Sustainability of Pacific Online Limited (PCO) as a provider of the multiple vertical web sites (MVWS) in China

In the past twenty years, China has undergone tremendous changes on all fronts: Economics, Commerce, Market, Technology, Society and People’s livelihood. With the changes has also come the challenge in terms of the management issues in both society and business. This thesis is an account of my experience in the management of the Pacific Online Limited (PCO) using the Multiple Vertical Web Sites (MVWS) business model told through an auto-ethnographic methodology. My purpose is to understand the key factors that will sustain PCO, its use of the MVWS business model and to present to the PCO Board my recommendations to take the company forward. In 2007, PCO was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (stock number: 543) with six vertical web sites. PCO was further expanded to seven vertical web sites in 2010 and as of July 29th, 2013, the market value of PCO was HK$3.7 Billion (GB£310.7 Million). Specifically, this research project will examine the topics of the interdependence of “Cooperation and Competition” in PCO; particularly on “how to foster the sharing and learning culture in PCO” and managing PCO which requires both cooperation and competition among management and employees in the company. In pursuit of this I will consider how to develop the PCO’s web sites and their dependence on the sharing and collaboration between business units at PCO which will also be studied and discussed. I have successfully completed this investigation and reported key findings to the PCO’s Board, These have been accepted and are in summary: 1. We have to tailor different reward schemes for employees in different vertical web sites as the maturity and growth potential of business units at PCO are at different stages and require different strategies, 2. We have to encourage the sharing of knowledge across business units, 3. Today, we have high employee turnover. Even though this is quite common in our industry in China, we have to find a way to retain our talented employees by providing career opportunities and advancements which will motivate and encourage them to stay with PCO, 4. We have to develop deeper information content and services in order to match PCO’s user needs and lifestyles. By analysing information on our user base, we could address the needs of users based on interest according to their lifestyles and life events such as decorating their homes, buying a home, buying a car, having a baby, dressing up and looking trendy and fashionable, buying or upgrading their computers or playing the latest games online. Langeveld (1965) as cited in Bell (2010: p. 584/4416 ) suggests that the aim of social research is not only to know facts and to understand relations for the sake of knowledge, these researchers want to know and understand in order to be able to act and perform better than they did in the past

Angle diversity to increase coverage and position accuracy in 3D visible light positioning

The most common approach to light-based indoor positioning relies on multilateration of received signals to the mobile device. Any deficiencies in the fidelity of these light signals can significantly distort position estimates. In this paper, we propose a method to dynamically control the light distribution from the overhead luminaires to mitigate fading effects that would otherwise occur under static lighting. By manipulating the direction of the luminaire, effectively the dispersion pattern, we introduce signal diversity in the form of multiple pointing angles and light distributions. In addition to providing angle diversity, steering and then tracking sustains the maximal line-of-sight path between a source and receiver, which reduces angle-dependent attenuation and optimizes the signal-to-noise ratio for any coordinate without needing to change the physical properties of the source or receiver. This gain in signal strength combats the limited field-of-view of luminaires and photodiodes to provide better overall coverage, which translates directly to increase positioning accuracy, particularly in a 3D space. In the results, we show field-of-view gains of 43% and improvements in MSE of 20cm.Accepted manuscrip

Magnification Bias Corrections to Galaxy-Lensing Cross-Correlations

Galaxy-galaxy or galaxy-quasar lensing can provide important information on the mass distribution in the Universe. It consists of correlating the lensing signal (either shear or magnification) of a background galaxy/quasar sample with the number density of a foreground galaxy sample. However, the foreground galaxy density is inevitably altered by the magnification bias due to the mass between the foreground and the observer, leading to a correction to the observed galaxy-lensing signal. The aim of this paper is to quantify this correction. The single most important determining factor is the foreground redshift z: the correction is small if the foreground galaxies are at low redshifts but can become non-negligible for sufficiently high redshifts. For instance, we find that for the multipole l=1000, the correction is above 1%*(5s-2)/b for z<0.37, and above 5%*(5s-2)/b for z<0.67, where s is the number count slope of the foreground sample, and b its galaxy bias. These considerations are particularly important for geometrical measures, such as the Jain and Taylor ratio or its generalization by Zhang et al. Assuming (5s-2)/b=1, we find that the foreground redshift should be limited to z<0.45 in order to avoid biasing the inferred dark energy equation of state w by more than 5%, and that even for a low foreground redshift (< 0.45), the background samples must be well separated from the foreground to avoid incurring a bias of similar magnitude. Lastly, we briefly comment on the possibility of obtaining these geometrical measures without using galaxy shapes, using instead magnification bias itself.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures; v2: minor revisions, as accepted for publication in Physical Review

<i>H</i>₂ and mixed <i>H</i>₂/<i>H</i>_∞ Stabilization and Disturbance Attenuation for Differential Linear Repetitive Processes

Repetitive processes are a distinct class of two-dimensional systems (i.e., information propagation in two independent directions) of both systems theoretic and applications interest. A systems theory for them cannot be obtained by direct extension of existing techniques from standard (termed 1-D here) or, in many cases, two-dimensional (2-D) systems theory. Here, we give new results towards the development of such a theory in H2 and mixed H2/H∞ settings. These results are for the sub-class of so-called differential linear repetitive processes and focus on the fundamental problems of stabilization and disturbance attenuation

Optimization on the financial management of the bank with goal programming model

Financial management is crucial for planning bank’s asset and liabilities while takingconsideration for multiple objectives. The objective of this study is to develop a GoalProgramming (GP) model to optimize the financial management of Public Bank Berhad inMalaysia. Six goals from the financial statements namely total asset, total liability, total equity, profit, earning and optimum management items are investigated for the period from 2011 to 2015. The results of this study indicate that all six goals are fully achieved by using the GP model. This study is significant because it helps to develop a mathematical model to examine the financial strengths of Public Bank Berhad in Malaysia. Besides that, the potential improvement on liability, equity, profit, earning and optimum management item of Public Bank Berhadcan be identified in this study based on the deviation from the target value.Keywords: Asset; Liability; Equity; Profit; Earning; Optimum Management Item