Uniqueness and value distribution of differences of entire functions

AbstractWe consider the existence of transcendental entire solutions of certain type of non-linear difference equations. As an application, we investigate the value distribution of difference polynomials of entire functions. In particular, we are interested in the existence of zeros of fn(z)(λfm(z+c)+μfm(z))−a, where f is an entire function, n, m are two integers such that n⩾m>0, and λ, μ are non-zero complex numbers. We also obtain a uniqueness result in the case where shifts of two entire functions share a small function

Why are Chinese and North American guests satisfied or dissatisfied with hotels? An application of big data analysis

Purpose The paper aims to identify the emergent themes of hotel guests’ satisfaction, to compare the distribution of the attributes of the themes between Chinese and North American guests and to compare the importance of the themes for different satisfaction levels between Chinese and North American guests from a cross-cultural perspective. Design/methodology/approach By adopting Python (a computer language), the word-frequency method was used to identify emergent themes of hotel guests’ satisfaction. Topic modeling was adopted to compare the attributes distribution of each theme and the features of satisfaction between Chinese and North American guests. Findings First, three themes were identified including functionality, staff and price. Functionality can be further categorized into five subthemes, namely, room, travel, food, environment and hotel facility. Second, the distribution of the attributes of the themes between Chinese and North American guests was compared from a cross-cultural perspective. Chinese guests tend to mention both lifestyles- and social norms–related attributes and expect personalized service, while North American guests mainly prefer to describe lifestyle-related attributes and prefer standardized service. Third, the study compared the changing importance of the themes (functionality, staff and price) for different satisfaction levels between Chinese and North American guests. As the satisfaction level decreases, the importance of functionality decreases, that of staff increases and that of price remain stable for Chinese guests. In contrast, the importance of each theme has fluctuated mildly from the high to the low satisfaction level for North American guests. Practical implications Proposed managerial implications are to highlight lifestyle- and social norms-related attributes, as well as personalized service for Chinese guests. However, lifestyle-related attributes and standardized service should be facilitated for North American guests. Specific suggestions were made to help improve hotel performance such as the good performance of functional-related attributes, which could enhance satisfaction and better staff performance, which would reduce dissatisfaction. Originality/value By mining big data, this study investigated hotel guests’ satisfaction from a dynamic instead of a static perspective. This study provides some rare insights into differences in key attributes influencing satisfaction levels of Chinese versus North American guests staying in luxury hotels in China. This study also takes a novel approach to examine the dynamics of the importance of the various themes at different satisfaction levels, and contrast these dynamics between Chinese and North American guests. The findings offer valuable insight into market segmentation and management in the hospitality industry

RecolorNeRF: Layer Decomposed Radiance Fields for Efficient Color Editing of 3D Scenes

Radiance fields have gradually become a main representation of media. Although its appearance editing has been studied, how to achieve view-consistent recoloring in an efficient manner is still under explored. We present RecolorNeRF, a novel user-friendly color editing approach for the neural radiance fields. Our key idea is to decompose the scene into a set of pure-colored layers, forming a palette. By this means, color manipulation can be conducted by altering the color components of the palette directly. To support efficient palette-based editing, the color of each layer needs to be as representative as possible. In the end, the problem is formulated as an optimization problem, where the layers and their blending weights are jointly optimized with the NeRF itself. Extensive experiments show that our jointly-optimized layer decomposition can be used against multiple backbones and produce photo-realistic recolored novel-view renderings. We demonstrate that RecolorNeRF outperforms baseline methods both quantitatively and qualitatively for color editing even in complex real-world scenes.Comment: To appear in ACM Multimedia 2023. Project website is accessible at https://sites.google.com/view/recolorner

Transition of economic structure and demography: The case of tourism gentrification in George Town, Penang

Gentrification of George Town has begun since 1997 after the revoked of Rent Control Act 1966. The inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008 has unfortunately exacerbated the pace of gentrification in George Town (Lim et al., 2014). With the influx of new capital and investment in housing stock, as well as tourists, gentrification could induce displacement of long-term residents, causing erosion of local culture. Nonetheless, culture is a powerful driver of local social and economic transition, which could open up many new opportunities. Cultural and creative district has been an important tool in fostering the development of urban centres and revitalising neighbourhoods in decline (Landry, 2000; Scott, 2000), making cities attractive both for entrepreneurs and employers, as well as tourists. For instance, George Town has 3177 businesses, where 660 are new establishments, ranging from hotels and restaurants to arts, fashion, culture and craft businesses in 2013 (Think City, 2014). We propose that the interaction between local residents in George Town, predominantly overseas Chinese, and tourists, would nurtures creative ideas leading to innovation and entrepreneurial activities. This will enable self-gentrification (Chan et al., 2016a) supporting a broader socio-economic transition of local residents

Process framework for innovation through tradition and its antecedents in rural heritage B&B

Design/methodology/approach: Nine heritage Bed and Breakfast (B&Bs) displaying successful Innovation through tradition (ITT) in Songyang county in China were selected as the research site. Multiple cases of B&B were interviewed, and some observations were conducted. This study adopted the process-oriented reflexive critical incident technique to collect qualitative data and analysed it thematically. Purpose: ITT is an increasingly important area of research particularly in the creative and cultural industries. The purpose of this study is to develop a process framework of ITT for rural heritage B&B sector and investigate the antecedents and challenges of ITT implementation. Findings: Based on the findings, a five-phase innovation framework is proposed to demonstrate how ITT could be achieved in practice. These phases are idea generation, idea evaluation, initial implementation, continuing implementation, and sustaining improvement. Three key antecedents (experience corridors, networks, and institutional pressures) of ITT implementation were also identified. Practical implications: This study has showed that rural heritage B&Bs can differentiate themselves from competition by the means of ITT. It proposes a process framework for this kind of innovation bringing to light the required steps, the antecedents, and key activities which the practitioners should pay great attention. It highlights the needs for continuing and sustaining innovations in long-term. Originality: This study proposes a novel five-phase process framework of ITT to encompass the innovation activities in heritage setting. For practitioners, this study recommends enhancing the sensing capability of local entrepreneurs through personal travel experience and establishing business networks as the key antecedents of a successful ITT under rural heritage setting

Re-engineer cultural “DNA” of an innovation in the process of adoption and diffusion: In the lens of adopters of an eco-innovation in Honghe UNESCO World Heritage Site in Yunnan China

This presentation will report on a project, which investigated a research gap in the theory of technology diffusion regarding the influence of socio-cultural and religious factors in adoption processes. The project was concerned with identifying local factors influencing the uptake of solar water heating systems in the Yuanyang Hani Rice Terrace community, an ethnic minority from Yunnan, China. The rice terraces are located in a remote, mountainous part of South Western China where the tourism industry has been rapidly developing following its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site in June 2013. For this community, the solar water heating system can be considered as a culturally foreign product, an eco-innovation designed and manufactured in China but carrying supposedly foreign concepts (primarily European-American origin such as sustainable development and climate change). Fieldwork data was collected through semi-structural interviews and observations. In addition, photographs were taken as well as observations and unrecorded discussions in order to provide a better understanding of the site and dynamics in the community. In this process of innovation adoption and diffusion, the convention agents such as government officers, opinion leaders and commercial entities do play a key role. Other than providing financial incentives government, the role to promote and systematically encourage adoption was instrumental in the acceptance of new technology. The role of opinion leaders, nonetheless, is to provide legitimacy to the use of the technology through new interpretation of or connection with the traditional culture and religious values. But we have also observed significant contribution of a key agent i.e. the returning residents who worked as migrant workers in the city. They are the carriers of new technology but also the agents of cultural change. We conclude that the cultural “DNA” of an innovation inherited from its creator would be re-engineered, in the sense of re-interpreted and adapted, in the process of adoption by a community. The modified cultural “DNA” could reflect partly the cultural and religious features of both the source and the host

Customer experience and brand loyalty in the full-service hotel sector: The role of brand affect

This study proposed a comprehensive causal model to examine the relationships between customer experience and four key factors in brand building, i.e., brand loyalty, brand trust, brand affect, and brand involvement. The dimensionality of customer experience in full-service hotel is also particularly examined in relation to brand building. Three steps of data collection were employed: interviews of 50 customers on their experiences of staying full-service hotels, a small survey of 176 hotel guests to establish the measurement scale of customer experience and a major survey of 732 hotel customers in 10 major Chinese cities to test the model of brand loyalty. Customers’ experiences with full-service hotels is proposed to be categorised into functional, affective and social. There is a chain effect from customer experience to brand trust and to brand affect, and then to brand loyalty. The brand involvement does moderate relationships between customer experience and brand trust, and brand affect, but not brand loyalty. For full-service hotels, social and functional experiences are critical in building brand loyalty and therefore they need to be the focal points in the enhancement of customer experience. Also hoteliers are advised to develop emotional connections between the customers and the hotel brand - effective way of building trust and affection. This paper is one of the first few studies to link customer experience to brand loyalty with comprehensive causal effect analysis. The study also contributes to the knowledge of customer experience in the context of the full-service hotel sector