Exploring Sharing Economy Success: Resource-Based View and the Role of Resource Complementarity in Business Value Co-Creation

In recent years, the sharing economy has been grown increasingly as an important means to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. With the support of mobile phone devices and the ubiquitous application of “SOLOMO (social, location, mobile)” concept, the emerging sharing economy hubs increase the pool of potential service providers and sellers by leveraging networked technology to change how market participants engage in a specific transaction. Several successful examples, such as Uber, Airbnb or live streaming platforms, demonstrate that such phenomenon will continue to generate immense interests and receive growing practical and academic attentions for the next decades. In order to meet the needs of heterogeneous network users or buyers, platform owners seek to promote and exploit the network resources from providers and facilitate the transactions. Therefore, the holistic network performance improves and values are co-created when the presence of platform owner complements network members each other. Though the importance of the above mentioned resource complementarity can be well-recognized from many practical evidences and academic studies, the role and empirical evidence of resource complementarity in facilitating the cocreation value and the impact on subsequent performance under sharing economy context is still not well understood. Moreover, sharing economy network is a new and distinct type of organization form and separates from markets and hierarchies, it still requires unique theories and research approaches for providing deeper insights. Value can be co-created by complementary alignment of mutual resources, but the degree to which value generation occurs is still subject to contextual factors. Therefore, the objective of this study is to present a holistic view to illuminate relationships among resource complementarity, relational capabilities (including relational embeddedness and ambidextrous competence), subsequent performance and cooperation continuance intention based on the perspective of resource-based view. 367 respondents from well-known online streaming platform were collected. We find that all hypotheses are supported, except that relational embeddedness has no any significant effect on financial performance. From this study, we hope to contribute nascent knowledge for sharing economy phenomenon and value co-creation with online marketing and information management disciplines scholarly, and provide fruitful insights to the design of an effective value-creating ecosystem application platform through our study for practitioners

A Large-Scale Network Data Analysis via Sparse and Low Rank Reconstruction

With the rapid growth of data communications in size and complexity, the threat of malicious activities and computer crimes has increased accordingly as well. Thus, investigating efficient data processing techniques for network operation and management over large-scale network traffic is highly required. Some mathematical approaches on flow-level traffic data have been proposed due to the importance of analyzing the structure and situation of the network. Different from the state-of-the-art studies, we first propose a new decomposition model based on accelerated proximal gradient method for packet-level traffic data. In addition, we present the iterative scheme of the algorithm for network anomaly detection problem, which is termed as NAD-APG. Based on the approach, we carry out the intrusion detection for packet-level network traffic data no matter whether it is polluted by noise or not. Finally, we design a prototype system for network anomalies detection such as Probe and R2L attacks. The experiments have shown that our approach is effective in revealing the patterns of network traffic data and detecting attacks from large-scale network traffic. Moreover, the experiments have demonstrated the robustness of the algorithm as well even when the network traffic is polluted by the large volume anomalies and noise

Soil–Plant Indices Help Explain Legume Response to Crop Rotation in a Semiarid Environment

Crop productivity is typically affected by various soil–plant factors systematically as they influence plant photosynthesis, soil fertility, and root systems. However, little is known about how the productivity of legumes is related to crop rotation systems. The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of rotation systems on legume productivity and the relationships among legume productivity and soil–plant factors. Three annual legumes – chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), pea (Pisum sativum L.), and lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus), were included in various diversified rotation systems and compared with legume monoculture in the 8-year rotation study. Soil N and water conditions, and canopy and root systems were evaluated at the end of 8-year rotation in the semiarid Canadian prairies. Results showed that diversified rotation systems improved leaf greenness by 4%, shoot biomass by 25%, nodule biomass by 44%, and seed yield by 95% for chickpea and pea, but such effects were not found for lentil. Pea monocultures increased root rot severity by threefold compared with diversified rotations, and chickpea monoculture increased shoot rot severity by 23%, root rot severity by 96% and nodule damage by 219%. However, all the legume monocultures improved soil N accumulation by an average 38% compared to diversified systems. Pea and chickpea displayed considerable sensitivity to plant biotic stresses, whereas lentil productivity had a larger dependence on initial soil N content. The 8-year study concludes that the rotational effect on legume productivity varies with legume species, the frequency of a legume appearing in the rotation, and the integration of relevant soil and plant indices

The role of the fat mass and obesity associated gene (FTO) in breast cancer risk

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Obesity has been shown to increase breast cancer risk. <it>FTO </it>is a novel gene which has been identified through genome wide association studies (GWAS) to be related to obesity. Our objective was to evaluate tissue expression of FTO in breast and the role of FTO SNPs in predicting breast cancer risk.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We performed a case-control study of 354 breast cancer cases and 364 controls. This study was conducted at Northwestern University. We examined the role of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of intron 1 of <it>FTO </it>in breast cancer risk. We genotyped cases and controls for four SNPs: rs7206790, rs8047395, rs9939609 and rs1477196. We also evaluated tissue expression of FTO in normal and malignant breast tissue.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that all SNPs were significantly associated with breast cancer risk with rs1477196 showing the strongest association. We showed that FTO is expressed both in normal and malignant breast tissue. We found that <it>FTO </it>genotypes provided powerful classifiers to predict breast cancer risk and a model with epistatic interactions further improved the prediction accuracy with a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves of 0.68.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In conclusion we have shown a significant expression of FTO in malignant and normal breast tissue and that <it>FTO </it>SNPs in intron 1 are significantly associated with breast cancer risk. Furthermore, these <it>FTO </it>SNPs are powerful classifiers in predicting breast cancer risk.</p

Draft genome sequence of the Tibetan antelope

The Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) is endemic to the extremely inhospitable high-altitude environment of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, a region that has a low partial pressure of oxygen and high ultraviolet radiation. Here we generate a draft genome of this artiodactyl and use it to detect the potential genetic bases of highland adaptation. Compared with other plain-dwelling mammals, the genome of the Tibetan antelope shows signals of adaptive evolution and gene-family expansion in genes associated with energy metabolism and oxygen transmission. Both the highland American pika, and the Tibetan antelope have signals of positive selection for genes involved in DNA repair and the production of ATPase. Genes associated with hypoxia seem to have experienced convergent evolution. Thus, our study suggests that common genetic mechanisms might have been utilized to enable high-altitude adaptation

Expression of a Serine Protease Gene prC Is Up-Regulated by Oxidative Stress in the Fungus Clonostachys rosea: Implications for Fungal Survival

BACKGROUND: Soil fungi face a variety of environmental stresses such as UV light, high temperature, and heavy metals. Adaptation of gene expression through transcriptional regulation is a key mechanism in fungal response to environmental stress. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the transcription factors Msn2/4 induce stress-mediated gene expression by binding to the stress response element. Previous studies have demonstrated that the expression of extracellular proteases is up-regulated in response to heat shock in fungi. However, the physiological significance of regulation of these extracellular proteases by heat shock remains unclear. The nematophagous fungus Clonostachys rosea can secret an extracellular serine protease PrC during the infection of nematodes. Since the promoter of prC has three copies of the stress response element, we investigated the effect of environmental stress on the expression of prC. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Our results demonstrated that the expression of prC was up-regulated by oxidants (H(2)O(2) or menadione) and heat shock, most likely through the stress response element. After oxidant treatment or heat shock, the germination of conidia in the wild type strain was significantly higher than that in the prC mutant strain in the presence of nematode cuticle. Interestingly, the addition of nematode cuticle significantly attenuated the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) induced by oxidants and heat shock in the wild type strain, but not in prC mutant strain. Moreover, low molecule weight (<3 kD) degradation products of nematode cuticle suppressed the inhibitory effect of conidial germination induced by oxidants and heat shock. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results indicate that PrC plays a protective role in oxidative stress in C. rosea. PrC degrades the nematode cuticle to produce degradation products, which in turn offer a protective effect against oxidative stress by scavenging ROS. Our study reveals a novel strategy for fungi to adapt to environmental stress

Heritable Targeted Inactivation of Myostatin Gene in Yellow Catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) Using Engineered Zinc Finger Nucleases

Yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) is one of the most important freshwater aquaculture species in China. However, its small size and lower meat yield limit its edible value. Myostatin (MSTN) is a negative regulator of mammalian muscle growth. But, the function of Mstn in fish remains elusive. To explore roles of mstn gene in fish growth and create a strain of yellow catfish with high amount of muscle mass, we performed targeted disruption of mstn in yellow catfish using engineered zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs). Employing zebrafish embryos as a screening system to identify ZFN activity, we obtained one pair of ZFNs that can edit mstn in yellow catfish genome. Using the ZFNs, we successfully obtained two founders (Founder July29-7 and Founder July29-8) carrying mutated mstn gene in their germ cells. The mutated mstn allele inherited from Founder July29-7 was a null allele (mstnnju6) containing a 4 bp insertion, predicted to encode function null Mstn. The mutated mstn inherited from Founder July29-8 was a complex type of mutation (mstnnju7), predicted to encode a protein lacking two amino acids in the N-terminal secretory signal of Mstn. Totally, we obtained 6 mstnnju6/+ and 14 mstnnju7/+ yellow catfish. To our best knowledge, this is the first endogenous gene knockout in aquaculture fish. Our result will help in understanding the roles of mstn gene in fish

Over-Expression of PDGFR-β Promotes PDGF-Induced Proliferation, Migration, and Angiogenesis of EPCs through PI3K/Akt Signaling Pathway

The proliferation, migration, and angiogenesis of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) play critical roles in postnatal neovascularization and re-endothelialization following vascular injury. Here we evaluated whether the over-expression of platelet-derived growth factor receptor-β (PDGFR-β) can enhance the PDGF-BB-stimulated biological functions of EPCs through the PDGFR-β/phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt signaling pathway. We first confirmed the expression of endogenous PDGFR-β and its plasma membrane localization in spleen-derived EPCs. We then demonstrated that the PDGFR-β over-expression in EPCs enhanced the PDGF-BB-induced proliferation, migration, and angiogenesis of EPCs. Using AG1295 (a PDGFR kinase inhibitor), LY294002 (a PI3K inhibitor), and sc-221226 (an Akt inhibitor), we further showed that the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway participates in the PDGF-BB-induced proliferation, migration, and angiogenesis of EPCs. In addition, the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway is required for PDGFR-β over-expression to enhance these PDGF-BB-induced phenotypes

Transcriptome and Network Changes in Climbers at Extreme Altitudes

Extreme altitude can induce a range of cellular and systemic responses. Although it is known that hypoxia underlies the major changes and that the physiological responses include hemodynamic changes and erythropoiesis, the molecular mechanisms and signaling pathways mediating such changes are largely unknown. To obtain a more complete picture of the transcriptional regulatory landscape and networks involved in extreme altitude response, we followed four climbers on an expedition up Mount Xixiabangma (8,012 m), and collected blood samples at four stages during the climb for mRNA and miRNA expression assays. By analyzing dynamic changes of gene networks in response to extreme altitudes, we uncovered a highly modular network with 7 modules of various functions that changed in response to extreme altitudes. The erythrocyte differentiation module is the most prominently up-regulated, reflecting increased erythrocyte differentiation from hematopoietic stem cells, probably at the expense of differentiation into other cell lineages. These changes are accompanied by coordinated down-regulation of general translation. Network topology and flow analyses also uncovered regulators known to modulate hypoxia responses and erythrocyte development, as well as unknown regulators, such as the OCT4 gene, an important regulator in stem cells and assumed to only function in stem cells. We predicted computationally and validated experimentally that increased OCT4 expression at extreme altitude can directly elevate the expression of hemoglobin genes. Our approach established a new framework for analyzing the transcriptional regulatory network from a very limited number of samples