Mobile financial services at the base of the pyramid : a systemic view for cross-sector governance and embedded innovation

Mobile financial services is one of the uprising movements to bank the unbanked by integrating philanthropic and business approaches for financial inclusion. In this paper, we address how a systemic view help integrate the Philanthropic Initiatives (PI) and the Commercial Initiatives (CI) to get a sustainable impact on the unbanked micro-entrepreneurs. However, each approach has pros and cons as they go along the stages of design, deployment, and sustainability. Using the soft system thinking we theorise the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) as a business system to mix-up the relatively high start-up capabilities of the PI with the relatively sustainable impact of CI. Our mobile money case shows that donors, local private enterprises, and multinational corporations follow the BoP strategy to develop an online grid that offers a reconciled balanced scorecard for economic returns, social benefits and local impact. Such a strategy guarantees flexible, long-term investments and facilitate developing innovative financial services

Impact of Science Technology and Innovation (STI) on Economic Growth and Development: A Case Study of Pakistan

The study reports the case study research about the impact of STI on economic growth and development. 305 scientists responded the questionnaire. Out of 305, 94% (288) confirmed that STI has the impact on economic growth and economic development.  In response to the 2nd question, about the impact of their research on economic growth and development, 85 %(260) scientists supported that STI has the positive impact on economic growth. The STI system of Pakistan is also discussed and found that STI system in Pakistan is very weak. To improve STI system of Pakistan, there is dire need of long-term STI policy. Therefore, at the end of the study on the basis of survey results and STI capacity indicator, the policy recommendations and implications of the study are presented. These recommendations are very useful for STI policy makers and planners for Pakistan as well as developing countries, to improve STI situation.&nbsp

Multiview of virtual currency adoption and systemic risks : an action research on service businesses in the UK

Our research focuses on the impact of Virtual Currency (VC) adoption on the British service businesses. We follow the systemic multiple perspectives theory (Linstone, 2010) to explore the Technical, Organizational, and Personal (TOP) changes that organizations conduct to issue Bitcoin account and use it as Cryptocurrency. Falling to manage such changes creates TOP risk and decrease the rate of adopting and accepting Bitcoin as alternative of physical cash

A systematic review of floating and beach landing records of Sargassum beyond the Sargasso Sea

Sargassum algal blooms on ocean surfaces and landings of huge Sargassum mats on beaches is an emerging global environmental challenge with wide socio-economic and environmental implications. Literature on Sargassum growth cycles, travel patterns, species and morphotypes, and quantified impacts have tended to focus on a geographic region, or a specific event. Few, if any, publications document long term continuous monitoring of Sargassum blooms in large areas such as the Pacific, or the tropical Atlantic. To address this gap, this paper systematically reviews the global evidence of Sargassum bloom monitoring beyond the Sargasso Sea, and identifies gaps in the evidence base of floating and landing influxes. This systematic review uses combinations of two key terms relating to Sargassum and monitoring, and utilises the resources in ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus and Google Scholar. The analysis moves us past a classic literature review, and produces an unbiased assessment of empirical research on Sargassum monitoring from 1960 to 2019. We find a significant research focus on open-ocean blooms and floating mats whereas research on beach landings and their associated impacts is comparatively limited. Research is focused within specific countries or water bodies (notably, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean and North Atlantic Ocean) and tends not to comprehensively assess neighbouring or regional shorelines, for example, West Africa and Central America. There was a lack of consistency in the application of methods for quantifying Sargassum biomass volume (including dry/wet weight, unit of measurement, and spatial extent of calculations). Further, in many publications Sargassum species identification was omitted. Given current attempts to understand the drivers and impacts of the exponential growth in Sargassum in some parts of the world, a consistent and replicable research approach to monitoring Sargassum could support creation of a Sargassum evidence database. To move this agenda forwards, we propose a definition for a Sargassum 'event': a continuous bloom of any Sargassum in open oceans, or, an aggregation of landed Sargassum, with the potential to disrupt social, economic or ecosystem functioning, or to impact human health. This review highlights the importance of standardising Sargassum monitoring methods to facilitate improved documentation of temporal and spatial patterns of Sargassum blooms and beach landings

A template-free and low temperature method for the synthesis of mesoporous magnesium phosphate with uniform pore structure and high surface area

Mesoporous phosphates are a group of nanostructured materials with promising applications, particularly in biomedicine and catalysis. However, their controlled synthesis via conventional template-based routes presents a number of challenges and limitations. Here, we show how to synthesize a mesoporous magnesium phosphate with a high surface area and a well-defined pore structure through thermal decomposition of a crystalline struvite (MgNH4PO4·6H2O) precursor. In a first step, struvite crystals with various morphologies and sizes, ranging from a few micrometers to several millimeters, had been synthesized from supersaturated aqueous solutions (saturation index (SI) between 0.5 and 4) at ambient pressure and temperature conditions. Afterwards, the crystals were thermally treated at 70-250 °C leading to the release of structurally bound water (H2O) and ammonia (NH3). By combining thermogravimetric analyses (TGA), scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM, TEM), N2 sorption analyses and small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS) we show that this decomposition process results in a pseudomorphic transformation of the original struvite into an amorphous Mg-phosphate. Of particular importance is the fact that the final material is characterized by a very uniform mesoporous structure with 2-5 nm wide pore channels, a large specific surface area of up to 300 m2 g-1 and a total pore volume of up to 0.28 cm3 g-1. Our struvite decomposition method is well controllable and reproducible and can be easily extended to the synthesis of other mesoporous phosphates. In addition, the so produced mesoporous material is a prime candidate for use in biomedical applications considering that magnesium phosphate is a widely used, non-toxic substance that has already shown excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability