The proliferation of sensor networks, mobile and pervasive computing has provided the technological push for a new class of participatory-sensing applications, based on sensing and aggregating usergenerated content, and transforming it into knowledge. However, given the power and value of both the raw data and the derived knowledge, to ensure that the generators are commensurate beneficiaries, ...

The E-Learning Maturity Model (eMM) is a quality improvement framework designed to help institutional leaders assess their institution's e-learning maturity. This paper reviews the eMM, drawing on examples of assessments conducted in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the USA to show how it helps institutional leaders assess and compare their institution's capability to sustainably develop, dep...

In this paper, we provide additional empirical evidence on the impact of institutional investors on stock return dynamics. The Polish pension system reform in 1999 and the associated increase in institutional ownership due to the investment activities of pension funds are exploited as an unique institutional characteristic. Performing a variant of the event study methodology in an asymmetric GA...

Global managers report that high unforeseen costs impact project outcomes and that many unforeseen costs arise from national institutional differences – differences in participants’ core beliefs, values, norms and legal, political and economic regulative systems. How do institutional differences impact firm success rates? Can these costs be quantified, measured, modeled and predicted? Are these...

This paper uses a large panel of financial flow data from banks to assess how institutions affect international lending. First, employing a time varying composite institutional quality index in a fixed-effects framework, the paper shows that institutional improvements are followed by significant increases in international finance. Second, cross-sectional models also show a strong effect of init...

The effects of the institutional determinants on trade in agricultural and food products are analyzed using a gravity model approach. We focus on the impact of the quality of governance and the similarity of institutions in explaining variation in bilateral agricultural and food trade patterns among the OECD countries. Results confirmed the separate effects for the institutional similarity and ...

Preliminary data were presented in a poster at the 14th annual Cochrane Colloquium in Dublin, Ireland, 23–26 October 2006. Final results were presented orally at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for Investigative Dermatology in Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A., 9–12 May 2007. This study was funded in part by National Cancer Institute grant K-07CA92550 (R.P.D.), National Institute of Health grant T...

INTRODUCTION Women represent a growing proportion of older people and experience increasing disability in their longer lives. Using a universally agreed definition of disability based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, this paper examines how, apart from age, social and economic factors contribute to disability differences between older men and women. M...