What is the future trend of decision-making?

Many intelligent decision-making tools have been developed over the past few decades. However, the real-life application of these tools is still limited even a high degree of consistency and flexibility of these models are reported. Perhaps, from the decision-makers’ perspective, the lack of understanding about the models would be a major source of resistance. Also, the trade-off between gains and dedications associated with the model development as well as implementation would be another bottleneck. In this connection, the future trend of decision-making model development should consider the interaction of the end users and the decision environment. In addition to the transformation of the domain knowledge into decision rules, it is also vital to recognise WHY the users prefer one decision over others under a specific decision environment, and HOW they may change their preferences. With this "learning’ ability, such decision-making tool may be able to generate decisions that are not necessarily the optimum but rational from the users’ viewpoint. This would increase the user acceptance since the tools would behave more like them. Due to technological development, environmental data can be readily collected and analysed. Hence, a data-driven approach which employs artificial intelligence to uncover the connectivity between key environmental factors and users’ preferences should be adopted

The foreign exchange exposure of Chinese banks

Using the capital market approach and the equity price data of 14 listed Chinese banks, this empirical study finds that there is a positive relationship between bank size and foreign exchange exposure. This relationship may reflect the larger foreign exchange operations and trading positions of larger Chinese banks and their significant indirect foreign exchange exposure arising from impacts of the renminbi exchange rate movements on their customers. Empirical evidence also suggests that the average foreign exchange exposures of state-owned and joint-stock commercial banks in China are higher than those of banks in Hong Kong, notwithstanding their limited participation in international banking businesses compared with their Hong Kong counterparts. It is also found that negative foreign exchange exposure is prevalent for larger Chinese banks, suggesting that an appreciation of the renminbi tends to reduce their equity value. It is therefore likely that the banking sector's performance will be hampered. Together with the fact that decreases in equity values generally imply a higher default risk, the effects of different scenarios of renminbi appreciation on the default risk of Chinese banks should therefore be closely monitored.postprin

trans-Diehlorotetrapyridineruthenium(II)

[Ru(py)4Cl2] (where py = pyridine, CsHsN), crystallizes in the tetragonal space group I4/acd. Ru and C1 atoms occupy sites of 222 and 2 point symmetry, respectively. The Ru atom has slightly distorted octahedral coordination. The C1--Ru---C1 moiety is linear, as a result of symmetry requirements.published_or_final_versio

Promoting the wider use of electrical vehicles in Hong Kong : a strategic proposal

Transport Design Lab, School of DesignInvited conference paper2008-2009 > Academic research: not refereed > Invited conference paperVersion of RecordPublishe

香港公立醫院中外陰切開術的應用情況

OBJECTIVE. To review the use of episiotomy during vaginal delivery in Hong Kong public hospitals. DESIGN. Prospective observational survey. SETTING. Public hospitals, Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS. Women who underwent normal vaginal delivery of a singleton foetus with cephalic presentation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES. Number of women having an episiotomy, severe-degree (third- or fourth-degree) tear, other types of tear, blood loss at delivery, postpartum haemorrhage, need for blood transfusion, puerperal pyrexia, wound infection, gaping wound that required suture removal, and drainage or resuturing of a perineal wound. RESULTS. Between 1 January and 31 March 2003, there were 6222 singleton spontaneous normal vaginal deliveries in the public hospitals of Hong Kong. Of the 6167 women in whom the status of the perineum was known, episiotomy was performed in 5274 (85.5%). Primiparous women were more likely to undergo episiotomy at delivery than multiparous women (97.9% vs 71.4%). Women with episiotomy had significantly less perineal tearing of any kind than those without. The occurrence of any type of perineal tear and severe-degree (third- or fourth-degree) tear was significantly lower in primiparous women who had an episiotomy than those without (P<0.05). Women with episiotomy had increased mean blood loss at delivery but other complications were not significantly increased. CONCLUSIONS. In Hong Kong, episiotomy is routinely performed during normal vaginal delivery. It is associated with a significantly lower overall rate of perineal tearing. This study was observational, nonetheless the occurrence of other complications was likely to increase when episiotomy was performed. Firm evidence from several randomised controlled studies shows that routine episiotomy is unjustified and possibly harmful. Routine episiotomy should not be promoted in Hong Kong without further randomised controlled study.published_or_final_versio

Development of technology maturity framework in managing manufacturing improvement for innovation providers

Readiness measurement frameworks have been used in different sectors of industry for many years. Many companies described them as essential when considering product development processes. Unfortunately, most of these frameworks cannot be directly applied in research centre environment for two reasons: too complicated, and not relevant to research centres‟ nature of work (Gove and Uzdzinski, 2013; Lind et al., 2013; Mankinsab, 2009). In addition, innovation providers have to consider global megatrends and the way they influence the community especially the manufacturing sector. For example, an increasing demand for customised nano- and macro- technologies has been observed and this trend has created a great impact on technological innovations and directions that research projects will follow in the coming years. This study focuses on manufacturing sector as this sector is mostly affected by the megatrends (Hajkowicz, 2015; Korn Ferry Hay Group, 2016; Ernest & Young, 2015). As existing industrial frameworks are not applicable at research centres, there is a need for developing new framework that would help not only with monitoring technology development processes, but also with decision-making processes. In fact, the majority of research centres in the UK often use road-mapping to evaluate and decide what would be their next actions. However, road-mapping was sometimes described as unreliable and hard to validate (Kostoff & Schaller, 2001). Anew framework would therefore be a better alternative. Preliminary studies suggested that there is a need for a new research centre-oriented framework, hence called technology maturity (Dombrowski et al., 2016; Gove & Uzdzinski, 2013). Moreover, given the importance of megatrends to the manufacturing sector, technology maturity, is found crucial when developing new technological solutions and considering so-called "valley of death", i.e. the transition from the innovation stage to the competitive manufacturing stage. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to develop a conceptual maturity framework and support research centres to enter Industry 4.0 by overcoming some of the modern engineering issues such as "valley of death"

Protein structure similarity from principle component correlation analysis

BACKGROUND: Owing to rapid expansion of protein structure databases in recent years, methods of structure comparison are becoming increasingly effective and important in revealing novel information on functional properties of proteins and their roles in the grand scheme of evolutionary biology. Currently, the structural similarity between two proteins is measured by the root-mean-square-deviation (RMSD) in their best-superimposed atomic coordinates. RMSD is the golden rule of measuring structural similarity when the structures are nearly identical; it, however, fails to detect the higher order topological similarities in proteins evolved into different shapes. We propose new algorithms for extracting geometrical invariants of proteins that can be effectively used to identify homologous protein structures or topologies in order to quantify both close and remote structural similarities. RESULTS: We measure structural similarity between proteins by correlating the principle components of their secondary structure interaction matrix. In our approach, the Principle Component Correlation (PCC) analysis, a symmetric interaction matrix for a protein structure is constructed with relationship parameters between secondary elements that can take the form of distance, orientation, or other relevant structural invariants. When using a distance-based construction in the presence or absence of encoded N to C terminal sense, there are strong correlations between the principle components of interaction matrices of structurally or topologically similar proteins. CONCLUSION: The PCC method is extensively tested for protein structures that belong to the same topological class but are significantly different by RMSD measure. The PCC analysis can also differentiate proteins having similar shapes but different topological arrangements. Additionally, we demonstrate that when using two independently defined interaction matrices, comparison of their maximum eigenvalues can be highly effective in clustering structurally or topologically similar proteins. We believe that the PCC analysis of interaction matrix is highly flexible in adopting various structural parameters for protein structure comparison

Managing malignant pleural effusion with an indwelling pleural catheter: factors associated with spontaneous pleurodesis

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Three dimensions of maturity required to achieve future state, technology-enabled manufacturing supply chains

The particular challenges associated with supply chain application of emerging manufacturing technologies are increasingly recognised in industry, academia and government. The problem is often described in terms of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), with the particular challenge relating to the stages between proof of concept and initial adoption in the factory environment. In the UK the government has established the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a network of manufacturing innovation centres brought together with the objective of addressing the so called ‘valley of death’ between traditional academic research and industrial needs across a broad spectrum of manufacturing process technology. This is achieved through demonstrating manufacturing technology at full scale, in factory representative environments in terms of equipment, process control and operation. This provision helps to address the key gap of full scale pre-production capability demonstration and can be seen to de-risk investment in new manufacturing technology. This paper argues that addressing this particular gap is entirely necessary but not sufficient to drive exploitation of the full potential that is available from the latest manufacturing technologies. A three dimensional maturity based framework is proposed which, in addition to considerations of technology demonstration, also allows the position of the target product application in its product lifecycle, and the readiness of the supply chain to receive the technology to be taken into account as success factors in the potential for industrialisation. Case study examples, both current and historical, are used to illustrate the need for such an approach in achieving future technology enabled supply chains. In combination this analysis introduces the basis of a more complete ‘long valley of death’ description which articulates the needs of research networks to establish a level of foundational capability ahead of specific client readiness projects in order to maximise overall pace and achieve a level of agility of delivery which is consistent with future views on digitalisation of manufacture

Enhanced depth resolution in optical scanning holography using a configurable pupil

The optical scanning holography (OSH) technique can capture all the three-dimensional volume information of an object in a hologram via a single raster scan. The digital hologram can then be processed to reconstruct individual sectional images of the object. In this paper, we present a scheme to reconstruct sectional images in OSH with enhanced depth resolution, where a spatial light modulator (SLM) is adopted as a configurable point pupil. By switching the SLM between two states, different Fresnel zone plates (FZPs) are generated based on the same optical system. With extra information provided by different FZPs, a depth resolution at 0.7 μm can be achieved.published_or_final_versio