WEB COMMUNICATIONS ON CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF CHINESE AND UNITED STATES FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES

This paper uses content analysis to compare corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategies on the websites of Fortune 500 companies both in China and the United States. This study aims to determine how CSR communication strategies differ between China and the United States by comparing the purpose, main stakeholders, types of CSR programs, compliance with the International CSR standards, and the existence of CSR annual reports. This study is based on recent discussion and theory-building efforts in public relations literature regarding evolving CSR practices. The overarching theoretical framework will be the so-called stakeholder theory and CSR communication strategy. The results will show that U.S. companies have a more mature development of CSR communication on their websites than do Chinese companies; Chinese companies are still engaged in Stakeholder information strategies, while U.S. companies disclose CSR information by using different communication strategies; although there\u27s no significant difference in CSR annual reporting between Chinese and U.S. companies, the framework for CSR reporting standards in China is still at a very rudimentary stage

Number-resolved master equation approach to quantum transport under the self-consistent Born approximation

We construct a particle-number(n)-resolved master equation (ME) approach under the self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA) for quantum transport through mesoscopic systems. The formulation is essentially non-Markovian and incorporates the interlay of the multi-tunneling processes and many-body correlations. The proposed n-SCBA-ME goes completely beyond the scope of the Born-Markov master equation, being applicable to transport under small bias voltage, in non-Markovian regime and with strong Coulomb correlations. For steady state, it can recover not only the exact result of noninteracting transport under arbitrary voltages, but also the challenging nonequilibrium Kondo effect. Moreover, the n-SCBA-ME approach is efficient for the study of shot noise.We demonstrate the application by a couple of representative examples, including particularly the nonequilibrium Kondo system.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1302.638

The Present State and Issues of Environmental Education in China: A focus on higher education

China has undergone very rapid economic growth during the past decades. This development, however, has not been achieved without significant costs. The costs include serious environmental problems, such as air and soil pollution, desertification and deforestation. China’s vast resources have enabled the unsustainable use of the natural resources and the environment for several decades, however, as the problems are getting more and more serious and evident, the consciousness is slowly shifting towards the realization of the environmental impacts of economic growth. Traditional environmental education concentrating mainly on cleaner technology has been present in China since 1979, however, not enough attention has been paid to comprehensive environmental quality that encompasses the education of emotions and attitudes, that is aesthetic education, towards the environment. This includes the need for comprehensive environmental education training of teachers, as they have the responsibility of conveying the environmental awareness to the next generation of primary, middle and high school students. This article looked at the present state of environmental education in China, paying special attention to the curricula for students in higher education including teacher education programs, and the amount and quality of environmental education they receive. It was found that while environmental education was present in some curricula, it was few in number. Several issues were pointed out as 1) formation of students’ awareness about environment rather than technology, 2) introduction of practical and experiential methods to environmental education, 3) consideration of environmental education in non-professional general education, and 4) strengthening environmental education in teacher education programs

Self-assembly of inorganic nanoparticle amphiphiles for biomedical applications

Ensembles of interacting nanoparticles (NPs) can exhibit novel collective properties ─ arising from the coupling between NPs ─ that can be radically different from individuals. Realizing the enormous potential of NPs in biomedical applications requires the organization of NPs into hierarchically ordered structures. My dissertation is focused on the design of NP amphiphiles (NPAMs) and the use of NPAMs as building blocks to construct polymer-inorganic hybrid materials. The NPAMs are made from NPs surface-grafted with amphiphilic block copolymers (BCPs). In this way, the NPAMs synergistically combine the properties of both inorganic NPs and grafted BCPs, such as optical and magnetic properties of NPs, and flexibility of BCPs. First, we demonstrated that NPAMs with relatively low polymer ligand densities (~0.03 chain/nm2) self-assembled into vesicular nanostructures composed of a single layer of NP chains in the membrane. The decrease in the interparticle distance between NPAMs in the chain vesicles led to strong plasmon coupling of NPs and hence enhanced efficiency in photoacoustic imaging. Second, we fabricated hybrid vesicles with well-defined shapes and surface patterns by co-assembling amphiphilic BCPs and NPAMs, which include Janus-like vesicles (JVs) with different shapes, patchy vesicles, and homogeneous vesicles. Third, we prepared magneto-plasmonic hybrid vesicles with various structures through concurrent self-assembly of NPAMs, free BCPs, and hydrophobic magnetic NPs. The hybrid vesicles were demonstrated for both light-triggered release of payload and magnetic resonance imaging. Particularly, the magnetic manipulation of vesicles to specific location can be used to enhance the photothermal effect of the vesicles in cancer imaging and therapy. Finally, we reported that the use of a microfluidic flow-focusing device for the self-assembly of JVs that can act as vesicular motors. The vesicles can be used to encapsulate active compounds, and the release of this payload can be effected using near-infrared light. This systematic study will help us gain deeper understanding of the self-assembly of NPAMs into controllable nanostructures and control the collective properties of NP ensembles for various applications. This research will also provide new insights into the fundamental questions that must be overcome before the hybrid materials can be utilized in effective cancer imaging and treatment

Reinventing the Wheel: Explaining Question Duplication in Question Answering Communities

Duplicate questions are common occurrences in Question Answering Communities (QACs) and impede the development of efficacious problem-solving communities. Yet, there is a dearth of research that has sought to shed light on the mechanisms underlying question duplication. Building on the information adoption model, we advance a research model that posits information quality and source credibility as factors deterring users from asking redundant questions within QACs. Furthermore, considering the question-answer dichotomy intrinsic to QACs, we distinguish the quality and credibility of questions from those of answers as distinctive inhibitors of question duplication. We empirically validate our hypotheses on a leading QAC platform by harnessing a deep learning algorithm to detect duplications on over 9,380,000 question pairs. Results revealed that while the credibility of both questions and answers could alleviate question duplication, visual and actionable elements are more effective in preventing question duplication by boosting the quality of questions and answers respectively

CluBear: A Subsampling Package for Interactive Statistical Analysis with Massive Data on A Single Machine

This article introduces CluBear, a Python-based open-source package for interactive massive data analysis. The key feature of CluBear is that it enables users to conduct convenient and interactive statistical analysis of massive data with only a traditional single-computer system. Thus, CluBear provides a cost-effective solution when mining large-scale datasets. In addition, the CluBear package integrates many commonly used statistical and graphical tools, which are useful for most commonly encountered data analysis tasks

THE POWER OF BEAUTY: LEVERAGING ON DEEP LEARNING TO DISENTANGLE THE EFFECT OF IMAGE AESTHETICS ON ONLINE PURCHASE

Visuals have been deemed as one of the primary marketing formats in service e-tailing environ-ments to compensate for the abstract and intangible nature of services. Yet, despite the overwhelm-ing empirical evidence attesting to the importance of aesthetics in product and website designs, there is a dearth of research on how the beauty of images depicting service offerings could affect consumers’ behaviour. Subscribing to Stimuli-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, we attempt to elucidate the power of aesthetics in shaping consumers’ cognitive and emotional responses when they are exposed to the portal image of a service offering. Additionally, we endeavour to explore the heterogeneity of consumers’ responses or their centrality of visual aesthetics, to such images. Blending computer vision and deep learning techniques, we advance a computable and decomposable aesthetic assessment method for scoring the aesthetics of portal images belonging to more than 299,000 local service offerings on a leading Chinese group buying site. We then em-ploy Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to yield initial evidence demonstrating that aesthetics ex-erts significant effects on the online sales of services