The implementation of marketing in private early childhood education centres in Hong Kong: an investigation of the effect on marketing ethics

A neo-liberal premise underlies the early years education provision in Hong Kong where the market determines the form, promotion and quality of early years provision with little or no Government oversight. Such reliance and acceptance of the market mechanism especially where participants’ knowledge may be limited and the consequences of market distortions can serious hurt vulnerable participants, i.e. children and parents, require a level of marketing ethics higher than in other consumer markets. This is acute when parents believe that they are equipping their children from a very young age with the skills and knowledge needed for their future development but have no way of determining independently the quality of the schools other than through their own marketing. This is not to assume that the marketing is poor, only that where private early childhood education centres compete in the market for students that such risks exist. This study investigates the effect of marketing management might use of many features of schooling including teaching quality, which is difficult to easily verify, to increase the attractiveness of specific schools. Positively this work to increase the importance of quality teaching practice to substantiate such claims, negatively it can lead to misrepresentation. Such considerations and a number of other issues are core to ethical marketing practices in the marketplace and are investigated in this study. Private early childhood education centres use marketing to promote themselves in the market, while parents use this information when making choices. Given that marketing is a seductive voice of neo-liberalism, a sustainable marketing measure needs to be backed by a wide range of practices which improve the products and protect the vulnerability of parents and children. At the same time, parents can collect information and other people’s comments for further consideration and analysis. This will allow them to be better informed when choosing a private early childhood education centre for their children, thereby making sure that the interests and well-being of their children are protected. Educational marketing, marketing ethics, and teaching quality in early childhood education centres forms the framework of this study, which will also use a mixed method approach. Phase 1 consists of a quantitative method in the form of a survey. Phase 2 consists of a qualitative method in the form of focus groups, followed by analysis and discussion of the results. The results indicate that young parents, females, parents with lower education qualifications, and parents with lower income show a higher trust and are more reliant on private early childhood education centres on promotions. The research also determined that online marketing is extremely important. It was also found that communication between parents and private early childhood education centres is crucial. Furthermore, participants felt that no additional regulations should be added to the industry, although the government does have a number of ordinances regarding education at regular schools. Positionality Being a researcher and owner of a private early childhood education centre, I contribute to knowledge by offering an understanding of the market and marketing ethics in the early childhood education sector in Hong Kong. From such a position I recognise that the sustainability of my business is based on the reputation of the quality that achieves and retains. Misrepresentation in marketing are not only unethical but also poor business practice whereas good quality education which is evidenced in the practice and resource that I devote to teaching and enhance my business proposition, supports sustainability but above this secure a flourishing learning environment for the children. As an insider researcher, and having the dual role of both operator and researcher adds a multidimensional aspect to project. However, it is vital that I remain objective and neutral in order to solve and mitigate personal and professional conflicts. In the interests of confidentiality, the sensitive information of the companies and organizations has not been disclosed. The data has also been rigorously evaluated to ensure credibility. The discussion of insider researcher implications can be referred to page 5 in this thesis

The future of ischemic stroke: flow from prehospital neuroprotection to definitive reperfusion.

Recent advances in ischemic stroke enable a seamless transition of the patient flow from the prehospital setting to definitive reperfusion, without the arbitrary separation of therapeutic phases of ischemia based on time alone. In 2013, the framework to understand and directly address the pathophysiology of cerebral blood flow that determines the timeline or evolution of ischemia in an individual case is given. This continuum of flow and the homeostasis of brain perfusion balanced by collaterals may be captured with serial imaging. Ongoing imaging core laboratory activities permit large-scale measurement of angiographic and tissue biomarkers of ischemia. Prehospital neuroprotection has become a reality and may be combined with revascularization therapies. Recent studies confirm that image-guided thrombolysis may be achieved without restrictive time windows. Baseline imaging patterns may be used to predict response to therapy and serial imaging may discern recanalization and reperfusion. Advanced techniques, such as arterial spin-labeled MRI, may also report hyperperfusion associated with hemorrhagic transformation. Endovascular therapies, including novel stent retriever devices, may augment revascularization and angiographic core laboratories may define optimal reperfusion. Serial evaluation of collaterals and reperfusion may identify definitive reperfusion linked with good clinical outcome rather than imposing arbitrary definitions of effective recanalization. Reperfusion injury and hemorrhagic transformation of various types may be detailed to explain clinical outcomes. Similar approaches may be used in intracranial atherosclerosis where flow, and not the degree of luminal stenosis, is paramount. Fractional flow may now be measured with computational fluid dynamics to identify high-risk lesions that require revascularization to restore the equilibrium of antegrade and collateral perfusion. Serial perfusion imaging of such cases may also illustrate inadequate cerebral blood volume gradients that may be more informative than blood flow delay alone. In sum, the growing understanding of collateral perfusion throughout all stages of ischemic stroke provides a framework for the future of ischemic stroke

Adaptive primal-dual genetic algorithms in dynamic environments

This article is placed here with permission of IEEE - Copyright @ 2010 IEEERecently, there has been an increasing interest in applying genetic algorithms (GAs) in dynamic environments. Inspired by the complementary and dominance mechanisms in nature, a primal-dual GA (PDGA) has been proposed for dynamic optimization problems (DOPs). In this paper, an important operator in PDGA, i.e., the primal-dual mapping (PDM) scheme, is further investigated to improve the robustness and adaptability of PDGA in dynamic environments. In the improved scheme, two different probability-based PDM operators, where the mapping probability of each allele in the chromosome string is calculated through the statistical information of the distribution of alleles in the corresponding gene locus over the population, are effectively combined according to an adaptive Lamarckian learning mechanism. In addition, an adaptive dominant replacement scheme, which can probabilistically accept inferior chromosomes, is also introduced into the proposed algorithm to enhance the diversity level of the population. Experimental results on a series of dynamic problems generated from several stationary benchmark problems show that the proposed algorithm is a good optimizer for DOPs.This work was supported in part by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant 70431003 and Grant 70671020, by the National Innovation Research Community Science Foundation of China under Grant 60521003, by the National Support Plan of China under Grant 2006BAH02A09, by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of U.K. under Grant EP/E060722/1, and by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Research Grants under Grant G-YH60

Phase Diagram of the 1D Kondo Lattice Model

We determine the boundary of the fully polarized ferromagnetic ground state in the one dimensional Kondo lattice model at partial conduction electron band filling by using a newly developed infinite size DMRG method which conserves the total spin quantum number. The obtained paramagnetic to ferromagnetic phase boundary is below $J \approx 3.5$ for the whole range of band filling. By this we solve the controversy in the phase diagram over the extent of the ferromagnetic region close to half filling.Comment: 6 pages, 4 EPS figures. Presented at MOS9

Clinical application of resorbable polymers in guided bone regeneration

Conference Theme: Cell Biomaterial ReactionOpen Access JournalINTRODUCTION: Long segmental diaphyseal bone loss often results from high energy trauma like blast injury, osteomyelitis or wide excision of malignant conditions. Treatment of this long segmental diaphyseal defects remain a difficult clinical problem. In the literature, many authors have reported that bone loss more than 2.5 cm always require bone grafting. This is probably the critical size defect in human. Non-vascularized bone graft frequently fails if the defect is longer than 6-7 cm. 2.5 cm is probably the critical size defect in human and 7 cm is likely the critical size for non-vascularized bone graft. Various treatment methods are adopted currently to address this problem, including vascularized bone graft, distraction osteogenesis and massive allograft. However, all these methods are associated with …published_or_final_versio

Climate and climate change in the sub-Antarctic

Meteorologically, the sub-Antarctic is sparsely represented in the climate literature. Drawing on a variety of sources that are either directly or indirectly linked to the sub-Antarctic, an overview of the climate of the sub-Antarctic is presented, In doing so, we note that, for the most part, the sub-Antarctic climate is more or less fixed to mean monthly air temperatures between -5C and +15C. Brief discussion explores the roles of teleconnections that appear to affect the sub-Antarctic climate, focusing on the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM). We report on meteorological evidence of climate change that has occurred in the recent history of the sub-Antarctic and note that rainfall dimate-change signals from Marion and Macquarie islands are consistent with trends associated with the SAM index. We report that modelling suggests that the climate of the sub-Antarctic will continue to change through the twenty-first century in line with twentieth-century trends. The need for more research into the climate of the sub-Antarctic, underpinned by a robust databank of quality controlled sub-Antarctic meteorological data, is noted

Prophylactic Use of an Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator After Acute Myocardial Infarction

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72580/1/j.1527-5299.2005.04172.x.pd

Bone regeneration with resorbable polylactide membrane and sponge in an unstable fracture model in rabbit radius

Open Access journalConference Theme: Bone Tissue EngineeringBACKGROUND: Healing of segmental diaphyseal bone defects in animals can be enhanced by covering the defects with resorbable polylactide membranes. Based on the results of bone healing in defects 10 mm long in the rabbit radii, it was suggested that the membranes prevents muscle and soft tissue from invading the defect and maintains osteogenic cells and osteogenic substances within the space covered with membrane, thus promoting new bone formation. OBJECTIVES: 1. To investigate and …published_or_final_versionpublished_or_final_versio

The Size Distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects

We describe analytical and numerical collisional evolution calculations for the size distribution of icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt. For a wide range of bulk properties, initial masses, and orbital parameters, our results yield power-law cumulative size distributions, N_C propto r^{-q}, with q_L = 3.5 for large bodies with radii of 10-100 km, and q_s = 2.5-3 for small bodies with radii lesss than 0.1-1 km. The transition between the two power laws occurs at a break radius of 1-30 km. The break radius is more sensitive to the initial mass in the Kuiper Belt and the amount of stirring by Neptune than the bulk properties of individual Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs). Comparisons with observations indicate that most models can explain the observed sky surface density of KBOs for red magnitudes, R = 22-27. For R 28, the model surface density is sensitive to the amount of stirring by Neptune, suggesting that the size distribution of icy planets in the outer solar system provides independent constraints on the formation of Neptune.Comment: 24 pages of text, 12 figures; to appear in the Astronomical Journal, October 200