Current Trends and Demands in Visualization in the Geosciences

Geosciences, along with many other disciplines in science and engineering, faces an exponential increase in the amount of data generated from observation, experiment and large-scale, high-resolution 3-D numerical simulations. In this communication we describe the fundamentals of visualization necessary to meet these challenges. We present several alternative methodologies such as 2D/3D feature extraction, segmentation methods, and flow topology, to help better understand the physical structure of the data. We use AMIRA from TGS to demonstrate our concepts. Examples are drawn from fields in computational fluid dynamics, 3-D mantle convection and seismic tomography. Finally, we present our perspective on the future of visualization.     

HRM Under Guided Economic Development: The Singapore Experience

The article begins with the three stages of Singapore's economic development as the context from which the local labour-management relations system emerged. This is followed by a discussion of the institutional framework under which the government managed to attractmulti-national enterprises to provide the necessary capital, technology, management expertise, and access to international markets - conditions required for the attainment of its economic goals. However, while the government did deliver a disciplined, hard-working and trained labour force, it also ensured that workers received a share of the wealth generated in the labour process. In the second part of the article, local employment practices, as well as the trends for future development are discussed.     

Motivations and experiences of Mainland Chinese medical tourists in Hong Kong

Medical tourism has been developing very rapidly in recent years and Hong Kong has emerged as a new medical tourism destination. The purpose of the study is to explore the motivations and experiences of a sample of medical tourists in Hong Kong and hence semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with obstetric patients from Mainland China. The findings indicate that one of the most important reasons for their traveling to give birth in Hong Kong was to avoid China’s ‘One Child’ policy. Variations in staff attitudes were also found among different hospitals and even in the same hospital. The findings also suggest that perceived discrimination by the medical tourists emerges in the form of less favourable service and less information sharing.