Showing papers by "Hong Kong Polytechnic University published in 2008"
TL;DR: A review of the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years can be found in this article, where a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, are used to comprehensively review and analyze prior studies in the context of Internet applications to tourism.
2,672 citations
TL;DR: An extensive review of the scheduling literature on models with setup times (costs) from then to date covering more than 300 papers is provided, which classifies scheduling problems into those with batching and non-batching considerations, and with sequence-independent and sequence-dependent setup times.
1,264 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the construct of and the scale for evaluating green supply chain management (GSCM) practices implementation among manufacturers and find that both the first-order and second-order models for GSCM implementation are reliable and valid.
1,228 citations
TL;DR: A review of the published studies on tourism demand modelling and forecasting since 2000 is presented in this article, where the authors identify some new research directions, which include improving the forecasting accuracy through forecast combination; integrating both qualitative and quantitative forecasting approaches, tourism cycles and seasonality analysis, events' impact assessment and risk forecasting.
977 citations
TL;DR: An optimal sizing method was developed to calculate the optimum system configuration that can achieve the customers required loss of power supply probability (LPSP) with a minimum annualized cost of system (ACS).
841 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an attempt has been made to analyze both agile manufacturing and supply chain management with the objective of developing a framework for responsive supply chain (RSC), which can be employed as a competitive strategy in a networked economy in which customized products/services are produced with virtual organizations and exchanged using e-commerce.
Abstract: Supply chain management (SCM) has been considered as the most popular operations strategy for improving organizational competitiveness in the twenty-first century. In the early 1990s, agile manufacturing (AM) gained momentum and received due attention from both researchers and practitioners. In the mid-1990s, SCM began to attract interest. Both AM and SCM appear to differ in philosophical emphasis, but each complements the other in objectives for improving organizational competitiveness. For example, AM relies more on strategic alliances/partnerships (virtual enterprise environment) to achieve speed and flexibility. But the issues of cost and the integration of suppliers and customers have not been given due consideration in AM. By contrast, cost is given a great deal of attention in SCM, which focuses on the integration of suppliers and customers to achieve an integrated value chain with the help of information technologies and systems. Considering the significance of both AM and SCM for firms to improve their performance, an attempt has been made in this paper to analyze both AM and SCM with the objective of developing a framework for responsive supply chain (RSC). We compare their characteristics and objectives, review the selected literature, and analyze some case experiences on AM and SCM, and develop an integrated framework for a RSC. The proposed framework can be employed as a competitive strategy in a networked economy in which customized products/services are produced with virtual organizations and exchanged using e-commerce.
780 citations
TL;DR: A novel probabilistic retrieval model forms a basis to interpret the TF-IDF term weights as making relevance decisions, and it is shown that the term-frequency factor of the ranking formula can be rendered into different term- frequency factors of existing retrieval systems.
Abstract: A novel probabilistic retrieval model is presented It forms a basis to interpret the TF-IDF term weights as making relevance decisions It simulates the local relevance decision-making for every location of a document, and combines all of these “local” relevance decisions as the “document-wide” relevance decision for the document The significance of interpreting TF-IDF in this way is the potential to: (1) establish a unifying perspective about information retrieval as relevance decision-making; and (2) develop advanced TF-IDF-related term weights for future elaborate retrieval models Our novel retrieval model is simplified to a basic ranking formula that directly corresponds to the TF-IDF term weights In general, we show that the term-frequency factor of the ranking formula can be rendered into different term-frequency factors of existing retrieval systems In the basic ranking formula, the remaining quantity - log p(r¯|t ∈ d) is interpreted as the probability of randomly picking a nonrelevant usage (denoted by r¯) of term t Mathematically, we show that this quantity can be approximated by the inverse document-frequency (IDF) Empirically, we show that this quantity is related to IDF, using four reference TREC ad hoc retrieval data collections
752 citations
TL;DR: A literature review of 85 academic journal papers that were published on the subject between 1995 and 2005 is presented in this article, where the authors organize these studies into four main categories: technological issues, applications, policy and security issues, and other issues.
713 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed and empirically tested a conceptual model of the impact of website quality on customer satisfaction and purchase intentions, and found that website quality has a direct and positive impact on customers' satisfaction, while customer satisfaction does significantly mediate this effect.
661 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors report on results from a cross-sectional survey with manufacturers in four typical Chinese industries, i.e., power generating, chemical/petroleum, electrical/electronic and automobile, to evaluate their perceived green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and relate them to closing the supply chain loop.
Abstract: In this paper we report on results from a cross-sectional survey with manufacturers in four typical Chinese industries, i.e., power generating, chemical/petroleum, electrical/electronic and automobile, to evaluate their perceived green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and relate them to closing the supply chain loop. Our findings provide insights into the capabilities of Chinese organizations on the adoption of GSCM practices in different industrial contexts and that these practices are not considered equitably across the four industries. Academic and managerial implications of our findings are discussed.
615 citations
TL;DR: In these 18 CSFs, 'top management support' and 'training and education' were the most frequently cited as the critical factors to the successful implementation of ERP systems.
TL;DR: Differences in the behavioral models between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged users who have direct usage experience are theorized and empirically tested and reveal distinct behavioral models and isolate the key factors that differentially impact the two groups.
Abstract: Digital inequality is one of the most critical issues in the knowledge economy. The private and public sectors have devoted tremendous resources to address such inequality, yet the results are inconclusive. Theoretically grounded empirical research is needed both to expand our understanding of digital inequality and to inform effective policy making and intervention. The context of our investigation is a city government project, known as the LaGrange Internet TV initiative, which allowed all city residents to access the Internet via their cable televisions at no additional cost. We examine the residents' post-implementation continued use intentions through a decomposed theory of planned behavior perspective, which is elaborated to include personal network exposure. Differences in the behavioral models between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged users who have direct usage experience are theorized and empirically tested. The results reveal distinct behavioral models and isolate the key factors that differentially impact the two groups. The advantaged group has a higher tendency to respond to personal network exposure. Enjoyment and confidence in using information and communication technologies, availability, and perceived behavioral control are more powerful in shaping continued ICT use intention for the disadvantaged. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
TL;DR: In this article, the importance of the political-economic situation, geographical location, infrastructure, financial background, performance history, risk factors, etc., have also been pointed out in particularly in the case of global supplier selection.
Abstract: Global supplier selection has a critical effect on the competitiveness of the entire supply chain network. Research results indicate that the supplier selection process appears to be the most significant variable in deciding the success of the supply chain. It helps in achieving high quality products at lower cost with higher customer satisfaction. Apart from the common criteria such as cost and quality, this paper also discusses some of the important decision variables which can play a critical role in case of the international sourcing. The importance of the political-economic situation, geographical location, infrastructure, financial background, performance history, risk factors, etc., have also been pointed out in particularly in the case of global supplier selection. Supplier selection problem related to the global sourcing is more complex than the general domestic sourcing and as a result it needs more critical analysis, which could not be found properly in past available literatures. This paper di...
TL;DR: Li et al. as discussed by the authors proposed an integrative framework that unbundles the benefits and risks of guanxi and delineates the organizational processes to internalize Guanxi as a corporate core competence.
Abstract: Guanxi refers to the durable social connections and networks a firm uses to exchange favors for organizational purposes. This study examines how and when guanxi operates as a governance mechanism that influences firm marketing competence and performance in the transitional economy of China. Drawing on social capital theory, the authors propose an integrative framework that unbundles the benefits and risks of guanxi and delineates the organizational processes to internalize guanxi as a corporate core competence. The authors surveyed senior executives in 282 firms in China's consumer products industries. The findings confirm guanxi's direct effects on market performance and its indirect effects mediated through channel capability and responsive capability. The authors also confirm that technological turbulence and competition intensity can be effective structure-loosening forces, thus reducing the governance effects of guanxi. The findings suggest that firms can improve market access and growth thr...
TL;DR: In this paper, a detailed simulation of glyoxal and methylglyoxal in the GEOS-Chem global 3-D chemical transport model including the best knowledge of source and sink processes was conducted.
Abstract: [1] We construct global budgets of atmospheric glyoxal and methylglyoxal with the goal of quantifying their potential for global secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation via irreversible uptake by aqueous aerosols and clouds. We conduct a detailed simulation of glyoxal and methylglyoxal in the GEOS-Chem global 3-D chemical transport model including our best knowledge of source and sink processes. Our resulting best estimates of the global sources of glyoxal and methylglyoxal are 45 Tg a−1 and 140 Tg a−1, respectively. Oxidation of biogenic isoprene contributes globally 47% of glyoxal and 79% of methylglyoxal. The second most important precursors are acetylene (mostly anthropogenic) for glyoxal and acetone (mostly biogenic) for methylglyoxal. Both acetylene and acetone have long lifetimes and provide a source of dicarbonyls in the free troposphere. Atmospheric lifetimes of glyoxal and methylglyoxal in the model are 2.9 h and 1.6 h, respectively, mostly determined by photolysis. Simulated dicarbonyl concentrations in continental surface air at northern midlatitudes are in the range 10–100 ppt, consistent with in situ measurements. On a global scale, the highest concentrations are over biomass burning regions, in agreement with glyoxal column observations from the SCIAMACHY satellite instrument. SCIAMACHY and a few ship cruises also suggest a large marine source of dicarbonyls missing from our model. The global source of SOA from the irreversible uptake of dicarbonyls in GEOS-Chem is 11 Tg C a−1, including 2.6 Tg C a−1 from glyoxal and 8 Tg C a−1 from methylglyoxal; 90% of this source takes place in clouds. The magnitude of the global SOA source from dicarbonyls is comparable to that computed in GEOS-Chem from the standard mechanism involving reversible partitioning of semivolatile products from the oxidation of monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, isoprene, and aromatics.
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper investigated the correlation of two major factors, organizational learning and management support, with the extent of adoption of green supply chain management practices in Chinese manufacturing firms, where their inbound and outbound logistics activities are potential polluters to the environment.
Abstract: Greening the supply chain is increasingly a concern for many business enterprises and a challenge for logistics management in the 21st century. Of particular concern is how to arouse organizational environmental awareness and put environmental activities into practice in the logistics activities of their supply chains. This paper investigates the correlation of two major factors, organizational learning and management support, with the extent of adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in Chinese manufacturing firms, where their inbound and outbound logistics activities are potential polluters to the environment. Organizational and operational learning was derived from the firm's experience with programs such as total quality management and environmental management systems. Management support included support for GSCM ideas and practices from top and middle-level management and cooperation across organizational functions. We find significant positive relationships between organizational learning mechanisms, organizational support and the adoption of GSCM practices, after controlling for a number of other influences including regulations, marketing, supplier, cost pressures, industry levels of the relevant practice and organizational size. Implications of our findings on logistics management are discussed.
TL;DR: In the process of managing multiple cultural environments and group loyalties, bilingual competence, and perceiving one's two cultural identities as integrated are important antecedents of beneficial psychological outcomes.
Abstract: The present investigation examined the impact of bicultural identity, bilingualism, and social context on the psychological adjustment of multicultural individuals. Our studies targeted three distinct types of biculturals: Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong, Filipino domestic workers (i.e., sojourners) in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese college students. Individual differences in Bicultural Identity Integration (BII; Benet-Martinez, Leu, Lee, & Morris, 2002) positively predicted psychological adjustment for all the samples except sojourners even after controlling for the personality traits of neuroticism and self-efficacy. Cultural identification and language abilities also predicted adjustment, although these associations varied across the samples in meaningful ways. We concluded that, in the process of managing multiple cultural environments and group loyalties, bilingual competence, and perceiving one's two cultural identities as integrated are important antecedents of beneficial psychological outcomes.
TL;DR: This paper reviews current remediation technologies that use chelating agents for the mobilization and removal of potentially toxic metals from contaminated soils and the possible impact of abiotic and biotic soil factors on the toxicity of metals left after the washing of soil and enhanced phytoextraction.
TL;DR: A transformation from time series to complex networks is introduced and the relative frequency of different subgraphs within that network is studied to characterize different types of continuous dynamics: periodic, chaotic, and periodic with noise.
Abstract: We introduce a transformation from time series to complex networks and then study the relative frequency of different subgraphs within that network The distribution of subgraphs can be used to distinguish between and to characterize different types of continuous dynamics: periodic, chaotic, and periodic with noise Moreover, although the general types of dynamics generate networks belonging to the same superfamily of networks, specific dynamical systems generate characteristic dynamics When applied to discrete (map-like) data this technique distinguishes chaotic maps, hyperchaotic maps, and noise data
TL;DR: A summary of published research that has set out to address the problem of selectivity of G‐quadruplexes and research methodologies that have been developed to study the binding of ligands to G‐ quadruplexes are provided.
Abstract: G-quadruplexes are special secondary structures adopted in some guanine-rich DNA sequences. As guanine-rich sequences are present in important regions of the eukaryotic genome, such as telomeres and the regulatory regions of many genes, such structures may play important roles in the regulation of biological events in the body. G-quadruplexes have become valid targets for new anticancer drugs in the past few decades. Many leading compounds that target these structures have been reported, and a few of them have entered preclinical or clinical trials. Nonetheless, the selectivity of this kind of antitumor compound has yet to be improved in order to suppress the side effects caused by nonselective binding. As drug design targets, the topology and structural characteristics of quadruplexes, their possible biological roles, and the modes and sites of small-ligand binding to these structures should be understood clearly. Herein we provide a summary of published research that has set out to address the above problem to provide useful information on the design of small ligands that target G-quadruplexes. This review also covers research methodologies that have been developed to study the binding of ligands to G-quadruplexes.
TL;DR: In this paper, a framework for categorizing the main supervisory and optimal control methods and optimization techniques developed and/or utilized in the HVAC field is presented. But the authors do not provide a detailed discussion of the applicat...
Abstract: HVAC systems are the major energy consumers in buildings. Operation and control of HVAC systems have significant impacts on the energy or cost efficiency of buildings besides their designs. Buildings nowadays are mostly equipped with comprehensive building automation systems (BASs) and building energy management control systems (EMCSs) that allow the possibility of enhancing and optimizing the operation and control of HVAC systems. Supervisory and optimal control, which addresses the energy or cost-efficient control of HVAC systems while providing the desired indoor comfort and healthy environment under the dynamic working conditions, is attracting more attention of the building professionals and the society and provides incentives to make more efforts in developing more extensive and robust control methods for HVAC systems. This paper provides a framework for categorizing the main supervisory and optimal control methods and optimization techniques developed and/or utilized in the HVAC field. The applicat...
TL;DR: In this paper, carbon nanotubes were easily coated with a reactive biopolymer, polydopamine (Pdop), by dispersing them in a dopamine solution and mildly stirring at room temperature.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how customers' affectionate ties with firms (customer-firm affection) affect customer loyalty in services, in particular, the components of intimacy and passion.
Abstract: This study extends the existing satisfaction–trust–loyalty paradigm to investigate how customers' affectionate ties with firms (customer–firm affection)—in particular, the components of intimacy and passion—affect customer loyalty in services. In a bilevel model, the authors consider customer–staff and customer–firm interactions in parallel. Through a netnography study and survey research in two service contexts, they confirm (1) the salience of intimacy and passion as two underrecognized components of customer–firm affection that influence customer loyalty, (2) the complementary and mediating role of customer–firm affection in strengthening customer loyalty, (3) significant affect transfers from the customer–staff to the customer–firm level, and (4) the dilemma that emerges when customer–staff relationships are too close. The findings provide several implications for researchers and managers regarding how intimacy and passion can enrich customer service interactions and how to manage customer–st...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the impact of employee satisfaction on operational performance in high-contact service industries based on an empirical study of 206 service shops in Hong Kong, examined the hypothesized relationships among employee satisfaction, service quality, customer satisfaction, and firm profitability using structural equations modeling, and found that employee satisfaction is significantly related to service quality and to customer satisfaction.
01 Dec 2008
TL;DR: This study applies a novel neural network technique called extreme learning machine (ELM) to investigate the relationship between sales amount and some significant factors which affect demand, and proposes methods which outperform several sales forecasting methods which are based on backpropagation neural networks.
Abstract: Sales forecasting is a challenging problem owing to the volatility of demand which depends on many factors. This is especially prominent in fashion retailing where a versatile sales forecasting system is crucial. This study applies a novel neural network technique called extreme learning machine (ELM) to investigate the relationship between sales amount and some significant factors which affect demand (such as design factors). Performances of our models are evaluated by using real data from a fashion retailer in Hong Kong. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed methods outperform several sales forecasting methods which are based on backpropagation neural networks.
28 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this paper, a survey of over seventy published works in this field since 1999 is provided, with a collection of eleven competing algorithms whose source codes or executables are provided by the authors.
Abstract: Image demosaicing is a problem of interpolating full-resolution color images from so-called color-filter-array
(CFA) samples Among various CFA patterns, Bayer pattern has been the most popular choice and demosaicing
of Bayer pattern has attracted renewed interest in recent years partially due to the increased availability of source
codes/executables in response to the principle of "reproducible research" In this article, we provide a systematic
survey of over seventy published works in this field since 1999 (complementary to previous reviews22, 67)
Our review attempts to address important issues to demosaicing and identify fundamental differences among
competing approaches Our findings suggest most existing works belong to the class of sequential demosaicing
- ie, luminance channel is interpolated first and then chrominance channels are reconstructed based on recovered
luminance information We report our comparative study results with a collection of eleven competing
algorithms whose source codes or executables are provided by the authors Our comparison is performed on
two data sets: Kodak PhotoCD (popular choice) and IMAX high-quality images (more challenging) While
most existing demosaicing algorithms achieve good performance on the Kodak data set, their performance on
the IMAX one (images with varying-hue and high-saturation edges) degrades significantly Such observation
suggests the importance of properly addressing the issue of mismatch between assumed model and observation
data in demosaicing, which calls for further investigation on issues such as model validation, test data selection
and performance evaluation
TL;DR: In this paper, the results of X-ray diffraction reveal that Ba 2+ diffuse into the Bi 0.5 Na 0.0.5 TiO 3 lattices to form a solid solution with a pure perovskite structure, and a morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) exists at 0.06.
TL;DR: The use of surface Zeta potential measurements as a new tool to investigate the interactions of iron oxide nanoparticles and cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) nanoparticles with human normal breast epithelial cells (MCF10A) and cancer breast epithelium cells ( MCF7) respectively is demonstrated.
Abstract: We demonstrate the use of surface Zeta potential measurements as a new tool to investigate the interactions of iron oxide nanoparticles and cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) nanoparticles with human normal breast epithelial cells (MCF10A) and cancer breast epithelial cells (MCF7) respectively. A substantial understanding in the interaction of nanoparticles with normal and cancer cells in vitro will enable the capabilities of improving diagnostic and treatment methods in cancer research, such as imaging and targeted drug delivery. A theoretical Zeta potential model is first established to show the effects of binding process and internalization process during the nanoparticle uptake by cells and the possible trends of Zeta potential change is predicted for different cell endocytosis capacities. The corresponding changes of total surface charge of cells in the form of Zeta potential measurements were then reported after incubated respectively with iron oxide nanoparticles and CPMV nanoparticles. As observed, after MCF7 and MCF10A cells were incubated respectively with two types of nanoparticles, the significant differences in their surface charge change indicate the potential role of Zeta potential as a valuable biological signature in studying the cellular interaction of nanoparticles, as well as specific cell functionality.
TL;DR: The CV angle in subjects with neck pain is significantly smaller than that in normal subjects and there is moderate negative correlation between CV angle and neck disability.