Conceptualising Green Awareness as Moderator in Technology Acceptance Model for Green IS/IT

Green Information System/Technology adoption is one of the key solutions sought by organisations, policy makers and governments to promote sustainability and deal with environmental issues. Surprisingly, in the research discipline of management information systems measuring the intention of decision maker to adopt Green IS/IT is ignored while only a few studies address the issue of Green IS/IT adoption. But these studies are mostly done in organisational manner and consistently lack to conceptualise the role of Green Awareness or environmental literacy of the end user that may play the role of the facilitator to such adoption models and can significantly moderate the relationship of users' cognitive and behavioural intention factors in decision making process of adopting Green IS/IT. To fill this gap in the Green IS/IT literature, this paper conceptualise the role of Green Awareness as a facilitator by incorporating a subjective green awareness rating scale as a moderator in Technology Acceptance Model. This paper contributes to the existing knowledge in the science of information systems, mapping users' intention to adopt Green IS/IT and sustainability by conceptualising green awareness rating scale for users and a theoretical framework of incorporating the scale in Technology Acceptances model to map its role as a moderator

Chemomodulation of human dendritic cell function by antineoplastic agents in low noncytotoxic concentrations

The dose-delivery schedule of conventional chemotherapy, which determines its efficacy and toxicity, is based on the maximum tolerated dose. This strategy has lead to cure and disease control in a significant number of patients but is associated with significant short-term and long-term toxicity. Recent data demonstrate that moderately low-dose chemotherapy may be efficiently combined with immunotherapy, particularly with dendritic cell (DC) vaccines, to improve the overall therapeutic efficacy. However, the direct effects of low and ultra-low concentrations on DCs are still unknown. Here we characterized the effects of low noncytotoxic concentrations of different classes of chemotherapeutic agents on human DCs in vitro. DCs treated with antimicrotubule agents vincristine, vinblastine, and paclitaxel or with antimetabolites 5-aza-2-deoxycytidine and methotrexate, showed increased expression of CD83 and CD40 molecules. Expression of CD80 on DCs was also stimulated by vinblastine, paclitaxel, azacytidine, methotrexate, and mitomycin C used in low nontoxic concentrations. Furthermore, 5-aza-2-deoxycytidine, methotrexate, and mitomycin C increased the ability of human DCs to stimulate proliferation of allogeneic T lymphocytes. Thus, our data demonstrate for the first time that in low noncytotoxic concentrations chemotherapeutic agents do not induce apoptosis of DCs, but directly enhance DC maturation and function. This suggests that modulation of human DCs by noncytotoxic concentrations of antineoplastic drugs, i.e. chemomodulation, might represent a novel approach for up-regulation of functional activity of resident DCs in the tumor microenvironment or improving the efficacy of DCs prepared ex vivo for subsequent vaccinations

Measuring consumer behavioural intention to accept technology: Towards autonomous vehicles technology acceptance model (AVTAM)

The work presented in the paper aims at exploring information technology acceptance in the context of Autonomous Vehicles (AV) with the objectives of identifying and testing the constructs that will influence future AVs acceptance. Most models of technology acceptance focus on barriers of successful information technology implementation in organisations and technologies that have already been deployed. There is only a small number of studies conducted on emerging and disruptive technologies such as AV. We address this issue by deriving context-related determinants from an extensive literature analysis and further describing a technology acceptance modeling process to provide an explanation for drivers’ and factors influencing people behavioural intention to accept AV technology. Based on our evaluation we take the determinants self-efficacy, perceived safety, trust, anxiety and legal regulation into consideration. The outcome and main contribution of this paper is the proposal of a theoretical AV technology acceptance model (AVTAM). This study concluded that the performance of these AV technologies, their safety on the road and consumer’s trust for the AV manufacturers will play a very important role for mass AV adoption

Exploring 2D/3D input techniques for medical image analysis

We describe a series of experiments that compared the 2D and 3D input methods for selection and positioning tasks related to medical image analysis. For this study, we chose a switchable P5 glove controller, which can be used to provide both 2DOF and 6DOF input control. Our results suggest that for both tasks the overall completion time and accuracy can be improved when the input device with more degrees of freedom is used for manipulation of the visualized medical data. However, 3D input appeared to be more beneficial for the positioning task than for the selection task