Perceived attributes of Asian foods: From the perspective of the American customers

The objectives of this study were to examine and compare the attributes of six types of Asian foods (Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese) as they are perceived by American customers. To achieve these objectives, a questionnaire examining the attributes of Asian foods was developed. The data was collected through a web survey completed by 424 American customers of the six types of Asian food. Importance-performance analyses showed that across the six types of Asian foods some common attributes were perceived. However, the analyses also indicated that each type of Asian food was perceived to have its own particular characteristics, signifying each cuisine's uniqueness when compared to other types of Asian foods. The results suggested basic information pertinent to marketing strategies for positioning and product development for Asian food restaurants.     

中外应对电网冰灾事故措施对比分析

2008年初,我国出现的大面积灾害性冰雪天气对电网造成了严重破坏,影响了电网的安全运行和有序供电.通过对我国和其他国家尤其是加拿大针对类似极端气象条件的应对方法和事后举措的比较,在电网设计标准、安全控制措施、应急机制等方面进行重点分析,针对冰灾等自然灾害提出了电网在规划、运行和管理方面的一些建议.在当前全球极端气象条件频现的背景下,以期能够对我国电网处理自然灾害和突发性电网事故提出一些有益的应对思路.     

Foreign direct investment and exports The experiences of Vietnam1

We examined the implementation statuses of a total of 5,919 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects approved by the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment since 1988, and compiled a database of actually disbursed FDI in Vietnam. The database covers FDI flows into Vietnam from 23 countries from 1990 to 2004. Using the data, we analyzed the impact of FDI on the exports of Vietnam with gravity equations. The empirical results demonstrate that FDI is one of the major factors driving the rapid export growth of Vietnam. It has significantly facilitated the expansion of Vietnam's exports to FDI source countries. In particular, the empirical analysis shows that a 1 percent increase in FDI inflows will be expected to give rise to a 0.13 percent increase in Vietnam's exports to these countries.     

Consumers’ preference modeling to price bundle offers in the telecommunications industry: a game with competition among operators

Network operators are merging their services, such as fixed or wireless telephony, internet or television, into single offers, called bundles. It is essential to understand consumers’ preferences to define the most profitable bundles, with their associated prices, especially in the fierce competitive current market. We start by defining a random linear utility model and then, analyze the competition between an integrated operator and new entrants proposing substitutable services. Each operator ignores the consumers’ reservation prices for his offers and has to deal with uncertainties about the marketing strategies of competitors, due to potential different size and cost structure. A two-level game is introduced and solved by backward induction. In the second level, the operators determine their optimal offer prices for each possible combination of marketing strategies while the consumers select their most profitable purchasing processes; the natural framework is that of Bayesian game theory. Finally at the top level, knowing the outcome of the other level, the operators identify which marketing strategy to use between market share expansion, segment targeting or multi-level price discrimination, to maximize their expected utilities conditionally to their private informations.     

Human Resource Management Practices in a Transitional Economy: A Comparative Study of Enterprise Ownership Forms in Vietnam

This exploratory study compared human resource management (HRM) practices in four types of companies in Vietnam. It found, from a sample of 169 companies, that the adoption of HRM practices reflects the company's ownership traits. Overall, foreign-invested companies (FICs) are somewhat more developed in HRM practices than state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Conversely, local private companies, albeit more entrepreneurial, are often less receptive to adopting HRM practices than SOEs. It also revealed that transforming SOEs into equitized companies has brought about no significant changes in this regard. Together with an examination of the impact of management's perceived value of human resources (HR), union status, and company size, the study provides more insight into the variations in HRM practices and suggests some implications for initiating change in this area.     

On bootstrapping periodic random arrays with increasing period

The aim of the paper is to determine when the periodic block bootstrap, procedure introduced by Chan et al. (Technometrics 46(2):215–224, 2004), can be applied to arrays of random variables. Formal consistency is obtained under α-mixing or m-dependence conditions together with the assumption that the length of the period tends to infinity. On the other hand, if the period is constant, inconsistency is shown. The performance of periodic block bootstrap is also compared in simulations with moving block bootstrap. It is suggested that for the case of long-period data the first method is more effective and much more stable with respect to the length of the block size.     

基于CPLD的正交磁通门传感器设计

简述了磁通门传感器技术中二次谐波法的原理,用软磁材料坡莫合金制作传感器探头磁芯,设计了基于CPLD的正交磁通门传感器。传感器能够实现水平载体的航向角数值,在0°³60°范围内航向角的测量精度可达1°,系统分辨率可达0.1°,可以满足水平定向导航的性能要求。     

浮选柱浮选金矿矿泥半工业试验研究

本文介绍了某金矿应用浮选柱浮选矿泥所进行的半工业试验过程及结果分析。通过试验及数据分析,表明了浮选柱适合该金矿浮选矿泥,并能够取得比较好的技术指标。     

Geodesic normal distribution on the circle

This paper is concerned with the study of a circular random distribution called geodesic normal distribution recently proposed for general manifolds. This distribution, parameterized by two real numbers associated to some specific location and dispersion concepts, looks like a standard Gaussian on the real line except that the support of this variable is [0, 2π) and that the Euclidean distance is replaced by the geodesic distance on the circle. Some properties are studied and comparisons with the von Mises distribution in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic means and variances are provided. Finally, the problem of estimating the parameters through the maximum likelihood method is investigated and illustrated with some simulations.     

Child injury prevention in Vietnam: achievements and challenges

As with other South Asian countries, injury is becoming a leading cause of death and morbidity among children in Vietnam. In response to the increasing burden of child injury, government and non-government agencies in Vietnam have combined efforts during the last decade to develop and implement various child injury prevention strategies and programmes. This article provides, through a review of relevant documents and interviews with major stakeholders, an overview of these efforts and highlights major challenges to child injury prevention in the country. The findings point to notable achievements in terms of increasing awareness of injury facing children at all levels in the community and developing a sound injury prevention policy framework in a relatively short period of time. However, much needs to be done to implement necessary environmental and legislative changes, strengthen child injury surveillance and injury prevention research; and to improve access to health services. The insight into the experience of Vietnam could benefit other low- and middle-income countries with a high burden of child injury.