Physical outdoor activity versus indoor activity: their influence on environmental behaviors

There are strong evidences linking physical outdoor activity and health benefits; however, little is known about the impact on environmental behaviors. Thus, this study aims to close this gap by investigating the influence of physical outdoor activity on environmental behaviors. A total of 416 surveys were distributed to students in eight public primary schools located near the Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park in Taiwan. Findings from the analysis revealed that subjective norms had a more influential effect on environmental behaviors for participants who engaged in physical activity at outdoor parks. In contrast, descriptive norms had a direct predictive impact on environmental behaviors for participants whose main physical activity venue was at the indoor after-school centers. Research results also highlighted attitude as the strongest predictive variable influence on environmental behaviors for children who engaged in physical indoor and outdoor activities

Service Alliance in Competition: A Game Theory Perspective

This research focuses on services based on alliance and devises a novel concept called service alliance. Service alliance uses service as the unit that companies can exchange, furnish, and share services in the alliance. Service alliance emphasizes on the representation and exchange for value of single service from an individual company. This research utilizes game theory to discuss the best action of service alliance in competition. We use airline industry as the example and expect to contribute to any service industry. The results show that four strategies are similar to the process from competition to cooperation. The best case is that the members in the alliance co-fund a new service team to serve all members. We hope the proposed concept can be applied to all service industry and create a new operation model for alliance

A self-evaluation system of quality planning for tourist attractions in Taiwan: an integrated AHP-Delphi approach from career professionals

This study seeks to identify a set of key indicators along with weightings for tourist attractions in Taiwan, and develop a quality management self-evaluation mechanism for tourism businesses, using an advanced integrated Analytic Hierarchy Process and Delphi (AHP-Delphi) approach derived from the supply side perspective. This research study comprises two phases: (1) Delphi method analysis that involves 17 experts, providing confirmation about the evaluation criteria; and (2) Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) method which aims to allocate weightings to the evaluation criteria from the experts. Findings from the Delphi method analysis revealed the acceptance of two dimensions, six sub-dimensions and 17 indicators as key evaluation criteria. The AHP method analysis indicated that the most significant dimension was managing quality, with tourism services and public sector facilities being the most important sub-dimension and indicator respectively. The self-evaluation mechanism proposed in this planning perspectives can assist tourism businesses and national/regional Destination Management Organization to identify quality management problems and possible ways of enhancing quality tourism, so that tourism experience, and tourist’s satisfaction can be further improved effectively between the conflicting views by career professionals

Fabrication of multianalyte CeO2 nanograin electrolyte–insulator–semiconductor biosensors by using CF4 plasma treatment

Multianalyte CeO2 biosensors have been demonstrated to detect pH, glucose, and urine concentrations. To enhance the multianalyte sensing capability of these biosensors, CF4 plasma treatment was applied to create nanograin structures on the CeO2 membrane surface and thereby increase the contact surface area. Multiple material analyses indicated that crystallization or grainization caused by the incorporation of flourine atoms during plasma treatment might be related to the formation of the nanograins. Because of the changes in surface morphology and crystalline structures, the multianalyte sensing performance was considerably enhanced. Multianalyte CeO2 nanograin electrolyte–insulator–semiconductor biosensors exhibit potential for use in future biomedical sensing device applications

Entity linking on microblogs with spatial and temporal signals

Invited for oral presentation at Conference on Empirical Methods on Natural Language Processing EMNLP 2014, October 25-29, Doha, Qatar</p

The Enterprise Risk Management of Foreign Exchange Exposures: Evidence from Taiwanese Hospitality Industry

For this paper, I use the ARIMA model to study the relationship between business performance and exchange rate fluctuations. Through this model, the empirical results shows that the influences of foreign exchange rate fluctuations on the tourist hotel business performance are significant and different across currencies and firms. Furthermore, according to the framework of Kim (2013) we employ the modern portfolio theory proposed by Markowitz (1952) to give an optimal foreign exchange allocation for each tourist hotel company's financial decision-makers, which will avoid the risk of exchange rate fluctuations expose and reduce losses due to the fluctuations of exchange rates, and complete the construction of enterprise risk management system (ERM)

Increased ATP generation in the host cell is required for efficient vaccinia virus production

To search for cellular genes up-regulated by vaccinia virus (VV) infection, differential display-reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (ddRT-PCR) assays were used to examine the expression of mRNAs from mock-infected and VV-infected HeLa cells. Two mitochondrial genes for proteins that are part of the electron transport chain that generates ATP, ND4 and CO II, were up-regulated after VV infection. Up-regulation of ND4 level by VV infection was confirmed by Western blotting analysis. Up-regulation of ND4 was reduced by the MAPK inhibitor, apigenin, which has been demonstrated elsewhere to inhibit VV replication. The induction of ND4 expression occurred after viral DNA replication since ara C, an inhibitor of poxviral DNA replication, could block this induction. ATP production was increased in the host cells after VV infection. Moreover, 4.5 μM oligomycin, an inhibitor of ATP production, reduced the ATP level 13 hr after virus infection to that of mock-infected cells and inhibited viral protein expression and virus production, suggesting that increased ATP production is required for efficient VV production. Our results further suggest that induction of ND4 expression is through a Bcl-2 independent pathway