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An efficient cargo logistics service for vessels anchored offshore becomes imperative to meet the increasing demand of transporting dry bulk cargoes and overcome insufficient infrastructural resources of ports. Offshore cargo handling service providers propose a fleet of offshore floating terminals (OFTs) performing the cargo handling service directly nearby anchorages at sea. This approach reduces the time and the usage of resources compared with relying on ports. In this paper, we develop a scheduling mathematical model for the fleet of OFTs to improve the operating efficiency in serving cargo vessels and their barges. This study proposes the model with various objective functions that can be used for a service provider depending on its goals and customer satisfaction policies. This study introduces real-world considerations inspired by an offshore service provider in Singapore and addresses complicated combinations of practical requirement owing to cargo/vessel/operation attributes, maintenance periods, and operating cost components in development of an optimization model via mixed-integer linear programming. An efficient genetic algorithm is also developed to solve the model with finding near-optimal effective solutions. Through examining a large set of real data provided by the service provider, the proposed genetic algorithm shows a high effectiveness in terms of solution quality and computational time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review paper describes the development of the pre-hospital system in Singapore from the pre-war days. Every country's prehospital community needs a deep understanding of how they developed over the years, factors that played a part, and the aspirations their community and government have set for this. This can guide future evolution of the services to ensure that care provided is relevant, applicable and in keeping with the community's needs. Countries with similar contextual circumstances, but at a different stage of development of their PECs, may learn from these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines a patient with borderline mental capacity, where the healthcare team is conflicted about how to proceed. This case demonstrates the complicated intersection between undue influence and mental capacity, allowing us to explore how the law is applied in clinical practice. Patients have the right to decline or accept medical treatments offered to them. In Singapore, family members perceive a right to be involved in the decision-making process for sick and elderly patients. Elderly patients, dependent on mainly family members for care and support, sometimes submit to their overbearing influence resulting in decisions that fail to protect the patients' own best interests. However, the clinicians' own well-intentioned influence, driven by a desire for the best medical outcome can also be undue, and neither influence should seek to be a substitution for the patient's decision. Following Re BKR [2015] SGCA 26, we are now obliged to examine how mental capacity can be affected by undue influence. A lack of capacity can be found when a patient fails to appreciate the presence of undue influence or is susceptible to undue influence due to their mental impairment causing their will to be overborne. This then paves the way for the health care team to decide based on best interests, because the patient is determined to be lacking in mental capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research suggests that descriptive norms positively influence proenvironmental behavior, including littering prevention. However, in some behavioral contexts, a weak descriptive norm may increase individuals' feelings of responsibility by signaling a need for action. We examined this effect in the context of litter prevention by conducting structural equation modeling of survey data from 1400 Singapore residents. The results showed that descriptive norms negatively predicted ascription of responsibility and were negatively related to littering prevention behavior via ascription of responsibility and personal norms. It also showed that strong injunctive norms can reduce the inhibitory effect of descriptive norms on ascription of responsibility. These findings were consistent with several hypotheses constituting the model of norm-regulated responsibility, a novel explanatory framework offering new insights and a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of social norms' influence on proenvironmental behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the impact of teachers' questions on child bilingual's heritage language reading process and outcomes. This study examined the role of adults' questions in English-Mandarin bilingual preschoolers' Mandarin word learning, story comprehension, and reading engagement. Ninety-nine 4- to 5-year-old preschoolers in Singapore were assigned to one of the three reading conditions: (a) reading with contextualized questions (e.g., labelling), (b) reading with decontextualized questions (e.g., inference), and (c) reading without questions. The experimenters read three storybooks to the children three times over 2 weeks. Children's general Mandarin proficiency was tested before the intervention, and their target words knowledge and story comprehension were tested before and after the intervention. Children's reading engagement in each reading was assessed with a modified Child Behavior Rating Scale. The results demonstrate that not all aspects of Mandarin performance and reading engagement have benefitted from the experimenter's questions. Contextualized questions were found to significantly enhance children's word meaning explanation and story retelling. Contextualized and decontextualized questions lead to higher increase in social-cognitive engagement but resulted in faster decrease in behavioral and affective engagement over repetitive readings. Furthermore, children's initial Mandarin proficiency influences their reading process and outcomes. Generally, the better their Mandarin vocabulary knowledge was, the more they could enjoy and benefit from the reading, whether they were asked questions or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists have crafted intricate taxonomies to classify nations beyond liberal democracy, positioning these societies along an authoritarian continuum. Despite the pivotal role of journalists in accelerating political dynamics, there exists a lack of comparative research on media governance in these regimes. Consequently, this study scrutinizes the media governance ecosystems in Vietnam and Singapore. Vietnam is a one-party authoritarian state, whereas Singapore represents a hybrid political system. However, both countries exhibit a stable and uninterrupted rule by the respective ruling party. Our research uncovers the nuances of Singapore's media regulation, which embeds trusted stakeholders with financial interests in key press roles to reinforce the implicit political norms. Conversely, Vietnam employs a more direct, coercive, and state-centric approach. Media actors in both nations occasionally test the boundaries of acceptable discourses, with each government's responses being shaped by specific contexts and broader history. Reforms in Vietnam, embracing privatization and commercialization, mirror Singapore's integration of capitalism, public ownership, and commercial interests when governing media. These findings highlight diverse yet effective authoritarian media governance strategies, unique features, and commonalities in both systems. Overall, media structures in these Southeast Asian countries have undergone profound evolutions towards more sophisticated regulatory tools to manage societal and political transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the limits of central industrial planning through a case study of Singapore. While previous Austrian scholars have argued that successful industrial planning is impossible, and that its successes (if any) are limited to the resolution of technical problems, the positive economic record of Singapore under the auspices of its developmental state capitalism poses a strong challenge to these market-oriented perspectives. In response, I present a modest position. I concede that Singapore's industrial policy has to some extent contributed to genuine economic development but insist that its state-heavy approach has nonetheless hampered the market's entrepreneurial discovery by stifling local entrepreneurial talent and crowding out local small-medium enterprises. The top-down model has also limited the economy's adaptive potential. I draw from productivity, entrepreneurship, and innovation data to make my case and conclude that Singapore's experience with its developmental state model comes with a significant cost, notwithstanding its impressive achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Although the trajectory of mental disorders can be improved with timely treatment, many people defer treatment-seeking. This study aimed to examine the prevalence and correlates of treatment delays for mental disorders in Singapore, as well as perceived effectiveness of treatment received. Methods: A total of 6126 respondents, aged 18 and above, participated in the Singapore Mental Health Study 2016—a cross-sectional, nationwide study conducted in Singapore from 2016 to 2018. Lifetime treatment contact for mood, anxiety, and alcohol use disorders (AUD) was assessed using the World Mental Health-Composite International Diagnostic Interview (Version 3.0). Multivariable logistic regression was conducted to examine correlates of delayed treatment. Results: A total of 137 participants had made lifetime treatment contact for a mental disorder. The proportion of respondents who received delayed treatment (i.e., at least one year after onset of disorder) was 60.8% for any disorder, 59.5% for mood disorders, 56.3% for anxiety disorders, and 92.7% for AUD. The median delay was 5 years for mood disorders, one year for anxiety disorders, and 4 years for AUD. Treatment delay was significantly associated with older age, higher educational qualification, lifetime AUD, and earlier age of onset of disorder. 58.4% of respondents with lifetime treatment contact had received treatment that they considered effective. Conclusion: The high prevalence and long durations of treatment delay underscore the need to encourage help-seeking for mental disorders, especially since treatment is generally perceived to be helpful. Our findings also highlight several population groups more susceptible to receiving delayed treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]