Towards a Stage Model for E-Business Adoption Among SMEs: Preliminary Results for Manufacturing and Service Firms

The ubiquity of the Internet has allowed companies of any size to engage in e-business. However, e-business adoption among Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) is limited because of resource constraints and a failure to understand the strategic value of e-business. In an effort to better understand the value of e-business to SMEs, this paper examines the use of over 100 e-business applications by over 400 SMEs in five different industries. Cluster analysis suggests a three stage model for e-business evolution in which firms progress from making only nominal use of the Internet to convey company information, to supply chain and order management applications in a transitional stage, to more extensive and integrated use in subsequent stages. Evidence of differences in use is also presented for firms that are manufacturers versus service providers

RELACIÓN SER HUMANO-NATURALEZA: DEBATIENDO EL DESARROLLO SOSTENIBLE DESDE LA FILOSOFÍA DE LA CIENCIA

The global ecological-economic dynamic tends to foment a false dichotomy between human beings and nature. This logic has generated a debate over the role of interdisciplinary approaches to eco-social studies. With an eye towards enriching this debate we propose a theoretical reflection on the human-nature relation y how emergent interdisciplinary connections provide a response in a society undergoing constant change

Motivating PAU language testing candidates through mobile technology

This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives License (CC BY NC ND). For non-commercial purposes you may distribute and copy the article and include it in a collective work (such as an anthology), provided you do not alter or modify the article, without permission from Elsevier. The original work must always be appropriately credited. Permission is not required for this non-commercial use. For commercial use please continue to request permission via RightsLink.[EN] Mobile learning permits combining the most motivating elements of online learning. When becoming a supplement to face-to-face education, it is likely to become a most motivating achievement in e-learning. Up to now, little interest and work has been posed in proposing mobile learning as a supporting element for language testing. In this paper, we introduce the concept of motivation for language testing through mobile telephone technology. The purpose of this study was to explore the acceptance of objective tasks by PAU candidates in an academic context. 24 students in a blended enrolled in the last high school year took a test through a mobile telephone simulator and responded to a questionnaire. Results indicate that students were genuinely interested and motivated towards independent autonomous training through mobile technology. The implications are both attractive for the different stakeholders and the educational software designers. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Ministry of Education of Spain for supporting the development and implementation of the testing system hereby mentioned under the PAUER project (HUM2007-66479-C02-01/FILO).Giménez López, JL.; García Laborda, J.; Magal Royo, T. (2011). Motivating PAU language testing candidates through mobile technology. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences. 15:12-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.03.042S12161

A Path Integral Approach to Age Dependent Branching Processes

Age dependent population dynamics are frequently modeled with generalizations of the classic McKendrick-von Foerster equation. These are deterministic systems, and a stochastic generalization was recently reported in [1,2]. Here we develop a fully stochastic theory for age-structured populations via quantum field theoretical Doi-Peliti techniques. This results in a path integral formulation where birth and death events correspond to cubic and quadratic interaction terms. This formalism allows us to efficiently recapitulate the results in [1,2], exemplifying the utility of Doi-Peliti methods. Furthermore, we find that the path integral formulation for age-structured moments has an exact perturbative expansion that explicitly relates to the hereditary structure between correlated individuals. These methods are then generalized with a binary fission model of cell division

Regional Adoption of Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce in China: Role of E-Readiness

Adoption of B2B e-commerce is a powerful driver of economic success in developed and developing countries. However, adoption rates in developing countries lag far behind. This paper draws on the Perceived eReadiness Model and research on the influence of inter-organizational relationships and economic-cultural contexts to explain the importance of three factors—inter-organizational power dependence, cooperativeness, and regional economic-cultural differences—for achieving higher levels of Internet-based Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the developing country of China. We employ survey data to empirically test both the individual and joint influence of these factors. The findings suggest that beyond intra-organizational and external factors, managers and policy makers wanting to promote Internet-based EDI adoption in developing countries must also account for the inter-organizational relationships of firms and the economic and cultural circumstances of the regions in which they operate

Daphnia revisited: Local stability and bifurcation theory for physiologically structured population models explained by way of an example

We consider the interaction between a general size-structured consumer population and an unstructured resource. We show that stability properties and bifurcation phenomena can be understood in terms of solutions of a system of two delay equations (a renewal equation for the consumer population birth rate coupled to a delay differetial equation for the resource concentration). As many results for such systems are available, we can draw rigorous conclusions concerning dynamical behaviour from an analysis of a characteristic equation. We derive the characteristic equation for a fairly general class of population models, including those based on the Kooijman-Metz Daphnia model and a model introduced by Gurney-Nisbet and Jones et al., and next obtain various ecological insights by analytical or numerical studies of special cases

Effects of lowering body temperature via hyperhydration, with and without glycerol ingestion and practical precooling on cycling time trial performance in hot and humid conditions

Background: Hypohydration and hyperthermia are factors that may contribute to fatigue and impairment of endurance performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of combining glycerol hyperhydration and an established precooling technique on cycling time trial performance in hot environmental conditions.Methods: Twelve well-trained male cyclists performed three 46.4-km laboratory-based cycling trials that included two climbs, under hot and humid environmental conditions (33.3 ± 1.1°C; 50 ± 6% r.h.). Subjects were required to hyperhydrate with 25 g.kg-1 body mass (BM) of a 4°C beverage containing 6% carbohydrate (CON) 2.5 h prior to the time trial. On two occasions, subjects were also exposed to an established precooling technique (PC) 60 min prior to the time trial, involving 14 g.kg-1 BM ice slurry ingestion and applied iced towels over 30 min. During one PC trial, 1.2 g.kg-1 BM glycerol was added to the hyperhydration beverage in a double-blind fashion (PC+G). Statistics used in this study involve the combination of traditional probability statistics and a magnitude-based inference approach.Results: Hyperhydration resulted in large reductions (-0.6 to -0.7°C) in rectal temperature. The addition of glycerol to this solution also lowered urine output (330 ml, 10%). Precooling induced further small (-0.3°C) to moderate (-0.4°C) reductions in rectal temperature with PC and PC+G treatments, respectively, when compared with CON (0.0°C, P\u3c0.05). Overall, PC+G failed to achieve a clear change in cycling performance over CON, but PC showed a possible 2% (30 s, P=0.02) improvement in performance time on climb 2 compared to CON. This improvement was attributed to subjects\u27 lower perception of effort reported over the first 10 km of the trial, despite no clear performance change during this time. No differences were detected in any other physiological measurements throughout the time trial.Conclusions: Despite increasing fluid intake and reducing core temperature, performance and thermoregulatory benefits of a hyperhydration strategy with and without the addition of glycerol, plus practical precooling, were not superior to hyperhydration alone. Further research is warranted to further refine preparation strategies for athletes competing in thermally stressful events to optimize health and maximize performance outcomes

The Impact of Different Antibiotic Regimens on the Emergence of Antimicrobial-Resistant Bacteria

Backgroud: The emergence and ongoing spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria is a major public health threat. Infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are associated with substantially higher rates of morbidity and mortality compared to infections caused by antimicrobial-susceptible bacteria. The emergence and spread of these bacteria is complex and requires incorporating numerous interrelated factors which clinical studies cannot adequately address. Methods/Principal Findings: A model is created which incorporates several key factors contributing to the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria including the effects of the immune system, acquisition of resistance genes and antimicrobial exposure. The model identifies key strategies which would limit the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant bacterial strains. Specifically, the simulations show that early initiation of antimicrobial therapy and combination therapy with two antibiotics prevents the emergence of resistant bacteria, whereas shorter courses of therapy and sequential administration of antibiotics promote the emergence of resistant strains. Conclusions/Significance: The principal findings suggest that (i) shorter lengths of antibiotic therapy and early interruption of antibiotic therapy provide an advantage for the resistant strains, (ii) combination therapy with two antibiotics prevents the emergence of resistance strains in contrast to sequential antibiotic therapy, and (iii) early initiation of antibiotics is among the most important factors preventing the emergence of resistant strains. These findings provide new insights into strategies aimed at optimizing the administration of antimicrobials for the treatment of infections and the prevention of the emergence of antimicrobial resistance

Neurotrophic requirements of human motor neurons defined using amplified and purified stem-cell derived cultures

Neurotrophic requirements of human motor neurons defined using amplified and purified stem-cell derived culturesHuman motor neurons derived from embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells (hESCs and hiPSCs) are a potentially important tool for studying motor neuron survival and pathological cell death. However, their basic survival requirements remain poorly characterized. Here, we sought to optimize a robust survival assay and characterize their response to different neurotrophic factors. First, to increase motor neuron yield, we screened a small-molecule collection and found that the Rho-associated kinase (ROCK) inhibitor Y-27632 enhances motor neuron progenitor proliferation up to 4-fold in hESC and hiPSC cultures. Next, we FACS-purified motor neurons expressing the Hb9::GFP reporter from Y-27632-amplified embryoid bodies and cultured them in the presence of mitotic inhibitors to eliminate dividing progenitors. Survival of these purified motor neurons in the absence of any other cell type was strongly dependent on neurotrophic support. GDNF, BDNF and CNTF all showed potent survival effects (EC(50) 1-2 pM). The number of surviving motor neurons was further enhanced in the presence of forskolin and IBMX, agents that increase endogenous cAMP levels. As a demonstration of the ability of the assay to detect novel neurotrophic agents, Y-27632 itself was found to support human motor neuron survival. Thus, purified human stem cell-derived motor neurons show survival requirements similar to those of primary rodent motor neurons and can be used for rigorous cell-based screening.This work was funded by Project A.L.S., P2ALS and NYSTEM grant number CO24415. The work of N.J.L. was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology SFRH/BD/33421/2008 and the Luso-American Development Foundation. B.J.-K. was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). L.R. was supported by the Swedish Brain Foundation/Hjarnfonden. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

The application of a real-time rapid-prototyping environment for the behavioral rehabilitation of a lost function in rats

Abstract-In this paper we propose a Rapid Prototyping Environment (RPE) for real-time biosignal analysis including ECG, EEG, ECoG and EMG of humans and animals requiring a very precise time resolution. Based on the previous RPE which was mainly designed for developing Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI), the present solution offers tools for data preprocessing, analysis and visualization even in the case of high sampling rates and furthermore tools for precise cognitive stimulation. One application of the system, the analysis of multi-unit activity measured from the brain of a rat is presented to prove the efficiency of the proposed environment. The experimental setup was used to design and implement a biomimetic, biohybrid model for demonstrating the recovery of a learning function lost with age. Throughout the paper we discuss the components of the setup, the software structure and the online visualization. At the end we present results of a real-time experiment in which the model of the brain learned to react to the acquired signals