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Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | In June of this year, a publication entitled ‘Macau’s sustainability and diversification’ noted that Macau’s ‘economic volatility caused by an unbalanced industrial structure restricts the diversified development of society. Economic diversification is the only way for Macau to achieve sustainable development’. Nothing new there, and, anyway, such a singular view is unconvincing. What about other aspects of society? Diversity is not singular, and it requires inclusion.

Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | When the casino resorts applied for the first licenses to operate in Macau, one of the commitments that they made was to serve the Macau society. Many of them have honoured those commitments outstandingly well, and continue to do so, and in ways too many and diverse to list here.

Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | Despite the welcome optimism expressed at the government’s plans to resurrect Macau’s economy, its economic recovery will continue to suffer from having had the rug pulled from under its feet by the zero-Covid policy, however well intentioned.

Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | As Macau strives to revive its post-pandemic economy and to reinject life into its ailing society, calls for investment in human capital resurface, alongside endless mantras of economic diversification which, for years, seem to have fallen on deaf ears, and together with plans for further infrastructure development and construction which have already turned Macau into a concrete jungle.

Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | Macau’s development of international and tertiary sector industries is the watchword for its long-overdue diversification. Is Macau ready for this?

The identification of barriers for e-commerce to thrive in specific countries is a topic of great interest. This work proposes two models to study the barriers to B2C e-commerce adoption in Portugal, highlighting obstacles less exploited by previous research: the impact of offline shopping pleasure and the influence of the distance to shopping malls on online shopping intent. An online survey was conducted based on different constructs. A multivariate OLS hierarchical regression was used to analyse the proposed models regarding the intention to buy online and the number of online purchases. The results revealed that customer satisfaction is a strong predictor of intent to buy online and that perceived product risk remains a barrier to e-commerce. Consumers living in high urbanised areas have more propensity to buy online. Helpful information is provided regarding the impact of context, culture, product, and individual barriers, showing that multichannel strategies are best suited for success.

In the last few years, the tourism industry has experienced rapid expansion and diversification, making it one of the fastest-growing financial industries in the world. Consequently, the hotel industry has significantly affected the environment's long-term viability. Many hotels have begun voluntarily implementing environmentally sustainable practices as they become more aware of their ecological footprint. There has been a great deal of discussion about the effects of hotel operations on the environment and tourism sustainability in Macau. It is because of these negative impacts that hoteliers have adopted green practices in an attempt to minimize them. By developing sustainability reports, hotels can set goals, measure performance, and manage change, resulting in better sustainability. It could also be viewed as a strategy to enhance the company’s sustainability reporting to ensure stakeholders know what the company does. The objective of this study is twofold based on the analysis of the official sustainability reports of four major hotel chains. Firstly, seven categories of sustainable practices effectively adopted by these chain hotels are identified and clusterized. Second, it is presented in which areas some hotels performed more efficiently than others, considering the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a reference. The results allow a comprehensive clusterized analysis of the industry in a highly developed gaming and entertainment area of South China and create a clear comparison between relevant players and their concerns about sustainability practices.

Electronic government is increasingly dominant in the study of public administration. In analysing people's behavioural factors towards the adoption of e-services, most previous studies targeted the adult population, while those on government employees are minimal. Government employees have an essential function in the process of government operation; they can be regarded as the principal medium of communication between the service provider (government) and the end-users (citizens). This study was designed to understand the government employees' behavioural factors on their intentions towards adopting e-government services. A set of semi-structured interview questions was developed based on the prior literature on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and e-government studies. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted in Macao SAR (Special Administrative Region). In addition to analysing the three primary constructs of TPB, the factor of Trust and some enablers and hindrances were identified. Significant findings were yielded while investigating how the government employees perceived the e-services and how they regarded the general public's perception of this issue. This contextualisation would help policymakers look at this issue from different perspectives and design feasible interventions according to group alignment strategies.

This article discusses the new gaming law in Macau with emphasis on the critical aspects concerning the gaming operators, concession regime, and other regulatory obligations.1 Thanks to the gaming liberalization commenced in 2001,2 Macau has experienced tremendous economic growth. The past two decades have seen the rapid development of large-scale integrated resorts, and Macau now ranks among the world's major gaming jurisdictions.3 Policy and regulatory challenges have also emerged along with the growth of the junket-driven VIP business in casinos.4 With the recent amendment of Law No. 16/2001 and the subsequent enactment of Law No. 16/2022, Macau has strengthened the legal underpinnings of its system of gaming regulation to oversee various groups involved in casinos and their industry practices. The present study is among the first to review the scope and impact of the revised gaming law, and associated managerial and operational implications for Macau casinos. Topics covered include policy directions, concession requirements, industry participants, gaming taxes, and fair business practices. This study could provide insights into the “Macau 2.0” project and how casinos are to be operated and managed over the next decade. This article could also provide practical guidance for policy makers charged with formulating gaming policy and regulation in other jurisdictions.

Despite the general good intentions towards the environment, individuals tend to adopt traditional internal combustion vehicles. Drawing from technology research, this study focuses on the impact of society - in the form of subjective norm and image – on the behavioral intention to adopt a technology. More precisely, this study seeks to explore to which extent societal influences drive the behavioral intention to adopt battery electric vehicles (BEV) technology. A self-administered survey was used for this purpose. The analysis of the data from a sample of 111 respondents showed significant relationships between the predictors and the target behavioral outcome. The study also revealed that subjective norm and image are particularly significant factors for the segment of BEV owners. The findings suggest that marketers and practitioners incorporate social elements into their product communication strategies in order to encourage the uptake of environmentally-sound technologies.

The adoption of project management techniques is a crucial decision for corporate governance in construction companies since the management of areas such as risk, cost, and communications is essential for the success or failure of an endeavor. Nevertheless, different frameworks based on traditional or agile methodologies are available with several approaches, which may create several ways to manage projects. The primary purpose of this work is to investigate the adequate project management methodology for the construction industry from a general perspective and consider a case study from Macau. The methodology considered semi-structured interviews and a survey comparing international and local project managers from the construction industry. The interviews indicate that most construction project managers still follow empirical methods with no specific methodology but consider the adoption of traditional waterfall approaches. In contrast, according to the survey, most project managers and construction managers agree that the project's efficacy needs to increase, namely in planning, waste minimization, communication increase, and focus on the Client's feedback. In addition, there seems to be a clear indication that agile methodology could be implemented in several types of projects, including hospitality development projects. A hybrid development approach based on the Waterfall and Agile methodologies as a tool for the project management area may provide a more suitable methodology for project managers to follow.

This paper presents an algorithm that applies metrics derived from automatic QRS detection and segmentation in electrocardiogram signals for analyzing Heart Rate Variability to study the evolution of metrics in the frequency domain of a clinical procedure. The analysis was performed on three sets of elderly people, who are categorized according to frailty phenotype. The first set was comprised of frail elderly, the second pre-frail elderly, and the third robust elderly. Investigators from many disciplines have been encouraged to contribute to the understanding of molecular and physiological changes in multiple systems that may increase the vulnerability of frail elderly. In this work, the frailty phenotype can be characterized by unintentional weight loss, as self-reported, fatigue assessed by self-report, grip strength (measured directly), physical activity level assessed by self-report and gait speed (measured). The results obtained demonstrate the existence of significant differences between Heart Rate Variability metrics for the three groups, especially considering a higher preponderance for sympathetic nervous system for the group of robust patients in response to postural maneuver.

There are many systematic reviews on predicting stock. However, each of them reveals a different portion of the hybrid AI analysis and stock prediction puzzle. The principal objective of this research was to systematically review and conclude the systematic reviews on AI and stock to provide particularly useful predictions for making future strategies for stock markets. Keywords that would fall under the broad headings of AI and stock prediction were looked up in two databases, Scopus and Web of Science. We screened 69 titles and read 43 systematic reviews which include more than 379 studies before retaining 10 of them.

Consumers' selections and decision-making processes are some of the most exciting and challenging topics in neuromarketing, sales, and branding. Multicultural influences and societal conditions are also crucial aspects to consider from a global perspective. Applying neuroscience tools and techniques in international marketing and consumer behavior is an emergent and multidisciplinary field that aims to understand consumers' thoughts, reactions, and selection processes in branding and sales. This study focuses on real-time monitoring of different physiological signals using eye-tracking, facial expressions recognition, and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) acquisition methods to analyze consumers' responses, detect emotional arousal, measure attention or relaxation levels, analyze perception, consciousness, memory, learning, motivation, preference, and decision-making. The primary purpose of this research was to monitor human subjects' reactions to these signals during an experiment designed in three phases consisting of different types of branding advertisements. The non-advertisement exposition was also monitored during the gathering of survey responses at the end of each phase. A feature extraction module was implemented with a data analytics module to calculate statistical metrics and decision-making supporting tools based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Feature Importance (FI) determination based on the Random Forest technique. The results indicate that when compared to image ads, video ads are more effective in attracting consumers' attention and creating more emotional arousal.

Neuromarketing lies at the intersection of three main disciplines: psychology, neuroscience, and marketing, and it has been a successful neuroscientific approach for the study of real-life choices such as consumer behavior [1]. A current gap in the cosmetics field is the lack of published research studies, considering the marketing investment done yearly in this category. With the rapid economic expansion and the rise of social media in China, consumers' interest in beauty is growing. Even though the Chinese cosmetics sector is rapidly expanding, no studies have been done with Chinese consumers. This study aims to employ the same approach as previously done in consumer neuroscience studies to evaluate cosmetic brands' marketing strategy to understand better if immediate emotional responses can be measured using Electrodermal Activity (EDA). Here, we focus on cosmetics products advertisement as a model to understand consumer preference formation and choice. Eighteen Chinese female consumers were recruited between 19 and 37 years old. From the results obtained, it was understood that none of the participants have voted for the product advertisement for which they showed higher emotional arousal. However, it appears that the participants' preference is for the products for which the brand awareness is stronger since the product advertisements with more votes are the ones for the Korean brand used. The product advertisements with Asian faces were the ones with more votes, suggesting that Asian faces have engaged consumer preference. However, the product advertisements for the Brazilian brands, unknown to the Chinese public, were the ones with fewer votes, although, those product advertisements were the ones with more emotional arousal per minute. Those advertisements were also those with non-Asian faces, suggesting that this feature influenced voting decisions. From this study, it has been observed that Electrodermal Activity is a measure of emotional arousal that by itself cannot be translated into consumer engagement. Therefore, it is also proposed to evaluate brand awareness in future studies related to product advertisements. The physical features of the people included in the advertisements is also suggested to be further evaluated in future studies since a different cultural background seems to influence the consumers' engagement. Furthermore, using EDA to complement other neurophysiological tools like facial expression analysis is also suggested for future studies to have evidence about the nature of the emotions raised.

Covid-19 has hit the world unprepared, as the deadliest pandemic of the century. Governments and authorities, as leaders and decision makers fighting against the virus, enormously tap on the power of AI and its data analytics models for urgent decision supports at the greatest efforts, ever seen from human history. This book showcases a collection of important data analytics models that were used during the epidemic, and discusses and compares their efficacy and limitations. Readers who from both healthcare industries and academia can gain unique insights on how data analytics models were designed and applied on epidemic data. Taking Covid-19 as a case study, readers especially those who are working in similar fields, would be better prepared in case a new wave of virus epidemic may arise again in the near future.

Fast and efficient malaria diagnostics are essential in efforts to detect and treat the disease in a proper time. The standard approach to diagnose malaria is a microscope exam, which is submitted to a subjective interpretation. Thus, the automating of the diagnosis process with the use of an intelligent system capable of recognizing malaria parasites could aid in the early treatment of the disease. Usually, laboratories capture a minimum set of images in low quality using a system of microscopes based on mobile devices. Due to the poor quality of such data, conventional algorithms do not process those images properly. This paper presents the application of deep learning techniques to improve the accuracy of malaria plasmodium detection in the presented context. In order to increase the number of training sets, deep convolutional generative adversarial networks (DCGAN) were used to generate reliable training data that were introduced in our deep learning model to improve accuracy. A total of 6 experiments were performed and a synthesized dataset of 2.200 images was generated by the DCGAN for the training phase. For a real image database with 600 blood smears with malaria plasmodium, the proposed Deep Learning architecture obtained the accuracy of 100% for the plasmodium detection. The results are promising and the solution could be employed to support a mass medical diagnosis system.

This book offers an objective and dispassionate analysis of modern educational architecture allowing us to notice gaps. The fundamental question addressed is whether our education system will embrace knowledge-based society and have the foresight to better prepare future generations. If educators around the world step back for a moment, it is not difficult to notice that unanswered questions about education are looming everywhere. The existent academic literature on education is abundant and embracing. In consequence, one can ask why is this book necessary? Indeed, this book is the result of senior university professors sharing their learnings and anticipating the pivotal issues facing all education professionals. According to the United Nations, by 2050, 68% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. This fact cannot be ignored as it is one of the drivers of the profile of the future students. The reasons to organize this publication are many, but among them three stand out which also function as the driving forces behind this project: (1) University professors teach future generations based on models grounded on knowledge advanced by past experiences; (2) The decisive requirement to understand the needs of the new generations of university millennial students; and (3) What are the critical challenges of global societies? "This book problematizes the issues concerning education, and its main contribution is to answer the need to rethink education, face contemporary challenges, and reorganize the way public policies address education. It critically analyses the challenges of global societies in a decentralized perspective, not only reflecting a western perspective of education and knowledge production. The project's originality comes from the contemporaneity of the topics covered, from the interdisciplinary perspective, and from the specific attention given to trends around education." —Cátia Miriam Costa, Researcher and Invited Assistant Professor, Centre for International Studies, Perfil Ciência