Factors Influencing the Adoption of Internet Banking

A research framework based on the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen 1985) and the diffusion of innovations theory (Rogers 1983) was used to identify the attitudinal, social and perceived behavioral control factors that would influence the adoption of Internet banking. An online questionnaire was designed on the World Wide Web (WWW). Respondents participated through extensive personalized e-mail invitations as well as postings to newsgroups and hyperlinks from selected Web sites. The results revealed that attitudinal and perceived behavioral control factors, rather than social influence, play a significant role in influencing the intention to adopt Internet banking. In particular, perceptions of relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, and risk toward using the Internet were found to influence intentions to adopt Internet banking services. In addition, confidence in using such services as well as perception of government support for electronic commerce were also found to influence intentions. The implications of the study are discussed and suggestions for future research presented

Seeing a talking face matters: The relationship between cortical tracking of continuous auditory ‐visual speech and gaze behaviour in infants, children and adults

Available online 15 April 2022An auditory-visual speech benefit, the benefit that visual speech cues bring to auditory speech perception, is experienced from early on in infancy and continues to be experienced to an increasing degree with age. While there is both behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for children and adults, only behavioural evidence exists for infants –as no neurophysiological study has provided a comprehensive examination of the auditory- visual speech benefit in infants. It is also surprising that most studies on auditory-visual speech benefit do not concurrently report looking behaviour especially since the auditory-visual speech benefit rests on the assumption that listeners attend to a speaker’s talking face and that there are meaningful individual differences in looking behaviour. To address these gaps, we simultaneously recorded electroencephalographic (EEG) and eye-tracking data of 5-month-olds, 4-year-olds and adults as they were presented with a speaker in auditory-only (AO), visual- only (VO), and auditory-visual (AV) modes. Cortical tracking analyses that involved forward encoding models of the speech envelope revealed that there was an auditory-visual speech benefit [i.e., AV > ( A + V )], evident in 5-month-olds and adults but not 4-year-olds. Examination of cortical tracking accuracy in relation to looking behaviour, showed that infants’ relative attention to the speaker’s mouth (vs. eyes) was positively correlated with cortical tracking accuracy of VO speech, whereas adults’ attention to the display overall was negatively correlated with cortical tracking accuracy of VO speech. This study provides the first neurophysiological evidence of auditory-visual speech benefit in infants and our results suggest ways in which current models of speech processing can be fine-tuned.This research was funded by a doctoral scholarship to the first author funded by the MARCS Institute at Western Sydney University and the HEARing Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), and by HEARingCRC funding to the last author. The second author’s work is supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018–2021 program, and PIBA PI-2019–0054, and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the Ramon y Cajal Research Fellowship, PID2019– 105528GA-I00

Tracking Control of Vertical Pneumatic Artificial Muscle System Using PID

The advantages of pneumatic system such as compactness, high power to weight ratio, ease of maintenance, cleanliness and inherent safety led to the development of McKibben muscle and pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM). However, the air compressibility and the lack of damping ability of PAM bring dynamic delay to the pressure response and causes oscillatory motion to occur. It is not easy to realize the motion with high accuracy and high speed due to all the non-linear characteristics of pneumatic system. In this paper, we present a vertical PAM system with a simple PID controller to control the motion of the PAM. The experiment setup is explained and Ziegler Nichols tuning method is used in getting the approximation PID parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm is demonstrated through experiments

Lifestyle Modifies the Diabetes-Related Metabolic Risk, Conditional on Individual Genetic Differences

Metabolic syndrome is a group of heritable metabolic traits that are highly associated with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Classical interventions to T2DM include individual selfmanagement of environmental risk factors, such as improving diet quality, increasing physical activity, and reducing smoking and alcohol consumption, which decreases the risk of developing metabolic syndrome. However, it is poorly understood how the phenotypes of diabetes-related metabolic traits change with respect to lifestyle modifications at the individual level. In the analysis, we used 12 diabetes-related metabolic traits and eight lifestyle covariates from the UK Biobank comprising 288,837 white British participants genotyped for 1,133,273 genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms. We found 16 GxE interactions. Modulation of genetic effects by physical activity was seen for four traits (glucose, HbA1c, C-reactive protein, systolic blood pressure) and by alcohol and smoking for three (BMI, glucose, waist–hip ratio and BMI and diastolic and systolic blood pressure, respectively). We also found a number of significant phenotypic modulations by the lifestyle covariates, which were not attributed to the genetic effects in the model. Overall, modulation in the metabolic risk in response to the level of lifestyle covariates was clearly observed, and its direction and magnitude were varied depending on individual differences. We also showed that the metabolic risk inferred by our model was notably higher in T2DM prospective cases than controls. Our findings highlight the importance of individual genetic differences in the prevention and management of diabetes and suggest that the one-size-fits-all approach may not benefit all.Jisu Shin, Xuan Zhou, Joanne T. M. Tan, Elina Hyppönen, Beben Benyamin, and S. Hong Le

Sulphonylurea Usage in Melioidosis Is Associated with Severe Disease and Suppressed Immune Response

10.1371/journal.pntd.0002795PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases84

In situ observations of coral spawning and spawn slick at Lankayan Island, Sabah, Malaysia

Sexual reproduction of corals is one of the most important processes for the persistence of coral populations. The Coral Triangle is recognised as a global hotspot of marine biodiversity, harbouring 75% of the world coral species. However, coral reproductive studies remain underrepresented in many reefs in the Coral Triangle. This study reports the coral spawning and spawn slicks occurrences from 2012 to 2019 at Lankayan Island, Malaysia, a small island located in the Sulu Sea at the westernmost boundary of the Coral Triangle. A total of 14 species belonging to three genera and two families were recorded to spawn on the reefs between March and May in 2012–2015 and 2019. Between one and eight species spawned on each observed spawning night. Acropora corals appear to dominate the spawning events based on direct observations on the reefs. Coral-spawn slicks were observed during March to May every year and in October 2019. We observed coral spawning between March and May in Lankayan Island, similar to other localities within the Coral Triangle. © 2021, Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung