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Teaching and learning are being transformed by digital technology, where the present generation of students, termed millennials, are more adept with the increasingly digitalised world we live in. Following this, lecturers and institutions are adapting and adopting a blended learning model across disciplines, which now commands an entire domain of research and application. However, questions remain about how ready students are for a blended learning model of instruction. The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ readiness for blended learning in a leading Malaysian private higher education institution.

This study used a non-experimental quantitative research design. Data were gathered from a sample of 274 pre-university and undergraduate students using the blended learning readiness engagement questionnaire. Data was analysed using WINSTEPS Rasch model measurement software to determine the validity and reliability of the instrument. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) scores, (logit) value of the item and (logit) value of a person was used to examine students’ readiness for a blended learning model of instruction and specifically assess their readiness based on gender, age, ethnicity and field of study.

Findings indicate that students were ready for blended learning. Further analysis indicated there were differences in students’ readiness for blended learning based on gender, age, ethnicity and field of study.

This study provides insight into students’ readiness towards blended learning in a leading Malaysian private higher education institution, discusses implications for blended learning practices and offers recommendations for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to inform readers of the cultural and scientific basis of the Mediterranean diet.

This review was compiled using peer reviewed articles and with the support of Oldways, the non‐profit organisation responsible for designing the Mediterranean diet pyramid in association with Harvard School of Public Health. It is designed to create a resource, which could be disseminated within the food industry to stimulate debate and an understanding of the commercial opportunities for products based on the Mediterranean diet.

From the review of information on the subject there is compelling evidence of the benefits of a Mediterranean diet having a beneficial effect on health status with a reduction in conditions such as coronary heart disease and cancers.

This is a literature review based on large studies of the Mediterranean diet and is not an intervention study.

It is hoped that the food industry can consider the scientific and market research evidence presented and, through innovation and new brand development, offer the possibility of products, which will promote choice and access to increasingly healthy foods.

The compilation of evidence citing the benefits of the Mediterranean diet supports an easily adapted and flavourful diet with numerous health benefits. For the food industry it provides an original concept designed to support the research and development of new initiatives to promote healthy food products.

The benefits of the Mediterranean diet are shown to have significant benefits on health and are easily implemented.

Careers have come to dominate contemporary discourse on gendered entrepreneurship. This paper aims to explore entrepreneurial careers as recounted by commercially successful female entrepreneurs to examine how they strategize to construct desirable careers in contexts characterized by underdeveloped markets and weak institutions.

Using a qualitative research design, data for our inquiry come from publicly available life history accounts of 20 female entrepreneurs appearing on an enterprise focus television show in Nigeria. The authors supplemented the television interview data with archival data in the form of publicly available digital footprints of the entrepreneurs collected from their company websites, magazines, online newspapers featuring these entrepreneurs and their social media pages such as LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Facebook and Instagram.

The careers of female entrepreneurs operating in context of underdeveloped institution and markets, the authors found, are characterized by four heterogeneous ingrained dispositions and actions reflecting how they got in and got on with their entrepreneurial careers: (1) “Observing and playing business,” (2) traipsing the “path less traveled,” (3) a hook to the “Pierian spring” of entrepreneurship and (4) “Grace under pressure” in decision-making.

The authors contribute to the entrepreneurship literature by providing insight into the lived experiences, agency and careers of commercially successful female entrepreneurs as played out in the form of a contextual practice of “wayfinding” to starting up and managing their own business ventures.

This study investigates the personal factors influencing innovative entrepreneurship combined with additional contextual insights from high-income European countries. Specifically, this study has three main objectives: (i) to measure differences in the level of entrepreneurial innovativeness activity among high-income European regions; (ii) to uncover key factors leading to appropriate levels of entrepreneurial innovativeness and (iii) to suggest policies that may enhance the regional level of entrepreneurial innovation.

A sample of 4,430 nascent and new entrepreneurs from 16 different high-income European countries drawn from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Adult Population Survey (APS) was used in conjunction with macroeconomic indicators. Data were analyzed using a logistic regression analysis.

There are significant differences in the conditions that influence entrepreneurial innovativeness in European regions. These variations in entrepreneurial activity can be explained using contextual factors and individual characteristics. Although technological novelty increases the probability of innovative entrepreneurship, the technology effect is significantly greater in Western Europe than other regions across Europe.

This study illustrates how a contextualized view of entrepreneurship enriches the knowledge of the human and dynamic socioeconomic drivers that motivate innovative entrepreneurial action in high-income European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to review the challenges of teaching values and ethics in mental-health, explore the differing perspectives of the key stakeholders and stimulate further questions for debate in this area; leading to a proposal of an alternative approach to educating mental-health professionals on values and ethics.

In current mental-health care settings, very few professionals work with homogeneous populations. It is imperative that mental-health education and training ensures health professionals are competent to practice in diverse settings; where ethics and values are bound to differ. Establishing professional practice not only involves considering concepts such as values and ethics, but also equality, diversity and culture. Incorporating values-based practice and cultural diversity training holds promise to education and training, that is truly reflective of the complexity of clinical decision making in mental-health. Further research is needed as to how these two frameworks can be unified and taught.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that was done among older adults in the city of Bahia Blanca, Argentina regarding their awareness and use of cultural heritage and commercial recreational sites.

This exploratory study among this historically understudied segment of the population used interviews and historical images to analyze their perceptions about such spaces and to establish a link between those perceptions and their civic identity.

The study found that appreciation of local cultural heritage sites was considerably lower than appreciation of commercial recreational areas and suggests possible interventions to enhance the use and appreciation of cultural heritage sites.

This paper about Bahia Blanca derives its relevance from venturing into an analysis of the opinions about such sites among an age segment, the elderly, that has been poorly addressed in other studies, in particular in the Latin American context. The study reported here generated firsthand information that may serve public servants in making decisions in the context of locally developed cultural policies and presents a methodological model and data collection and analysis techniques that may be of interest for development elsewhere.

In Argentina there is a lack of research studies in the “older adults” age bracket. The contribution of this manuscript lies in creating a connectivity among concepts such as recreation/leisure, heritage and lived space, by using new contributions in the geography of leisure that are associated with the geography of everyday life. The concepts are integrated in the study of subjective spaces of individuals.

THE proposition that British library schools should examine their own students is not a new one. As long ago as 1954, Roy Stokes put the question bluntly to the profession. In those days his was a voice crying in the wilderness. The profession at large was not ready for such a development, and continued to adhere to its long held view that the Library Association should examine the products of the schools, while the schools confined themselves to teaching.

This research aims to revisit Gul and Goodwin (2010), which focuses on exploring the relationship between debt maturity structure, credit ratings and audit fees. Furthermore, the authors investigate whether this association varies based on firm size, firm life cycle and financial reporting quality.

To investigate the research question, the authors use an extended sample period, 2004–2017, in comparison to the sample period, 2003–2006, used in Gul and Goodwin (2010). The authors use ordinary least squares regression as a baseline methodology along with two-stage least-squares regression and change analysis to control for endogeneity concerns.

According to Gul and Goodwin (2010), auditors charge lower audit fees for firms with higher short-maturity debt and better credit ratings, indicating a lower likelihood of financial misreporting. Further, Gul and Goodwin (2010) find that lower credit rated firms benefit more from short-term debt. Primarily, the findings are consistent with Gul and Goodwin (2010) and provide further evidence that the beneficial effects of short-maturity debt for firms with poor ratings are evident for small firms, firms in the growth stage of their life cycle and firms with poor earnings quality.

The findings imply that practitioners in the audit profession and investors should take a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to varied firm and financial factors, taking into consideration the intricate relationships between many elements impacting a firm’s financial health. As a result, audit professionals may give more accurate appraisals of a firm’s financial condition, and investors can make better investment decisions.

The authors reconfirm the findings of Gul and Goodwin (2010) using an extended sample. The findings are novel, which evidence that the lower audit fees for rated firms with short-maturity debt are moderated by firm size, life cycle and financial reporting quality.

As studies investigating the effects of fructan sources, such as yacon, on glucose and lipid metabolism showed different results, additional research is required to establish a clear relationship between them. Thus, this paper aims to evaluate possible effects of the consumption of the yacon pulp flour (YPF) on biological and metabolic parameters such as food consumption, weight gain, serum glucose levels and fecal lipid excretion of rats, as well as determine the role of glycemic index (GI) of the diets added of this ingredient on those parameters.

For this purpose, 24 male albino Wistar rats were divided into four groups, which received the following treatments for 17 days: Group 1 (G1) (Control) – American Institute of Nutrition (AIN)-M; Group 2 (G2) – AIN-M added 5 per cent YPF; Group 3 (G3) – AIN-M added 10 per cent YPF and Group 4 (G4) – AIN-M added 15 per cent YPF. Analysis of fasting and postprandial glycemia was conducted for elaboration of the glycemic curve and calculation of the GI of the diets. Lipids loss was measured by quantification of crude fat in feces after consumption of the diet.

YPF, regarding the concentration in the diets, did not elevate the fasting glucose among the groups. The postprandial glucose of the animals declined in different postprandial glucose peaks of the groups ingesting YPF in relation to the control one, especially in group treated with 15 per cent YPF, between 30 and 60 min (p <0,05), confirming the influence of the dietary fiber on the absorption of the glucose. The ingestion of YPF increased dragging of lipids to the animal feces, proportional to the amounts of YPF added to the diets. According to the regression analysis, followed by regression testing to 5 per cent, there was a significant difference between the experimental groups, being that the elevation of the percentage of YPF added to the diet caused a proportional increase in the lipid levels in the animal feces.

YPF could be an alimentary source of interest, mainly when the focus is on disease risk prevention such as diabetes, obesity and dyslipidemias.