An Initial Study on the Effectiveness of TM Online Customer Care Service

The purpose of this research is to study the effectiveness of TM Online Customer Care Services at Telekom Malaysia Bhd used for rendering services to all TM customers as an alternative support or a helpdesk service. The aims are to identify the effectiveness the Online Customer Care Service and to provide recommendations for the future improvement of the system. In this study, TM customers in various types of services were surveyed and the results showed that there are four main factors that influence the effectiveness of the TM Online Customer Care Services. These factors are customers' behavior and attitude, technology and system, interactive applications and characteristics of TM Staff, and the paper discusses these factors in detail with an emphasis on the role of the TM Online Customer Care Services

Wage structure in the rubber estates in West Malaysia

Economic literature is full of general theoretical discussions about the determination of wages, but there is, relatively speaking, a dismal shortage of detailed factual studies or discussions about wages in labour markets in the less developed economies. This study on the Wage Structure in the Rubber Estates in West Malaysia tries to fill a little part of this gap. The study is divided into two parts. The first deals with the findings of a sample survey conducted on about 500 workers. A detailed description of the workers' earnings structure, at one point of time, highlighted the importance of the union-management agreements as a proximate determinant. This was supported by other information on the low rate of mobility amongst the estate workers and the increasing levels of unemployment amongst the estate population. This finding raised questions on the role of unionisation over a period of time, as distinct from that at a point of time, on the industry's wage levels (and therefore on the industry's wage structure). It also raised questions' on the influence of the Union's wage policy on the industry's unemployment levels. These questions were examined in the second part of the study. The examination confirmed the importance of the Union in determining the wage levels (and therefore of the wage structure) in the estates, but it rejected the probability that the Union was chiefly responsible for the unemployment problem in the estates. A summing-up chapter has been left out because this would merely repeat materials included more appropriately elsewhere in the study. Almost all the materials discussed in Part I are original. These add on to the existing knowledge of Malaysia. Much of the time spent in the field and in the analysis was necessarily taken up by this section. The materials in Part II are partly original and partly secondary, but their relationship to the industry's wage and unemployment levels has been attempted for the first time in an academic study. The interpretation in Part I is fairly definitive, but that in Part II is not as definitive mainly because of incomplete information and because much more time and money than available would have been required to collect this information. In the past, the lack of published information and the almost insurmountable difficulties of accessibility to primary data (for a single unofficial investigator) have been amongst the main factors deterring research scholars from pursuing the type of questions raised for Part II. Although these difficulties still exist, it is considered preferable to discuss such problems with whatever limited information is available than to wait until more information can be obtained (if ever) for them to be examined more scientifically

Winds of change in a ‘Saffronised’ Indian Borderland: dispossession and power in rural Kutch

Renewables are imagined in India around features of ‘greenness’ and ‘cleanness’ and are presented as the key solutions towards sustainable development and unlimited growth. But this narrative entails a problematic land politics and the reconfiguration of territories for capital accumulation: following the 2001 earthquake, Kutch district has been framed as a major resource frontier and experienced several waves of land liberalisation and industrialisation programs. Being a borderland district, the proximity with Pakistan and the presence of Muslim pastoral populations on both sides of the border have also fostered important ‘saffron’ Hindu nationalist discourses since 1947. What do the new territories of ‘green’ energy extraction look like in this context of sensitive borderland? This research focuses on the land politics of extracting wind energy as embedded within relations of caste and class, citizenship, and religious identities. Land is being imagined ‘empty’ and ‘waste’, shifting from one user to another via bureaucratic means, while it is materially aligned with companies’ interests. This process affects social differentiation and creates new trajectories of accumulation and domination for ground-level brokers and fixers who mediate consent and resistance. These actors merge the companies’ endless appetite for land with their own socio-economic and political gains affiliated with nationalist projects of territory revivalism. As the thesis argues, wind infrastructures align with broad ethno-religious conceptions of Indian citizenship and space as Hindu and their expansion over new border areas serves the enforcement of a racialised citizenship and security regime. Finally, the emergence of everyday resistance and political reactions to the arrival of wind power reveals continuity with traditional agrarian struggles, but also with caste politics and exclusive forms of mobilisation. This research adopts perspectives from political ecology, human geography, and critical agrarian studies and is grounded in a 7-month ethnographic investigation in mainland and borderland Kutch

Partial characterization of a 36-kDa antigen of Entamoeba histolytica and its recognition by sera from patients with amoebiasis

A 36-kDa antigen of axenically grown pathogenic Entamoeba histolytica (HM1-IMSS) was eluted from the sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE)-resolved crude amoebic extract antigens. The immunoreactivity of this partially purified 36-kDa antigen with monoclonal antibody (MoAb) 3D10 altered significantly (P<0.01) after heat and trypsin treatment but remained unaltered after treatment with sodium metaperiodate (P>0.5), thereby indicating the protein nature of the epitope recognized by MoAb 3D10. The epitope was found to be localized on the surface as well as in the cytoplasm of the E. histolytica trophozoites with the majority of it in the cytoplasm. In addition, this epitope was also found to be present on the cyst form of the parasite. The 36-kDa molecule was recognized by the sera from 29 (85%) of the 34 patients with amoebic liver abscess and five (83%) of the six patients with amoebic colitis. No serum samples from asymptomatic cyst passers, from patients with non-amoebic hepatic or intestinal disorders and apparently healthy subjects had antibodies that reacted with this 36-kDa molecule. The immune responses in man to this 36-kDa amoebic molecule indicate a potential specific role for this molecule in invasive amoebiasis

Differential, Tissue-specific, Transcriptional Regulation of Apolipoprotein B Secretion by Transforming Growth Factor β

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Regulation of T cell receptor signaling by activation-induced zinc influx

Zinc enhances TCR signaling in part by inhibiting Shp-1 recruitment to the TCR synapse

Teachers' attitudes towards the application of merit pay programs in British Columbia

Eight years ago the members of the British Columbia Schools Trustees' Association recommended to the teaching profession in British Columbia that they give serious consideration to the proposition of including merit as one of the factors in the determination of their salaries. The British Columbia Teachers' Federation, representing the teaching profession in the province, was vigorous in its opposition to merit pay schedules. The purpose of the present study is to assess the attitudes of the rank and file in the profession, as opposed to the institutional stand of the Teachers' Federation towards this issue. A study of the existing salary structures for teachers in the province showed that the teachers were paid primarily on the basis of their training and experience. An examination of the literature on merit rating pointed out that the training and experience of a teacher could not be equated with his teaching performance, as the research studies conducted indicated very low correlationships between them. The first part of the study, therefore, concluded that the teachers in British Columbia are not being paid on the basis of their teaching experience. The attitudes of the teachers towards this issue of pay based on teaching performance were then examined. Responses from 402 teachers from all levels of the teaching profession were fed into an IBM computer and the results analyzed. Slightly less than half of them (48.0%) opposed merit rating, and the rest were either in favor (39.0%) or were uncertain or did not answer (13.0%). The study, however, showed that the opposition to merit pay was greater if this meant that salaries were to be affected by double increments or super-maxima salaries superimposed on the existing salary structure. The opposition would be lesser if the merit of a teacher was being recognized by rewarding him/her with supervisory posts carrying extra allowances, granting study leave or sabbatical leave, and awarding travel grants for approved purposes. The recommendations in the concluding chapter were made on this basis.Business, Sauder School ofGraduat