Abstract: The main purpose of this study was to establish Professional Competency Contents for International Marketer in Taiwan. To establish these contents a set of interviews with international marketing managers and three rounds of Delphi Technique surveys were employed. Five international marketing managers were interviewed for discussions on definitions, framework, and items of international marketing competency. A questionnaire for the " Delphi Technique Survey " was developed based on the results acquired from the interviews. The resulting questionnaire was distributed to another group of 30 international marketer of trading companies in Taiwan. After three rounds of Delphi Technique Survey with these participants, the "Contents of Professional Competency for International Marketer " was established. Five dimensions and thirty indicators were identified. It is hoped that the proposed contents could be served as a self-evaluation tool for international marketer as well as the basis for staffing and training programs for international marketer in Taiwan.
Abstract: Visual attention allows user to select the most relevant
information to ongoing behaviour. This paper presents a study on; i)
the performance of people measurements, ii) accurateness of people
measurement of the peaks that correspond to chemical quantities
from the Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) graphs and iii)
affects of people measurements to the algorithm-based diagnosis.
Participant-s eye-movement was recorded using eye-tracker tool
(Eyelink II). This experiment involves three participants for
examining 20 MRS graphs to estimate the peaks of chemical
quantities which indicate the abnormalities associated with
Cerebellar Tumours (CT). The status of each MRS is verified by
using decision algorithm. Analysis involves determination of
humans-s eye movement pattern in measuring the peak of
spectrograms, scan path and determining the relationship of
distributions of fixation durations with the accuracy of measurement.
In particular, the eye-tracking data revealed which aspects of the
spectrogram received more visual attention and in what order they
were viewed. This preliminary investigation provides a proof of
concept for use of the eye tracking technology as the basis for
expanded CT diagnosis.
Abstract: A perfect secret-sharing scheme is a method to distribute a secret among a set of participants in such a way that only qualified subsets of participants can recover the secret and the joint share of participants in any unqualified subset is statistically independent of the secret. The collection of all qualified subsets is called the access structure of the perfect secret-sharing scheme. In a graph-based access structure, each vertex of a graph G represents a participant and each edge of G represents a minimal qualified subset. The average information ratio of a perfect secret-sharing scheme realizing the access structure based on G is defined as AR = (Pv2V (G) H(v))/(|V (G)|H(s)), where s is the secret and v is the share of v, both are random variables from and H is the Shannon entropy. The infimum of the average information ratio of all possible perfect secret-sharing schemes realizing a given access structure is called the optimal average information ratio of that access structure. Most known results about the optimal average information ratio give upper bounds or lower bounds on it. In this present structures based on bipartite graphs and determine the exact values of the optimal average information ratio of some infinite classes of them.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the production of an Arabic word semantic similarity benchmark dataset. It is the first of its kind for Arabic which was particularly developed to assess the accuracy of word semantic similarity measurements. Semantic similarity is an essential component to numerous applications in fields such as natural language processing, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and psychology. Most of the reported work has been done for English. To the best of our knowledge, there is no word similarity measure developed specifically for Arabic. In this paper, an Arabic benchmark dataset of 70 word pairs is presented. New methods and best possible available techniques have been used in this study to produce the Arabic dataset. This includes selecting and creating materials, collecting human ratings from a representative sample of participants, and calculating the overall ratings. This dataset will make a substantial contribution to future work in the field of Arabic WSS and hopefully it will be considered as a reference basis from which to evaluate and compare different methodologies in the field.
Abstract: One of the major problems in liberalized power
markets is loss allocation. In this paper, a different method for
allocating transmission losses to pool market participants is
proposed. The proposed method is fundamentally based on
decomposition of loss function and current projection concept. The
method has been implemented and tested on several networks and
one sample summarized in the paper. The results show that the
method is comprehensive and fair to allocating the energy losses of a
power market to its participants.
Abstract: This paper deals with heterogeneous autoregressive
models of realized volatility (HAR-RV models) on high-frequency
data of stock indices in the USA. Its aim is to capture the behavior of
three groups of market participants trading on a daily, weekly and
monthly basis and assess their role in predicting the daily realized
volatility. The benefits of this work lies mainly in the application of
heterogeneous autoregressive models of realized volatility on stock
indices in the USA with a special aim to analyze an impact of the
global financial crisis on applied models forecasting performance.
We use three data sets, the first one from the period before the global
financial crisis occurred in the years 2006-2007, the second one from
the period when the global financial crisis fully hit the U.S. financial
market in 2008-2009 years, and the last period was defined over
2010-2011 years. The model output indicates that estimated realized
volatility in the market is very much determined by daily traders and
in some cases excludes the impact of those market participants who
trade on monthly basis.
Abstract: Moral decisions are considered as an intuitive process,
while conscious reasoning is mostly used only to justify those
intuitions. This problem is described in few different dual-process
theories of mind, that are being developed e.g. by Frederick and
Kahneman, Stanovich and Evans. Those theories recently evolved
into tri-process theories with a proposed process that makes ultimate
decision or allows to paraformal processing with focal bias..
Presented experiment compares the decision patterns to the
implications of those models.
In presented study participants (n=179) considered different
aspects of trolley dilemma or its footbridge version and decided after
that.
Results show that in the control group 70% of people decided to
use the lever to change tracks for the running trolley, and 20% chose
to push the fat man down the tracks. In contrast, after experimental
manipulation almost no one decided to act. Also the decision time
difference between dilemmas disappeared after experimental
manipulation.
The result supports the idea of three co-working processes:
intuitive (TASS), paraformal (reflective mind) and algorithmic
process.
Abstract: Cellular automata have been used for design of cryptosystems. Recently some secret sharing schemes based on linear memory cellular automata have been introduced which are used for both text and image. In this paper, we illustrate that these secret sharing schemes are vulnerable to dishonest participants- collusion. We propose a cheating model for the secret sharing schemes based on linear memory cellular automata. For this purpose we present a novel uniform model for representation of all secret sharing schemes based on cellular automata. Participants can cheat by means of sending bogus shares or bogus transition rules. Cheaters can cooperate to corrupt a shared secret and compute a cheating value added to it. Honest participants are not aware of cheating and suppose the incorrect secret as the valid one. We prove that cheaters can recover valid secret by removing the cheating value form the corrupted secret. We provide methods of calculating the cheating value.
Abstract: This research assesses the value of the brand personality and its influence on consumer-s decision making, through relational variables, after receiving a text message ad. An empirical study, in which 380 participants have received an SMS ad, confirms that brand personality does actually influence the brand trust as well as the attachment and commitment. The levels of sensitivity and involvement have an impact on the brand personality and the related variables to it.
Abstract: This article investigated the validity of C-test and Cloze test which purport to measure general English proficiency. To provide empirical evidence pertaining to the validity of the interpretations based on the results of these integrative language tests, their criterion-related validity was investigated. In doing so, the test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL) which is an established, standardized, and internationally administered test of general English proficiency was used as the criterion measure. Some 90 Iranian English majors participated in this study. They were seniors studying English at a university in Tehran, Iran. The results of analyses showed that there is a statistically significant correlation among participants- scores on Cloze test, C-test, and the TOEFL. Building on the findings of the study and considering criterion-related validity as the evidential basis of the validity argument, it was cautiously deducted that these tests measure the same underlying trait. However, considering the limitations of using criterion measures to validate tests, no absolute claims can be made as to the construct validity of these integrative tests.
Abstract: Even though most researchers would agree that in
symbiotic relationships, like the one between parent and child,
influences become reciprocal over time, empirical evidence
supporting this claim is limited. The aim of the current study was to
develop and test a model describing the reciprocal influence between
characteristics of the parent-child relationship, such as closeness and
conflict, and the child-s bullying and victimization experiences at
school. The study used data from the longitudinal Study of Early
Child-Care, conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development. The participants were dyads of early
adolescents (5th and 6th graders during the two data collection waves)
and their mothers (N=1364). Supporting our hypothesis, the findings
suggested a reciprocal association between bullying and positive
parenting, although this association was only significant for boys.
Victimization and positive parenting were not significantly
interrelated.
Abstract: One of the basic concepts in marketing is the concept
of meeting customers- needs. Since customer satisfaction is essential
for lasting survival and development of a business, screening and
observing customer satisfaction and recognizing its underlying
factors must be one of the key activities of every business.
The purpose of this study is to recognize the drivers that effect
customer satisfaction in a business-to-business situation in order to
improve marketing activities. We conducted a survey in which 93
business customers of a manufacturer of Diesel Generator in Iran
participated and they talked about their ideas and satisfaction of
supplier-s services related to its products. We developed the measures
for drivers of satisfaction first by as investigative research (by means
of feedback from executives and customers of sponsoring firm). Then
based on these measures, we created a mail survey, and asked the
respondents to explain their opinion about the sponsoring firm which
was a supplier of diesel generator and similar products. Furthermore,
the survey required the participants to mention their functional areas
and their company features.
In Conclusion we found that there are three drivers for customer
satisfaction, which are reliability, information about product, and
commercial features. Buyers/users from different functional areas
attribute different degree of importance to the last two drivers. For
instance, people from buying and management areas believe that
commercial features are more important than information about
products. But people in engineering, maintenance and production
areas believe that having information about products is more
important than commercial aspects. Marketing experts should
consider the attribute of customers regarding information about the
product and commercial features to improve market share.
Abstract: Restructured electricity markets may provide
opportunities for producers to exercise market power maintaining
prices in excess of competitive levels. In this paper an oligopolistic
market is presented that all Generation Companies (GenCos) bid in a
Cournot model. Genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to obtain
generation scheduling of each GenCo as well as hourly market
clearing prices (MCP). In order to consider network constraints a
multiperiod framework is presented to simulate market clearing
mechanism in which the behaviors of market participants are
modelled through piecewise block curves. A mixed integer linear
programming (MILP) is employed to solve the problem. Impacts of
market clearing process on participants- characteristic and final
market prices are presented. Consequently, a novel multi-objective
model is addressed for security constrained optimal bidding strategy
of GenCos. The capability of price-maker GenCos to alter MCP is
evaluated through introducing an effective-supply curve. In addition,
the impact of exercising market power on the variation of market
characteristics as well as GenCos scheduling is studied.
Abstract: In this paper we report a study aimed at determining
the most effective animation technique for representing ASL
(American Sign Language) finger-spelling. Specifically, in the study
we compare two commonly used 3D computer animation methods
(keyframe animation and motion capture) in order to ascertain which
technique produces the most 'accurate', 'readable', and 'close to
actual signing' (i.e. realistic) rendering of ASL finger-spelling. To
accomplish this goal we have developed 20 animated clips of fingerspelled
words and we have designed an experiment consisting of a
web survey with rating questions. 71 subjects ages 19-45 participated
in the study. Results showed that recognition of the words was
correlated with the method used to animate the signs. In particular,
keyframe technique produced the most accurate representation of the
signs (i.e., participants were more likely to identify the words
correctly in keyframed sequences rather than in motion captured
ones). Further, findings showed that the animation method had an
effect on the reported scores for readability and closeness to actual
signing; the estimated marginal mean readability and closeness was
greater for keyframed signs than for motion captured signs. To our
knowledge, this is the first study aimed at measuring and comparing
accuracy, readability and realism of ASL animations produced with
different techniques.
Abstract: This study aimed to explore future life orientation and
support that needed to accomplish it. A total of 258 participants are
Javanese high school student. The age of the sample ranges from 14
to 18 years old. Participants were asked about their future aspiration,
their reason of choosing them as important goals in their life, and
support that they need to accomplished their goals using open ended
questionnaire. The responses were categorized through content
analysis into four main categories. They are: (1) Self Fulfillment
(72.1%) (2) Parents and Family (16.7%) (3) Altruism (8.1%) (4)
Social and Economy Status (3.1%). Meanwhile, the categories for
support that they needed are shown as follows: (1) Affection Support
(64.7%) (2) Spiritual support (17.4%) (3) Material Support (10.9%)
(4) Guidance Support (7.0%). The research found that affection
support always gets the highest number in every future orientation
categories. It can be concluded that although Javanese adolescents
have different future orientation, they basically need affection
support.
Abstract: Trauma in early life is widely regarded as a cause for
adult mental health problems. This study explores the role of
secondary trauma on later functioning in a sample of 359 university
students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes in the United
States. Participants were initially divided into four groups based on
1) having directly experienced trauma (assaultive violence), 2)
having directly experienced trauma and secondary traumatization
through the unanticipated death of a close friend or family member
or witnessing of an injury or shocking even), 3) having no
experience of direct trauma but having experienced indirect trauma
(secondary trauma), or 4) reporting no exposure. Participants
completed a battery of measures on concepts associated with
psychological functioning which included measures of
psychological well-being, problem solving, coping and resiliency.
Findings discuss differences in psychological functioning and
resilience based on participants who experienced secondary
traumatization and assaultive violence versus secondary
traumatization alone.
Abstract: This paper investigates how the use of machine learning techniques can significantly predict the three major dimensions of learner-s emotions (pleasure, arousal and dominance) from brainwaves. This study has adopted an experimentation in which participants were exposed to a set of pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) while their electrical brain activity was recorded with an electroencephalogram (EEG). The pictures were already rated in a previous study via the affective rating system Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) to assess the three dimensions of pleasure, arousal, and dominance. For each picture, we took the mean of these values for all subjects used in this previous study and associated them to the recorded brainwaves of the participants in our study. Correlation and regression analyses confirmed the hypothesis that brainwave measures could significantly predict emotional dimensions. This can be very useful in the case of impassive, taciturn or disabled learners. Standard classification techniques were used to assess the reliability of the automatic detection of learners- three major dimensions from the brainwaves. We discuss the results and the pertinence of such a method to assess learner-s emotions and integrate it into a brainwavesensing Intelligent Tutoring System.
Abstract: There is a paucity of data on the prevalence of alcohol
use and related problems among foreign students in Belarus. We
therefore screen for the prevalence of alcohol related problems
among the general foreign students- population in Minsk, Belarus.
Participants were 135 male university foreign students (average age –
21) from three major universities in Minsk, Belarus. All respondents
were administered questionnaire, containing the AUDIT, CAGE,
MAST and other alcohol related questions. Overall, 62.2% (n=84)
alcohol users and 31.1% (n=42) problem drinkers were identified on
the AUDIT. There was a significant increase (from 39.3% to 60.7%)
of the total alcohol users after arrival in Belarus (¤ç2 = 7.714, p
Abstract: Construction project control attempts to obtain real-time information and effectively enhance dynamic control and management via information sharing and analysis among project participants to eliminate construction conflicts and project delays. However, survey results for Taiwan indicate that construction commercial project management software is not widely accepted for subcontractors and suppliers. To solve the project communications problems among participants, this study presents a novel system called the Construction Dynamic Teams Communication Management (Con-DTCM) system for small-to-medium sized subcontractors and suppliers in Taiwanese Construction industry, and demonstrates that the Con-DTCM system responds to the most recent project information efficiently and enhances management of project teams (general contractor, suppliers and subcontractors) through web-based environment. Web-based technology effectively enhances information sharing during construction project management, and generates cost savings via the Internet. The main unique characteristic of the proposed Con-DTCM system is extremely user friendly and easily design compared with current commercial project management applications. The Con-DTCM system is applied to a case study of construction of a building project in Taiwan to confirm the proposed methodology and demonstrate the effectiveness of information sharing during the construction phase. The advantages of the Con-DTCM system are in improving project control and management efficiency for general contractors, and in providing dynamic project tracking and management, which enables subcontractors and suppliers to acquire the most recent project-related information. Furthermore, this study presents and implements a generic system architecture.
Abstract: The main issue of interest here is whether individuals
who differ in arithmetical reasoning ability and levels of imagery ability display different brain activity during the conduct of mental
arithmetical reasoning tasks. This was a case study of four
participants who represented four extreme combinations of Maths –Imagery abilities: ie., low-low, high-high, high-low, low-high respectively. As the Ps performed a series of 60 arithmetical reasoning tasks, 128-channel EEG recordings were taken and the
pre-response interval subsequently analysed using EGI GeosourceTM
software. The P who was high in both imagery and maths ability
showed peak activity prior to response in BA7 (superior parietal cortex) but other Ps did not show peak activity in this region. The
results are considered in terms of the diverse routes that may be employed by individuals during the conduct of arithmetical reasoning
tasks and the possible implications of this for mathematics education.