The Potential of Critical E-Applications for Engaging SMEs in E Business: A Provider Perspective

YesAgainst a background of the low engagement of SMEs in e-business this paper investigates the emergence of, and potential for, critical e-applications defined as `an e-business application, promoted by a trusted third party, which engages a significant number of SMEs by addressing an important shared business concern within an aggregation.¿ By a review of secondary data and empirical investigation with service providers and other intermediaries the research shows that such applications can facilitate the e-business engagement of SMEs. There are three key findings, namely: the emergence of aggregation specific e-business applications; the emergence of collaboratively based `one to many¿ business models; and the importance of trusted third parties in the adoption of higher complexity e-business applications by SMEs. Significantly this work takes a deliberately provider perspective and complements the already considerable literature on SME IT adoption from a user and network perspective. In terms of future research the importance of a better conceptual understanding of the impact of complexity on the adoption of IT by SMEs is highlighted

Aggregation and the Role of Trusted Third Parties in SME E-Business Engagement: A Regional Policy Issue

YesIt is against the background of low engagement by SMEs in e-business that this paper seeks to highlight the potential importance of aggregation and of the role of trusted third parties in facilitating higher levels of involvement. The paper is based on an ongoing SME e-business research programme and reports on some recent research on SMEs that were using high complexity e-business applications and explores the extent to which the research findings could address the core concern of low engagement. This qualitative case study based research includes analysis of data collected from 13 community intermediaries, acting as trusted third parties. It concludes that the role of community intermediaries appears to be central to the adoption of critical e-aggregation applications provided by service providers. For policymakers, this important role of critical e-aggregation applications in facilitating e-business engagement by SMEs has emerged as part of this research but there is limited evidence of policy initiatives that reflect this

The Use of Hosted Enterprise Applications by SMEs: A Dual Market and User Perspective

YesThis deliberately dual perspective paper seeks to deepen our understanding of the engagement of SMEs in hosted enterprise applications in the UK. The emergence and development of the ASP sector has attracted much interest and highly optimistic forecasts for revenues. The paper starts by considering ICT adoption by SMEs in general before reviewing the provision of hosted enterprise applications in the US and UK (market perspective). The study is extended by qualitative empirical data collected by semi-structured interviews with SME users of hosted enterprise applications (user perspective) and subsequent analysis in order to develop the key findings and conclusions. From an SME user perspective the key findings to emerge from the study include: i) confirmation that ICT infrastructure was no longer a barrier to adoption, ii) the pragmatic approach taken to security issues, iii) the use of both multiple information systems and multiple service providers, iv) the financial attractiveness of the rental model and v) the intention to continue or extend the use of hosted applications. It also highlights the opportunity for gaining competitive advantage by using hosted enterprise applications to reduce costs. There are very few empirical studies of hosted applications which take deliberately market and SME user perspectives - this paper makes an important contribution in this emerging field

A provisional survey of the interaction between net photosynthetic rate, respiratory rate, and thallus water content in some New Zealand cryptogams

The effect of water content on photosynthetic and respiratory rates in eight lichen species and one bryophyte species were studied using an injection infrared gas analyser technique. All species snowed a strong relationship between net assimilation rate (NAR), respiration rate, and water content similar to relationships reported in published studies overseas. Species from moist habitats showed negative NAR at low water contents. Species from high-light areas showed a depression in NAR at high water contents which could be alleviated by higher light intensities. The experiments confirmed the suitability of New Zealand species for these studies

Gluon self-energy in a two-flavor color superconductor

The energy and momentum dependence of the gluon self-energy is investigated in a color superconductor with two flavors of massless quarks. The presence of a color-superconducting quark-quark condensate modifies the gluon self-energy for energies which are of the order of the gap parameter. For gluon energies much larger than the gap, the self-energy assumes the form given by the standard hard-dense loop approximation. It is shown that this modification of the gluon self-energy does not affect the magnitude of the gap to leading and subleading order in the weak-coupling limit.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, RevTeX, aps and epsfig style files require

E-Business, Innovation and SMEs: The Significance of Hosted Services and Firm Aggregations

YesAgainst a background of the low engagement of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in e-business this paper investigates the significance of hosted services and firm aggregations. Based on qualitative case studies of aggregations of SMEs the research shows how e-business based innovation can occur, and identifies the extent to which the aggregation factor contributes to this innovation. The research confirms existing understanding of the importance of network based aggregations but adds to this with further detail and examples, including the `outsourcing¿ of innovation to the application service providers (ASPs)

How the quark self-energy affects the color-superconducting gap

We consider color superconductivity with two flavors of massless quarks which form Cooper pairs with total spin zero. We solve the gap equation for the color-superconducting gap parameter to subleading order in the QCD coupling constant $g$ at zero temperature. At this order in $g$, there is also a previously neglected contribution from the real part of the quark self-energy to the gap equation. Including this contribution leads to a reduction of the color-superconducting gap parameter \f_0 by a factor b_0'=\exp \big[ -(\p ^2+4)/8 \big]\simeq 0.177. On the other hand, the BCS relation T_c\simeq 0.57\f_0 between \f_0 and the transition temperature $T_c$ is shown to remain valid after taking into account corrections from the quark self-energy. The resulting value for $T_c$ confirms a result obtained previously with a different method.Comment: Revtex, 8 pages, no figur