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The purpose of this study is to show how selective laser sintering (SLS) manufacturing of bioresorbable scaffolds is used for applications in bone tissue engineering.

Polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffolds were computationally designed and then fabricated via SLS for applications in bone and cartilage repair.

Preliminary biocompatibility data were acquired using human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) assuring a satisfactory scaffold colonization by hMSCs.

A promising procedure for producing porous scaffolds for the repair of skeletal defects, in tissue engineering applications, was developed.

Students with learning disabilities (LD) have a wide range of academic needs. Since the passing of P.L. 94-142, significant research has been done on effective interventions for this group of students. Starting with the Learning Disabilities Research Institutes through the recent Handbook of Learning Disabilities, reviews of lines of research make several broad ideas about interventions clear. Primary among these is that students with LD can learn if provided with appropriate, effective instruction. Specifics about this idea and its implications are discussed in the following chapter.

Purpose: This chapter aims to lay out the issues regarding the world of digital currencies, private and central bank digital currency (CBDC). In that connection, the authors want to, as much as possible, systematically present the terminology, examples of various digital currencies and the technology behind that phenomenon. The chapter also highlights the occurrence of CBDC and the possible implications of its introduction to day-to-day commercial banking practice, possibly taking the payment systems and transactions alternation, balance sheet and profits’ issues into consideration.

Need for the study: Digital currencies already have and are also soon going to have an enormous impact on society as such, where payments for everyday goods and services are taken on a whole new platform and level, in the sense of how the payments are made and payment systems are constructed, as also in the sense of quantity, as the number and sum-wise payments carried out via such platforms are growing.

Methodology: A triangulation method, a mixed qualitative methodological approach was implemented, so the research offers a synthesis of previously published contributions in this field, followed by deductive and inductive reasoning interconnected with descriptive and comparative analyses.

Findings: As digital currency already have a vast impact on payment systems and modes of payment, the CBDC, an imperative of today and not the matter of the future, will have implications for commercial banks, probably in the field of lowering banks’ commissions, no big customer data-selling ability, accumulating the deposits and deposit policies and credit policies due to higher funding costs for banks. There is an interwovenness among the central bank activities, bank customer’s behaviour and commercial bank activities. Therefore, the change of payment and spending behaviour of customers because of central banks’ introducing novelties will also have consequences for the banking industry.

Practical implications: The choice to handle cash or digital currency will be obsolete, and an individual’s or a firm’s financial knowledge must be upgraded in the field of new money using angles. The issue of digital currencies and CBDCs are no longer a matter of choice but are becoming a new reality. Therefore, it is necessary for the common public, economy and banking system, especially now carrying out most of payments and transfers of money, to study this field and foresee the possible consequences and risks emerging.

To cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing mobile apps (CTMAs) have been developed to trace contact among infected individuals and alert people at risk of infection. To disrupt virus transmission until the majority of the population has been vaccinated, achieving the herd immunity threshold, CTMA continuance usage is essential in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. This study seeks to examine what motivates individuals to continue using CTMAs.

Following the coping theory, this study proposes a research model to examine CTMA continuance usage, conceptualizing opportunity appraisals (perceived usefulness and perceived distress relief), threat appraisals (privacy concerns) and secondary appraisals (perceived response efficacy) as the predictors of individuals' CTMA continuance usage during the pandemic. In the United States, an online survey was administered to 551 respondents.

The results revealed that perceived usefulness and response efficacy motivate CTMA continuance usage, while privacy concerns do not.

This study enriches the understanding of CTMA continuance usage during a public health crisis, and it offers practical recommendations for authorities.

We describe a special education teacher and a history teacher who, together, gave specific learning disabled (SLD) and emotionally disabled (ED) students the opportunity to make historical documentaries in a self-contained special education classroom. Students were diverse in race, gender and disability. Findings indicated documentary making yielded positive outcomes for students as well as for the teachers. By selectively appropriating desktop documentary making technology, teachers engaged students in a technology-based project. Documentary making also opened opportunities for teachers’ close interaction with students, while still managing a potentially disruptive classroom. Students, who struggled with reading and writing, completed an engaging, lengthy, complex history project and exercised historical thinking skills. This study has implications for using documentary making technologies for engaging and refining students’ historical thinking skills.

The purpose of this paper is to report about the presence of misconceptions in the historical thinking of fifth-grade children with learning disabilities (LD) and their normally achieving (NA) peers. We also sought to determine the effects of implementing an integrated instructional unit about 19th century U.S. Westward Expansion on children's historical misconceptions. This unit was taught over an eight-week period by a special education teacher (subsequently referred to as Ms. M) who had approximately two years of prior professional teaching experience. In addition to quantitative information about changes in children's content knowledge, we report interview data about children's understanding of historical content and historical reasoning. Furthermore, we captured on videotape approximately 12h of classroom instruction. Ms. M and the first author of this paper independently reviewed and then discussed these videotapes for the purpose of assessing the effects of her teaching practices on the development of children's historical understanding. The implications of our findings are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a screening protocol that can be used to support the provision of more accessible information.

The paper presents a series of four case studies of adults with learning disabilities examining the processes of making information accessible considering their literacy and language skills.

Screening revealed that four individuals required different mechanisms to maximise their ability to access information provided.

The need to complete relevant screening, devise personalised materials and evaluate success is pivotal in the development of accessible information.

The provision of appropriate accessible information with evidenced positive outcomes is fundamental to reducing risk and increasing social inclusion.

This paper summarises a new approach to information provision based on screening, decision making and review. It will be of interest to a range of professionals tasked with the responsibility of providing accessible information to individuals with varying and complex needs who may lack functional literacy skills. This may include completion of capacity screening.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing property tax reassessment performance in West Malaysia. It specifically examines intangible aspects, such as intellectual capital and process innovation among valuation officers. The primary concern in this study is the variability in how effectively local authorities carry out property tax reassessment, with a significant number of them not conducting revaluations regularly.

The data was collected using self-administered and electronic questionnaires using a purposive sampling method. The 154 useable responses were further analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling in SmartPLS 4.

The result shows that process innovation mediates the relationship between structural capital and property tax reassessment performance as well as the relationship between relational capital and property tax reassessment performance. This suggests that local authority systems and policies are indirectly related to reassessment practises by introducing new methods of reassessment in the form of administration and technology. The result shows that building good relationships with stakeholders and other institutions encourages staff to develop innovative ideas for their reassessment activities, thus enhance the performance of property tax reassessment.

The study provides insightful information for local authorities managers and stakeholders in crafting a better policy for periodic property tax reassessment. The study suggests the need for new administration and technological innovation in developing effective property tax reassessment strategies through the integration of organisational structure and relationship building.

The study developed a new model for property tax reassessment performance that incorporates intangible assets with the introduction of process innovation as a mediator.

The purpose of this paper is to combine studies that describe the spin-off creation process with studies that analyze spin-off determinants to understand the phenomenon of spin-off development.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to improve our understanding of academic spin-off development in southern Italy. Following a systematic combining approach, the framework is constructed by iteratively matching the concepts derived by the literature on spin-off processes and spin-off determinants with the empirical findings obtained through a case study of 19 spin-offs in southern Italy.

The combination of empirical results and literature analysis helps us to identify a general model for spin-off creation that could be particularly useful to explain the criticalities of their development.

This paper provides implications for policy-makers in southern Italy regarding factors for which intervention would support the creation of new spin-offs. This study also provides useful implications for policy-makers in other contexts, such as areas that may or may not be at a disadvantage.

The resulting framework represents an original contribution to the literature because it: links two aspects – the stages of spin-off creation and determinants of spin-off development – which are often considered separately in existing studies; explores factors that either impede or facilitate the different stages of spin-off development; provides a series of findings that can be successively tested in other studies; and sheds more light on the context of southern Italy, which has been investigated in only a limited number of previous studies.