Understanding the experiences of students who self-initiate mobile device use for online courses or course-related activities provides institutions with valuable insights. In this study, we report how enrolled in higher education voluntarily used devices their coursework and activities, challenges using these devices, they managed those challenges. We surveyed 103 college one more fully regardi...

This paper analyzes the efficiency of the Brazilian banking sector over the post-privatization period of 2000-2007. We employ a Bayesian stochastic frontier approach, which provides exact efficiency estimates and confidence intervals and thus, allows an accurate comparison across institutions and bank groups. The results suggest that large banks are the most cost and profit efficient, supportin...

Among other proposals to reform the German outpatient health care system the establishment of networks of cooperating physicians (doctors’ networks) has found high and controversial consideration in recent years. In this paper we analyze doctors’ networks both from an economic perspective, particularly with a view on network strategies, and the perspective of supporting information technologies...

The transition from multiple-port to single-port robotic systems in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) procedures has made flexible, dexterous manipulation an essential capability. The requirement that single-port MIS devices span an enclosed surgical workspace through only one access point while avoiding collateral damage to surrounding tissues necessitates the employment of mechanically sophist...

Grape is an important economic crop in Hebei, and its plant protection operation also accounts for proportion production. Grapes need to be sprayed many times kill pests the whole growth cycle. Traditional farmers use electric backpack spray pesticides operations. This inefficient, heavy workload, inefficient of pesticides. Many redundant agricultural chemicals into soil will lead environmental...

0

This paper examines a two-period mixed market model in which a welfaremaximizing public firm and a profit-maximizing private firm can use inventory investment as a strategic device. It is then demonstrated that the equilibrium in the second period coincides with the Stackelberg solution where the private firm is the leader, and at equilibrium, both social welfare and the private firm’s profit a...

In this paper, a system of GIG/l/K queue is considered. The optimal system's capacity (K), when the system is optimized with respect to the benefit of the entire system (social optimization) and when the criterion for optimality is individual gains (individual optimization), is determined and compared. In social optimization, the system capacity is obtained through maximization of the syst...

Strategic interactions between two-sided platforms depend not only on whether their decision variables are strategic complements or substitutes as for one-sided firms, but also -and crucially soon whether or not the platforms subsidize one side of the market in equilibrium. For example, with prices being strategic complements across platforms, we show that a cost-reducing investment by one firm...