Purpose: Exploration of some major obstacles to integrated care in ‘countries in transition’ in central/eastern Europe. Context: ‘Integration’ is virtually a universal policy aim of European ‘transition’ countries. Seduced by the prospect of increased value from scarce resources, governments strive to transform traditional compartmentalised ‘curative’ health systems, into more integrated system...

This thesis proposes a risk-based navigation method including both the traditional notion of risk of collision and the notion of risk of disturbance. With the growing demand of personal assistance to mobility and mobile service robotics, robots and people must share the same physical spaces and follow the same social conventions. Robots must respect proximity constraints but also respect people...

Social Media tools are seen by many authors as powerful drivers of change for teaching and learning practices, in terms of openness, interactivity and sociability. However, extensive surveys about actual use that are carried out with large samples at a national level are rare. This study reports the results of a survey addressed to the Italian academic staff, with the aim of identifying the use...

Brazilian Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery In times of economic crisis, with the government cutting funds in various sectors, including science and technology, with serious consequences in scientific research and, consequently, the production of good articles, periodicals must learn to reinvent themselves in order to be most read/accessed by attracting more interesting studies. To make matters...

Scholars investigating the relationship between the Internet and social capital have been stymied by a series of obstacles, some due to theoretical frameworks handed down unchanged from television research, and some due to the lack of an appropriate yardstick. For example, the social interactions that occur through television are prima facie different from those that occur online. Given this ba...

Although theoretically necessary, social capital is not considered within the process of asset allocation for private investors. Both the lack of appropriate practical valuation concepts and the effort of providing and processing the required information as input for a valuation were obstacles to include social capital in this process. However, first theoretical financial models for the evaluat...

Organizations often face challenges with the adoption and use of new information systems, and social media is no exception. In this exploratory case study, we aim to identify internal and external challenges related to the adoption and use of social media in a large case company. Our findings show that internal challenges include resources, ownership, authorization, attitudes and economic issue...