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Opinion polarisation in social media has recently become a significant issue. The existing literature mainly attributes polarisation to online friends' informational social influence, that is, users are more likely to interact with others with similar opinions, which leads to the echo chamber effect. However, the impact of social interaction on individual polarisation may also result from normative social influence, which varies with social settings on the platform. In this paper, we leverage a quasi‐experiment to investigate the normative social influence of online friends on focal users' review polarity. We use fixed effects and difference‐in‐differences approaches, along with propensity score matching, to address the potential endogeneity in users' friend function adoption decisions. Our results indicate that adopting the friend function leads users to post less extreme ratings. We further separate the reviews into positive and negative, finding that the reduction in the review polarity for positive reviews is more prominent than for negative ones. Regarding user heterogeneity, our causal forest analysis uncovers that users with a higher engagement level on the platform are less affected by adopting the friend function than those with less engagement. Our study has clear implications for managers and platform designers, highlighting the importance of social function design in reducing social media induced polarisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monocrystalline silicon is etched by alkaline solution to prepare an ordered pyramid structure. A certain thickness of gold film is plated on the surface of the silicon-based pyramid by magnetron sputtering as a surface-enhanced Raman scattering active substrate. The surface morphology and optical properties of the samples were characterized by SEM and UV-Vis spectrophotometer. With methylene blue as the probe molecule, more Raman characteristic peaks were detected. Raman spectra of melamine and pesticide diphenoquinone were detected by improving silicon fund nanosubstrate. The experimental results show that the prepared silicon fund nanosubstrate has potential application prospects in food safety and pesticide detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background & Aims: Sodium taurocholate cotransporting polypeptide (NTCP) has been identified as the cellular receptor for hepatitis B virus (HBV). However, hepatocytes expressing NTCP exhibit varying susceptibilities to HBV infection. This study aimed to investigate whether other host factors modulate the process of HBV infection., Methods: Liver biopsy samples obtained from children with hepatitis B were used for single-cell sequencing and susceptibility analysis. Primary human hepatocytes, HepG2-NTCP cells, and human liver chimeric mice were used to analyze the effect of candidate host factors on HBV infection., Results: Single-cell sequencing and susceptibility analysis revealed a positive correlation between neuropilin-1 (NRP1) expression and HBV infection. In the HBV-infected cell model, NRP1 overexpression before HBV inoculation significantly enhanced viral attachment and internalization, and promoted viral infection in the presence of NTCP. Mechanistic studies indicated that NRP1 formed a complex with LHBs and NTCP. The NRP1 b domain mediated its interaction with conserved arginine residues at positions 88 and 92 in the preS1 domain of the HBV envelope protein LHBs. This NRP1-preS1 interaction subsequently promoted the binding of preS1 to NTCP, facilitating viral infection. Moreover, disruption of the NRP1-preS1 interaction by the NRP1 antagonist EG00229 significantly attenuated the binding affinity between NTCP and preS1, thereby inhibiting HBV infection both in vitro and in vivo., Conclusions: Our findings indicate that NRP1 is a novel host factor for HBV infection, which interacts with preS1 and NTCP to modulate HBV entry into hepatocytes., Impact and Implications: HBV infection is a global public health problem, but the understanding of the early infection process of HBV remains limited. Through single-cell sequencing, we identified a novel host factor, NRP1, which modulates HBV entry by interacting with HBV preS1 and NTCP. Moreover, antagonists targeting NRP1 can inhibit HBV infection both in vitro and in vivo. This study could further advance our comprehension of the early infection process of HBV., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)