The relevance of educational reform to the job satisfaction of secondary school teachers in Hong Kong

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Safety Analysis of Level Crossing Surveillance Systems Using Fuzzy Petri Nets

[[abstract]]A backward safety analysis model that can deal with dangerous status by virtue of fuzzy theory is proposed in this paper. Fuzzy Petri Nets (FPN) is developed and applied to the safety analysis for three types of level crossing surveillance systems of Taiwan Railway Administration. The numerical results of proposed FPN models are fairly plausible.[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20081219~20081221[[conferencelocation]]Taipei, Taiwa

A Taxonomy of Hyperlink Hiding Techniques

Hidden links are designed solely for search engines rather than visitors. To get high search engine rankings, link hiding techniques are usually used for the profitability of black industries, such as illicit game servers, false medical services, illegal gambling, and less attractive high-profit industry, etc. This paper investigates hyperlink hiding techniques on the Web, and gives a detailed taxonomy. We believe the taxonomy can help develop appropriate countermeasures. Study on 5,583,451 Chinese sites' home pages indicate that link hidden techniques are very prevalent on the Web. We also tried to explore the attitude of Google towards link hiding spam by analyzing the PageRank values of relative links. The results show that more should be done to punish the hidden link spam.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Is there any relationship between producer price index and consumer price index in the Czech Republic?

This article tests the expenditure-switching model in the Czech Republic to inspect the causal link between the Producer Price Index (P.P.I.) and Consumer Price Index (C.P.I.). The results of the co-movement between the P.P.I. and C.P.I. in the period indicate a positive relationship across the chosen period. We notice that in the frequency domain, the two variables have a relationship in higher spectrums (short-term). The results also show that comovements exist during structural reforms and financial crises, which in turn supports the expenditure-switching model. The C.P.I. and P.P.I. are sensitive to variations in exchange rates, which pass through prices at the domestic level. Exchange rate shocks lead to inflationary pressure; therefore, long-term oriented intervention policies of the central banks will be more efficient. This article provides substantial information to exporters about price adjustments to exchange rate fluctuation

Fuzzy clustering of CPP family in plants with evolution and interaction analyses

Background: Transcription factors have been studied intensively because they play an important role in gene expression regulation. However, the transcription factors in the CPP family (cystein-rich polycomb-like protein), compared with other transcription factor families, have not received sufficient attention, despite their wide prevalence in a broad spectrum of species, from plants to animals. The total number of known CPP transcription factors in plants is 111 from 16 plants, but only 2 of them have been studied so far, namely TSO1 and CPP1 in Arabidopsis thaliana and soybean, respectively. Methods: In this work, to study their functions, we applied the fuzzy clustering method to all plant CPP transcription factors. The feature vector of each protein sequence for the fuzzy clustering method is encoded by the short length peptides and the combination of functional domain models. Results and conclusions: With the fuzzy clustering method, all plant CPP transcription factors are grouped into two subfamilies. A systems approach, including Expressed Sequence Tag analysis, evolutionary analysis, proteinprotein interaction network analysis and co-expression analysis, is employed to validate the clustering results, the results of which also indicates that the transcription factors from different subfamilies show uncorrelated responses

A Modified Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour Model to Analyze User Intention towards Distance-Based Electronic Toll Collection Services

This study proposes a modified decomposed theory of planned behaviour model (DTPB) that integrates satisfaction and trust into the original DTPB model to explore what kind of factors affect the user intention towards distance-based electronic toll collection (ETC) services. The proposed model is empirically tested by using data collected from a questionnaire survey with a computer assisted telephone interview system. Empirical analysis is carried out in three stages that combine confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modelling (SEM), and Bayesian network: (1) examination of reliability and validity of the measurement model; (2) analysis of structural model; (3) prediction of the probability of user intention change based on rigorous framework of SEM. The results confirm that the satisfaction and trust have positive effects on the behaviour intention, also validating that five constructs have indirect effects on the behaviour intention through attitude and perceived behaviour control. Compatibility is the most important influence factor, followed by perceived usefulness, facilitating conditions, self-efficacy, and perceived ease of use. The findings of this study identify potential improvements for ETC operator, such as contributing to the society to enhance the company image and trust of enterprise with charity activities, and simultaneously upgrading the information platform of website, software, and Apps.</p