How Might Different Cultural Worldviews Affect Collaborative Inhibition

Collaborative inhibition is a phenomenon whereby a group of people who collaborate (collaborative group) recall less information than a group of people who recall information individually (nominal group). However, collaborative groups make fewer intrusions, or mistakes, than the nominal groups. The current research investigated whether cultural worldviews, individualism and collectivism, can influence collaborative inhibition and the number of intrusions made. Ninety participants were pre-screened through Individualism-Collectivism (IC) measure by Triandis et al. (1986). Participants were then assigned into either individualistic group or collectivistic group based on their scores. Within each group, participants were randomly paired into either collaborative dyads or nominal dyads and then completed a word list recall task. Twenty-six participants were excluded because they either refused to continue the experiment or their scores in the IC measure were insufficient to reflect their cultural worldviews. Two significant differences: 1) nominal dyads make more intrusions than collaborative dyads, which is consistent with the findings of previous research, and 2) contrary to the hypothesis, Individualistic Collaborative Group recalled more words than Individualistic Nominal Group, whereas Collectivistic Collaborative Group recalled fewer words than Collectivistic Nominal Group. This unexpected interaction could be explained by two reasons: 1) Collectivists are shy in interacting with strangers, whereas Individualists are not, and 2) Collectivism encourages face-saving behavior, while Individualism promotes achievement

Business Cycle Correlation and Output Linkages among the Asia Pacific Economies

Currency crises and financial instability in the 1990s have increased the needs of regional cooperation, hence leading to the proposition of optimal currency area (OCA). But only if shocks are symmetric, the cost of relinquish the flexible monetary policy is to be outweighed by the benefits of forming OCA. To tackle the issue, this paper studies the extent of business cycle correlation and output linkages among fifteen Asia Pacific economies during 1961-2004. The real outputs series which sourced from the Penn World Data were estimated in standardized international dollars to construct business cycles based on the Christiano-Fitzgerald (2003)’s asymmetric band-pass filtering method. On the whole, the selected APEC members (especially ASEANs and NIEs) have achieved some important degree of business cycle co-fluctuations since the 1990s and further enhanced after 1997, most possibly attributed to the improved intra-trading and cross-boarder investments. For the US-Japan-ASEAN5 series, a dynamic analysis was conducted using the Autoregressive Distributed Log bounds test and the Unrestricted Error Correction Model (UECM) representation advanced in Pesaran et al. (2002). Nonetheless, the idiosyncratic and common shocks in ASEAN economies are more identical to the Japanese experience rather than the US’s. The overall finding has signified the brighter likelihood of economic cooperation and regional currency arrangements among APEC members.Business Cycle Correlation, Output linkages, OCA, Asia Pacific, Band-pass Filtering, UECM

Experimental And Finite Element Analyses Of Corrugated Web Steel Beams Subjected To Bending Loads

The behaviour of beams with corrugated web has been investigated throughout this study. They are commonly used in structural steel works to enhance the momentcarrying capability and weight reduction. Experimental tests and finite element analysis were conducted on beams with plane web (PW), horizontally corrugated (HC) and vertically corrugated (VC) webs. Throughout the experimental tests, semicircular shape corrugation of 22.5 mm mean radius and 4.0 mm thickness was used. Two cases were considered for the HC beams, one are (HC 1) and two arcs (HC2) corrugation, while semicircular wholly corrugated was used for the VC type beams. All specimens were fabricated using tubes and flat plates of mild steel material (AlSI 1020). The 1nstron testing machine was used for the three-point bending tests where three tests for each case have been carried out to obtain the load-displacement relations. The plane web I-section beams with the mass per unit length value of 19.3 (kgm-l) was also tested to act as the benchmark result. In the analytical work, finite element models were generated and analysed by using LUSAS software. The material datasets were defined based on the actual stressstrain data obtained from the tensile tests. A series of elastic-plastic nonlinear analysis were carried out with the boundary settings similar to the experiment setup. Three corrugation radii of 22. 50 mm, 33.75 mm and 67.50 mm were considered for the HC beams while five radii, in the range of 11 .25 mm to 33.75 mm for the VC beams. From the results obtained, the VC beams has yield loads of 60.62 1 kN to 73.308 kN or 13.3% to 32.8% higher than the welded plane web beams and 1 .32-1.89 times and 1 .56-3.26 times higher compared to the HCl and HC2 beams respectively. The yield load increases as the larger size of radius was used, which is true for the sizes taken in this study. Moreover, as much as 13.6% of reduction in weight was achieved for the VC beams at the largest value of corrugation radius. A good agreement was found between the experimental and finite element analysis results where the percentage difference obtained was 7.28% to 28.37%

Comparing restaurant service failure and recovery between online and offline complaint channels

Customer complaint behavior has been an important issue to both consumer researchers and marketers. Foodservice organizations have developed a number of channels to facilitate customer complaint solicitation. These channels range from the conventional means such as phone, fax, and face-to-face to the innovative ways like e-mail, Facebook, and website. With the advancement in the computer technology,the ease and real time information management, as well as the increasing number of technological savvy consumers, sourcing service problems from the online channels is the future direction. However, it remains a research question to what extent that the customer complaints sourced from the online channels are representative. This research was undertaken to validate the online complaint with the information collected from the offline situation. The validation was executed by qualitatively (to assess the coverage) and quantitatively (to assess the pattern) analyzing the data on service failures and recovery expectations. In addition, the research proposed a new scheme of service failure categorization based on the services marketing mix. The online complaint data were obtained from two locally-established restaurants and categorized through content analysis. On the other hand, interviews were carried out with approximately 400 respondents from the two restaurants. Respondents described their dissatisfactory dining experience, may lodge face-to-face complaint yet no complaint was filed online (is termed offline complaint). The analyses achieved inter-judge reliability values of 0.91 (failure incidents) and 0.93 (recovery expectations) for the online condition and 0.89 (failure incidents) and 0.86 (recovery expectations) for the offline situation. The findings of the study revealed seven and six main categories of service failures and recovery expectation, respectively. The new service failure categorization schemes appeared to be appropriate. Process-, people-, and product-related were the three main categories of service failures but in different sequence for online and offline channels. This study also highlighted the distinctions between upon-failure and after-failure recovery expectations. Corrective and empathetic actions upon service failure were equally important for online complainers. However, empathetic was more critical to offline complainers. Compensatory actions were not as important, especially among the online complainers, as the attention paid by researchers. As for the context of after-failure, management actions were highly expected. Overall, the results of quantitative analysis yielded somewhat different patterns between the online and offline complaints in terms of service failures and recovery expectations. However, the qualitative analysis revealed that online complaints are more extensive and comprehensive than the offline complaints in both the types of service failure and recovery expectations. Hence, online channel could be useful and as the future means for companies to understand service failures and recovery expectations of customers

Influence of key performance index toward job satisfaction, job stress and job turnover: A case of academic staff at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Perak, Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to identify the influence of key performance index toward job satisfaction, job stress and job turnover. Nowadays, Malaysian academic policy is emphasizing the performance achievement of staff to enhance the quality of education. Thus this study was conducted to measure the academic staff regarding their response toward key performance index. Meanwhile, the academic staff of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Perak campus were selected for this study because it is merely new founded Malaysian University since year 2001, and this fledge environment assure that staff’s response is primitive. The questionnaire that used for this study consists of 4 main parts which were demographic survey, and total 41 survey items for variables of key performance index, job satisfaction, job stress and intention to leave (job turnover). Moreover, the distribution of questionnaire was conducted through sending email and hardcopy paper to respondent. The data were analyzed by the “Statistical Package for Social Science” (SPSS Window) Version 19.0. Correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that there is significant relationship between the independent variables (key performance index) and the dependent variable (job satisfaction and job stress). However, key performance index was found has no influence on job turnover for the staff in UTAR. Meanwhile, the multiple regression between dependent variables showed that the job stress and job satisfaction has significant relationship. The findings for this study will help the UTAR management to look further improvement and consideration of their performance evaluation system. Indeed, the findings from this study also can be the reference source for other academic institution especially to enhance its human resource practic

Adoption of biometric technology in online applications

Peningkatan populariti aplikasi Internet telah mewujudkan pelbagai perkhidmatan seperti perbankan Internet, pembelian tiket kapal terbang melalui Internet dan pengisian cukai pendapatan melalui Internet untuk memberikan kemudahan and perkhidmatan yang lebih baik kepada pelanggan-pelanggan. The growing popularity of online applications has led to various service offerings like Internet banking, online airline ticket purchase and online income tax filing to provide convenience and better service to customers

Dynamic financial linkages of Japan and ASEAN economies: Evidence based on real interest parity

This article provides empirical evidence on the dynamic linkages of real interest rates among the ASEAN-5 during the post-liberalisation era (1984-1997).The upshots of our findings are four-fold. Firstly, there were co-movement of ASEAN real rates in the long-run and dynamic causalities in the short-run,which explicitly indicated monetary inter-dependency among the ASEAN countries. Secondly, most of the forecast error variance of real interest rates in own country can be attributed to other ASEAN-4’s innovations (more than 50%), which partly explains the contagion effects during the Asia crisis of 1997/98. Thirdly, the real interest differentials are mean reverting over time, implying that RIP holds between ASEAN-Japan (except Singapore) and ASEAN-US. Forthly, the deviations from RIP have half-lives of around 6 to 11 months, meaning RIP adjustments change rapidly to its parity of equilibrium value. All in all, this finding supports the recent proposal of Currency Union with the Japanese yen taken as common currency

BENEFITS AND COST OF DUAL-TASKING IN A VIGILANCE TASK: A LABORATORY AND DRIVING SIMULATOR INVESTIGATION

It is believed that under certain conditions, the presence of a secondary task such as a cell phone conversation would minimize a decrease in vigilance. The current study investigates this assumption by using two different vigilance paradigms. Further investigations were done by applying the same secondary task conditions to a monotonous driving scenario in a simulator. Results from the vigilance studies showed robust effects of dual task interference, and improvement in task performance for participants engaged in dual task from beginning to end. It was noted that the benefit of an improvement in task performance did not outweigh its cost as the reported improvement only reached a level similar to that of an individual who was low in vigilance. Results from the driving simulator indicated a possible driving improvement with the presence of a secondary task during later stages of the driving task as indicated by smaller lane keeping variability. The perceived improvement was questioned as there was a significantly poorer recall memory under dual task conditions. In general, it might be suggested that a secondary task may improve task performance under vigilance conditions, but the reported benefit may not outweigh its costs

The role of cramming for examinations and its impact on the use of learning strategies : A comparison between Japanese students and Singaporean students

Students use variety of learning strategies to achieve their perceived learning goals. These strategies range from memory-oriented learning typical of cramming for objective tests, to deep-processing strategies characteristic of what we have defined as "authentic learning." Students\u27 choices of learning strategies depend not only on the style of teaching and assessment, but also on students\u27 perceptions of their learning goals. This paper intends to show that cramming for high-stakes test can foster use of psychologically sound and creative learning strategies such as meaningful learning, structural learning, and metacognitive judgment. The larger the amount of content knowledge students must learn in order to pass a high-stakes exam, the more sophisticated the learning strategies need to be. Our data from Japanese students and Singaporean students show the effect of cramming for high-stakestest foster developmental changes in students\u27 learning strategies

ProLanGO: Protein Function Prediction Using Neural~Machine Translation Based on a Recurrent Neural Network

With the development of next generation sequencing techniques, it is fast and cheap to determine protein sequences but relatively slow and expensive to extract useful information from protein sequences because of limitations of traditional biological experimental techniques. Protein function prediction has been a long standing challenge to fill the gap between the huge amount of protein sequences and the known function. In this paper, we propose a novel method to convert the protein function problem into a language translation problem by the new proposed protein sequence language "ProLan" to the protein function language "GOLan", and build a neural machine translation model based on recurrent neural networks to translate "ProLan" language to "GOLan" language. We blindly tested our method by attending the latest third Critical Assessment of Function Annotation (CAFA 3) in 2016, and also evaluate the performance of our methods on selected proteins whose function was released after CAFA competition. The good performance on the training and testing datasets demonstrates that our new proposed method is a promising direction for protein function prediction. In summary, we first time propose a method which converts the protein function prediction problem to a language translation problem and applies a neural machine translation model for protein function prediction.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure