Optimal acquisition and inventory control can often make the difference between successful and unsuccessful remanufacturing. However, there is a greater degree of uncertainty and complexity in a remanufacturing system, which leads to a critical need for planning and control models designed to deal with this added uncertainty and complexity. In this paper, a method for optimal acquisition and inventory control of a remanufacturing system is presented. The method considers three inventories, one for returned item and the other for serviceable and recoverable items. Taking the holding cost for returns, recoverable and remanufactured products, remanufacturing cost, disposal cost, and the loss caused by backlog into account, the optimal inventory control model is established to minimize the total costs. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed methods

Transmission of H7N9 influenza virus in mice by different infective routes.

BackgroundOn 19 February 2013, the first patient infected with a novel influenza A H7N9 virus from an avian source showed symptoms of sickness. More than 349 laboratory-confirmed cases and 109 deaths have been reported in mainland China since then. Laboratory-confirmed, human-to-human H7N9 virus transmission has not been documented between individuals having close contact; however, this transmission route could not be excluded for three families. To control the spread of the avian influenza H7N9 virus, we must better understand its pathogenesis, transmissibility, and transmission routes in mammals. Studies have shown that this particular virus is transmitted by aerosols among ferrets.MethodsTo study potential transmission routes in animals with direct or close contact to other animals, we investigated these factors in a murine model.ResultsViable H7N9 avian influenza virus was detected in the upper and lower respiratory tracts, intestine, and brain of model mice. The virus was transmissible between mice in close contact, with a higher concentration of virus found in pharyngeal and ocular secretions, and feces. All these biological materials were contagious for naïve mice.ConclusionsOur results suggest that the possible transmission routes for the H7N9 influenza virus were through mucosal secretions and feces

Fog computing-based approximate spatial keyword queries with numeric attributes in IoV

Due to the popularity of on-board geographic devices, a large number of spatial-textual objects are generated in Internet of Vehicles (IoV). This development calls for Approximate Spatial Keyword Queries with numeric Attributes in IoV (ASKIV), which takes into account the locations, textual descriptions, and numeric attributes of spatial-textual objects. Considering huge amounts of objects involved in the query processing, this paper comes up with the ideal of utilizing vehicles as fog-computing resource, and proposes the network structure called FCV, and based on which the fog-based Top-k ASKIV query is explored and formulated. In order to effectively support network distance pruning, textual semantic pruning, and numerical attribute pruning simultaneously, a two-level spatial-textual hybrid index STAG-tree is designed. Based on STAG-tree, an efficient Top-k ASKIV query processing algorithm is presented. Simulation results show that, our STAG-based approach is about 1.87x (17.1x, resp.) faster in search time than the compared ILM (DBM, resp.) method, and our approach is scalable.University of Derb