Assessing the Role of Automation in Managing of Iranian E-banking and its Impact on Social Benefit
Banks in the field of commercial developments have attention to create structural changes in the receiving and payment systems and also have facilities in services process to customers. In fact we can claim one of the reasons of general tendency to electronic business is the banks managers’ attention to the importance and necessity of this phenomenon, thus have led to their trend and serious attention for providing banking structure, based on electronic method. What banking services makes it different in comparing with other conventional methods for using E-Banking systems, is, quantitative and qualitative expansion in customer service. In other words, E-Banking, prepares the situation to customer till have wider and more diverse services. Furthermore, time and spatial dimension will not have effect in reducing or increasing services to customers. Also the customer can control his/her financial activities in every time and everywhere without attending in bank’s branches. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the status of banking automation, its social and organizational consequences in Iranian E-banking system, and providing appropriate recommendations.
The Electronic Journal for Virtual Organizations and Networks
A Living Lab is a new way to deal with community-driven innovation. Living Labs represent, mostly regional – innovation environments focusing on user communities embedded within real-life. In Europe the Living Labs concept seems to be largely accepted as a way to deal with innovation and to get insight into what triggers innovation. Several Living Labs are currently gathered in an European Network of Living Labs aiming to share best practices and lessons learned. However, is this emerging model for innovation also applicable to South African context? The current article explores how best practices and lessons learned can speed up innovation in South African’s rural communities.
Novel polymeric hydrogel composites: Synthesis, physicochemical, mechanical and biocompatible properties
In this research study, novel hydrogel composite films were constructed using different ratios of poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/kappa-carrageenan (KC) (PVA90/KC10%, PVA80/KC20%, PVA70/KC30%, PVA60/KC40%) crosslinked with glutaraldehyde (0.025%) and investigated their physicochemical characteristics such as mechanical, thermal, morphological, swelling behaviour, and cell viability. SEM and FTIR revealed that surface morphology changed to heterogeneous and the presence of molecular interaction among the polymers. PVA90KC10 and PVA60KC40 exhibited smaller and larger pores on surface respectively. The change in the proportion of PVA and KC also triggered the tensile strength (Ts) of the film and the highest Ts observed were 21.60 MPa for PVA60KC40. Moreover, the thermal analysis showed three-phase degradation, and an increase in KC40 concentration results inversely proportional to a decrease in the rate of thermal degradation. Further, swelling and in-vitro biodegradation study confirmed the enhanced perseverance of water uptake for PVA60KC40 (286%) due to pores structure of the hydrogel film and PVA and KC alone degraded faster as compare to other films results suggested higher concentration of PVA90KC10 showed lower degradation rate and highest for PVA60KC40 about 6% and 22% respectively. Further, the cell viability was studied with MTT assay method by using NIH3T3 and HEK-293 cells for biocompatibility study revealed NIH3T3 cells were more biocompatible than HEK-293 and cell viability percent for PVA60KC40 showed the highest cell attachment about 99%. Overall corroborating data obtained from the study attested to the average swelling, appreciable mechanical characters, good interaction between molecules, and cell viability of the constructed PVA/KC hydrogel film, these all characters pave to be used as a potential template for biomedical applications such as tissue engineering and drug delivery.