Impacts of Ageing Population on Monetary and Exchange Rate Managements in Singapore

This paper finds that the ageing of the population in Singapore will cause a reversal of the current net Central Provident Fund (CPF) contribution into a substantial net CPF withdrawal from 2025, with a peak occurring at 2035. The result is qualitatively robust to changes in the underlying assumptions of the projection. The paper then highlights the implications of this change on the exchange rate and monetary managements in Singapore. First, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)’s ability to influence Singapore’s exchange rate will be greatly hampered. Second, the net CPF withdrawal will mean sustained liquidity injection into (instead of the usual liquidity drain from) the economy. To avoid unnecessary inflation, the MAS has to find a sustainable way to mob up the excess liquidity due to the sustained liquidity injection. As a simple reversal of MAS’s current foreign exchange market operation will result in substantial shrinkage of foreign reserves, the paper proposes the issuance of government bonds to achieve the dual objectives of mobbing up the excess liquidity and avoiding the shrinkage of foreign reserves. This measure will also help the bond market development in Singapore. Finally, the paper proposes two other measures that can help maintain MAS’s influence on Singapore’s exchange rate to a reasonable level in the longer future.Ageing Population, Central Provident Fund, Exchange Rate System, Monetary Policy, Singapore.

Digital Heritage Gamification: An Augmented-Virtual Walkthrough to Learn and Explore Tangible Cultural Heritage

In the last decade, cultural heritage including historical sites are reconstructed into digital heritage. Based on UNESCO , digital heritage defines as “cultural, educational, scientific and administrative resources, as well as technical, legal, medical and other kinds of information created digitally, or converted into digital form from existing analogue resources”. In addition, the digital heritage is doubling in size every two years and expected will grow tenfold between 2013 and 2020. In order to attract and stir the interest of younger generations about digital heritage, gamification has been widely promoted. In this research, a virtual walkthrough combine with gamifications are proposed for learning and exploring historical places in Malaysia by using mobile device. In conjunction with Visit Perak 2017 Campaign, this virtual walkthrough is proposed for Kellie’s Castle at Perak. The objectives of this research are two folds 1) modelling and design of innovative mobile game for virtual walkthrough application, and 2) to attract tourist to explore and learn historical places by using sophisticated graphics from Augmented Reality. The efficiency and effectiveness of the mobile virtual walkthrough will be accessed by the International and local tourists. In conclusion, this research is speculated to be pervasively improve the cultural and historical knowledge of the learners

Improvement of dielectric loss of doped Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 thin films for tunable microwave devices

Al2O3-Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 (Al2O3-BST) thin films, with different Al2O3 contents, were deposited on (100) LaAlO3 substrate by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The Al2O3-BST films was demosnstrated to be a suitable systems to fabricate ferroelectric thin films with low dielectric loss and higher figure of merit for tunable microwave devices. Pure BST thin films were also fabricated for comparison purpose. The films' structure and morphology were analyzed by X-ray diffractiopn and scanning electron microscopy, respectively; nad showed that the surface roughness for the Al2O3-BST films increased with the Al2O3 content. Apart from that, the broadening in the intensity peak in XRD result indicating the grain size of the Al2O3-BST films reduced with the increasing of Al2O3 dopant. We measured the dielctric properties of Al2O3-BST films with a home-made non-destructive dual resonator method at frequency ~ 7.7 GHZ. The effect of doped Al2O3 into BST thin films significantly reduced the dielectric constant, dielectric loss and tunability compare to pure BST thin film. Our result shows the figure of merit (K), used to compare the films with varied dielectric properties, increased with the Al2O3 content. Therefore Al2O3-BST films show the potential to be exploited in tunable microwave devices.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted & tentatively for Feb 15 2004 issue, Journal of Applied Physic

Enhancement of Copper Sorption through Acid Blue 29 Treated Oil Palm Pressed Fibres

The removal of cupric ions from aqueous solution by natural and dyecoated palm pressed fibres was studied. Sorption was both pH and concentration dependent. The equilibrium data followed the Langmuir isotherm model with maximum copper sorption capacities of 2.41 and 7.71 mg/g for natural and dye-treated fibres respectively. The presence of other metal ions inhibited copper uptake in the following order Pb> Zn > Ni. The suppressing effects of chelators correspond to their log K values. Column studies showed that bed-depth had a more pronounced effect on copper sorption than flow rate

Identifying Retweetable Tweets with a Personalized Global Classifier

In this paper we present a method to identify tweets that a user may find interesting enough to retweet. The method is based on a global, but personalized classifier, which is trained on data from several users, represented in terms of user-specific features. Thus, the method is trained on a sufficient volume of data, while also being able to make personalized decisions, i.e., the same post received by two different users may lead to different classification decisions. Experimenting with a collection of approx.\ 130K tweets received by 122 journalists, we train a logistic regression classifier, using a wide variety of features: the content of each tweet, its novelty, its text similarity to tweets previously posted or retweeted by the recipient or sender of the tweet, the network influence of the author and sender, and their past interactions. Our system obtains F1 approx. 0.9 using only 10 features and 5K training instances.Comment: This is a long paper version of the extended abstract titled "A Personalized Global Filter To Predict Retweets", of the same authors, which was published in the 25th ACM UMAP conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, in July 201

Wide-band RF photonic second order vector sum phase-shifter

A novel technique to extend the phasing range of the vector sum phase shifter by exploiting its second order response is proposed and implemented. A continuously variable phase shift is demonstrated between 8 and 16 GHz with phasing range exceeding 450° measured at 16 GHz. Good agreement between the predictions and measurements has been obtained

Wide-band photonically phased array antenna using vector sum phase shifting approach

In this paper, a wide-band photonically phased array antenna is demonstrated. The array configuration consists of a 4 x 1 Vivaldi single-polarization antenna array and an independent photonic phasing system for each element. The phasing network of this array is implemented using two novel photonic phase shifters based on the vector summation approach. A vector sum phase shifter (VSPS), which exhibits a frequency-linear characteristic from dc to 15 GHz and can be continuously tuned from 0 to 100 degrees, is presented. A second-order VSPS (SO-VSPS), a modification of the VSPS that is capable of 0-430 degrees phasing range, is also demonstrated. This paper presents the operation and characterization of each component of the array, including the radiating elements and the various photonic phase shifters; and, finally, a demonstration of the combined system. A discussion on the practicality of this system for airborne applications is presented, along with suggestions for simplification and improvement