Strength Of Interrelationships Research Articles

The putative maintaining mechanism of gut bacterial ecosystem in giant pandas and its potential application in conservation.

Animals living in captivity and the wild show differences in the internal structure of their gut microbiomes. Here, we performed a meta-analysis of the microbial data of about 494 fecal samples obtained from giant pandas (captive and wild giant pandas). Our results show that the modular structures and topological features of the captive giant panda gut microbiome differ from those of the wild populations. The co-occurrence network of wild giant pandas also contained more nodes and edges, indicating a higher complexity and stability compared to that of captive giant pandas. Keystone species analysis revealed the differences between geographically different wild populations, indicating the potential effect of geography on the internal modular structure. When combining all the giant panda samples for module analysis, we found that the abundant taxa (e.g., belonged to Flavobacterium, Herbaspirillum, and Escherichia-Shigella) usually acted as module hubs to stabilize the modular structure, while the rare taxa usually acted as connectors of different modules. We conclude that abundant and rare taxa play different roles in the gut bacterial ecosystem. The conservation of some key bacterial species is essential for promoting the development of the gut microbiome in pandas. The living environment of the giant pandas can influence the internal structure, topological features, and strength of interrelationships in the gut microbiome. This study provides new insights into the conservation and management of giant panda populations.

Moderating effects of service separation on customer relationships with service firms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of service separation on the ability of service firms to build and maintain customer relationships, by exploring the differences in the strength of interrelationships among key relational constructs between separated and unseparated service delivery modes.Design/methodology/approachA field survey was conducted with retail banking customers in Saudi Arabia (n=592) using a structured self-administered questionnaire consisting of well-established scales. Data were analyzed using AMOS 24.FindingsService separation negatively moderates (weakens) the ability of the service firms to leverage their social benefits, relational trust and affective commitment to increase customer loyalty and to strengthen overall customer relationships.Research limitations/implicationsThis study uses retail banking customers in Saudi Arabia to test the impact of service separation in their relationship with the bank; hence, its findings may not be generalizable to other types of services and cultural settings.Practical implicationsService firms using online and mobile technologies should be aware that trust and commitment remain key to building customer loyalty. Hence, the trade-off between the benefits of these technologies and their negative impact on customer relationship needs to be factored into managerial decision making.Originality/valueThe paper highlights the importance of maintaining face-to-face interactions with service customers to create robust relationships that yield loyalty, despite the growing popularity of online and mobile technologies.

Interrelationships among geotechnical and leaching properties of a cement-stabilized contaminated soil

ABSTRACTRelationships among selected performance properties have been established using experimental data from a cement-stabilized mixed contaminated soil. The sandy soil was spiked with 3,000 mg/kg each of Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni and Zn, and 10,000 mg/kg of diesel. It was then treated with 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% dosages of Portland cement. Different water contents were considered for lower dosage mixes. Selected geotechnical and leaching properties were determined on 28-day old samples. These include unconfined compressive strength (UCS), bulk density, porosity, hydraulic conductivity, leachate pH and granular leachability of contaminants. Interrelationships among these properties were deduced using the most reasonable best fits determined by specialized curve fitting software. Strong quadratic and log-linear relationships exist between hydraulic conductivity and UCS, with increasing binder and water contents, respectively. However, the strength of interrelationships between hydraulic conductivity and porosity, UCS and porosity, and UCS and bulk density varies with binder and water contents. Leachate pH and granular leachability of contaminants are best related to UCS and hydraulic conductivity by a power law and an exponential function, respectively. These results suggest how the accuracy of not-easily-measurable performance properties may be constrained from simpler ones. Comparisons with some published performance properties data support this.

Intraday patterns in time-varying correlations among Central European stock markets

In this paper we investigate intraday relationships between three Central European stock exchanges: those in Frankfurt, Vienna and Warsaw. They represent different types of stock markets: two of them are developed, while the last is an emerging market. Via DCC-GARCH models we analyze and compare time-varying conditional correlations of intraday returns of the main indices of the stock exchanges. We study the impact of important public information, US macroeconomic news announcements, on the strength of interrelationships between the markets. Additionally, we analyze diurnal patterns in time-varying correlations on different days of the week.