Examining the role of three sets of innovation attributes for determining adoption of the interbank mobile payment service

The interbank mobile payment service (IMPS) is a very recent technology in India that serves the very critical purpose of a mobile wallet. To account for the adoption and use of IMPS by the Indian consumers, this study seeks to compare three competing sets of attributes borrowed from three recognized pieces of work in the area of innovations adoption. This study aims to examine which of the three sets of attributes better predicts the adoption of IMPS in an Indian context. The research model is empirically tested and validated against the data gathered from 323 respondents from different cities in India. The findings are analysed using the SPSS analysis tool, which are then discussed to derive the key conclusions from this study. The research implications are stated, limitations listed and suggestions for future research on this technology are then finally made

Anatomical heterogeneity of tendon: Fascicular and interfascicular tendon compartments have distinct proteomic composition

This study was funded by the BBSRC (BB/K008412/1)

Reducing anemia prevalence in Afghanistan: socioeconomic correlates and the particular role of agricultural assets

This research aims to examine the socio-economic correlates of anemia in women, and potential sources of iron in household diets in Afghanistan. It also examines whether ownership of agricultural (particularly livestock) assets and their use in food production has a role in alleviating anaemia, especially where local markets may be inadequate. We analyse data from the 2010/11 Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, estimating a logistic regression to examine how anemia status of women is associated with socio-economic covariates. A key result found is that sheep ownership has a protective effect in reducing anemia (prevalence odds ratio of sheep ownership on anemia of 0.83, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.73–0.94) after controlling for wealth and other covariates. This association is found to be robust to alternative model specifications. Given the central role of red meat in heme iron provision and absorption of non-heme iron, we hypothesise that sheep ownership promotes mutton consumption from own-production in a setting where market-sourced provision of nutritious food is a challenge. We then use the 2011/12 National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment household data to understand the Afghan diet from the perspective of dietary iron provision, and to understand interactions between own-production, market sourcing and mutton consumption. Sheep ownership is found to increase the likelihood that a household consumed mutton (odds ratio of 1.27, 95% CI: 1.15–1.42), the number of days in the week that mutton was consumed (prevalence rate ratio of 1.24. 95% CI: 1.12–1.37) and the quantity of mutton consumed (7 grams/person/week). In the subsample of mutton consumers, households sourcing mutton mostly from own production consumed mutton 1.5 days more frequently on average than households relying on market purchase, resulting in 100 grams per person per week higher mutton intake. Thus this analysis lends support to the notion that the linkage between sheep ownership and anemia risk is at least partly due to consumption arising from own-production in the presence of market incompleteness

Enhancing organisational competitiveness via social media - a strategy as practice perspective

The affordances, popularity and pervasive use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have made these platforms attractive to organisations for enhancing their competitiveness and creating business value. Despite this apparent significance of social media for businesses, they are struggling with the development of a social media strategy as well as understanding the implications of social media on practice within their organisations. This paper explores how social media has become a tool for competitiveness and its influence on organisational strategy and practice. Using the 'strategy as practice' lens and guided by the interpretivist philosophy, this paper uses the empirical case of a telecom organisation in Tanzania. The findings show that social media is influencing competitiveness through imitation and product development. Also, the findings indicate how social media affects the practices within an organisation, consequently making the social media strategy an emergent phenomenon

Re-examining the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT): Towards a Revised Theoretical Model

YesBased on a critical review of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this study first formalized an alternative theoretical model for explaining the acceptance and use of information system (IS) and information technology (IT) innovations. The revised theoretical model was then empirically examined using a combination of meta-analysis and structural equation modelling (MASEM) techniques. The meta-analysis was based on 1600 observations on 21 relationships coded from 162 prior studies on IS/IT acceptance and use. The SEM analysis showed that attitude: was central to behavioural intentions and usage behaviours, partially mediated the effects of exogenous constructs on behavioural intentions, and had a direct influence on usage behaviours. A number of implications for theory and practice are derived based on the findings

Early Secreted Antigen ESAT-6 of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Promotes Protective T Helper 17 Cell Responses in a Toll-Like Receptor-2-dependent Manner

Despite its relatively poor efficacy, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) has been used as a tuberculosis (TB) vaccine since its development in 1921. BCG induces robust T helper 1 (Th1) immune responses but, for many individuals, this is not sufficient for host resistance against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) infection. Here we provide evidence that early secreted antigenic target protein 6 (ESAT-6), expressed by the virulent M. tb strain H37Rv but not by BCG, promotes vaccine-enhancing Th17 cell responses. These activities of ESAT-6 were dependent on TLR-2/MyD88 signalling and involved IL-6 and TGF-β production by dendritic cells. Thus, animals that were previously infected with H37Rv or recombinant BCG containing the RD1 region (BCG::RD1) exhibited improved protection upon re-challenge with virulent H37Rv compared with mice previously infected with BCG or RD1-deficient H37Rv (H37RvΔRD1). However, TLR-2 knockout (TLR-2-/-) animals neither showed Th17 responses nor exhibited improved protection in response to immunization with H37Rv. Furthermore, H37Rv and BCG::RD1 infection had little effect on the expression of the anti-inflammatory microRNA-146a (miR146a) in dendritic cells (DCs), whereas BCG and H37RvΔRD1 profoundly induced its expression in DCs. Consistent with these findings, ESAT-6 had no effect on miR146a expression in uninfected DCs, but dramatically inhibited its upregulation in BCG-infected or LPS-treated DCs. Collectively, our findings indicate that, in addition to Th1 immunity induced by BCG, RD1/ESAT-6-induced Th17 immune responses are essential for optimal vaccine efficacy

PICS-Ord: unlimited coding of ambiguous regions by pairwise identity and cost scores ordination

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We present a novel method to encode ambiguously aligned regions in fixed multiple sequence alignments by 'Pairwise Identity and Cost Scores Ordination' (PICS-Ord). The method works via ordination of sequence identity or cost scores matrices by means of Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA). After identification of ambiguous regions, the method computes pairwise distances as sequence identities or cost scores, ordinates the resulting distance matrix by means of PCoA, and encodes the principal coordinates as ordered integers. Three biological and 100 simulated datasets were used to assess the performance of the new method.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Including ambiguous regions coded by means of PICS-Ord increased topological accuracy, resolution, and bootstrap support in real biological and simulated datasets compared to the alternative of excluding such regions from the analysis a priori. In terms of accuracy, PICS-Ord performs equal to or better than previously available methods of ambiguous region coding (e.g., INAASE), with the advantage of a practically unlimited alignment size and increased analytical speed and the possibility of PICS-Ord scores to be analyzed together with DNA data in a partitioned maximum likelihood model.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Advantages of PICS-Ord over step matrix-based ambiguous region coding with INAASE include a practically unlimited number of OTUs and seamless integration of PICS-Ord codes into phylogenetic datasets, as well as the increased speed of phylogenetic analysis. Contrary to word- and frequency-based methods, PICS-Ord maintains the advantage of pairwise sequence alignment to derive distances, and the method is flexible with respect to the calculation of distance scores. In addition to distance and maximum parsimony, PICS-Ord codes can be analyzed in a Bayesian or maximum likelihood framework. RAxML (version 7.2.6 or higher that was developed for this study) allows up to 32-state ordered or unordered characters. A GTR, MK, or ORDERED model can be applied to analyse the PICS-Ord codes partition, with GTR performing slightly better than MK and ORDERED.</p> <p>Availability</p> <p>An implementation of the PICS-Ord algorithm is available from <url>http://scit.us/projects/ngila/wiki/PICS-Ord</url>. It requires both the statistical software, R <url>http://www.r-project.org</url> and the alignment software Ngila <url>http://scit.us/projects/ngila</url>.</p