In remembrance of Herbert Pardes, M.D. July 7, 1934–April 30, 2024
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The risk effects of corporate digitalization: exacerbate or mitigate?
This study elaborates on the risk effects of corporate digital transformation (CDT). Using the ratio of added value of digital assets to total intangible assets as a measure of CDT, this study overall reveals an inverse relationship between CDT and revenue volatility, even after employing a range of technical techniques to address potential endogeneity. Heterogeneity analysis highlights that the firms with small size, high capital intensity, and high agency costs benefit more from CDT. It also reveals that advancing information infrastructure, intellectual property protection, and digital taxation enhances the effectiveness of CDT. Mechanism analysis uncovers that CDT not only enhances financial advantages such as bolstering core business and mitigating non-business risks but also fosters non-financial advantages like improving corporate governance and ESG performance. Further inquiries into the side effects of CDT and the dynamics of revenue volatility indicate that CDT might compromise cash flow availability. Excessive digital investments exacerbate operating risks. Importantly, the reduction in operating risk associated with CDT does not sacrifice the potential for enhanced company performance; rather, it appears to augment the value of real options.
The impact of warming Tibetan Plateau on the 2020 summer unprecedented Northeastern Pacific Marine heatwave
An unprecedented marine heatwave (MHW) struck the extratropical Northeastern Pacific during the summer of 2020. This study reveals that this event is characterized by a persistent atmospheric high-pressure anomaly in the MHW region, which leads to a decreased cloud cover, an increased surface shortwave radiation (SWR), a decreased mixed-layer depth, and an increased sea surface temperature (SST). The local net surface heat flux anomaly associated with the increased SWR primarily drives the increased SST, while the oceanic processes likely play a minor role. Both observations and simulations further demonstrate that the SST and high-pressure anomaly are closely associated with a large-scale wave train over the extratropical sector from Asia to the North Pacific which can be forced by the Tibetan Plateau heating change. According to our findings, the projection of a persistent warming Tibetan Plateau heightens the risk of escalating MHW events in the Northeastern Pacific under future scenarios.
Why do travelers discontinue using integrated ride-hailing platforms? The role of perceived value and perceived risk
Despite integrated ride-hailing platforms have provided many benefits to travelers, there are also various potential risks. This study aims to examine travelers’ discontinuance behavioral intention toward integrated ride-hailing platforms. The research framework was established by extending the theory of planned behavior (TPB) with perceived value and perceived risk. Perceived value was classified into utilitarian, hedonic, and social values, while perceived risk was classified into privacy, performance, security, and financial risks. Additionally, the factors of switch cost and personal innovativeness were included. An empirical analysis was carried out using partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) based on a survey conducted in Nanjing, China. Furthermore, a multi-group analysis (MGA) was performed to examine behavioral differences across demographic variables. The findings suggest that discontinuous behavioral intention is influenced by subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and attitude. Among them, perceived behavioral control shows the strongest impact (−0.190). Perceived value, including utilitarian, hedonic, and social dimensions, negatively influences discontinuance intention, whereas the four variables of risk perception positively affect discontinuance intention. Notably, social value, performance risk, and privacy risk act higher total effects on discontinuance intention. Switch cost is negatively associated with attitude (−0.222), and positively affects discontinuance intention (0.189). Personal innovativeness has positive and stronger effects on perceived value (0.237), negative effects on perceived risk (−0.174), and negative effects on discontinuance intention. Regarding MGA results, older travelers demonstrate a stronger impact of social value on perceived value, higher-income groups exhibit greater sensitivity to security risks, and frequent travelers prioritize utilitarian value.
A severe local flood and social events show a similar impact on human mobility
While a social event, such as a concert or a food festival, is a common experience to people, a natural disaster is experienced by a fewer individuals. The ordinary and common ground experience of social events could be, therefore, used to better understand the complex impacts of uncommon, but devastating natural events on society, such as floods. Based on this idea, we present a comparison — in terms of human mobility — between an extreme local flood that occurred in 2017 in Switzerland, and social events which took place in the same region, in the weeks before and after the inundation. Using mobile phone location data, we show that the severe local flood and social events have a similar impact on human mobility, both at the national scale and at a local scale. At the national level, we found a small difference between the distributions of visitors and their travelled distances among the several weeks in which the events took place. At the local level, instead, we detected the anomalies (in time series) in the number of people travelling each road and railway, and we found that the distributions of anomalies, and of their clusters, are comparable between the flood and the social events. Hence, our findings suggest that the knowledge on ubiquitous social events can be employed to characterise the impacts of rare natural disasters on human mobility. The proposed methods at the local level can thus be used to analyse the disturbances in complex spatial networks and, in general, as complementary approaches for the analyses of complex systems.
Ubiquitous, B12-dependent virioplankton utilizing ribonucleotide-triphosphate reductase demonstrate interseasonal dynamics and associate with a diverse range of bacterial hosts in the pelagic ocean
Through infection and lysis of their coexisting bacterial hosts, viruses impact the biogeochemical cycles sustaining globally significant pelagic oceanic ecosystems. Currently, little is known of the ecological interactions between lytic viruses and their bacterial hosts underlying these biogeochemical impacts at ecosystem scales. This study focused on populations of lytic viruses carrying the B12-dependent Class II monomeric ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) gene, ribonucleotide-triphosphate reductase (Class II RTPR), documenting seasonal changes in pelagic virioplankton and bacterioplankton using amplicon sequences of Class II RTPR and the 16S rRNA gene, respectively. Amplicon sequence libraries were analyzed using compositional data analysis tools that account for the compositional nature of these data. Both virio- and bacterioplankton communities responded to environmental changes typically seen across seasonal cycles as well as shorter term upwelling–downwelling events. Defining Class II RTPR-carrying viral populations according to major phylogenetic clades proved a more robust means of exploring virioplankton ecology than operational taxonomic units defined by percent sequence homology. Virioplankton Class II RTPR populations showed positive associations with a broad phylogenetic diversity of bacterioplankton including dominant taxa within pelagic oceanic ecosystems such as Prochlorococcus and SAR11. Temporal changes in Class II RTPR virioplankton, occurring as both free viruses and within infected cells, indicated possible viral–host pairs undergoing sustained infection and lysis cycles throughout the seasonal study. Phylogenetic relationships inferred from Class II RTPR sequences mirrored ecological patterns in virio- and bacterioplankton populations demonstrating possible genome to phenome associations for an essential viral replication gene.
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