Injured Citizenship: Civil Society and Governmentality in Malaysia and Singapore

Master'sMASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Multilateral Global Airline Alliances and The Stock Market Reactions

The inauguration of the three multilateral global airline alliances namely Star AllianceTM, oneworld®, and SkyTeam® had changed the nature of competition in the airline industry from competition between airlines to competition between alliances. Collectively, the three alliances generated 55 percent of the world’s passenger traffic. Despite the prevalence of these alliance groups, no stock market reactions study had been done on them thus far. Using the event study methodology, this study analyses the reactions of the stock market to announcements of airlines form, join and withdraw from these alliances. The study is done from the points of two parties, namely the announcing airlines and the existing member airlines. The study covers an initial sample of all existing and former members of these alliances during the period from 1997 to 2007, which make up to 51 airlines from 36 countries. This entails a multi country event study being conducted, differs from the general single country event studies. In addition, in order to examine the stock price implications of the existing member airlines, an equally weighted average “airline alliance index” is thus created for each of the alliances. It is found that the announcements by airlines confirm to found and join the airline alliances produced significant positive abnormal returns for the announcing airlines. This supports the general argument that alliances do create value for allied firms. However, the same announcement that new member joining an alliance had rendered negative, though insignificant, abnormal returns to the existing member airlines. This leads to the argument that positive abnormal returns enjoyed by the announcing airlines that will join the alliance are merely an appropriation of value from the existing member airlines, contrasting the general believe that alliance do create value for allied firms. The argument of alliance creates value versus appropriate value is inconclusive and hence warrant for further research. Lastly, withdrawn airlines did suffer negative abnormal returns while the existing member airlines enjoyed positive abnormal returns upon the relevant airlines withdrawal. As the withdrawn airlines under study are those with financial problems or non cooperative ones, the relevant alliance would be better off after their departure where remaining member airlines could cooperate more effectively. As a result, positive abnormal returns for remaining member airlines are observed

Human selenium binding protein-1 (hSP56) is a negative regulator of HIF-1α and suppresses the malignant characteristics of prostate cancer cells

In the present study, we demonstrate that ectopic expression of 56-kDa human selenium binding protein-1 (hSP56) in PC-3 cells that do not normally express hSP56 results in a marked inhibition of cell growth in vitro and in vivo. Down-regulation of hSP56 in LNCaP cells that normally express hSP56 results in enhanced anchorage-independent growth. PC-3 cells expressing hSP56 exhibit a significant reduction of hypoxia inducible protein (HIF)-1α protein levels under hypoxic conditions without altering HIF-1α mRNA (HIF1A) levels. Taken together, our findings strongly suggest that hSP56 plays a critical role in prostate cells by mechanisms including negative regulation of HIF-1α, thus identifying hSP56 as a candidate anti-oncogene product. [BMB Reports 2014; 47(7): 411-416

An Expected Average Run Length (EARL) Performance Comparison of the SSGR and EWMA Control Charts

The acceleration use of control charts in industrial processes has led to the effectiveness in their evaluation by quality practitioners. This is crucial, as it influences their decisions on the choice of which control charts to employ. This study aims to explore and compare the performance of the side sensitive group runs (SSGR) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts. In general, the average run length (ARL) characteristics were used to evaluate the performance of these control charts. The ARL, which considers the exact shift size in the process, is restricted in the case when the practitioner cannot identify the process shift size (unknown shift size). In this situation, the expected average run length (EARL) is an alternative performance criterion. Upon comparison of the findings obtained, the EWMA chart has superior performance when (δmin, δmax) = (0.1, 0.4). In contrast, the SSGR chart overtakes the EWMA chart when (δmin, δmax) = (0.5, 0.8) and (δmin, δmax) = (0.9, 1.2), except when the sample size n = 3 for (δmin, δmax) = (0.5, 0.8). For this particular combination, the EWMA chart performs slightly better than the SSGR chart. The outcome of this study is expected to contribute to practitioners in identifying suitable control charts in process monitoring and implementation

An Expected Average Run Length (EARL) Performance Comparison of the SSGR and EWMA Control Charts

The acceleration use of control charts in industrial processes has led to the effectiveness in their evaluation by quality practitioners. This is crucial, as it influences their decisions on the choice of which control charts to employ. This study aims to explore and compare the performance of the side sensitive group runs (SSGR) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts. In general, the average run length (ARL) characteristics were used to evaluate the performance of these control charts. The ARL, which considers the exact shift size in the process, is restricted in the case when the practitioner cannot identify the process shift size (unknown shift size). In this situation, the expected average run length (EARL) is an alternative performance criterion. Upon comparison of the findings obtained, the EWMA chart has superior performance when (δmin, δmax) = (0.1, 0.4). In contrast, the SSGR chart overtakes the EWMA chart when (δmin, δmax) = (0.5, 0.8) and (δmin, δmax) = (0.9, 1.2), except when the sample size n = 3 for (δmin, δmax) = (0.5, 0.8). For this particular combination, the EWMA chart performs slightly better than the SSGR chart. The outcome of this study is expected to contribute to practitioners in identifying suitable control charts in process monitoring and implementation

Customer Churn Prediction of Telecom Company Using Machine Learning Algorithms

We can’t escape the fact that using telecommunications has become a significant part of our everyday lives. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the telecommunication industry has become crucial.  Hence, the industry now enjoys growth opportunities. In this study, KNN, Random Forest (RF), AdaBoost, Logistic Regression (LR), XGBoost, and Support Vector Machine (SVM) are 6 supervised machine learning algorithms that will be used in this study to predict the customer churn of a telecom company in California. The goal of this study is to identify the classifier that predicts customer churn the most effectively. As evidenced by its accuracy of 79.67%, precision of 64.67%, recall of 51.87%, and F1-score of 57.57%, XGBoost is the overall most effective classifier in this study. Next, the purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of customers who are most likely to leave the telecom company. These characteristics were discovered based on customers’ demographics and account information. Lastly, this study also provides the company with advice on how to retain customers. The study advises company to personalize the customer experience, implement a customer loyalty program, and apply AI in customer relationship management in retaining customers

Impact factor of Korean Journal of Pediatrics on Korean Medical Citation Index and Science Citation Index of Web of Science

PurposeThe total number of times a paper is cited, also known as the impact factor (IF) of a medical journal, is widely implied in evaluating the quality of a research paper. We evaluated the citation index data as an IF of Korean J Pediatr in Korean Medical Citation Index (KoMCI) and JCI of Web of Science.MethodsWe calculated the IF of Korean J Pediatr at KoMCI supervised by Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors. And we estimated the IF of Korean J Pediatr by the JCI of Web of Science although it was never officially reported.ResultsThe IF of Korean J Pediatr on KoMCI has increased from 0.100 in the year 2000, to 0.205 in 2008, and 0.326 in 2009. Although the IF of Korean J Pediatr was 0.006 in 2005, 0.018 in 2006, 0.028 in 2008, 0.066 in 2009, and 0.018 in 2010 according to the JCI of Web of Science, the number of citations are steadily increasing.ConclusionUnderstanding and realizing the current status will be a stepping stone for further improvement. The next objective of the Korean J Pediatr is to become registered in the SCI or SCIE. Increasing the IF according to the JCI of Web of Science is crucial in order to achieve this goal

Solar Distillation System Based on Multiple-Effect Diffusion Type Still

The present study intends to develop a high-performance solar-assisted desalination system (SADS) using multi-effect diffusion type still (MEDS) and the vacuum tube solar collector (VTSC). A MEDS prototype was designed and built. The measured result is very close to the estimation. The 10-effect MEDS will produce pure water at about 13.7 L/day/m2 collector area at a solar irradiation of 600 W/m2 and 19.7 L/day/m2 collector area at solar irradiation 800 W/m2. For 20-effect still, the yield rate increase is 32% compared to 10-effect still