On demand-side sources of service innovation ideas

Abstract. Increasing degree of consensus has been made among academics and practitioners, that firms should pay special attention to the demand-side factors just to design and produce products/services that gain most loyalty. This article discusses further the specific demand-side sources of service innovation ideas in a multi-layer direct marketing context. Experience marketing, value perception, and re-purchasing process are proposed and articulated. Implications for research and practices are offered. Keywords. Demand-side drivers, Service innovation, Multi-layer direct marketing.JEL. M10, M11, M14

Environmental phthalates exposure is related to male infertility and other health endpoints in U.S. and Taiwan

Nowadays, phthalates esters are used to bring flexibility and stability into polyvinyl chloride products and numerous applications globally. Previous studies demonstrate that phthalates esters exposure leads to a increased risk of many adverse health effects, such as liver carcinogenesis, diminished cognitive and motor functions, or imbalanced endocrine system when a condition of dynamic equilibrium inside the body is not stable working at all. The period of sexual differentiation in utero induces reproductive malformations, such as epididymal and gubernacular agenesis, as it exposes to the certain phthalates esters. As phthalates esters exposure mainly targeting on fetal testes, it reveals decreased testosterone production and reduction of insulin-like peptide hormone three (INSL3) which reflect the number and differentiation status of Leydig cells and induce testicular dysgenesis syndrome. Perinatal phthalates esters exposure in utero, in vivo and in vitro discloses that disruption of Leydig and Sertoli cell maturation leads to an increased incidence of abnormal differentiation of germ stem cells and abnormal development of androgen-dependent tissues. High concentrations of metabolite phthalates that are detected in the exposed groups’ urine associate with reproductive abnormality. Histopathological changes of reproductive malformation also play the marginal diagnostic value to explain the climbing male fertility problems in the U.S. and Taiwan. Applications of phthalates esters are not easily to be replaced because of its economic value. Public Health issues with regards to the potential problem of phthalate exposure to the general population should be considered as potential risk that may affect infertility, when several earlier studies have been identified that multiple sources and routes of phthalates exposure entering human body are associate with male reproductive abnormality

Financial capital of Malawi and Mongolia during 2005-2014

Abstract. Financial capital is among the most critical endowment of a nation. It is a driver of other sorts of capitals (e.g., human, technology, and so on), especially for developing countries. This study collected and analyzed important data for national financial capital through established indicators in two representative countries in Asia and Africa – Mongolia and Malawi. Through the analyses we observe comparable development of both countries’ national financial capital and witness the growth potential of them. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.Keywords. Financial capital, National competitiveness, Malawi, Mongolia.JEL. M10, M11, M14

The Application of Six Sigma Approach in Construction : A Case Study for Improving Precast Production Management

Six Sigma has been developed in the 1980s at Motorola; this approach is now extensively ap-plied in the manufacturing and other industries for improving productivity and profitability. In Taiwan, after 921 earthquake in 1999 and huge floods in 2009, the construction industry have realized that the importance of construction quality and harmony with the environment. The Six Sigma takes attention to the quality that customers concerned and also contribute to achieving efficiency and reduce costs. By the way, the thinking of Six Sigma approach should also be applied in the construction industry. Therefore, this paper will take the Six Sigma approach into the practice of precast construction management

Effects of orthographic consistency and homophone density on Chinese spoken word recognition

Studies of alphabetic language have shown that orthographic knowledge influences phonological processing during spoken word recognition. This study utilized the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to differentiate two types of phonology-to-orthography (P-to-O) mapping consistencies in Chinese, namely homophone density and orthographic consistency. The ERP data revealed an orthographic consistency effect in the frontal-centrally distributed N400, and a homophone density effect in central-posteriorly distributed late positive component (LPC). Further source analyses using the standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) demonstrated that the orthographic effect was not only localized in the frontal and temporal-parietal regions for phonological processing, but also in the posterior visual cortex for orthographic processing, while the homophone density effect was found in middle temporal gyrus for lexical-semantic selection, and in the temporal-occipital junction for orthographic processing. These results suggest that orthographic information not only shapes the nature of phonological representations, but may also be activated during on-line spoken word recognition

The feedback consistency effect in Chinese character recognition:evidence from a psycholinguistic norm

Researchers have demonstrated the importance of phonology in literacy acquisition and in visual word recognition. For example, the spelling-to-sound consistency effect has been observed in visual word recognition tasks, in which the naming responses are faster and more accurate for words with the same letters that also have the same pronunciation (e.g. -ean is always pronounced /in/, as in lean, dean, and bean). In addition, some studies have reported a much less intuitive feedback consistency effect when a rime can be spelled in different ways (e.g. /ip/ in heap and deep) in lexical decision tasks. Such findings suggest that, with activation flowing back and forth between orthographic and phonological units during word processing, any inconsistency in the mappings between orthography and phonology should weaken the stability of the feedback loop, and, thus, should delay recognition. However, several studies have failed to show reliable feedback consistency in printed word recognition. One possible reason for this is that the feedback consistency is naturally confounded with many other variables, such as orthographic neighborhood or bigram frequency, as these variables are difficult to tease apart. Furthermore, there are challenges in designing factorial experiments that perfectly balance lexical stimuli on all factors besides feedback consistency. This study aims to examine the feedback consistency effect in reading Chinese characters by using a normative data of 3,423 Chinese phonograms. We collected the lexical decision time from 180 college students. A linear mixed model analysis was used to examine the feedback consistency effect by taking into account additional properties that may be confounded with feedback consistency, including character frequency, number of strokes, phonetic combinability, semantic combinability, semantic ambiguity, phonetic consistency, noun-to-verb ratios, and morphological boundedness. Some typical effects were observed, such as the more frequent and familiar a character, the faster one can decide it is a real character. More importantly, the linear mixed model analysis revealed a significant feedback consistency effect while controlling for other factors, which indicated that the pronunciation of phonograms might accommodate the organization of Chinese orthographic representation. Our study disentangled the feedback consistency from the many other factors, and supports the view that phonological activation would reverberate to orthographic representation in visual word recognition

Biphenyl-3,3′,4,4′-tetra­carboxylic acid dihydrate

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C16H10O8·2H2O, contains one-half of the centrosymmetric organic mol­ecule and one water mol­ecule. The dihedral angles between the carboxyl­ate groups and the adjacent phenyl ring are 71.31 (3) and 16.67 (3)°, while the carboxyl­ate groups are oriented at a dihedral angle of 72.01 (3)°. In the crystal structure, inter­molecular O—H⋯O and bifurcated O—H⋯(O,O) hydrogen bonds link the mol­ecules to form a three-dimensional supra­molecular network

Prevalence of Helicobacter pylori Infection in High-school Students on Lanyu Island, Taiwan: Risk Factor Analysis and Effect on Growth

Background/PurposeThe Yami inhabit Lanyu Island and are the smallest and most primitive aboriginal tribe in Taiwan. Lanyu Island is a closed environment and little information is available on the prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infection there. This study aimed to establish the prevalence of H. pylori infection in high-school students on Lanyu Island and its risk factors and effect on growth.MethodsA cross-sectional population-based study was conducted among high-school students to determine the prevalence of H. pylori infection by using the 13C urea breath test. A questionnaire was administered to the recruited population. Relevant personal and socioeconomic data for risk factors of infection were collected. Body height and weight of the recruited adolescents in relation to H. pylori infection were analyzed.ResultsA total of 106 high-school students (55 boys and 51 girls), with a mean age of 14.3 ± 1.4 years were enrolled. The overall prevalence of H. pylori infection was 54.7%. Those residing in Dongcing village had the highest rate of H. pylori infection (73.3%). There was no difference in the prevalence of H. pylori infection according to sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic level or parental education. Sixty-two students (54.8%) were completely asymptomatic and the others had at least one gastrointestinal symptom. H. pylori infection was asymptomatic in 56.8% and symptomatic in 53.2% of students. There was no significant difference between infected and uninfected children with regard to body weight, height and body mass index.ConclusionThe prevalence of H. pylori infection is high among high-school students on Lanyu Island. There is no evidence that infection is related to growth failure