Are UK SMEs with active websites more likely to achieve both innovation and growth?

Purpose: This paper examines the impact of developing more active Websites and increasing E-commerce on the relationship between innovation and growth performance in SMEs. Using the existing literature and empirical analysis the study considers the potential of engagement with the Internet to achieve the often hard to attain ambition of both innovation and growth. Design/methodology/approach: In order to examine the relationship, data is drawn from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) 'Lifting the Barriers to Growth Survey'. In order to establish whether the use of more sophisticated Websites is associated with being an innovative high performance business, whilst controlling for other firm and entrepreneurial characteristics, multivariate approaches in the form of multinominal logits and discriminant function analysis are utilised. Findings: The results suggest that although theoretically Websites with tools allowing interaction with customers or suppliers could benefit SMEs through a reduction in transaction costs and wider access to information, enabling them to jointly experience innovation and growth, in practice there is less evidence that this occurs. If anything those firms with active websites are more likely to be innovative, but no more likely to be both innovative and achieving growth. Implications: These results suggest that further work must be undertaken to establish whether SMEs should be encouraged to make such investments and if so what additional help is required to ensure that investments in this digital infrastructure achieves an appropriate return on investment. Originality/Value: The results are of importance to both SMEs and policy makers providing insight into the nature of potential benefits from Website development using a large dataset. A clear need to investigate further how more innovative SMEs can benefit from company Websites and ecommerce to grow is identified

Caring of Leukemia Patients with Li-Fraumeni Syndrome with TP53 Mutation​

Sharon Williams-Mattox pictured.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/aprn-week-22/1013/thumbnail.jp

A Quality Improvement Initiative to Engage Older Adults in the Discharge Process Using the IDEAL Discharge Protocol

Background: Readmissions are costly and adversely affect patient outcomes. Readmissions significantly impact older adults’ ability to manage post-discharge. Older adults are more likely to have challenges with understanding newly prescribed medications after discharge and therefore are less compliant with medications. Older adults are also less likely to follow-up with their primary care physician after discharge. Engaging patients and families in a collaborative discharge process is a key foundational element needed to improve patient outcomes and reduce avoidable readmission rates. Purpose: This quality improvement initiative engaged patients and families in an evidence-based discharge protocol to reduce avoidable readmission over three months. Methods: The Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, and Verify (DMADV) improvement process was used to implement the initiative. The IDEAL Discharge Protocol was piloted on one medical-surgical unit targeting adults 65 years or older with no cognitive deficits and discharged home. The IDEAL Discharge Protocol focused on implementing a structured process to include patients and their families in a collaborative care process focused on discussion, education, and post-discharge follow-up. Results: Forty-four participants engaged in the study. A 4 percent decrease in the pilot unit readmission rate was observed. Before implementation, the readmission rate was 17 percent. After implementation, the readmission rate was 13 percent. Post-discharge follow-up resulted in the completion of 52.2 percent follow-up calls and 45.5 percent follow-up appointments scheduled. Of the 44 participants engaged in the intervention, two were readmitted, resulting in a 4.5 readmission rate for the study participants. Medication compliance was assessed and found to be 93.3 percent, and 100 percent of participants received education while engaged in the study. Conclusion: The IDEAL intervention aided in improving the discharge process to better equip patients with the tools to successfully transition home after discharge and showed a trend toward reducing the pilot unit’s readmission rate

The impact of the ATLAS zero-lepton, jets and missing momentum search on a CMSSM fit

Recent ATLAS data significantly extend the exclusion limits for supersymmetric particles. We examine the impact of such data on global fits of the constrained minimal supersymmetric standard model (CMSSM) to indirect and cosmological data. We calculate the likelihood map of the ATLAS search, taking into account systematic errors on the signal and on the background. We validate our calculation against the ATLAS determinaton of 95% confidence level exclusion contours. A previous CMSSM global fit is then re-weighted by the likelihood map, which takes a bite at the high probability density region of the global fit, pushing scalar and gaugino masses up.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. v2 has bigger figures and fixed typos. v3 has clarified explanation of our handling of signal systematic

Next-to-minimal SOFTSUSY

We describe an extension to the SOFTSUSY program that provides for the calculation of the sparticle spectrum in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM), where a chiral superfield that is a singlet of the Standard Model gauge group is added to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) fields. Often, a $\mathbb{Z}_{3}$ symmetry is imposed upon the model. SOFTSUSY can calculate the spectrum in this case as well as the case where general $\mathbb{Z}_{3}$ violating (denoted as $\,\mathbf{\backslash}\mkern-11.0mu{\mathbb{Z}}_{3}$) terms are added to the soft supersymmetry breaking terms and the superpotential. The user provides a theoretical boundary condition for the couplings and mass terms of the singlet. Radiative electroweak symmetry breaking data along with electroweak and CKM matrix data are used as weak-scale boundary conditions. The renormalisation group equations are solved numerically between the weak scale and a high energy scale using a nested iterative algorithm. This paper serves as a manual to the NMSSM mode of the program, detailing the approximations and conventions used

Extreme Food-Plant Specialisation in Megabombus Bumblebees as a Product of Long Tongues Combined with Short Nesting Seasons

© 2015 Huang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The attached file is the published version of the article

What is the nature and extent of evidence on methodologies for monitoring and evaluating marine spatial management measures in UK and similar coastal waters? A systematic map protocol

Background Anthropogenic degradation of marine ecosystems is widely accepted as a major social-ecological problem. The growing urgency to better manage marine ecosystems has led to the increasing application of ‘spatial management measures’ including marine protected areas, sectoral (e.g. fishery) closures, and marine spatial planning. However, the designation of varied spatial management regimes is just the first step; achievement of objectives relies upon effective implementation, monitoring, evaluation and adaptation. Despite spatial management being a core component of the marine management portfolio, to our knowledge, there is no systematic overview of the evidence on methodologies available, and employed, to monitor and evaluate their effectiveness across social, economic and ecological outcomes. Methods This systematic map will examine existing evidence describing methodologies for monitoring the effects, and evaluating the effectiveness, of marine spatial management across ecological, social and economic outcomes. Our aim is to provide a resource for decision-makers, primarily in the UK but also internationally, that supports effective marine management, and to describe the current evidence base. Identification and evaluation of relevant studies will therefore be restricted to coastal countries identified by our Stakeholder Group as being relevant to the UK, and searches will be restricted to the period 2009 to 2019 to align with the current UK policy context. Searches for relevant grey and academic literature, published in English, will be conducted in four bibliographic search engines, Google Scholar, 38 organisational websites and one specialist data repository. Eligibility screening will be conducted first at title and abstract level, and then at full text. Coding and meta-data extraction from eligible studies will include: bibliographic information, general information about the spatial management measure studied, and methodological information on the monitoring and evaluation undertaken. Consistency checking amongst reviewers will be undertaken during screening, coding and data extraction phases. The outcome of the systematic map will be a database that displays the meta-data of identified relevant studies. Findings will be presented in a descriptive report detailing the evaluation approaches and analytical methodologies employed, and data collection methods applied and/or data required by relevant studies to inform evaluations on the effectiveness of marine spatial management measures

Geographical Disparities in Screening and Cancer-Related Health Behaviour.

This study aimed to identify whether cancer-related health behaviours including participation in cancer screening vary by geographic location in Australia. Data were obtained from the 2014-2015 Australian National Health Survey, a computer-assisted telephone interview that measured a range of health-related issues in a sample of randomly selected households. Chi-square tests and adjusted odds ratios from logistic regression models were computed to assess the association between residential location and cancer-related health behaviours including cancer screening participation, alcohol consumption, smoking, exercise, and fruit and vegetable intake, controlling for age, socio-economic status (SES), education, and place of birth. The findings show insufficient exercise, risky alcohol intake, meeting vegetable intake guidelines, and participation in cervical screening are more likely for those living in inner regional areas and in outer regional/remote areas compared with those living in major cities. Daily smoking and participation in prostate cancer screening were significantly higher for those living in outer regional/remote areas. While participation in cancer screening in Australia does not appear to be negatively impacted by regional or remote living, lifestyle behaviours associated with cancer incidence and mortality are poorer in regional and remote areas. Population-based interventions targeting health behaviour change may be an appropriate target for reducing geographical disparities in cancer outcomes