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Adopting cloud services may increase opportunities for achieving competitive advantage and improving business outcomes - this is significant to Australian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which account for 96% of all Australian organisations. This work explored via a semi-structured survey - the possible drivers and challenges for Australian SMEs adopting cloud computing, to achieve a competitive advantage. Some 470 Australian SMEs were sampled in six Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Wollongong, and Newcastle. A conceptual framework was developed using resource-based theory (RBT) together with the technology, organisation and environment (TOE) framework. This work provides an objective benchmark concerning the drivers and challenges when SMEs adopt cloud computing, however we restrict ourselves to the Australian context.

The common view of requirements engineering consists of requirement elicitation, specification, validation, and evolution. Requirement elicitation is a significant stage to assure the quality of the requirement documentations and would affect the project success or failure. There are different techniques to elicit the requirements. Each technique has its advantages and disadvantages. Thus, it is important to adopt more than one kind of technique to describe a system clearly from different viewpoints. This study prospected some of the research papers in the same field to display the requirements elicitation techniques that are used in developing mobile applications from a variety of research disciplines. It suggests some requirements elicitation concepts to guide software engineers in selecting the techniques according to customers' needs and to show the common challenges that they face.

This study was focused on the extract retrieval from Prosopis juliflora leaves and their use in the bio-synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The as-synthesized AgNPs were characterized by FTIR, FESEM, XRD and EDX analyses in order to determine the functional groups, morphology, crystal structure, and elemental composition of the samples. The extract produced metallic Ag and Ag2O crystalline form of the AgNPs as revealed by XRD experiment. The synthesized AgNPs were used for their evaluation in the studies of antimicrobial as well as water decontamination from common pollutants. The synthesized AgNPs were found to catalyze the 2-nitrophenol (2-NPh) and methylene orange dye (MO) reduction by sodium borohydride with reaction rate constants of 0.352 and 0.134 min–1in the water decontamination studies. The antimicrobial effect of the bio-synthesized AgNPs was studied using multi-drug resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus as the model bacterial species and Candida albicans and Candida tropicalis as the model fungi strains. It was revealed that at a very dosage of the Prosopis juliflora extract-assisted synthesized AgNPs, the stated micro-organisms were unable to survive.

The studies suggesting the prevalence of Obsessive-compulsive disorder is scant in the region of Saudi Arabia and more so in a population sample of medical and paramedical students. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in a community sample of students of applied medical sciences. Furthermore, an association between obsessive compulsive symptoms and various sociodemographic variables and several aspects of academic life were investigated.

C. elegansvulval precursor cell (VPC) fates are patterned by an epidermal growth factor (EGF) gradient. High-dose EGF induces 1° VPC fate, and lower dose EGF contributes to 2° fate in support of LIN-12/Notch. We previously showed that the EGF 2°-promoting signal is mediated by LET-60/Ras switching effectors, from the canonical Raf-MEK-ERK mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase cascade that promotes 1° fate to the non-canonical RalGEF-Ral that promotes 2° fate. Of oncogenic Ras effectors, RalGEF-Ral is by far the least well understood. We use genetic analysis to identify an effector cascade downstream of C. elegansRAL-1/Ral, starting with an established Ral binding partner, Exo84 of the exocyst complex. Additionally, RAL-1 signals through GCK-2, a citron-N-terminal-homology-domain-containing MAP4 kinase, and PMK-1/p38 MAP kinase cascade to promote 2° fate. Our study delineates a Ral-dependent developmental signaling cascade in vivo, thus providing the mechanism by which lower EGF dose is transduced.