Who Will Buy in the Next Visit?

Increased propensity of consumers directly visiting the e-commerce website is the most prominent effect of display advertising. Therefore, understanding consumers’ directed revisit behaviors is important for advertisers to arrange their advertising delivering activity. In this paper, authors used an e-commerce website’s consumers browsing data and advertising clicking data to examine the relationship between consumers’ previous shopping behaviors and their direct revisit. Besides, they also consider the visit channels (i.e., direct visit, generic advertising, and retargeting advertising). The results show that for consumers entering the website through different channels, their previous behaviors have different effect on the probability of revising directly in the future. The findings extend previous direct visit studies and can help website to advertise

INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH IN CHINESE UNIVERSITIES: AN EXAMINATION OF THE INPUT SIDE

Along with the rapid growth of the Chinese economy over the past decades, information systems (IS) research in China has undergone a profound transformation. This exploratory study reports on a survey involving 107 university researchers, focusing on the input aspects of IS research and how institutional factors affect the input. In this paper, input mainly refers to research activities, effort, methods and reference disciplines. Data show researchers are withdrawing from IS development projects, while increasing their effort in academic research. Compared to the past, IS research topics are now more aligned to the international mainstream. A major hurdle for empirical research is the lack of familiarities with empirical research methodology, as indicated by nearly half of the respondents. Effort in academic research tends to correlate with the researchers\u27 income scheme, i.e., sources and proportion of base salary and benefits in their overall income. However, surprisingly, emphasis on quality of publication has not significantly influenced researchers\u27 effort yet, nor has the increased degree of internationalization affected the selection of research methods and the shift to empirical research. The underlying reasons are explored, and implications are also discussed

Erzhi Pill® Repairs Experimental Liver Injury via TSC/mTOR Signaling Pathway Inhibiting Excessive Apoptosis

The present study aimed to investigate the mechanism of hepatoprotective effect of Erzhi Pill (EZP) on the liver injury via observing TSC/mTOR signaling pathway activation. The experimental liver injury was induced by 2-acetylaminofluorene (2-AAF) treatment combined with partial hepatectomy (PH). EZP treated 2-AAF/PH-induced liver injury by the therapeutic and prophylactic administration. After the administration of EZP, the activities of aspartic transaminase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (AKP), and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (γ-GT) were decreased, followed by the decreased levels of hepatocyte apoptosis and caspase-3 expression. However, the secretion of albumin, liver weight, and index of liver weight were elevated. Microscopic examination showed that EZP restored pathological liver injury. Meanwhile, Rheb and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) activation were suppressed, and tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) expression was elevated in liver tissues induced by 2-AAF/PHx and accompanied with lower-expression of Bax, Notch1, p70S6K, and 4E-EIF and upregulated levels of Bcl-2 and Cyclin D. Hepatoprotective effect of EZP was possibly realized via inhibiting TSC/mTOR signaling pathway to suppress excessive apoptosis of hepatocyte

Sishen Wan® Ameliorated Trinitrobenzene-Sulfonic-Acid-Induced Chronic Colitis via NEMO/NLK Signaling Pathway

The nuclear factor (NF)-κB signaling pathway plays an important role in the initialization and development phase of inflammatory injuries, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Sishen Wan (SSW) is a classic Chinese patent medicine listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, which is usually used to treat chronic colitis; however, it is unclear whether SSW can treat IBD via the NF-κB signaling pathway. In the present study, the therapeutic effect of SSW was demonstrated by the decreased index of colonic weight, macroscopic and microscopic score, and pathological observation in chronic colitis induced by trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid. In colonic mucosa of rats with chronic colitis, SSW reduced the levels of calprotectin and eliminated oxidative lesions; downregulated expression of interferon-γ, interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-17; increased expression of IL-4; and suppressed expression of NF-κB p65, and NF-κB essential modulator (NEMO)-like kinase (NLK). Furthermore, SSW inhibited ubiquitinated NEMO, ubiquitin-activated enzyme, and E2i activation, and phosphorylation of downstream proteins (cylindromatosis protein, transforming growth factor-β-activated kinase and P38). These results show that the therapeutic effects of SSW in chronic colitis were mediated by inhibiting the NEMO/NLK signaling pathway to suppress NF-κB activation

Effects of two different anesthesia-analgesia methods on incidence of postoperative delirium in elderly patients undergoing major thoracic and abdominal surgery: study rationale and protocol for a multicenter randomized controlled trial

Background: Delirium is a common complication in elderly patients after surgery and associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Studies suggest that deep anesthesia and intense pain are important precipitating factors of postoperative delirium. Neuraxial block is frequently used in combination with general anesthesia for patients undergoing major thoracic and abdominal surgery. Compared with general anesthesia alone and postoperative intravenous analgesia, combined epidural-general anesthesia and postoperative epidural analgesia decreases the requirement of general anesthetics during surgery and provided better pain relief after surgery. However, whether combined epidural-general anesthesia plus epidural analgesia is superior to general anesthesia plus intravenous analgesia in decreasing the incidence of postoperative delirium remains unknown. Methods/design: This is a multicenter, open-label, randomized, parallel-controlled clinical trial. One thousand eight hundred elderly patients (age range 60-90 years) who are scheduled to undergo major thoracic or abdominal surgery are randomized to receive either general anesthesia plus postoperative intravenous analgesia or combined epidural-general anesthesia plus postoperative epidural analgesia. The primary outcome is the 7-day incidence of postoperative delirium. Secondary outcomes include the duration of postoperative delirium, the intensity of pain during the first three days after surgery, the 30-day incidences of postoperative non-delirium complications, the length of stay in hospital after surgery and 30-day all-cause mortality. Discussion: Results of the present study will provide information to guide clinical practice in choosing appropriate anesthesia-analgesia method for elderly patients undergoing major thoracic and abdominal surgery.Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities-Peking University Clinical Research Program in Peking University Health Science Center [PUCRP201101]; Peking University First HospitalSCI(E)[email protected]

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Joint analysis of three genome-wide association studies of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in Chinese populations

We conducted a joint (pooled) analysis of three genome-wide association studies (GWAS) 1-3 of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) in ethnic Chinese (5,337 ESCC cases and 5,787 controls) with 9,654 ESCC cases and 10,058 controls for follow-up. In a logistic regression model adjusted for age, sex, study, and two eigenvectors, two new loci achieved genome-wide significance, marked by rs7447927 at 5q31.2 (per-allele odds ratio (OR) = 0.85, 95% CI 0.82-0.88; P=7.72x10−20) and rs1642764 at 17p13.1 (per-allele OR= 0.88, 95% CI 0.85-0.91; P=3.10x10−13). rs7447927 is a synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in TMEM173 and rs1642764 is an intronic SNP in ATP1B2, near TP53. Furthermore, a locus in the HLA class II region at 6p21.32 (rs35597309) achieved genome-wide significance in the two populations at highest risk for ESSC (OR=1.33, 95% CI 1.22-1.46; P=1.99x10−10). Our joint analysis identified new ESCC susceptibility loci overall as well as a new locus unique to the ESCC high risk Taihang Mountain region

Combining Online News Articles and Web Search to Predict the Fluctuation of Real Estate Market in Big Data Context

The real estate price is of paramount importance in both economic and social fields. It is a key indicator of the operation of real estate market and its prediction is essential in the decision-making process of both average people and official governments. Past researchers on this topic have already proposed several prediction methods including linear regression models, nonlinear regression models and machine learning models. Nevertheless, those models have generally neglected the impact of human behavior, which we believe is a significant factor of the real estate price prediction. What’s more, past studies have shown that news sentiments could improve the prediction performance of real estate price. Search engine query data were studied to reflect web users’ behavior by analyzing the frequency of words searched by online users. Researchers have already used the news sentiments and query data for prediction, respectively. But none have combined them together as an integrated model. In this paper, we propose an integrated method that throws new light on the prediction of real estate price in China by integrating these two factors into the forecasting model. In our method, we extract sentiment series from both news data and search engine query data by adding weights to original sentiment series that are produced by news data alone. Then both the weighted series and original ones are used as inputs of several well-acknowledged data mining models, including SVR, RBFNN and BPNN, to produce prediction results. To validate the integrated model, we apply it to four representative cities in China respectively, and compare the results produced by the integrated model using weighted inputs with non-integrated ones using original inputs. The results show that for every one of the four cities, the integrated model generally leads to lower prediction errors than the non-integrated ones. This not only validates the model’s accuracy and universality, but also proves the hypothesis that human searching behavior as a strong impact in typical Chinese cities’ real estate market and can enhance the prediction accuracy of real estate prices. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol6/iss4/2