A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Relationships among Post-secondary Students’ Attitudes Toward Statistics and Statistics Achievement

Background: An understanding of statistics is essential in our data-driven world. Accordingly, successful completion of a statistics course is required for undergraduate and graduate students from many disciplines. Attitudes toward statistics is a multidimensional construct that expresses individuals’ positive or negative dispositions to statistics. A wide body of research indicates that there are statistically significant relationships among attitudes toward statistics and statistics achievement. However, the reported magnitudes of these relationships differ across studies.  Methods/Design: This review will examine the relationships among post-secondary students’ scores on the attitude components assessed by the Survey of Attitudes toward Statistics (SATS) and their statistics achievement assessed using a variety of measures. As the data allow, this review then will explore the impact of possible moderating research characteristics including, for example, those associated with research sources, institutions, courses, subjects, and the SATS and statistics achievement measures. Discussion: In the resulting journal article, this section will focus on the results and the strengths and limitations of the synthesized literature. We expect that the study will contribute to the literature on the relationship between attitudes toward statistics and achievement by synthesizing the individual research results. The availability of the required information and the quality of primary studies will be potential limitations for the current study

Translational Research: Palatal-derived Ecto-mesenchymal Stem Cells from Human Palate: A New Hope for Alveolar Bone and Cranio-Facial Bone Reconstruction

The management of facial defects has rapidly changed in the last decade. Functional and esthetic requirements have steadily increased along with the refinements of surgery. In the case of advanced atrophy or jaw defects, extensive horizontal and vertical bone augmentation is often unavoidable to enable patients to be fitted with implants. Loss of vertical alveolar bone height is the most common cause for a non primary stability of dental implants in adults. At present, there is no ideal therapeutic approach to cure loss of vertical alveolar bone height and achieve optimal pre-implantological bone regeneration before dental implant placement. Recently, it has been found that specific populations of stem cells and/or progenitor cells could be isolated from different dental resources, namely the dental follicle, the dental pulp and the periodontal ligament. Our research group has cultured palatal-derived stem cells (paldSCs) as dentospheres and further differentiated into various cells of the neuronal and osteogenic lineage, thereby demonstrating their stem cell state. In this publication will be shown whether paldSCs could be differentiated into the osteogenic lineage and, if so, whether these cells are able to regenerate alveolar bone tissue in vivo in an athymic rat model. Furthermore, using these data we have started a proof of principle clinical- and histological controlled study using stem cell-rich palatal tissues for improving the vertical alveolar bone augmentation in critical size defects. The initial results of the study demonstrate the feasibility of using stem cell-mediated tissue engineering to treat alveolar bone defects in humans

Proposal, project, practice, pause: developing a framework for evaluating smart domestic product engagement

Smart homes are fast becoming a reality, with smart TVs, smart meters and other such “smart” devices/systems already representing a substantial household presence. These, which we collectively term “smart domestic products” (SDPs), will need to be promoted, adopted, and normalized into daily routines. Despite this, the marketing canon lacks a substantive discourse on pertinent research. We look to help correct this by melding ideas from organizational sociology, innovation diffusion and appropriation studies, and service dominant logic. Consequently, we suggest a framework for research that responds directly to the specific characteristics of SDPs. Using the SDP eco-system as a context, our framework emphasizes the interplay of embeddedness, practice, value and engagement. It comprises a four-stage horizontal/ longitudinal axis we describe as proposal, project, practice and pause. Cross-sectionally we focus on value, and combine aspects of existing thought to suggest how this impacts each stage of our engagement continuum. We subsequently identify perceived personal advantage as the resultant of these two axes and propose this as the key for understanding consumer and SDP sociomaterial engagement. This article also advances a definition of SDPs and ends with an agenda for further research

Language in international business: a review and agenda for future research

A fast growing number of studies demonstrates that language diversity influences almost all management decisions in modern multinational corporations. Whereas no doubt remains about the practical importance of language, the empirical investigation and theoretical conceptualization of its complex and multifaceted effects still presents a substantial challenge. To summarize and evaluate the current state of the literature in a coherent picture informing future research, we systematically review 264 articles on language in international business. We scrutinize the geographic distributions of data, evaluate the field’s achievements to date in terms of theories and methodologies, and summarize core findings by individual, group, firm, and country levels of analysis. For each of these dimensions, we then put forward a future research agenda. We encourage scholars to transcend disciplinary boundaries and to draw on, integrate, and test a variety of theories from disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to gain a more profound understanding of language in international business. We advocate more multi-level studies and cross-national research collaborations and suggest greater attention to potential new data sources and means of analysis