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Innovation is the source of building competitive advantages in an enterprise, industry or country. With the increasing competition in the global market, as well as the ever-changing market demand, companies must strategically cultivate innovation-based competitive advantages. In the context of economic transition, how to play an active role by market orientation and thus effectively enhance their level of innovation, is currently one of the core issues the companies face within the process to enhance their capabilities of independent innovation. Therefore, from the perspective of an intermediating mechanism between market orientation and innovation, this study focuses in-depth on how to enhance innovation for market-oriented firms on the basis of related theoretical and empirical research. This study first reviews the existing literature on the relationship between market orientation and innovation, and then puts forward that distributor alliance governance mechanism may be the middle mechanism of in the link between market orientation and technological innovation. This research focuses on this research question because the existing literature did not study the impact mechanism of market orientation on innovation although some studies have confirmed that a market-oriented company will be more likely to achieve innovations. In business practices, firms maintaining market orientation cannot necessarily be able to succeed in innovation. Therefore, whether in theory or in practice, there is the need to explore the middle mechanism between market orientation and enterprise innovation. Manufacturing enterprises' innovations are often based on an accurate grasp of consumer needs, competitor activities and industry-changing technologies. When companies understand this information, they may be able to research and develop innovative products and services which is targeted on the specific needs of consumers, thus win in the competition. However, manufacturers often do not directly deal with consumers, and cannot always carry out market research. The distributor alliances are often the closer part of the consumers. Distributors are not only able to gather information about the feedback of consumers, but also convenient to collect information on business activities of manufacturers' competitors. Therefore, the enterprises that take proper governance on distributors are likely to provide a good foundation for business innovation. Therefore, this study proposes alliance governance may be the mediating mechanism between market orientation and technological innovation. This research discusses the important role of alliance governance (AG) as a mediating mechanism in the relationship between market orientation (MO) and innovation, and compares the differences between the influences of different dimensions. The study aims to reveal the influence mechanism of different types of alliance governance on the relationship between market orientation and innovation. Based on a sample of 122 Chinese manufacturing enterprises, the study finds that: (1) contractual governance (CG) will increase when customer orientation (CuO) and competitor orientation (CoO) become higher, and contractual governance will affect radical innovation (RI) in a U-shaped way; (2) trust governance (TG) will increase when inter-functional coordination (IC) becomes higher, and trust governance has a positive impact on both radical innovation and incremental innovation (II). The findings are meaningful for research into the relationship between market orientation and innovation, and have managerial implications in helping different types of market-oriented firms make appropriate choices for alliance governance in order to improve both radical and incremental innovation.

The first essay (Chapter 2) shows that changes in gambling attitudes affect asset prices and corporate decisions. Using the Internet search volume for lottery-related keywords to capture gambling sentiment shifts, we show that when the overall gambling sentiment is high, investor demand for lottery-like stocks increases, stocks with lottery-like characteristics earn positive abnormal returns in the short-run, managers are more likely to announce stock splits to cater to the increased demand for low-priced lottery stocks, and IPOs perceived as lotteries earn higher first-day returns. Further, the sentiment-return relation is stronger among low institutional-ownership firms and in regions where gambling is more acceptable. The second essay (Chapter 3) examines the relation between social attributes and stock returns. As investors regularly update their beliefs on firm-level CSR records, they are likely to rebalance their portfolios to include firms with good social attributes. Using a novel measure to identify perceived social attributes, we demonstrate that stocks with good perceived social attributes have better future returns. A trading strategy that attempts to exploit demand-based return predictability generates an annualized risk adjusted performance of 14% and spans 15-36% of the market. Further, institutional trading results show that institutions have consistently higher demand for firms with good perceived social attributes. Our findings suggest that perceived social attributes predict stock returns. The third essay (Chapter 4) investigates how social attributes affect mutual fund flows. Using social sensitivity estimates to capture fund-level social attributes perceived by the market, we show that mutual funds with good social attributes attract 0.13% higher monthly flows than their counterparts. In addition, these funds experience greater appreciation in flows following good performance and lower decline in flows following bad performance. When investors increase demand for corporate social responsibility, funds perceived to have poor social attributes experience 0.5% reduction in monthly fund flows. Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that mutual fund investors value social attributes when making investment decisions.

Railway safety is very important, as it concerns human lives. Therefore identifying risks from possible failures is vital to maintain the safety of railways. Currently, many mature tools, such as fault tree analysis and event tree analysis, are applied to investigate possible risks to railway safety. However, in many circumstances, the applications of these tools are unable to provide satisfactory results when the risk data is incomplete or there is a high level of uncertainty involved in the risk dataThus it is essential to develop new methods to overcome the weakness of current assessment tools. This thesis introduces an improved intelligent system for risk analysis usingfuzzy reasoning approach (FRA) and improved fuzzy analytical hierarchy decision making process (Fuzzy-AHP), which is specially designed and developed for the railways, and able to deal with the uncertainty in risk assessment.

Green and renewable energy materials have attracted great interest because of the soaring price of fossil energy and global warming. Among them, lithium secondary batteries are the key components of portable electronic devices as well as hybrid and electric cars and have been studied for over 30 years. Although in current commercial Li rechargeable batteries liquid and polymer electrolyte are the common electrolyte materials, safety issues are still of concern which therefore leads to an increasing interest in technological improvement and a demand for new materials for all solid state Li rechargeable batteries. In this project, various Li rare earth-oxide based compositions containing Nb, transition metal or trivalent cations were studied in order to find materials for possible Li-ion secondary battery applications. Stoichiometric phase-pure garnet, LisLa3Nb2012, was found to be difficult to synthesise due to the loss of volatile LhO. The covering blanket method involving careful heat profiles to reduce the possibilities of lithia loss during heating has been used in the present study of selected compositions in the Li20-La203-Nb20s system; a solid solution, Lis+xLa3Nbz0I2-osx, has been found. Electrical properties were measured by impedance spectroscopy and samples showed intrinsic Li ionic conductivity, - 10-6 Scm', at room temperature. Several new lithium Nd-based ternary oxides containing also Fe or Rh have been reported, but there was considerable disagreement over the possible stoichiometry of these phases. A detailed study of the ternary phase diagram of the LhO-Nd203-Fe203 system has been carried out with the initial objective to determine the stoichiometry of the previously reported ternary phase. A revised stoichiometry, LillNdlSFe4039, which differs from all previously claimed formulae, is proposed along with a revised phase diagram of the LizO-Nd203-Fe203 system. The crystal structure of this revised ternary phase has been studied using a combination of X- ray and neutron diffraction methods. It is primitive cubic, a = - 12 A, space group Pm "3 n. The structure is complex and can be described as comprising four < III > face-sharing polyhedra with alternating Li06 trigonal prisms and Fe06 octahedra intercepting at the origin and body-centre of the unit cell within an Nd-O framework. Face-sharing trigonal prismatic sites occupied by u: form octagon-like polyhedral coordination; with partially occupancy in one of those two trigonal prismatic sites these face-sharing polyhedra provide a possible short distance Li ion conduction pathway. Structural studies indicate that because the formula unit contains 39 oxygens, Fe is present in a mixture of 3+ and 4+ oxidation states. However, the valence state of Fe is variable, from Fe2+ only to a mixture of Fe 3+/4+, depending on different heat profiles; electrical properties of samples also reveal a change from semiconducting to insulating behaviours using impedance spectroscopy (IS). Using the same methodology, four new phases, Li11NdlsC04039, LiIINdlsAI40385, Li\JSmlSFe4039 and LiIISmISC04039, have been found in a survey of compound formation, Li\JRE1sM4039. Two ternary phase diagrams, LbO-Nd203-Ah03 and Li-Nd-Co-O system, are presented here; the Li20-Nd203-Ah03 system reveals a similar ternary phase diagram to that of Fe analogue system but a new ternary phase, LiCoNd4O8, and a solid solution, Lill-xNdlsC04039-o.5x have been found in the Co system. The crystal structures of those four new phases have been determined and are similar to that of Li11NdlsFe4039. Apart from LilINdlsAl403S5, which shows Li ionic conductivity, all the phases show modest electronic conductivity by IS. Two new phases, LiCoNd4O8 and LiNiNd40g, have been found in a survey of compound formation, LiMRE40s, after heating under suitable conditions. Rietveld refinement of the LiNiNd40s crystal structure was carried out using neutron powder diffraction; it shows that the crystal structure might have a supercell based upon the K2NiF 4 structural model. The electrical properties of these two new phases reveal very similar electrical characteristics, with electronic conductivity and constriction effect in the ceramics. During the study of compound formation, LiMRE40s, an X-ray pattern similar to that of the previously reported phase, LioI4Cuo86Nd204-o, appeared in the attempted synthesis of several LiCuRE40s compositions. In the present study, two new phases, Lio.14Cuos6Pr204-o and Lio.14Cuos6Sm204-8, were prepared. Rietveld refinements of the crystal structures are in agreement with the reported structural model. Electrical properties of samples revealed a very conducting behaviour which can be varied depending on heating conditions.

Scarring and wounds are a significant clinical issue which affects up to 100 million people worldwide. More specifically, as one of the most common and devastating sequelae of uncontrolled diabetes, chronic non-healing diabetic wounds affect an estimated 25% of diabetic patients. Wound healing process is significantly impaired in diabetic patients, including imbalanced production of extracellular matrix components, aberrant cellular infiltration, abnormal fibroblast function, and insufficient angiogenesis. A molecular therapeutic for diabetic wound healing that acts to restore the molecular and cellular processes is needed for successful wound healing. Fibromodulin (FMOD), as a key molecule required for fetal scarless skin repair, can significantly accelerate wound closure, promote angiogenesis, decrease scarring, and improve extracellular matrix organization. Studies have shown FMOD promotes dermal fibroblast migration, myofibroblast differentiation and contraction, which plays an important role in diabetic wound healing process. F06-C40, a FMOD derived peptide acts similar as FMOD protein and is much faster and easier to generate, which can potentially benefit millions of patients. However, the effect of FMOD and its peptide on diabetic wounds remains unknown. In this study, type II diabetic NONcNZO10 mouse model was used to study the effect of FMOD and its peptide in vivo. After full thickness excisional wounds, scar area, capillary formation, and extracellular matrix formation and collagen architecture were determined. In vitro, hyperglycemia-induced fibroblasts and primary human dermal diabetic fibroblasts were treated with FMOD and its derived peptide to study the effect of FMOD and its peptide on diabetic dermal fibroblast proliferation, migration, contraction and invasion. To further investigate the mechanism of FMOD on wound healing in a molecular level, the effect of FMOD on cell adhesion was analyzed and the downstream molecule was studied. In addition, TGF-beta 1 plays an important role in scarring and fibrosis formation. The effect of FMOD on TGF-beta 1 pathway was determined to further elucidate the role of FMOD on wound healing and scar reduction. As a result, FMOD and its peptide successfully accelerated wound closure, reduced scar formation and promoted angiogenesis in vivo. In addition, they promoted diabetic fibroblast migration, contraction and invasion. FMOD promoted fibroblast cell adhesion via integrin. And FMOD shows a down regulation on TGF-beta 1 non-canonical pathway, which is the opposite effect on TGF-beta 1 canonical pathway according to previous studies. Therefore, FMOD and its peptide have the potential to treat diabetic wounds by improving fibroblast characteristics.

Through a ramp circulation system connect each floor of the building and horizontally link inside and outside the gym with an urban environment. People experiencing continuing from in/out, enclose/opening, artificial/nature, green/gray, void/solid from beginning to "begin".

Background: Fibromodulin (FMOD) has been demonstrated to decrease scarring in mouse models. We developed an FMOD-based peptide, F06-C40, which has similar effect as FMOD while being more efficient and less costly to produce. In this study, the effect of FMOD and F06-C40 on scars was tested in porcine models for future preclinical studies.Methods: Full-thickness incisional wounds were generated on the dorsum of Yorkshire pigs or red Duroc pigs to simulate human normal or hypertrophic scarring. FMOD, F06-C40, or PBS was injected intradermally around the wound edge. At 8 weeks post-injury, scar formation was evaluated by gross appearance, histological analysis, and tensile strength. Results: FMOD and F06-C40 peptide significantly reduced scar formation and increased tensile strength in both Yorkshire pig and red Duroc pig models.Conclusion: The results indicate F06-C40 has the potential to be developed as a novel therapeutic for improving wound healing in normal and hypertrophic scarring patients.

Eye contact is a research and installation projects about the westernization process of bridal costume from 1900 to 2012 in both China and the Chinese immigrant community in America. The project focuses on the bride’s wedding costume to present the development of social status of women in both China and Chinese immigrant community in America.