Political meritocracy and its betrayal

Some Confucian scholars have recently claimed that Confucian political meritocracy is superior to Western democracy. I have great reservations about such a view. In this article, I argue that so lo..

Home buyers' purchase decision framework for Klang Valley, Malaysia

To solve the property overhang issues in Malaysian housing market, housing developers require answers and solutions for housing attributes and services to increase their sales. However, previous researchers only focused on one aspect while studying house buyers' purchase-decision. So, to overcome the problems of property overhang and low satisfaction-level, this research aims to investigate the housingpurchase factors, homebuyers' demographic, purchase decision and satisfaction. The chosen research method is Quantitative method as there is a large sample of population. Finally, it has developed a Home Buyers' Purchase Decision Framework for the home buyers in Klang Valley. The researcher has collected data using SurveyMonkey, an online survey tool and has developed a questionnaire specifically to Klang Valley residents for their opinions on housing purchase factors, purchase decision and post-purchase satisfaction. A total of 417 questionnaires were returned from the 2,000 distributed. Then, the data was analyzed using logistic regression, multivariate analysis of variance and multiple linear regression. This result is then validated by 24 respondents to increase the accuracy. The findings show that home buyers’ purchase decision are influenced by all house purchase factors: house structure, spaces, finance, location, and neighbourhood. However, gender, marital status, and family income of home buyer do not influence house purchase decision and financial factors do not have significant influence on home buyers' satisfaction. The results will make contributions to the Malaysian residential housing industry, give the housing developers a wider comprehension of their consumers and lay a foundation for the housing industry to improve. For the recent years, this research is the only known study that develops homebuyers' purchase-decision framework for Klang Valley housing market. Thus, this study contributes to the knowledge of homebuyers decision-making processes for the housing market in Malaysia

Distributed-memory large deformation diffeomorphic 3D image registration

We present a parallel distributed-memory algorithm for large deformation diffeomorphic registration of volumetric images that produces large isochoric deformations (locally volume preserving). Image registration is a key technology in medical image analysis. Our algorithm uses a partial differential equation constrained optimal control formulation. Finding the optimal deformation map requires the solution of a highly nonlinear problem that involves pseudo-differential operators, biharmonic operators, and pure advection operators both forward and back- ward in time. A key issue is the time to solution, which poses the demand for efficient optimization methods as well as an effective utilization of high performance computing resources. To address this problem we use a preconditioned, inexact, Gauss-Newton- Krylov solver. Our algorithm integrates several components: a spectral discretization in space, a semi-Lagrangian formulation in time, analytic adjoints, different regularization functionals (including volume-preserving ones), a spectral preconditioner, a highly optimized distributed Fast Fourier Transform, and a cubic interpolation scheme for the semi-Lagrangian time-stepping. We demonstrate the scalability of our algorithm on images with resolution of up to $1024^3$ on the "Maverick" and "Stampede" systems at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). The critical problem in the medical imaging application domain is strong scaling, that is, solving registration problems of a moderate size of $256^3$---a typical resolution for medical images. We are able to solve the registration problem for images of this size in less than five seconds on 64 x86 nodes of TACC's "Maverick" system.Comment: accepted for publication at SC16 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA; November 201

BS-ISO helical gear fatigue life estimation and wear quantitative features analysis

Original article can be found at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/ Copyright Blackwell Publishing. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-1305.2008.00457.xLack of representative theoretical models for gear wear causes difficulties in their useful lifetime prediction. Critical operating parameters, such as loading and lubrication, affect the wear process in a very complex manner and lead the theoretical modelling to an imperfect zone of assumptions. Complexities in gear wear mathematical modelling allow the researchers to use approximations for useful lifetime calculations. On the basis of modelling approximations and assumptions, organizations, such as American Gear Manufacturers' Association (AGMA) and British Standards (BS), provide gear useful lifetime formulations. In these formulations, the useful lifetime values are estimated by means of experimentation that is controlled with known gear operating conditions and physical dimensions. However, for useful lifetime estimation and validation, these standards have not considered any experimental approach that represents the actual gear wear. In this paper, an effort is made to validate the competency of standard's gear useful lifetime formulation. For this purpose, an approach that is able to provide an idea about actual gear wear is used. During the effort, BS-ISO 6336-2 standard formulation is used for helical gear useful lifetime estimation under linear pitting fatigue conditions. The used formulation is validated by using wear quantitative feature analysis that is able to provide actual gear wear quantitative trends. The obtained wear quantitative trends fairly validate the lifetime estimation of BS-ISO 6336-2 standard.Peer reviewe

Biochemical prevention and treatment of viral infections – A new paradigm in medicine for infectious diseases

For two centuries, vaccination has been the dominating approach to develop prophylaxis against viral infections through immunological prevention. However, vaccines are not always possible to make, are ineffective for many viral infections, and also carry certain risk for a small, yet significant portion of the population. In the recent years, FDA's approval and subsequent market acceptance of Synagis, a monoclonal antibody indicated for prevention and treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) has heralded a new era for viral infection prevention and treatment. This emerging paradigm, herein designated "Biochemical Prevention and Treatment", currently involves two aspects: (1) preventing viral entry via passive transfer of specific protein-based anti-viral molecules or host cell receptor blockers; (2) inhibiting viral amplification by targeting the viral mRNA with anti-sense DNA, ribozyme, or RNA interference (RNAi). This article summarizes the current status of this field