How does digital transformation affect the profitability of rural commercial banks?

Under the impact of the business sinking of large commercial banks and the cross-border competition of fintech companies, digital transformation has become a strategic priority for rural commercial banks. However, can digital transformation improve the profitability of rural commercial banks (PORCB)? This aspect has not been thoroughly examined in academic literature. This study utilizes unbalanced panel data from 54 Chinese rural commercial banks spanning from 2010 to 2021. The Peking University Commercial Bank Digital Transformation Index is employed to gauge the extent of digital transformation, while ordinary least squares estimation is used to examine its effect on the profitability of rural commercial banks and elucidate its underlying mechanisms. The findings show that: (1) Digital transformation can significantly improve the PORCB. (2) Digital transformation improves the PORCB by enhancing asset quality, operating efficiency and risk-taking. (3) The profitability-enhancing effect of digital transformation is more pronounced among rural commercial business banks with larger assets and lower equity concentration, as well as among state-owned rural commercial banks. This paper's findings represent a novel investigation into the correlation between digital transformation and the profitability of rural commercial banks. They offer a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence for future studies examining the economic implications of bank digital transformation, and offer valuable insights for enhancing the digitalisation of rural banks.

RNN-Based Sequence to Sequence Decoder for Run-Length Limited Codes in Visible Light Communication.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with visible light communication (VLC) technology can simultaneously offer flexible communications and illumination to service ground users. Since a poor UAV working environment increases interference sent to the VLC link, there is a pressing need to further ensure reliable data communications. Run-length limited (RLL) codes are commonly utilized to ensure reliable data transmission and flicker-free perception in VLC technology. Conventional RLL decoding methods depend upon look-up tables, which can be prone to erroneous transmissions. This paper proposes a novel recurrent neural network (RNN)-based decoder for RLL codes that uses sequence to sequence (seq2seq) models. With a well-trained model, the decoder has a significant performance advantage over the look-up table method, and it can approach the bit error rate of maximum a posteriori (MAP) criterion-based decoding. Moreover, the decoder is use to deal with multiple frames simultaneously, such that the totality of RLL-coded frames can be decoded by only one-shot decoding within one time slot, which is able to enhance the system throughput. This shows our decoder's great potential for practical UAV applications with VLC technology.

Silver-doped graphite carbon nitride nanosheets as fluorescent probe for the detection of curcumin.

Green fluorescent silver (Ag)-doped graphite carbon nitride (Ag-g-C3 N4 ) nanosheets have been fabricated by an ultrasonic exfoliating method. The fluorescence of the Ag-g-C3 N4 nanosheets is quenched by curcumin. The fluorescence intensity decreases with the increase in the concentration of curcumin, indicating that the Ag-g-C3 N4 nanosheets can function as a non-toxic and facile fluorescence probe to detect curcumin. The fluorescence intensity of Ag-g-C3 N4 nanosheets shows a linear relationship to curcumin in the concentration range 0.01-2.00 µM with a low detection limit of 38 nM. The fluorescence quenching process between curcumin and Ag-g-C3 N4 nanosheets mainly is based on static quenching. The fluorescent probe has been successfully applied to analyse curcumin in human urine and serum samples with satisfactory results.

Boron and nitrogen co-doped carbon dots as a sensitive fluorescent probe for the detection of curcumin.

In this present study, a fluorescent probe was developed to detect curcumin, which is derived from the rhizomes of the turmeric. We used a simple and economical way to synthesize boron and nitrogen co-doped carbon dots (BNCDs) by microwave heating. The maximum emission wavelength of the BNCDs was 450 nm at an excitation wavelength of 360 nm. The as-prepared BNCDs were characterized by multiple analytical techniques such as transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and infrared spectroscopy. The synthesized carbon nanoparticles had an average particle diameter of 4.23 nm. The BNCDs exhibited high sensitivity to the detection of curcumin at ambient conditions. The changes of BNCDs fluorescent intensity show a good linear relationship with the curcumin concentrations in the range 0.2-12.5 µM. This proposed method has been successfully applied to detect the curcumin in urine samples with the recoveries of 96.5-105.5%.