Online or Offline?

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Johnson ◽  
Arvind Ashta ◽  
Djamchid Assadi

Over the past five years, “peer-to-peer” lending websites have become a new approach to mobilizing funds for on-lending to impoverished people in developing countries (microfinance) and domestic markets. In this paper, the authors review these developments and use the analytical lens of asymmetric information and transactions costs to explain the characteristics of the different models in operation. The authors find that “peer-to-peer” lending is more of an aspiration than a reality. Although web 2.0 technologies have offered new means of mobilizing funds, the borrowing mechanisms at work follow mainstream conventional approaches to the management of lending.

Author(s):  
Arvind Ashta ◽  
Djamchid Assadi

Microcredit interest costs remain higher than those of commercial banks in spite of significant donor funds, largely owing to transaction costs relative to small loan sizes. With the rise of Web 2.0 and online social interactivity, can these transaction costs be reduced through peer to peer lending? Peer to Peer transactions and Web 2.0 have two things in common. The first common denominator is that both of them are rather newcomers in their respective fields and growing fast. The second is that they are both based on mutual and social exchanges between people instead of intermediary based relationships. The main objective of this chapter was to investigate whether peer to peer online lending transactions are integrated to support a higher level of social interactions and associations with a promise of reducing (transaction) costs through disintermediation and risk reduction. We find that “peer to peer” lending consists of diverse websites of microcredit (Kiva, Wokai, Babyloan), social investing (MicroPlace) as well as small loans at market rates (Prosper, Zopa, Lending Club), and even lending between friends and family members (Virgin Money). The chapter studies the use of web 2.0 technologies (blogs, interactivity between lenders and buyers, peers‘ reviews and comments, peers communities and chats) in seven such online lending sites. It finds that most of the so called “peer-to-peer” lenders are in fact intermediaries between the peers (lender and borrowers) and there is little direct contact between the peers. One website used none of the web 2.0 tools. None of the websites used all the web 2.0 tools. The impact on transaction costs should therefore be very little as there is neither disintermediation nor risk reduction. A discussion of difficulties in establishing platforms in this field and directions for future research are provided.


Author(s):  
Nuddy Pillay

Web 2.0 technologies have not had the impact many perceived they would in many higher learning institutions in both developing and developed countries. Its potentiality has hardly been realised. Great strides have been made in designing and using Web 2.0 technologies to help students learn in the cognitive (mental), behavioural (psychomotor), and affective (feeling) domains. The major challenge is the application of Web 2.0 technologies to the conative (will) domain, which relates to an individual’s intrinsic motivation to achieve goals. Students’ participation in the Web 2.0 learning environment is influenced by their cultural background, language proficiency, communication style, socio-economic and technological circumstances, learning styles, and prior knowledge. This chapter explores the participation from various groups of students from developed and developing countries. These students are located in learning environments within a tertiary institute, which are facilitated by Web 2.0 technologies. It observes that the students’ learning and successful participation in the Web 2.0 environment largely depends on the state of student’s conative domain and the interface between their cultural background and learning preference.


Author(s):  
W. A. Chiou ◽  
N. Kohyama ◽  
B. Little ◽  
P. Wagner ◽  
M. Meshii

The corrosion of copper and copper alloys in a marine environment is of great concern because of their widespread use in heat exchangers and steam condensers in which natural seawater is the coolant. It has become increasingly evident that microorganisms play an important role in the corrosion of a number of metals and alloys under a variety of environments. For the past 15 years the use of SEM has proven to be useful in studying biofilms and spatial relationships between bacteria and localized corrosion of metals. Little information, however, has been obtained using TEM capitalizing on its higher spacial resolution and the transmission observation of interfaces. The research presented herein is the first step of this new approach in studying the corrosion with biological influence in pure copper.Commercially produced copper (Cu, 99%) foils of approximately 120 μm thick exposed to a copper-tolerant marine bacterium, Oceanospirillum, and an abiotic culture medium were subsampled (1 cm × 1 cm) for this study along with unexposed control samples.


Author(s):  
Ramnik Kaur

E-governance is a paradigm shift over the traditional approaches in Public Administration which means rendering of government services and information to the public by using electronic means. In the past decades, service quality and responsiveness of the government towards the citizens were least important but with the approach of E-Government the government activities are now well dealt. This paper withdraws experiences from various studies from different countries and projects facing similar challenges which need to be consigned for the successful implementation of e-governance projects. Developing countries like India face poverty and illiteracy as a major obstacle in any form of development which makes it difficult for its government to provide e-services to its people conveniently and fast. It also suggests few suggestions to cope up with the challenges faced while implementing e-projects in India.


MIS Quarterly ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 729-742 ◽  
Author(s):  
De Liu ◽  
◽  
Daniel J. Brass ◽  
Yong Lu ◽  
Dongyu Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaolei Zhan ◽  
Younes Makoudi ◽  
Judicael Jeannoutot ◽  
Simon Lamare ◽  
Michel Féron ◽  
...  

Over the past decade, on-surface fabrication of organic nanostructures has been widely investigated for the development of molecular electronic devices, nanomachines, and new materials. Here, we introduce a new strategy to obtain alkyl oligomers in a controlled manner using on-surface radical oligomerisations that are triggered by the electrons/holes between the sample surface and the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope. The resulting radical-mediated mechanism is substantiated by a detailed theoretical study. This electron transfer event only occurs when <i>V</i><sub>s</sub> < -3 V or <i>V</i><sub>s</sub> > + 3 V and allows access to reactive radical species under exceptionally mild conditions. This transfer can effectively ‘switch on’ a sequence leading to formation of oligomers of defined size distribution due to the on-surface confinement of reactive species. Our approach enables new ways to initiate and control radical oligomerisations with tunnelling electrons, leading to molecularly precise nanofabrication.


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