Will Junket Business Change Significantly in Macao?

Will Junket Business Change Significantly in Macao? Changbin Wang Professor, Gaming Teaching & Research Center Macao Polytechnic Institute Abstract The unique junket business which has lasted nearly four decades in Macao and has brought more than a half, actually 60%-70% in most of the years, of the gaming revenues to Macao since 2002 is jeopardized due to a couple of factors. First, Macao government has put on stricter regulations after Huang Shan, a junket who brought high rollers from Mainland China to Macao, disappeared in 2014 leaving massive debts, and an accountant in the Dore-operated VIP room at the Wynn Macau casino stole a huge amount of money from it in 2015. Stricter regulations have put quite a number of junkets out of business. Second, the recent judicial judgement from the Court of Appeals demands a concessionaire to take joint liability with one of its junkets in terms of gaming business. This would likely intimidate the concessionaires to collaborate with the junkets and make the concessionaires to intervene more in the specific business that the junkets operate. Third, the central government of Mainland China is showing more and more concern on the junket activities which are actually forbidden in criminal law of Mainland China. If the central government takes more severe measures to put down junket business, as it did to the representatives of an Australian casino in 2016, and encourages the Macao government to take actions in this regard, the junket business will be facing significant challenges. The paper will discuss the factors above and analyze the possible trends of junket business in Macao

Licensing VIP-Room Contractors or Gaming Promoters in Macao: the Status Quo and Improvement

Macao is a traditional gaming city with more than 160 years of legalized gaming, and it was under the Portuguese colonial rule that Macao began to develop the industry. The transfer of sovereignty in 1999 to China, where gambling is strictly prohibited, did not interrupt the growth of the industry. Instead, the industry has experienced a

Unveiling Macau Gaming Inspectors: Functions, Conditions and Operations

Macau has seen the rapid development of casinos in the past two decades. Long-established regulatory control of the city’s gaming industry ensures compliance with the applicable regulations and standards. Among other regulators and staff, gaming inspectors are responsible for the first-line supervision of gaming operations across Macau casinos. This paper is the first attempt to review the casino regulatory inspection in Macau with a particular focus on the functions and practices of gaming inspectors stationed at casinos. Existing internal and external factors affecting the functions of gaming inspectors are identified and discussed in this paper. The authors of this paper consider that high-caliber gaming inspectors play a pivotal role in the regulatory performance of the gaming industry. Suggestions for further improvement are also provided for Macau to develop an effective regulatory inspection system for the gaming industry

Seismic data correction and dynamic impact evaluation for assessing coal burst risks in underground mines

With the increasing mining depth in recent decades, the high in-situ stress and challenging environments in deep underground mines result in multiple mining hazards. Coal bursts and rockbursts are one of the most formidable mining hazards in underground mines, causing the dynamic failure of coal and/or rock mass and violent ejections of material into mine openings. After more than half a century of research, the mechanisms of coal bursts and rockbursts are not yet fully understood because of the large variability and uncertainty in the causal factors. Seismic monitoring is the most popular technique to help forecast, prevent and control burst hazards. It uses seismic waves generated from coal and rock mass to locate internal damage, which provides a powerful means to detect dynamic rock failure and understand the burst damage mechanism. The dynamic impact from seismic waves is an essential cause of rock failure. However, as dynamic impacts in underground coal mines have been rarely studied, the triggering mechanism of seismic waves for coal bursts is poorly understood. Apart from that, due to the complex underground environment, the recorded seismic data may have high location errors and low data integrity, which significantly limits the accuracy of the seismic methods. Therefore, this thesis investigated dynamic impacts of mining induced seismicity in underground mines and enhanced the seismic data quality in assessing the associated risks. Based on seismic data in a burst-prone coal mine in China, the research investigated the ground motion characteristics in the target longwall blocks. It is found that coal bursts are usually triggered by the dynamic impacts when the coal and rock mass are already under critical stress levels. The roadway zones that have experienced more intensive ground motions are more susceptible to coal bursts. The characteristics of location error in the studied longwall were investigated, and a modified seismic clustering method was proposed to assess burst risks. The result revealed that location errors are highly anisotropic and vary along with the geophone movement. The proposed seismic clustering method that considers the influence of location errors had a strong correlation with coal burst damage. The characteristics of seismic data integrity in the studied longwall were investigated by assessing the detection probabilities of the seismic monitoring system. Geophones had various capabilities to detect seismic events at different locations and energy magnitudes. Based on the detection probability results, a method was proposed to correct the integrity of seismic data, which shows more event counts and seismic energy release in front of the longwall face. The concept of “reinforced seismic data” was proposed to correct location errors in the raw seismic data and improve data integrity. The relationship between the spatial variation of seismicity and burst risks was also investigated by using reinforced seismic data. It is found that seismic energy has a strong correlation with coal burst damage, which can be used as an essential precursor of impending burst hazards. The outcome of this thesis can provide insights on the burst damage mechanism and evaluation of seismic data quality in underground coal mines. The proposed seismic methods identify burst risks in terms of ground motions, seismic clusters and variations of seismicity, which can be used individually or together to improve burst hazard forecasting

The geometric structure of unit dual quaternion with application in kinematic control

AbstractIn this paper, the geometric structure, especially the Lie-group related properties, of unit dual quaternion is investigated. The exponential form of unit dual quaternion and its approximate logarithmic mapping are derived. Correspondingly, Lie-group and Lie-algebra on unit dual quaternions and the approximate logarithms are explored, respectively. Afterwards, error and metric based on unit dual quaternion are given, which naturally result in a new kinematic control model with unit dual quaternion descriptors. Finally, as a case study, a generalized proportional control law using unit dual quaternion is developed

Effects of Moisture Content on Selected Physical and Mechanical Properties of Alfalfa Seeds

Alfalfa is one of the most widely planted forage legume in the world and that because of its tolerance, adaptation, high yield and nutritious value. Physico-mechanical properties of alfalfa seed are very crucial in the machine designing and processing operations. In this study, some of the physical and mechanical properties of alfalfa seed cultivar were investigated under laboratory condition, as desired for the design of a metering device.  Seven moisture contents were introduced to the initial content of 7.98%, d.b. The geometric and gravimetric characteristics were determined. Correlation equation models were developed based on the function of moisture contents. The means average parameter values of the length, width, thickness, aspect ratio, seed mass, arithmetic, geometric mean diameter, true and bulk density, porosity seed volume, and surface area ranged between 2.356 to 2.718mm, 1.390 to 1.473mm, 1.071 to 1.345mm, 0.68 to 0.776%, 1.7968 to 2.295g, 1.466 to 1.589mm, 1.141 to 1.517mm and 1.466 to 1.589g/cm31.199 to 0.830g/cm3, 0.10 to 0.44%, 0.7383 to 0.79426, and 6.305 to 7.2438mm2, respectively. While, the plywood surface had the highest value of the coefficient of friction as the roughest, followed by polished steel and rubber, glass the least surface roughness. However, the germination rate (%) increased as seed damages decreased, as the coefficient of internal friction decreases from 0.127 to 0.095, while the cohesion increasing from 2.11 to 5.95. The angle of repose resulted in a non-linear increase from 27.05o to 28.68o, 28.86o to 29.86o, 31.49o to 32.35o, and 32.47o to 33.21o as moisture content increased from7.98 to 22.12% d.b. Keywords: alfalfa seed, moisture content, mechanical property, physical propert

A distributed control law with guaranteed convergence rate for identically coupled linear systems

This paper investigates the stabilization and optimization problems for a group of identically linear agents with undirected interaction topology. It is shown that a distributed control law based on local measurements and relative information exchanged f

Distributed attitude and translation consensus for networked rigid bodies based on unit dual quaternion

This paper provides unified solutions for distributed attitude and translation consensus problems for networked fully actuated rigid bodies under the fixed and undirected communication topology with the tool of unit dual quaternion. We investigate two kinds of consensus, that is, leaderless consensus and leader-following consensus with a static leader. Firstly, the dynamics of rigid bodies are presented by unit dual quaternion. The control inputs of rigid bodies are also obtained from unit dual quaternion. Secondly, we propose a distributed consensus law in the form of dual quaternion to guarantee that the attitudes and translations of all rigid bodies reach consensus, respectively, without a leader. Thirdly, the leader-following consensus problem with a static leader is studied. With the proposed leader-following consensus law, the states of all rigid bodies converge to the corresponding states of the static leader, including the attitude and the translation. Finally, numerical examples are provided to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical resultsThe authors were supported in part by Australian Research Council (DP130103610 and DP160104500) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (61375072 and 61503109) and Nature Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LQF030005)