Impacts of agri-food e-commerce on traditional wholesale industry:Evidence from China

Rapidly expanding studies investigate the effects of e-commerce on company operations in the retail market.However,the interaction between agri-food e-commerce(AEC)and the traditional agri-food wholesale industry(AWI)has not received enough attention in the existing literature.Based on the provincial panel data from 2013 to 2020 in China,this paper examines the effect of AEC on AWI,comprising three dimensions:digitalization(DIGITAL),agrifood e-commerce infrastructure and supporting services(AECI),and agri-food e-commerce economy(AECE).First,AWI and AEC are measured using an entropy-based combination of indicators.The results indicate that for China as a whole,AWI has remained practically unchanged,whereas AEC exhibits a significant rising trend.Second,the findings of the fixed-effect regression reveal that DIGITAL and AECE tend to raise AWI,whereas AECI negatively affects AWI.Third,threshold regression results indicate that AECI tends to diminish AWI with three-stage inhibitory intensity,which manifests as a first increase and then a drop in the inhibition degree.These results suggest that with the introduction of e-commerce for agricultural product circulation,digital development will have catfish effects that tend to stimulate the vitality of the conventional wholesale industry and promote technical progress.Furthermore,the traditional wholesale industry benefits financially from e-commerce even while it diverts part of the traditional wholesale circulation for agricultural products.

Designing Proportional-Integral Consensus Protocols for Second-Order Multi-Agent Systems Using Delayed and Memorized State Information

This paper is concerned with consensus of a secondorder linear time-invariant multi-agent system in the situation that there exists a communication delay among the agents in the network.A proportional-integral consensus protocol is designed by using delayed and memorized state information.Under the proportional-integral consensus protocol,the consensus problem of the multi-agent system is transformed into the problem of asymptotic stability of the corresponding linear time-invariant time-delay system.Note that the location of the eigenvalues of the corresponding characteristic function of the linear time-invariant time-delay system not only determines the stability of the system,but also plays a critical role in the dynamic performance of the system.In this paper,based on recent results on the distribution of roots of quasi-polynomials,several necessary conditions for Hurwitz stability for a class of quasi-polynomials are first derived.Then allowable regions of consensus protocol parameters are estimated.Some necessary and sufficient conditions for determining effective protocol parameters are provided.The designed protocol can achieve consensus and improve the dynamic performance of the second-order multi-agent system.Moreover,the effects of delays on consensus of systems of harmonic oscillators/double integrators under proportional-integral consensus protocols are investigated.Furthermore,some results on proportional-integral consensus are derived for a class of high-order linear time-invariant multi-agent systems.

A Formal Model for Analyzing Fair Exchange Protocols Based on Event Logic

Fair exchange protocols play a critical role in enabling two distrustful entities to conduct electronic data exchanges in a fair and secure manner.These protocols are widely used in electronic payment systems and electronic contract signing,ensuring the reliability and security of network transactions.In order to address the limitations of current research methods and enhance the analytical capabilities for fair exchange protocols,this paper proposes a formal model for analyzing such protocols.The proposed model begins with a thorough analysis of fair exchange protocols,followed by the formal definition of fairness.This definition accurately captures the inherent requirements of fair exchange protocols.Building upon event logic,the model incorporates the time factor into predicates and introduces knowledge set axioms.This enhancement empowers the improved logic to effectively describe the state and knowledge of protocol participants at different time points,facilitating reasoning about their acquired knowledge.To maximize the intruder’s capabilities,channel errors are translated into the behaviors of the intruder.The participants are further categorized into honest participants and malicious participants,enabling a comprehensive evaluation of the intruder’s potential impact.By employing a typical fair exchange protocol as an illustrative example,this paper demonstrates the detailed steps of utilizing the proposed model for protocol analysis.The entire process of protocol execution under attack scenarios is presented,shedding light on the underlying reasons for the attacks and proposing corresponding countermeasures.The developedmodel enhances the ability to reason about and evaluate the security properties of fair exchange protocols,thereby contributing to the advancement of secure network transactions.

Hyperbolic Tangent Function-Based Protocols for Global/Semi-Global Finite-Time Consensus of Multi-Agent Systems

This paper investigates the problem of global/semi-global finite-time consensus for integrator-type multi-agent sys-tems.New hyperbolic tangent function-based protocols are pro-posed to achieve global and semi-global finite-time consensus for both single-integrator and double-integrator multi-agent systems with leaderless undirected and leader-following directed commu-nication topologies.These new protocols not only provide an explicit upper-bound estimate for the settling time,but also have a user-prescribed bounded control level.In addition,compared to some existing results based on the saturation function,the pro-posed approach considerably simplifies the protocol design and the stability analysis.Illustrative examples and an application demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocols.

Impact of BRICS Trade Facilitation on China's Exports Using Cross-Border E-Commerce

With the rapid growth of the global digital economy, cross-border e-commerce, as an emerging form of trade, has gradually become a powerful engine to promote the development of global trade. BRICS is an important force in the global economy, and the progress of the BRICS countries' trade facilitation level has an important impact on the global trade environment. This paper conducts an in-depth study of the dynamic changes in BRICS trade facilitation from 2013 to 2022, and uses an extended gravity model to analyze the specific impact of this change on China's exports using cross-border e-commerce. The results show that although the BRICS countries have made some progress in trade facilitation, the overall level still needs to be improved, and there are obvious differences among member countries. However, the improvement of trade facilitation among BRICS countries has undoubtedly brought significant positive effects to China's exports using cross-border e-commerce.

Research on Current Situation and Legal Regulation of Cosmetics Live Streaming E-commerce in China

Analyze the compatibility between cosmetics and live streaming e-commerce from its own nature,marketing means and supply chain characteristics.According to the prominent problems,sort out the relationship between all parties in the cosmetics live e-commerce industry chain.Combined with the latest regulatory policies of live streaming e-commerce and cosmetics,the responsibilities of different subjects in cosmetics live streaming e-commerce are summarized,and relevant suggestions and countermeasures are put forward for the standardization and development of live streaming e-commerce.Cosmetics brand owners are the first responsible persons for product quality.Anchors,as a mixed identity between intermediary,advertising spokesperson and operator,should bear stricter joint and several liability when recommending products related to consumers’health.If anchors fail to clearly identify themselves in the recommendation process,thus causing consumers to mistake them for the operator of the cosmetics,they should assume the obligations of the operator.

Cell replacement with stem cell-derived retinal ganglion cells from different protocols

Glaucoma,characterized by a degenerative loss of retinal ganglion cells,is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide.There is currently no cure for vision loss in glaucoma because retinal ganglion cells do not regenerate and are not replaced after injury.Human stem cell-derived retinal ganglion cell transplant is a potential therapeutic strategy for retinal ganglion cell degenerative diseases.In this review,we first discuss a 2D protocol for retinal ganglion cell differentiation from human stem cell culture,including a rapid protocol that can generate retinal ganglion cells in less than two weeks and focus on their transplantation outcomes.Next,we discuss using 3D retinal organoids for retinal ganglion cell transplantation,comparing cell suspensions and clusters.This review provides insight into current knowledge on human stem cell-derived retinal ganglion cell differentiation and transplantation,with an impact on the field of regenerative medicine and especially retinal ganglion cell degenerative diseases such as glaucoma and other optic neuropathies.

Research on Professional Teaching Reform of the E-Commerce Major in Vocational Colleges Under the Internet Era

With the rapid development of science and technology,the face of human society has undergone great changes;with the emergence of the Internet era,all kinds of educational technology,equipment,and software in vocational colleges have been widely used to carry out education and teaching,and has achieved remarkable results.Based on this,colleges and universities’electronic commerce(e-commerce)professional teachers should try to rely on the Internet to build information teaching classrooms,introduce advanced methods to build efficient classrooms by integrating teaching resources,and optimize the top-level design,so as to activate the classroom atmosphere,mobilize students’emotions,make them immersed in the teaching of electronic commerce courses.In view of this,this paper combines the existing theory and experience,first analyzes the dilemma faced by the current teaching of e-commerce in vocational colleges,then discusses the practical significance of teaching reform based on the Internet era,and lastly puts forward the specific practice path.

Analysis of the Current Situation, Influential Factors, and Countermeasures of Rural E-commerce Development

The development of rural e-commerce is becoming an important driver for the transformation of China’s rural economy,and with the rapid development of information technology and the upgrading of the agricultural industry,rural e-commerce is showing a vigorous momentum of development.Traditionally,agricultural products are mainly sold through traditional farmers’markets,which are subjected to geography and channel limitations,resulting in inefficient circulation of agricultural products.This paper analyzes the definition,the status quo,as well as the influencing factors of rural e-commerce development.On this basis,countermeasures for the advancement of rural e-commerce development are put forward.

Symbolic Model Checking and Analysis for E-Commerce Protocol

A new approach is proposed for analyzing non-repudiation and fairness of e-commerce protocols. The authentication e-mail protocol CMP1 is modeled as finite state machine and analyzed in two vital aspects- non-repudiation and fairness using SME. As a result, the CMP1 protocol is not fair and we have improved it. This result shows that it is effective to analyze and check the new features of e-commerce protocols using SMV model checker.

Spatial Structure of China's E-commerce Express Logistics Network Based on Space of Flows

The intermediate link compression characteristics of e-commerce express logistics ne tworks influence the tradition al mode of circulation of goods and economic organization,and alter the city spatial pattern.Based on the theory of space of flows,this study adopts China Smart Logistics Network relational data to build China's e-commerce express logistics network and explore its spatial structure characteristics through social network analysis(SNA),the PageRank technique,and geospatial methods.The results are as follows:the network density is 0.9270,which is close to 1;hence,indicating that e-commerce express logistics lines between Chinese cities are nearly complete and they form a typical network structure,thereby eliminating fragmented spaces.Moreover,the average minimum number of edges is 1.1375,which indicates that the network has a small world effect and thus has a high flow efficiency of logistics elements.A significant hierarchical diffusion effect was observed in dominant flows with the highest edge weights.A diamond-structured network was formed with Shanghai,Guangzhou,Chongqing,and Beijing as the four core nodes.Other node cities with a large logistics scale and importance in the network are mainly located in the 19 city agglomerations of China,revealing the fact that the development of city agglomerations is essential for promoting the separation of experience space and changing the urban spatial pattern.This study enriches the theory of urban networks,reveals the flow laws of modern logistics elements,and encourages coordinated development of urban logistics.

Transaction Frequency Based Trust for E-Commerce

Most traditional trust computing models in E-commerce do not take the transaction frequency among participating entities into consideration,which makes it easy for one party of the transaction to obtain a high trust value in a short time,and brings many disadvantages,uncertainties and even attacks.To solve this problem,a transaction frequency based trust is proposed in this study.The proposed method is composed of two parts.The first part is built on the classic Bayes analysis based trust modelswhich are ease of computing for the E-commerce system.The second part is the transaction frequency module which can mitigate the potential insecurity caused by one participating entity gaining trust in a short time.Simulations show that the proposed method can effectively mitigate the self-promoting attacks so as to maintain the function of E-commerce system.

Enhanced E-commerce Fraud Prediction Based on a Convolutional Neural Network Model

The rapidly escalating sophistication of e-commerce fraud in recent years has led to an increasing reliance on fraud detection methods based on machine learning.However,fraud detection methods based on conventional machine learning approaches suffer from several problems,including an excessively high number of network parameters,which decreases the efficiency and increases the difficulty of training the network,while simultaneously leading to network overfitting.In addition,the sparsity of positive fraud incidents relative to the overwhelming proportion of negative incidents leads to detection failures in trained networks.The present work addresses these issues by proposing a convolutional neural network(CNN)framework for detecting ecommerce fraud,where network training is conducted using historical market transaction data.The number of network parameters reduces via the local perception field and weight sharing inherent in the CNN framework.In addition,this deep learning framework enables the use of an algorithmiclevel approach to address dataset imbalance by focusing the CNN model on minority data classes.The proposed CNN model is trained and tested using a large public e-commerce service dataset from 2018,and the test results demonstrate that the model provides higher fraud prediction accuracy than existing state-of-the-art methods.

Optimistic fair exchange E-commerce protocol based on secret sharing

A key problem of electronic commerce （for short e-commerce） is fair exchange which guarantees that at the end of the transaction, either both parties involved in the trausaction receive each other＇s items or none do. A non-interactive optimistic fair exchange e-commerce protocol model based on the publicly verifiable secret sharing is presented. The main idea of our exchange protocol is to interchange verifiable and recoverable keys of the symmetric encryption for participants＇ items. So it is especially suitable for exchange of large-size items. Furthermore, our protocol is efficient and simple as it does not need interactive proof system which has been adopted by a large quantity of previously proposed fair exchange protocols. Based on a modified （2,2） secret sharing scheme, a concrete non-interactive fair exchange e-commerce protocol is designed.

An Enhanced Intelligent Intrusion Detection System to Secure E-Commerce Communication Systems

Information and communication technologies are spreading rapidly due to their fast proliferation in many fields.The number of Internet users has led to a spike in cyber-attack incidents.E-commerce applications,such as online banking,marketing,trading,and other online businesses,play an integral role in our lives.Network Intrusion Detection System(NIDS)is essential to protect the network from unauthorized access and against other cyber-attacks.The existing NIDS systems are based on the Backward Oracle Matching(BOM)algorithm,which minimizes the false alarm rate and causes of high packet drop ratio.This paper discussed the existing NIDS systems and different used pattern-matching techniques regarding their weaknesses and limitations.To address the existing system issues,this paper proposes an enhanced version of the BOM algorithm by using multiple pattern-matching methods for the NIDS system to improve the network performance.The proposed solution is tested in simulation with existing solutions using the Snort and NSL-KDD datasets.The experimental results indicated that the proposed solution performed better than the existing solutions and achieved a 5.17%detection rate and a 0.22%lower false alarm rate than the existing solution.

Diagnosis,treatment protocols,and outcomes of liver transplant recipients infected with COVID-19

Several cases of fatal pneumonia during November 2019 were linked initially to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2,which the World Health Organization later designated as coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19).The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11,2020.In the general population,COVID-19 severity can range from asymptomatic/mild symptoms to seriously ill.Its mortality rate could be as high as 49%.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have acknowledged that people with specific underlying medical conditions,among those who need immunosuppression after solid organ transplantation(SOT),are at an increased risk of developing severe illness from COVID-19.Liver transplantation is the second most prevalent SOT globally.Due to their immunosuppressed state,liver transplant(LT)recipients are more susceptible to serious infections.Therefore,comorbidities and prolonged immunosuppression among SOT recipients enhance the likelihood of severe COVID-19.It is crucial to comprehend the clinical picture,immunosuppressive management,prognosis,and prophylaxis of COVID-19 infection because it may pose a danger to transplant recipients.This review described the clinical and laboratory findings of COVID-19 in LT recipients and the risk factors for severe disease in this population group.In the following sections,we discussed current COVID-19 therapy choices,reviewed standard practice in modifying immunosuppressant regimens,and outlined the safety and efficacy of currently licensed drugs for inpatient and outpatient management.Additionally,we explored the clinical outcomes of COVID-19 in LT recipients and mentioned the efficacy and safety of vaccination use.

Fast and scalable routing protocols for data center networks

Data center networks may comprise tens or hundreds of thousands of nodes,and,naturally,suffer from frequent software and hardware failures as well as link congestions.Packets are routed along the shortest paths with sufficient resources to facilitate efficient network utilization and minimize delays.In such dynamic networks,links frequently fail or get congested,making the recalculation of the shortest paths a computationally intensive problem.Various routing protocols were proposed to overcome this problem by focusing on network utilization rather than speed.Surprisingly,the design of fast shortest-path algorithms for data centers was largely neglected,though they are universal components of routing protocols.Moreover,parallelization techniques were mostly deployed for random network topologies,and not for regular topologies that are often found in data centers.The aim of this paper is to improve scalability and reduce the time required for the shortest-path calculation in data center networks by parallelization on general-purpose hardware.We propose a novel algorithm that parallelizes edge relaxations as a faster and more scalable solution for popular data center topologies.

Upgraded Analytical Protocols in Bauxite Refining Industry Using Composite Sampling Approach to Minimize Laboratory Analysis Load

The laboratories in the bauxite processing industry are always under a heavy workload of sample collection, analysis, and compilation of the results. After size reduction from grinding mills, the samples of bauxite are collected after intervals of 3 to 4 hours. Large bauxite processing industries producing 1 million tons of pure aluminium can have three grinding mills. Thus, the total number of samples to be tested in one day reaches a figure of 18 to 24. The sample of bauxite ore coming from the grinding mill is tested for its particle size and composition. For testing the composition, the bauxite ore sample is first prepared by fusing it with X-ray flux. Then the sample is sent for X-ray fluorescence analysis. Afterwards, the crucibles are washed in ultrasonic baths to be used for the next testing. The whole procedure takes about 2 - 3 hours. With a large number of samples reaching the laboratory, the chances of error in composition analysis increase. In this study, we have used a composite sampling methodology to reduce the number of samples reaching the laboratory without compromising their validity. The results of the average composition of fifteen samples were measured against composite samples. The mean of difference was calculated. The standard deviation and paired t-test values were evaluated against predetermined critical values obtained using a two-tailed test. It was found from the results that paired test-t values were much lower than the critical values thus validating the composition attained through composite sampling. The composite sampling approach not only reduced the number of samples but also the chemicals used in the laboratory. The objective of improved analytical protocol to reduce the number of samples reaching the laboratory was successfully achieved without compromising the quality of analytical results.

Corneal collagen cross-linking in patients with keratoconus from the Dresden protocol to customized solutions:theoretical basis

Keratoconus is an ectatic condition characterized by gradual corneal thinning,corneal protrusion,progressive irregular astigmatism,corneal fibrosis,and visual impairment.The therapeutic options regarding improvement of visual function include glasses or soft contact lenses correction for initial stages,gas-permeable rigid contact lenses,scleral lenses,implantation of intrastromal corneal ring or corneal transplants for most advanced stages.In keratoconus cases showing disease progression corneal collagen crosslinking(CXL)has been proven to be an effective,minimally invasive and safe procedure.CXL consists of a photochemical reaction of corneal collagen by riboflavin stimulation with ultraviolet A radiation,resulting in stromal crosslinks formation.The aim of this review is to carry out an examination of CXL methods based on theoretical basis and mathematical models,from the original Dresden protocol to the most recent developments in the technique,reporting the changes proposed in the last 15y and examining the advantages and disadvantages of the various treatment protocols.Finally,the limits of non-standardized methods and the perspectives offered by a customization of the treatment are highlighted.

Analysis of the Development Environment and Trend of Cross-Border E-commerce in China

With the conclusion of the novel coronavirus pandemic and the increasingly complex market environment,China’s cross-border e-commerce has entered a new phase of development.The external landscape is evolving rapidly,and there is a gradual improvement in laws and regulations governing cross-border e-commerce,coupled with increased government support.Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the market economy,overall development has been steadily improving.The Internet population is expanding,the online retail market is experiencing rapid growth,the consumption structure is undergoing transformation and upgrading,and the e-commerce market is demonstrating significant potential.The advancement of technologies such as big data,artificial intelligence,blockchain,and supply chain has provided more efficient operational support for the cross-border e-commerce industry.Against the backdrop of the emergence of new forms of cross-border e-commerce in China post-pandemic,this paper utilizes the PEST model to analyze the macro environment of cross-border e-commerce in China and project its future development trends.