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The purpose of this paper is to study compatibility variations in buyer-seller relationships between Mainland Chinese firms and Hong Kong Chinese buyer firms that act as intermediaries to markets in the West. Data are drawn from 19 multiple in-depth case study interviews with Mainland and Hong Kong Chinese firms and buyer firms from the West. Compatibility dimensions that provide further evidence of factors that underpin the nature of classical-type exchange arrangements, vis-à-vis relational relationships, within Chinese buyer-seller interactions are identified. Compatibility variations based on political and legal factors are driven by interpretation and application of Chinese state laws at the business and provincial levels rather than at the national level. Mainland Chinese tend to exhibit authoritative vis-à-vis Confucian-based practices and a short-term orientation within interactions. There is a need to expand the psychic distance composite to elucidate compatibility variations within the distinct provincial business regions of China. Quantitative studies to test for compatibility variability in China business practices across China are needed next. A better understanding of the nature of classical inclinations used by the Chinese is crucial, as is an understanding of how firms, both domestic and foreign, are able to leverage classical and relational relationships within Mainland China. Uncertainty associated with the entrepreneurial behaviours of Chinese businesspersons and a varying emphasis on traditional Confucian values in business result in a hybridisation of interactions across classical and relational types. Guanxi may be evolving beyond traditional social and personal trust as Mainland Chinese business relationships have advanced from the smaller scale CFB stage to the state-owned enterprise stage, and now to the larger and increasingly important world trade stage. The paper challenges shortcomings in research that has centred exclusively on the relational nature of Chinese business interactions, and it builds on previous research to study compatibility variations underpinning these Chinese interactions. It predicts a hybridisation of interactions amongst Chinese actors and provides a foundation for future quantitative research to study compatibility variations, and also classical-type business practices across China. Increased international market awareness may also be leading to the inclusion of an economic trust factor, driving classical-type Chinese buyer-seller relationships, as is more characteristic of arrangements found in Western exchanges.

Abstract With its large population and natural resources, Africa needs investors who can sustain its development. At the same time, foreign investors expect returns on their investments. In ...

The visual analysis of cardiotocographic examinations is a very subjective process. The accurate detection and segmentation of the fetal heart rate (FHR) features and their correlation with the uterine contractions in time allow a better diagnostic and the possibility of anticipation of many problems related to fetal distress. This paper presents a computerized diagnostic aid system based on digital signal processing techniques to detect and segment changes in the FHR and the uterine tone signals automatically. After a pre-processing phase, the FHR baseline detection is calculated. An auxiliary signal called detection line is proposed to support the detection and segmentation processes. Then, the Hilbert transform is used with an adaptive threshold for identifying fiducial points on the fetal and maternal signals. For an antepartum (before labor) database, the positive predictivity value (PPV) is 96.80% for the FHR decelerations, and 96.18% for the FHR accelerations. For an intrapartum (during labor) database, the PPV found was 91.31% for the uterine contractions, 94.01% for the FHR decelerations, and 100% for the FHR accelerations. For the whole set of exams, PPV and SE were both 100% for the identification of FHR DIP II and prolonged decelerations.

Crowdsensing exploits the sensing abilities offered by smart phones and users' mobility. Users can mutually help each other as a community with the aid of crowdsensing. The potential of crowdsensing has yet to be fully realized for improving public health. A protocol based on gamification to encoura...

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The knowledge of spatial distribution of grasshoppers can be very relevant for agricultural planning purposes. On the other hand, the comparison of spatial interpolators for efficiency and reliability reasons is also a key factor to understand interpolation maps outcomes (versus reality). At last, but not least, the use of open Web geographical tools to disseminate true spatial inferential methods to address spatial issues is still quite limited (if none) in high schools and universities, particularly in Geography subjects. If the latter can be addressed with myGeoffice©, the first issue will use the Utah, USA, dataset (58 samples) to layout the spatial distribution of grasshoppers and understand the counties that are more pro to this kind of agriculture infestation. Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW), Moving Average (MA), Multi-quadratic, Inverse Multi-quadratic and Nearest Neighbor (NN) will produce interpolated surfaces of grasshopper’s properties. Efficiency of spatial interpolators was assessed in this writing based on the prediction error’s statistics derived from the difference between the estimation and the real samples on a cross-validation procedure. Remarkably, results show that NN was the most accurate one when compared with the remaining deterministic approaches at sample’s locations.

It is plausible to assume that the component waves in ECG signals constitute a unique human characteristic because morphology and amplitudes of recorded beats are governed by multiple individual factors. According to the best of our knowledge, the issue of automatically classifying different ’identities’ of QRS morphology has not been explored within the literature. This work proposes five alternative mathematical models for representing different QRS morphologies providing the extraction of a set of features related to QRS shape. The technique incorporates mechanisms of combining the mathematical functions Gaussian, Mexican-Hat and Rayleigh probability density function and also a mechanism for clipping the waveform of those functions. The searching for the optimal parameters which minimize the normalized RMS error between each mathematical model and a given QRS search window enables to find an optimal model. Such modeling behaves as a robust alternative for delineating heartbeats, classifying beat morphologies, detecting subtle and anomalous changes, compression of QRS complex windows among others. The validation process evaluates the ability of each model to represent different QRS morphology classes within 159 full ECG signal records from QT database and 584 QRS search windows from MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database. From the experimental results, we rank the winning rates for which each mathematical model best models and also discriminates the most predominant QRS morphologies Rs, rS, RS, qR, qRs, R, rR’s and QS. Furthermore, the average time errors computed for QRS onset and offset locations when using the corresponding winner mathematical models for delineation purposes were, respectively, 12.87±8.5 ms and 1.47±10.06 ms.

In government studies, electronic government has become a hot topic in recent decades. Many scholars believe that soon, the government might not be able to operate smoothly without the help of ICTs as the Internet has been overwhelming people's daily lives already. In analyzing people's behavioral factors towards adopting e-government services, most studies targeted the adult population, while those in the hard-to-reach groups are minimal. This study was designed especially to understand the behavioral factors of the younger generation aged between 18 and 24 and the senior citizens above 60 on their adoption of e-government services in Macao SAR. Sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted based on the semi-structured interview questions developed from the prior literature on the Theory of Planned Behavior and e-government studies. Six significant findings are yielded, which could serve as an important reference for policymakers designing e-government policy and promoting its implementation strategy. These behavioral factors also contribute empirical data to support the theoretical framework of TPB in the context of Macao SAR e-government services.

If Australia has been subject to major influences by the United States and European countries, why is its economy healthier than their counter partners? What are the economic foundations that underline this anti-counter cycle of financial worldwide crisis from Australia? What are some of the lessons that countries from Europe that have not fared during the current financial worldwide crisis should learn from Australia? The purpose of this paper is to review the present Australian management system. Four changes are identified including embracement of corporate governance, a shift to adopt more R&D activities, a shift to adopt environmental sustainability practices and emerging corporate social responsibility. On the conclusions settings, a recap and recommendation on how Portugal, a member of the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) Southern European Countries club forgot to embrace directives that have been applied in Australia, to avoid the actual financial and identity crisis.

The use of learning analytics (LA) in real-world educational applications is growing very fast as academic institutions realize the positive potential that is possible if LA is integrated in decision making. Education in schools on public health need to evolve in response to the new knowledge and th...

Hydrology modeling became a relevant topic for the Cidade da Praia, Cabo Verde, Africa, due to negative impact risk to local population and its assets. The modeling via Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can help the decision-making process of space occupation and characterization for this type of risk. Under the municipalities of Praia, the phenomenon of flash flood is common, causing soil erosion and landslide. This constitutes a risk for the local habitat, particularly in districts with a lack of strong human infrastructures. To simulate, analyze and generate risk maps using GIS to help this county governance authorities for decision-making, thus, becomes the main aim of this article.

Background and objective Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR) is a condition in which a fetus does not grow to the expected weight during pregnancy. There are several well documented causes in the literature for this issue, such as maternal disorder, and genetic influences. Nevertheless, besides the risk during pregnancy and labour periods, in a long term perspective, the impact of IUGR condition during the child development is an area of research itself. The main objective of this work is to propose a machine learning solution to identify the most significant features of importance based on physiological, clinical or socioeconomic factors correlated with previous IUGR condition after 10 years of birth. Methods In this work, 41 IUGR (18 male) and 34 Non-IUGR (22 male) children were followed up 9 years after the birth, in average (9.1786 ± 0.6784 years old). A group of machine learning algorithms is proposed to classify children previously identified as born under IUGR condition based on 24-hours monitoring of ECG (Holter) and blood pressure (ABPM), and other clinical and socioeconomic attributes. In additional, an algorithm of relevance determination based on the classifier is also proposed, to determine the level of importance of the considered features. Results The proposed classification solution achieved accuracy up to 94.73%, and better performance than seven state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. Also, relevant latent factors related to HRV and BP monitoring are proposed, such as: day-time heart rate (day-time HR), day-night systolic blood pressure (day-night SBP), 24-hour standard deviation (SD) of SBP, dropped, morning cortisol creatinine, 24-hour mean of SDs of all NN intervals for each 5 minutes segment (24-hour SDNNi), among others. Conclusion With outstanding accuracy of our proposed solutions, the classification system and the indication of relevant attributes may support medical teams on the clinical monitoring of IUGR children during their childhood development.

The adoption of IoT for smart health applications is a relevant tool for distributed and intelligent automatic diagnostic systems. This work proposes the development of an integrated solution to monitor maternal and fetal signals for high-risk pregnancies based on IoT sensors, feature extraction based on data analytics, and an intelligent diagnostic aid system based on a 1-D convolutional neural network (CNN) classifier. The fetal heart rate and a group of maternal clinical indicators, such as the uterine tonus activity, blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and oxygen saturation are monitored. Multiple data sources generate a significant amount of data in different formats and rates. An emergency diagnostic subsystem is proposed based on a fog computing layer and the best accuracy was 92.59% for both maternal and fetal emergency. A smart health analytics system is proposed for multiple feature extraction and the calculation of linear and nonlinear measures. Finally, a classification technique is proposed as a prediction system for maternal, fetal, and simultaneous health status classification, considering six possible outputs. Different classifiers are evaluated and a proposed CNN presented the best results, with the F1-score ranging from 0.74 to 0.91. The results are validated based on the diagnosis provided by two specialists. The results show that the proposed system is a viable solution for maternal and fetal ambulatory monitoring based on IoT.

In 2000, the China-Africa relationship was further strengthened with the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The FOCAC offers a platform for consultation and cooperation mechanisms aimed at deepening diplomatic, security, trade and investment relations between China and African countries. Later came the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, an international trade network initiated by China that connects the three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa. The BRI focuses on the following key areas: cultural exchange; policy coordination; facilities connectivity; trade and investment; and financial integration. The BRI shares development objectives similar to those of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In fact, the BRI implements part of the SDGs and provides a practical mechanism to strengthen the Sino-Africa relationship, which Africa can leverage to meet its Sustainable Goals. Africa is linked through the “Road” of the BRI plan and has received infrastructural projects funded by China to facilitate trade and integration of the national economies along the trading route. Through the establishment of Economic and Trade Zones which attracts investments from Chinese companies, and building infrastructures such as sea ports and railways, China through the BRI framework is helping Africa meet UN SGD Goal 9 concerning industry, innovation and infrastructure. A practical effect is that the BRI is helping African countries overcome the infrastructure gap, create jobs, acquire skills and promote integration between countries.

South Korea management system has been influenced significantly by their traditional social and religious beliefs for hundreds of years. Yet, the 1997 Asian financial crisis has gradually confirmed this shifted, from the Confucius mentality to a close Westernized system. This paper aims to evaluate this management transition in South Korea. The theoretical model of the convergent-divergent, as proposed by Chatterjee and Nankervis [2006], is applied to identify a number of critical factors. The aforementioned factors altogether have influenced the management system in four main vectors: (A) From seniority to meritocracy performance management; (B) From consultative to individualistic decision-making style; (C) From ignoring to embracing corporate governance; (D) From avoiding to improving environmental sustainability.