Exploring factors that influence customer engagement in value co-creation in higher education institutions using online platforms

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) can be described as a container that encompasses strong knowledgeable minds and experienced individuals. It is one of the service sectors comprised of a huge number of individuals who are attached for life with Higher Education Institutions and possess resources of knowledge, experience and competency. These valuable resources are considered to be sources of innovative performance, best service quality and better community transformation. By engaging such brilliant minds in value co-creation, either with internal or external customers of these HEIs, it is believed that this engagement will help HEIs to maintain better service quality, attain reputable positions and contribute to enhance community transformation. However, the task to engage large numbers of HEIs customers in co-creation of value is not easy to be achieved without in-depth exploration of how to accomplish and sustain such engagement. Special effort is taking place to engage the inner and outer HEIs community in value co-creation process through online platforms. Yet, the level of customers engagement still low and poor. The aim of this research is to explore factors that impact HEIs customers to be engaged in any form of value co-creation through the online platforms, and to introduce a holistic value co-creation model that helps universities and other HEIs to engage customers in value co-creation activities through any means of effective online platforms. A qualitative method is adopted by interviewing ten HEIs experts from four reputable Malaysian universities. Data are collected, analyzed and synthesized with support of Nvivo10 software. Value co-creation conceptual model is established and the results reveal that there are several factors that have an impact on customer engagement in the value co-creation in HEIs. According to the nature of value co-creation and the context of this research, factors are summarized into three classifications: organizational factors that represent HEIs provider aspects and these factors are the predominant among other aspects. Then technological factors that represent the online platform characteristics and the personal factors that represent customer aspects

Numerical analysis of second harmonic generation in soft glass equiangular spiral photonic crystal fibers

In this paper, the accurate and numerically efficient finite element (FE)-based beam propagation method (BPM) has been employed to investigate second harmonic generation (SHG) in highly nonlinear soft glass (SF57) equiangular spiral photonic crystal fibers (ES-PCFs) for the first time. It is shown here that the SHG output power in highly nonlinear SF57 soft glass PCF exploiting the ES design is significantly higher compared with that of silica PCF with hexagonal air-hole arrangements. The effects of fabrication tolerances on the coherence length and the modal properties of ES-PCF are also illustrated. Moreover, phase matching between the fundamental and the second harmonic modes is discussed through the use of the quasi-phase matching technique. Furthermore, the ultralow bending loss in the SF57 ES-PCF design has been successfully analyzed

Counting the electrons in a multiphoton ionization by elastic scattering of microwaves

Laser induced plasmas have found numerous applications including plasma-assisted combustion, combustion diagnostics, laser induced breakdown spectroscopy, light detection and ranging techniques (LIDAR), microwave guiding, reconfigurable plasma antennae etc. Multiphoton ionization (MPI) is a fundamental first step in high-energy laser-matter interaction and is important for understanding of the mechanism of plasma formation. With the discovery of MPI more than 50 years ago, there were numerous attempts to determine basic physical constants of this process in the direct experiments, namely photoionization rates and cross-sections of the MPI, however, no reliable data is available until today and spread in the literature values often reaches 2-3 orders of magnitude. This is due to inability to conduct absolute measurements of plasma electron numbers generated by MPI which leads to uncertainties and, sometimes, contradictions between the MPI cross-section values utilized by different researchers across the field. Here we report first direct measurement of absolute plasma electron numbers generated at MPI of air and subsequently we precisely determine ionization rate and cross-section of eight-photon ionization of oxygen molecule by 800 nm photons ${\sigma}_8=(3.32{\pm}0.3)*10^{-130} W^{-8}m^{16}s^{-1}$. Method is based on the absolute measurement of electron number created by MPI using elastic scattering of microwaves off the plasma volume in Rayleigh regime and establishes a general approach to directly measure and tabulate basic constants of the MPI process for various gases and photon energies

Ultra low bending loss equiangular spiral photonic crystal fibers in the terahertz regime

An Equiangular Spiral Photonic Crystal Fiber (ES-PCF) design in Topas® for use in the Terahertz regime is presented. The design shows ultra low bending loss and very low confinement loss compared to conventional Hexagonal PCF (H-PCF). The ES-PCF has excellent modal confinement properties, together with several parameters to allow the optimization of the performance over a range of important characteristics. A full vector Finite Element simulation has been used to characterize the design which can be fabricated by a range of techniques including extrusion and drilling

Hypoxic Culture Conditions as a Solution for Mesenchymal Stem Cell Based Regenerative Therapy

Cell-based regenerative therapies, based on in vitro propagation of stem cells, offer tremendous hope to many individuals suffering from degenerative diseases that were previously deemed untreatable. Due to the self-renewal capacity, multilineage potential, and immunosuppressive property, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are considered as an attractive source of stem cells for regenerative therapies. However, poor growth kinetics, early senescence, and genetic instability during in vitro expansion and poor engraftment after transplantation are considered to be among the major disadvantages of MSC-based regenerative therapies. A number of complex inter-and intracellular interactive signaling systems control growth, multiplication, and differentiation of MSCs in their niche. Common laboratory conditions for stem cell culture involve ambient O-2 concentration (20%) in contrast to their niche where they usually reside in 2-9% O-2. Notably, O-2 plays an important role in maintaining stem cell fate in terms of proliferation and differentiation, by regulating hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) mediated expression of different genes. This paper aims to describe and compare the role of normoxia (20% O-2) and hypoxia (2-9% O-2) on the biology of MSCs. Finally it is concluded that a hypoxic environment can greatly improve growth kinetics, genetic stability, and expression of chemokine receptors during in vitro expansion and eventually can increase efficiency of MSC-based regenerative therapies.Article Link: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2013/632972