The Technology Readiness Index (TRI) developed by Parasuraman (2000) was adapted to measure the technology readiness of public school teachers in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The study aims at better understanding the factors (mostly demographics) that affect such readiness levels. In addition, Abu Dhabi teachers are segmented into five main groups, with the highest percentage being “laggar...

Technology and societal changes are moving the global market rapidly towards a new economic order rooted in e-commerce. Hence, assessing and monitoring the e-readiness of a nation has become an increasing challenge. This paper proposes a framework to evaluate the e-readiness of a nation based on eight factors: digital infrastructure, macro economy, ability to invest, knowledgeable citizens, com...

Much has been made of the shifting relationships of power caused by the forces of globalization. Through the intensification of social interconnections, we now can apprehend the world as a single place, aware of our own place and its relative location within the range of world experience. The media of communication are key players in this process, both as causes and outcomes. Like with other ar...

It verges on tautology to say that internet use depends on internet availability. Obviously, the former will not occur in the absence of the latter. However, it is quite another thing to claim that there is a simple linear relationship between availability and use. It is conceivable that, once the diffusion of a communication technology has reached a certain critical threshold, every additional...

BACKGROUND Framingham-based and Reynolds Risk scores for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prediction have not been directly compared in an independent validation cohort. METHODS AND RESULTS We selected a case-cohort sample of the multiethnic Women's Health Initiative Observational Cohort, comprising 1722 cases of major CVD (752 myocardial infarctions, 754 ischemic strokes, and 216 other CVD death...

Privately owned forests, wetlands, and crop-lands in the United States are disappearing at alarming rates due to development and erosion , according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on 7 December 1999. The report, which summarizes the USDA's 1997 National Resources Inventory (NRI), reveals that development has doubled during the last decade to-more than three mi...

OBJECTIVE The objectives of this study were to develop a coronary heart disease (CHD) risk model among the Korean Heart Study (KHS) population and compare it with the Framingham CHD risk score. DESIGN A prospective cohort study within a national insurance system. SETTING 18 health promotion centres nationwide between 1996 and 2001 in Korea. PARTICIPANTS 268 315 Koreans between the ages of...

In clinical practice, approximately one-third of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) respond insufficiently to TNF-α inhibitors (TNFis). The aim of the study was to explore the use of a metabolomics to identify predictors for the outcome of TNFi therapy, and study the metabolomic fingerprint in active RA irrespective of patients' response. In the metabolomic profiling, lipids, oxylipins, an...

BACKGROUND Nasopharyngeal radium irradiation (NRI) was used widely from 1940 through 1970 to treat otitis serosa in children and barotrauma in airmen and submariners. We assessed whether NRI-exposed individuals were at higher risk for cancer-related deaths than were nonexposed individuals. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all-cause and cancer-related mortality in 5358 NRI-...