Co-movement clustering: A novel approach for predicting inflation in the food and beverage industry

In the realm of food and beverage businesses, inflation poses a significant hurdle as it affects pricing, profitability, and consumer’s purchasing power, setting it apart from other industries. This study proposes a novel approach; co-movement clustering, to predict which items will be inflated together according to historical time-series data. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed approach based on real-world data obtained from the UK Office for National Statistics. The predicted results of the proposed approach were compared against four classical methods (correlation, Euclidean distance, Cosine Similarity, and DTW). According to our experimental results, the accuracy of the proposed approach outperforms the above-mentioned classical methods. Moreover, the accuracy of the proposed approach is higher when an additional filter is applied. Our approach aids hospitality operators in accurately predicting food and beverage inflation, enabling the development of effective strategies to navigate the current challenging business environment in hospitality management. The lack of previous work has explored how time series clustering can be applied to support inflation prediction. This study opens a new research paradigm to the related field and this study can serve as a useful reference for future research in this emerging area. In addition, this study work contributes to the data analytics research stream in hospitality management literature

FinTech (Financial Technology): What is It and How to Use Technologies to Create Business Value in Fintech Way?

We define FinTech as a cross-disciplinary subject that combines Finance, Technology Management and Innovation Management. The definition had been presented to different audiences with different backgrounds, such as students and business professionals in various events, we found that the definition provides audiences better understanding on what is FinTech and its potential. Moreover, in order to discuss how FinTech would create value for businesses, we summarized various FinTech applications into four major categories: i) payment, ii) advisory service, iii) financing and iv) compliance. In addition, we also discuss what are the emerging technologies in FinTech and how they could possibility create business values. We believe that this study could serve as a reference for researchers, particularly from technology background, on how to identify and develop new Fintech solutions

An Exploratory Study of How Emotion Tone Presented in A Message Influences Artificial Intelligence (AI) Powered Recommendation System

This innovative study aims to explore how emotion tone presented in a message influences the judgement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) bots. We established a scenario by using vacation rental introduction as input message to conduct experiments to explore the influences. Our findings suggest that AI bots demonstrate preferences on the input message presented in positive tones rather than input message with negative tones. Our pioneering study can serve as a crucial starting point for future studies, in particular opening up fresh avenues for future research endeavours and engenders discussions and debates concerning the development of recommendation system

What Business Managers Should Know About Quantum Computing?

Business management requires rapid reactions to the changes of business environment effectively. Given quantum computing’s game-changing power will bring huge transformation, therefore managers should be aware of how to take the advantage of quantum computing and recognize its potential impacts to the business world. In fact, quantum computing will deliver exponential advantages for various problems, such as factoring very large numbers within very short time, therefore it has dramatic impacts on existing business issues, such as cybersecurity practice, business optimization, investment decision making, search from unstructured data, etc. However, although the topic is emerging, only very limited studies have been conducted with specific focus on the potential impacts of quantum computing on business management. Accordingly, this study was conducted to fill this knowledge gap. In this study, we began with analyzing quantum related investment markets, trends in scholarly publication and keyword search on the internet about quantum computing. In addition, we provided an introduction on what is quantum computing and discussed related quantum algorithms. Finally, we summarized four major potential applications of quantum computing in business management. Hopefully this paper can serve as a reference for researchers, industrial participators and policy makers engaged in future research or practical applications on related topics

Heparin release from thermosensitive hydrogels

Thermosensitive hydrogels (TSH) were synthesized and investigated as heparin releasing polymers for the prevention of surface induced thrombosis. TSH were synthesized with N-isopropyl acrylamide (NiPAAm) copolymerized with butyl methacrylate (BMA) (hydrophobic) or acrylic acid (AAc) (hydrophilic) comonomers. The incorporation of hydrophobic and hydrophilic comonomers strongly influences the swelling/shrinking behavior of TSH. Upon deswelling, gels containing the hydrophobic comonomer formed a skin-type layer, which acted as a rate controlling membrane, while the hydrophilic comonomer greatly increased gel swelling, relative to NiPAAm. Equilibrium swelling in isotonic PBS and deswelling kinetics of the synthesized gels were examined at various temperatures. The loading of heparin into the different gels was studied as a function of temperature, solution concentration, and gel composition. The release kinetics of heparin was found to be influenced by gel composition and loading temperature; the release correlated with the gel deswelling kinetics. In the case of Ni-PAAm/BMA gel, the release profile of heparin was affected by temperature dependent properties of the skin-type diffusional barrier formed on the gel surface

Cold-Soak Testing Method -Based Evaluation of Thermal Performance of A Typical Residential Dwelling

Thermal characteristics of two identical British-style residential houses were evaluated and compared to each other in this paper. The two houses were built in Scotland under the Scottish building regulation 2011. Thermal characteristic evaluation of the houses was accomplished by determining their heat loss coefficient and thermal mass potential. A practical heating measurement method was applied to evaluate heat loss coefficient before a thermal mass storage evaluation was carried out using a cold soak testing method. This cold-soak testing method is based on evaluation approach under the absence of effect of solar radiation that eliminates solar heat gain during the assessment period. Because of this, the uncertainty of analytical result could be reduced and the accuracy of evaluation result would be improved. The evaluation result indicated that heat loss coefficient of the two identical houses was almost the same while their thermal mass storage potential was quite similar with a small difference of 5.5% that is thought to be caused by a different number of heating systems installed in each house as well as small differences in either variability in materials or variability in the batch of material that the houses were made

La tecnología central detrás y más allá de ChatGPT: Una revisión exhaustiva de los modelos de lenguaje en la investigación educativa

ChatGPT has garnered significant attention within the education industry. Given the core technology behind ChatGPT is language model, this study aims to critically review related publications and suggest future direction of language model in educational research. We aim to address three questions: i) what is the core technology behind ChatGPT, ii) what is the state of knowledge of related research and iii) the potential research direction. A critical review of related publications was conducted in order to evaluate the current state of knowledge of language model in educational research. In addition, we further suggest a purpose oriented guiding framework for future research of language model in education. Our study promptly responded to the concerns raised by ChatGPT from the education industry and offers the industry with a comprehensive and systematic overview of related technologies. We believe this is the first time that a study has been conducted to systematically review the state of knowledge of language model in educational research. ChatGPT ha atraído una gran atención en el sector educativo. Dado que la tecnología central detrás de ChatGPT es el modelo de lenguaje, este estudio tiene como objetivo revisar críticamente publicaciones relacionadas y sugerir la dirección futura del modelo de lenguaje en la investigación educativa. Nuestro objetivo es abordar tres preguntas: i) cuál es la tecnología central detrás de ChatGPT, ii) cuál es el nivel de conocimiento de la investigación relacionada y iii) la dirección del potencial de investigación. Se llevó a cabo una revisión crítica de publicaciones relacionadas con el fin de evaluar el estado actual del conocimiento del modelo lingüístico en la investigación educativa. Además, sugerimos un marco rector para futuras investigaciones sobre modelos lingüísticos en educación. Nuestro estudio respondió rápidamente a las preocupaciones planteadas por el uso de ChatGPT en la industria educativa y proporciona a la industria una descripción general completa y sistemática de las tecnologías relacionadas. Creemos que esta es la primera vez que se realiza un estudio para revisar sistemáticamente el nivel de conocimiento del modelo lingüístico en la investigación educativa

A Study of Preferred Learning Time of Online Learner in Multimedia Microlearning in Higher Education Context

This study aims to explore when would online learners prefer to interact with multimedia microlearning†in higher education context. Although microlearning is an emerging topic, most of the previous studies were focus on reporting the application results of microlearning, only very few of previous works were specifically conducted on discussing when would online learners prefer to interact with multimedia microlearning. Total population sampling approach was adopted and questionnaire was used to collect primary data. In total, 77 participants attempted the survey, the response rate is 32.6%. The findings from this study indicate that more learners prefer to study during morning or afternoon time rather than evening or midnight time (H2) (p<0.05). On the other hand, there is no significant difference on when to attempt assessment (H1) and on gender issue (H3, H4). The findings from this study generates knowledge to fill the research gap in the field of microlearning. According to the researcher’s best knowledge, this is the first time that a study like this had been conducted to review and discuss the online learners’ preferences on interacting multimedia learning. Hopefully, this study could shed some lights on future directions of the development of microlearning

A review of the trend of microlearning

Purpose Microlearning has been considered as a promising topic in work-based learning. This paper aims to review the trends of microlearning in terms of related publications and internet searches. Hopefully, the findings can serve as a reference for the education sector, government, business and academia, to promote, design and use microlearning. Design/methodology/approach In this study, two sets of analysis were conducted. Firstly, we analysed the publication trend of microlearning. Second, we analysed the trend of internet searches related to microlearning. More specifically, we analysed 14-years real-world data obtained from Scopus and Google Trends for the purpose. These data include the first relevant publication found in the database. Findings In total, 476 relevant publication have been identified during 2006 to 2019. According to the findings from analysing the identified publications, microlearning is a relevant new and emerging global topic involving authors, affiliations and funding sponsors from different countries. Moreover, many microlearning related publications were conducted from perspectives of elearning or mobile learning. Furthermore, we notice higher education was the most frequently mentioned education level in the identified publications. On the other hand, language learning (i.e. second language, vocabulary learning) had been mentioned more times in the titles and abstracts then other subject areas. Overall, the increasing trend of publications on ‘microlearning’ (as a knowledge supply) is in line with the established increasing internet searches of ‘microlearning’ (as a practical demand) in recent years. Practical implications From the work-based learning perspective, microlearning has been considered as one of the key topics in talent development topics. Policymakers, educators, researchers and participators, have the responsibility to explore how to promote, design and use microlearning to help people to learn in the right direction through valid knowledge with ethical consideration. Originality/value Although many works had been done on microlearning, there is a lack of comprehensive studies reviewing the trends of microlearning in terms of related publications and internet searches. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing real-world data obtained from Scopus and Google Trends - these data include the first relevant publication found in the database. We believe this is the first time that a study has been conducted to comprehensively review the development trends of microlearning. Hopefully, this study can shed some light on related research