Morphometric sexing of little spiderhunter (Arachnothera longirostra) in Peninsular Malaysia

Sexual dimorphism is often directly linked to sexual selection, mating systems and resource partitioning, which are crucial in species conservation and management. Many avian species, including pollinator birds, are sexually dimorphic with respect to size and colour, yet, such differences may be subtle for some species. In this study, molecular sexing was performed in addition to determining morphological parameters that can aid in future sex determination of a common forest pollinator, the little spiderhunter (Arachnothera longirostra), in Peninsular Malaysia. Based on 23 captures made in four forests, two out of seven body measurements (i.e. wing and tail lengths) were useful in predicting the sexes of the bird with 100% accuracy. In addition, significant differences were found in the head, bill, and total body lengths. Such findings will facilitate more effective sex identification in future field studies, particularly in the case of juveniles

Test statistics with event-induced variance: evidence from stock dividend

Even though many researchers have found the problem of event-induced variance in event studies, they are tended to neglect these hazards by using conventional event-study methods, such as the Patell test. This test tends to reject the null hypothesis of zero average abnormal returns too often when it is true (higher type I error). In this study, we had implemented a more advanced event-study method, Boehmer, Mucumeci, and Poulsen (BMP) test, to remedy the issue of event-induced variance. Using stock dividend, the empirical findings demonstrated that the BMP test produced six significant abnormal returns from day 10 before the event to day 30 after the event while the Patell test generated 11 significant abnormal returns. In other words, the over-rejection rate in Patell test was 83.33%. At the same time, the level of significance in test values increased from 1%-5% in the Patell test to 5%-10% in the BMP test. A possible explanation for the two main findings might be due to the presence of event-induced variance. We found that the BMP test generated equally powerful tests as the null was false as well as suitable rejection rates as it was true. In addition, there has the impact of the stock dividend event on the Malaysia stock market returns. This paper provides an empirical comparison between conventional event-study methods and the BMP test to resolve event-induced variance in event studies

Towards Green Metaverse Networking Technologies, Advancements and Future Directions

As the Metaverse is iteratively being defined, its potential to unleash the next wave of digital disruption and create real-life value becomes increasingly clear. With distinctive features of immersive experience, simultaneous interactivity, and user agency, the Metaverse has the capability to transform all walks of life. However, the enabling technologies of the Metaverse, i.e., digital twin, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and extended reality, are known to be energy-hungry, therefore raising concerns about the sustainability of its large-scale deployment and development. This article proposes Green Metaverse Networking for the first time to optimize energy efficiencies of all network components for Metaverse sustainable development. We first analyze energy consumption, efficiency, and sustainability of energy-intensive technologies in the Metaverse. Next, focusing on computation and networking, we present major advancements related to energy efficiency and their integration into the Metaverse. A case study of energy conservation by incorporating semantic communication and stochastic resource allocation in the Metaverse is presented. Finally, we outline the critical challenges of Metaverse sustainable development, thereby indicating potential directions of future research towards the green Metaverse

Effect of sintering temperature on the microstructure, electrical and magnetotransport properties of La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 compound

In this work, we report the effect of sintering temperature (900°C, 1000°C, 1100°C and 1200°C) on the electrical and magnetotransport properties of polycrystalline La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 (LSMO). Single phase of LSMO hexagonal structure (R-3c) accompanied with minor phases was successfully synthesized by co-precipitation method. With increasing sintering temperature, grain growth was promoted and grain connectivity was improved. It was found that an enhancement of resistivity on smaller grain size was due to larger grain surface over volume (grain boundaries effect). The shifting of the metal-insulator transition (TMI) to higher temperature was also responsible for observed changes in physical properties. TMI of 900°C, 1000°C and 1100°C were 232 K, 278 K and 298 K respectively however 1200°C was out of measurement range (higher than 300 K). In summary, CP900 with smaller grain size distribution (~200 nm) displayed the highest resistivity and MR% of -19.2% (at 80 K, 10 kG)

Exploring sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in Airbnb accommodation using unsupervised and supervised topic modeling

This study aims to examine key attributes affecting Airbnb users' satisfaction and dissatisfaction through the analysis of online reviews. A corpus that comprises 59,766 Airbnb reviews form 27,980 listings located in 12 different cities is analyzed by using both Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and supervised LDA (sLDA) approach. Unlike previous LDA based Airbnb studies, this study examines positive and negative Airbnb reviews separately, and results reveal the heterogeneity of satisfaction and dissatisfaction attributes in Airbnb accommodation. In particular, the emergence of the topic “guest conflicts” in this study leads to a new direction in future sharing economy accommodation research, which is to study the interactions of different guests in a highly shared environment. The results of topic distribution analysis show that in different types of Airbnb properties, Airbnb users attach different importance to the same service attributes. The topic correlation analysis reveals that home like experience and help from the host are associated with Airbnb users' revisit intention. We determine attributes that have the strongest predictive power to Airbnb users' satisfaction and dissatisfaction through the sLDA analysis, which provides valuable managerial insights into priority setting when developing strategies to increase Airbnb users' satisfaction. Methodologically, this study contributes by illustrating how to employ novel approaches to transform social media data into useful knowledge about customer satisfaction, and the findings can provide valuable managerial implications for Airbnb practitioners

Case Study: First-Time Success ASIC Design Methodology Applied to a Multi-Processor System-on-Chip

Achieving first-time success is crucial in the ASIC design league considering the soaring cost, tight time-to-market window, and competitive business environment. One key factor in ensuring first-time success is a well-defined ASIC design methodology. Here we propose a novel ASIC design methodology that has been proven for the RUMPS401 (Rahman University Multi-Processor System 401) Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) project. The MPSoC project is initiated by Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) VLSI design center. The proposed methodology includes the use of Universal Verification Methodology (UVM). The use of electronic design automation (EDA) software during each step of the design methodology is also presented. The first-time success RUMPS401 demonstrates the use of the proposed ASIC design methodology and the good of using one. Especially this project is carried on in educational environment that is even more limited in budget, resources and know-how, compared to the business and industrial counterparts. Here a novel ASIC design methodology that is tailored to first-time success MPSoC is presented

Volatility forecasting of real estate stock in Malaysia with smooth transition exponential smoothing

In financial market, volatility forecast has been taking the deliberation of the academics and practitioners over the past decades in different areas of study. Malaysian real estate market has been in the long-run appreciation during years 2000-2013. A reliable volatility forecast in real estate stock market (sector) may provide important information for the central bankers, policymakers, investors, developers and public in decision making process (on real estate). Therefore, this research is to study the volatility forecasting performance of various forecasting models for the Malaysian real estate stocks. Daily returns of 33 Malaysian real estate stocks are used in this study. The forecasting models are ad-hoc methods, generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models, and the newly proposed Smooth Transition Exponential Smoothing (STES) methods. Using Mean Absolute Error (MAE) as the evaluation criterion, the newly proposed STES models is found to be the most accurate forecasting model among the comparison models

Fight or flight: the importance of team work, leadership and human governance

This case discusses issues revolving around organization behavior within MAB & Co., a pharmaceutical company in Malaysia. The company experienced substantial staff turnover following the announcement of its acquisition by Marck. The issue was further aggravated with the resignation of the Senior Manager of the Research & Development (R&D) division, who had served the company for 10 years. The previous Manager of the Marketing division was then promoted to the vacancy. However, the new appointment was not well-received by the existing staff, and hence conflicts started to surface. This case highlights the potential organization structural change arising from the impending merger exercise, coupled with deteriorating employee morale as evidenced by increasing staff turnover, which could eventually lead to disorganization of the company

GPS based child care system using RSSI technique

In today's society, missing child cases increases rapidly. Child care is a critical issue in solving this epidemic. Various systems and methods have been implemented in solving this crisis. In this paper, the global position system (GPS) based child care system is proposed to solve this problem. This system consists of two nodes; child and parent nodes, each carried by the child and parent respectively. The child node consists of a simple circuit that has a Bluetooth module and a GPS receiver. The parent node is a mobile device that has Bluetooth connection. The GPS technology helps to determine the exact position of the child. The parent node receives the location of the child and displays the information on a designed map using a GUI program that is embedded into the mobile device. Besides the location, the distance between parent and child can also be determined using Bluetooth connection. A data from received signal strength indicator (RSSI) is extracted out from the Bluetooth connection and is used as vital information in determining the distance between parent and child. An alert is triggered when the distance between the parent and child is far apart for a certain range. The proposed system proves to be useful as a locator that could locate missing and wandering child for the parents

Contemporary event study test: event-induced variance and cross correlation among abnormal returns in dividend

Although many literatures related to event studies have reported the problem of event-induced variance and cross correlation among abnormal returns, a lot of researchers still employ conventional event-study methods which tend to reject the null hypothesis of zero average abnormal returns too frequent when it is true (higher type I error). In this paper, we applied a more advanced event-study method, namely the adjusted Boehmer, Mucumeci, and Poulsen (Adj-BMP) test, to provide a remedy to the issue of event-induced variance and cross correlation among abnormal returns. Using cash dividend increase to evaluate a battery of both statistical tests, the empirical results found the presence of the cross-correlation among abnormal returns. Consequently, the Adj-BMP test produces four significant abnormal returns from day 10 before the event to day 30 after the event while the BMP test generates eight significant abnormal returns. The BMP test exhibits 100% over-rejection of null hypothesis. At the same time, the level of significance has been decreased from 5% to 1% in the BMP test to 10% to 5% in the Adj-BMP test. Thus, we show that the Adj-BMP test is a robust test in presence of cross correlation among abnormal returns. According to the Adj-BMP test, this study found that there is an impact of cash dividend increase events on the average abnormal returns. This study makes a major contribution to research on providing an empirical comparison between BMP test and Adj-BMP test to resolve event-induced variance and cross correlation among abnormal returns in event studies of emerging market