Hidden inequalities amongst the international workforce

This chapter focuses on low status expatriates who have been largely ‘hidden’ from managerial scholarship. They are ‘hidden’ because they are ignored by the migrant literature which looks at people trying to remain in their new society and gain citizenship; and ignored by the expatriation literature which is mainly concerned with high-status ‘top’ talent. These hidden expatriates are typically maids, drivers, security guards, and construction workers - low status and low paid, unable to obtain citizenship, and liable to be sent home, unemployed, at the whim of their employer. If we, as scholars, are to contribute to the betterment of society by elevating the health and well-being of those who live in it, then we must recognise the existence of and address the management issues and concerns of those at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. We use Organisational Justice theory and draw on examples from Turkey, Singapore and the Middle East to examine the position, the concerns, and the issues of such workers and their often-unequal place in the workforce

Fish freshness determination through support vector machine

In this study, the fish freshness determination system used digital image processing to determine the freshness quality and shelf life span of the three most consumed fish in the Philippines namely: (1) milkfish (Chanos chanos), (2) round scad (Decapterus maruadsi) and (3) short mackerel scad (Rastrelliger brachysoma). Moreover, it used a method based on support vector machine (SVM) algorithm that would classify the redness of the fish\u27s eyes and gills as a measure of the fish freshness quality level. It will be able to determine the shelf life of a raw fish after it has been stored in a slurry ice. Standard images were set with technical assistance from the Philippines\u27 Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) that will be used as database of the program. The database for the network, which was successfully verified and approved by the aquaculturists from BFAR, includes 720 images for milkfish, 480 images for round scad, and 480 images for short mackerel scad. The captured image of the fish to be tested will be processed by the MATLAB program. It will be compared to the images in the database. The results of the testing is compared with the manual sensory assessment done by the aquaculturists from BFAR achieving 98% accuracy in determining the freshness of the fish samples

Overexpression of Selenocysteine Methyltransferase in Arabidopsis and Indian Mustard Increases Selenium Tolerance and Accumulation

A major goal of phytoremediation is to transform fast-growing plants with genes from plant species that hyperaccumulate toxic trace elements. We overexpressed the gene encoding selenocysteine methyltransferase (SMT) from the selenium (Se) hyperaccumulator Astragalus bisulcatus in Arabidopsis and Indian mustard (Brassica juncea). SMT detoxifies selenocysteine by methylating it to methylselenocysteine, a nonprotein amino acid, thereby diminishing the toxic misincorporation of Se into protein. Our Indian mustard transgenic plants accumulated more Se in the form of methylselenocysteine than the wild type. SMT transgenic seedlings tolerated Se, particularly selenite, significantly better than the wild type, producing 3- to 7-fold greater biomass and 3-fold longer root lengths. Moreover, SMT plants had significantly increased Se accumulation and volatilization. This is the first study, to our knowledge, in which a fast-growing plant was genetically engineered to overexpress a gene from a hyperaccumulator in order to increase phytoremediation potential