Examining the Determinants of SMEs Credit Access from Commercial Banks in Tanzania

The economic development in most African countries is greatly supported by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) due to insufficient large capital to start up giant factories.  This makes it necessary to focus on how SMEs finance their activities. Extensive literature provides evidence that SMEs find it difficult to meet credit access requirement by Commercial. In view of this, the study aims to examine the determinants of credit access in Tanzania Commercial Banks (TCB) and SMEs access to the credit.The study adopted a survey based approach by choosing some commercial banks in Tanzania and randomly involving SMEs firms in the capital of the Tanzania. Using Multiple Regression Analysis, the study reveals that firm characteristics, legal documents, financial characteristics and SME owner have positive relationship with bank credit access. Most SMEs are denied credit from commercial banks due to their ineffective to provide the require materials such as financial statements, improper documentations and registration certificates, owners level of education which affects his or her understanding on credit lending and others. However, firms’ owner characteristics (education, age and experience) narrowly affect credit access. In addition, firm characteristics were perfectly significant with credit access.The paper suggested that priority sector lending and access to credit must be introduced in Tanzania. Also, policy maker should establish a credit guarantee scheme provides third-party credit risk mitigation to lenders. This will help to overcome the challenge of collateral requirement and others that make lending to SMEs risky. Keywords: Small and Medium Enterprises, credit determinants, commercial banks DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-4-01 Publication date: February 28th 202

Impact of Consumer Attitude and Online Video Advert Characteristics on Consumer Purchase Decision in Nuremberg Germany

Background: The global increased internet penetration has resulted in a shift in the way people do business. Similarly, marketers and companies have changed from traditional offline advertisements to online advertisement to increase their product reach and tap into new tech-survey customers who spend many hours online. Online Video Advertisement (OVA) is one of the forms of online advertisement that has witnessed tremendous growth over the last decade. With Germany being one of the countries with high internet penetration and high volumes of e-commerce, high internet and social media users, many companies have embraced OVA to reach this population with their brands. However, the consumers' knowledge, attitude, and perceptions of OVA have rarely been explored. It remains largely unknown how the OVA characteristics and consumer attitude on the OVA affect their purchase intention and purchase decision. In this study, we sought to assess the knowledge, attitude, and perceptions on OVA among consumers in Nuremberg, Germany and determine the influence of the OVA characteristics and consumer attitude on their purchase intention and decision. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among conveniently selected Nuremberg adult residents. A semi-structured questionnaire administered online was used for data collection using Google forms. The data was imported into Excel for cleaning before being imported into IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26.0 for analysis. For descriptive analysis, frequencies and percentages were used for categorical variables, while for the Likert scale data, mean and standard deviation were used. The reliability of the Likert scales was assessed using Cronbach alpha. Pearson's correlation was used to determine the association between the different scales, while Linear and multiple linear regression were used to quantify the association between perceptions on OVA influence of the OVA characteristics and consumer attitude (explanatory variables) and purchase intention and decision (outcome variable). Results: Of the 206 participants, 128 (62.1%) were male. Most (135; 65.5%) had frequently seen OVA, 194 (94.2%), saw it in the last one month, 169 (82.0%) on YouTube, 13 (6.3%) on Facebook, and 7 (3.4%) on Instagram. A total of 195 (94.7%) preferred OVA with the skip option. More than half (104; 50.5%) agreed that OVA reinforce product familiarity. There was a strong significant positive correlation between attitude towards OVA (r=0.622; P-value<0.001) and content and quality of OVA (r=0.602; P-value<0.001) and purchase intention. In the multiple regression analysis, attitude towards OVA, invasiveness of OVA, and OVA quality and content were significantly associated with intention to purchase and purchase decision for the advertised product (P value<0.001). Conclusion: The positive attitude of the consumer on OVA, and its content and quality are key aspects that influence consumers to purchase the advertised product while invasiveness of the OVA seems to put them off. This has implication for marketers as these are key aspects that they need to consider in designing OVA to ensure that they result in improved sales hence value for money invested in OVA advertisements. Keywords: Online Video Advertisement, Consumer decision, consumer purchase, marketing. DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/81-01 Publication date:August 31st 202

GainNet: Coordinates the Odd Couple of Generative AI and 6G Networks

The rapid expansion of AI-generated content (AIGC) reflects the iteration from assistive AI towards generative AI (GAI) with creativity. Meanwhile, the 6G networks will also evolve from the Internet-of-everything to the Internet-of-intelligence with hybrid heterogeneous network architectures. In the future, the interplay between GAI and the 6G will lead to new opportunities, where GAI can learn the knowledge of personalized data from the massive connected 6G end devices, while GAI's powerful generation ability can provide advanced network solutions for 6G network and provide 6G end devices with various AIGC services. However, they seem to be an odd couple, due to the contradiction of data and resources. To achieve a better-coordinated interplay between GAI and 6G, the GAI-native networks (GainNet), a GAI-oriented collaborative cloud-edge-end intelligence framework, is proposed in this paper. By deeply integrating GAI with 6G network design, GainNet realizes the positive closed-loop knowledge flow and sustainable-evolution GAI model optimization. On this basis, the GAI-oriented generic resource orchestration mechanism with integrated sensing, communication, and computing (GaiRom-ISCC) is proposed to guarantee the efficient operation of GainNet. Two simple case studies demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed schemes. Finally, we envision the key challenges and future directions concerning the interplay between GAI models and 6G networks.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Application of residue number systems to bent-pipe satellite communication systems

Conference Name:2011 6th International ICST Conference on Communications and Networking in China, CHINACOM 2011. Conference Address: Harbin, China. Time:August 17, 2011 - August 19, 2011.ICSTTo reduce the impact on the performance of satellites caused by space radiation environments, redundant structures are introduced into hardware design. Meanwhile, it brings in a new trouble, that is, a great deal of hardware resource is consumed. To overcome the problem, a lot of methods are proposed, one of which is using the residue number system (RNS). The RNS is proved to be suitable to all linear systems in this paper. Since the main modules of Bent-pipe (BP) satellites such as beam forming, finite impulse response (FIR) filters can be approximated to linear systems, RNS becomes an effective way to reduce the area overhead of hardware in BP mode satellite communication systems. ? 2011 IEEE

Prevalence and Characterization of Staphylococcus aureus Isolated From Women and Children in Guangzhou, China

The prevalent Staphylococcus aureus clones and antibiotic susceptibility profiles are known to change dynamically and geographically; however, recent S. aureus strains causing infections in women and children in China have not been characterized. In this study, we analyzed the molecular epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance of S. aureus isolated from patients in four centers for women and children in Guangzhou, China. In total, 131 S. aureus isolates (100 from children and 31 from women) were analyzed by spa typing, multi-locus sequence typing, virulence gene and antimicrobial resistance profiling, staphylococcal chromosomal cassette mec typing, and mutation analyses of rpoB. A total of 58 spa types, 27 sequence types (STs), and 10 clonal complexes (CCs) were identified. While CC59 (ST59-IV, 48.8%; ST338-III, 35.7%) and CC45 (ST45-IV, 100%) were the major clones (84.4%) among MRSA isolates, CC5 (ST188, 24.3%; ST1, 21.6%) and CC398 (ST398, 70%) were the major ones (70.1%) among MSSA isolates. ST338-MRSA-III mostly found in pus but hardly in respiratory tract samples while ST45-MRSA-IV was on the opposite, even though they both found in blood and cerebrospinal fluid sample frequently. Staphylococcal enterotoxin genes seb-seq-sek were strongly associated with ST59 and ST338, while sec was associated with ST45, ST121, ST22, and ST30. All ST338, ST1232, and SCCmec III isolates carried lukF/S-PV genes. A total of 80% of ST338 isolates were resistant to erythromycin, clindamycin, and tetracycline. All ST45 isolates exhibited intermediate or complete resistance to rifampicin. In total, 481 HIS/ASN mutations in rpoB were found in rifampicin-resistant or intermediate-resistant isolates. ST338-III and ST45-IV emerged as two of three major clones in MRSA isolates from women and children in Guangzhou, China, though ST59-MRSA-IV remained the most prevalent MRSA clone. Clonal distribution of S. aureus varied, depending on the specimen source. Virulence genes and antibiograms were closely associated with the clonal lineage. These results clarified the molecular epidemiology of S. aureus from women and children in Guangzhou, China, and provide critical information for the control and treatment of S. aureus infections

ABI4 Activates DGAT1 Expression in Arabidopsis Seedlings during Nitrogen Deficiency1[C][W][OA]

Triacylglycerol (TAG) is the major seed storage lipid and is important for biofuel and other renewable chemical uses. Acyl-coenzyme A:diacylglycerol acyltransferase1 (DGAT1) is the rate-limiting enzyme in the TAG biosynthesis pathway, but the mechanism of its regulation is unknown. Here, we show that TAG accumulation in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) seedlings increased significantly during nitrogen deprivation (0.1 mm nitrogen) with concomitant induction of genes involved in TAG biosynthesis and accumulation, such as DGAT1 and OLEOSIN1. Nitrogen-deficient seedlings were used to determine the key factors contributing to ectopic TAG accumulation in vegetative tissues. Under low-nitrogen conditions, the phytohormone abscisic acid plays a crucial role in promoting TAG accumulation in Arabidopsis seedlings. Yeast one-hybrid and electrophoretic mobility shift assays demonstrated that ABSCISIC ACID INSENSITIVE4 (ABI4), an important transcriptional factor in the abscisic acid signaling pathway, bound directly to the CE1-like elements (CACCG) present in DGAT1 promoters. Genetic studies also revealed that TAG accumulation and DGAT1 expression were reduced in the abi4 mutant. Taken together, our results indicate that abscisic acid signaling is part of the regulatory machinery governing TAG ectopic accumulation and that ABI4 is essential for the activation of DGAT1 in Arabidopsis seedlings during nitrogen deficiency

An SEU-Hardened FIR Filter Based On Improved Triple Module Redundancy

Conference Name:International Conference on Information Science, Automation and Material System. Conference Address: Zhengzhou, PEOPLES R CHINA. Time:MAY 21-22, 2011.The finite impulse response (FIR) filters in the space radiation environment probably face the single event upset (SEU), making unexpected results. To avoid that situation, the traditional triple module redundancy (TMR) technology is usually applied. At the same time, however, it brings high cost of area and power. For this reason, an improved TMR (ITMR) structure for FIR filters is proposed in this paper. Simulation shows that the design can achieve the same performance with much less resources. Based on traditional technique TMR, the design reports an improved TMR (ITMR) structure by simplify the two redundancy modules, the advantage that it has the same performance but costs less resources can be reflect by the simulation and synthesis clearly

Distributed Dynamic Cluster-Head Selection and Clustering for Massive IoT Access in 5G Networks

With the rapid growth of Internet-of-things (IoT) devices, IoT communication has become an increasingly crucial part of 5G wireless communication systems. The large-scale IoT devices access results in system overload and low utilization of energy efficiency under the existing network framework. In this paper, the cluster head uses the LTE-M protocol, and the intra-cluster uses the low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) self-networking protocol in the wireless sensor network. By a detailed analysis of the messages exchanged between the device and the base station, we describe the causes of overload and the steps of data aggregate combined with the physical channel. Then, we explore the cluster head quantity and the optimal scale in the intra-cluster under the traditional K-mean algorithm. When K is 30 under specific resources, the simulation results show that the system’s access success probability and resource utilization are optimal. Also, we propose a distributed dynamic cluster-head selection and clustering scheme based on an improved K-means algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can reach 88.07% on the access success probability. The throughput and resource utilization are 3.5 times high than that of the optimal K-means

A novel cooperative MAC for broadcasting in clustering VANETs

Conference Name:2013 2nd IEEE International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo, ICCVE 2013. Conference Address: Las Vegas, NV, United states. Time:December 2, 2013 - December 6, 2013.IEEE-USA; World Academy of Connected VehiclesIn VANETS, a variety of services can be provided, including safety-related applications, traffic management and user infotainment services. Out of all these applications, safety-related applications are the most important ones and they mainly depend on the broadcast service. However, it is a challenging task to provide a reliable broadcast in VANETs, because of the mobility of vehicles and the unreliability of wireless channels. On the other hand, cooperative communication has been proved effective to mitigate wireless channel impairments and increase the reliability of communications. In this paper, a cooperative MAC for broadcasting is proposed in clustering VANETs. This MAC can improve the reliability of broadcasting. The performance of this MAC is verified through mathematical analysis and simulations. ? 2013 IEEE