Estimating monetary policy rules for Malaysia: an optimal monetary conditions index

Based on the concept of the monetary conditions index (MCI) to underscore the important role of the interest rates parity, the paper attempts to estimate a model of optimal monetary policy for open emerging market economies. It is designed to shed a light of significance of the internal and external equilibrium and provide the basis for the analysis. The paper estimated the relative influence of interest rates and exchange rate on the output gap, the weights of real interest rates and real exchange rate, which are used to estimate the optimal monetary conditions index. The estimated weights are 1.6: 1, which can be used to specify operating target rule for monetary policy.

INFLUENCES OF THE SHOE SOLE HARDNESS AND SPEED ON STRIDE FREQUENCY AND STRIKING POSITION VARIABILITY DURING TREADMILL RUNNING WITHOUT AWARENESS OF SPEED CHANGE

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influences of wearing soft or hard soled shoe on the runner’s stride frequency and striking position variability, while the runner was not aware of the treadmill speed changing by visual or auditory information. The positions of the right ankle markers on the twenty subjects were captured to determine the stride frequency and striking position variability from ten strides at different speeds during six minutes of treadmill running. The results showed that the runner’s stride frequency significantly increased as the treadmill speed increased (

Collective Influence of Multiple Spreaders Evaluated by Tracing Real Information Flow in Large-Scale Social Networks

Identifying the most influential spreaders that maximize information flow is a central question in network theory. Recently, a scalable method called "Collective Influence (CI)" has been put forward through collective influence maximization. In contrast to heuristic methods evaluating nodes' significance separately, CI method inspects the collective influence of multiple spreaders. Despite that CI applies to the influence maximization problem in percolation model, it is still important to examine its efficacy in realistic information spreading. Here, we examine real-world information flow in various social and scientific platforms including American Physical Society, Facebook, Twitter and LiveJournal. Since empirical data cannot be directly mapped to ideal multi-source spreading, we leverage the behavioral patterns of users extracted from data to construct "virtual" information spreading processes. Our results demonstrate that the set of spreaders selected by CI can induce larger scale of information propagation. Moreover, local measures as the number of connections or citations are not necessarily the deterministic factors of nodes' importance in realistic information spreading. This result has significance for rankings scientists in scientific networks like the APS, where the commonly used number of citations can be a poor indicator of the collective influence of authors in the community.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Promotion Strategies of Family Education Guidance Service in Chinese Community

To carry out family education is related to the vital interests of thousands of families, and it is the top priority of the national livelihood work. It has become an international consensus to provide family education guidance services based on communities to improve the level and quality of family education. However, at present, there are still serious problems in the work of family education guidance services in Chinese communities, such as the absence of a normalized policy guarantee system, the weakening of value consensus by the game of stakeholders, and the prominent contradiction between supply and demand of high-quality resources. To this end, the following promotion strategies are proposed: improving relevant policies and regulations and ensuring the working operation mechanism; guiding residents to participate deeply and balancing the demands of stakeholders; deepening the supply-side reform of resources and promoting the quality development of education

Differences in the Decision-Making Process Between Sellers Using Yahoo!Kimo Auction Site and Barter Sites

Prior studies of consumer behavior have focused more on purchasing intention than selling intention. However, sellers do form different values or economic views (utilitarian or hedonic) when selling the same second-hand product on different platforms (auction vs. barter sites). The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that determined which platform an online seller uses for second-hand products: an auction site or a barter site. Based on the Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) model, the study used a validated questionnaire to explore several internal and external factors. The factors supporting both the intention and actual behavior of using auction sites are product condition, reference group, word of mouth, and reference price; the factors for using barter sites are personal value and reference group. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology was used to further observe the influence that different values have on sellers’ brain activities and decision-making behaviors regarding site choice

Development Of Bio-Ash Supported Nanocomposites For The Photocatalytic Treatment Of Acid Red 88 And Methylene Blue

To date, the wide scale application of photocatalysis, a new innovative and promising technology for the environmental remediation of textile dye pollutants, is experiencing the technical challenges of particles self-agglomeration and post-separation difficulty. Arising research pertaining to the immobilization of photocatalysts onto different supporting materials have been promoted. Giving insight into the huge generation of agricultural bio-ash and highlighting of their low economical value, the development of a series of bio-ash supported nanocomposites by using simple physical coating and hydrothermal techniques has been attempted. Bio-ash including incense ash (IA), durian shell ash (DSA) and coffee residue ash (CA) was adopted to be the low-cost precursors for the preparation of bio-ash supported SnO2 and ZnO nanocomposites, with different ash impregnation ratio from 1:1 to 1:5. Surface morphology analysis, pore structural measurement, detection of surface functional groups and evaluation of point of zero charge (pHzpc) were carried out. The photocatalytic performance was examined with respect to the batch photocatalytic degradation of Acid Red 88 (AR 88) and Methylene Blue (MB) by varying the operational parameters, catalyst loading, initial dye concentration and irradiation time, and solution pH. Surface morphological studies revealed that the deposition of catalysts onto the surface of different bio-ash was successfully attained. Examination of the porosity development suggested that the capability of bio-ash to improve the overall surface area. Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) spectrum ascertained the homogenous deposition of SnO2 and ZnO photocatalysts on the surface of bio-ash. Results illustrated the best photodegradation efficacy was achieved at the optimum catalyst loading of 0.03 g/100 mL for SnO2/CA, 0.04 g/100 mL for SnO2/IA and SnO2/DSA nanocomposites, and 0.40 g/100 mL for ZnO/IA, ZnO/DSA, and ZnO/CA nanocomposites, respectively. Acidic medium favors to the photocatalytic removal of AR 88, while the basic condition prefers to the photodegradation of MB. Increasing initial concentration from 100-500 mg/L for AR 88 and from 50-400 mg/L for MB demonstrated the significant influences on the removal efficacy, and a longer irradiation time was acquired for the complete removal process. Kinetic analysis revealed that the linearity of the photocatalytic plots was well described by the first order model. Reusability test indicated high durability of these newly prepared nanocomposites, with greater than 85% of degradation efficiency even after five regeneration cycles. This study provided a new insight in the preparation of valuable bio-ash supported nanocomposites for the effective purification of textile dye pollutants