Applying marketing mix constructs in higher education: the case of an MBA programme in the UAE

This exploratory study identifies significant choice factors for prospective students when selecting a Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme in the increasingly competitive higher education sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Implications for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) when they develop marketing communication strategies are addressed. Study participants included current MBA students, MBA graduates who have completed their degree at a British University’s campus in the UAE and prospective students who chose not to enrol on that MBA programme. Constructs were tested for reliability using the Cronbach Alpha test. The relative importance of specific choice factors were assessed via analysis of the means of the constructs. The difference between the most important (People) and least important (Promotion) factors were as much as 34%. Differences between three groups of study participants were analysed based on the results of Scheffé's post-hoc test. Marketing implications for HEIs include: improving the quality of the factors identified and communicating the quality of these factors; especially intangible ones, to potential MBA candidates more effectively

Clinical, histological and prognostic features of a novel nail-bed lesion of cats: 41 cases

There is a distinct subset of lesions arising on the digits of cats, located at or close to the nail-bed epithelium, which are typically composed of proliferative fibroblast-like cells, multinucleate giant cells and areas of osseous metaplasia, but currently there is no published literature detailing the clinical or histological features of these lesions. This study identified 41 such cases from two large commercial diagnostic laboratories and assessed various histological and clinical features; 22 cases had additional follow-up data available

Complex critical exponents for percolation transitions in Josephson-junction arrays, antiferromagnets, and interacting bosons

We show that the critical behavior of quantum systems undergoing a percolation transition is dramatically affected by their topological Berry phase $2\pi\rho$. For irrational $\rho$, we demonstrate that the low-energy excitations of diluted Josephson-junctions arrays, quantum antiferromagnets, and interacting bosons are spinless fermions with fractal spectrum. As a result, critical properties not captured by the usual Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson description of phase transitions emerge, such as complex critical exponents, log-periodic oscillations and dynamically broken scale-invariance.Comment: revised version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Harvesting the power of fungal entomopathogens for controlling arthropod pests in Brazil.

Here we summarize our progress in innovative liquid fermentation and formulation technologies that produce stable, infective fungal propagules for use in biocontrol of arthropod pests

Fixação biológica do nitrogênio e colonização micorrízica em genótipos de caupi (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) cultivados em solo de tabuleiros costeiros.

Estudo conduzido para avaliar a variabilidade entre dez genótipos de caupi quanto a características relacionadas à fixação biológica do nitrogênio (FBN) e à colonizaçõa por fungos micorrízicos arbusculares (FMA).bitstream/CPATC-2009-09/20519/1/bp_35.pd

Optical and Near Infrared Study of the Cepheus E outflow, a very low excitation object

We present images and spectra of the Cepheus E (Cep E) region at both optical and infrared wavelengths. Only the brightest region of the southern lobe of the Cep E outflow reveals optical emission, suggesting that the extinction close to the outflow source plays an important r\^ole in the observed difference between the optical and IR morphologies. Cep E is a unique object since it provides a link between the spectroscopic properties of the optical Herbig-Haro (HH) objects and those of deeply embedded outflows.Comment: Accepted Astron. J., 8 files: paper, tables plus 6 figure

Possible unconventional superconductivity in substituted BaFe2_{2}As2_{2} revealed by magnetic pair-breaking studies

The possible existence of a sign-changing gap symmetry in BaFe$_{2}$As$_{2}$-derived superconductors (SC) has been an exciting topic of research in the last few years. To further investigate this subject we combine Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) and pressure-dependent transport measurements to investigate magnetic pair-breaking effects on BaFe$_{1.9}M_{0.1}$As$_{2}$ ($M=$ Mn, Co, Cu, and Ni) single crystals. An ESR signal, indicative of the presence of localized magnetic moments, is observed only for $M=$ Cu and Mn compounds, which display very low SC transition temperature ($T_{c}$) and no SC, respectively. From the ESR analysis assuming the absence of bottleneck effects, the microscopic parameters are extracted to show that this reduction of $T_{c}$ cannot be accounted by the Abrikosov-Gorkov pair-breaking expression for a sign-preserving gap function. Our results reveal an unconventional spin- and pressure-dependent pair-breaking effect and impose strong constraints on the pairing symmetry of these materials