An Empirical Investigation on Credit Card Repayment Pattern of Academicians in Malaysia

The credit card market has witnessed tremendous growth resulting from a paradigm shift in technology. The genuine usage of credit cards as a form of convenience has diverged to overspending, irresponsibility, revolving liability and bankruptcy. This implies that possession of credit cards has brought about a change in users repayment behavior. Thus, this study aims to determine academicians credit card repayment pattern in a private tertiary institution in Malaysia. The dependent variable is the repayment pattern and the independent variables that serve as the attributes include personal attitude and spending pattern, while gender and parenthood serve as the moderating variables. Findings revealed that personal attitude and spending pattern were important attributes in determining the repayment pattern among the academicians. Gender and parenthood were found to play a moderating role in the repayment pattern. Findings from this study is expected to facilitate the government and credit card companies to work towards nurturing a financially healthier and informed society, and also to each out positively to the younger generations through the influence of the academicians

Asiatic acid stabilizes cytoskeletal proteins and prevents TNF-α-induced disorganization of cell-cell junctions in human aortic endothelial cells

Endothelial hyperpermeability represents an initiating step in early atherosclerosis and it often occurs as a result of endothelial barrier dysfunction. Asiatic acid, a major triterpene isolated from Centella asiatica (L.) Urban, has previously been demonstrated to protect against tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α-induced endothelial barrier dysfunction. The present study aimed to investigate the mechanisms underlying the barrier protective effect of asiatic acid in human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs). The localization of F-actin, diphosphorylated myosin light chain (diphospho-MLC), adherens junctions (AJs) and tight junctions (TJs) was studied using immunocytochemistry techniques and confocal microscopy. Their total protein expressions were examined using western blot analysis. The endothelial permeability was assessed using In Vitro Vascular Permeability Assay kits. In addition, intracellular redistribution of the junctional proteins was evaluated using subcellular fractionation kits. We show that asiatic acid stabilized F-actin and diphospho-MLC at the cell periphery and prevented their rearrangement stimulated by TNF-α. However, asiatic acid failed to attenuate cytochalasin D-induced increased permeability. Besides, asiatic acid abrogated TNF-α-induced structural reorganization of vascular endothelial (VE)-cadherin and β-catenin by preserving their reticulum structures at cell-cell contact areas. In addition, asiatic acid also inhibited TNF-α-induced redistribution of occludin and zona occludens (ZO)-1 in different subcellular fractions. In conclusion, the barrier-stabilizing effect of asiatic acid might be associated with preservation of AJs and prevention of TJ redistribution caused by TNF-α. This study provides evidence to support the potential use of asiatic acid in the prevention of early atherosclerosis, which is initiated by endothelial barrier dysfunction

Contribution of semantic web to collaborative design

Abstract. This paper focuses on a lightweight ontology-base

IT IN COLLABORATIVE BUILDING DESIGN (IT-CODE)

ABSTRACT: Location and time independent interaction and collaboration among the multidisciplinary competencies of building industry at early design stage highly influence the quality of final building products. A cross-platform IT supported virtual workspace is therefore necessary. This semantic web based distributed virtual workspace will be built on meta-structured languages, XML and RDF, and integrated with ontologies to serve as a dynamic knowledge pool for decisionmaking support. Virtual building with time tracking capability to formulate the redundant building’s descriptions throughout its simulated lifecycle to support decision-making is a resolution to replace physical prototype. A temporal database will be formulated to populate all of the necessary properties of a virtual building for archiving, retrieving, processing and producing building artifacts/documents fast and efficiently. A demonstrator at low-medium cost will be developed for public access in a distributed environment to enable consistent evaluation from the participated end users. 1

Comparative study of chairman's statements between Singapore and UK companies

This study is a replication of the Clatworthy and Jones (2003) study in the Singapore context to examine the presence of impression management in the chairman’s statements of annual reports. Content analysis was performed on selected chairman’s statements of Singapore listed companies

Semantic Web Supported Knowledge Management System:An approach to Enhance Collaborative Building Design

This paper focuses on a lightweight ontology-based knowledge management system, which is a main component of IT-CODE, a Semantic Web based virtual workspace for enhancing the collaboration at an early building design stage. Technologies with respect to de facto standards that are proposed by industry group W3C are implemented to develop this knowledge management system. Resource Description Framework (RDF) associated with its Schema (RDFS) is selected as ontology language of the system. RDF(S) with its embedded reasoning techniques provides a rich set of constructs to facilitate the generation of ontologies so that the annotated information can be machine readable. Initiatives taken in the building industry for the evolution of the Semantic Web will be overviewed in this paper. Potential benefits offered by the RDF(S)-based knowledge management system to the building industry will be explained. Approaches of how the knowledge is represented in RDF-based ontology, is shared and retrieved among actors participating in the early design phase of a building project will also be described and illustrated. The paper will conclude with a description of how the early design phase may benefit from IT-CODE and its innovative knowledge management system. Keywords: semantic-web, RDF(S), knowledge management system, ontologies, collaborative desig