Prevalence and Pattern of Consanguineous Marriages Among Different Communities in Mangalore

Introduction: Consanguineous marriages are a common practice in the Middle East, Asian and African populations. Many studies have stated an association between first cousin marriages and the incidence of autosomal recessive diseases and congenital malformations. High frequency of consanguinity is reported by researchers among South India. The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence and type of consanguineous marriages among the different communities of Mangalore. Methods: This study was conducted on 1164 married women in Mangalore to investigate the prevalence and type of consanguineous marriages. All the women were interviewed personally using a structured questionnaire. Family pedigree was constructed to study the type of consanguineous marriages. Data analysis was done by SPSS Win 13.0. Results: A low percentage of consanguinity (6.53%) was observed with a mean inbreeding coefficient of 0.0339. Frequency of consanguinity between religions was highly significant. Of these the most frequent were first cousin marriages (43.42%). Within Hindu religion the highest rate of consanguinity was among the Billavas (47.62%) of which the most frequent were distant relative marriages (75%) followed by second cousin marriages (57.14%). There was no significant difference in the frequency distribution of the types of consanguinity between the religions and also between the different groups among Hindus. Conclusion: The frequency of consanguinity was found to be low in Mangalore. The findings contradict with the earlier reports of high prevalence of consanguineous marriages in South India. Increased female education, increased socio-economic status and decrease in parental decisions in marriages may be the reasons

Industry 4.0 Benefits, Challenges, Critical Success Factors: Comparative analysis through the lens of Resource Dependence Theory across continents and economies

Purpose: As we enter a new era of digital transformation, Industry 4.0 promises to revolutionize the way we do business, providing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. This study aims to investigate empirically and comparatively analyse the benefits, challenges, and critical success factors of Industry 4.0 (I 4.0) across four continents and developing and developed economies. Methodology: This study employed an online survey to explore the benefits, challenges, and critical success factors of developed and developing economies. In order to ensure the validity of the survey, a pilot test was conducted with 10 respondents. A total of 149 participants with senior managerial, vice-presidential, and directorial positions from developed and developing economies spanning four continents were invited to take part in the survey. Findings: The study ranks benefits, challenges and CSFs across economies and continents. Further, the benefit of Industry 4.0 helping to achieve organizational efficiency and agility differed across the developing and developed economies. Further, the benefit improves customer satisfaction significantly differed across continents; in terms of challenges, Employee resistance to change had a higher proportion in developing economies. Future viability of Industry 4.0 also differed across the continents. Regarding CSFs, there was no difference across the developing and developed economies. Finally, change management and project management vary across the continents. Implications: This study contributes to a balanced understanding of Industry 4.0 by providing empirical evidence for a comparative analysis. Moreover, it extends the concept of Resource- Dependent Theory (RDT) to explain how organizations in developing economies and developed economies deploy resources to manage external condition uncertainties to implement Industry 4.0. Furthermore, this study provides a structural framework to understand the specific benefits, challenges, and critical success factors of implementing Industry 4.0, which can be utilized by policymakers to promote Industry 4.0 in their economies or continents. Originality of Value: As far as our knowledge goes, no studies have empirically demonstrated the comparative analysis of benefits, challenges and CSFs across economies and continents and distinguish an original contribution of our work

Technology acceptance, social marketing and the design of a mobile health app to support active aging amongst senior citizens in the Asia Pacific region

This chapter presents the findings from a usability study on health apps on older members of the population in the Asia-Pacific region. Life expectancy continues to increase around the world, and this has long-term implications for society in terms of managing the health care needs of an ageing population. Mobile health apps are increasingly seen as a mechanism to help improve the health, independence and quality of life of older individuals. However, health professionals highlight that the natural process of ageing has, in general, an adverse impact on people's physical and cognitive functions; hence, closer interactions between health care and technology researchers are necessary to ensure that health apps correctly address the needs of this target population. This study shows that several design aspects of health apps in the marketplace require modification to produce robust, reliable, meaningful and usable technologies. The research draws on the concept of usability and the technology acceptance model to explain the factors that predict the successful adoption of health apps amongst senior members of the population in Singapore and Australia