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Rice-paper plant, Tetrapanax papyrifer is a woody plant native to Taiwan and widely distributed in western Japan. Due to its low commercial value, little is known about its interactions with microorganisms. Here, we isolated Neofusicoccum parvum, a known causal agent of grape stem rot and mango stem-end rot, from leaf blight on T. papyrifer. Compared to mango isolate, N. parvum from rice-paper plant showed comparable virulence on grape stem and mango fruit. N. parvum strains exhibited pathogenicity on a variety of common weeds, which may act as disease reservoirs and boost N. parvum prevalence in commercially grown mango and grape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper cultural relics such as double-sided printed newspapers and periodicals represent modern cultural heritage. Severe damage such as embrittlement, decay, and dreg generally occur to paper; hence, it urgently needs conservation and restoration. Therefore, herein, a new reinforcement method for the fragile double-sided printed paper cultural relics is proposed with cotton mesh and adhesive PVA217 as reinforcement materials. Using a computer measured and controlled folding endurance tester, a pendulum tensile strength tester, pH meter, pulp viscosimeter, and other instruments, the physical properties of newspaper samples before and after aging were evaluated. In addition, the mechanical properties, chromatic aberration and surface morphology of simulated samples before and after the cotton mesh reinforcement and Japanese washi paper reinforcement were assessed. The experimental results indicate that this new reinforcement method could effectively improve the physical strength, chromatic aberration and durability of the simulated samples. Widespread applications of this cotton mesh reinforcement method for the reinforcement and protection of the red revolutionary cultural relics such as double-sided printed newspaper and periodicals during the Republic of China era are foreseeable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mudstone soils (MS) are widely distributed in southern Taiwan and have an inherent proclivity to geological damages and failures. However, the use of traditional and non-traditional techniques to treat MS remains a challenge and is an area relatively unexplored due to the soils' distinct and sophisticated features. This study examined the hydromechanical performance of reconstituted MS treated with colloidal nanosilica (CN), fiber (f), and combinations thereof (CN-f) via a series of laboratory tests, including the unconfined compressive strength tests, 3D volumetric shrinkage tests, free swell tests, 1D consolidation tests, and filter paper tests. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were also used to inspect the geochemical composition and microstructure of the untreated and treated MS. Results suggest that CN-f treatment can significantly improve the peak and postpeak strengths and ductility of MS while achieving satisfactory improvements in swelling control, shrinkage limits, and volumetric strains. Following treatment with 15% CN and 1% f for 28 days, the MS showed an optimal 527% improvement in Unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and satisfactory residual strain. Finally, the FTIR and SEM images revealed enhanced interlocking between the MS particles and the formation of marginal C–S–H and viscous gels, supporting the improved performance in MS. This study provides comprehensive analyses that offer insights into the synergistic effects of CN-f on the hydromechanical performance of MS. The findings will be valuable to engineers exploring innovative and ecofriendly alternatives for treating MS with a robust design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change induced partly by emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) is an urgent issue worldwide, calling for advanced methods of carbon sequestration. Since CO2-emitting industries often generate alkaline waste, sequestrating CO2 by mineral carbonation of alkaline waste is promising both for carbon capture and utilization, and for preventing waste disposal. Here we review the principles of mineral carbonation and we discuss mineral carbonation of alkaline waste and byproducts in Taiwan. We focus on wastes such as iron and steel slag, cement and concrete waste, incineration ash, coal combustion ash, and paper waste. We evaluate the CO2 reduction potential to reveal promising materials and industries. We found that 4.2 Mt CO2 can be directly sequestered annually. Moreover, the use of alternative materials in the cement and concrete industries can indirectly facilitate CO2 sequestration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pineapples are an important agricultural economic crop in Taiwan. Considerable human resources are required to protect pineapples from excessive solar radiation, which could otherwise lead to overheating and subsequent deterioration. Note that simple covering all of the fruit with a paper bag is not a viable solution, due to the fact that it makes it impossible to determine whether the fruit is ripe. This paper proposes a system by which to automate the detection of ripe pineapples. The proposed deep learning architecture enables detection regardless of lighting conditions, achieving accuracy of more than 99.27% with error of less than 2% at distances of 300 ~ 800 mm. This proposed system using an Nvidia TX2 is capable of 15 frames per second, thereby making it possible to mount the device on machines that move at walking speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oyster Farming is one of important fisheries and aquaculture industries in Taiwan. Each year, approximately 4000–5000 tons of discarded bamboo scaffolding (BS) used in oyster farming, are generated, so the treatment and utilization of BS should be taken seriously. This study evaluates the suitability of BS for pulp and papermaking by assessing the chemical compositions, microstructural, and fiber morphology. The pulping properties is investigated by soda pulping. The chemical composition of BS shows the potential for application in pulping. The BS microstructure shows that can enhance pulping reactions, while the fiber morphology indicates the possibility of producing high-strength paper. Through the pulping experiment, it demonstrated that BS is suitable for pulping with lower NaOH dosage and longer digestion time. The condition at 170 °C with 14% NaOH dosage for 90 min digestion has the highest yield. After refining the highest pulping yield BS pulp, it can improve the handsheet strength and bulk of the OCC-BS mixed pulp, which can achieve the strength property required for industrial paper. In summary, BS exhibits the potential for pulping application and produces a better paper strength than OCC pulp, exhibiting the feasibility of enhancing the circular utilization value of BS in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Phosphorus (P) is the limiting nutrient in many mature tropical forests. The ecological significance of declining P stocks as soils age is exacerbated by much of the remaining P being progressively sequestered. However, the details of how and where P is sequestered during the ageing in tropical forest soils remains unclear. Results: We examined the relationships between various forms of the Fe and Al sesquioxides and the Hedley fractions of P in soils of an incipient ferralitic chronosequence on an altitudinal series of gently sloping benches on Green Island, off the southeastern coast of Taiwan. These soils contain limited amounts of easily exchangeable P. Of the sesquioxide variables, only Fe and Al crystallinities increased significantly with bench altitude/soil age, indicating that the ferralisation trend is weak. The bulk of the soil P was in the NaOH and residual extractable fractions, and of low lability. The P fractions that correlated best with the sesquioxides were the organic components of the NaHCO3 and NaOH extracts. Conclusions: The amorphous sesquioxides, Feo and Alo, were the forms that correlated best with the P fractions. A substantial proportion of the labile P appears to be organic and to be associated with Alo in organic-aluminium complexes. The progression of P sequestration appears to be slightly slower than the chemical and mineralogical indicators of ferralisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States brought many financial institutions to the brink of bankruptcy. Securities firms were not immune to such issues, given their prominence in the financial market. Consequently, evaluating the performance of securities companies' post-recession is important when determining how to confront market-shaking macroeconomic problems. Consequently, this paper employs a non-radial model of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the performance of revival on Taiwan's securities industry. The research findings suggest that Tachan Securities (TCS) outperformed its peers in the operational period immediately after the global financial crisis, while Capital Securities (CAPITAL) is the best performer in the profit-making period. This paper applies the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix to analyze strategic positioning and trajectory on the basis of the efficiency value of the two-stage of non-radial DEA model. In order to validate any variances between the efficiencies of different stages after the global financial crisis, this paper conducts non-parametric statistical analysis to examine the variances in the efficiency values of the single-stage and the two-stage model. Finally, the purpose is to understand the impact of the post-crisis environmental variables on the efficiency of the securities industry. The empirical findings can serve as a reference for industry management on the assessment of operating performances and profitability by the characteristic of radial efficiency. Decision-makers in the industry may also refer to the findings as a benchmarking tool for the evaluation of business performance after the global financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper complicates the classic security dilemma by considering the notions of ontological security and relational deterrence. It studies how the ontological security dilemma has emerged between the US, China, and Taiwan from the relational perspective and how these spiral chains will further develop in the future. The paper incurs the literature on relational analysis to expound on how different ontological security concerns allude to relational deterrence between the three actors. Taiwan's separatism is more of a threat to China's relational self than to physical security because the separatist does not belong to any already agreed relationship. A geometric model and a few simulations yield three unconventional findings. 1) The less advantaged the US military is over China, the less likely armed unification will occur. 2) The US anti-Chinese tendency is irrelevant in determining the probability of armed unification. 3) What may escalate the spiral are China's anti-Taiwan independence and Taiwan's anti-unification. Case sensitivity indicates the ontological sensibilities of a security dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing pressure to cut carbon emissions and develop sustainability plans, companies need carbon credits to offset emissions that cannot be eliminated from their operations, new global carbon exchange to launch in Singapore by 2021 end, the high-quality credit can bridge this gap and play an important role in the overall climate change mitigation strategy. The purpose of this research is to use the production data (including carbon emissions) of paper-making companies in Taiwan to establish a circular economy mathematical programming model and the concept based on the activity cost method (ABC) to explore the impact of different carbon emissions costs (such carbon tax, carbon cap-and-trade, etc.) on the company's production structure and profitability impact. The research results show that different carbon emission cost models have different effects on the company's optimal product-mix and profitability. The managerial implication is to combine the extensive application of the carbon emission credit mechanism, which can offset the carbon emissions in the production process and have a significant impact on the company's sustainable competitiveness. In addition, this study can also enable decision makers to understand the impact of different carbon emission cost models on the profitability of the company's product mix, which can be used as a reference for production planning decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question remains how to integrate the core service proposals within a smart tourism platform setting for further facilitating tourist value co-creation behaviours in sustainable ways. This paper investigates the paradigm of smart tourism service (STS) platforms within the context of an ecosystem space. It conceptualizes concepts by laying a reasonable theoretical foundation (service-dominant logic) and proposing a scale for smart services. Applying sequential mixed methods to an exploratory research design, with seven interlocking stages and data from Fuzzy Delphi experts and tourist surveys in Taipei City, a smart city in Taiwan, this paper proposes a second-order scale with six dimensions, comprising smart services of attractions, transportation, accommodation, diet, purchase, and payment. The final 32-item STS scale is thoroughly developed and subsequently validated in different contexts (i.e. travellers in different phases of travel, pre-travel and during the trip, respectively). The scale significantly reveals the tourist-operated technologies for the provision of STS, determining the development of conceptual STS platforms in this paper. Next, the platforms disclose the locus between ICT functions, information-related services, tourist applications and behaviours, and sustainable value co-creation. The potential path of "STS → behaviour → sustainable value co-creation" explored herein is helpful for illustrating the conceptualization of STS platforms. Moreover, predictions from the platforms of tourists' smart behaviours make it practically relevant in assessing demands about smart services for tourism. In the end, this paper describes the theoretical implications and managerial implications for tourism practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, the Taiwan government promulgated some regulatory measures and promotional actions on energy efficiency promotion and renewable energy development. In March 2022, the "Taiwan's Pathway to Net-Zero Emissions in 2050" was announced to respond to the Paris Agreement. In order to achieve the goal, the Climate Change Response Act (CCRA) was passed on February 15, 2023, requiring the de-carbonization measures and adaptation strategies. The main aim of this paper was to analyze the changes in GHG emissions and renewable energy supply by using the updated data from the official statistics in connection with the trends of environmental and energy sustainability since 2000. The findings showed that total installed capacity of renewable power (especially in solar power and wind power) showed an amazing increase over the past decade, leading to the inclined GHG emissions and thus supporting the environmental and energy sustainability toward a low-carbon society. Furthermore, this paper summarized the development history and main differences concerning the carbon neutrality policy and legislation in Japan and South Korea. For achieving the staged targets of GHG emissions by 2030 and 2050, this paper finally addressed the technological approaches for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 in Taiwan, focusing on the transformation of energy and industry, and the policy implications by all levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ship tracking and mapping capabilities that geospatial technology provides create an opportunity to observe fishing vessels as they move through established maritime boundaries. This paper connects data availability to ground-truthing research and explores the limits of vessel movement mapping in representing worker abuse at sea through three related themes. First, a conceptual background links the advancements in maritime remote sensing to critical GIS scholarship and provides a background on worker abuse aboard Taiwanese fishing vessels. Second, the paper examines the potential of machine learning algorithms to represent worker abuse at sea, arguing that more extensive ground-truthing research with workers could help address variations in the data and limited data sets. Third, I use remote sensing data to identify and unpack Taiwanese fishing across the three EEZs with the most concentrated Taiwanese fishing activity: starting with Taiwan, followed by the Falkland Islands, and Seychelles. I argue that fishing activity and the digital representation of vessel movements are governed by terrestrial geopolitics and subject to manipulation by ship captains. Finally, the conclusion offers recommendations for how future research can capitalize on the capabilities of AIS, particularly with respect to addressing problems of working conditions and abuse at sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To strengthen brand identity, enrich tourist experiences, and promote heritage education, Taijiang National Park proposed to reconstruct Taiwan's Dutch Trading Post in a different location from where it was initially erected in the 17th century. This paper is a case study of the reconstruction proposal for a lost colonial architectural complex in the context of heritage tourism. It discusses the practical and academic issues of rebuilding long-lost colonial heritage sites. The author provided a first-hand account of the technical and practical reasoning for reconstructing a bygone complex erected by Dutch settlers. Historical development phases of the Dutch Trading Post of Taiwan were first introduced, and then a reconstruction strategy was proposed to resolve conflicts with legal constraints. Additionally, a site selection process using GIS, a conceptually driven plan for reconstruction, and a 3D simulation were provided. Three specific issues in heritage rebuilding were further discussed, including the decision to reconstruct a heritage building (complex), the authenticity of the reconstructed building if done in a different location from where it was initially situated, and the need to discover more archaeological facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On September 18, 2022, an earthquake with a local magnitude (ML) 6.8 struck the southern part of Longitudinal Valley in southeastern Taiwan, resulting in the collapse and damage of many engineering structures. A field reconnaissance was conducted at the selected sites that experienced building and bridge damages and is presented in this paper. The focus is on geotechnical problems such as strong ground motion, ground rupture, soil liquefaction, and their influence on engineering structures. Strong motions of up to 0.6 g were induced, with similar intensity in the vertical and horizontal components near the epicenter. Widespread ground rupture traces were observed along the officially recognized active faults, inducing offsets up to tens of centimeters. Soil liquefaction was also noticed in this region, mainly on the river flood plain and characterized as gravel layer. The possible influence of these observed geotechnical characteristics on the damage pattern or failure mode of buildings, bridges, embankments, and levees was discussed and interpreted insightfully. The perspectives presented in this paper may serve as a reference to disaster prevention and mitigation in future events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence is the unification of philosophy, cognitive science, mathematics, neurophysiology, psychology, computer science, information theory, cybernetics, and uncertainty theory. Therefore, it is feasible and necessary to utilize STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Liberal Arts, and Mathematics) education to learn artificial intelligence courses. Computational thinking skills are of vital importance to high school students. This paper integrates artificial intelligence education with STEAM model with the aim of enhancing students' computational thinking skills. First, we investigate the feasibility of this model and set teaching objectives about artificial intelligence curricula. Second, artificial intelligence curricula with STEAM model is proposed to carry out interdisciplinary artificial intelligence knowledge acquisition. Finally, the effects of this model on students' computational thinking skills, learning motivation, and self-efficacy are evaluated. One hundred thirty-six participants are recruited from a high school in Beijing. The results reveal that the integration of artificial intelligence education with STEAM is able to promote computational thinking skills, learning motivation, and self-efficacy of the students in the experimental group. The main implication of this study is that artificial intelligence education in light of STEAM model can be used as a teaching guide for the combination of artificial intelligence curricula with multi-disciplinary knowledge at the primary and secondary levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a susceptible exposed infectious recovered model (SEIR) with isolation measures to evaluate the COVID-19 epidemic based on the prevention and control policy implemented by the Chinese government on February 23, 2020. According to the Chinese government's immediate isolation and centralized diagnosis of confirmed cases, and the adoption of epidemic tracking measures on patients to prevent further spread of the epidemic, we divide the population into susceptible, exposed, infectious, quarantine, confirmed and recovered. This paper proposes an SEIR model with isolation measures that simultaneously investigates the infectivity of the incubation period, reflects prevention and control measures and calculates the basic reproduction number of the model. According to the data released by the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China, we estimated the parameters of the model and compared the simulation results of the model with actual data. We have considered the trend of the epidemic under different incubation periods of infectious capacity. When the incubation period is not contagious, the peak number of confirmed in the model is 33,870; and when the infectious capacity is 0.1 times the infectious capacity in the infectious period, the peak number of confirmed in the model is 57,950; when the infectious capacity is doubled, the peak number of confirmed will reach 109,300. Moreover, by changing the contact rate in the model, we found that as the intensity of prevention and control measures increase, the peak of the epidemic will come earlier, and the peak number of confirmed will also be significantly reduced. Under extremely strict prevention and control measures, the peak number of confirmed cases has dropped by nearly 50%. In addition, we use the EEMD method to decompose the time series data of the epidemic, and then combine the LSTM model to predict the trend of the epidemic. Compared with the method of directly using LSTM for prediction, more detailed information can be obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the rise of renewable energy/green energy issues in recent years, many countries have agreed to adopt the forms of environmental protection, cleanliness, and no impact on the environment for the sources and composition of energy. They have also drawn up relevant international agreements (i.e., Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agreement) to strictly limit and manage CO2 emissions. The newly advocated electric vehicles have gradually been regarded as a method to improve the environment by all countries. Through the introduction of new electric transport modes, the innovation and reform of the energy structure are promoted, and traditional transportation has also changed. In recent years, Taiwan has promoted the policy of replacing traditional fuel two-wheeled vehicles with electric two-wheeled vehicles (ETWVs), and gradually increased the number of ETWVs in Taiwan by replacing old fuel vehicles and subsidizing the purchase of ETWVs. This study is aimed at college students to explore the important factors that affect their willingness to buy ETWVs. As college students are the first group to buy ETWVs, if their willingness to buy ETWVs can be increased, environmental sustainability may be enhanced. Through a questionnaire designed to investigate the two-wheeled vehicle use preferences of college students in Taiwan, this paper explores the significant factors affecting college students' purchase of ETWVs. This study applies Logistic Regression and Ordered Logit models, and the results of model estimation show that household income, gender, environmental awareness, recognition of ETWVs, the fuel costs of existing vehicles, number of people in each household, operational efficiency of ETWVs, and subsidy and incentive measures will all positively affect the purchase intention of college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on goal orientation theory, this paper aims to examine the mediating effect of utility perception on the relationships between three types of goal orientation and transfer motivation. The study applied a longitudinal field design with a total of 239 trainees from a technological institute in northern Taiwan and used AMOS 24 to examine the hypotheses. The findings show that learning goal orientation demonstrates the strongest impact on utility perception and transfer motivation. Learning goal orientation is the desired training trait, and utility perception is a critical factor in transfer motivation. If managers assert a given training program to be useful to trainees, then the anticipated training effect will likely be enhanced. The contribution of this study is its use of goal orientation theory to examine how three goal orientations affect transfer motivation through utility perception. Further, since there have been inconsistent results about the effect of proving goal orientation on training effectiveness, this study examines if there are significantly differences between learning goal orientation and proving goal orientation through statistical analysis. Third, by focusing on practitioners rather than students, this study indicates that utility perception is an important mediator between goal orientation and transfer motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some movement parties successfully institutionalize into a functioning party organization while others struggle? This paper argues that not all movement parties institutionalize in the same way. Movement parties that emanate out of a long-term social movement organization face a qualitatively different set of challenges than those that form out of a short-term movement. Routinization—the process of parties developing rules, regulation, and predictable behavior—is a particularly crucial component for short-term movement party institutionalization. When parties emanate out of long-standing social movement organizations, they are advantaged because they already have existing formal rules and regulations. Short-term parties however, are disadvantaged because they lack these organizational structures. Further, short-term movement parties not only need routinization, but must make it a priority; the sequencing of their institutionalization matters. I demonstrate the importance of routinization with the case of Taiwan's New Power Party, a movement party formed out of the 2014 Sunflower Movement. This case shows how struggles to routinize early for short-term movement parties leads to crucial causal mechanisms hindering party institutionalization instead of helping it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing prominence of social network services, political communication has experienced a paradigm shift. To communicate with internet users, politicians, candidates, and political organizations create fan pages. Initially, they provide text-only material on their pages; later, to increase engagement, they include photos, images, and videos. This paper investigates image-based political images in Taiwan for the first time during a nationwide referendum. Unlike an election, a referendum is a policy-based vote. We evaluate over 2000 Facebook images shared by the two most prominent political parties in order to comprehend the aspects of images and the tactics of political organizations. In addition, we examine the textual content, objects, and colors of the collected data. We find that the characteristics of propaganda materials vary between political groups. Nonetheless, the color strategies employed by both sides are equivalent, with each side utilizing its own representative colors for consolidation and the opponent's colors for attacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the Internet becoming indispensable in our lives, social media has become an integral part of our lives. However, with this has come the phenomenon of a single user registering multiple accounts (sockpuppets) to advertise, spam, or cause controversy on social media sites, where the user is called the puppetmaster. This phenomenon is even more evident on forum-oriented social media sites. Identifying sockpuppets is a critical step in stopping the above-mentioned malicious acts. The identification of sockpuppets on a single forum-oriented social media site has seldom been addressed. This paper proposes a Single-site Multiple Accounts Identification Model (SiMAIM) framework to address this research gap. We used Mobile01, Taiwan's most popular forum-oriented social media site, to validate SiMAIM's performance. SiMAIM achieved F1 scores between 0.6 and 0.9 on identifying sockpuppets and puppetmasters under different datasets and settings. SiMAIM also outperformed the compared methods by 6–38% in F1 score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On average, women menstruate for approximately half of their lives. Little is known about whether and how health-related quality of life (HRQOL) differs across users of different types of menstrual products. To answer this question, this study collected data from 1,245 female university students in Taiwan through an anonymous online survey and compared users of different types of menstrual products in four HRQOL domains. Multivariate linear regression analysis revealed significant differences in all four domains. For instance, regarding physical health, tampon users reported better HRQOL (β =.054) than pad users; regarding social health, tampon (β =.059) and menstrual cup (β =.071) users both reported better HRQOL than pad users. Furthermore, factors influencing HRQOL also differed between pad and tampon users. For example, having many premenstrual symptoms affected both pad (β = -.115) and tampon (β = -.172) users' physical HRQOL; while pad users with many premenstrual symptoms also had worse psychological (β = -.085), social (β = -.100), and environment (β = -.104) HRQOL, their tampon-using counterparts were not significantly affected. Bisexual tampon-using college women reported worse social HRQOL (β = -.149) than their heterosexual peers. In addition, relationship status and varsity team membership had differential significant associations with the four domains. Future menstrual health education could focus more on introducing the different features of various menstrual products. Our empirical findings can help empower women to make informed decisions about which menstrual products could best suit their needs and improve their HRQOL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many governments worldwide have individual increased tax rates as a means to stem rising housing prices. The present study comprehensively explores whether luxury tax policy influences housing price trends in Taiwan by using quantile regression and regression quantile for panel data with fixed effect methods. A novel analytical framework of four models is proposed in this paper to provide housing market investors with a basis for establishing their trading strategies and to help policymakers better evaluate their policies. First, the results relevant for investors indicate that a positive autocorrelation exists within the previous and current returns of Taiwan's national housing price index (HPI). This autocorrelation is strengthened when the housing market is undergoing a boom but is weakened when returns in the housing market have an extreme value or normal value. Second, the results relevant for policymakers indicate that Taiwan's luxury tax policy only affects the prices of existing houses rather than new houses. Moreover, this policy influences the HPI in only a few regions in Taiwan. The policy implication of this study is that a higher luxury tax does not necessarily curb rising housing prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to examine whether and on what basis the international human rights law applies to the territorial non-state entities, having as an example the cases of the Republic of China and the territorial non-state entities from the post-Soviet space. For this purpose, the paper will focus first, on the applicability of the relevant international human rights treaties and general international human rights law regulations. Second, it will look at what place is reserved for the international human rights law in the national legal systems of the analysed territorial non-state entities. It is argued here that these territorial non-state entities proclaim their commitment to the rule of law and human rights by transplanting international regulations, especially the human rights ones, into their national provisions. After analysing the two case studies, it will be claimed that although the territorial non-state entities committed themselves to following international human rights law norms and standards, legal transplant is not sufficient and the territorial non-state entities shall engage more at the practical level in order to ensure the effectiveness of human rights protection on their territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bankruptcy prediction is considered one of the most important research topics in the field of finance and accounting. The rapid increase of data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning has led researchers to build an accurate bankruptcy prediction model. Recent studies show that ensemble methods perform better than traditional machine learning models for predicting corporate failure, especially with highly imbalanced datasets. However, the black box property of these techniques remains challenging to interpret the result and generate corporate classes without any explanation. To this end, we propose to build an accurate and interpretable classification model that generates a set of prediction rules for output. Tri-eXtreme Gradient Boosting (Tri-XGBoost), a semi-supervised technique, is recommended in this paper. The proposed method combines Borderline-Smote (BLSmote) based on Edited Nearest Neighbor (ENN) sampling techniques with three different XGBoost methods as weak classifiers (gbtree, gblinear, and dart). First, the resampling techniques are used to produce more representative synthetic data and balance the distribution of the datasets. To this end, BLSmote is applied to increase the proportion of instances in the minority class (bankrupt data). Then, ENN is used to eliminate the noisy samples from both classes. In addition, the most crucial features that increase predictive accuracy are chosen using XGBoost. Finally, in order to make the model more understandable for both applicants and experts, our result is presented as "IF–THEN" rules. Our proposed model is validated using the imbalanced Polish and Taiwan bankruptcy datasets. Our obtained results demonstrate that our suggested model performs better than the existing models based on the area under the ROC curve (AUC), F1-score, and G-mean performance measures. Our proposed model significantly improves classification accuracy, which is greater than 95% for Polish datasets and more than 93% for Taiwanese dataset in terms of AUC, G-mean and F1-score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates medical providers' supply curve under universal healthcare system with global budgeting, which theory predicts to be either positive or negative sloping. Using the population data of medical providers' services and exogenous shifted budgets in Taiwan, empirical evidence shows that the dentists and Chinese herb practitioners maintained positive sloping supply curves. Hospitals and clinics that practice Western medicine were found to have negative sloping supply curves. The latter results indicate medical providers have incentives to provide excessive services under global budgeting, even when this drives down the price of their services provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the growing industry of hospitality and tourism has promoted the development of academics, and produced a lot of multiple issues and methodologies in these areas. It showed the reputation of academics in hospitality and tourism are more abundant in Taiwan. Therefore, a content analysis approach was used to analyze the research articles written by Taiwanese in international tourism and hospitality journals, and this study can show the industry trend, research preference of scholar and the relationship of corporation between authors in Taiwan. This paper aims to provide an overview 345 of articles published from 2000 to 2014, with the journals selected from ten leading journals of hospitality and tourism, that are Annals of Tourism Research Tourism Management, Cornell Hotel Quarterly, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Leisure Sciences and Tourism Geographies. This study found that academic performance focused on particular scholars through listed ranking of author in publication of hospitality and tourism. Hence, this study used graph social clustering analysis to compare the relationship between authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefits and services of urban gardens (UGs) in urbanized areas are being increasingly recognized, leading to widespread enhancement of efforts in protection and provision. At present, several types of UGs created under the policy of "The Garden City Initiative" (GCI) exist in Taipei City, Taiwan, and four types of UGs, namely Allotment Garden (AG), Happy Garden (HG), Rooftop Garden (RG), and School Garden (SG), have been created using vacant lots and rooftop spaces developed via GCI. To clarify the characteristics of UGs in Taipei City, this paper first analyzes the changes in the number and surface area of each type of UG during 2015–2019. Second, using the 2019 data on all 201 UGs (18 AGs, 107 HGs, and 76 RGs) and excluding SGs that are only accessible by school students, this paper clarifies the spatial distribution of UGs in each district of Taipei City and the accessibility of UGs to locals and non-locals using a geographic information system. Furthermore, correlations between the accessibility of UGs to both locals and non-locals and their surface areas were evaluated. As a result, positive correlation was observed between the accessibility of UGs to locals and non-locals in seven districts, suggesting that both locals and non-locals have equal access to UGs. Lastly, the characteristics of UGs realized in Taipei City under GCI and their accessibility to locals and non-locals are discussed and conclusions are drawn on the implications for the utilization of vacant lots and rooftop spaces as UGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies Pierre Bourdieu's field theory to study fake news in COVID communication in Taiwan. Using the corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) method, we analyzed fake news identified as such by two Taiwanese fact-checking institutions during the pandemic. While the pandemic prevention as doxa was acknowledged, the discourses of fake news aimed to challenge the state's constructed nomos. Through cultural, social, political, and symbolic capital, these stories could leverage their power in the field of COVID communication. We argue that the dissemination of pandemic-related fake news, especially those that promoted resistance to the strict measures implemented by governments, can be understood as a manifestation of nonconformity to COVID-19 protocols. Referring to fake news as an infectious disease oversimplifies communication and hinders critical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The DeLone and McLean IS Success Model is a widely accepted model by IS researchers for understanding and evaluating the dimension and success of a particular information system. A quantitative investigation of the IS model of success and its applications with scientometrics analysis will provide meaningful insight into the existing literature. Therefore, the study aims to give the articles published in the Web of Science database, an intellectual structure utilizing scientometrics methods. This paper uses 511 articles published between 2003 and 2021, and the results of this study provide map-related networks and thematically related clusters using visualization techniques with VOSViewer. The results show that Taiwan is the leading country, followed by the US. Computers in Human behaviour and Sustainability are the leading journals. Additionally, the content analysis results show continuation intention, adoption, and e-commerce as hot research topics that can be explored further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Braithwaite's Reintegrative Shaming Theory is the basis of restorative justice policy in Taiwan, little research has been conducted to understand how the theory and its rationale are integrated into restorative practice in Taiwanese juvenile justice. The unique political and cultural context Taiwan, including its embrace of Confucian relationalism, presents an opportunity to refine our understanding of how shame may operate in restorative justice encounters. Based on a review of restorative justice programmes in Taiwanese juvenile justice, governmental documents, and academic scholarship, this paper will explore the work of shame in Taiwanese restorative justice, focusing on the unique characteristics of shaming in the context of Confucian relationalism. We then propose a framework that links shame, relationalism, and transformation, which can help understand the practice of restorative justice within Taiwanese juvenile justice. This framework can be beneficial to the future development of restorative justice theory and practice in Confucian relationalistic societies and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Restorative Justice," firstly a research concept and later a criminal justice practice, was introduced into Taiwan at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This paper reviews how RJ grounded in the Taiwanese district prosecutors' offices and gradually grows into a grassroots social movement. We propose that the RJ advancement benefits from open-minded policymakers, dedicated academics, and innovative facilitators. The facilitators trained from 2011 to 2012 became key players to spread the RJ practices to other criminal justice sectors and beyond. In addition, the third wave of judicial reform further enabled the embedding of the RJ procedure in the Juvenile Justice Act, the Code of Criminal Justice Procedure, the Prison Act, and the Detention Act. We compare the discourse of RJ advocacy in the east and the west and address the importance of cultural sensitivity, terminology translation, and the meaning of localized practice. In conclusion, we reflect on the existing evaluation reports of the Taiwanese RJ model and provide recommendations for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature suggests that recent years have witnessed a fundamental shift in higher education internationalisation. This paper argues that a reorientation of policy, which is upheld through an initiative known as the Higher Education Sprout Project, indicates the fundamental shift in higher education internationalisation in Taiwan. The paper begins with an explanation of how the notion of world-class university induced elitism in East Asian higher education. Next, it reviews the last two decades of Taiwan's efforts on developing world-class universities. In particular, the paper explains how perceived domestic problems in higher education, such as an overemphasis on certain performance indicators and the resulting effects of homogenisation, and the phenomenon of emphasising research but neglecting teaching, are considered the consequences of emphasising global competition and the associated quest for building world-class universities. The paper argues that the recent policy change reveals an intention to uphold egalitarianism, thereby reaching a balance between fulfilling global ambition and addressing local needs in higher education. This intention highlights the political essence of internationalisation policy for higher education. It also reaffirms the significance of the global–local dynamics in higher education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about spatial–temporal variability of atmospheric temperature across Taiwan, an island with diverse local emission sources partly because of its Asian cultural characteristics. To develop a new land use regression (LUR) model for this study, we used the temperature data collected by the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau from 2000 and 2016, while using the data from 2017 as the external data verification to assess model reliability. Because incense and joss money burning is a cultural-specific emission source in Asia, we further included location of temples, cemeteries, and crematoriums as potential predictors. The overall model performance and tenfold cross-validated are R2 of 0.88 and R2 of 0.87, respectively, which presents a high level of prediction performance. Moreover, we used our LUR model to estimate urban heat islands intensity (UHII) for six metropolises in Taiwan and found Taichung City has the highest UHII value (4.60 °C) among them. These results provide important insights in expanding the remote sensing application on spatial–temporal variation of atmospheric temperature and its further application on UHI effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial parks, which are characterized as a group of industrial businesses designed to meet the concomitant demands of different organizations within an area, have played an important role in the national development strategies of many countries. Industrial parks have received increasingly more attention over time. Nevertheless, few scholars have visually analyzed global scientific data. This paper quantitatively and visually examines global academic research papers on industrial parks from 1987 to 2016 by using a bibliometric analysis. A total of 1823 papers from Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index databases were analyzed. The distributions of authorship, keywords, countries/territories, and institutes were generated. According to data from Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index databases, the top five most productive authors (i.e., Geng Y. with 22 articles, Fujita T. with 17, El-Halwagi M.M. with 15, Zhang Y. with 14, and Tan R.R. with 12) have contributed significantly to industrial park research. Papers on industrial park research have mainly been from China, the USA, and Taiwan. The dominant keywords from industrial park research from 1987 to 2016 are "China", "system", "heavy metal", and "eco-industrial park". These keywords will be the hot topics in industrial park research in the future. The research findings can provide a reference for understanding the research development process and trends in analyses in the field of industrial parks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous cinnamon (Cinnamomum osmophloeum) is an endemic tree in Taiwan. The leaf essential oil is rich in trans-cinnamaldehyde, and its excellent antifungal activity has been reported. Since trans-cinnamaldehyde is a volatile compound, it is here evaluated for whether it is more effective via fumigant action. This study illustrates the antifungal action of trans-cinnamaldehyde against wood-decay fungi. Two ways that trans-cinnamaldehyde inhibits the growth of fungi, namely direct contact and fumigation, were examined using the agar dilution method (AD) and the inverted paper disc method (IPD). In addition, the amount of trans-cinnamaldehyde vapor in the headspace of the Petri dish was quantified using solid-phase microextraction and GC–MS. Antifungal results showed that the antifungal indices observed in the IPD method were clearly higher than those in the AD method, indicating that trans-cinnamaldehyde vapor had stronger antifungal activity. Results from the quantitative analysis also revealed that the amounts of trans-cinnamaldehyde vapor measured by the IPD method were significantly greater than those by the AD method. Accordingly, with higher amount of trans-cinnamaldehyde evaporated, stronger antifungal activity was observed. It is clear that the antifungal action of trans-cinnamaldehyde was primarily attributed to fumigation instead of direct contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to improve service quality of international freight forwarders and explore practical business solutions to enhance customer service level. Freight forwarder usually acts as an agent to source logistics service for shipper and work closely with carriers such as shipping line and airline companies. This business is characterized by lower capital investment and entry barrier comparing with carriers, and most of their major customers are small or medium size manufactures or traders. Providing high quality service to enhance customer satisfaction is the key mission since competition is extremely severe. This paper empirically investigates the leading freight forwarders to find important customer requirements in East Asian region such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Furthermore, the feature of the study by using quality function deployment approach would not only identify key technical measures but also explore meaningful business solutions as direction of quality improvement. The finding reveals key customer requirements are cheaper agency fees, door to door ability and instant response, and the key technical measures are customer relationship management, overall information system, service point and network. We would further discuss the empirical result and conclude managerial meaning for decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing comprehensive limit-order data that unambiguously identify investor groups, this paper examines the order-cancellation behavior across investor groups in the Taiwan Stock Exchange. First, facing trade-offs between the monitoring cost and limit-order risks, such as non-execution and free-trade-option risks, behavioral differences exist across investor groups. Foreign investors closely monitoring the market cancel their limit orders most actively, while individual investors with the highest monitoring cost do so least actively. Second, Tobit regressions show that the order cancellations by foreign investors are the most sensitive to the free-trade-option and non-execution risks, while those by individual investors are the least sensitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the corporate ownership and control contestability of the listed companies in the non-financial industry in Taiwan from 1999 to 2008. The research includes 11,888 samples, from which the direct and indirect control of the majority shareholders of the companies is calculated, and the ultimate control is obtained. It is found that the average control of the ultimate owners in the listed companies (excluding financial companies) in Taiwan is 14.03%. The average control of the first four largest controllers is 29.10%, and the degree of deviation of the four largest controllers is 84.89%. Control contestability affects company supervision and management. This paper also adopts the fixed effect model to discuss the impact of control contestability on company performance. The results show that when the control concentration of majority shareholders is high or when the alliance force of the largest controller is over 38.48%, it will have an adverse impact on company performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the weather effects with a comprehensive examination that includes all eight weather elements after controlling for the effect of seasonal affect disorder using the data from Taiwan between January 1, 1995, and October 31, 2021. We further employ principal component analysis to provide us with components that fittingly represent various multi-facet weather conditions and intuitively depict the relationship between the weather as we know it and investor behavior manifested in the overall market in returns, volatility, turnover, and liquidity. The results from a vector autoregression model based on both the individual weather elements and weather components show that the weather effects exist. We also find that warnings about extreme weather condition of a typhoon have a direct effect and heavy rain an indirect effect on market liquidity. In addition, institutional investors' buying and selling activity is linked to weather conditions. The robustness of the weather effects is further demonstrated by the results of the intraday return analysis and from considering different numbers of weather elements and conditions in the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While urban nature has been reported as positively associated with health and well-being, only a few research focused on the health-beneficial effects of the ecological quality of natural environments. When designing urban green spaces, there is a growing need for establishing rich biodiversity and creating spaces where residents can recover from daily demands and stress. This study aims to understand if human aesthetic perceptions align with ecological quality by exploring the correlation between environmental naturalness, measured by avian diversity, and the restorativeness people experience from the natural landscapes. Additionally, we examine the relationship between the naturalness measured objectively and the naturalness people perceive. We conducted surveys to collect perceptions about natural landscapes in Taipei Metropolitan, Taiwan. We retrieved bird survey data from BBS Taiwan to estimate the naturalness levels of the sites and took photographs on-site to generate the interventions. Participants viewed images and evaluated their restoring and natural perceptions of landscapes. There were 128 participants who answered the survey. Our findings reported landscapes with greater objective naturalness, higher avian species richness and the Shannon diversity index scores, were assessed as more natural and were positively associated with perceived restorativeness. Although bird abundance, another objective naturalness measure did not show significant associations between perceived naturalness and restorativeness. People perceive urban nature supporting diverse bird species as more restorative, having a higher potential to provide restoring effects. This paper suggests future research to have more control over other environmental factors to gain a more detailed understanding of the ecological quality of the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the characteristics of financial cycles (credit and house prices) and their interactions with business cycles in Taiwan. We employ multivariate structural time series model to estimate trend and cyclical components in real bank credit, real house prices, and real GDP. We find that financial cycles are roughly twice the length of the business cycles, and house price cycles lead both credit and business cycles. Nevertheless, the estimated length of business and financial cycles in Taiwan is much shorter than those in industrialized economies. We then use machine learning to evaluate the importance of a macroeconomic variable that predicts downturns of financial cycles, by conducting both in-sample fitting and out-of-sample forecasting. Those macrovariables selected by machine learning reflects Taiwan's close linkage in trades and financial interdependence with other countries such as China and spillover effects from the Fed's monetary policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses consumer behavior in Taiwan to both domestic and cross-border E-commerce service providers based on the literature review and field research, conducting the empirical analysis through the survey. The results are 1. Taiwan consumers have had much of online shopping experience from domestic and cross-border E-commerce service providers. 2. The individual variables of customer would affect the buying behavior from domestic and cross-border E-commerce service providers such as the difference of gender, age, daily web browsing time, the stickiness of E-commerce website or applications and the frequency of recurring purchase according to the product category of shopped merchandise. 3. The Home Bias of consumer E-commerce might exist: When domestic and cross-border E-commerce platform provides a similar product, consumers would be more willing to engage in the domestic E-commerce service providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of auditor industry specialization on the association between information asymmetry and accounting information quality. Using data from Taiwan whose audit reports are required to be signed by audit partners and controlling for the endogenous auditor choice, the results show that the audit partner industry specialization moderates the positive relation between discretionary accruals and measures of information asymmetry (i.e., bid-ask spread and analyst forecast dispersion). Moreover, this positive relation is stronger for firms whose audit partners are industry specialists than for firms whose audit firms are industry specialists. Further analysis shows that the first audit partner's expertise itself matters more for the association between earnings quality and information asymmetry, in comparison with the expertise of audit firm alone. The results are robust to alternative estimation method and models, and alternative measures of information asymmetry, earnings quality, and industry specialists. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the audit partner's industry specialization reducing information asymmetry via its impact on higher earnings quality. Our analyses provide policy implications in the dual-partner signature rule implemented in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the cost efficiency (CE), technology gap ratio (TGR), and overall cost efficiency (OCE) of 43 banks and 27 life insurance companies operating in Taiwan. The use of the copula method to derive the joint probability density function for the cost functions of financial holding banks (FHBs) and financial holding life insurers (FHLIs) allows us to take into account the operational synergies enjoyed by the financial holding companies. Our empirical results are as follows. (1) A significant, positive correlation exists between the cost efficiencies of FHBs and FHLIs, supporting that both types of firms benefit from the synergy effect. (2) The omission of synergy effects leads to underestimated measures of CE and OCE for FHBs, but leaves the measure of TGR intact. (3) The absence of synergies results in underestimating the CE scores for FHLIs, but the TGRs of FHLIs and non-FHLIs are overestimated, exaggerating the OCE scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Producing high-definition maps (HD maps) is critical for achieving the goal of safe autonomous vehicles. These maps must have sufficient quality to ensure safety in self-driving applications. In this paper, a procedure for the verifying the accuracy of HD maps and validating the maps is proposed. Maps meeting the standards should have horizontal and vertical accuracy of 20 and 30 cm, respectively. Moreover, the HD maps must include attributes that can be used by autonomous vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research concentrates on segmenting credit card clients of Taiwan into optimal groups. Unsupervised Learning plays a significant role in dividing customers into similar groups based on several parameters. If customers are clustered in groups optimally, it leads towards the retrieval of better precision from machine learning models applied to customers associated with the clusters. Different machine learning algorithms (Linear discriminant analysis, logistic regression and random forest) were applied on the obtained clusters through K-means, hierarchical and HK Means clustering algorithm, and predictive accuracy is compared with the accuracy obtained via applying mentioned machine learning models on the whole dataset. In this paper, a novel approach of combining K Means and hierarchical clustering (HK Means) is used. In this approach, HK means clustering algorithms are applied on the factorial coordinates, obtained from multiple correspondence analyses for segmenting customers into optimal groups has been proposed. The accuracy of the clustering techniques is evaluated from the decomposition of inertia. The results demonstrate that the combination of K Means and hierarchical clustering proved to be optimal clustering techniques for customer segmentation which can be used further for applying Machine Learning techniques for credit risk analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dengue is one of the world's most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral diseases. As it is found mostly in urban and semi-urban areas, urbanization and associated human activities that affect the environment and larval habitats could become risk factors (e.g., lane width, conditions of street ditches) for the spread of dengue. However, there are currently no systematic studies of micro-scale urbanization-based risk factors for the spread of dengue epidemics. We describe the study area, two micro-scale environmental risk factors associated with urbanization, and meteorological data. Since the observations involve spatial and temporal correlations, we also use some statistical methods for the analysis of spatial and spatial-temporal data for the relationship between urbanization and dengue. In this study, we analyzed data from Kaohsiung, a densely populated city in southern Taiwan, and found a positive correlation between environmental risk factors associated with urbanization (ditches positive for mosquito larvae and closely packed streets termed "dengue lanes") and clustering effects in dengue cases. The statistical analysis also revealed that the occurrence of positive ditches was significantly associated with that of dengue lanes in the study area. The relationship between climate variables and positive ditches was also analyzed in this paper, indicating a relationship between dengue and both rainfall and temperature, with temperature having a greater effect. Overall, this work is immediately relevant and applicable for policymakers in government, who will need to reduce these favorable habitats for vector-born disease spreaders and implement regulations for new urban constructions to thus reduce dengue spread in future outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operations on inputs are partially or completely decisive for information aggregation, and parameterized operations are widely used due to their flexibility in practice. The Bonferroni mean is a typical mean operator taking into account interrelationships between any two input variables. In this paper, the Hamacher operations are considered in constructing q-rung orthopair fuzzy aggregation operators combined with the Bonferroni mean. First, explicit expressions of aggregated results by the q-rung orthopair fuzzy Hamacher Bonferroni mean operator are presented without intermediate variables, which would certainly improve the computational efficiency. Then, limits of these resulting aggregations are examined with respect to parameters within Hamacher operations and Bonferroni mean, respectively. The obtained conclusions reveal relations among the current mean operator and some existing ones, and some numerical examples are given to facilitate the conceptual arguments. Finally, the developed operator is employed to evaluate the service quality of passenger airlines in Taiwan, China, and a comparative analysis is presented in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]