The effects of external cues on cross-border e-commerce product sales: An application of the elaboration likelihood model.

In response to the soaring demand for imported goods among Chinese consumers, this study innovatively investigates the role of external cues on consumer behavior on cross-border e-commerce platforms, utilizing advanced data crawling techniques to extract data from Tmall Global. Guided by the Elaboration Likelihood Model, this research unveils key determinants affecting consumer purchasing decisions, contributing novel insights to e-commerce literature and methodologies. Our analysis discovers that increased picture comments significantly boost sales and that source credibility, product collections, and price discounts also play pivotal roles, especially for experiential products. We further explore a nuanced, inverted U-shaped relationship between product title length and sales, offering a foundational understanding of non-linear relationships in consumer behavior and presenting practical implications for enhancing marketing strategies. This study, while acknowledging limitations like data access constraints, provides strategic insights into optimizing product information presentation and broadens understanding of consumer decision-making processes, thus adding substantial value to ongoing e-commerce discourse.

Axis dependent conduction polarity in the air-stable semiconductor, PdSe2.

Axis-dependent conduction polarity (ADCP) is a unique electronic phenomena in which the charge polarity of carrier conduction can differ from p-type to n-type depending on the direction of travel through the crystal. Most materials that exhibit ADCP are metals, and very few semiconducting materials exhibit this effect. Here, we establish that PdSe2, a ∼0.5 eV band gap semiconductor that is air- and water-stable, exhibits ADCP, through the growth and characterization of the transport properties of crystals with extrinsic p- and n-type doping levels of Ir and Sb, respectively, in the 1016-1018 cm-3 range. Electron doped PdSe2 exhibits p-type conduction in the cross-plane direction and n-type conduction along the in-plane directions above an onset temperature of 100-200 K that varies with doping level. Lightly p-doped samples show p-type thermopower in all directions at low temperatures, but above ∼360 K the in-plane thermopower turns negative. Density functional theory calculations indicate that the origin of ADCP arises from the complementary effective mass anisotropies in the valence and conduction bands in this material, which facilitate hole transport in the cross-plane direction, and electron transport along the in-plane directions. ADCP occurs at temperatures with sufficient thermal population of both carrier types to overcome the extrinsic doping levels to exploit the effective mass anisotropy. In total, the development of this stable semiconductor in which thermally or optically excited holes and electrons inherently migrate along different directions opens up numerous potential applications in a multitude of technologies.

Large-scale phylogenomics of aquatic bacteria reveal molecular mechanisms for adaptation to salinity.

The crossing of environmental barriers poses major adaptive challenges. Rareness of freshwater-marine transitions separates the bacterial communities, but how these are related to brackish counterparts remains elusive, as do the molecular adaptations facilitating cross-biome transitions. We conducted large-scale phylogenomic analysis of freshwater, brackish, and marine quality-filtered metagenome-assembled genomes (11,248). Average nucleotide identity analyses showed that bacterial species rarely existed in multiple biomes. In contrast, distinct brackish basins cohosted numerous species, but their intraspecific population structures displayed clear signs of geographic separation. We further identified the most recent cross-biome transitions, which were rare, ancient, and most commonly directed toward the brackish biome. Transitions were accompanied by systematic changes in amino acid composition and isoelectric point distributions of inferred proteomes, which evolved over millions of years, as well as convergent gains or losses of specific gene functions. Therefore, adaptive challenges entailing proteome reorganization and specific changes in gene content constrains the cross-biome transitions, resulting in species-level separation between aquatic biomes.

Al Coordination and Ga Interstitial Stability in a ß-(Al0.2Ga0.8)2O3 Thin Film.

Alloying Al2O3 with Ga2O3 to form ß-(AlxGa1-x)2O3 opens the door to a large number of new possibilities for the fabrication of devices with tunable properties in many high-performance applications such as optoelectronics, sensing systems, and high-power electronics. Often, the properties of these devices are impacted by defects induced during the growth process. In this work, we uncover the crystal structure of a ß-(Al0.2Ga0.8)2O3/ß-Ga2O3 interface grown by molecular beam epitaxy. In particular, we determine Al coordination and the stability of Al and Ga interstitials and their effect on the electronic structure of the material by means of scanning transmission electron microscopy combined with density functional theory. Al atoms can substitutionally occupy both octahedral and tetrahedral sites. The atomic structure of the ß-(Al0.2Ga0.8)2O3/ß-Ga2O3 interface additionally shows Al and Ga interstitials located between neighboring tetrahedrally coordinated cation sites, whose stability will depend on the number of surrounding Al atoms. The presence of Al atoms near interstitials leads to structural distortions in the lattice and creates interstitial-divacancy complexes that will eventually form deep-level states below the conduction band (Ec) at Ec -1.25 eV, Ec -1.68 eV, Ec -1.78 eV, Ec -1.83 eV, and Ec -1.86 eV for a Ga interstitial surrounded by zero, one, two, three, and four Al atoms, respectively. These findings bring new insight toward the fabrication of tunable ß-(AlxGa1-x)2O3 heterostructure-based devices with controlled electronic properties.

CrxPt1-xTe2 (x ≤ 0.45): A Family of Air-Stable and Exfoliatable van der Waals Ferromagnets.

The development of thermally robust, air-stable, exfoliatable two-dimensional van der Waals ferromagnetic materials with high transition temperatures is of great importance. Here, we establish a family of magnetic alloys, CrxPt1-xTe2 (x ≤ 0.45), that combines the stability of the late transition metal dichalcogenide PtTe2 with magnetism from Cr. These materials are easily grown in crystal form from the melt, are stable in ambient conditions, and have among the highest concentrations of magnetic element substitution in transition metal dichalcogenide alloys. The highest Cr-substituted material, Cr0.45Pt0.55Te2, exhibits ferromagnetic behavior below 220 K, and the easy axis is along the c-axis of the material, as determined using a combination of neutron diffraction and magnetic susceptibility measurements. These materials are metallic, with appreciable magnetoresistance below the Curie temperature. Single-crystal and powder diffraction measurements indicate Cr readily alloys onto the Pt site and does not sit in the van der Waals space, allowing these materials to be readily exfoliated to the few-layer regime. In summary, this air-stable, exfoliatable, high transition temperature ferromagnet shows great potential as building block for future 2D devices.

Enhancing the free corrosion dealloying rate with a catalytically driven reaction.

Despite its high popularity, chemical dealloying that is widely used for the fabrication of nanoporous metals is a relatively slow process: dealloying a few milligrams of bulk material may take from several hours up to a few days, depending on the material system. Raising the temperature of the corroding medium is a common approach to speed up the dealloying process. However, high temperatures cause undesired ligament growth in dealloyed materials. Here we report for the first time the use of a catalytically driven reaction to speed up the dealloying process at ambient temperature and pressure. To demonstrate the concept, we show that the free corrosion dealloying of a silver-aluminum alloy is significantly faster with the help of a platinum catalyst. More importantly, the corresponding characteristic nanostructured size is much smaller than that without a catalyst. Our finding is expected to play a central role in scaling up the dealloying process from the laboratory to the industrial scale.