An Investigation into Post-Implementation Success of ERP: An Empirical Study of the Chinese Retail Industry

Significant growth in the Chinese retail industry has boosted utilization of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems among Chinese retailers. However, due to the weak information infrastructure of organizations and the inherent complexity of ERP systems, many Chinese retailers have encountered difficulties in achieving the benefits at the post-implementation stage of the ERP deployment. The post-implementation success of the ERP is under researched, though. Therefore, based on the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) theory, we develop an integrated model of the post-implementation success of ERP, and empirically test it in the Chinese retail industry. The results show that implementation quality and organizational readiness positively affect the post-implementation success of the ERP, while external support does not exert significant impacts. The research and practical implications of the findings are discussed

What Accounts for Organizations’ Different Usage of B2B E-Marketplaces?

A business to business (B2B) e-marketplace is an Internet-based inter-organizational system that facilitates online businesses. It provides two basic functions: search and transaction. Accordingly, organizational usage of B2B e-marketplaces varies across these two functions. The previous research mainly applies the Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory to predict the usage of B2B e-marketplaces, but this theory is insufficient in explaining the unbalanced usage of search versus transaction. This research attempts to fill this gap. We identify a cognitive limitation associated with each usage, i.e., insufficient knowledge of B2B e-marketplaces corresponds to the usage of search and incapability of foreseeing all consequences corresponds to the usage of transaction. Then, we incorporate perceived institutional norm and organizational trust as two remedies into the DOI theory, and argue that the former will affect the use of B2B e-marketplaces for search while the latter will affect the usage of transaction. A field survey is conducted to collect the data, and structural equation modeling is employed to test the research model. The results confirm the hypotheses. Besides, relative advantage and perceived compatibility from the DOI theory also affect both types of usage. This research implies that the usage of Internet-based inter-organizational systems may encounter cognitive limitations, and highlights how the DOI theory can be extended to account for the usage of information systems that provide multiple uses at different adoption stages

DNA methylation in lung cancer patients: Opening a "window of life" under precision medicine

DNA methylation is a work of adding a methyl group to the 5th carbon atom of cytosine in DNA sequence under the catalysis of DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) to produce 5-methyl cytosine. Some current studies have elucidated the mechanism of lung cancer occurrence and causes of lung cancer progression and metastasis from the perspective of DNA methylation. Moreover, many studies have shown that smoking can change the methylation status of some gene loci, leading to the occurrence of lung cancer, especially central lung cancer. This review mainly introduces the role of DNA methylation in the pathogenesis, early diagnosis and screening, progression and metastasis, treatment, and prognosis of lung cancer, as well as the latest progress. We point out that methylation markers, sample tests, and methylation detection limit the clinical application of DNA methylation. If the liquid biopsy is to become the main force in lung cancer diagnosis, it must make efficient use of limited samples and improve the sensitivity and specificity of the tests. In addition, we also put forward our views on the future development direction of DNA methylation

TencentPretrain: A Scalable and Flexible Toolkit for Pre-training Models of Different Modalities

Recently, the success of pre-training in text domain has been fully extended to vision, audio, and cross-modal scenarios. The proposed pre-training models of different modalities are showing a rising trend of homogeneity in their model structures, which brings the opportunity to implement different pre-training models within a uniform framework. In this paper, we present TencentPretrain, a toolkit supporting pre-training models of different modalities. The core feature of TencentPretrain is the modular design. The toolkit uniformly divides pre-training models into 5 components: embedding, encoder, target embedding, decoder, and target. As almost all of common modules are provided in each component, users can choose the desired modules from different components to build a complete pre-training model. The modular design enables users to efficiently reproduce existing pre-training models or build brand-new one. We test the toolkit on text, vision, and audio benchmarks and show that it can match the performance of the original implementations

Visualization and Analysis of Tea Beverage Research Based on CiteSpace

To obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the hotspots and research progress of tea beverage at home and abroad, this research paper analyzed the annual publication volume, author co-occurrences, co-citations, research institutions, the number of country publications, journals, and research hotspots of 1247 English literature collected by WOS from 2002 to 2022 using the Web of Science core collection database as the data source and the visual data analysis software CiteSpace v 6.1.6R. The results of the analysis showed that the heat for research on tea beverage at home and abroad continued to rise, and the annual number of publications showed a rising trend year by year. The number of core authors with more than four articles was 584, accounting for 82.4% of the total number of authors. The majority of institutional publications came from Chinese universities, of which the first institution with the highest number of publications was Anhui Agricultural University. The People's Republic of China was the most actively published country, followed by USA and JAPAN. The journals with high publication volume were mainly concentrated in the field of agricultural and food chemistry, and Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry was the journal with the highest co-citation frequency, with a total of 988 citations. The "caffeine" "acid" and "catechin" were high-frequency keywords in tea beverage research, with research hotspots focusing on the detection and extraction of active substances in tea beverage, fermented teas, antioxidant and antibacterial activities. In summary, research on tea beverage was still on the rise, but existing studies suffered from a lack of cooperation among authors, limited research areas and convergent research methods, etc. Scholars should strengthen multifaceted cooperation and communication to broaden the breadth and depth of the research, and to jointly promote the development of research in this field. This study provided a reference for a more in-depth understanding of the current status of global tea beverage research in the future

Overexpressed transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) in lung adenocarcinoma harbours a new opportunity for therapeutic targeting

The specific biological function of transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) in pathogenesis of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) remains unclear. In this study, TRPV1 expression in tumor tissues, primary cells and cell lines of LUAD, as well as the mechanism mediating its hyperexpression were systematically studied. Multiple models and techniques were adopted to elucidate the relationship between TRPV1 hyperexpression and tumor recurrence and metastasis. Results showed that TRPV1 expression was increased in tumor tissues and primary tumor cells of LUAD patients. The increased expression was associated with worse overall survival outcome and raised HIF1α levels. TRPV1 expression in A549 and NCI-H292 cells was increased after pretreatment with cigarette smoke extract or spermine NONOate. Moreover, A549 cells with TRPV1 overexpression has enhanced tumor growth rates in subcutaneous grafted tumor models, and increased intrapulmonary metastasis after tail vein infusion in nude BALB/c nude mice. Mechanistically, TRPV1 overexpression in A549 cells promoted HIF1α expression and nuclear translocation by promoting CREB phosphorylation and activation of NOS1-NO pathway, ultimately leading to accelerated cell proliferation and stronger invasiveness. In addition, based on photothermal effects, CuS-TRPV1 mAb effectively targeted and induced apoptosis of TRPV1-A549 cells both in vivo and in vitro, thereby mitigating tumor growth and metastasis induced by xenotransplantation of TRPV1-A549 cells. In conclusion, TRPV1 hyperexpression in LUAD is a risk factor for tumor progression and is involved in proliferation and migration of tumor cells through activation of HIF1α. Our study also attempted a new strategy inhibiting the recurrence and metastasis of LUAD: by CuS-TRPV1 mAb precisely kill TRPV1 hyperexpression cells through photothermal effects

Slit2–Robo4 signalling promotes vascular stability by blocking Arf6 activity

Slit–Roundabout (Robo) signalling has a well-understood role in axon guidance1–5. Unlike in the nervous system, however, Slitdependent activation of an endothelial-specific Robo, Robo4, does not initiate a guidance program. Instead, Robo4 maintains the barrier function of the mature vascular network by inhibiting neovascular tuft formation and endothelial hyperpermeability induced by pro-angiogenic factors 6. In this study, we used cell biological and biochemical techniques to elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying the maintenance of vascular stability by Robo4. Here, we demonstrate that Robo4 mediates Slit2-dependent suppression of cellular protrusive activity through direct interaction with the intracellular adaptor protein paxillin and its paralogue, Hic-5. Formation of a Robo4–paxillin complex at the cell surface blocks activation of the small GTPase Arf6 and, consequently, Rac by recruitment of Arf-GAPs (ADP-ribosylation factor- directed GTPase-activating proteins) such as GIT1. Consistent with these in vitro studies, inhibition of Arf6 activity in vivo phenocopies Robo4 activation by reducing pathologic angiogenesis in choroidal and retinal vascular disease and VEGF-165 (vascular endothelial growth factor-165)-induced retinal hyperpermeability. These data reveal that a Slit2–Robo4–paxillin–GIT1 network inhibits the cellular protrusive activity underlying neovascularization and vascular leak, and identify a new therapeutic target for ameliorating diseases involving the vascular system

Study on spalling behaviours of the railway wheel steel

The objective of this paper is to investigate the spalling behaviours of the railway wheel steel. This concern the safety of the passenger commuting via train and it is important for us to understand what potential failure it might occur. One such potential failure is known as spalling. Spalling is often associate with rolling contact fatigue (RCF). Rolling-contact fatigue well-known to be found on railway wheel contact. Propagation of crack found in the railway wheel is often initiated in a layer known as White Etching Layer (WEL). The crack might propagate enough to break part of the material and leaving empty spaces which is term as spalling. This phenomenon is caused by cyclic rolling contact experienced by the wheel. Software tools that uses finite element analysis like Abaqus is used to study the effect of spalling. The primarily focus in this investigation is to find out the effects of different crack angles and loading at the surface of the white etching layer subjected to direct cyclic loading. The 2D simulation is discretized using extended finite element which is within the frame work Abaqus Version 6.13. The software program allows for simulation of crack growth and propagation within the WEL layer.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering