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"This study explored the relationships of work-life balance and turnover intentions of full-time employees in Macao, and role of gender, parenting, and elderly care. Namely: (1) What is the relationship between work-life balance perceptions and turnover intentions? (2) What is the moderating role of gender in the relationship between work-life balance perceptions and turnover intentions? (3) What is the moderating role of parenting (i.e., having children or not) in the relationship between work-life balance perceptions and turnover intentions? And, (4) what is the moderating role of care for elderly family members (i.e., having to provide care or not) in the relationship between work-life balance perceptions and turnover intentions?"

According to the United Nations (UN) World Urbanization Prospects 2018, cities are growing in both size and number, posing challenges for sustainable development. With urbanization, the increase of impermeabilization and landscape fragmentation urges for territorial planning and resources management. To promote resilient and resourceful cites, strategic planning where nature-based solutions (NBS) are included into the built environment, counteracting the negative effects of urbanization through the provision of ecosystem services, should be considered. Green roofs (GR) are an example of NBS that provide a panoply of ecosystem services at the level of the building and city, besides contributing for climate change mitigation and adaptation. This NBS can be included in the urban planning agenda in the new building or as a retrofit solution in the existing built environment. Macao SAR (here mentioned as Macao) is the second more densely populated city in the world, according to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division. The present study aims to assess the inclusion of GR in Macao and assess the ecosystem services that they may provide in a holistic approach aligned with the city’s sustainable development. For this purpose, an extensive GR implemented in Taipa Island of Macao was monitored in terms of associated biodiversity and carbon cycle assessment. Further on, it was carried out a comparison between this GR and a conventional roof (CR) in terms of surface thermal buffering. The results of this study have shown to be very promising in terms of the applicability of GR in Macao and on the relevant ecosystem services that they can provide. First, data loggers were installed in the GR and CR to assess the impact on temperature mitigation. The GR had a significant effect in decreasing and buffering temperature at the surface, with temperatures of 35.6 ºC in the GR substrate comparing with temperatures of 57.7 ºC in the CR surface. The results show that GR can be a cost-efficiency strategy to reduce heating of buildings and their associated environmental and economic costs with cooling. Second, the biodiversity of plants and animals was assessed using a combination of methods. It was observed a high level of biodiversity under a low maintenance and low disturbance of GR vegetation, with 23 species of plants and 34 species of animals identified. This shows that GR can contribute to increase biodiversity in cities. Third, an experiment was run with leaf litter bags to investigate the role of macrofauna (e.g., insects) in the decomposition of organic matter. With macrofauna activity, the decomposition rate increased 17 % when compared to decomposition rates without macrofauna, suggesting that the animals harboured in GR, in particular insects, play a key role in organic matter decomposition and thus on the carbon cycle in cities. This work is, to our knowledge, the first empirical GR study in Macao. The results support the application of GR in Macao for temperature mitigation, biodiversity increase and carbon sequestration, promoting the integration of this NBS in the future urban planning and policy of the city. More generally, the work supports the use of GR as an important NBS to mitigate the impact of climate change in urban settings

This dissertation focused on the consumers’ consumption behavior in Macau flower retailers. It revealed what factors affect consumers’ choice of flower shops during purchase. Also, what contributes to the customers’ loyalty towards a flower retailer by having interviews with the female target groups aged between 20 to 50 who work in the office. This study is important to the flower business owner because the result can allow them to understand the thoughts and feelings of their consumer. By interviewing 11 heavy users of floral products with 16 questions based on the five consumption values, we can communicate with the consumers directly and learn the reasons behind their purchasing behavior. Questions have been divided into 5 consumption values according to the previous research by (Sheth, Newman, & Gros, 1991), including functional, conditional, social, emotional, and epistemic values. The research has collected data on how and at what level these values may affect consumer consumption choices individually. The finding part analyzed the reason why those values affect consumers’ choices. Most of the interviewees stated that service is the most important compared to quality because the owner should be enthusiastic to provide product information and understand the consumer very well to impress and retain them with good personal service

Establishing and improving the independent reading ability of middle school students has become one of the critical topics in the world, especially for second language learners. The cultivation of independent reading ability has specific challenges. This action research investigated the effectiveness of integrating robot-assisted teaching in reading lessons at lower primary grades. A group of third-grade students (n=15) participated in this research. The instruments include the pre-and post-test of a reading competency test (RCT) and motivational index (MI), a teacher reflection journal, and focus group discussion with parents. The whole intervention is conducted in two cycles, and requires the completion of four 40-minute lessons each week per cycle. The findings support the view that integrating robot-assisted teaching in the classroom can improve students' learning motivation to a certain extent, and that intervention programs positively impact students' learning motivation and independent reading ability in English. This study provides suggestion for the design of English reading instruction, and encourages English teachers to pay more attention to improving students' independent reading ability

The degree of economic integration in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA), as reflected in the mobility of trade and capital flows, has been strengthened by free trade agreements, but obstacles including border effects, capital controls, differences of exchange rate systems and inadequate cross-regional coordination remain. Digital renminbi (e-CNY) has been tested in Shenzhen, a core GBA city since April 2020. If e-CNY is adopted in the GBA, the area will effectively become a single currency zone. Whether the GBA constitutes an “optimum currency area” (OCA) depends on its degree of economic integration. This paper computes real interest rate differential (RID), uncovered interest rate differential (UID) and deviation from purchasing power parity (PPD) of each regional pair based on data of interest rates, exchange rates and price indexes from 2016M2 to 2022M7. All UID, PPD and RID series have means within about 1 percent point from 0, indicating high degrees of financial integration, real integration and economic integration. With the exception of Guangdong-Macau RID, all series are stationary, implying mean-reverting behavior. Hence, the parities are expected to hold both in the short run and in the long run, which is a condition for an OCA in the GBA. Furthermore, the regression analysis finds that the test launch of e-CNY in Shenzhen (adjusted for the COVID-19 outbreak) has significant impacts on all RIDs, Guangdong-Macau PPD and Hong Kong-Macau PPD. With merely two and a half years of test launch, the introduction of e-CNY already had impacts on overall economic integration in the GBA.

"The purpose of the research aimed to explore the challenges and future possiblities of ways of promoting elderly social participation in Macau. As lack of related research has been conduted in Macau, this community services and government policies and to provide suggestions for improving the direction of sustainable development and future possible research topics in this area. The research adopts a qualitative and phenomenological approach to explore the current situations, difficulties and ideas through the industry experience and insights. Nine in-depth interviews with 9 representatives of elderly social service providers subsidised by Macau SAR Government from late April to July 2022 in Macau. The content analysis using open coding to collect inductive data. Throughout themetic analysis identified by four levels: individials, community and social services, governmental policies and infrastructures. Overall, the study found that the autonomy trend of future social participation of the elderly in Macao is enhanced by education and self-health concerns and they are more independent, but the participation of male elders and female elders is unbalanced. Social service providers for the elderly provide a large number of repetitive services and are too passive and dependent on government policies andsupport, resulting in a lack of innovative thinking. The infrastructure design promoted by the government does not consider the continuous health and activity development of the elderly. This study looks at the ability of the elderly in Macau to continue to develop their strengths in the future, and suggests the need to strengthen individual retirement life planning and development for the elderly, personal health monitoring improvement, diversification of social services, elderly-led community programs, private social enterprise capital, and elderly volunteering The urgency of the number of elderly people, more practical and effective elderly inclusive urban planning."

We see security guards around in Macao in our daily lives and they are the ones who are responsible for protecting people’s safety and properties. Most security guards are non-local workers and might have different workplace stress levels. This study’s main aim is to investigate how job satisfaction and supervisory support are related to burnout among security guards in Macao. The research is carried out through a quantitative questionnaire to collect data and deliver it to the local and non-local security guards working in Macao. A total of 132 questionnaires were collected. It is expected that when security guards have higher job satisfaction and more supervisory support, they will experience less burnout. This intention enables the organization to make some changes to help the security guards from burnout due to job dissatisfaction and no supervisory support. The practical implication for reducing stress is introducing training courses such as mindfulness-based stress training programs. Future research will investigate other support like organizational support, peer support, and family and friends support on security guards

In view of the complex marine environment of navigation, especially in the case of multiple static and dynamic obstacles, the traditional obstacle avoidance algorithms applied to unmanned surface vehicles (USV) are prone to fall into the trap of local optimization. Therefore, this paper proposes an improved artificial potential field (APF) algorithm, which uses 5G communication technology to communicate between the USV and the control center. The algorithm introduces the USV discrimination mechanism to avoid the USV falling into local optimization when the USV encounter different obstacles in different scenarios. Considering the various scenarios between the USV and other dynamic obstacles such as vessels in the process of performing tasks, the algorithm introduces the concept of dynamic artificial potential field. For the multiple obstacles encountered in the process of USV sailing, based on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS), the USV determines whether the next step will fall into local optimization through the discrimination mechanism. The local potential field of the USV will dynamically adjust, and the reverse virtual gravitational potential field will be added to prevent it from falling into the local optimization and avoid collisions. The objective function and cost function are designed at the same time, so that the USV can smoothly switch between the global path and the local obstacle avoidance. The simulation results show that the improved APF algorithm proposed in this paper can successfully avoid various obstacles in the complex marine environment, and take navigation time and economic cost into account.

This study analyzed Tencent Holdings Limited’s internal and external factors and future strategies, forecasted the financial statements of the Company for the next ten years, and measured the intrinsic value of the Company on December 31, 2021 and compared it with the stock market price on the same date. The share price’s sensitivity analysis was also conducted to understand the Company's capital structure and profitability, and the sensitivity analysis can be used to reflect the impact of these factors and strategies on the future share price, which can have a high impact on investors' future investment decisions. This study also used the SWOT Analysis and Michael Porter's Five Forces Analysis to analyze the Company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and the Five Competitive Forces that shape the technology industry to evaluate the Company's external and internal environment and enrich the management with a more intuitive analysis leading to recommendations

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

The global pandemic triggered by the Corona Virus Disease firstly detected in 2019 (COVID-19), entered the fourth year with many unknown aspects that need to be continuously studied by the medical and academic communities. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), until January 2023, more than 650 million cases were officially accounted (with probably much more non tested cases) with 6,656,601 deaths officially linked to the COVID-19 as plausible root cause. In this Chapter, an overview of some relevant technical aspects related to the COVID-19 pandemic is presented, divided in three parts. First, the advances are highlighted, including the development of new technologies in different areas such as medical devices, vaccines, and computerized system for medical support. Second, the focus is on relevant challenges, including the discussion on how computerized diagnostic supporting systems based on Artificial Intelligence are in fact ready to effectively help on clinical processes, from the perspective of the model proposed by NASA, Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). Finally, two trends are presented with increased necessity of computerized systems to deal with the Long Covid and the interest on Precision Medicine digital tools. Analyzing these three aspects (advances, challenges, and trends) may provide a broader understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the development of Computerized Diagnostic Support Systems.

The scientific literature indicates that pregnant women with COVID-19 are at an increased risk for developing more severe illness conditions when compared with non-pregnant women. The risk of admission to an ICU (Intensive Care Unit) and the need for mechanical ventilator support is three times higher. More significantly, statistics indicate that these patients are also at 70% increased risk of evolving to severe states or even death. In addition, other previous illnesses and age greater than 35 years old increase the risk for the mother and the fetus, including a higher number of cesarean sections, higher systolic and diastolic maternal blood pressure, increasing the risk of eclampsia, and, in some cases, preterm birth. Additionally, pregnant women have more Emotional lability/fluctuations (between positive and negative feelings) during the entire pregnancy. The emotional instability and brain fog that takes place during gestation may open vulnerability for neuropsychiatric symptoms of long COVID, which this population was not studied in depth. The present Chapter characterizes the database presented in this work with clinical and survey data collected about emotions and feelings using the Coronavirus Perinatal Experiences—Impact Survey (COPE-IS). Pregnant women with or without COVID-19 symptoms who gave birth at the Assis Chateaubriand Maternity Hospital (MEAC), a public maternity of the Federal University of Ceara, Brazil, were recruited. In total, 72 mother-infant dyads were included in the study and are considered in this exploratory analysis. The participants have undergone serological tests for SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection and a nasopharyngeal swab test for COVID-19 diagnoses by RT-PCR. A comprehensive Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) is performed using frequency distribution analysis of multiple types of variables generated from numerical data, multiple-choice, categorized, and Likert-scale questions.

Starbucks Corporation (hereinafter “Starbucks” or “the Company”) is a worldwide coffee retailer, which operates over 33,000 stores located in over 83 countries nowadays. The purpose of the study is to estimate Starbucks’ intrinsic value as of December 31, 2021 and identify whether the Company was overvalued or undervalued. Several analyses give investors and shareholders an insight into how the Company may develop or identify the ability to generate positive returns from investing in Starbucks. This study is mainly separated into two aspects. The first part specifically discusses the Company overview, industry analysis, and economic outlook, which includes SWOT analysis, PESTEL analysis, Porter's five forces analysis, and value chain analysis to identify external and internal factors that may influence the Company. The second part focuses on financial analyzes, including both historical and forecasted financial statement. Three valuation models and a sensitive analysis are applied to understand the Company’s financial conditions and performance. Starbucks’ intrinsic value is derived from the three discounted cash flow models, indicating the market overvalued the Company’s stock price as of December 31, 2021. Finally, investors and shareholders can understand more about Starbucks’ capital structure, financial highlights, and intrinsic value, because this set of information is critical for existing investors and potential investors to make investment decisions

Road transportation is one of the main sources of air pollution in Macao. This study mainly explores four major roadside locations with high traffic flow in Macao from March to May 2022 and measures their pollutant concentrations (PM10 and PM2.5), traffic flow and their fuel type, as well as considering the meteorological parameters and pollutant concentration of SMG Macao to analyze the relationship between traffic flow and pollutants on roadside locations. Under the measuring distance between 3 and 6 meters, showing that the four locations had a good correlation with the roadside station data provided by SMG on both weekdays and weekends/holidays (PM2.5: R2 is 0.59 to 0.81 on weekdays and 0.79 to 0.88 on weekends/holidays, p<0.01; PM10: R2 is 0.33 to 0.82 on weekdays and 0.30 to 0.58 on weekends/holidays, p<0.05), the overall PM2.5 is 41 to 86% higher than that of the same period of Macao roadside station (SMG), and 68 to 186% higher than that of Taipa Ambient (SMG), indicating that it is more harmful to daily pedestrians. The overall relationship between PM concentration and traffic flow is small on the long-term scale (PM2.5: R2 is 0.01 to 0.13; PM10: R2 is 0.00 to 0.02). This study also analyzed air quality on EBL, the overall PM2.5 and PM10 decreased by 12.3% to 24.8% compared with non-EBL during the period, so that is indeed beneficial to the reduction of pollutant concentrations. In addition, narrower roads were overall higher when road widths added for comparison. Lastly, meteorological data added for comparison, except for relative humidity, it can be found that there is a significant correlation with long-term pollutants (p<0.05). While previous studies have found that single-day traffic flow is related to the increase in PM concentration, this paper is more inclined to their two-way effect when exploring their long-term relationship

Nowadays marketers and practitioners recognize the importance of social marketing as a strategy to acquire customers. Accordingly, the enterprises and brands are embracing the use of social network in communicating with potential consumers ad actual consumers, in order its performance so as to increase its sales. Among all those social media platforms, Instagram is one of the platforms which is image orientated and can easily connect with users and provide information with photos and images. As Macau is small‐sized city where there are abundant small to medium‐sized enterprises, the local small firms are switching their marketing strategies by utilizing the Instagram to promote their product online. In order to get a better grasp of how Instagram affects the promotion of the food and beverage product in Macau, the research question has been formulated: “To what extend can the local food sectors in Macau use Instagram as a marketing tool to engage purchasing intention and strengthen their brand equity? From the perspective of customers.” Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 13 participants who are the Instagram users, with diverse situations of engagement on Instagram. According to the interviews, participants expressed that how Instagram can associate effects with arousal and brand equity (brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality and brand loyalty) and formation of purchase intention eventually through the Instagram marketing activities. The results showed that Instagram marketing activities strongly correlated the brand equity (brand awareness, brand image, and perceived quality while which in turn led to purchasing intention towards the brand. This research comprehensively illustrates the influences of Instagram marketing activities on customer‐based brand equity. The findings of this study will enable local food brands to more accurately forecast the future purchasing behaviors of their customers through Instagram marketing activities and provide a guide in managing brand equity as well