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People who suffer from phobias try to avoid a specific object or feared situation by creating a great obstacle that causes serious consequences in their daily life; the most effective way to deal with a phobia is through exposure therapy, which according to one of the most important principles of psychology states that to overcome a fear you have to face it. The purpose of this paper is to develop a mobile application based on augmented reality (AR) for the treatment of spider phobia (Araneae).

The application development methodology was divided into two phases: design where sketches were made according to functional requirements, and the client server model was used for user queries and the development phase where the modules for the information of the phobia; and visualization of the arachnid in different morphological forms was implemented through the development tools.

The findings of this study, in this sense, state that it was possible to overcome the phobia in an essential way by ceasing to perceive harmless things as dangerous, helping them to manage stress and keep them under control.

Allowing to face their fears in support of existing therapeutic processes through images with progressively AR, being an innovative and accessible treatment from an economic, technological and professional point of view.

The use of information and communication technologies has become essential in organizations, as it is considered a key factor for modernization; however, many public or private institutions do not start with the process of digitizing their services. The purpose of this paper is to seek to manage the digital identity through a mobile application on Android that is intuitive and simple to access information in a public entity in the Province of Cañete.

In this regard, for the development of the mobile application, it was divided into three phases: analysis and design, where the functional and nonfunctional requirements are collected, the interface and the client–server architecture are designed; development, where the predesigned interfaces are encoded with their respective documentation; finally, software testing, to detect possible errors, unexpected crushes and behavior of the functionalities at user level.

Thus, it was possible to implement a directory of mobile services for citizens to facilitate access to data, content and public information such as files and location of municipal premises.

The application provides a new means of digital communication to provide access to institutional information and monitoring of procedures as digital banking, education and medicine.

This paper investigates the significant increase in S corporation banks converting to C corporations following the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and the shift in motivations behind these conversions.

The paper uses bank-level panel data from Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Call Reports to analyze the determinants of S bank conversions after the TCJA, comparing post-TCJA conversion trends with pre-TCJA trends utilizing an ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistics model.

The study finds that post-TCJA conversions are primarily driven by financially stable banks seeking improved tax conditions and relaxed shareholder restrictions as C corporations. This contrasts with pre-TCJA conversions, which were predominantly driven by financially distressed S corporation banks seeking new equity capital to maintain solvency.

The findings necessitate a comprehensive reconsideration of the Subchapter S status' sustained relevance for smaller institutions, especially in light of the comparative benefits now offered by the C corporation status post-TCJA. The results underscore the importance of ongoing academic investigation to deepen the understanding of the evolving fiscal landscape's effects on community banks, thereby contributing to the knowledge of the resilience and health of the US economy.

This research nudges policymakers and regulators to contemplate the ongoing relevance and advantages of the S corporation status. Given the substantial benefits conferred by the C corporation status in the post-TCJA environment, this study suggests that retaining the S corporation status may not offer the same appeal for smaller community banks as it once did.

This paper contributes to the broader understanding of the impact of tax policy on businesses' organizational choices, particularly in the banking industry and emphasizes the need for a comprehensive review of the S corporation status to assess its ongoing applicability in fostering small and community-focused financial institutions in light of the evolved corporate tax landscape.

This study has two primary objectives. First, it analyzes the information content of confidentiality strictness in corporate loan credit agreements. Second, it examines how confidentiality strictness impacts covenant design, lending syndicate structure and loan pricing.

Using a sample of 6,327 loan credit agreements originated by US public firms in the period of 1996–2017, this study measures the confidentiality strictness in loan contracts using textual analyses that capture the appearance of confidentiality-related words and the length of confidentiality provision. All regressions include relevant loan characteristics, firm-specific accounting variables, industry and year fixed effects. To address the endogeneity concern, the paper uses borrowing firms' rival cash holdings and R&D expenditures to instrument for confidentiality strictness in two-staged least square regressions.

Borrowers which have higher R&D and operate in more competitive product markets have tighter confidentiality policies. Furthermore, this study reveals that confidentiality strictness is negatively associated with the imposition of financial covenants, especially performance covenants. Loan contracts for borrowers with stricter confidentiality on average have more relaxed covenant intensity, measured by the number of covenants. The study also shows that stricter confidentiality attracts finance companies, which have strong expertise in product markets of their parent firms, into the lending syndicate. However, confidentiality-conscious borrowers with higher degree of information asymmetry are subject to higher loan spreads.

This study provides the first examination of confidentiality policies in loan contracts and supports the idea that loan provisions are not simply made of “boilerplate” language. The results suggest that, for confidentiality-sensitive borrowers, the greater exposure to product market competition helps control managerial slack and substitute monitoring from financial markets.

This paper presents a new mixed methods approach which allows researchers to scan industry sectors for institutional change periods and to locate periods of significant institutional change agency.

The approach is grounded on the institutional logics perspective and on institutional entrepreneurship theory and combines an automated quantitative content analysis with a cognitive mapping exercise.

The paper describes the development of this approach and its application to the urban water management sector of Australia. Three periods of significant institutional change agency are identified, described and discussed.

The paper puts forward a new methodological approach that enables a robust and objective identification of actor-driven institutional change periods which can be used as a precursor for more targeted qualitative inquiries into institutional change research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief history of the Animal Welfare Act and suggest that librarians and other information professionals can play an active role in helping researchers to comply with the Act.

The author attended workshops directed towards Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) and Biomedical Researchers. As a result of attending these workshops, the author recognized the potential for librarians and information specialists to assist researchers in performing literature searches, a required component of research protocols. The purpose of the literature search is to seek alternatives to the use of animals in experiments and to ensure that the researchers are not unnecessarily duplicating previous experiments. A research guide consisting of proprietary databases, free databases, books, web sites, and tutorials facilitates the literature review mandated by the Act.

While serving on his institution's Animal Care and Use Committee, the author was charged with reviewing research protocols involving the use of live, vertebrate animals. These protocols call for a literature review to determine if there are acceptable alternatives to the use of animals, or to methods that cause pain and distress to the animals. The author found that the majority of the searches that were performed needed improvement, with many failing to meet the minimum requirements of the Animal Welfare Act. Through his participation in relevant workshops, the author also found that many researchers were unaware of the requirements of this search for alternatives, and that they lacked familiarity with the resources available to them.

The author performed a search in Library and Information Science Abstracts and Library/Information Sciences & Technology Abstracts using the keywords “alternatives” and “animals” and received only four relevant results, dated 1990, 2001, 2004, and 2007.

There is sufficient literature on green knowledge regarding supplier selections. Notwithstanding, there are hardly any empirical studies that analyze green knowledge toward supplier selection through the lenses of green intellectual capital (GIC). This paper aims to analyze green knowledge development toward supplier selection through the lenses of GIC.

This study uses an exploratory case study approach involving seven public universities in Ghana. A purposive sampling technique was used in selecting respondents who were interviewed through face-to-face and focus group discussions with a semistructured interview guide. Atlas ti software was used to generate themes for discussion.

The findings of this study attribute the nonapplication of green criteria to supplier selection to low knowledge among practitioners. Training, collaboration, opportunities for further studies and affiliation with professional bodies were identified as means to enhance green knowledge. Green human capital factors that support knowledge enhancement include commitment, capability, skills and ease of understanding.

Green procurement practitioners in public universities in developing countries stand little chance of integrating green criteria into supplier selection if they do not develop their level of knowledge.

Selecting green suppliers is a complex issue for public organizations, particularly universities. This study would therefore help equip managers of public universities and procurement practitioners with the relevant GIC knowledge for the successful integration of green credentials into supplier selection.

This paper highlights the importance of knowledge in green supplier selection. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, analyzing the role of GIC in knowledge development is considered the first of this kind of study.

Context matters in social entrepreneurship, and it matters a lot. Social entrepreneurs are deeply entrenched in the context where they operate: they respond to its challenges, are shaped by it, and attempt to shape it in turn. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how social entrepreneurship in Africa is still understood within the scope of Western theories, without much consideration for local variations of the commonly shared archetype of social entrepreneurship or for how African norms, values and beliefs may shape our common understanding of this phenomenon.

The authors survey the often-neglected literature on social entrepreneurship in Africa and bring it together in this paper to discuss – also from the vantage point of their own experience and research in diverse African countries – how important assumptions in the social entrepreneurship literature are confirmed, enriched or challenged by key dimensions of African contexts.

Four important themes in the literature on social entrepreneurship in Africa emerged – institutions, embedding values, entrepreneurial behaviour and bricolage and scaling impact – each with its own considerations of how African contexts may challenge predominant assumptions in the extant social entrepreneurship literature, as well as implications for future research.

The authors uncover ways in which the peculiarities of the African context may challenge the underlying – and mostly implicit – assumptions that have shaped the definition and analysis of social entrepreneurship. They end by offering their understanding of social entrepreneurship and its concomitant dimensions in Africa as a stepping stone for advancing the field in the continent and beyond.

This systematic review of literature purposes to explore the impact of climate change on Mexico's water resources, exploring the impacts and efforts to address the problem as well as their effectiveness.

The researcher relied on several tools to obtain scholarly articles. The primary approach was using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The Journal Impact Factor was an important consideration for the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The work also excluded all journals predating 2009. The work emphasized using journal articles. However, it consulted textbooks and documents from the government and water conservation sources. Contextually the sources with the highest Journal Impact Factor index were selected, paying heed to their relevance to the topic under investigation. Fifty sources out of seventy were included in the systematic review.

Mexico's already strained water resources have been negatively impacted by climate change, behooving the Mexican government to implement various mitigative strategies. However, scholars reported mixed results on the effectiveness of the various policies and programs implemented by the Mexican government. Key impediments to sustainable implementations entailed the political and social contexts surrounding the conservation policies in Mexico.

Numerous articles have explored the impact of climate change on Mexico's water resources, but many focus on a specific aspect. This work took a holistic approach, synthesizing multiple impacts and providing a sociological perspective on the effects, mitigation efforts, and implementation challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare ultra-violet (UV)-curable inkjet inks for textile printing application. The influence of both type and component ratio of monomer/oligomer on the quality of the desired viscosity range is studied. Moreover, the effect of pigment/resin ratio on the rheological behaviour of the ink has been studied.

Aqueous dispersions of nanoscale organic pigments were prepared through ball milling and ultrasonication. The dispersed pigments were encapsulated into UV-curable resin via miniemulsion technique, using different types and component ratios of monomers and oligomers.

It was found that the monomer/oligomer ratio of 2:3 and the pigment/resin ratio of 2:1 gave the most stable miniemulsion dispersions and provided the most suitable rheological range for inkjet printing inks.

As the rheology of the ink is optimised, most of the problems associated with the jetting process could be avoided.

This method of using UV-curable encapsulated inks eliminates the usage of binders, which are the principal factor for nozzle clogging of the print head. In addition, binders are responsible for the coarse handle of the printed textiles.

The UV-curable inks were viewed as a green technology by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

This method is simple and fast and requires low cost. In addition, it could find numerous applications in surface coating.