The impact of technophobia on technology acceptance and the moderating influence of transformational leadership, organizational climate, and emotional intelligence

This study sought to investigate the relationship between technophobia and technology acceptance. In addition, this study examined the moderating influence of variables such as transformational leadership, organizational climate, and emotional intelligence has any influence on that relationship. This study determined that there is a significant negative relationship between technophobia and technology acceptance. Furthermore, all moderating variable were found to have a strong moderating influence on the relationship between technophobia and technology acceptance. In other words, transformational leadership, organizational climate, and emotional intelligence lessen the strength of the negative correlation to the point that technophobia and technology acceptance were no longer correlated. Previous studies investigate technophobia using technologies that are no longer new; computers, fax machine, email, VCRs, and ATMs. In the conclusion of the study, it was suggested the future studies should further investigate technophobia with different variables

The impact of Project Lead The Way gateway to technology foundation unit completion on students\u27 critical-thinking skills

Georgetown\u27s Public Policy Institute (2013) reported that the fastest growing occupations and the highest demand for college education and training fields will be in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM), healthcare, and community services. One of the K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programs\u27 purposes is to promote critical-thinking skills (Johnson, 1992). This study examined the impact of Project Lead The Way Gateway to Technology (PLTW-GTT) units, a middle school STEM program, on the critical-thinking skills of middle school students. Quasi experimental research methods were utilized to test the impact of the completion of two PLTW-GTT foundation units on students\u27 critical thinking scores as measured by the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). Participants from the sixth- and seventh-grades of a suburban middle school in a Midwestern state formed two sets of treatment and control groups. Students enrolled in the PLTW Design and Modeling (D&M) (63 participants) and Automation and Robotics (A&R) (27 students) units along with two control groups (28 and 19 respectively) completed the CCTST at the beginning and at the end of the units. The results of the study indicated that completion of the PLTW Design and Modeling (DM) unit had a significant positive influence on participants\u27 critical-thinking skills when compared to the control group. The Automation and Robotics (AR) unit had no significant impact on participants\u27 critical-thinking skills when compared to a corresponding control group. There appeared to be some inconsistencies in the data collection steps which may have affected the AR unit results. Therefore, future studies to test the impact of the AR unit on critical thinking are recommended. An additional finding was that both of the PLTW-GTT foundation units influenced the critical-thinking skills of male and female participants similarly. Selected results may be generalized to schools that possess similar characteristics to those possessed by the sample school. Since the sample used for this study did not include a variety of ethnicities or races, it is recommended that future studies include schools with a larger proportion of ethnic and racial diversity. Finally, there was some evidence that experiences at the sample school may be influencing students to pursue STEM careers. This phenomenon should be investigated in future studies

The Effectiveness of a Counseling Supervision Program Based on the Cognitive Model on Reducing the Level of the Psychological Burnout of Educational Counselors in Irbid Governorate

The study aimed to identify the effectiveness of a supervisory supervision program based on the cognitive model in reducing the level of psychological burnout among educational counselors in the governorate of Irbid. The sample of the study consisted of (30) male and female educational counselors working in public and private schools in the Directorate of Education for the Bani Obeid District. The study sample members were distributed randomly into two groups: an experimental group with a number of (15) male and female instructors who received training, and a control group of (15) male and female mentors who did not receive training. The performance of members of the experimental and control groups was measured on the psychological burnout scale before and after the supervisory program, while the follow-up measure was taken for the experimental group one month after the end of the program. The results of the study showed that there were statistically significant differences in the post measurement between the experimental and control groups on the Burnout Scale and its dimensions in favor of the experimental group. The results also showed that there were no statistically significant differences on the total score of the Burnout Scale and its dimensions between the post and follow-up measures

Challenges and prospects of community management in Ghana

Challenges and prospects of community management in Ghan

Application of the disposition model to breast cancer data

In this paper, we have presented the second level nesting of Bonney's disposition model (Bonney, 1998) and examined the implications of higher level nesting of the disposition model in relation to the dimension of the parameter space. We have also compared the performance of the disposition model with Cox's regression model (Cox, 1972). It has been observed that the disposition model has a very large number of unknown parameters, and is therefore limited by the method of estimation used. In the case of the maximum likelihood method, reasonable estimates are obtained if the number of parameters in the model is at most nine. This corresponds to about four to seven covariates. Since each covariate in Cox's model provides a parameter, it is possible to include more covariates in the regression analysis. On the other hand, as opposed to Cox's model, the disposition model is fitted with parameters to capture aggregation in families, if there should be any. The choice of a particular model should therefore depend on the available data set and the purpose of the statistical analysis. --Second level nesting,Proportional hazards model,Quadratic exponential form,Partial likelihood,Familial aggregation,Second-order methods,Marginal models,Conditional models

Health education in water and sanitation projects

Health education in water and sanitation project

Comparative study of analgesic effectiveness of single doses of paracetamol and ibuprofen in a dental pain model

Objective: The overall aim of this study is to evaluate the analgesic effectiveness of paracetamol and ibuprofen in the pharmacologic management of acute post-operative dental pain.Method: This study employed the visual analogue scale to measure the effectiveness of single doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol over a six-hour period, following a third molar surgery in a homogenous study population, matched for age, body mass index (BMI) and gender. Alarms were set to remind patients to score pain intensity at time point 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 hours, post-dosing. A measure of the difference between the pain scores at the various time interval and that at the basal level (time 0) is the pain intensity difference (PID) at the various time intervals. Data obtained were analysed, using the SPSS version 16.0. (Chicago, IL, USA). Inferential statistics used include Chi squared test and a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). P<0.05 was considered  significant.Result: Ibuprofen showed a statistically significant superiority over paracetamol from time 2.5 hours to the sixth hour (P<0.05). There is no significant difference between paracetamol and placebo (P>0.05). The difference per dose prices of ibuprofen and paracetamol is negligible. Probability of developing significant pain following use of paracetamol is greater than 0.9, the relative risk is 1.10 and the odds 10.3, C.I. 95%.Conclusion: This study concludes that ibuprofen is significantly more efficacious than paracetamol in the management of post-surgical dental pain and suggests that paracetamol should not be prescribed as a sole agent for analgesia after a third molar surgery.Key words: Analgesic effectiveness, dental pain, pharmacologic managemen

An mTORC1 to HRI signaling axis promotes cytotoxicity of proteasome inhibitors in multiple myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) causes approximately 20% of deaths from blood cancers. Notwithstanding significant therapeutic progress, such as with proteasome inhibitors (PIs), MM remains incurable due to the development of resistance. mTORC1 is a key metabolic regulator, which frequently becomes dysregulated in cancer. While mTORC1 inhibitors reduce MM viability and synergize with other therapies in vitro, clinically, mTORC1 inhibitors are not effective for MM. Here we show that the inactivation of mTORC1 is an intrinsic response of MM to PI treatment. Genetically enforced hyperactivation of mTORC1 in MM was sufficient to compromise tumorigenicity in mice. In vitro, mTORC1-hyperactivated MM cells gained sensitivity to PIs and hypoxia. This was accompanied by increased mitochondrial stress and activation of the eIF2α kinase HRI, which initiates the integrated stress response. Deletion of HRI elevated the toxicity of PIs in wt and mTORC1-activated MM. Finally, we identified the drug PMA as a robust inducer of mTORC1 activity, which synergized with PIs in inducing MM cell death. These results help explain the clinical inefficacy of mTORC1 inhibitors in MM. Our data implicate mTORC1 induction and/or HRI inhibition as pharmacological strategies to enhance MM therapy by PIs

On the Index of the Group Generated by Relative Units

AbstractLet L/K be a finite abelian extension of algebraic number fields. We consider the group generated by "relative units" of cyclic subextensions of L/K. We majorize its index in the full group of units of L