Online leisure hotel selection criteria and booking behavior of young middle-income Singaporeans

The Internet has changed the face of purchasing and customer behaviour over the last decade or so. Traditional concepts of marketing must be reviewed and businesses must be ready to fully embrace the online marketplace. The hotel industry is no different and evidently, has much to gain from this new medium with online sales figures climbing annually (Carroll & Sileo, 2007; PhoCusWright, 2006). Studies have shown that more and more consumers are moving towards the Internet to find their products and services and ultimately making the purchase online (Starkov & Price, 2003). Singaporeans make for interesting subjects in this area, especially for hotel reservations, as they have shown on a global scale that they are highly receptive to buying online (ACNielsen, 2005). The conditions are ideal for hotels targeting their marketing on Singaporeans due to the excellent Internet and broadband access infrastructure available throughout the island (Teo, 2002). This is cushioned by the fact that Singaporeans, especially the young, middle-income group, love travelling and have the money to spend (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2005). The outlook gets better as according to the Ministry of Manpower (2007), the average monthly nominal earnings per employee have been rising steadily annually. That is more disposable income for travelling

Perceived Absorptive Capacity Of Individual Users In Performance Of Enterprise Resource Planning (Erp) Usage: The Case For Penang Manufacturing Firms

Penyelidikan ini memeriksa kesan keupayaan menyerap pengguna Perancangan Sumber Perusahaan (ERP) di kilang-kilang pembuatan Pulau Pinang. The research examines the effect of absorptive capacity of users on their use of ERP in Penang manufacturing firms

Compensation Committee and Executive Compensation in Asia

ABSTRACT Using a sample of firms in East Asian economies, we find that level of CEO compensation is positively associated with CEO power. The positive association between the level of CEO compensation and CEO power is attenuated by the proportion of independent directors on the compensation committee and the equity ownership held by external block-holders. Furthermore, CEO pay-performance sensitivity is lower in firms with powerful CEOs. In the sub-sample of firms with powerful CEOs, CEO payperformance sensitivity is higher in firms with higher compensation committee independence and higher proportion of equity held by block-holders. Additional tests indicate that excessive CEO compensation in firms with more powerful CEO is associated with lower subsequent operating performance and lower future stock returns. The negative association between excessive CEO compensation and future firm performance is attenuated by stronger corporate structures. JEL Classifications: G30, G34, J33, L2

Creating a "city of art" : evaluating Singapore's vision of becoming a renaissance city

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-180).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.The arts have been used by many cities as a way to regenerate their urban environments and rejuvenate their economies. In this thesis, I examine an approach in which city-wide efforts are undertaken to create a "city of art". Such attempts endeavor to infuse the entire city, not just specific districts, with arts and cultural activities and to develop a strong artistic inclination among its residents. Singapore"s recent plan to transform itself into a "Renaissance City" is an example of such an attempt to create a "city of art". I conceptualize urban cultural policies used to create "cities of art" as having two possible policy orientations. An externally-oriented policy is used to project a city"s cultural achievements into the international arena, often with the intention of generating economic growth and enhancing the city's image. An internally-oriented policy, on the other hand, is focused on cultivating cultural growth within the city and is more directed at achieving local socio-cultural advancement. While some cities may adopt urban cultural policies that are either strongly externally- or internally-oriented, other cities may have urban cultural policies that endeavor to balance both orientations. For Singapore, I will show that the urban cultural policy adopted to transform itself into a "Renaissance City" tries to be simultaneously externally- and internally-oriented. Despite the attempt to address both policy orientations, I argue that the Singapore government has inappropriately placed undue emphasis on external at the cost of internal strategies for arts and cultural development. To evaluate Singapore's vision of becoming a "Renaissance City", I will compare its recently proposed strategies under the two policy orientations to those of two other cities, Glasgow and Chicago, which have implemented their urban cultural policies since the 1980s. While Glasgow"s urban cultural policy is strongly externally-oriented, Chicago's policy is more internally-oriented. Through this comparative analysis, I propose recommendations that will help to enhance Singapore"s strategies to develop a "Renaissance City".by Lee, Wai Kin.S.M

An adaptive data processing framework for cost- effective covid-19 and pneumonia detection

Medical imaging modalities have been showing great potentials for faster and efficient disease transmission control and containment. In the paper, we propose a costeffective COVID-19 and pneumonia detection framework using CT scans acquired from several hospitals. To this end, we incorporate a novel data processing framework that utilizes 3D and 2D CT scans to diversify the trainable inputs in a resource-limited setting. Moreover, we empirically demonstrate the significance of several data processing schemes for our COVID-19 and pneumonia detection network. Experiment results show that our proposed pneumonia detection network is comparable to other pneumonia detection tasks integrated with imaging modalities, with 93% mean AUC and 85.22% mean accuracy scores on generalized datasets. Additionally, our proposed data processing framework can be easily adapted to other applications of CT modality, especially for cost-effective and resource-limited scenarios, such as breast cancer detection, pulmonary nodules diagnosis, etc

Development of teaching beliefs and the focus of change in the process of pre-service ESL teacher education

This study sets out to investigate how pre-serviceESLteachers shape their beliefs in the process of experimenting with new teaching methods introduced in the teacher education programme. A 4-year longitudinal study was conducted with four randomly selectedESLpre-service teachers. Their theoretical orientations ofESLinstruction were tracked at intervals through a protocol which consisted of i) descriptive accounts, ii) surveys, iii) lesson plan analysis, iv) lesson recording and v) interviews. Despite the fact that these 4 student teachers had shown different theoretical orientations in the protocols, they shared similar patterns of instructional practices in the Teaching Practicum. It was also found that the new teaching method practiced in the teacher education programme was re-conceptualised by these student teachers in the actual teaching context because of the strong influence of their personal agency beliefs

Epidemiology of small-bowel obstruction beyond the neonatal period

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the etiologies causing intestinal obstruction beyond the neonatal period.Patients and methods: An observational study was conducted on children between 1 month and 17 years of age who underwent surgery for small-bowel obstruction (SBO) at this tertiary referral center between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013.Results: In total, 133 patients (38 female) with a median age of 3.4 (range 0.16–15.8) years were included in the study group. Forty-four patients (18 female) had intussusception, of whom seven presented with a pathological lead point. Thirty-nine individuals (12 female) had a postoperative SBO. The median formation time for the SBO was 1.75 years, and neonatal anomalies represented the most frequent cause of initial surgery. Primary SBO with no previous surgery was observed in 30 children (eight girls), including 12 (9%) with Meckel’s diverticulum, nine (7%) with congenital bands, and three (2%) with bezoars. Twenty patients (15%), all boys, presented with an irreducible inguinal hernia. During the surgery, a total of 43 (32%) patients underwent bowel  resection or enterotomy. Five patients (3.8%) died, four as a result of sepsis and one following parenteral nutritionrelated liver failure.Conclusion: Nearly a quarter of this cohort had a primary SBO. SBO in children is more prevalent among boys (M : F ratio, 2.5 : 1). Intussusception, postoperative adhesions, and irreducible inguinal hernias are the most common pathologies for SBO, followed by Meckel’s diverticulum and congenital adhesive bands.Keywords: congenital band, inguinal hernia, intussusception, Meckel’s diverticulum, postoperative adhesion, small bowel obstructio

A Gentleman with Anemia and Cholestasis

Primary sclerosing cholangitis is a rare cause of cholestasis caused by progressive inflammation and fibrosis of both intrahepatic and extrahepatic bile ducts leading to multifocal ductal strictures. Herein, we report a case of primary sclerosing cholangitis and inflammatory bowel disease. The concomitant diagnosis of these two diseases is not typical. The management includes the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease and potential complications of primary sclerosing cholangitis, including dominant strictures of bile duct, portal hypertension, gallbladder diseases, cholangiocarcinoma, and colonoscopic surveillance

Cross-disciplinary collaboration through WuZhiQiao Project to foster cultural exchange and community engagement

In 2013, students of the Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong (THEi), with the support of WuZhiQiao (WZQ) Charitable Foundation, formed a core team of 11 students to organize and participate in social service projects to help the underprivileged in the Chinese mainland. WuZhiQiao (WZQ) projects, the first cross-region social service engagement by THEi students, bring together students from Hong Kong and the Mainland. WZQ Charitable Foundation aims to help the Chinese traditional village in building Pedestrian Bridge and organizing community projects. Since there are Chinese villages facing flooding during rainy seasons, the local villagers will be trapped inside the village without the chance to go outside or wade outside the village. There are hundreds of such villages and they highly need our help. Each project mainly involves two or three institutes from Hong Kong and the Mainland, and they organize the whole volunteer project including planning, investigation, design, promotion and operation. Through involvement in different states or provinces, WZQ projects provide good chance of communication and interaction between Hong Kong teams and the Mainland teams and advocate intercultural social services. The projects can foster the cultural exchange between Hong Kong and the Mainland. Moreover, the majority of WZQ project members are coming from the fields of engineering, architecture and health care. We can practice our learning from lectures through the project implementation. Different parties are involved in the engineering projects including clients, consultants, contractors, surveyors, engineers and workers. Engineering students can gain good understanding of the holistic picture of a real-life engineering project. We visited the location village for investigation to learn more about the local culture, geometry and the people’s needs and discussed with the Mainland Team through online chatting tools in order to propose the optimal pedestrian building design and other community projects. Having spent over six months in planning and preparation, THEi students will implement a bridge-building and community project in Chongqing in January 2015. Through engagement in this service-learning project, not only the undergraduates of THEi can benefit through personal development but the life quality of the disadvantaged can also be improved