Determinants of social and institutional beliefs about internet acceptance within developing country’s context: A structural evaluation of higher education systems in Pakistan

This study aims to extend a model of technology acceptance to suit in developing country’s context. The model attempts to identify relationship between social and institutional factors over behavioural intention and usage. Recently, ‘acceptance and adoption of information technology (IT) in multicultural setting’ is becoming topic of interest for IS researchers. In this line, numerous theories and models are proposed to contribute in examining factors of IT acceptance and reluctance. It is argued that the models in published literature are found culturally biased, which successfully present results in only American and European context, however, their validity became questionable when they were tested in south Asian countries context. Additionally, lack of research is observed to predict individual’s cognitive behaviour of acceptance, which are influenced by social factors (i.e. peer influence and superior influence, voluntariness, experience) and institutional factors (i.e. local institutional management influence and top-level governmental policies influence). This study used Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) based on Partial Least Square (PLS) method to analyse the data. The results reveal that the proposed conceptual model achieves acceptable fit and the hypothesised paths are valid

The Performance of CRTNT Fluorescence Light Detector for Sub-EeV Cosmic Ray Observation

Cosmic Ray Tau Neutrino Telescopes (CRTNT) using for sub-EeV cosmic ray measurement is discussed. Performances of a stereoscope configuration with a tower of those telescopes plus two side-triggers are studied. This is done by using a detailed detector simulation driven by Corsika. Detector aperture as a function of shower energy above 10^17 eV is calculated. Event rate of about 20k per year for the second knee measurement is estimated. Event rate for cross calibration with detectors working on higher energy range is also estimated. Different configurations of the detectors are tried for optimization.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to HEP & N

Sleep Disturbances in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

BACKGROUND: Sleep problems are frequent in chronic diseases like rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The present study was conducted to determine frequency of sleep disturbances and their relations with disease severity.METHODS: The present case-control study was performed on 100  rheumatoid patients who were referred to the rheumatology clinic at the Avicenna hospital. A hundred age- and sex- matched healthy individuals were recruited in the study as a control group. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality questionnaire, Insomnia Severity Index questionnaire and EpworthSleepiness Scale were used. The disease activity was calculated with the disease activity score 28. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 19.RESULTS: Mean scores of the sleep quality were 6.2±4.3 in patients and 4.6±2.5 in control group. 28% of the patients had good sleep quality whereas 72% had poor sleep quality. Daytime sleepiness was present in24.8% of the patients and 15% of the control group. Multiple logistic regressions showed that insomnia, pain and disease intensity were the most important factors that determine patients' sleep quality.CONCLUSION: The present study showed that sleep disturbances are frequent in patients with RA and may contribute to disease severity. It is recommended that rheumatoid patients be evaluated for sleep  disturbances during routine examinations.KEY WORDS: Rheumatoid arthritis, Sleep quality, Insomnia, Daytime sleepines

Isolation of keratinophilic fungi and aerobic actinomycetes from park soils in Gorgan, North of Iran

Background: Keratinophilic fungi are a group of fungi that colonize in various keratinous substrates and degrade them to the components with low molecular weight. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of keratinophilic fungi and aerobic Actinomycetes in soil of city parks in Gorgan. Objectives: In this study, we surveyed the city park soils of Gorgan (a northern province of Iran) to determine the identities and diversity of soil aerobic Actinomycetes, keratinophilic and non-keratinophilic fungi. Materials and Methods: A total of 244 soil samples were collected from 22 diferent parks of Gorgan, North of Iran. The samples were collected from the superfcial layer with depth not exceeding than 0-10 cm in sterile polyethylene bags. We used hair bait technique for isolation keratinophilic fungi. The colonies identifed by macroscopic and microscopic characterization after slide culturing. Actinomycetes were isolated by antibiotic dilution methods and detected by using physiological tests such as Lysozyme, Casein, Xanthine, Hypoxanthine, Gelatin, Urea Broth, and modifed acid-fast stain. Results: Totally, 75 isolates of aerobic Actinomycetes were detected that Actinomadura madurae and Nocardia asteroides were the most prevalent strains, with 14.66 and 28% prevalence respectively. Microsporum gypseum was more frequent than other keratinophilic fungi (22.96%) and Aspergillus spp. was the most species of saprophyte fungi (15.92%). Conclusions: This study showed that the collected soil from studied areas was rich of keratinophilic fungi and Actinomycetes, therefore hygiene protocol should be taken to prevent the spread of pathogenic and saprophytes fungi in the environment of susceptible person. © 2013, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences

Identification and ranking of the key success factors of e-learning from the Persian language instructors’ perspective

Background and Objective:In general, the purpose of e-learning is to provide equal, free and searchable access to courses and to create a uniform learning environment for different people everywhere and to optimize the presentation of course materials for deeper learning. In such an educational environment, unlike traditional (teacher-centered) teaching methods, people benefit from the subjects to the extent of their capacity and ability. In e-learning, it is possible to achieve maximum productivity in education by combining different methods of presenting educational content such as text, audio and video, etc. Virtual education utilizes the capacity of computer networks, Internet technologies, satellite networks, and new digital sciences. In fact, the art of using network technologies is to design, select, transform, and manage the educational process. The purpose of this study was to investigate, identify, and rank the most important key factors in the success of the Persian language e-learning course in universities (Al-Mustafa society and Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin). Methods: This is an applied research in terms of the purpose, descriptive in terms of the method of data collection and cross-sectional study. The statistical population of this study was 60 Persian language instructors who taught at least one full term using the E-learning system. The main instrument for data collecting was a researcher-made questionnaire based on the Likert scale of 5 scales. Findings: The results of the research showed that the factor of content was considered as the first priority, technology as the second, students as the third priority, the organizational factor as the forth one, and the last priority was the general issue. In the study of the organizational factors, the educational- management strategies in organization gained the highest amount of 12.32, the highest percentage of variance 32.08 and the highest coefficient of reliability of 0.875, among the factors of student, the sub-factor trust, adaption and response to the needs with the special value of 8.094 and the variance of 27.93 was the most important sub-factor. Also, in determining the factors of content, the factors affecting content production with a specific amount of 5.314, indicated the highest percentage 42.151 of the total variance related to the factors of content. The applicability of technology with a specific value of 6.07 and 36.54 percent of the total variance was the most important sub-factor of the factor of technology. The leadership and strategic factors with the specific value of 10.404 and 26.035 percent of the total variance proved to be the most important sub-factor in general factors. Conclusion: Based on the set of attitudes of success factors in the use of e-learning in higher education centers, this study aims to prioritize these factors in teaching Persian to foreigners. In this research, these two questions have been answered: What are the key factors of success in using the Persian language virtual education system as a second/foreign language from the perspective of teachers of these courses? And what is the priority and importance of these key success factors identified in the education system of the country's universities? In response to the first question, the findings show that from the perspective of teachers of Persian language e-learning courses to foreigners, the content factor ranks first, the technology factor ranks the second, the student factor ranks third, and the general factor is the last after the organizational factor. Also, in answer to the second question, each of these factors has several sub-factors.   ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS  ©2019 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.  ====================================================================================

Design of Real Time Walsh Transform for Processing of Multiple Digital Signals

This paper presents the design and implementation of multiple digital signals processing using real-time Walsh transforms. The design of real time Walsh transform is done in such a way that it starts producing outputs instantly even before all input data have entered the system. The system consists of Walsh Transform circuit, several Digital Signal Processing (DSP) circuits, and an inverse Walsh transform circuit. The real time Walsh and inverse Walsh transforms are also designed to produce right results for any possible combinations of input data. DSP blocks are able to perform addition, subtraction, and dyadic convolution process of Walsh coefficients of more than one digital signals. Comparisons to the previous methods are briefly presented. It was found that the design of real time Walsh transform structure has better performance than many of the previously reported results in the literature.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v3i2.196

RETRACTED: Monolayers of pigment-protein complexes on a bare gold electrode:Orientation controlled deposition and comparison of electron transfer rate for two configurations

Photosynthetic protein complexes are very efficient in solar energy absorption, excitation transfer, and subsequent electron transfer. These complexes have the potential to be exploited as circuit elements for various bio-hybrid devices, ranging from biosensors to solar cells. In this report, we characterized a bioelectronic composite fabricated by interfacing reaction center-light harvesting 1 (RC-LH1) complex with an un-functionalized gold surface in defined orientation. The orientation of RC-LH1 complex was controlled by using Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) deposition technique: RC-LH1 complexes were attached to the electrode facing either with their primary donor or the acceptor sides by'"forward" or'"reverse" dipping, respectively. Photochronoamperometry was utilized to confirm the integrity of the protein complexes and their orientation. Electrical transport of protein complexes coupled to gold electrode was studied by using conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM). Two distinct current-voltage (I-. V) curves were observed for two different deposition schemes, indicating opposite orientations of RC-LH1 complexes on the electrode. I-. V spectroscopy was also carried out under light illumination, the magnitude of current was considerably increased by the light illumination and the asymmetry of the curves was more pronounced. We show that, RC-LH1 complexes attached to the electrode with primary donor side facing the electrode exhibit much faster electron transfer compared to opposite orientatio

Trends of research productivity across author gender and research fields: A multidisciplinary and multi-country observational study

Bibliographic properties of more than 75 million scholarly articles, are examined and trends in overall research productivity are analysed as a function of research field (over the period of 1970-2020) and author gender (over the period of 2006-2020). Potential disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are also investigated. Over the last decade (2010-2020), the annual number of publications have invariably increased every year with the largest relative increase in a single year happening in 2019 (more than 6% relative growth). But this momentum was interrupted in 2020. Trends show that Environmental Sciences and Engineering Environmental have been the fastest growing research fields. The disruption in patterns of scholarly publication due to the Covid-19 pandemic was unevenly distributed across fields, with Computer Science, Engineering and Social Science enduring the most notable declines. The overall trends of male and female productivity indicate that, in terms of absolute number of publications, the gender gap does not seem to be closing in any country. The trends in absolute gap between male and female authors is either parallel (e.g., Canada, Australia, England, USA) or widening (e.g., majority of countries, particularly Middle Eastern countries). In terms of the ratio of female to male productivity, however, the gap is narrowing almost invariably, though at markedly different rates across countries. While some countries are nearing a ratio of .7 and are well on track for a 0.9 female to male productivity ratio, our estimates show that certain countries (particularly across the Middle East) will not reach such targets within the next 100 years. Without interventional policies, a significant gap will continue to exist in such countries. The decrease or increase in research productivity during the first year of the pandemic, in contrast to trends established before 2020, was generally parallel for male and female authors. There has been no substantial gender difference in the disruption due to the pandemic. However, opposite trends were found in a few cases. It was observed that, in some countries (e.g., The Netherlands, The United States and Germany), male productivity has been more negatively affected by the pandemic. Overall, female research productivity seems to have been more resilient to the disruptive effect of Covid-19 pandemic, although the momentum of female researchers has been negatively affected in a comparable manner to that of males

Text stream to temporal network - A dynamic heartbeat graph to detect emerging events on twitter

© 2018, Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature. Huge mounds of data are generated every second on the Internet. People around the globe publish and share information related to real-world events they experience every day. This provides a valuable opportunity to analyze the content of this information to detect real-world happenings, however, it is quite challenging task. In this work, we propose a novel graph-based approach named the Dynamic Heartbeat Graph (DHG) that not only detects the events at an early stage, but also suppresses them in the upcoming adjacent data stream in order to highlight new emerging events. This characteristic makes the proposed method interesting and efficient in finding emerging events and related topics. The experiment results on real-world datasets (i.e. FA Cup Final and Super Tuesday 2012) show a considerable improvement in most cases, while time complexity remains very attractive