Positioning ourselves for research and teaching: a cross-country analysis of academic formation

This paper presents early findings emerging from an international collaborative research project that addresses the key question of the nature of academic work, how academics make decisions regarding teaching and research and how they develop their academic identities. Drawing on survey data and pilot interviews administered in Australian and English Universities, the paper considers emerging evidence in relation to factors that contribute to success in research as well as contextual factors that discourage it. The paper begins to illuminate how academics in different countries, university contexts and with different career orientations, interpret and position themselves in relation to those contexts and how structural and agential factors may influence the formation of academic identity. The findings emerging from this research will provide new in-depth understandings about how institutions might most effectively support, develop and encourage world-class teaching, and the capacity for high quality research

Affective Technology Acceptance Model: Extending Technology Acceptance Model with Positive and Negative Affect

Research works on TAM, TAM2, TAM3 and UTAUT has always focused on cognitive aspect of technology acceptance in the past two decades. Acceptance of technologies such as eCommerce, Mobile and ERP that considered emotion and affect are still less. This creates a gap in the technology acceptance research, which consider the role of affect into technology acceptance model. This study considers the role of affect of a knowledge worker that work in Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)-status organizations in Malaysia on their behavioural intention to use knowledge sharing tools (KS tools) in their day-to-day tasks. Hence, Affective Technology Acceptance (A.T.A) model has been proposed. The behavioural intention on the acceptance of KS tools will be hypothesize in the Affective Technology Acceptance (A.T.A) model. Positive (PA) and Negative (NA) affect as the role of affect construct were introduce in this model to investigate its influence on KS tools usefulness and ease of use among employees in Multimedia Super Corridor organizations. The findings of this study highlighted that NA has no impact on perceive usefulness. The findings also showed that PA has very significant positive influence on PU, PEOU and BI with impact on PEOU being the greatest

Chlamydia infection status, genotype, and age-related macular degeneration

PURPOSE: To evaluate whether Chlamydia (C.) infections are associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and to assess if this association is influenced by the complement factor H (CFH) Y402H or the high temperature requirement A serine peptidase 1 (HTRA1) rs11200638 risk genotypes.METHODS: One hundred ninety-nine AMD patients with early and late forms of the disease and 100 unaffected controls, at least 50 years old were included in the study. Patients in the AMD and control groups were selected based on known CFH Y402H variant genotype status (one third homozygous CC, one third heterozygous CT, and one third wild-type TT). Plasma from all patients and controls was tested for C. pneumoniae, C. trachomatis, and C. psittaci IgG seropositivity using a micro-immunofluorescent assay to establish previous infection status. Assays were conducted blind to risk genotypes and the results analyzed using univariate and multivariate (logistic regression) analysis.RESULTS:IgG seropositivity to C. pneumoniae was most prevalent (69.2%, n=207), followed by C. trachomatis (7.4%, n=22) and C. psittaci (3.3%, n=10). No association was found between each of the three Chlamydia species IgG seropositivity and AMD status or severity (early/late). There was also no significant association between Chlamydia species IgG seropositivity and AMD status or severity, in patients carrying at least one CFH Y402H risk allele (C) or HTRA1 rs11200638 risk allele (A), with univariate or logistic regression analysis. CONCLUSIONS:Chlamydia infection status does not appear to be associated with AMD status or severity. The presence of CFH Y402H and HTRA1 rs11200638 risk genotypes does not alter this negative association