AN ANALYTIC APPROACH TO MEASURE INFORMATION AGGREGATION AND EVALUATE THE STABILITY OF INFORMATIONAL CASCADES UNDER INCOMPLETE INFORMATION SETTINGS

Informational cascades describe a situation in which people observe the actions of others and then make the same choice, regardless of their own information. Behavioral conformity prevents information aggregation (Bikhchandani et al., 1992). However, under incomplete information settings, individual’s information is a sample of the whole information pool as we are facing information more than we can handle in daily business routine. As we can rule out the possibility that predecessors get enough information to shatter a cascade if cascade continues, it is reasonable to consider there is information injected into cascade even when decision-maker follows predecessor’s behavior. Taking this belief into consideration, we analyze the threshold point of convergence /deviation, and propose a model to measure Information aggregation and evaluate the stability of informational cascades under incomplete information settings. This model helps to optimize sequential decision-making process by utilizing the statistical aspects of informational cascades

Bounded Rationality, Social Learning and Collective Behavior: Decisional Analysis in a Nested World

People are usually brought together in a social network to make synergetic decisions. This decision making process often involves information acquisition and social learning, which are essential to overcome individuals’ bounded rationality. The performance of a society thus depends on the collective behavior of individuals. Besides information attributes, organizational properties often influenced such a decision process. In this article, we introduce a paradigm -- nested world -- that treats social network as a symbolic system. Based on this paradigm, we developed a research model to investigate how information attributes, social parameters, and their interactions influenced the performance of a social network. This research model was subsequently converted to a computational model for analysis and validation. Our findings suggested that informativeness, network density, social influence, and their interactions had significant influence on the performance of whole society. Besides these findigns, many interesting phenomenon were also observed, including significant social learning curve, U-shape decision speed, threshold of network density, and interchangeability between network density and social influence

Who do We Listen to More: Opinion Leaders or Friends? The Social Function of Conformity Behavior in Social Commerce

Online social information (e.g., product ratings and product purchase) is widely available on the social commerce sites and is believed to affect user purchase decisions. Drawing from the prior research on online conformity, we examine any differential impact of the online social information generated by opinion leader versus friends. By analyzing a large-scale data collected from a social commerce site, we found that user purchase decisions are influenced by the online social information both by opinion leaders and by friends. However, the information by friends has greater effect in comparison to that by opinion leaders. In addition, our results indicated that female users demonstrate greater tendency to conform to friends than opinion leaders, but not for male users. This study contributes to the existing literature by explaining how different types of social information influence users’ purchase decision and identifying the moderating role of gender on it. The results offer important and interesting insights to research and practice

Loss of Fructose-1,6-Bisphosphatase Induces Glycolysis and Promotes Apoptosis Resistance of Cancer Stem-Like Cells: An Important Role in Hexavalent Chromium-Induced Carcinogenesis

Hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) compounds are confirmed human carcinogens for lung cancer. Our previous studies has demonstrated that chronic exposure of human bronchial epithelial BEAS-2B cells to low dose of Cr(VI) causes malignant cell transformation. The acquisition of cancer stem cell-like properties is involved in the initiation of cancers. The present study has observed that a small population of cancer stem-like cells (BEAS-2B-Cr-CSC) exists in the Cr(VI)-transformed cells (BEAS-2B-Cr). Those BEAS-2B-Cr-CSC exhibit extremely reduced capability of generating reactive oxygen species (ROS) and apoptosis resistance. BEAS-2B-Cr-CSC are metabolic inactive as evidenced by reductions in oxygen consumption, glucose uptake, ATP production, and lactate production. Most importantly, BEAS-2B-Cr-CSC are more tumorigenic with high levels of cell self-renewal genes, Notch1 and p21. Further study has found that fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase (FBP1), an rate-limiting enzyme driving glyconeogenesis, was lost in BEAS-2B-Cr-CSC. Forced expression of FBP1 in BEAS-2B-Cr-CSC restored ROS generation, resulting in increased apoptosis, leading to inhibition of tumorigenesis. In summary, the present study suggests that loss of FBP1 is a critical event in tumorigenesis of Cr(VI)-transformed cells