Gender-based itrust in e-commerce: The moderating role of cognitive innovativeness

© 2018 by the authors. Despite the extensive academic interest in e-commerce, cognitive innovativeness in e-commerce context has been neglected. This study focuses on the moderating role of consumer cognitive innovativeness on the influencing factors of interpersonal trust (iTrust) towards online purchase intention of new product in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce. Data were collected in Australia from consumers who has had prior online shopping experience. Variance-based structural equation modeling such as partial least squares (PLS-SEM) is used to test the research model. The results show men and women have different perceptions of what is important to be provided by an online store to make a positive shopping experience. We highlighted that in-addition to the e-commerce web design aspects; the individual cognitive innovativeness can influence females more to purchase online. Practitioners should adjust their online business strategies, considering consumer cognitive innovativeness to enhance their e-commerce desirable outcomes. This means online business should not treat their consumers as a uniform group with a 'one-design-fits-all' web design strategy but need to consider the individual needs of their male and female consumers

ROBUST TECHNIQUES FOR BUILDING FOOTPRINT EXTRACTION IN AERIAL LASER SCANNING 3D POINT CLOUDS

The building footprint is crucial for a volumetric 3D representation of a building that is applied in urban planning, 3D city modeling, cadastral and topographic map generation. Aerial laser scanning (ALS) has been recognized as the most suitable means of large-scale 3D point cloud data (PCD) acquisition. PCD can produce geometric detail of a scanned surface. However, it is almost impossible to get point clouds without noise and outliers. Besides, data incompleteness and occlusions are two common phenomena for PCD. Most of the existing methods for building footprint extraction employ classification, segmentation, voting techniques (e.g., Hough-Transform or RANSAC), or Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based methods. It is known that classical PCA is highly sensitive to outliers, even RANSAC which is known as a robust technique for shape detection is not free from outlier effects. This paper presents a novel algorithm that employs MCMD (maximum consistency within minimum distance), MSAC (a robust variant of RANSAC) and a robust regression to extract reliable building footprints in the presence of outliers, missing points and irregular data distributions. The algorithm is successfully demonstrated through two sets of ALS PCD

Anti-MRSA Activity of Oxysporone and Xylitol from the Endophytic Fungus Pestalotia sp. Growing on the Sundarbans Mangrove Plant Heritiera fomes

Heritiera fomes Buch.-Ham., a mangrove plant from the Sundarbans, has adapted to a unique habitat, muddy saline water, anaerobic soil, brackish tidal activities and high microbial competition. Endophytic fungal association protects this plant from adverse environmental conditions. This plant is used in Bangladeshi folk medicine, but it has not been extensively studied phytochemically, and there is hardly any report on investigation on endophytic fungi growing on this plant. In this study, endophytic fungi were isolated from the surface sterilized cladodes and leaves of H. fomes. The antimicrobial activities were evaluated against two Gram-positive and two Gram-negative bacteria and the fungal strain, Candida albicans. Extracts of Pestalotia sp. showed activities against all test bacterial strains, except that the EtOAc extract was inactive against E. coli. The structures of the purified compounds, oxysporone and xylitol, were elucidated by spectroscopic means. The anti-MRSA potential of the isolated compounds were determined against various MRSA strains, i.e., ATCC 25923, SA-1199B, RN4220, XU212, EMRSA-15 and EMRSA-16, with MIC values ranging from 32-128 g/mL. This paper, for the first time, reports on the anti-MRSA property of oxysporone and xylitol, isolation of the endophyte Pestalotia sp. from H. fomes, and isolation of xylitol from a Pestalotia sp

Prevalence of anopheline species and their Plasmodium infection status in epidemic-prone border areas of Bangladesh

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Information related to malaria vectors is very limited in Bangladesh. In the changing environment and various <it>Anopheles </it>species may be incriminated and play role in the transmission cycle. This study was designed with an intention to identify anopheline species and possible malaria vectors in the border belt areas, where the malaria is endemic in Bangladesh.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p><it>Anopheles </it>mosquitoes were collected from three border belt areas (Lengura, Deorgachh and Matiranga) during the peak malaria transmission season (May to August). Three different methods were used: human landing catches, resting collecting by mouth aspirator and CDC light traps. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was done to detect <it>Plasmodium falciparum</it>, <it>Plasmodium vivax</it>-210 and <it>Plasmodium vivax</it>-247 circumsporozoite proteins (CSP) from the collected female species.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 634 female <it>Anopheles </it>mosquitoes belonging to 17 species were collected. <it>Anopheles vagus </it>(was the dominant species (18.6%) followed by <it>Anopheles nigerrimus </it>(14.5%) and <it>Anopheles philippinensis </it>(11.0%). Infection rate was found 2.6% within 622 mosquitoes tested with CSP-ELISA. Eight (1.3%) mosquitoes belonging to five species were positive for <it>P. falciparum</it>, seven (1.1%) mosquitoes belonging to five species were positive for <it>P. vivax </it>-210 and a single mosquito (0.2%) identified as <it>Anopheles maculatus </it>was positive for <it>P. vivax</it>-247. No mixed infection was found. Highest infection rate was found in <it>Anopheles karwari </it>(22.2%) followed by <it>An. maculatus </it>(14.3%) and <it>Anopheles barbirostris </it>(9.5%). Other positive species were <it>An. nigerrimus </it>(4.4%), <it>An. vagus </it>(4.3%), <it>Anopheles subpictus </it>(1.5%) and <it>An. philippinensis </it>(1.4%). <it>Anopheles vagus </it>and <it>An. philippinensis </it>were previously incriminated as malaria vector in Bangladesh. In contrast, <it>An. karwari</it>, <it>An. maculatus</it>, <it>An. barbirostris</it>, <it>An. nigerrimus </it>and <it>An. subpictus </it>had never previously been incriminated in Bangladesh.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Findings of this study suggested that in absence of major malaria vectors there is a possibility that other <it>Anopheles </it>species may have been playing role in malaria transmission in Bangladesh. Therefore, further studies are required with the positive mosquito species found in this study to investigate their possible role in malaria transmission in Bangladesh.</p

Photoluminescent and superparamagnetic reduced graphene oxide-iron oxide quantum dots for dual-modality imaging, drug delivery and photothermal therapy

Reduced graphene oxide–iron oxide quantum dots (QDs) with intrinsic photoluminescent and superparamagnetic properties were synthesized through a green, hydrothermal method that simultaneously reduced and shattered graphene nanosheets to form the dots. The structure, morphology, properties and cell viability of these QDs were investigated. The QDs emitted violet light when excited at 320 nm, possessed no residual magnetization upon magnetic hysteresis tests, and had low cytotoxicity to healthy cells at low concentrations. The suitability of the QDs for fluorescent and magnetic resonance dual-modality imaging was shown by in vitro imaging with dermal fibroblast cells and T2 relaxation time. A drug could be loaded onto the surface of the QDs, with a loading ratio of drug to QD of 0.31:1. The drug achieved a steady but full release from the QDs over 8 h: these drug-loaded QDs could be manipulated by an external magnetic stimulation for targeted drug delivery. The potential for use as a cancer photothermal therapy was demonstrated by both a rapid, ∼50 °C temperature increase by a suspension of 100 μg ml−1 of QDs and the photothermal ablation of HeLa cells in vitro under near infrared irradiation. The stability of the MGQDs in fetal calf serum was shown to improve when an ionic drug was coated on the surface

Antimicrobial activity of endophytic fungi isolated from the mangrove plant Sonneratia apetala (Buch.-Ham) from the Sundarbans mangrove forest

Endophytic fungi reside in the intercellular space of plant nourished by the plant. In return, they provide bioactive molecules which can play critical roles on plant defense system. Fifty six endophytes were isolated from the leaves, root, bark and fruits of Sonneratia apetala, a pioneer mangrove plant in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh. A total of 56 isolates were obtained and 12 different species within 8 genera were identified using morphological and molecular characteristics. Antimicrobial activity of Ethyl Acetate (EtOAc) and Methanolic (MeOH) extracts of these 12 different species were analyzed by resazurin assay and the Minimum Inhibitory Concentrations (MICs) were determined. The fungal extracts showed antimicrobial activities against more than one tested bacterium or fungus among 5 human pathogenic microbes, i.e. Escherichia coli NCTC 12241, Staphylococcus aureus NCTC 12981, Micrococcus lutus NCTC 7508, Pseudomonas aeruginosa NCTC 7508 and Candida albicans ATCC 90028. Overall, Methanolic extracts showed greater activity than that of Ethyl Acetate extracts. Of the isolates identified, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, Aspergillus niger and Fusarium equiseti were the most active isolates and showed activity against microorganisms under investigation. Methanolic extracts of C. gloeosporioides and A. niger showed the lowest MIC (0.0024 mg/mL) against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The study indicates that endophytic fungi isolated from S. apetala species posses potential antimicrobial properties, which could be further investigated

Suspension of Friday and Daily Congregational Prayers during Pandemic: A Juristic Maqasidic Study: التوقف عن صلاة الجمعة والجماعات في زمن الوباء: دراسة فقهية مقاصدية

This study analyses the rulings of Islamic Shari'ah regarding the suspension of daily and weekly congregational prayers during COVID-19 or any other situation like this. Since saving lives from any harm is one of the major objectives of Sharīʿah, it prefers performing prayers at home instead of going to the mosque for prayer in congregation during COVID-19 pandemic. Descriptive method has been followed in this article through incorporating the opinions of Muslim scholars and some international fiqh academies regarding the suspension of congregational prayers during COVID-19. The study, primarily, reveals Sharīʿah rulings for three issues of congressional prayers during any pandemic or emergency situation. They are: firstly, the ruling for Friday and daily congregational prayers in the mosque during COVID-19; secondly, ruling for attending Friday and congregational daily prayers for those who are already affected; thirdly, ruling for attending Friday and daily congregational prayers in the mosques by following preventive measures. http://aif-doi.org/IJFUS/05020

Identification of multiple influential observations in logistic regression

The identification of influential observations in logistic regression has drawn a great deal of attention in recent years. Most of the available techniques like Cook's distance and difference of fits (DFFITS) are based on single-case deletion. But there is evidence that these techniques suffer from masking and swamping problems and consequently fail to detect multiple influential observations. In this paper, we have developed a new measure for the identification of multiple influential observations in logistic regression based on a generalized version of DFFITS. The advantage of the proposed method is then investigated through several well-referred data sets and a simulation study.generalized DFFITS, generalized Studentized Pearson residual, generalized weight, high leverage point, influential observation, masking, outlier, swamping,

Novel Meandered Line EBG Filters with Significant Size Reduction Using Sine Tapering

Tapering electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structures is a common method in designing microstrip filters with different periodic structures. A novel technique for tapering EBG structures with the amplitude coefficients obtained from the sine function has been illustrated. This method deduces mellifluous coefficients that improves the performance with reasonable stopband width, preferable insertion loss level, and much-minimized passband ripples compared to similar designs with other tapering methods (e.g., binomial distribution, Chebyshev distribution, and conventional cosine tapering). It also offers tandem use of tapered EBG structures, leading to the novel meandered transmission line tandem design that significantly reduces the length of the filter; more than 40% is possible, compared to the uniform and conventional tapered designs. Size reduction on such a large scale will benefit the designers with the limited space issues