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"Zhang, Zhen"
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Exploring the green edge: the role of market orientation and knowledge management in achieving competitive advantage through creativity
This study examines the interconnectedness between Green Market Orientation (GMO) and Green Knowledge Management (GKM) in connection to Green Competitive Advantage (GCA) within Chinese green businesses. This research also focuses on the mediating influence of Green Creativity (GC). Drawing on the Knowledge-Based View (KBV), we examine how GMOs and GKM improve enterprises’ green creativity and subsequent green competitive advantage. Using a comprehensive survey of 325 environmentally conscious Chinese companies and an advanced PLS-SEM analysis, our findings offer several important insights. Our findings reveal that GMOs substantially affect both GC and GCA, highlighting their crucial role in fostering a company’s innovative green capabilities and competitive position. Concurrently, GKM positively affects GC and GCA, emphasizing the importance of effectively using and leveraging green knowledge within businesses. Furthermore, we observe the mediating role of GC in the relationships between GMO and GCA, as well as GKM and GCA. This finding underscores the need to promote GC to maximize the advantages of market orientation and knowledge management in attaining a green competitive advantage. These results not only add to the existing KBV theoretical framework, but they also have important implications for managers because they show how important it is to fully incorporate green practices into an organization’s strategy in order to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.
Journal Article
Mechanically strong MXene/Kevlar nanofiber composite membranes as high-performance nanofluidic osmotic power generators
Two-dimensional nanofluidic channels are emerging candidates for capturing osmotic energy from salinity gradients. However, present two-dimensional nanofluidic architectures are generally constructed by simple stacking of pristine nanosheets with insufficient charge densities, and exhibit low-efficiency transport dynamics, consequently resulting in undesirable power densities (<1 W m
−2
). Here we demonstrate MXene/Kevlar nanofiber composite membranes as high-performance nanofluidic osmotic power generators. By mixing river water and sea water, the power density can achieve a value of approximately 4.1 W m
−2
, outperforming the state-of-art membranes to the best of our knowledge. Experiments and theoretical calculations reveal that the correlation between surface charge of MXene and space charge brought by nanofibers plays a key role in modulating ion diffusion and can synergistically contribute to such a considerable energy conversion performance. This work highlights the promise in the coupling of surface charge and space charge in nanoconfinement for energy conversion driven by chemical potential gradients.
Nanofluidic channels can capture osmotic energy from salinity gradients, but output power densities should be improved for practical applications. Here the authors report high-strength nanosheet/nanofiber composite membranes for harvesting osmotic energy from natural water with high output power.
Journal Article
Revealing the three-dimensional structure of liquids using four-point correlation functions
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications, but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and biological agents in living organisms. Despite the importance of these systems, their microscopic structure is understood only on a rudimentary level, thus in stark contrast to the case of gases and crystals. Since scattering experiments and analytical calculations usually give only structural information that is spherically averaged, the three-dimensional (3D) structure of disordered systems is basically unknown. Here, we introduce a simple method that allows probing of the 3D structure of such systems. Using computer simulations, we find that hard sphere-like liquids have on intermediate and large scales a simple structural order given by alternating layers with icosahedral and dodecahedral symmetries, while open network liquids like silica have a structural order with tetrahedral symmetry. These results show that liquids have a highly nontrivial 3D structure and that this structural information is encoded in nonstandard correlation functions.
Journal Article
VLP: A Survey on Vision-language Pre-training
In the past few years, the emergence of pre-training models has brought uni-modal fields such as computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP) to a new era. Substantial works have shown that they are beneficial for downstream uni-modal tasks and avoid training a new model from scratch. So can such pre-trained models be applied to multi-modal tasks? Researchers have explored this problem and made significant progress. This paper surveys recent advances and new frontiers in vision-language pre-training (VLP), including image-text and video-text pre-training. To give readers a better overall grasp of VLP, we first review its recent advances in five aspects: feature extraction, model architecture, pre-training objectives, pre-training datasets, and downstream tasks. Then, we summarize the specific VLP models in detail. Finally, we discuss the new frontiers in VLP. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey focused on VLP. We hope that this survey can shed light on future research in the VLP field.
Journal Article
Update on the Pathogenesis and Therapy of Atopic Dermatitis
Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common inflammatory skin disorder characterized by recurrent eczematous lesions and intense itch. Although it most often starts in infancy and affects children, it is also highly prevalent in adults. In this article, the main aspects of AD have been updated, with a focus on the pathogenetic and therapeutic aspects. The pathogenesis of AD is complex, and it is evident that a strong genetic predisposition, epidermal dysfunction, skin microbiome abnormalities, immune dysregulation, and the neuroimmune system are critical in AD development. Mutations in the genes associated with disrupted epidermal barrier, exaggerated pathological inflammation and inadequate antimicrobial peptides can promote enhanced Th2 inflammation and mediate pruritus. Current understanding of etiology highlights gut microbial diversity, NK cell deficiency, and different immunological phenotype with age and race. For topical anti-inflammatory treatment for mild-to-severe AD, phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitors (PDE-4), JAK inhibitors, and microbiome transplantation with Roseomonas mucosa provided more management selections. The treatment of moderate-to-severe AD has been limited to merely symptomatic and relatively nonspecific immunosuppressive approaches. In-depth understanding of the pathogenesis of AD has led to the development of innovative and targeted therapies, such as biologic agents targeting interleukin (IL)-4, IL-13 and JAK/STAT inhibitors. Other potential therapeutic agents for AD include agents targeting the T helper (Th) 22 and Th17/IL23 pathway. Antipruritic therapy and complementary probiotics therapy have also been reviewed.
Journal Article
A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China
Emerging infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Zika virus disease, present a major threat to public health
1
–
3
. Despite intense research efforts, how, when and where new diseases appear are still a source of considerable uncertainty. A severe respiratory disease was recently reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. As of 25 January 2020, at least 1,975 cases had been reported since the first patient was hospitalized on 12 December 2019. Epidemiological investigations have suggested that the outbreak was associated with a seafood market in Wuhan. Here we study a single patient who was a worker at the market and who was admitted to the Central Hospital of Wuhan on 26 December 2019 while experiencing a severe respiratory syndrome that included fever, dizziness and a cough. Metagenomic RNA sequencing
4
of a sample of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid from the patient identified a new RNA virus strain from the family
Coronaviridae
, which is designated here ‘WH-Human 1’ coronavirus (and has also been referred to as ‘2019-nCoV’). Phylogenetic analysis of the complete viral genome (29,903 nucleotides) revealed that the virus was most closely related (89.1% nucleotide similarity) to a group of SARS-like coronaviruses (genus Betacoronavirus, subgenus Sarbecovirus) that had previously been found in bats in China
5
. This outbreak highlights the ongoing ability of viral spill-over from animals to cause severe disease in humans.
Phylogenetic and metagenomic analyses of the complete viral genome of a new coronavirus from the family
Coronaviridae
reveal that the virus is closely related to a group of SARS-like coronaviruses found in bats in China.
Journal Article
Risk factors for mortality of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) patients in two centers of Hubei province, China: A retrospective analysis
Since the outbreak in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic. We analyzed and compared the clinical, laboratory, and radiological characteristics between survivors and non-survivors and identify risk factors for mortality.
Clinical and laboratory variables, radiological features, treatment approach, and complications were retrospectively collected in two centers of Hubei province, China. Cox regression analysis was conducted to identify the risk factors for mortality.
A total of 432 patients were enrolled, and the median patient age was 54 years. The overall mortality rate was 5.09% (22/432). As compared with the survivor group (n = 410), those in the non-survivor group (n = 22) were older, and they had a higher frequency of comorbidities and were more prone to suffer from dyspnea. Several abnormal laboratory variables indicated that acute cardiac injury, hepatic damage, and acute renal insufficiency were detected in the non-survivor group. Non-surviving patients also had a high computed tomography (CT) score and higher rate of consolidation. The most common complication causing death was acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) (18/22, 81.8%). Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that hemoglobin (Hb) <90 g/L (hazard ratio, 10.776; 95% confidence interval, 3.075-37.766; p<0.0001), creatine kinase (CK-MB) >8 U/L (9.155; 2.424-34.584; p = 0.001), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) >245 U/L (5.963; 2.029-17.529; p = 0.001), procalcitonin (PCT) >0.5 ng/ml (7.080; 1.671-29.992; p = 0.008), and CT score >10 (39.503; 12.430-125.539; p<0.0001) were independent risk factors for the mortality of COVID-19.
Low Hb, high LDH, PCT, and CT score on admission were the predictors for mortality and could assist clinicians in early identification of poor prognosis among COVID-19 patients.
Journal Article
Strategies for Partitioning Narratives
The Hollywood narrative film is often viewed as an overall causal relationship driven by the protagonist’s pursuits. Contrary to this point of view, this study treats the Hollywood narrative film as a complex of primary and secondary causal relationships dominated by protagonists and supporting roles, respectively, and proposes to use the protagonist-led causal relationship to segment the Hollywood narrative film. The paper also advocates the use of visual, verbal, and aural performance cues to demarcate primary and secondary narrative units. The narrative units obtained through this segmentation method can be used to study Hollywood narrative film development, characters, and the relation between narrative and performance. This paper selects four Hollywood films (Roman Holiday, Interstellar, Joker, and Lolita) representing different narrative paths to test the segmentation method. The validation process shows that the proposed method can effectively segment linear and non-linear Hollywood narrative films and distinguish narrative units. However, this study only applies the proposed segmentation method to limited Hollywood narrative films. Larger-scale validations are required in the future to test the effectiveness of the method and further refine it.
Plain language summary
This study examines how the protagonist-led causal relationship segments linear and non-linear Hollywood narrative films and how performative clues signify narrative unit boundaries. In order to achieve the research objectives, this study first proposes a Hollywood narrative film segmentation method, and then applies the method to small-scale Hollywood films with different running times and narrative techniques to test its effectiveness. The test result shows that the proffered method allows the segmentation of Hollywood narrative films with linear or non-linear sequences and the study of narrative techniques. The new method also contributes to the literature on the cognitive study of narratives by disclosing how the changes in visual, verbal, and aural performative clues form the boundaries between various primary and secondary narrative units. However, it should be admitted that this study has its limitations. The proposed segmentation method has only been tested on a small scale on linear and non-linear Hollywood narrative films. Future research needs to conduct large-scale tests on linear and non-linear Hollywood narrative films, especially non-linear films that unfold through various narrative techniques such as backstory, flashback, foreshadowing, and flash-forward.
Journal Article