Decisions about entry modes for telecom companies into digital music business: An empirical case study

The digital music market offers an opportunity for telecom companies to furnish value-added services. However, little effort has been made to study empirically how to make a decision about entry modes for telecom companies into digital music business. This study therefore investigates various strategies that telecom companies may implement to enter the digital music industry. The results of a series of expert surveys reveal that the preference ranking of entry modes is acquisition, joint venture, and contractual agreement, respectively. Moreover, the leading key factors in selecting entry modes are complementary capabilities, hostility of environment, relational risk between firms as partners, commitment of resources, and availability of expertise. Furthermore, an importance-performance analysis was conducted to understand the different aspects that are of different performances and importance in each entry mode. The implications of the findings are also discussed. --Telecom companies,Digital music business,Entry modes,Value added

Women and Matrimony: A Study of Mona Lisa Smile

This study intended to use the film Mona Lisa Smile (1993) as an example to examine how women in the traditional generation of 1950 were gender stereotyped and used to trade themselves off through marriage in consideration of a cost-and-benefit analysis. However, as the change of women’s gender consciousness from the conservative to the feminist in the USA of 1950, women began to realize their potential and subjectivity, hence questing for liberal spirit and autonomy to choose their career and husbands based on love. The researchers used the qualitative method, with both the primary and secondary data, to facilitate a latent-content analysis. After conducting a content analysis of the film and the script of Mona Lisa Smile, the researchers took notes regarding gender stereotyping and conventional gender norms in social interactions and conducted a literature review of Becker’s side bet theory and Homan’s social exchange theory to investigate how women in America in the 1950s were disciplined to meet the expectation of social norms to fit the notion of conventional matrimony, and how people, both men and women, while choosing their mates, seek the maximum interest and minimum cost. The film Mona Lisa Smile lets readers have a chance to see the transformation of a marital relationship from the old days to modern ones. With raised gender consciousness, women may now subject their choices to their own will and, hence, apply a different definition to the word “marriage.

UV-finite scalar field theory with unitarity

In this paper we show how to define the UV completion of a scalar field theory such that it is both UV-finite and perturbatively unitary. In the UV completed theory, the propagator is an infinite sum of ordinary propagators. To eliminate the UV divergences, we choose the coefficients and masses in the propagator to satisfy certain algebraic relations, and define the infinite sums involved in Feynman diagram calculation by analytic continuation. Unitarity can be proved relatively easily by Cutkosky's rules. The theory is equivalent to infinitely many particles with specific masses and interactions. We take the $\phi^4$ theory as an example and demonstrate our idea through explicit Feynman diagram computation.Comment: 14 pages, references adde

Growing Up In Taiwan: Cultural Adjustment And Challenges For Children Of Foreign Brides

In 2010, there were over 400,000 immigrants residing in Taiwan, many of them women from Mainland China and Southeast Asia who had married a Taiwanese citizen. As a result, there has been a population boom in children of mixed nationality, and this has changed the cultural structure of Taiwan. Both non-Taiwanese residents and the children of immigrants face culture estrangement and alienation. The dominant Taiwanese ethnic group tries to impose their rules on other ethnic groups, which may result in an abuse of power that may then cause enduring pain to minority groups. This study considers the importance of culture in the lives of children of foreign brides. These children have to face individual, family, school, and societal factors that can impede their education and sense of self. In order to understand the challenges that these children may experience, this study illustrates risk factors for these children, and considers how educators can help alleviate ethnic tension and provide ethnic-related interventions to children from diverse populations

Social Media as a Disguise and an Aid: Disabled Women in the Cyber Workforce in China

Existing literature shows that people living with physical impairment are systematically disadvantaged in the workforce and their voices are often silenced. With a perspective of intersectionality, this article looks into how disabled women suffer from multiple forms of discrimination and how social media may emerge as a tool of empowerment for them in both the workforce and their everyday lives. Drawing on five cases of Chinese disabled women in the cyber workforce, the study finds that the booming Internet economy enables more disabled women to financially support themselves. Social media appears as a cover for these women to disguise their disability identity and get more job opportunities. It serves as an aid in many cases to allow these women to increase social participation, to project their voice, and to form alliances. The risks and challenges that disabled women often encounter in the cyber workforce are also discussed

The Synesthesia effects of Online Advertising Stimulus Design on Word-of-Mouth and Purchase Intention: From the Perspective of Consumer Olfactory and Gustatory

Multisensory marketing has been seen as an approach improving advertising effect in the social science, neuroscience, and marketing literature. For examining visual/audio synesthesia, the effect of smelling and tasting an online product, this study first developed design elements of digital video advertising: rational/emotional appeals and fast/slow tempo. Moreover, it strives to investigate empirically the effects of various online advertisement contexts on consumer emotion, attitude, and behavioral intention. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) in a scenario-based laboratory experiments. Data collected from 166 customers provide strong support for the research model. Through EEG and SEM analyses, in rational advertisings, consumers’ olfactory was triggered and both arousal and pleasure of the emotions affected the attitudes; in emotional advertisings, not only olfactory but gustatory were triggered and only pleasure affected the attitudes. By understanding online advertising design and synesthesia, insights from the findings can benefit designers and marketers in implementing more effective marketing strategies

Significant neutrinoless double beta decay with quasi-Dirac neutrinos

A significant signal of neutrinoless double beta decay can be consistent with the existence of light quasi-Dirac neutrinos. To demonstrate this possibility, we consider a realistic model where the neutrino masses and the neutrinoless double beta decay can be simultaneously generated after a Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Journal versio

Paxillin facilitates timely neurite initiation on soft-substrate environments by interacting with the endocytic machinery.

Neurite initiation is the first step in neuronal development and occurs spontaneously in soft tissue environments. Although the mechanisms regulating the morphology of migratory cells on rigid substrates in cell culture are widely known, how soft environments modulate neurite initiation remains elusive. Using hydrogel cultures, pharmacologic inhibition, and genetic approaches, we reveal that paxillin-linked endocytosis and adhesion are components of a bistable switch controlling neurite initiation in a substrate modulus-dependent manner. On soft substrates, most paxillin binds to endocytic factors and facilitates vesicle invagination, elevating neuritogenic Rac1 activity and expression of genes encoding the endocytic machinery. By contrast, on rigid substrates, cells develop extensive adhesions, increase RhoA activity and sequester paxillin from the endocytic machinery, thereby delaying neurite initiation. Our results highlight paxillin as a core molecule in substrate modulus-controlled morphogenesis and define a mechanism whereby neuronal cells respond to environments exhibiting varying mechanical properties