Personalized rankings: a new ranking system for Taiwanese universities / Angela Yung-chi Hou

Because traditional college rankings had many methodological problems a new type of user-based ranking, called “personalized college ranking” was developed in many nations in the late 1990s. The main objective of this paper, therefore, is to explore what challenges are involved in the development of current college rankings nationally and globally and how to establish a new type of ranking system. The paper starts by attempting to understand the pitfalls and criticisms of college rankings. Based on the analysis of five major personalized rankings, it outlines strategies and pathways for establishing personalized college rankings in Taiwa

Impact of Manually Controlled Solar Shades on Indoor Visual Comfort

Daylight plays a significant role in sustainable building design. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the impact of manual solar shades on indoor visual comfort. A developed stochastic model for manual solar shades was modeled in Building Controls Virtual Test Bed, which was coupled with EnergyPlus for co-simulation. Movable solar shades were compared with two unshaded windows. Results show that movable solar shades have more than half of the working hours with a comfortable illuminance level, which is about twice higher than low-e windows, with a less significant daylight illuminance fluctuation. For glare protection, movable solar shades increase comfortable visual conditions by about 20% compared to low-e windows. Moreover, the intolerable glare perception could be reduced by more than 20% for movable solar shades

Design, Assembly, and Fabrication of Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials into Functional Biomimetic Device Systems

Diverse functioning biosystems in nature have inspired us and offered unique opportunities in developing novel concepts as well as new class of materials and devices. The design of bioinspired functional materials with tailored properties for actuation, sensing, electronics, and communication has enabled synthetic devices to mimic natural behavior. Among which, artificial muscle and electronic skin that enable to sense and respond to various environmental stimuli in a human-like way have been widely recognized as a significant step toward robotics applications. Polymer materials have previously been dominant in fabricating such functional biomimetic devices owing to their soft nature. However, lacking multifunctionality, handling difficulty, and other setbacks have limited their practical applications. Recently, versatile and high-performance two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene and its derivatives have been studied and proven as promising alternatives in this area. In this chapter, we highlight the recent efforts on fabrication and assembly of 2D nanomaterials into functional biomimetic systems. We discuss the structure-function relationships for the development of 2D materials–based biomimetic devices, their tailoring property features, and their variety of applications. We start with a brief introduction of artificial functional biomimetic materials and devices, then summarize some key 2D materials–based systems, including their fabrication, properties, advantages and demonstrations, and finally present concluding remarks and outlook

Understanding the Effects of Colleague Participation and Public Cause Proximity on Employee Volunteering Intentions: The Moderating Role of Power Distance

Many organizations encourage their employees to participate in charitable activities as part of their corporate social responsibility strategies. As a result, there has been an increased research interest in employee volunteering behavior. However, while previous research on employee volunteering decisions has focused on both individual-level and organizational-level factors, there has been less focus on peer involvement and volunteer cause proximity. To go some way to filling this research area, this paper conducted two studies to examine the possible effects of colleague participation, colleague position and public cause proximity on employee volunteering intentions. Study 1 found that colleague participation and public cause proximity had significant effects on employee volunteering, and Study 2 found that power distance played a moderating role in the relationship between colleague position and employee volunteering. This study contributes to theoretical research on employee volunteering and provides some information to assist firms retain engaged volunteers

A Green Peel on STEAM Education: An Innovative and Sustainable Education Scheme Integrating STEAM and Environmental Education

The STEAM education in China started late so it is still in its infancy. Its curriculum is partial to IT and Internet, which is against the original purpose of interdisciplinary education in STEAM. Meanwhile, the resources put on environmental education are minute so the environmental awareness of citizens is very weak. Therefore, we have proposed an innovative education scheme—integrating STEAM, environmental and family education together so that they can complement each other. Such a scheme not only makes STEAM education more comprehensive, it can also make environmental education more effective. To implement our scheme, we have made use of peel wastes to produce a new natural peel crayon. The whole production process is further developed to a curriculum which serves as an education model that combines all five elements in STEAM education. Together we have created a ‘learning package’ that takes care of students’ individuality in education. After putting it into practice, we have received positive feedbacks from both parents and children. Furthermore, we have done several standard tests to ensure the safety of our peel crayons. Results have proved the feasibility of our new education scheme. Such a scheme has provided a role model for integration of environmental and STEAM education. In the future, we hope to develop more education models to make our learning package more diverse and applied in different aspects

"Maps preserving the spectrum of generalized Jordan product of operators", and its "Addendum"

In the paper "Maps preserving the spectrum of generalized Jordan product of operators", we define a generalized Jordan products on standard operator algebras $A_1, A_2$ on complex Banach spaces $X_1, X_2$, respectively. This includes the usual Jordan product $A_1 \circ A_2 = A_1 A_2 + A_2 A_1$, and the triple $\{A_1,A_2,A_3\} = A_1 A_2 A_3 + A_3 A_2 A_1$. Let a map $\Phi : A_1 \to A_2$ prserving the spectra of the products $$\sigma (\Phi (A_1) \circ ... \circ \Phi (A_k)) = \sigma (A_1\circ ... \circ A_k)$$ whenever any one of $A_1, ..., A_k$ has rank at most one. It is shown in this paper that if the range of $\Phi$ contains all operators of rank at most three, then $\Phi$ must be a Jordan isomorphism multiplied by an $m$th root of unity. Similar results for maps between self-adjoint operators acting on Hilbert spaces are also obtained. After our paper "Maps preserving the spectrum of generalized Jordan product of operators" was published in Linear Algebra Appl. 432 (2010), 1049-1069, Jianlian Cui pointed out that some arguments in the proof of Theorem 3.1 are not entirely clear and accurate. Here we supply some details in the "Addendum".Comment: 1. 29 pages, the "orginal paper". 2. 5 pages, the "Addendum". 3. Replace the latex file of the "original paper" to avoid the conflict of using an old version of 'natbib' at April 23, 2010. The newer version simply does not use `natbib' at all, and nothing else is changed