Role of placement in determination of service quality measurement of higher education in India

In this research paper the methodological development of a new model, namely SQM-HEI (Service Quality Measurement in Higher Education in India) for the measurement of service quality in higher educational institutions is developed. Three dimensions are arrived namely Teaching Methodology(TM), Environmental Change in Study Factor (ECSF) and Disciplinary Action(DA). The Placement is considered as the mediating factor for the outcome of education. For conducting an empirical study, data were collected from final year students of higher educational institutions across Tamilnadu. 1600 valid questionnaires were used for the analysis. The SQM-HEI captures the authentic determinants of service quality within the higher education sector. The developed 30-item instrument has been empirically tested with AMOS 7.0. The developed model is tested for Structural Equation Model and Bayesian estimation and testing. The SEM model output reveals that the RMSEA=0.049, GFI= 0.987 and NFI = 0.928. all the fit indices concludes the best fit of the model. The results from the current study are crucial because previous studies have produced scales that bear a resemblance to the generic measures of service quality, which may not be totally adequate to assess the perceived quality in higher education.SQM-HEI, Service Quality, Higher Education, India

Mediating effects of broadband consumers’ behavior in India

Internet usage is rapidly growing in areas like cosmopolitan cities, semi-urban cities in India. I-enabled services offered by various government agencies, educational institutions and commercial activities force users of these services to seek superior internet access like broadband, WiMax is likely to replace traditional broadband and dial-up access soon. Interestingly, reforms in telecom sector are taking place at a rapid pace in India. Many private players started internet services affecting monopolistic public sector telecoms. The advent of private ISPs, the consumer behavior and brand choice of broadband consumers are witnessing dynamic shift in favor of private players. Cost competitiveness, transparency, paradigm shift in consumer responsiveness etc weigh in favor of Public Sector telecoms. This paper attempts to identify the factors affecting broadband consumer behavior. Further, paper studies the causes and effects, mediating effects of consumer behavior and conceptualizes a model to capture these effects. The results suggest that adoption of broadband service is playing a mediatory role in consumer satisfaction.Broadband, Adoption, Normative constructs, mediating

Trustworthiness of Web Services

Workflow systems orchestrate various business tasks to attain an objective. Web services can be leveraged to handle individual tasks. Before anyone intends to leverage service components, it is imperative and essential to evaluate the trustworthiness of these services. Therefore, choosing a trustworthy service has become an important decision while designing a workflow system. Trustworthiness can be defined as the likelihood of a service functioning as it is intended. Selection of a service that satisfies business goals involves collecting relevant information such as security mechanisms, reliability, performance and availability. It is important to arrive at total trustworthiness, which incorporates all of the above mentioned multi-facet values relevant to a service. These values can be gathered and analyzed to derive the total trustworthiness of a service. Measuring trustworthiness of a service involves arriving at a suitable value that would help an end-user make a decision for the given business settings. The primary focus of this thesis is to gather relevant details and measure trustworthiness based on inputs provided by the user. A conceptual model was developed after extensive literature review to identify factors that influence trustworthiness of a service. A mechanism was created to gather concept values for a given service and utilize those values to calculate trustworthiness index value. A proof-of-concept prototype was also developed. The prototype is a web-based application that implements the mechanism to measure the trustworthiness of the service. The prototype was evaluated using a scenario-based analysis method to demonstrate the utility of the trustworthiness mechanism using three different scenarios. Results of the evaluation shows that trustworthiness is a multidimensional concept, the relevant conceptual values can be collected, a trustworthiness index value can be calculated based on the gathered concepts, and a trustworthiness index can be interpreted to select the most relevant service for a given requirement

Crystallization of the immunodominant outer membrane protein OmpC; the first protein crystals from Salmonella typhi, a human pathogen

AbstractOmpC, a surface antigen of Salmonella typhi was crystallized after several attempts, using PEG 3350. Well shaped hexagonal crystals were grown from vapor diffusion method using octyl glucoside and C12E9 as detergents. Crystals are sensitive to X-ray and diffract weakly up to 7 Å. Porin isoforms, due to the bound lipopolysaccharides, could be the cause for poor diffraction. Crystal quality depends largely on the purification method, and in case of LPS contamination, the genetic background of the bacteria. Crystallization and initial data collection suggest optimum conditions and the method of choice for OmpC crystallization

A note on a fixed point theorem for ray oriented maps

[EN] In this paper, we will prove a fixed point theorem for a ray-oriented map defined on a nonempty closed bounded convex subset of a Banach space.Arockiasamy, A.; Eldred, A. (2008). A note on a fixed point theorem for ray oriented maps. Applied General Topology. 9(2):185-188. doi:10.4995/agt.2008.1798.SWORD1851889

Performance, Combustion and Emission Characteristics of a D.I. Diesel Engine Fuelled with Nanoparticle Blended Jatropha Biodiesel

The effect of nanoparticle as additive in Jatropha biodiesel is experimentally investigated in a single cylinder DI diesel engine with the aim of diluting the level of pollutants in the exhaust and for the improvement of engine performance owing to its potential advantage of high surface area to volume ratio, acting as a catalyst for the better combustion. Alumina and Cerium oxide nanoparticles are blended separately with Jatropha biodiesel at 30 parts per million and the engine performance, combustion and emission characteristics are compared with neat diesel and neat biodiesel as base fuels. For alumina blended test fuel, percentage reduction of NO emission by 9 %, Smoke opacity by 17 %, unburned hydrocarbon by 33 % and carbon monoxide by 20 % are observed along with percentage reduction of NO emission by 7 %, Smoke opacity by 20 %, unburned hydrocarbon by 28 % and carbon monoxide by 20 % for cerium oxide blended test fuel. 5 % improvement in brake thermal efficiency is observed for both the test fuels, due to its high surface area to volume ratio of nanoparticle promoting better combustion by improved atomization, better mixing of air-mixture and rapid evaporation of the fuel

E Business in Developing Countries (including Middle East): Information Systems Strategic Thinking

E Business in Developing Countries and the Middle East (and in Oman in particular) is of great interest because of opportunities for growth, to elsewhere around the world. For example, E Business expansion in the Middle East is of growing importance because of the scaling down of income from Middle Eastern sourced oil over the next decades. In Developing Countries other than the Middle East E Business is of critical importance for development, for example, China (and examples will be given of China). We are interested in building Case Studies of E Business Strategic Thinking and also exploring ideas for Strategic Thinking generally and more specifically in relation to Developing Countries (including Middle Eastern) E Business. The workshop will consist of two parts (1) What constitutes Strategic Thinking? How can Strategic Thinking be applied to E Business? (2) What are the key issues for E Business development in relation to Developing Countries and extended innovation in the Middle East? This topic, in general terms related to the Middle East, recently won, for the presenters of this workshop, a major research grant in Oman (the equivalent of just over US$200,000). Workshop Leader Information (Please attach a copy of your resum

MBA: Market Basket Analysis Using Frequent Pattern Mining Techniques

This Market Basket Analysis (MBA) is a data mining technique that uses frequent pattern mining algorithms to discover patterns of co-occurrence among items that are frequently purchased together. It is commonly used in retail and e-commerce businesses to generate association rules that describe the relationships between different items, and to make recommendations to customers based on their previous purchases. MBA is a powerful tool for identifying patterns of co-occurrence and generating insights that can improve sales and marketing strategies. Although a numerous works has been carried out to handle the computational cost for discovering the frequent itemsets, but it still needs more exploration and developments. In this paper, we introduce an efficient Bitwise-Based data structure technique for mining frequent pattern in large-scale databases. The algorithm scans the original database once, using the Bitwise-Based data representations as well as vertical database layout, compared to the well-known Apriori and FP-Growth algorithm. Bitwise-Based technique enhance the problems of multiple passes over the original database, hence, minimizes the execution time. Extensive experiments have been carried out to validate our technique, which outperform Apriori, Éclat, FP-growth, and H-mine in terms of execution time for Market Basket Analysis