bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A comparison of high-speed internet service in Ghana: an analytical hierarchy approach
Authors: Frimpon Michael F. , Adaku Ebenezer 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The rising proportion of internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa and the lack of analytical techniques, as decision support systems, in choosing among alternative internet service providers (ISPs) by consumers underpin this study. The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach for evaluating high-speed internet service offered by ISPs in a sub-Saharan African country.

Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample size of 150, pairwise comparisons of two ISPs along five criteria of cost, usability, support, reliability and speed were performed by ten person groups of university students working in various organizations in Ghana and undertaking an online Six Sigma Course. Geometric means were employed to aggregate the scores in 15 groups, and these scores were then normalized and used as input into an analytical hierarchy process grid.

Findings
The results show that consumers of internet services highly emphasize the cost attribute of internet provision in their decision making. On the other hand, it was realized that consumers least emphasize the support provided by ISPs in their decision making among alternative ISPs.

Originality/value
This study has sought to provide an analytical framework for assessing the quality of service provided by alternative ISPs in a developing economy’s context. The evaluating criteria in this framework also reveal the key consumer requirements in internet service provision in a developing economy’s environment. This, to a large extent, will inform the marketing strategies of existing ISPs in Ghana as well as prospective ones intending to enter the Ghanaian market. Besides, the National Communication Authority, a regulator of communication services provision in Ghana, will be informed about the performances of the ISPs along five performance criteria. This is expected to aid in their regulatory functions.
Understanding microblogging continuance intention
Authors: Mirkovski Kristijian , Jia Yanli , Liu Libo , Chen Kun 
Published: January 2018

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explain how individuals form microblogging habits and why they continue to use microblogs from the perspective of direction social networks.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the social network theory and the social presence theory, the authors develop a theoretical framework to explain how individuals form microblogging habits and why they continue to use microblogs. To test the proposed model and examine its external validity, the authors collected data from two microblogs: Twitter and Sina Weibo.FindingsSatisfaction and habit have a significant influence on microblogging continuance intention. Whereas, users’ microblogging habits are developed by two key factors – satisfaction and frequency of past behavior – that are further determined by social presence and social network centrality.Research limitations/implicationsLarger sample size with diverse populations is highly recommended for future studies. In addition, exploring the distinct technical functionalities of microblogs when conceptualizing habit formation would be of benefit in future studies.Practical implicationsIn this study, it was found that social presence increases both the satisfaction of users and the frequency of past use behavior. Hence, microblog designers should provide users with greater freedom to modify the form and content of their interface, and enable these modifications to be visible in real time to increase the interactivity of microblogs.Originality/valueIn contrast to past studies that have largely neglected the impacts of the directed social network structure, this study aims to focus on microblogging continuance intention from the directed social network perspective. The results from two independent data sets converge on the conclusion that users’ continuance intention to use is affected by both their conscious evaluations (i.e. satisfaction) and unconscious reactions (i.e. habit).
Using member checking in interpretive research practice
Authors: Iivari Netta 
Published: January 2018

PurposeIn recent years, there has been a growing desire to more fully integrate informants into the overall research process. In response to this trend, the purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the usage and outcomes of the member checking technique for enabling more participatory interpretive research practices. Information systems (IS) research has utilized this technique, but it has not yet undergone a thorough analysis in this context. Additionally, interpretive IS research is in need of means and tools for engaging with informants during the data analysis and interpretation process.Design/methodology/approachThe data for this study originated from an inquiry into the position of usability work within its cultural context, and this study has adopted a hermeneutic lens to make sense of the member checking technique, which positions informants as co-analysts and co-interpreters to make sense of both their organizational realities and researchers’ interpretations of those realities.FindingsThe analysis shows that during the research process, the informants reproduced, questioned, and cultivated the researcher-crafted texts that they were given to interpret, both individually and collaboratively. The study shows that member checking contributes to fulfilling the criteria set for interpretive IS research in a variety of ways.Research limitations/implicationsThe study contributes to interpretive IS research method practice by offering IS researchers insights into and guidelines on the usage and potential outcomes of the member checking technique.Originality/valueThe examination of the member checking technique through a hermeneutic lens is a novel approach. For IS research, the study explicates the usages and outcomes of member checking in more participatory interpretive research practice. Also novel in this study is that member checking is examined as a collective endeavor.
A conceptual framework highlighting e-learning implementation barriers
Authors: Ali Samnan , Uppal M. Amaad , Gulliver Stephen R. 
Published: January 2018

PurposeE-learning has gained much focus from educators and researchers, with many extolling e-learning over traditional learning. Despite this focus, implementation of e-learning systems often fails. The purpose of this paper is to consider a range of barriers, impacting the success of e-learning implementations, yet to the best of the authors’ knowledge no conceptual framework is able to consolidate existing research.Design/methodology/approachThis paper undertook an in-depth review of literature concerning e-learning implementation barriers. Papers were extracted from established peer-reviewed journals and open sources. Articles not related to e-learning implementation barriers were discarded. A total of 259 papers were identified, published between 1990 and 2016. Hermeneutics and data-driven qualitative content analysis was used to define 68 unique barriers.FindingsThe 68 unique barriers were thematically grouped into four conceptual categories, i.e. Technology (T), Individual (I), Pedagogy (P), and Enabling Conditions (EC). These four categories led to the conceptualization of “TIPEC” framework, which highlights the key concepts hindering e-learning implementation and delivery. Results show that most articles only consider a narrow range of success barriers.Practical implicationsThe proposed TIPEC framework acts as a guide for education practitioners, system developers, policy makers, and researchers. It provides stakeholders with a summary of e-learning barriers.Originality/valueThis paper fulfils an identified need for a conceptual framework that consolidates all current research related to e-learning implementation barriers.
Integrated care
Authors: Warwick-Giles Lynsey , Checkland Kath 
Published: January 2018

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to try and understand how several organisations in one area in England are working together to develop an integrated care programme. Weick’s (1995) concept of sensemaking is used as a lens to examine how the organisations are working collaboratively and maintaining the programme.Design/methodology/approachQualitative methods included: non-participant observations of meetings, interviews with key stakeholders and the collection of documents relating to the programme. These provided wider contextual information about the programme. Comprehensive field notes were taken during observations and analysed alongside interview transcriptions using NVIVO software.FindingsThis paper illustrates the importance of the construction of a shared identity across all organisations involved in the programme. Furthermore, the wider policy discourse impacted on how the programme developed and influenced how organisations worked together.Originality/valueThe role of leaders from all organisations involved in the programme was of significance to the overall development of the programme and the sustained momentum behind the programme. Leaders were able to generate a “narrative of success” to drive the programme forward. This is of particular relevance to evaluators, highlighting the importance of using multiple methods to allow researchers to probe beneath the surface of programmes to ensure that evidence moves beyond this public narrative.
Graph theoretic structural modeling based new measures of complexity for analysis of lean initiatives
Authors: Singh Varinder , Singru Pravin M. 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of graph theoretic structural modeling for assessing the possible reduction in complexity of the work flow procedures in an organization due to lean initiatives. A tool to assess the impact of lean initiative on complexity of the system at an early stage of decision making is proposed.

Design/methodology/approach
First, the permanent function-based graph theoretic structural model has been applied to understand the complex structure of a manufacturing system under consideration. The model helps by systematically breaking it into different sub-graphs that identify all the cycles of interactions among the subsystems in the organization in a systematic manner. The physical interpretation of the existing quantitative methods linked to graph theoretic methodology, namely two types of coefficients of dissimilarity, has been used to evolve the new measures of organizational complexity. The new methods have been deployed for studying the impact of different lean initiatives on complexity reduction in a case industrial organization.

Findings
The usefulness and the application of new proposed measures of complexity have been demonstrated with the help of three cases of lean initiatives in an industrial organization. The new measures of complexity have been proposed as a credible tool for studying the lean initiatives and their implications.

Research limitations/implications
The paper may lead many researchers to use the proposed tool to model different cases of lean manufacturing and pave a new direction for future research in lean manufacturing.

Practical implications
The paper demonstrates the application of new tools through cases and the tool may be used by practitioners of lean philosophy or total quality management to model and investigate their decisions.

Originality/value
The proposed measures of complexity are absolutely new addition to the tool box of graph theoretic structural modeling and have a potential to be adopted by practical decision makers to steer their organizations though such decisions before the costly interruptions in manufacturing systems are tried on ground.
A study on the effect of electromigration on solder alloy joint on copper with nickel surface finish
Authors: Mhd Noor Ervina Efzan , R. Baaljinder , J. Emerson 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of electromigration (EM) on solder alloy joint on copper with nickel surface finish. Sn-Bi solder alloy has been used in this research.

Design/methodology/approach
The EM process was completed with the duration of 0, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h under direct current (DC) of 1,000 mA. Tensile stress on the substrates was assessed after EM at a tension rate of 0.1 mm/min. Microscopy was used to observe the formation and size of voids and conduct an analysis between copper and nickel substrates.

Findings
Four types of intermetallic compounds (IMCs), namely, Cu-Sn, Cu3Sn, Cu6Sn5, and Sn-Bi, were detected between the Sn-Bi/Co solder joint. Voids appear to be at the anode and the cathode for 96 h of EM for Sn-Bi/Ni solder join; however, there seem to be more voids at the cathode.

Originality/value
EM is one of the crucial keys to produce a good integrated circuit (IC). When the current density is extremely high and will cause the metal ions to move into the electron direction flow, it will be characterised based on the ion flux density. In this research, the effect of EM on the Sn-Bi solder alloy joint on copper with nickel surface finish was studied.
Cognate effects and cognitive control in patients with parallel and differential bilingual aphasia
Authors: Van der Linden Lize , Verreyt Nele , De Letter Miet , Hemelsoet Dimitri , Mariën Peter , Santens Patrick , Stevens Michaël , Szmalec Arnaud , Duyck Wouter 
Published: January 2018

AbstractBackgroundUntil today, there is no satisfying explanation for why one language may recover worse than another in differential bilingual aphasia. One potential explanation that has been largely unexplored is that differential aphasia is the consequence of a loss of language control rather than a loss of linguistic representations. Language control is part of a general control mechanism that also manages non‐linguistic cognitive control. If this system is impaired, patients with differential aphasia could still show bilingual language activation, but they may be unable to manage activation in non‐target languages, so that performance in another language is hindered.AimsTo investigate whether a loss of cognitive control, rather than the loss of word representations in a particular language, might underlie differential aphasia symptoms.Methods & ProceduresWe compared the performance of seven bilinguals with differential and eight bilinguals with parallel aphasia with 19 control bilinguals in a lexical decision and a flanker task to assess bilingual language co‐activation and non‐linguistic control respectively.Outcomes & ResultsWe found similar cognate effects in the three groups, indicating similar lexical processing across groups. Additionally, we found a larger non‐linguistic control congruency effect only for the patients with differential aphasia.Conclusions & ImplicationsThe present data indicate preserved language co‐activation for patients with parallel as well as differential aphasia. Furthermore, the results suggest a general cognitive control dysfunction, specifically for differential aphasia. Taken together, the results of the current study provide further support for the hypothesis of impaired cognitive control abilities in patients with differential aphasia, which has both theoretical and practical implications.
Serine/threonine kinase PpkA coordinates the interplay between T6SS2 activation and quorum sensing in the marine pathogen Vibrio alginolyticus
Authors: Yang Zhen , Zhou Xiaohui , Ma Yue , Zhou Mian , Waldor Matthew K. , Zhang Yuanxing , Wang Qiyao 
Published: January 2018

SummaryType VI secretion systems (T6SS) are multiprotein secretion machines that can mediate killing of bacterial cells and thereby modify the composition of bacterial communities. The mechanisms that control the production of and secretion of these killing machines are incompletely understood, although quorum sensing (QS) and the PpkA kinase modulate T6SS activity in some organisms. Here we investigated control the T6S in the marine organism Vibrio alginolyticus EPGS, which encodes two T6SS systems (T6SS1 and T6SS2). We found that the organism principally relies on T6SS2 for interbacterial competition. We further carried out a phosphoproteomic screen to identify substrates of the T6SS2‐linked PpkA2 kinase. Substrates of PpkA2 encoded within the T6SS2 cluster as well proteins that are apparently not linked to T6SS‐related processes were identified. Similar to other organisms, PpkA2 autophosphorylation was critical for T6SS2 function. Notably, phosphorylation of a polypeptide encoded outside of the T6SS2 cluster, VtsR, was critical for T6SS2 expression and function because it augments the expression of luxR, a key regulator of QS that also promotes T6SS2 gene expression. Thus, PpkA2 controls a phosphorylation cascade that mediates a positive regulatory loop entwining T6SS and QS, thereby coordinating these pathways to enhance the competitive fitness of V. alginolyticus.
Women's education and marriage decisions: Evidence from China
Authors: Li Xue , Cheng Hua 
Published: January 2018

AbstractThe faster increase in education among women compared with men has been underexplored. Thus, using Chinese data, we evaluate the impacts of a plausibly exogenous increase in educational attainment on women's marriage decisions. An extra year of education does not change women's decision to marry and leads to a brief delay of 0.12 years in their marriage age on average, which is much smaller than the delay among men. Although more educated women and men both have improved labour market outcomes, which may have increased their patience, men experience larger income growth than women do. Moreover, declining physical attractiveness at least partly explains why the delay is less than 1 year. Overall, the results are more reliable after addressing the endogeneity issue.
Genetic evidence confirms severe extinction risk for critically endangered swift parrots: implications for conservation management
Authors: Stojanovic D. , Olah G. , Webb M. , Peakall R. , Heinsohn R. 
Published: January 2018

AbstractMobile species pose major challenges for conservation because of their unpredictable, large scale movements in response to fluctuating resources. If locations with critical resources overlap with threats, large proportions of a mobile population may be exposed to threats. Critically endangered and nomadic swift parrots Lathamus discolor nest wherever food is most abundant in their breeding range, but concern exists that nest predation from an introduced predator may severely affect their population. Although swift parrots nest on predator‐free offshore islands, population viability analysis indicates that is land nesting alone may be insufficient to offset extinction risk from high mainland predation rates assuming that the species is a single panmictic population. We test the assumption that swift parrots act as a single conservation unit. We undertook a population genetic analysis using seven microsatellite loci and samples obtained over 6 years from across the breeding range of swift parrots. We found no evidence of departure from Hardy–Weinberg expectations across the species and both Analysis of Molecular Variance and Bayesian Structure analyses failed to detect any evidence for genetic differentiation across the samples both spatially and temporally. These results, supported by simulations, indicate panmixia and a lack of population genetic structure in swift parrots. Unlike a sedentary or site philopatric species, the majority of the swift parrot population may be at risk of exposure to predation when unpredictable resources draw individuals away from islands. These findings support a key assumption of population viability models that predict an extreme reduction in population size for swift parrots, and address a major gap in knowledge of the species’ ecology. Our study has implications both for the development of effective conservation management strategies and for the longer‐term evolution of avoidance of predator‐infested habitat in swift parrots.
3D reconstruction of the porcine and equine pulmonary veins, supplemented with the identification of telocytes in the horse
Authors: Vandecasteele T. , Van Den Broeck W. , Tay H. , Couck L. , van Loon G. , Cornillie P. 
Published: January 2018

SummaryThe myocardial sleeve of the porcine and equine pulmonary veins were histologically investigated and reconstructed three dimensionally. Moreover, the localization of neuron cell bodies at the veno‐atrial junction and alongside the myocardial sleeve was light microscopically visualized to depict the organization of nerve, myocardial and fat tissue. Finally, the presence of telocytes inside the equine pulmonary veins was demonstrated by use of transmission electron microscopy. These structures are thought to play a role in the induction of atrial fibrillation, which is frequently seen in horses, while pigs are often used as a cardiovascular model in this context. This data fills in remaining gaps in the literature concerning the histological build‐up of the pulmonary veins wall in pigs and horses. In‐depth knowledge on the myocardial sleeve and its surrounding cell types are important to understand the possible outcome of an ablation therapy as an atrial fibrillation treatment. In pigs and horses, the layout of the pulmonary veins wall concerning these structures is comparable to humans. However, neuron cell bodies were recovered at the veno‐atrial junction in both species but not alongside the myocardial sleeve in horses.
Sofosbuvir plus daclatasvir with or without ribavirin in 551 patients with hepatitis C‐related cirrhosis, genotype 4
Authors: El‐Khayat H. , Fouad Y. , Mohamed H. I. , El‐Amin H. , Kamal E. M. , Maher M. , Risk A. 
Published: January 2018

SummaryBackgroundThe Daclatasvir and Sofosbuvir combination therapy (SOF/DCV) has shown efficacy in patients with chronic hepatitis C in clinical trials.AimTo investigate the efficacy and safety of SOF/DCV for treatment of patients with hepatitis C‐related liver cirrhosis genotype 4.MethodsMulticentre study involving 551 patients with liver cirrhosis genotype 4; 432 naïve patients and 119 treatment‐experienced patients. All patients received SOF (400 mg) and DCV (60 mg) daily in addition to weight‐based ribavirin (RBV) for 12 weeks and when RBV is contraindicated the treatment duration was extended to 24 weeks.ResultsSustained virological response at 12 weeks after end of treatment (SVR12) rate was 92% in naïve cirrhotic patients and 87% in previous treated patients (by ITT analysis). Virological failure was infrequent, occurring in 42 patients (8%) overall. Thirty‐two (6%) were non responders; and 10 (2%) cases were relapsers, 31 patients (7%) were CTP‐A and 11 (13.3%) patients were CTP‐B (by ITT analysis). The most common adverse events were anaemia, fatigue, headache, pruritus. Serious side effects were recorded mainly in CTP‐B cirrhotic patients including HCC and hepatic encephalopathy.ConclusionsThe SOF/DCV combination therapy has proven efficacy and safety in treating patients with hepatitis C‐related liver cirrhosis genotype 4 in a large cohort of patients in the real world.