Evaluation Of Tannin From Rhizophora Apiculata As Rust Converter

The main objective of this research is to formulate rust C<?nverter formulations based on tannin and to evaluate their rust conversion performance. The tannins that were used in this study were extracted from mangrove (Rhizophora apiculata) barks which are the waste product from charcoal industry. The extraction of mangrove bark with 70 % aqueous acetone produced 23.6 % mixed tannin, which contained 12.3 % hydrolysable tannin and 8.7 % condensed tannin. The quantifications of tannin have been carried out by several assays, such as Prussian blue assay for total phenolic determination; vanillin assay to estimate condensed tannin, Stiasny test to provide the estimation of the total flavanoid that react with formaldehyde

Pharmaceutical enterprises’ market entry strategies

The pharmaceutical sector encompasses a wide range of business activities – research and product development, manufacturing, marketing, international business, wholesale, retail and services. Consequently, it is facing the contemporary challenges of globalisation, sustainable development, social, economic and political change. At the same time, pharmaceuticals have a significant impact on the provision of health care, which limits the freedom of business. In framework of this research the applicability of the International business theories to pharmaceutical sector, as well as the major factors influencing the enterprise’ choice of the market entry mode are explored. The organisation of healthcare and its financing system are important external factors influencing the market entry strategy of the pharmaceutical company. Focusing on the healthcare market as a platform for medical entrepreneurship and significant regulatory interventions, it should be noted that, in a context of globalization, healthcare is characterised as both an international business and an area to strong government influence and demand generation. In the process of market entry strategy development, pharmaceutical enterprises more often choose the direct exporting, contractual modes and foreign direct investments as the market entry modes. In these circumstances, the Managed Entry Agreements become topical to ensure the availability of new medicines for patients and to encourage the pharmaceutical enterprises to come into market

Understanding IT-enabled organizational change: A structurational perspective

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

Organizational innovation for SME'S: a model for Latvia

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can be a significant source of innovation in small economies. SMEs face challenges of limited capacity, personnel and resources for long-term investments. Additionally, they might not see and understand the benefits of innovation. Implementation of organizational innovation (OI) could give such enterprises an opportunity to improve competitiveness and develop other types of innovation. The purpose of this study is to develop a model, explaining OI through such factors as organizational culture (OC) and knowledge management (KM) in SMEs via an empirical study across various industries. Surveying 600 SMEs in Latvia, the authors explore the contribution of organizational factors - cooperation, trust, inclusive decision making, result orientation and long-term strategic planning, as well as knowledge management and organizational learning processes to OI performance. The authors propose a conceptual model in several steps, the current step focuses on Organizational Innovation Analysis through Regression Methods and on a final step a whole model for all kinds of Innovation outputs (not only organizational) will be designed through Structural Equation Modelling. After current analysis the influence of Human/Individual values over Organizational Innovation seems to be confirmed

A firm’s organizational innovation and organizational learning abilities

Many recent studies are dedicated to the problem of innovation as a mean of improving a firm’s overall performance. Various kinds of innovation in a firm usually are closely interrelated with each other. While the majority of studies focus on technological - product and process - innovation, the investigation of non-technological - marketing and organizational - innovation (ORI), has increasingly attracted the interest of researchers during the last decade. Organizational culture and organizational learning are important drivers of such innovation. For instance, a collaborative culture, trust and open-mindedness encourage new initiatives and ideas, while learning helps not just to improve skillsets and abilities of individual employees, but can also greatly contribute to strategic knowledge management and building a resilient, innovative organization. This study examines the relationship between a firm’s organizational learning ability and its organizational innovation performance. The authors consider such factors as Learning Intention – seeing learning as a key investment and organizational commitment to it, and Openness - open-mindedness and organizational culture open to new ideas and worldviews. This study contributes to the theory of ORI by finding the answer to the question what impact these factors could have on ORI development in a firm. The findings are based on a quantitative analysis of more than 150 small and medium-sized enterprises surveyed in Russia and Latvia. The survey questions measuring ORI performance were developed in line with the widely used definition introduced in the OECD - Eurostat Oslo Manual. The scales for organizational learning were adopted from the previous studies elaborated this area of a firm activity. The survey compared a firm’s innovation performance to that of its closest competitors. This research demonstrates that some of the elements of organizational learning positively influence ORI activity. The results also suggest that Latvian companies differ from Russian ones in terms of their organizational learning intention

INFLUENTIAL DETERMINANTS OF INNOVATION: CASE STUDY OF LATVIA AND GERMANY

Innovation is often recognized as a vital source of competitive advantage for business. Taking into account the conditions of increasingglobalization at a high level of intensity as well as a rapidly changing technological landscape and also continuous customerdemands for new products and services on the modern market, it is needed to assume that businesses have to innovate in order tosurvive and prosper in the contemporary environment. In the context of the paper at hand the main attention is given to the analysisof the theoretical and empirical aspects of the concept of innovation. There were applied such economic science research methods asmonographic, grouping, reference, generalization, graphical analysis and content analysis.KEY WORDS: innovation, growth, Germany, Latvia, competitiveness, enterprise

Designing, implementing and testing an intervention of affective intelligent agents in nursing virtual reality teaching simulations:a qualitative study

Emotions play an important role in human-computer interaction, but there is limited research on affective and emotional virtual agent design in the area of teaching simulations for healthcare provision. The purpose of this work is twofold: firstly, to describe the process for designing affective intelligent agents that are engaged in automated communications such as person to computer conversations, and secondly to test a bespoke prototype digital intervention which implements such agents. The presented study tests two distinct virtual learning environments, one of which was enhanced with affective virtual patients, with nine 3rd year nursing students specialising in mental health, during their professional practice stage. All (100%) of the participants reported that, when using the enhanced scenario, they experienced a more realistic representation of carer/patient interaction; better recognition of the patients’ feelings; recognition and assessment of emotions; a better realisation of how feelings can affect patients’ emotional state and how they could better empathise with the patients

Educating Health Professionals about Disability: A Review of Interventions

Health professionals need to understand the human rights and health needs of disabled people. This review of evidence on interventions demonstrates that a range of often innovative approaches have been trialled. Lectures by faculty are less effective in changing attitudes than contact with disabled people themselves. Existing examples of good practice need to be scaled up, and better and more long-term evaluations of impact are required