Examining the socio-economic determinants of adoption of the 'Government Gateway' initiative in the UK

This paper empirically examines the impact of socio-economic determinants upon the adoption of a recent UK e-government initiative, the 'Government Gateway'. The data on five socio-economic characteristics was collected employing a postal survey. The findings of this research suggest that the three variables of age, gender and occupation significantly differentiated the adopters from the non-adopters of the Government Gateway, whilst education and income were found to be non-significant. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of promoting the adoption of emerging Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and reducing the digital divide against less privileged parts of the population

On the peak-to-average power of OFDM signals based on oversampling

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) introduces large amplitude variations in time, which can result in significant signal distortion in the presence of nonlinear amplifiers. We introduce a new bound for the peak of the continuous envelope of an OFDM signal, based on the maximum of its corresponding oversampled sequence; it is shown to be very tight as the oversampling rate increases. The bound is then used to derive a closed-form probability upper bound for the complementary cumulative distribution function of the peak-to-mean envelope power ratio of uncoded OFDM signals for sufficiently large numbers of subcarriers. As another application of the bound for oversampled sequences, we propose tight relative error bounds for computation of the peak power using two main methods: the oversampled inverse fast Fourier transform and the method introduced for coded systems based on minimum distance decoding of the code

Analytical models of a fault-tolerant multiple module microprocessor system

Imperial Users onl

Infusion of information systems in the stockbroking sector

The Australian stockbroking sector has been at the forefront of integrating information systems (IS) in its daily operations. Trade and clearance account for a large percentage of processes undertaken in a brokerage house. Upon integration of IS, the trade and clearance processes of the sector were centralised and the institutional arrangements of the sector were transformed. Centralisation also meant that this large percentage of processes was directly controlled by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). Although the integration of IS was intended to rationalise the trading regime and make the process of brokerage identical across the industry, there are many types of brokerage houses - each catering to a specific group of customers. This interplay between the intent to homogenise the sector by the regulatory authority and the move by the brokerage houses to strategically differentiate from peers motivated this research to explore the dynamics of the diffusion of IS adoption and its resultant structural changes in the stockbrokerage sector

Stress among medical students of Gorgan (South East of Caspian Sea), Iran

Objective: This study aims to estimate the prevalence of psychological stress and association between the levels of stress and study variables among Gorgan medical students. Materials and methods: All three year medical students (129 basic sciences students) in Gorgan Faculty of Medicine, Golestan University of medical Sciences, were asked to complete the Kessler 10 questionnaire. Results: The findings showed mild, moderate and severe stress among 26.22%, 20.50% and 14.75% study subjects. 39.35% of medical students had no stress. There was statistically significant association between year of study and stress levels (p= 0.040). Conclusion: The results indicate that there is a decrease in the psychological health of first year medical students. Provided that stress management courses are organised by medical schools, when the students arrive, they will cope up with the stress in coming years. These courses may reduce the negative effects of stress on medical students. By providing such courses and reducing stress level, medical students may improve their medical education