Female development in the autobiographical novel of Fang E’zhen

Fang E’zhen, a Chinese Malaysian female writer, was greatly admired in the literary arenas of both Malsysia and Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s. the renowned poet Yu Kwang-chung once praised her as “the most endearing little girl of Muse.” Yu’s recognition has virtually shaped the public image of Fang E’zhen. However, has the “little girl” ever grown up or at least has the notion of growing up? Hua Tianya, a novel by Fang, which exhibits a distinct voice of auto diegetic narration, no doubt is an ideal text to clarify this question. It depicts the living conditions of women in particular circumstances through an apparel “feminine” language and style, and to an extent reveals the life experiences of Chinese Malaysian female in the 1960s and 1970s. based on this autobiographical novel, this paper aims to discuss the above questions from the aspects of female subjectivity and cultural identity

Electrochemical Studies of C60-Fullerene Microcrystals Attached to a Solid State Electrode

Electrochemistry behaviours of C₆₀ attached with physical method: solvent casting and mechanically attachment, to various solid-state electrode surfaces (gold, glassy carbon and platinum) were studied in aqueous and non-aqueous solution containing a variety of doping cations such as Group I alkali-metal cations and quatemaI)'-ammonium R4N+. Electroreduction and reoxidation of microcrystalline C₆₀ in 0.1 M TBAPF₆/ACN showed one to four pairs, characteristic solid state current-potential curve, with only first and second pairs appeared to be stable and reversible. In contact with 0.1 M TBAPF₆/ACN, the large peak separation and small maximum at reverse scan observed with cyclic voltammetric experiments, as well as the current-time transients obtained in chronoamperometric experiments produce evidence of nucleation and growth (N&G) processes at the electrolytesolid- electrode interface. C60 cast onto glassy carbon or gold electrodes showed very different results of cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronocoulometry (CC), and chronoamperometry (CA) in aqueous and non-aqueous solutions. With the presence of alkali-metal cations in aqueous electroyte, MnC₆₀ (M = LI⁺, Na⁺, K⁺, R⁺, Cs⁺, n = 1 to 6) was formed at the end of potential scan, and the loss of faradaic activity when oxidizing MnC60 at reverse of potential scan indicated the formation of non-electroactive and irreversible species. In aqueous solution, CV results showed a parallel shift in reduction peak position as the sizes of cation increased. A glassy carbon electrode modified by C60 coat was used to mediate the oxidation of cysteine in contact with an aqueous electrolyte containing potassium cation. Under conditions of cyclic voltammetry, the potential of cysteine is lowered by approximate 100 m V and current is enhanced significantly relative to the situation prevailing when a bare glassy carbon electrode is used. Mediation also occurs when the potential range covered include that of Cw/C60n- redox couples

Criteria of an Effective Training Programme: A Case Study

Well-established criteria of training programme development are crucial to ensure the effectiveness, and most importantly, to reveal the real value of training programme. This study was conducted among the lecturers in Universiti Putra Malaysia to examine the criteria of an effective training programme by identifying the programme development elements, and the approach to programme planning preferred by the professionals. Also, it attempted to compare the perceptions according to the teaching experience, experience in planning training programme, and the frequency of their involvement in training in the last 12 months. By using stratified sampling, 364 lecturers were surveyed, utilizing a structured questionnaire with a response rate of 89.6 percent. The data were analyzed quantitatively by using SPSS programme and was presented in table format. The results of the statistical analyses indicated the components of designing, implementation, and evaluation were perceived to be significantly associated to training effectiveness. By comparison, implementation component was the most important component. The findings further revealed that the sub-components of target audience identification, obtaining credible facilitators/instructors, and formulation of recommendations for changes and future actions were very significant in a successful training. The professionals showed more favour to Classical Viewpoint on planning practice. It was also indicated by the findings, instead of teaching experience and frequency of involvement in training, the professionals' perception on the importance of those criteria varied by their experience in planning training programme. The study therefore recommends that programme developers should take into consideration the training stakeholders' point of views when developing training programme. Further research could be pursued in examining the impact of the input evaluation and/or formative evaluation as to provide insights for improvement of programme development practice

Study On The Job Satisfaction And Burnout Among Medical Social Workers In Government Hospitals In Malaysia [HF5549.5.J63 L732 2007 f rb].

Kajian ini menilai tahap kepuasan dan kelesuan kerja semua pekerja sosial perubatan di hospital-hospital kerajaan Malaysia. This study surveyed the job satisfaction and burnout levels of all medical social workers in Malaysian government hospitals

Leadership Styles and Motivational Goals of Secondary School Principal in Pulau Pinang

This study investigated the relationship between leadership style of principals of secondary schools and their motivational needs, and possible relationships among selected demographic variables (age, gender, birth order, and years of principalship experience) to leadership style. The dependent variable, leadership style was investigated along the consideration and initiating structure dimension (as measured by the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire). The independent variables were motivational goals (nAch, nAff, and nPow) as defined by McClelland’s trichotomy of needs theory of motivation. Questionnaires were distributed to the principals of 34 secondary schools in Penang. The data were analysed by using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient, one-way ANOVA, t-Test and Stepwise Multiple Regression techniques.The results of the study indicated that both dimensions of leadership style of the principals correlated significantly with their nAch. There is significant relationship between leadership style along initiating structure and the nPow. However, no significant relationship was found between leadership style and the nAff. The four demographic variables found no significant differences at the .05 level of significance. The nAch and nPow emerged as the main predictors of leadership style along consideration and initiating structure dimensions respectively. Another significant finding showed that the principals were high in both initiating structure and consideration leadership dimensions. The nPow emerged as inversely related to the principal’s age. Implications of the findings and recommendations for practice and further research are presented

Factors Influencing Email Usage: Applying The UTAUT Model

Email has now become an important thread that has been woven into the fabric of our daily communication in life. It is a powerful method of communication medium. To understand the effect, we must first comprehend the reason. Therefore, the study objective is to perform analysis on the possible factors which determined the acceptance of the electronic mail as communication media in organizations. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al., 2003) model was used as the basis of this study, and the data was collected using questionnaire. A total of 350 surveys were distributed to working adults in Penang, and a total of 138 useful responses were received, yielded 39.4 % response rate. The results of this study suggest that performance expectancy and social influences are important determinants of the behavioural intention to use email in an organizational environment

Determining Factors For The Usage Of Web-Based Marketing Applications: An Analysis Of Smes In Penang, Malaysia

Tujuan kajian ini adalah untuk mengenal-pasti faktor penentu terhadap penggunaan pemasaran melalui web di kalangan firma-firma saiz kecil dan sederhana di Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. The purpose of this study is to investigate the determining factors for the usage of Web-Based Marketing applications by Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Penang, Malaysia

An investigation of two behavioural economic approaches to evaluating reinforcer value

This study compares two approaches for comparing the value of two different reinforcers. The own-price demand method compares the changes in consumption of the reinforcers resulting from increases in the number of responses required to gain access to the reinforcers. Experiment 1 assessed own-price demand for two reinforcers. Six hens responded under increasing fixed-ratio schedules when either wheat or puffed wheat was delivered for key-pecking. The quantity consumed (measured as either numbers of reinforcers obtained or weight of food consumed) was plotted against the FR size on log-log coordinates to give the own-price demand functions. Three functions were fitted to the data and all described the data well. The parameter values from Hursh’s (1988) and Hursh and Winger’s (1995) equations were generally consistent with wheat being the preferred reinforcer data when derived from the weight of food consumed. Those derived from number of reinforcers were inconsistent. The essential value, α, from the equation proposed by Hursh and Silberberg (2008), when k was fixed at 6.5, were smaller when weight was used and were weight was used and were larger when number of reinforcers was used as the consumption measures and so suggested the essential value changed. These data show that the outcome is affected by how the consumption is measured. It seems that that the above models were similar. The cross-price demand method examines the divergence of the cross-point of two demand functions. In Experiment 2 assessed the cross-point using the same six hens responding under concurrent fixed-ratio fixed-ratio schedules over nine pairs of schedules: FR1/FR256, FR8/FR32, FR128/FR2, FR4/FR64, FR256/FR1, FR32/FR8, FR2/FR128, FR16/FR16 and FR64/FR4. In Condition 1 both schedules gave access to wheat, in Condition 2 both gave puffed wheat, and in Condition 3 one gave wheat and the other puffed wheat. The numbers of each reinforcer obtained and weight of each food consumed were plotted as functions of the left fixed-ratio values to give the cross-price demand functions. When the two reinforcers were identical the cross point tended to be around the ratio used for the equal schedules session (16) with both number of reinforcers and weight of food.. When the two reinforcers differed the cross point for most hens moved to higher ratio when weight of food consumed was used, suggesting that wheat was more valued than puffed wheat for these hens. This was not so for number of reinforcers. Both experiments show that how the consumption was assessed affected the conclusions from that method. Overall the cross-price demand analysis appeared to be the easier to interpret

Enhanced Deep Residual Networks for Single Image Super-Resolution

Recent research on super-resolution has progressed with the development of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN). In particular, residual learning techniques exhibit improved performance. In this paper, we develop an enhanced deep super-resolution network (EDSR) with performance exceeding those of current state-of-the-art SR methods. The significant performance improvement of our model is due to optimization by removing unnecessary modules in conventional residual networks. The performance is further improved by expanding the model size while we stabilize the training procedure. We also propose a new multi-scale deep super-resolution system (MDSR) and training method, which can reconstruct high-resolution images of different upscaling factors in a single model. The proposed methods show superior performance over the state-of-the-art methods on benchmark datasets and prove its excellence by winning the NTIRE2017 Super-Resolution Challenge.Comment: To appear in CVPR 2017 workshop. Best paper award of the NTIRE2017 workshop, and the winners of the NTIRE2017 Challenge on Single Image Super-Resolutio

Emotional Affect in Response to Judgments Made in a Modified Trolley Dilemma with Automated Vehicles

Numerous studies have been conducted with trolley dilemmas to better understand moral decision making. The first classical dilemma was introduced in 1967 as a philosophical thought experiment (Foot, 1967). It observed how humans decided between the lesser of two evils, sacrificing one person to save many or vice versa, by controlling which track a trolley would travel along. Modified versions of the trolley dilemma have been adapted to human-driven cars to help decide how to set an automated vehicle’s ethical decisions (Faulhaber et al., 2018). Other recent work has shown that humans, within a simulated environment, prove to be more utilitarian than they claim to be (Patil, Cogoni, Zangrando, Chittaro, & Silani, 2014). Contissa, Lagioia, and Sartor (2017) outlined various submissions and observations that have been discussed regarding what kind of ethical technology should be implemented into automated vehicles to address and solve this issue. Automated vehicles (AVs) continue to increase in today’s market and researchers have modified trolley dilemmas to account for them. Decision making analysis of participants within these modified trolley dilemmas has led researchers to propose numerous ethical theories to base algorithms upon that may be programmed into the AV. This will dictate what actions the vehicle will take in an inevitable crash event. One suggestion is for allowing the users of AVs to pre-program v their own customizable algorithm, but this may cause unwanted outcomes and a mandatory ethics setting (MES) is suggested as best for society (Gogoll & Müller, 2017). Limited research has been done exploring exactly how the public’s affect in choice would react to being given the ability to program their own algorithm. This study has compared differences of affect and willingness to ride (WTR) of participants involved in either a congruent or incongruent group using an AV in a modified trolley dilemma. The congruent group rode in a simulated AV that performed actions consistent with the algorithm the user preselected; the incongruent group rode in a simulated AV that performed actions that were opposite of the algorithm the user preselected. The groups represent either complete control, congruent, in the selection process of the algorithm versus no control, incongruent. The study utilized an experimental, 2 x 2 mixed design using 44 participants. Tests were conducted in the CERTS lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University using STI Sim Drive simulator software and Logitech driving assembly. Statistical analysis included a 2 x 2 mixed ANOVA. Affect and WTR scores were predicted to significantly differ between participants involved in the congruent group versus the incongruent group and emotions of happiness, anger, and fear were expected to significantly differ between groups. Results showed that although the null hypotheses were retained, several two-way interactions were revealed between the following categories: SUFES Happiness and congruency group: F(1, 42) = 5.142, p = .029, η2 = .109 Affect total and congruency group: F1, 42) = 4.199, p = .047, η2 = .091 vi Affect Favorable and congruency group:F(1, 42) = 10.017, p = .003, η2 = .193 WTR Confident and congruency group: F(1, 42) = 6.021, p = .018, η2 = .12