Service Quality of Self-Checkout Technology in Malaysian Hypermarket: A Case Study in Johor

The revolution of retailing has been transformed into a new era where technology and human meets. The modern retail environment offers a new kind of services to customer impressively. The purpose of this research is to examine service quality attributes on self-checkout technology and its influence on customer satisfaction and reuse intention. The survey items are adapted from previous literature, and a mall intercept survey via convenient sampling was employed. The findings from 176 data were analyzed using IBM-AMOS to test the hypotheses. Control has a positive significant result with service quality. Ease of use and enjoyment have a negative significant result with service quality while speed and reliability have an insignificant result. Service quality has a strong positive effect on customer satisfaction as well as customer satisfaction with reuse intention. Thus, retail developers could tackle the correct path to make more comprehensive strategies through retail technology innovation to meet customer demand

Chinese cultural values and personal referral sources in international education choice

China offers the greatest growth potential for international education across the global markets. To better understand the motivations of students, a survey of 420 university students was conducted and results revealed that students who rated abasement and personal activity orientation as important values were more likely to find personal referral sources influential. Students who rated situation orientation and interdependence as important values were less likely to find personal referral sources more influential. However, there is no significant difference in authority, face, and group orientation. This suggests the complex role of Chinese cultural values in the process of globalization and industrialization

Penetrance of biallelic SMARCAL1 mutations is associated with environmental and genetic disturbances of gene expression

Biallelic mutations of the DNA annealing helicase SMARCAL1 (SWI/SNF-related, matrix-associated, actindependent regulator of chromatin, subfamily a-like 1) cause Schimke immuno-osseous dysplasia (SIOD, MIM 242900), an incompletely penetrant autosomal recessive disorder. Using human, Drosophila and mouse models, we show that the proteins encoded by SMARCAL1 orthologs localize to transcriptionally active chromatin and modulate gene expression. We also show that, as found in SIOD patients, deficiency of the SMARCAL1 orthologs alone is insufficient to cause disease in fruit flies and mice, although such deficiency causes modest diffuse alterations in gene expression. Rather, disease manifests when SMARCAL1 deficiency interacts with genetic and environmental factors that further alter gene expression. We conclude that the SMARCAL1 annealing helicase buffers fluctuations in gene expression and that alterations in gene expression contribute to the penetrance of SIOD