Comparison of Local and Taiwanese Managerial Leadership Styles as Perceived by the Malaysian Workforce of a Taiwanese Company in Malaysia: A Case Study

The globalisation of business is a must for many multinational companies, including Taiwanese enterprises, to stay and prosper on the competitive edge of international business. Taiwanese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which began in 1986 has had special interest in the region of South East Asia, especially in Malaysia. Today, there is a need to take a closer look at the managerial leadership practices in Taiwanese enterprises within the Malaysian context so as to evaluate the current status and to provide a basis for future development and improvement. A survey Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) was randomly distributed to qualified respondents in a Taiwanese Electronics company. And 203 valid respondents provided relevant data for comparisons between Taiwanese and local superiors, which included leadership styles, leadership performance and the associated personal attributes. Confirmative factor analysis was used in accordance with the two-factor model and five-factor model of leadership style introduced by Bass (1985). Reliability tests showed that the constructs were valid and existed in this study. Leadership styles were compared between Taiwanese and local superiors by using paired T-test. Stepwise multiple-regression was applied to find out the leadership styles most associated with leadership performance. One way ANOVA and independent T-test were used to distinguish the personal attributes, which had perceived effect on the leadership styles. The results of this study showed that there were significantly different and yet similar leadership styles used by Taiwanese and local superiors. No extra-ordinary leadership styles were perceived among Charisma, Individual Consideration, Intellectual Stimulation, Contingent Reward and Management-by-Exception. Charisma was found to be most associated with leadership performance, which was the leadership effectiveness of superiors and the satisfaction of subordinates towards leadership. Previous working exposure to foreign leadership was a crucial factor in affecting subordinates' perception of leadership

Ferritin level prospectively predicts hepatocarcinogenesis in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection

Previous studies have detected a higher level of ferritin in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but a potential causal association between serum ferritin level and hepatocarcinogenesis remains to be clarified. Using a well-established prospective cohort and longitudinally collected serial blood samples, the association between baseline ferritin levels and HCC risk were evaluated in 1,152 patients infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV), a major risk factor for HCC. The association was assessed by Cox proportional hazards regression model using univariate and multivariate analyses and longitudinal analysis. It was demonstrated that HBV patients who developed HCC had a significantly higher baseline ferritin level than those who remained cancer-free (188.00 vs. 108.00 ng/ml, P\u3c0.0001). The patients with a high ferritin level (≥200 ng/ml) had 2.43-fold increased risk of HCC compared to those with lower ferritin levels [hazard ratio (HR), 2.43; 95% confidence interval, 1.63-3.63]. A significant trend of increasing HRs along with elevated ferritin levels was observed (P for trend \u3c0.0001). The association was still significant after multivariate adjustment. Incorporating ferritin into the α-fetoprotein (AFP) model significantly improved the performance of HCC prediction (the area under the curve from 0.74 to 0.77, P=0.003). Longitudinal analysis showed that the average ferritin level in HBV patients who developed HCC was persistently higher than in those who were cancer-free during follow-up. HCC risk reached a peak at approximately the fifth year after baseline ferritin detection. Moreover, stratified analyses showed that the association was noted in both males and females, and was prominent in patients with a low AFP value. In short, serum ferritin level could independently predict the risk of HBV-related HCC and may have a complementary role in AFP-based HCC diagnosis. Future studies are warranted to validate these findings and test its clinical applicability in HCC prevention and management. © 2018, Spandidos Publication

High-order symbolic strong-coupling expansion for the Bose-Hubbard model

Combining the process-chain method with a symbolized evaluation we work out in detail a high-order symbolic strong-coupling expansion (HSSCE) for determining the quantum phase boundaries between the Mott insulator and the superfluid phase of the Bose-Hubbard model for different fillings in hypercubic lattices of different dimensions. With a subsequent Pad{\'e} approximation we achieve for the quantum phase boundaries a high accuracy, which is comparable to high-precision quantum Monte-Carlo simulations, and show that all the Mott lobes can be rescaled to a single one. As a further cross-check, we find that the HSSCE results coincide with a hopping expansion of the quantum phase boundaries, which follow from the effective potential Landau theory (EPLT).Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. For the latest version and more information see https://www.physik.uni-kl.de/eggert/papers/index.htm

Application of Neural-Like P Systems With State Values for Power Coordination of Photovoltaic/Battery Microgrids

The power coordination control of a photovoltaic/battery microgrid is performed with a novel bio-computing model within the framework of membrane computing. First, a neural-like P system with state values (SVNPS) is proposed for describing complex logical relationships between different modes of Photovoltaic (PV) units and energy storage units. After comparing the objects in the neurons with the thresholds, state values will be obtained to determine the con guration of the SVNPS. Considering the characteristics of PV/battery microgrids, an operation control strategy based on bus voltages of the point of common coupling and charging/discharging statuses of batteries is proposed. At rst, the SVNPS is used to construct the complicated unit working modes; each unit of the microgrid can adjust the operation modes automatically. After that, the output power of each unit is reasonably coordinated to ensure the operation stability of the microgrid. Finally, a PV/battery microgrid, including two PV units, one storage unit, and some loads are taken into consideration, and experimental results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control strategy and the SVNPS-based power coordination control models

High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANs

We present a new method for synthesizing high-resolution photo-realistic images from semantic label maps using conditional generative adversarial networks (conditional GANs). Conditional GANs have enabled a variety of applications, but the results are often limited to low-resolution and still far from realistic. In this work, we generate 2048x1024 visually appealing results with a novel adversarial loss, as well as new multi-scale generator and discriminator architectures. Furthermore, we extend our framework to interactive visual manipulation with two additional features. First, we incorporate object instance segmentation information, which enables object manipulations such as removing/adding objects and changing the object category. Second, we propose a method to generate diverse results given the same input, allowing users to edit the object appearance interactively. Human opinion studies demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms existing methods, advancing both the quality and the resolution of deep image synthesis and editing.Comment: v2: CVPR camera ready, adding more results for edge-to-photo example

Why a local moment induces an antiferromagnetic ordering: An RVB picture

Based on a Gutzwiller projected BCS wavefunction, it is shown that a local S=1/2 moment is present around a vacancy site (zinc impurity) in a form of staggered magnetic moments, which is a direct consequence of the short-ranged resonating-valence-bond (RVB) pairing in the spin background.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure