Exploring factors that influence customer engagement in value co-creation in higher education institutions using online platforms

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) can be described as a container that encompasses strong knowledgeable minds and experienced individuals. It is one of the service sectors comprised of a huge number of individuals who are attached for life with Higher Education Institutions and possess resources of knowledge, experience and competency. These valuable resources are considered to be sources of innovative performance, best service quality and better community transformation. By engaging such brilliant minds in value co-creation, either with internal or external customers of these HEIs, it is believed that this engagement will help HEIs to maintain better service quality, attain reputable positions and contribute to enhance community transformation. However, the task to engage large numbers of HEIs customers in co-creation of value is not easy to be achieved without in-depth exploration of how to accomplish and sustain such engagement. Special effort is taking place to engage the inner and outer HEIs community in value co-creation process through online platforms. Yet, the level of customers engagement still low and poor. The aim of this research is to explore factors that impact HEIs customers to be engaged in any form of value co-creation through the online platforms, and to introduce a holistic value co-creation model that helps universities and other HEIs to engage customers in value co-creation activities through any means of effective online platforms. A qualitative method is adopted by interviewing ten HEIs experts from four reputable Malaysian universities. Data are collected, analyzed and synthesized with support of Nvivo10 software. Value co-creation conceptual model is established and the results reveal that there are several factors that have an impact on customer engagement in the value co-creation in HEIs. According to the nature of value co-creation and the context of this research, factors are summarized into three classifications: organizational factors that represent HEIs provider aspects and these factors are the predominant among other aspects. Then technological factors that represent the online platform characteristics and the personal factors that represent customer aspects

Hypoxic Culture Conditions as a Solution for Mesenchymal Stem Cell Based Regenerative Therapy

Cell-based regenerative therapies, based on in vitro propagation of stem cells, offer tremendous hope to many individuals suffering from degenerative diseases that were previously deemed untreatable. Due to the self-renewal capacity, multilineage potential, and immunosuppressive property, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are considered as an attractive source of stem cells for regenerative therapies. However, poor growth kinetics, early senescence, and genetic instability during in vitro expansion and poor engraftment after transplantation are considered to be among the major disadvantages of MSC-based regenerative therapies. A number of complex inter-and intracellular interactive signaling systems control growth, multiplication, and differentiation of MSCs in their niche. Common laboratory conditions for stem cell culture involve ambient O-2 concentration (20%) in contrast to their niche where they usually reside in 2-9% O-2. Notably, O-2 plays an important role in maintaining stem cell fate in terms of proliferation and differentiation, by regulating hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) mediated expression of different genes. This paper aims to describe and compare the role of normoxia (20% O-2) and hypoxia (2-9% O-2) on the biology of MSCs. Finally it is concluded that a hypoxic environment can greatly improve growth kinetics, genetic stability, and expression of chemokine receptors during in vitro expansion and eventually can increase efficiency of MSC-based regenerative therapies.Article Link: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2013/632972

Coordinated NanoSIMS and TEM Analysis of a Large 26Mg-Rich AGB Silicate from the Meteorite Hills 00426 CR2 Chondrite

Silicates are one of the most abundant presolar phases around evolved stars, in the inter-stellar medium (ISM), and in our Solar System. These grains afford the opportunity for O, Si, Mg, Fe, and Ca isotopic analyses to constrain stellar nucleosynthetic and mixing processes, and Galactic chemical evolution (GCE). While Mg and Fe isotopic studies have been successfully conducted on presolar silicates, isotopic analyses beyond O and Si are often hampered by the small grain sizes (average ~250 nm). This also makes coordinated mineral and chemical characterization challenging. These studies provide insight into the dust condensation conditions as well as subsequent alteration in the ISM and/or the Solar System. TEM studies of presolar silicates have shown that they are much more mineralogically and chemically diverse than other presolar phases [1 and references therein]. Large (>500nm) presolar silicate grains are rare, but they allow for detailed isotopic, mineral, and chemical characterization. We identified a large presolar silicate grain in the MET 00426 CR2 chondrite and report the O, Si, Mg, and Fe isotopic compositions and TEM study of this grain

A framework for molecular biology databases integration using context graph keying.

This paper proposed a novel framework for integrating public domain molecular biology databases with the aid of a context graph. A context graph is used to map data in order to establish an integration domain for the participating multi-resource database federation. Data are presented in a consolidated form upon retrieval from the multiple databases. The approach presented in this paper is novel in the sense that, it can be implemented within a component database and can initiate data consolidation collected from multiple sources without users' intervention. The approach has received considerable interest from the research community