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The importance of financial dependence of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on their performance is a relatively unaddressed area of research. Relatedly, whether and to what extent foreign bank penetration exerts an impact in the presence of financial dependence also remains an open question. The purpose of the paper in this regard is to exploit unit-level data on Indian SMEs and assess the independent and interactive effects of financial dependence on SME behaviour, in the presence of foreign banks.

This study uses fixed effects specification to address the issue. In subsequent analysis, this study also uses an instrumental variable approach for robustness.

The results indicate that financial dependence improves investment and employment, although there is a decline in productivity. These findings differ across size classes of SMEs. Similar is the evidence in the presence of foreign banks. In particular, foreign bank penetration leads to a decline in investment for micro and medium SMEs, although for small SMEs, the impact is found to be the opposite.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the early within-country studies to examine the interface between SMEs and financial dependence and the role played by foreign banks in this regard.

Presenteeism is the productivity loss due to working with ill health. This paper aims to develop a presenteeism scale for students (PSS) and reveals its association with the academic achievement of undergraduate (Bachelor) students.

This is a cross-sectional study based on a reputed public university in Bangladesh. The study collected data from 164 undergraduate students by relying upon the systematic random sampling technique.

Nearly 70 percent of the study population have reported some health problems, with male students reporting frustration (59.6 percent) and female students reporting migraine (61.2 percent) as the most prevalent issues. Predictors such as gender, living status, television and social media use, absenteeism, physical activity, BMI (body mass index), hygienic meal intake, exhaustion score and PSS score have significantly influenced presenteeism and reduced academic performance. As many students face multiple health issues, it is recommended that the issue of presenteeism on university campuses be addressed.

This study breaks from the conventional approach of studying presenteeism in business settings and expands knowledge in the education domain. Additionally, it examines the interconnection of primary health conditions, work impairment score, presenteeism and academic performance.

In the realm of construction education, the investigation of immersive learning and extended reality (XR) technologies has experienced a surge in recent times. Nevertheless, there remains a notable lack of comprehension surrounding the most efficient ways to integrate these technologies into tailored teaching approaches for vocational construction training. This research study aims to pinpoint the key factors that construction vocational education and training (VET) providers must consider when introducing XR technologies into their training schemes.

This study conducted an in-depth literature review to develop an initial framework to summarise training, technology and institutional factors influencing the educational-technology integration of XR technologies in VET. In addition, this study utilised a Delphi technique, including semi-structured group discussions and two rounds of online follow-up questionnaires, to capture VET experts’ judgements on the importance of decision-making criteria.

This study has identified the critical factors to be considered in the VET sector when adopting XR technologies. Findings revealed institutional factors were the most important criteria for participants, followed by training and technology factors.

The current decision-making process focuses on selecting XR technologies rather than evaluating their performance after implementation. Therefore, more research is needed to monitor the implementation of this technology in curricula from a senior management perspective. This will help to understand the cost and value factors related to the value proposition of XR technologies in courses.

To ensure the success and long-term viability of the technology-curriculum interface, it is important to consider factors such as the availability of technical and educational support, data security and cost-effectiveness. It is also crucial to focus on ease of use and content development that emphasises instruction to create engaging content for learners.

The potential impact of this study is underpinned by two facts: (1) it constitutes the first effort made in the field to comprehensively elicit VET expert judgements in relation to XR technologies, and (2) it offers decision-making criteria that are at play in seeking to take advantage of high-cost technologies that are rapidly evolving. While there is no simple checklist for XR implementation, this study takes a step further to identify significant factors influencing XR integration in vocational construction training.

Zara et al. (2023) provide novel findings into how psychopathy may develop, showing that early life predictors of poor relationships (e.g. being unwanted before birth) are predictive of psychopathy in adulthood. The authors provide a theoretical interpretation of why psychopathy might develop based on these findings by using an adaptive perspective, suggesting that psychopathy may protect or shield individuals from poor relationships. This commentary aims to critically evaluate and extend this latter suggestion in hopes of fostering further research and clarity on the topic.

After presenting an overview of evolutionary perspectives, a summary and elaboration are presented of the interpretation that psychopathy may be an adaptive response that functions to protect individuals from poor relationships. Then, an additional adaptive interpretation is offered.

Psychopathy describes a collection of traits and behavior that facilitates an approach-oriented and exploitative motivational style that might suggest more than a protective function. When negative or poor relationships are experienced (e.g. being unwanted), it is suggested that psychopathy may begin to develop not just for protection (If I am not loved, I will shield myself from those around me) but to actively orient toward exploitation (If I am not loved, I will exploit those around me).

This commentary hopes to arouse further interest into the theoretical interpretations of why psychopathy may develop that are based on findings of how psychopathy develops. These considerations are consequential for understanding what to target in treatments that aim to meet the specific needs and motivations of individuals with psychopathic traits.

The current study is aimed at identifying the prominent influencers that affect the response behaviour of patients in a hospital environment.

The research is based on the data collected through the participant observation method while interviewing patients about the quality of healthcare services in nine community health centres of the Kashmir division. Thematic analysis was performed on the information collected from patients admitted to various hospital sections.

The analysis of the qualitative data revealed that the presence of hospital staff near respondents, perceived risk of maltreatment, social desirability, the sensitivity of the topic, risk of information sharing and attitude towards surveys are the most frequently observed factors that modulate the patient's tendency to truthfully report critical facts about the problem understudy.

These results can help researchers to exercise caution while communicating with respondents and collecting data related to serious issues in a natural setting.

This paper aims to concentrate on recent innovations in flexible wearable sensor technology tailored for monitoring vital signals within the contexts of wearable sensors and systems developed specifically for monitoring health and fitness metrics.

In recent decades, wearable sensors for monitoring vital signals in sports and health have advanced greatly. Vital signals include electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, electromyography, inertial data, body motions, cardiac rate and bodily fluids like blood and sweating, making them a good choice for sensing devices.

This report reviewed reputable journal articles on wearable sensors for vital signal monitoring, focusing on multimode and integrated multi-dimensional capabilities like structure, accuracy and nature of the devices, which may offer a more versatile and comprehensive solution.

The paper provides essential information on the present obstacles and challenges in this domain and provide a glimpse into the future directions of wearable sensors for the detection of these crucial signals. Importantly, it is evident that the integration of modern fabricating techniques, stretchable electronic devices, the Internet of Things and the application of artificial intelligence algorithms has significantly improved the capacity to efficiently monitor and leverage these signals for human health monitoring, including disease prediction.

Embedded in built environment discourse, this chapter examines the traditional knowledge and resilience of the Ngadjuri Nation Peoples through an Elder’s narrative of reconciliation as well as resistance in their subsisting colonial settlement. Removed from ‘Country’ in the 1840s, Ngadjuri Aboriginal community endured colonial industries of open-cut copper mining and large-scale pastoralism as irreparable destruction to their cultural landscapes. European processes in the resources sectors reshaped natural topographies, deconstructing Ngadjuri Songlines and Ancestral Dreaming stories. Burra’s colonial stone buildings of settlement, painstakingly cut and composed from materials of the surrounding ecological terrain, prompted new narratives from Ngadjuri as a way of alleviating scars. Broadly speaking, this chapter aims to show how cultural heritage of two communities is provocatively and conceptually unpacked through the vernacular buildings’ cross-cultural foundations. That is, an under-reported narrative was unwittingly bestowed on the colonial-built forms with hidden meanings that deserve further investigation. This chapter offers a counternarrative to colonial histories revealing Ngadjuri’s methods for reconnecting to Country and culture after generations of disempowerment. It explores how within the materiality of colonial structures, the Ngadjuri entwined their remediated storylines – revealing a data curation that had avoided popular discourse in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] sector representation. This example implies there are bodies of knowledge in built cultural heritage hidden elsewhere on our Aboriginal Nations and the challenges it presents GLAM in their Indigenisation processes.

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) interventions demand diverse services, encompassing medical, social and psychological care to ensure the overall wellbeing of service users. In the absence of multidisciplinary response to SRH interventions, service users could be deprived of crucial SRH services, which could undermine their safety and wellbeing. Based on this knowledge, our study was designed to map the interprofessional space in primary healthcare (PHC) facilities in Ebonyi State, Nigeria that deliver SRH services.

Interviews with 20 health workers and group discussions with 72 young people aged 15–24 years provided the data for the study. We analyzed data deductively, focusing on the assessments of the presence or absence of specific professionals that are typically expected to provide different aspects of SRH services.

We found conspicuous absence of laboratory diagnostic, social care, psycho-cognitive and some medical services expected of primary care. These absences necessitated unnecessary referrals, encouraged breaches in confidentiality, undermined social care and justice, increased cost of care and discouraged young clients from utilizing SRH services provided in PHCs. Our study, therefore, emphasizes the need for integrated care in the delivery of SRH services, which would involve relevant diverse professionals contributing their expertise toward comprehensive care for SRH service users.

The study provides human resource insights toward strengthening primary healthcare in Nigeria vis-à-vis efficient delivery of SRH services to guarantee the health security of service users.

The study aims to investigate how pregnant and nursing mothers’ stories have been neglected in writing about gender, security and spaces.

The study chronicles Agogo Traditional Area’s pregnant and nursing mothers’ resistance and survival in this conflicted environment. The author used photo voices in a participatory photography design to give conflict-area women a voice. Interviews and observations supported this. Pregnant and nursing mothers were sampled using the purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The data analysis considered narrative analysis, photographic and inductive approaches.

The findings highlighted how these mothers in vicious settings experienced healthcare access and problems, societal issues including gender dynamics, food insecurity, and emotional and psychological well-being.

The findings in this study expand the socio-cultural narratives of pregnant and nursing mothers in violent spaces.

This study aims to explore the efficacy of government policy directions in mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by employing a panel of 22 countries throughout the 2020-second quarter of 2022.

The panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is employed to examine this phenomenon and to investigate the long-run effects of government policy decisions on infection and mortality rates from the pandemic.

The study reveals the following key findings: (1) Income support and debt relief facilities and stringent standards of governments are associated with reduced infection and death rates. (2) The response of governments has resulted in decreased mortality rates while simultaneously leading to an unexpected increase in infection rates. (3) Containment and healthcare practices have led to a decrease in infection rates but an increase in mortality rates, presenting another counterintuitive outcome. Despite the expectation that robust government responses would decrease infection rates and that healthcare containment practices would reduce mortality, these results highlight a lack of health equity and the challenge of achieving high vaccination rates across countries.

To effectively combat the spread of COVID-19, it is crucial to implement containment health practices in conjunction with tracing and individual-level quarantine. Simply implementing containment health measures without these interconnected strategies would be ineffective. Therefore, policy implications derived from containment health measures should be accompanied by targeted, aggressive, and rapid containment strategies aimed at significantly reducing the number of individuals infected with COVID-19.

This study concludes by suggesting the importance of implementing economic support in terms of income, and debt relief has played a crucial role in mitigating the spread of COVID-19 infections and reducing fatality rates.

To effectively combat the spread of COVID-19, it is crucial to implement containment health practices in conjunction with tracing and individual-level quarantine. Simply implementing containment health measures without these interconnected strategies would be ineffective. Therefore, policy implications derived from containment health measures should be accompanied by targeted, aggressive, and rapid containment strategies aimed at significantly reducing the number of individuals infected with COVID-19.

This research makes a unique contribution to the existing literature by investigating the impact of government responses on reducing COVID-19 infections and fatalities, specifically focusing on the period before COVID-19 vaccinations became available.