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This dissertation examines the implementation of smart policing in Macau, focusing on the adoption and challenges of facial recognition technology within the Macau Urban Electronic Surveillance System. As Macau pursues its smart city ambitions, the integration of advanced technologies into law enforcement has become a central strategy for enhancing public safety and operational efficiency. However, the actual acceptance and use of these technologies by frontline police officers remain underexplored. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach. documentary analysis of government policies and strategic documents provides an overview of Macau’s smart policing initiatives and the legal and infrastructural frameworks supporting them. The core of the research is a quantitative survey of Macau police officers who have direct experience with the facial recognition system. The survey is structured around the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), with additional attention to compatibility and perceived legal knowledge. The results reveal that performance expectancy and perceived legal knowledge are the strongest factors influencing officers’ adoption of facial recognition while effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions and compatibility are less influential. Practical challenges were discovered through the Macau police officers.

This study employs qualitative research methods, conducting semi-structured interviews with ten kindergarten teachers in Macao. The study further analyses and summarises the participants' perceptions of music teaching, music curriculum design, teaching practices, practical challenges, and the support needed to develop music education. The findings of the study are as follows: 1. The study explores kindergarten teachers' perceptions and attitudes towards music teaching, revealing that all participants recognise the importance of fundamental music knowledge and skills, although there is a noticeable variation in the music proficiency level among teachers. A solid foundation in music is essential for delivering high-quality music instruction. Further to professional skills, teachers' attitudes towards music teaching also vary. While most participants are passionate about music education, some hold neutral or conservative views, and a few lack much interest. Their involvement in teaching is primarily driven by professional duties and school curriculum requirements, with some missing intrinsic motivation or enthusiasm for teaching music. Additionally, some teachers' limited interest in music teaching may be related to a lack of musical talent or confidence. 2. This study analyses the current state of music curriculum teaching in kindergartens. Most music instruction within kindergartens in Macao aligns with the guidelines provided by the Education and Youth Development Bureau, with two music classes arranged per week, each session lasting about 30 minutes. While thematic teaching is a significant model in kindergarten music curricula, over-reliance on it should be avoided. The study suggests that teachers should balance thematic teaching with systematically cultivating fundamental music knowledge and skills. Regarding staffing, music classes are typically co-taught by two classroom teachers, with one required to have instrumental skills. This arrangement supports more professional music instruction, enriches teaching content, and enhances children's musical experiences. However, challenges remain due to heavy teacher workloads and insufficient resources and facilities. Despite these limitations, kindergarten teachers in Macao continue to implement personalised teaching approaches and adopt diverse, innovative, and individualised teaching methods in their music curricula. The interviewed teachers demonstrated a broad and innovative approach to curriculum design and practice, reflecting their deep understanding and professional competence in early childhood music education. 3. Kindergarten teachers in Macao face various challenges in teaching music curricula, most due to the comprehensive and objective assessment of children's musical abilities. The study finds that teachers typically struggle to evaluate musical concepts, rhythm, creativity, interest, and engagement. Additionally, pronunciation accuracy and developmental differences among children are significant factors in the assessment process. 4. This study aims to delve into the challenges and needs faced by kindergarten teachers in music curriculum practice, particularly in music education. The findings indicate that the development of music education in kindergartens is influenced by multiple factors, with the level of importance and support given to music education by schools being a critical issue. Specifically, some participants noted that schools place limited emphasis on music education, prioritising core subjects such as language and English, while others reported that schools provide ample recognition and support for music education. This disparity leads to an imbalance in music teaching resources and environments, affecting teachers' ability to conduct music teaching activities effectively. While some schools place a high value on music education, overemphasising certain aspects of training may lead to an imbalanced development of music education. Furthermore, the study finds that kindergarten teachers have varying levels of musical background and teaching experience. Despite having a basic understanding of music, some teachers fall short in teaching methods and strategies, while others lack systematic music knowledge and skills. These differences in capability limit the quality of music instruction and hinder the comprehensive development of children's musical literacy. Finally, the researcher provides relevant recommendations based on these conclusions to guide future research. 本研究採用質性研究法,通過半結構訪談10位澳門幼稚園教師,並進一步加以分析與歸納探討了受訪者對音樂教學的認知、音樂課程設計、教學實況、實踐困境以及發展支持等方面的情況。研究結論如下： 1. 探討幼稚園教師對音樂教學的認知和態度,研究發現,所有受訪教師均認識到音樂基礎知識和技能的重要性,但教師之間的音樂技能水準存在一定差異。紮實的音樂基礎是開展高品質音樂教學的前提。除了專業技能外,教師對音樂教學的態度也有所不同,大部分受訪者對音樂教學充滿熱忱,但也有部分教師持中立或保守的態度,少數教師則缺乏興趣。他們參與教學主要是出於職責和學校課程安排,可能缺乏內在動力和熱情。此外,個別教師對音樂教學的興趣不足,這可能與其音樂天分不夠或自信心不足有關。 2. 本研究分析了幼稚園音樂課程的教學現狀。大多數澳門幼稚園的音樂教學安排符合教青局的指引,每週安排兩次音樂課,每節課時長約為30分鐘。雖然主題教學是幼稚園音樂課程的重要模式之一,但不宜過度依賴。研究指出,教師在進行主題教學的同時,應重視系統性培育音樂基礎知識和技能,並在兩者之間找出平衡。在教師配置方面,音樂課通常由兩位班主任共同執導,其中一位教師需具備樂器演奏能力,這樣的安排有助於提供更專業的音樂指導,豐富教學內容,並提升幼兒的音樂體驗。然而,問題在於教師的工作負擔較重,且在師資力量和教學設施等方面仍有不足。儘管面對環境的限制,澳門幼稚園教師仍靈活地開展自己的個性化教學,並在音樂課程中採用了多樣化、創新性和個性化的教學方法。受訪的幼稚園教師展現出了多元化、創新性的教學設計理念和實踐,充分體現了他們對幼兒音樂教育的深刻理解和專業素養。 3. 澳門的幼稚園教師在進行音樂課程教學時面臨多種挑戰,這些挑戰主要集中在如何全面且客觀地評估幼兒音樂能力。研究發現,教師們普遍在音樂概念、節奏感、創造力、興趣和參與度的評估方面遇到困難。此外,發音準確性和幼兒之間的發展差異也成為評估過程中的重要考慮因素。 4. 本研究旨在深入探討幼稚園教師在音樂課程實踐中面臨的挑戰與需求,尤其是在音樂教育方面。研究結果顯示,幼稚園的音樂教育發展受到多種因素的影響,其中學校對音樂教育的重視程度和支持力度的差異是關鍵問題之一。具體而言,有部分受訪者指出,學校對音樂教育的重視程度有限,更側重於語文、英語等主學科的教學；而另一些受訪者則表示,學校對音樂教育給予了充分的認可和支持。這種差異性導致了音樂教學資源和環境的不平衡,影響了教師開展音樂教學活動的能力和效果。 儘管一些學校非常重視音樂教育,但如果過度強調某一方面的培養,可能會導致音樂教育的發展失衡。此外,研究還發現,幼稚園教師的音樂專業背景和教學經驗存在較大差異,有些教師雖然具備音樂基礎,但教學方法和策略上有所欠佳,另一些教師缺乏系統的音樂知識和技能。這種能力上的差異不僅限制了音樂教學的品質,還阻礙了幼兒音樂素養的全面發展。最後,研究者依據上述結論據出相關建議,以提供給後續研究者為參考。

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.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can benefit significantly from open innovation by gaining access to a broader range of resources and expertise using absorptive capacitive, and increasing their visibility and reputation. Nevertheless, multiple barriers impact their capacity to absorb new technologies or adapt to develop them. This paper aims to perform an analysis of relevant topics and trends in Open Innovation (OI) and Absorptive Capacity (AC) in SMEs based on a bibliometric review identifying relevant authors and countries, and highlighting significant research themes and trends. The defined string query is submitted to the Web of Science database, and the bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer software. The results indicate that the number of scientific publications has consistently increased during the past decade, indicating a growing interest of the scientific community, reflecting the industry interest and possibly adoption of OI, considering Absorptive. This bibliometric analysis can provide insights on the most relevant regions the research areas are under intensive development.

Nowadays, the increasing number of medical diagnostic data and clinical data provide more complementary references for doctors to make diagnosis to patients. For example, with medical data, such as electrocardiography (ECG), machine learning algorithms can be used to identify and diagnose heart disease to reduce the workload of doctors. However, ECG data is always exposed to various kinds of noise and interference in reality, and medical diagnostics only based on one-dimensional ECG data is not trustable enough. By extracting new features from other types of medical data, we can implement enhanced recognition methods, called multimodal learning. Multimodal learning helps models to process data from a range of different sources, eliminate the requirement for training each single learning modality, and improve the robustness of models with the diversity of data. Growing number of articles in recent years have been devoted to investigating how to extract data from different sources and build accurate multimodal machine learning models, or deep learning models for medical diagnostics. This paper reviews and summarizes several recent papers that dealing with multimodal machine learning in disease detection, and identify topics for future research.

We present an overview and discussion of the Colloquium «Narrative, Media and Cognition», which took place at Porto's Centre of Catholic University of Portugal in July of 2015, under the organization of the Research Centre for Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR). Several scholars of different areas presented research about the uses and advances in narrative study and practice in a broad range of areas, giving some important insights about the latest developments in Narrative Studies, Ontology of Narrative and the uses of Narrative in Art, Cinema, Performance, Journalism, Marketing and Literature, among other fields. After briefly describing the main points of each presentation in the Colloquium we try to draw some conclusions and possibilities raised by the Colloquium and take a glimpse of future paths that the use of Narrative can end up taking.

The various volumes coordinated by Pierre Nora to pursue a history of the places of memory in France have become a multidisciplinary theoretical reference for those who, like us, seek to reconstruct the memories with which the land of the Potiguara aborigines of Brazil is organized today. In the introduction to the voluminous work that he directed for eight years, Nora explained his epistemic understanding of the notion of “places of memory”, stressing that a “lieu de mémoire” is any significant entity that, material or immaterial in nature, through a human will or the wear and tear of time, has become a symbolic element of a community's memorial heritage. The French historian also added that, since memory is the fundamental structure of this generally lengthy process, it was convenient to understand it as a phenomenon of emotions and magic that only accommodates the facts that feed it. Strictly speaking, memory is always vague, and reminiscent, stirring both general impressions and fine symbolic details. Furthermore, memory is always vulnerable to transference, repressed and imagined memories, censorship, and all kinds of projections. (Nora, 1984). In this article, we try to understand that the places of memory are also almost always what comes to us, stays, and selects the past. The reserve where they live appears as a symbolic locus to which the Potiguara aborigines cling with all their strength to preserve what remains of their past.

A interpretação da Escritura e das suas diferentes personagens enriquece a Tradição cristã, mas este processo de receção é muitas vezes marcado por debates e polémica …

In this chapter, a mathematical model explaining generically the propagation of a pandemic is proposed, helping in this way to identify the fundamental parameters related to the outbreak in general. Three free parameters for the pandemic are identified, which can be finally reduced to only two independent parameters. The model is inspired in the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking, used normally in quantum field theory, and it provides the possibility of analyzing the complex data of the pandemic in a compact way. Data from 12 different countries are considered and the results presented. The application of nonlinear quantum physics equations to model epidemiologic time series is an innovative and promising approach.

Human resources are essential to the survival, success, and long-term growth of a company. Hotel is an industry requiring a high level of human resources for delivering high-quality personal service to the hotel guests to maintain its competitiveness in the business environment. With the rapid economic growth in Macao started in 2002, all the industries have been growing fast and competing fiercely for the limited manpower in Macao. However, the Macao hotel industry has been losing its attractiveness in the Macao labor market and needs to rely on non-local workers with a limited stay in Macao. The management team of the Macao hotel industry is looking for a solution to maintain a stable workforce. Therefore, a study has been conducted on the effectiveness of its employee retention strategies. A questionnaire was designed to collect the preferences of the employees and interviews were conducted to understand the perspective of the management team toward the employee retention strategies. The study shows the employee strategies are focused on key employees’ interests such as career development and prospect. However, the communication between the management team and employees failed and led to employee turnover.

This study examines the psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the Engaged Teacher Scale (C-ETS). A translated questionnaire with 16 items was administered to a sample of 341 primary and secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. A series of confirmatory factor analyses were performed to assess the construct, convergent, and discriminant validity of the scale in alternative models. Results provide support for a second-order model with teacher engagement as an overarching construct with four hypothesized dimensions: emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, social engagement (students), and social engagement (colleagues). The C-ETS provides a useful measure for teacher engagement in Chinese societies. Contributions and limitations of the study are discussed.

The information paradox suggests that the black hole loses information when it emits radiation. In this way, the spectrum of radiation corresponds to a mixed (non-pure) quantum state even if the internal state generating the black hole is expected to be pure in essence. In this paper we propose an argument solving this paradox by developing an understanding of the process by which spontaneous symmetry breaks when a black hole selects one of the many possible ground states and emits radiation as a consequence of it. Here, the particle operator number is the order parameter. This mechanism explains the connection between the density matrix, corresponding to the pure state describing the black hole state, and the density matrix describing the spectrum of radiation (mixed quantum state). From this perspective, we can recover black hole information from the superposition principle, applied to the different possible order parameters (particle number operators).

In the 21st century, complex problem-solving (CPS) serves as a key indicator of educational achievement. However, the elements of successful CPS have not yet been fully explored. This study investigates the role of strategic exploration and different problem-solving and test-taking behaviors in CPS success, using logfile data to visualize and quantify students’ problemsolving behavior on 10 CPS problems with different characteristics and levels of difficulty. Additionally, in the present study, we go beyond the limits of most studies that focus on students’ problem-solving behavior pattern analyses in European cultures and education systems to examine Arabic students’ CPS behavior. The results show that computer-based assessments of CPS are feasible and valid in Jordanian higher education. The findings also confirm the structural validity of CPS, indicating that the processes of knowledge acquisition (KAC) and knowledge application (KAP) can be distinguished and separated in the problem-solving process. Large differences were identified in students’ test-taking behavior in terms of the efficacy of their exploration strategy. We identified four latent classes based on the students’ exploration strategy behavior. The study thus leads to a better understanding of how students solve problems and behave during the problem-solving process in uncertain situations.

This dissertation conducts a comparison of French Nouvelle Cuisine and Japanese Kaiseki Cuisine, exploring the similarities and differences of both cuisines and reflecting how cultural values, philosophical aspects, and historical influences have shaped contemporary dining experiences. In the examination of both cuisines, it takes into consideration aspects such as sensory experience, plating, and their underlying philosophical principles to demonstrate the interaction between aesthetics and culture particularly in relation to the culinary arts. French nouvelle cuisine was influenced by the Enlightenment, and this type of Western cuisine highlights a focus on texture and balance in flavor, emphasizing freshness, innovation, and intellectual artistry. Kaiseki cuisine inherited the tradition of the Japanese tea ceremony and is essentially rooted in Zen Buddhism. Some of the core aesthetic concepts in Kaiseki cuisine include seasonality, simplicity, and the aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi, emphasizing how humans should live in harmony with nature. As these two types of cuisines are compared, there will also be a comparison of Immanuel Kant’s aesthetics and how it is related to French nouvelle cuisine, as representative of a Western philosophical view and this will be compared to Japanese aesthetics in general and, in particular, the views on aesthetics of the Japanese philosopher Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, as representative of an Eastern philosophical view and its relation to culinary arts.

Today, gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls have become one of the sustainable development goals jointly regarded by the international community. As society's understanding of gender gradually becomes more diverse and open, more and more people are beginning to pay attention to men's needs. Although society generally recognizes gender equality and pays attention to the development of women, relatively little attention is paid to the development and needs of men. Men also have needs and expectations, and are influenced by society's traditional expectations in their willingness to participate in associations. This study outlines the phenomenon that men’s participation in community services is generally lower than that of women, and cites data from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and other places to support this view. Although gender equality is a global concern, there are relatively few protection policies and services specifically for men in Macau and surrounding areas. In the context of pursuing gender equality, men's rights and needs should not be ignored. Therefore, this study aims to explore men's motivations for participating in women's group social services. It uses qualitative research and a phenomenological approach to 15 invited respondents. Interview samples were collected through in-depth interviews. Different findings were obtained from the research results through the use of description and inductive analysis through the life stories of the interviewees. The research concluded that service can not only meet their personal needs and experience the achievement of development tasks, but also found the key experience factors, that is, the four major motivations for men to participate in clubs, including personal service spirit, personal life needs, maintenance Social relationships and personal interests and preferences and six elements of continuous participation, including contrast in values, tangible experience, feeling changed, having challenges and growth, improving horizons and knowledge, and feeling a sense of belonging. The study also obtained four suggestions from the interviewees for social services and their expected experiences. This study also inspired social workers to formulate comprehensive and targeted men's policies, not only to respond to the diverse needs of the men's group, but also to It is the key to promoting comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development of society. 現今性別平等與增強婦女和女童的權能，已成為國際社會共同視為持續發展目標之一。隨著社會對兩性的認知逐漸變得多元及開放，越來越多人士開始關注男士的需要。儘管社會普遍認同性別平等並關注婦女發展情況，但對男士的發展和需求關注相對不足。男士同樣有需求和期望，並且受社會傳統的期望影響參與社團的意願。 本研究概述了社團服務中男性參與度普遍低於女性的現象，並引用了香港、臺灣及澳門等地的數據來支撐這一觀點。儘管性別平等是全球關注的議題，但在澳門及周邊地區，專門針對男性的保護政策和服務相對較少。在追求性別平等的背景下，男士的權益和需求不應被忽視，因此本研究旨在探討男士參與婦女團體社會服務的動機，採用質性研究，以現象學方式，向受邀的 15 位受訪樣本，透過深度訪談蒐集資料。藉著受訪者闡述生活故事，運用描述及歸納分析，從研究結果中得到不同的發現。研究結論得出，服務既滿足到他們的個人需要，以及體 驗到發展任務的達成，另外找到了關鍵體驗的因素，即男士參與社團的四個動機，包括個人服務精神、個人生活需要、維繫社會關係、個人興趣與喜好以及六個持續參與元素，包括 價值觀的反差、切實之體驗、感受到改變、.有挑戰和成長、提升視野知識以及感覺歸屬感。 研究也得到了受訪者對社會服務的四個建議，以及他們期望的體驗，這樣研究同時啟發了社會工作者如何制定全面且有針對性的男士政策，不僅是回應男士群體多元化需求，更是推動社會全面、協調、可持續發展的關鍵所在。