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This research explored the potential of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted learning using ChatGPT in an engineering course at a university in South-east Asia. The study investigated the benefits and challenges that students may encounter when utilising ChatGPT-3.5 as a learning tool. This research developed an AI-assisted learning flow that empowers learners and lecturers to integrate ChatGPT into their teaching and learning processes. The flow was subsequently used to validate and assess a variety of exercises, tutorial tasks and assessment-like questions for the course under study. Introducing a self-rating system allowed the study to facilitate users in assessing the generative responses. The findings indicate that ChatGPT has significant potential to assist students; however, there is a necessity for training and offering guidance to students on effective interactions with ChatGPT. The study contributes to the evidence of the potential of AI-assisted learning and identifies areas for future research in refining the use of AI tools to better support students' educational journey. Implications for practice or policy • Educators and administrators could review the usage of ChatGPT in an engineering technology course and study the implications of generative AI tools in higher education. • Academics could adapt and modify the proposed AI-assisted learning flow in this paper to suit their classroom. • Students can review and adopt the proposed AI-assisted learning flow in this paper for their studies. • Researchers could follow up on the application of ChatGPT in teaching and learning: teaching quality and student experience, academic integrity and assessment design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most inter-state comparisons of education systems are limited to figures on participation in higher education. In contrast, this paper presents a new metric that takes into account the hierarchical structure of education systems and focuses on access to higher education. These continuation rates were collected for up to 180 countries and 120 years and show that, although expansion started in the 1990s, a relatively high number of education systems currently still have rather elite access to higher education, despite high enrolment rates in secondary schools. Interstate differences are attributed in this paper, among other things, to colonial pasts. Although a clear association of rising continuation rates and rising unemployment among the highly educated is not apparent, it is worth considering regional variation in labour markets. This is because in the regions of West Asia and North Africa, which are characterised by above-average youth unemployment, the unemployment rate among the highly educated is also rising sharply. Here, expanding access to higher education does not appear to fulfil the promise of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning is nowadays popular area of science research. As the amount of accessible data is still increasing, therefore the machine learning methods can be used for many applications. One of the more detailed topics, which is commonly analyzed in practice in regard to financial decision supporting, is the support for decision making on stock market. It has been noticed that the main focus is on the developed markets like in Asia, West Europe or USA. As the Polish stock market is also recognized as the developed market, here in opposite to Asia, West Europe or USA markets, the shortage of practical implementation of machine learning algorithms is perceptible. With this paper various learning algorithms have been used to determine its backtesting performance. The main goal of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of selected machine learning algorithms and to find the best one for stock data by comparing several selected algorithms using a backtesting environment on the same data sets and general parameters. For this purpose, experiments were carried out on one random seed and then out on 100 different seeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plasmodium knowlesi malaria infection in humans has been reported throughout southeast Asia. The communities at risk are those living in areas where Macaque monkeys and Anopheles mosquito are present. Zoonotic malaria control is challenging due to the presence of the reservoir host and the possibility of human-vector-human transmission. Current control measures, including insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), are insufficient to address this threat due to gaps in protection associated with outdoor and early evening vector biting and social and economic activities, such as agricultural and forest work. Understanding the challenges faced by affected communities in preventing mosquito bites is important for reducing disease transmission. This opinion paper discusses opportunities to improve P. knowlesi malaria control through understanding the challenges faced by communities at risk and increasing community engagement and ownership of control measures. The paper highlights this issue by describing how the concept of reimagining malaria can be adapted to zoonotic malaria control measures including identifying current gaps in vector control, understanding interactions between environmental, economic, and human behavioral factors, and increasing community participation in and ownership of control measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecosystem services (ES) approach has been widely applied for assessing nature's values and human-nature links. Over the past two decades, this research approach has experienced remarkable growth, exerting global influence on the sustainability policy agenda. Recent literature indicates that North America, Europe, East Asia, and Australia are major contributors to ES research, while other regions are progressing at a slower pace. Many countries in these regions remain under-represented due to various factors, including but not limited to knowledge transfer gaps, disparities in research capacities, as well as distinct needs and challenges among researchers in the Global North and South. Although the ES literature in Asia is growing in topics, methodologies, quality and quantity, many Asian researchers, especially Early Career Researchers (ECRs), still face problems typical of the Global South while conducting ES research. In this paper, we outline four major challenges from the perspective of ECRs. They include: 1) Inequality in career prospects and capacity-building, 2) Inequality and challenges in data access & knowledge transfer, 3) Circulation of research findings in global scientific publishing, 4) Challenges in funding. This perspective paper draws special attention to the challenges faced by ECRs in ES research in Asia. By presenting recommendations, we strongly advocate that the research community work together to make ES research a level playing field for ECRs like ourselves working in Asia and elsewhere. • We provide an overview of the inequalities in scientific production on Ecosystem Services in Asia. • From an early career perspective we highlight four key categories young researchers face difficulties in. • These include: career prospects & capacity-building, data access & knowledge transfer, access to publishing, and funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The state of knowledge production and circulation - or what is framed as "relevant" knowledge within academic cultures of learning and teaching - is intimately tied to the global concept of what is "marketable". Closely associated with this are opportunities for teaching and research funding, graduate scholarship awards, the employment of research and teaching staff and curriculum design. In Asia, the corporatisation of universities and their departments intensified in the 1990s and early 2000s. This stemmed from a complex interplay of historical and structural conditions and pressures, including the colonial legacy of cultural, intellectual and economic dependency. In this paper, the author argues that what is necessary in these contexts in Asia, in line with the call for what are now broadly termed "alternative discourses" from scholars such as Syed Farid Alatas and Vineeta Sinha, is the teaching of a social science tradition created and expanded by scholars who are guided by the selection of problems and relevance from within. In broad contours, alternative discourses refer to the theorising and conceptualisation of social science in Asia and elsewhere that emerged from dissatisfaction with mainstream Euro-American-oriented models, research agendas and priorities. More specifically, the article interrogates the focus on teaching and pedagogy, which has, among other things, resulted in a displacement of attention from issues that should be of crucial consideration to Asian societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phishing attacks, based on social engineering to persuade potential victims to provide valuable information, have significantly increased in the pandemic Covid-19 era, characterised by ubiquitous big data technologies. This paper aims to assess the theoretical and empirical research on phishing emails and big data that has been done to identify trends and recommend new areas for research. Using the VOSviewer program, the search results from the Web of Science (WoS) database were extracted. A mapping technique, using VoS Viewer, was used to examine articles on big data and phishing emails. The findings show that most of the field's research is carried out in nations in Asia and the United States of America and that the number of publications in this area is increasing exponentially. However, it is evident that researchers predominately concentrate on technical fields like computer science. Even though they are used in relatively small quantities, machine learning techniques, particularly artificial neural networks, are associated with most of the phishing publications that have been studied. Six clusters correspond to the main phishing domains: Phishing target or victim, Phishing channel, Big data analytics, Big data machine learning, Phishing attacker, and External phishing protection. The results indicate that real-time data collection and the development of effective algorithms are new approaches to combating phishing assaults. However, research outside of the technical domains is scarce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This study aims to investigate how leadership competencies (cognitive, interpersonal, and results-oriented competencies) and four dimensions of organizational learning (knowledge acquisition, knowledge distribution, knowledge interpretation, and organizational memory) contribute to organizational performance of tourism firms. Design/Methodology - Data were collected from leaders working at various tourism establishments in Vietnam - a developing country in the Asia. Smart-PLS software was used to perform structural equation modelling of 638 valid responses. Findings - The results showed that among the three proposed leadership competencies, only managers' result orientation exerted a significant influence on organizational performance. Knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing were fully influenced by the three leadership competencies, while knowledge interpretation and organizational memory were facilitated by the cognitive and outcome-oriented competencies. Knowledge acquisition and knowledge interpretation were positively related to organizational performance. The mediating effect of organizational learning was supported by the existence of knowledge acquisition. Originality of the research - Although the topics of leadership competencies, organizational learning, and organizational performance have received a great concern among worldwide academia, there is scarce research examining the relationships among these three phenomena together. This paper is among the first study that offers a more comprehensive model of the relationship between these domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motivation for developing a rehabilitation lower-limb exoskeleton robot was to provide functional robot-assisted therapy for assisting physiotherapists in improving hemiplegic patients' walking recovery. Rehabilitation tasks required robust and precise trajectory-tracking performance, mainly achieved with exoskeleton robots. This paper presents a study on the gait trajectory cycles of a rehabilitation lower-limb exoskeleton robot controlled by an Admittance Swarm Initialized Adaptive (ASIA). The aim of this paper was to develop a robust adaptive controller integrated with admittance model to overcome human–robot interaction forces generated by the wearer. The parameters of the ASIA controller were efficiently initialized using swarm beetle antenna searching. An experiment was conducted on a prototype lower limb exoskeleton with four degrees of freedom, involving a healthy human subject for gait trajectory analysis. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of control performance, steady-state error reduction, and robustness. The statistical analysis revealed that the ASIA performed 63 %, 53 % and 48 % less in average error compared to adaptive conventional controllers used in the same exoskeleton platform. The findings ascertained the potential of the ASIA controller in improving human mobility through lower limb exoskeleton applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore the Web of Science Database (WOS) and review the significant contributions to the research of Fuzzy Logic or Fuzzy Sets theory from the beginning to the present. This study analyzes the most eminent authors, institutions, countries, and journals in Fuzzy Logic research by applying science mapping methods and bibliometric measures. Also, we paid attention to link strength and h-index to represent the visibility, influence, and link between the representative authors. Moreover, we added descriptive statistics to highlight strong linearity and a connection between fuzzy publications and Fuzzy Logic research. Also, we applied regression analyses and prevision functions to predict the evolution of the Fuzzy Logic topic. The results showed a significant increase in the number of papers published annually in a portfolio of internationally representative journals. This leads us to the idea that Fuzzy Logic research is now a transdisciplinary topic that continually develops. Therefore, it can be found in more and more related areas such as artificial intelligence, IoT, medicine, economics, or the environment. Most of the results are consistent with other bibliometric studies. Still, some results are different, results related to the current cited works that show a polarization in the Asia area and the top journals that is continuously changing depending on the number of papers and the quotations of scientific personalities that publish. We used the VOS Viewer software to map the main trends in the field. The results indicate that the use of concepts has long exceeded traditional boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to understand the development of good governance research worldwide covering the practices by the public and private institutions. Design/methodology/approach - A bibliometric study on 3,375 scientific papers from 1990 to 2018 was conducted, and the data was analyzed to examine the trends and challenges in the worldwide scientific productions for good governance. Findings - Most research comes from scholars in the high-income countries (70%) and has moved from classical socio-economic topics of good public governance to sustainable environmental development. Post-colonial politics and economy remain unending discussion on good governance in Africa and Asia. Exporting the implementation of good governance from wealthier countries attracts critics and arguments from the third countries. Practical implications - 3,375 scientific papers used in this research was collected from Scopus database. While it was not the only existing scientific research database, the collection could not guarantee the sample adequacy of the worldwide scientific knowledge on good governance. There are papers that are not Open Access (OA), written in other languages, published in regional/national journals, nor have significant academic impact. Originality/value - The authors recognize that this study is the first evaluation ever. The result provides the first scientific reference for probing the worldwide practices of good governance for public and private sectors. Under the changing world environment in the form of digital transformation, the rise of intangible economy, and the worldwide trend of coexistence between nationalism and globalism; this paper can provoke the policymakers to rethink good governance both for public and private institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-first century learners are media-centric and heavily reliant on technology. Internet-accessible resources are always at the students' fingertips and they learn through such resources anywhere, anytime. Unfortunately, formal education in most part of Asia remains largely examination focused given the immense pressure to obtain paper qualifications. Our challenge today is how do we make students learn on their own volition? How do we then sustain learning when the education system is still very much examination-centric? Success in learning is not always dependent on the ways students are taught in the classroom or the tools they use to learn but can be very much affected by the learners' affective characteristics. This paper highlights two selected affective characteristics-- attitudes and interest, as previous and current literature continue to suggest their positive impact on student behavior including learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of uninterpreted ancient documents exist in Asia, which record a large amount of information about the politics, economy, and culture. Since the beginning of oracle bone inscription, characters have been developing and evolving, and the forms of ancient documents have also been changing. As a large amount of information is preserved in ancient documents, the interpretation and collation of ancient documents are of great importance. However, due to the age, many ancient documents are moth-eaten, stained, damaged, and other problems. And most ancient documents are written in a style that is no longer in use, leaving few experts able to interpret them. This paper from oracle bone inscription, ancient hand-written character, rubbings three diferent types of ancient documents, introduces the recognition technology of assisted ancient documents re-organization including image processing, deep learning, and data analysis and deep learning combined method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microplastics pose a significant environmental threat, with potential implications for toxic chemical release, aquatic life endangerment, and human food chain contamination. In Asia, rapid economic growth coupled with inadequate waste management has escalated plastic pollution in rivers, positioning them as focal points for environmental concern. Despite Asia's rivers being considered the most polluted with plastics globally, scholarly attention to microplastics in the region's freshwater environments is a recent development. This study undertakes a systematic review of 228 scholarly articles to map microplastic hotspots in Asian freshwater systems and synthesize current research trends within the continent. Findings reveal a concentration of research in China and Japan, primarily investigating riverine and surface waters through net-based sampling methods. Polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) emerge as the predominant microplastic types, frequently observed as fibers or fragments. However, the diversity of sampling methodologies and reporting metrics complicates data synthesis, underscoring the need for standardized analytical frameworks to facilitate comparative analysis. This paper delineates the distribution of microplastic hotspots and outlines the prevailing challenges and prospects in microplastic research within Asian freshwater contexts. [Display omitted] • Comprehensive review in Asian freshwater environments, based on 228 publications. • Microplastic hotspots identified in Asian rivers, highlighting pollution concerns. • Most studies use nets to sample rivers and surface waters. • PE, PP, and PET are the prevalent types, mainly as fibers or fragments. • Need for standardization of analytical methods for enhanced quantitative comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to develop a refined gravity model for the quantitative assessment of competitive hub status of cities between 2000 and 2012 from the perspective of international air traffic movements. Its focus of attention is Europe and Asia, where cross border competition has been witnessed among major cities for the role as a key international air traffic hub. To this end, the research incorporates global network connectivity (GNC) as a measure of business connections into an established gravity model that previously relied on GDP per head, population and distance to account for international air links. The results confirm the dynamic change of the air transport city hierarchy, demonstrating a stronger presence of a number of previously secondly ranked cities as international air traffic hubs over this period. The paper concludes with suggestions that possible extension of geographical scope and incorporation of domestic air traffic could enrich the insight of this approach. • Hub status of cities is assessed from an international air traffic perspective. • Networks of inter-city air traffic flows in Europe and Asia are explored. • Business connectivity is the most powerful in explaining international air links. • Secondly ranked cities are now more prominent in the region's urban hierarchies. • New airports and integrators' hubs have significant effect on cities' mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If two self-connected individuals are connected, it follows in classical extensional mereotopology that the sum of those individuals is self-connected too. Since mainland Europe and mainland Asia, for example, are both self-connected and connected to each other, mainland Eurasia is also self-connected. In contrast, in non-extensional mereotopologies, two individuals may have more than one sum, in which case it does not follow from their being self-connected and connected that the sum of those individuals is self-connected too. Nevertheless, one would still expect it to follow that a sum of connected self-connected individuals is self-connected too. In this paper, we present some surprising countermodels which show that this conjecture is incorrect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread recognition of the right to a nationality, statelessness and its attendant vulnerabilities continue to characterize the lives of millions in South Asia. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when states turned inward to protect their own citizens, refugees and de facto stateless persons found themselves excluded from humanitarian services and health care and were denied the ability to claim rights. Stateless women faced the additional burden of gender-based violence, a hostile labor market, and the threat of trafficking. This paper analyzes gender and statelessness as vectors of exclusion in South Asia, where asylum seekers are neither recognized by law nor protected by social institutions. We argue that citizenship constitutes an unearned form of social capital that is claimed and experienced in distinctively gendered ways. The pandemic has shone a bright light on the perils of statelessness, particularly for women, who face exacerbated economic inequities, the forced commodification of their sexuality, and exclusion from mechanisms of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of posthumanism and the proliferation of neoliberal rationality have not only changed the meaning of the word human, but also the status of the human. Technological autonomy overpowers and replaces human agency and the human becomes marginal and peripheral on a planetary scale; in the same manner that humans have lost control over the machine, they have also lost control over their agentic narrative on a global scale and on a literary one. And in the same way neoliberal commodification reduces humans to non-humans and transforms technology to a transcendent other that can transform and control the body, neoliberal posthumanism transformed the genre of the novel. The authors argue that the decentralization of the human, triggered by posthumanism, and the commodification of the genre of the novel, triggered by neoliberalism, transformed the most popular subgenre of the novel, the bildungsroman into a geschäftsroman. There is considerable evidence that indicates that many contemporary novels no longer focus on the growth of human beings, but rather on the growth of businesses, instead. This paper analyzes Mohsin Hamid's How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), arguing that it is a poignant example of a geschäftsroman, in which the human is decentralized and the growth of the city and the development of the economy become the narrative's nucleus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Southeast Asia as an example, this paper is a plea for a reconciliation of diverging epistemologies in Area Studies. The argument is for a moderate realism that conceptualises areas as socially constructed but based on empirical research. The southeastern part of Asia, being extremely diverse -- historically a mixing zone with no hegemonic dominant civilisation and currently lacking a truly regional power -- provides us with a litmus test for area methodology. In reclaiming a spatial reality this contribution systematically develops steps towards a realist approach to Area Studies. This is done by demonstrating that the core of Area Studies should be seen in a theory and methodology of socio-spatial relations. With regard to theoretical approaches and methods it is argued that the notion of family resemblance and the method of social network analysis are especially fruitful by allowing for a critically reflected and yet empirically oriented study of areas in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we offer personal accounts along the Educator Track from Instructor to Associate Professor as members of an English Language Centre at a leading research-intensive university in Asia. The Educator Track is a career pathway growing in significance and status and now boasts a full professorial grade. Our narratives provide an overview of what we and our institution deem as excellence in scholarly teaching leading to our recent promotions along the track. We also detail some of our identity construction processes as practitioners and how our Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has progressed over our careers. We draw on three frameworks. The first, Kern et al.'s (2015) Dimensions of Activities Related to Teaching, enables us to map what we do. The second, Shulman's (2005) Habits of Mind, Hand, and Heart, is used to present important elements of how we teach our content and rationalize why we teach it. The last, Quinlan's (2014) concept of Leadership of Teaching for Student Learning links the Associate Professor role to engagement in the wider community beyond the classroom. We hope that these accounts might help further understanding of what it means to be on the Educator Track at a research-intensive university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Our paper reviews current teaching practices used to support students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the South Asian region, and to what extent these teaching practices reflect key research based effective practices. We have focused our attention on teaching practices at a time when we are witnessing a greater thrust towards achieving inclusive education at both, regional and global levels. Methods: We have used an eclectic approach for the study by employing a scoping review methodology to identify peer reviewed journal articles from South Asian countries. Having identified 10 articles and three dissertations in total from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, we have used a matrix method to present our data against nine best teaching practices for students with ASD. Results: Results from the review indicate three practices (of the nine best teaching practices) were most frequently used. These are assessments, alternative, and augmentative communication systems, and parent-implemented instruction/program. The other six teaching practices were not widely reported. Conclusions: We identify significant implications for practitioners, educators, and teacher education programs within the Asian region and beyond. The use of an eclectic approach in making choices regarding teaching strategies, incorporating varied research based effective teaching practices, and following a systematic and informed approach of assessments – teaching interventions – ongoing evaluation are key to supporting students with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the potential of Area Studies to inform scientific inquiry for urban sustainability. It draws from two strains of scholarship: the systemic and place-based research on sustainability and the post-1989 reflection on the conceptual foundations of Area Studies. The author starts from the assumption that Area Studies and sustainability research share a similar concern over place(s), shaped over time by human-to-nature and human-to-human relations. He then lays down two pathways for the contribution of Area Studies to urban sustainability research. The first reflects the role of Area Studies in overcoming disciplinary and sectorial barriers, fostering holistic understandings of sustainability. The second relates to the capacity for self-reflexivity inherent in Area Studies, which nurtures critical approaches to the study of sustainability. Once its epistemological and ethical potential is unearthed, Area Studies can become a thriving trans-disciplinary field informing socio-ecological transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Resilience’ is the catchword of the moment. For many of the mainstream institutions of international development, building resilience is embedded in a wider commitment to market liberalism. Taking three entry points, the sectoral, spatial and socio-governmental, this paper critically explores the connections, interdependencies and tensions between social resilience and the market imperative. The paper argues that ‘liberal resilience’ plays into a growth-development-resilience ‘trap’ wherein economic growth has become a de facto synonym for development and, often, development a synonym for resilience. Drawing on empirical cases from across rural Asia we highlight the incongruities and inconsistencies in this line of logic. The paper suggests that there is a need to critically judge the market mechanism and the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which the processes that have been set in train by market integration impinge on resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the Asian influence in Europe is presented. It talks about the Tartar influence in European Russia. The author discusses his travels through Russia and the crossing of the Caucasus Mountains into Europe. Subjects of the paper also include tribes of Jews in the mountains, the Armenian Plain, and Tartar mill-work.

Megacities in Asia have been growing and showing dynamic ‘compressed’ changes. Tokyo, Bangkok and Shanghai are serving as the centre of finance, production and other functions of the region, while disparities within the city are widening to form multi-layered stratification. Besides, in the advancement of globalisation, they now experience uncertainty, insecurity, and more difficult new challenges – facing challenges of global cities in developed countries and of cities in developing countries simultaneously. In order to consider social environment where individual can live well in such Asian cities, this paper explores potential urban risks, risk responses, and actual condition of well-being of urban residents in three cities. The data from field survey show that Tokyo residents face to the work-related problems, while shanghai and Bangkok residents to the fundamental economic risks. As the responses to those risks, all three cities use some personal networks to ensure enough resources to overcome, even if what relationships they have developed and how to use those vary. An interesting but not surprising finding is that, despite a better living condition, Tokyo residents show the lowest level of life satisfaction among the surveyed cities. In reality, there is a limit in responding to the public needs due to the austerity, which results in a serious policy dilemma. Managing the urban risks in a creative way by multi-actors in local context, such as involving individuals’ personal networks, is one of the key challenges to be tackled for the future development and economic and social sustainability of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of internationalization in higher education is understood as the recruitment of international students, marketing of academic programs and courses, and teaching English as a Second Language to student cohorts from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Various models of internationalization (Knight, 2004, 2006; Leask, 2009; Pimpa, 2009; Welikala, 2011) have been explored and promoted in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Often, as noted in the literature, these models emphasize the acculturation of international students into the host country culture rather than a respectful exchange of academic and cultural knowledge and ideas. The central thesis of this critical reflective discussion paper is that glocalization in higher education is an appropriate alternative to internationalization. Glocalization advocates a positive learning experience and encourages the enhancement of learners' glocal experience through a critical academic and cultural exchange of global and local socio-economic and political issues. Instructional strategies supporting glocalized learning curricula are recommended. The glocalization pedagogical framework for higher education, introduced in this paper, embraces the principles of social responsibility and justice with a firm commitment to sustainable futures for local and global societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precarity among low-skilled temporary migrant workers in Asia is well documented, particularly concerning migrant women in domestic work in countries of the Gulf region and in East Asia. In this paper, we first examine the intersection of gender and type of work by comparing men and women, but also by comparing women engaged in domestic work and those working in manufacturing. Second, we analyse indicators of precarity through the entire migration process: pre-departure, time abroad, and return. Based on descriptive analyses from survey data collected in 2009 from 499 former Vietnamese migrant workers who worked in Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan between 2000 and 2009, our results indicate differences in (1) moments of precarity, (2) types of precarity, and (3) levels of precarity. This paper unpacks how gender is central to an understanding of precariousness in migration but also how it may intersect with other important variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the focus of CBR action is at the community level, it is pertinent to note some of the Asia-Pacific region's overall development trends. In an interconnected world, these trends have significant implications for the practice of CBR and its advancement in the region. This paper discusses how CBR could give impetus to a community-supported self-help movement for change. The paper presents seven prisms for a kaleidoscopic view to highlight some parameters that are unique to the Asia- Pacific scenario for CBR. The relevance of CBR for this region is discussed in relation to two groups of issues: the first refers to chronic issues of poverty, hunger and inequalities; and the second, to dramatic emerging challenges, from urbanisation to the current economic scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Asian region, most populous and fastest growing in terms of economic growth, has countries with lowest per capita energy/electricity consumption. Barring the Middle East, the rest of the region is, by and large, modest in conventional energy resources. This is also a region where large sections of population suffer from income inequality and inadequate economic development. Economic growth and quality of life of a population depend heavily on per capita availability of energy/electricity, and thus there is an urgent need to increase the per capita electricity production/consumption in the region. Unlike in the past, it is the Asian region that is poised to dwarf the today''s developed world in new capacity addition in the coming years. This fact alone asks for sensible choices to be made. Also, the Asian region is quite vulnerable to the effects of climate change, given the geography and population distribution. Today, governments must seriously consider the environmental impact of electricity generation, in order to help mitigate global warming and its consequences. Nuclear power, being environmentally benign, affords sustainability at the very outset. But that''s not all. The other compelling reasons in favour of nuclear power are its compact nature as a source of energy and the promise of long-term energy security. Nuclear power is, therefore, inevitable for the region. Recognising this, the rapidly developing countries in the region – such as India and China – are pursuing ambitious nuclear power programmes, while several other countries in the region are also planning to embark on the nuclear power route for electricity generation. As nuclear power is inherently technology-intensive, there is a need for greater cooperation, to reach out to countries that presently do not have the technology base for starting nuclear power programmes on their own. Even in the countries with established commercial nuclear power programmes, there is a need to reach out to the people to demonstrate the merits, safety aspects and economic competitiveness of nuclear power, and also the role of nuclear power in the preservation of the environment. The imperatives of the current scenario warrant building confidence among the people regarding nuclear power through sharing of credible information on all its aspects to remove misconceptions. This paper describes the current scenario, key issues, challenges and possible ways to address them. The paper also briefly describes the Indian nuclear power programme for being the second -most aggressive player in the nuclear arena in this region, after China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Contributing to the wider field of studies of international communication strategies by major international fora, this study investigates a scholarly vacuum - the role of visibility in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). A novelty of this inquiry is that it is carried out on endogenous (i.e. deriving internally in ASEM) and exogenous (i.e. originating externally to ASEM) levels. Addressing the former perspective, this paper examines ASEM's official discourse and its vision of the role of visibility. Addressing the latter, exogenous perspective, the paper explores a rarely addressed dimension in ASEM studies, namely personal perceptions of the forum among Asian national elites (the opinions expressed by representatives of political, business, media and civil society circles in Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand). The main rationale is to assess whether the degree of ASEM's visibility positively correlates to the direct involvement of the stakeholders into or to the achievement of the process. Positing its inquiry within a social constructivist perspective, this article argues that, instead of being conceptualised as the end-goal, visibility should be understood as an element in the construction of the Asia-Europe relations under the ASEM framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Global sustainability is increasingly influenced by processes of industrialisation and urbanization in non-OECD countries, especially in Asia. Growth models suggest that developing economies and regions will become first relatively more resource- and pollution-intensive, before converging on more resource-efficient and low-pollution production and consumption patterns expressed in developed countries. Alternative less resource- and pollution-intensive growth models for latecomer countries promise social and economic benefits in the short- and long-term. Drawing on insights from system innovation research on long-run change in socio-technical systems, we discuss the potential role of ‘sustainability experiments’ to generate innovations that will constitute new ‘greener’ growth models. We observe a great number of technology-based initiatives that we characterize as sustainability experiments in East and South Asian countries. These experiments emerge in the context of the growth of new socio-technical regimes in key sectors, including energy, transport, manufacturing, food and the built environment. We set out a conceptual framework for assessing the role of experiments, and for evaluating how they link with and become anchored into alternative more sustainable regimes. In this paper we argue that sustainability experiments represent a significant new source of innovation and capability-formation, linked to global knowledge and technology flows, which could reshape emergent socio-technical regimes and so contribute to alternative development pathways in latecomer countries. We conclude by summarizing the six papers published in this Special Issue. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the implications of foreign bank penetration on economic growth from the perspective of resource allocation in host countries. We use aggregate banking data, constructed from bank-level balance sheet and income statement information covering more than 1200 banks in the 35 emerging economies of Asia, Latin America and Eastern and Central Europe for the period from 1996 to 2003. By applying pooled OLS and fixed effects estimators, we present consistent evidence that the effect of gross fixed capital formation on output growth is higher in an economy with a more pronounced level of foreign bank penetration relative to an economy with a lower level of foreign bank penetration. This finding suggests that foreign banks play an important role in allocating capital in a more productive way, thus leading to a higher economic growth rate. One of the main policy implications of our findings in this paper is that foreign banks may serve as a channel in enhancing the economic integration of emerging economies with the advanced economies that are home countries of foreign banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on foreign direct investment (FDI) often ignores the psychology aspect of relationship. The role of relationship is embedded in Bourdieu's social capital, believing that networking and friendship could be valuable factors for attracting business. In macroeconomic context, international relations could be an important determinant in attracting foreign investment. Manifestations of this conceptualization are guanxi and "Bamboo network" in Chinese business culture. Applying to Malaysia international relations with Islamic countries of Wessocial capitat Asia, an "Ummah network" can be established to enable win-win situation in investment decision. This is in contrast with the rational behaviour of profit maximization motive of the classic school of thought. In reality, foreign investors with higher degree of negotiation power may seek maximum incentives at the expanse of the welfare of the host country, thus evaporating any possibility of win-win outcome. Given close relationship between Malaysia and Islamic countries of West Asia through Islam brotherhood and membership of Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Malaysia is in the best position to utilize its social capital to attract mutually beneficial FDI rather than giving excessive incentive to profit maximization oriented investors. Furthermore, growing tension and suspicion between Western world and Islamic countries strengthen Malaysia's position to build up long term investment relationship with West Asian countries. Hence, this paper aims to explore potential mutually beneficial Malaysia-West Asia partnership through the perspective of social capital networking with the focus on foreign investment. The ultimate objective of this paper is to propose a framework for the establishment of a relationship-based "Ummah network" between Malaysia and West Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1990s technology has become a central component of national education policies in many Asian countries. In Singapore schools, for instance, technology has become central in teaching, learning and administration. On the other hand, Japanese schooling has been largely impervious to advances in educational technology. This paper aims to stimulate discourse between policy makers, teachers, researchers and the community in Japan and internationally to consider informed, meaningful strategies required for developing suitably skilled pupils for today's Digital Age. The paper begins with a summary of Singapore's technology centric education policy, called the Masterplan for IT in Education. The Japanese context is then summarised and a number of recently proposed educational reforms are discussed. It will be argued that these reforms do not lend themselves to supporting the necessary development of digital competency required of Japanese school pupils in the 21st century. To overcome the shortcomings, strategic actions to support meaningful ICT integration in education, influenced by the Singapore experience, will be proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the degree of integration of the BRIC countries on a regional and global basis, achieved by using daily equity index level data. The paper concludes that a high degree of integration exists between the BRIC countries and their respective regions, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world. Regional trends are found to have a much greater influence than world trends upon the stock return process of the BRIC countries. The world index returns, and most likely the US equity market returns, have a significant influence upon the variance of returns seen across Brazil, Russia and India. China is the only country where there exists a negative relationship between volatility spillover effects on a regional and global basis. This suggests existence of diversification opportunities for investment managers. Global portfolio managers can still add value from investments in these countries, however the increased levels of integration of these economies highlight the need for portfolio stock selection strategies as well as investment in specific growth areas within these economies, rather than taking a position in the country index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether or not the Northeast Asian economies, namely, China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, can form a currency union, where a single currency and a uniform monetary policy are adopted, or an exchange rate union where all the currencies are pegged to an internal or external currency or an optimum currency basket. The analysis of correlations of supply shocks, exchange rate shocks, monetary shocks, and demand shocks, which are estimated applying the structural VAR model with identification restrictions imposed, to the data for the period from 1970 through 2004, shows that shocks of these economies are not symmetric, in general, implying that the Northeast Asian economies are not ready yet to form a common currency union. However, it is found that the Northeast Asian countries can form an exchange rate union with a major currency basket, which consists of the U.S. dollar, the euro and the Japanese yen, as an anchor currency. The paper also examines the option of pegging to a basket of regional currencies, similar to the Asian Currency Unit (ACU), and discusses policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a simple open economy interest rate determination model to empirically examine an important aspect of pre-crisis monetary and exchange rate policy. It investigates whether sterilization of the reserve effects of capital inflows helped keep interest rates sufficiently high that they may have prolonged the inflow of capital. Despite the use of a pre-crisis sample in this study, the issues in this paper have relevance today given the recent trend in foreign capital inflow for Asia. The empirical section is concerned with the effect of reserve flows on the interest rate and is divided into two parts. The first tests for a contemporaneous effect of the basic model using OLS and IV methods. The second generalizes the model to assess for lagged effects by way of VAR analysis. The results show that there are some contemporaneous effects of sterilization on the domestic interest rate though the effects are stronger when estimating the lagged model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to examine the rhizomatic flows of transnational Tamil cinema in Asia in the context of the growing influence of the agents of Web 2.0. The application of the concepts of flow and rhizome forms the theoretical backbone in this regard. The concept of television flow, as advanced by Raymond Williams, has had its transformations in the notion of the space of flows by Manuel Castells and the notion of rhizomatic line of flight of Deleuze and Guattari. Giddens'notion of structuration is the sociological attempt to capture the ephemerality of postmodern representations. In this paper, the rise of transnational Tamil cinema in Asia is juxtaposed with the rise of Web 2.0 in their intertwined contexts. This is to understand their implications for the members of the globalized homeland, who are increasingly connected in the rhizomatic networks of flows originated by the transnational Tamil cinema and Web 2.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been claimed that Asia lags behind the rest of the world in the privatization of airports. At the same time, the air transport sector has been growing quickly and this has placed enormous pressure on airport infrastructure. This paper reviews the situation and finds that the private sector is involved extensively with new airports and the upgrading of existing airports in Asia. Although the models used to accommodate the private sector appear similar to those used elsewhere, governments in Asia have retained majority control in every case. Despite the fact that some governments say that efficiency is important to them, the most common and important motive in “privatization” in Asia is to mobilize a new source of finance. Airports remain high on the agenda of public policy. Governments are concerned about abuse of monopoly powers and they want to cross-subsidize regional airports, but they lack the institutional strengths to regulate effectively. By retaining majority control, however, governments risk losing the efficiency benefits of privatization. The paper explores the reasons why airports are such difficult cases to deal with and concludes that there is a greater need than ever to be able to compare the performances of airports. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Edible bird nest (EBN) production is a major industry in South East Asia, motivated by the perception that consumption of this delicacy can help improve the human immune system while slowing down the aging process. However, processing the raw EBN requires a tremendous amount of human effort, making it a very labour-intensive process. The most critical part of this process is the cleaning of the EBN and this is also the most labour intensive and time consuming. Impurities in each sample have to be painstakingly identified and then removed from the rest of the nest. This paper proposed a method to detect the impurities in edible bird nest using K-Means segmentation to help improve the effectiveness of the conventional cleaning process by accurately identifying the impurities of various shapes and sizes. The accuracy of the proposed method has been compared with Fuzzy C-Means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning of historic cities in Asia is typically characterised as mixed land use with a hierarchy of streets and open spaces. While the morphology of the built environment is archetypal of the regional context, addressing the concern of thermal comfort essentially through passive systems using locally available resources. Further, most of these cities, centuries old, are vivid example of resilience to change with time, technology and developmental pressures. Also, the majority of such cities are in Asia. These old neighbourhoods are a huge built resource, in sync with locally available materials and indigenous technology, and thus in harmony with the environment; also recognised for their traditional style by the tourism sector. In this paper, the parameters of morphology of these built environments, contextual for arid zones, are spelt out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As urban populations grow and climate exposure increases, more cities are introducing formal planning processes to adapt to climate change. This paper explains the process applied to eight cities in the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) for developing indicators for planning and monitoring local climate resilience. This process relied on transferring a common conceptual framework for climate resilience, together with a locally led iterative and collaborative process that engaged technical and planning authorities and vulnerable groups. The process varied slightly between cities and generated indicators that were chosen for their contextual fit and availability of data. The main benefit of developing resilience indicators in this way was the local capacity that the process built, in terms of understanding resilience, shared understanding of concepts and measurement and establishment of a common platform for future planning and monitoring of climate adaptation interventions at the city level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the microbiome is a major public health concern globally. Many habitats in the environment are under threat due to excessive use of antibiotics and evolutionary changes occurring in the resistome. ARB and ARGs from farms, cities and hospitals, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) or as water runoffs, may accumulate in water, soil, and air. We present a global picture of the resistome by examining ARG-related papers retrieved from PubMed and published in the last 30 years (1990–2020). Natural Language Processing (NLP) was used to retrieve 496,640 papers, out of which 9374 passed the filtering test and were further analyzed to determine the distribution and diversity of ARG subtypes. The papers revealed seven major antibiotic families together with their respective ARG subtypes in different habitats on six continents. Asia, especially China, had the highest number of ARGs related papers compared to other countries/regions/continents. ARGs belonging to multidrug, glycopeptide, and β-lactam families were the most common in reports from hospitals and sulfonamide and tetracycline families were common in reports from farms, WWTPs, water and soil. We also highlight the 'omics' tools used in resistome research, describe some factors that shape the development of resistome, and suggest future work needed to better understand the resistome. The goal was to show the global nature of ARB and ARGs in order to encourage collaborate research efforts aimed at reducing the negative impacts of antibiotic resistance on the One Health concept. [Display omitted] • Antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) are major public health concerns globally. • The diversity and distribution of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are presented. • Factors that affect ARB and ARGs in different environments are discussed. • Different 'omics' tools used to study resistome development are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a critical outline of the social and economical development pattern of Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) in East-Asia. Of such a pattern are here presented the trade off between the market and the State role in the economic development along with the cultural values of human resources, functional to it. Then it offers some critical comments on NICs' delays about social and cultural promotion of human rights, as for instance the acquiescence towards the lack of democracy or the plague of child labour. In the end the paper questions about the future perspectives of Asian NTCs and their trade relations, charged of social dumping, with Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an interactional perspective on the emergence and organization of disputes in organizations. Organizations are analyzed as interrelated dispute domains which consist of standardized and recurring argumentation practices and constraints, orientations to interactions and relationships, and role formats. The paper considers how organization members orient to and treat disputes as disruptions of preferred organizational routines and realities, and attempt to sustain the routines and realities in the face of ongoing disputes. Two additional implications of the perspective are also considered: how disputes are transformed when they are reconsidered within different dispute domains, and how the rhetorical resources available to disputants vary within and across dispute domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change in the Arctic is leading to the fast recession of sea ice in the summer. This evolution leads several observers, scientists, media and government officials, to consider the possibility of developing new shipping routes along Arctic routes, as these routes are much shorter between Europe and Asia. The literature displays a strong discourse about interest from Asian countries for these potential shipping routes. This paper tackles with this idea and examines to what extent Asian shipping companies, the ultimate economic agents, are really interested in Arctic shipping routes. The image the research portrayed is that only a minority of Asian shipping companies are indeed interested, and those that are interested stress the destinational dimension of Arctic shipping, not transit shipping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy design, or the deliberate governmental effort to attain desired policy objectives, is an integral part of micro and macro-level fiscal and financial regulation. This paper seeks to address the role of regime coherence and policy capacity in contributing to effective financial policy design. Drawing on the cases of the Global Financial Crisis and Asian Financial Crisis and focusing on Asian states, we assess regime capacity at both international and domestic levels. We argue that it is the integration of analytical, operational and political capacities that have contributed to the overall ability of a government regime to address and respond to crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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BACKGROUND The influence of religion on demographic behaviors has been extensively studied mainly for Abrahamic religions. Although Buddhism is the world's fourth largest religion and is dominant in several Asian nations experiencing very low fertility, the impact of Buddhism on childbearing has received comparatively little research attention. OBJECTIVE This paper draws upon a variety of data sources in different countries in Asia in order to test our hypothesis that Buddhism is related to low fertility. METHODS Religious differentials in terms of period fertility in three nations (India, Cambodia and Nepal) and cohort fertility in three case studies (Mongolia, Thailand and Japan) are analyzed. The analyses are divided into two parts: descriptive and multivariate analyses. RESULTS Our results suggest that Buddhist affiliation tends to be negatively or not associated with childbearing outcomes, controlling for education, region of residence, age and marital status. Although the results vary between the highly diverse contextual and institutional settings investigated, we find evidence that Buddhist affiliation or devotion is not related to elevated fertility across these very different cultural settings. CONCLUSIONS Across the highly diverse cultural and developmental contexts under which the different strains of Buddhism dominate, the effect of Buddhism is consistently negatively or insignificantly related to fertility. These findings stand in contrast to studies of Abrahamic religions that tend to identify a positive link between religiosity and fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]