Factors influencing online banking adoption: the case of academicians in Malaysian technical University network (MTUN)

Advancement of technology saw the evolution of how banking activities being conducted. Online banking for example, has created new approach of banking activities around the globe. This study was conducted to investigate and determine factors influencing online banking adoption among academicians in Malaysia. The selection of factors was developed based on extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). TAM is the most widely applied model in the field of technology adoption. TAM investigates the adoption of technology based on its Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use. Government support was included as an extension of the original model mainly because of its direct influence on the existence of the online banking itself. These factors were categorized as the independent variables in this study while online banking adoption as the dependent variable. Data for this research were collected from survey questionnaires, distributed to the target population of academicians at four higher education institutions listed under Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) in Malaysia. Data collected were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. Correlation and regression technique was employed to study factors influencing online banking adoption among respondents, Results of the analysis shows that Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use found to be significant factors while Government Support is found to be not a significant factor in influencing the adoption of online banking among the respondents. This study has shed new knowledge for the research in the area of technology adoption particularly in Malaysia

The Experience of Coexistence and Love: A Critical Study of Al-Muqri’s The Handsome Jew

This study aims at exploring issue of coexistence and love in Yemeni society in the seventeenth century represented in Al- Muqri’s The Handsome Jew by the prominent characters Fatima, a Muslim, and Salem, a Jew. The experience of coexistence is still controversial that has not received enough study in the light of the complexities that are involved in understanding the reasons of violence, social and religious conflicts in order to accept the culture and ideas of the other. The objective of the study is to show how this issue affects Muslim- Jewish women and men in a city that opens its doors for all people. Coexistence theory has often shed light on the language and practice of living together and love stories between Muslim women and Jewish boys and vice versa that stemmed from the social, cultural and religious coexistent in Yemeni society. Al-Muqri’s novel depicts Muslim-Jewish love relation in a way that counters religious and conventional ideas. It is concluded that Ali Al-Muqri addresses the issues of tolerant and peaceful love of human beings that transcends religion, sects and classes. In this sense, he tries hardly to consolidate not only his views, but also all views about the values of cultural, religious and social tolerance and coexistence away from stereotypes, intolerance, racial discrimination and ideological hatred that leave nothing, but destruction to all of humanity

Representation of Racial Segregation and Identity Crisis in Richard Wright’s Novel Black Boy

Racial segregation and identity crisis play an essential role in Black American literature as well as in American society. The objective of the study is to analyze the significant themes of identity crisis and racial segregation in Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy. The study focuses on the concepts of racial segregation and identity crisis because these issues were and are still controversial and argumentative in Afro-American Literature. There is also an analysis of the features of post-colonialism. Post-colonialism is a major writing style used in this novel. It claims that Black American literature was written to fight against racial segregation, oppression, aggression in order to obtain self-pride and identity. It also concentrates on the theme of the problems of Blacks’ identity and racial discrimination in American society to prove that racism and oppression are indeed prominent themes in Wight’s novel because the book was written during the Jim Crow era at a point where racism was very important in American society

Optimizing Approach for Sifting Process to Solve a Common Type of Empirical Mode Decomposition Mode Mixing

Empirical mode decomposition (EMD), a new data-driven of time-series decomposition, has the advantage of supposing that a time series is non-linear or non-stationary, as is implicitly achieved in Fourier decomposition. However, the EMD suffers of mode mixing problem in some cases. The aim of this paper is to present a solution for a common type of signals causing of EMD mode mixing problem, in case a signal suffers of an intermittency. By an artificial example, the solution shows superior performance in terms of cope EMD mode mixing problem comparing with the conventional EMD and Ensemble Empirical Mode decomposition (EEMD). Furthermore, the over-sifting problem is also completely avoided; and computation load is reduced roughly six times compared with EEMD, an ensemble number of 50

Online banking adoption among academicians at MTUN Universities in Malaysia

The advancement of technology especially the invention of the internet has changed the way organizations conduct their businesses today including banks especially in offering online banking services. Online banking services had been introduced in Malaysia in the year 2000. However, bank customers including academicians in Malaysia are influenced by issues of trust of online banking which also affects their level of adoption. In addition, there were only few studies which have combined Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Perceived Risk Theory (PRT) in understanding the adoption of online banking services in Malaysia. Therefore, this study intended to determine the factors influencing the adoption of online banking based on TAM (Perceived Usefulness, PU; Perceived Ease of Use, PEOU) as the base model, with Government Support (GS) being included as the additional variable. Furthermore, based on PRT, Trust is also included in this study. Variables influencing Trust (Perceived Security, PS; Perceived Risk, PR; Perceived Privacy, PP) are also assessed as well as the moderating influence of Trust on the relationship between PU, PEOU and GS, with the adoption of online banking in Malaysia. Respondents of this study were selected among academicians at Malaysian Technical Universities Network (MTUN) based on simple random sampling approach. Data was collected through the use of survey questionnaires. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed while 253 of them were retrieved and usable for data analysis. Data analysis was carried out with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The main results of this study revealed that PU and PEOU have significant influence on the adoption of online banking while GS was found not to be significant. Besides, PS and PR were also found to be significant in influencing Trust, while PP was found to be non-significant. Finally, Trust is also found to have a moderating influence on the relationship between PU and GS with the adoption of online banking and not significant in moderating the relationship between PEOU with the adoption of online banking. These findings sheds some valuable information to be considered by banks in offering online banking services to their customers as well as additional new practical and informational understanding to current literature on the adoption of online banking services

3-[2-(1H-Benzimidazol-2-ylsulfan­yl)eth­yl]-1,3-oxazolidin-2-one

In the title compound, C12H13N3O2S, the oxazolidin ring displays an envelope conformation. The dihedral angle between the benzimidazole ring and the 1,3-oxazolidin-2-one mean plane is 69.85 (13)°. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by inter­molecular N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds, forming a chain parallel to the b axis

A Study of Biomedical Time Series Using Empirical Mode Decomposition : Extracting event-related modes from EEG signals recorded during visual processing of contour stimuli

Noninvasive neuroimaging techniques like functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and/or Electroencephalography (EEG) allow researchers to investigate and analyze brain activities during visual processing. EEG offers a high temporal resolution at a level of submilliseconds which can be combined favorably with fMRI which has a good spatial resolution on small spatial scales in the millimeter range. These neuroimaging techniques were, and still are instrumental in the diagnoses and treatments of neurological disorders in the clinical applications. In this PhD thesis we concentrate on lectrophysiological signatures within EEG recordings of a combined EEG-fMRI data set which where taken while performing a contour integration task. The estimation of location and distribution of the electrical sources in the brain from surface recordings which are responsible for interesting EEG waves has drawn the attention of many EEG/MEG researchers. However, this process which is called brain source localization is still one of the major problems in EEG. It consists of solving two modeling problems: forward and inverse. In the forward problem, one is interested in predicting the expected potential distribution on the scalp from given electrical sources that represent active neurons in the head. These evaluations are necessary to solve the inverse problem which can be defined as the problem of estimating the brain sources that generated the measured electrical potentials. This thesis presents a data-driven analysis of EEG data recorded during a combined EEG/fMRI study of visual processing during a contour integration task. The analysis is based on an ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and discusses characteristic features of event related modes (ERMs) resulting from the decomposition. We identify clear differences in certain ERMs in response to contour vs non-contour Gabor stimuli mainly for response amplitudes peaking around 100 [ms] (called P100) and 200 [ms] (called N200) after stimulus onset, respectively. We observe early P100 and N200 responses at electrodes located in the occipital area of the brain, while late P100 and N200 responses appear at electrodes located in frontal brain areas. Signals at electrodes in central brain areas show bimodal early/late response signatures in certain ERMs. Head topographies clearly localize statistically significant response differences to both stimulus conditions. Our findings provide an independent proof of recent models which suggest that contour integration depends on distributed network activity within the brain. Next and based on the previous analysis, a new approach for source localization of EEG data based on combining ERMs, extracted with EEMD, with inverse models has been presented. As the first step, 64 channel EEG recordings are pooled according to six brain areas and decomposed, by applying an EEMD, into their underlying ERMs. Then, based upon the problem at hand, the most closely related ERM, in terms of frequency and amplitude, is combined with inverse modeling techniques for source localization. More specifically, the standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) procedure is employed in this work. Accuracy and robustness of the results indicate that this approach deems highly promising in source localization techniques for EEG data. Given the results of analyses above, it can be said that EMD is able to extract intrinsic signal modes, ERMs, which contain decisive information about responses to contour and non-contour stimuli. Hence, we introduce a new toolbox, called EMDLAB, which serves the growing interest of the signal processing community in applying EMD as a decomposition technique. EMDLAB can be used to perform, easily and effectively, four common types of EMD: plain EMD, ensemble EMD (EEMD), weighted sliding EMD (wSEMD) and multivariate EMD (MEMD) on the EEG data. The main goal of EMDLAB toolbox is to extract characteristics of either the EEG signal by intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) or ERMs. Since IMFs reflect characteristics of the original EEG signal, ERMs reflect characteristics of ERPs of the original signal. The new toolbox is provided as a plug-in to the well-known EEGLAB which enables it to exploit the advantageous visualization capabilities of EEGLAB as well as statistical data analysis techniques provided there for extracted IMFs and ERMs of the signal

COVID-19 Tackling in Yemen: An Overview of Scenario

COVID-19 has threatened the whole world with its devastating nature. It is first reported as pneumonia-like outbreak in Hubei province of China in late December 2019. The coronavirus, cause of COVID-19; spread so quickly that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in a very short period. Though, initially it has affected the developed countries, the countries in low and middle income category also are not spared. Yemen is a country with low-income economy and has been in ongoing civil war. First case of COVID-19 reported on 10th April with total 1619 cases and 447 total deaths as of 21st July 2020 in Yemen. The preventive measures such as lockdown, social distancing, and personal hygiene are practiced, however there is still lack of adequate resources for efficient healthcare facilities. Poverty, lack of sufficient health resources, proper hygiene and sanitation, and social stigmatization are the major problems in Yemen. No drugs and vaccines are now developed to rely on for the treatment of COVID-19, therefore a preventive measures should be focused for the proper management in countries like Yemen. The concept of “do not take the virus and do not give the virus” with different approaches of preventive aspects through hand-washing, social distancing, wearing masks and gloves, and making people aware in mass utilizing audio-visual media are helpful. The preparation of management guidelines by the government and mobilizing healthcare resources to different parts for proper containment of the COVID-19 cases is essential

URWalking: Indoor Navigation for Research and Daily Use

In this report, we present the project URWalking conducted at the University of Regensburg. We describe its major outcomes: Firstly, an indoor navigation system for pedestrians as a web application and as an Android app with position tracking of users in indoor and outdoor environments. Our implementation showcases that a variant of the A∗-algorithm by Ullmann (tengetriebene optimierung präferenzadaptiver fußwegrouten durch gebäudekomplexe https://epub.uni-regensburg.de/43697/, 2020) can handle the routing problem in large, levelled indoor environments efficiently. Secondly, the apps have been used in several studies for a deeper understanding of human wayfinding. We collected eye tracking and synchronized video data, think aloud protocols, and log data of users interacting with the apps. We applied state-of-the-art deep learning models for gaze tracking and automatic classification of landmarks. Our results indicate that even the most recent version of the YOLO image classifier by Redmon and Farhadi (olov3: An incremental improvement. arXiv, 2018) needs finetuning to recognize everyday objects in indoor environments. Furthermore, we provide empirical evidence that appropriate machine learning models are helpful to bridge behavioural data from users during wayfinding and conceptual models for the salience of objects and landmarks. However, simplistic models are insufficient to reasonably explain wayfinding behaviour in real time—an open issue in GeoAI. We conclude that the GeoAI community should collect more naturalistic log data of wayfinding activities in order to build efficient machine learning models capable of predicting user reactions to routing instructions and of explaining how humans integrate stimuli from the environment as essential information into routing instructions while solving wayfinding tasks. Such models form the basis for real-time wayfinding assistance