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Research related to the developmental disability (DD) community should include collaboration with individuals with DD. Unfortunately, people with DD are infrequently involved in research projects in meaningful ways, and there is little guidance about how to collaborate equitably with researchers with DD. The purpose of this article is to share lessons learned from a collaborative research study among researchers with and without DD using both qualitative and quantitative methods to develop and examine the effectiveness of a civic engagement intervention for transition-aged youth with disabilities. It includes how our research team compensated researchers with DD, clarified team member roles, leveraged the expertise of researchers with DD in using both qualitative and quantitative methods, and integrated technology throughout the research process.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the most significant disruption to education in history (United Nations, 2020), not least in Tourism, Hospitality, and Events (THE). While growing evidence explores the reshaping of higher education in a COVID-19 era, limited discussion exists on the specific impacts for current and future students of THE and the challenges of rebuilding student and wider stakeholder confidence in THE education and careers. This paper advances this discussion by focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on the THE educational experience. A case example approach is adopted to illustrate the responses of four universities in the pre, during, and post phases of students’ educational journey. Common approaches are drawn using lesson drawing, broader implications and issues affecting institutions and students are explored and lessons for the future of THE education are extrapolated. Finally, the paper also suggests avenues for future research.

Pediatric obstructive sleep apnea has significant negative effects on health and behavior in childhood including depression, failure to thrive, neurocognitive impairment, and behavioral issues. It is strongly associated with an increased risk for chronic adult disease such as obesity and diabetes, accelerated atherosclerosis, and endothelial dysfunction. Accumulating evidence suggests that adult-onset non-communicable diseases may originate from early life through a process by which an insult applied at a critical developmental window causes long-term effects on the structure or function of an organism. In recent years, there has been increased interest in the role of epigenetic mechanisms in the pathogenesis of adult disease susceptibility. Epigenetic mechanisms that influence adaptive variability include histone modifications, non-coding RNAs, and DNA methylation. This review will highlight what is currently known about the phenotypic associations of epigenetic modifications in pediatric obstructive sleep apnea and will emphasize the importance of epigenetic changes as both modulators of chronic disease and potential therapeutic targets.

During the preschool years, children develop several inter-related skills including motor skills and communication skills. In this article, we highlight several communication teaching strategies and describe how practitioners can promote communication skills of preschoolers with disabilities by providing them with multiple opportunities to practice these skills during motor activities. The following strategies are described: arrange the physical environment, model motor vocabulary, ask motor related questions, use a fill in the blank strategy, and reinforce/prompt child communication. The use of these strategies during large and small group motor activities is illustrated with vignettes. We present strategies for creating an engaging environment and providing meaningful opportunities so that children can learn important communication skills while also developing critical motor skills.

This study investigates the enhancement of cultural intelligence (CQ) and emotional intelligence (EI) of hospitality management students to maximize learning outcomes from their study abroad experience. A phenomenological approach through content analysis of reflective journals was employed to understand students’ learning experiences. All students reflected at least one of the four CQ dimensions where the majority expressed improvement in cognitive and motivational CQ. Among the EI dimensions, the self-emotion appraisal was expressed by the majority of students. All CQ and EI dimensions enhanced at least one of the learning outcomes. The findings revealed that study abroad effectively prepares students as socially responsible global citizens, besides enhancing their CQ and EI.

The purpose was to investigate long-term health impacts of trauma and the aim was to describe the functional outcome and health status up to 7 years after trauma.We conducted a prospective, multi-centre cohort study of adult trauma patients admitted to three regional trauma centres with moderate or major trauma (ISS ≥ 9) in Hong Kong (HK). Patients were followed up at regular time points (1, 6 months and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 years) by telephone using extended Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOSE) and the Short-Form 36 (SF36). Observed annual mortality rate was compared with the expected mortality rate estimated using the HK population cohort. Linear mixed model (LMM) analyses examined the changes in SF36 with subgroups of age ≥ 65 years, ISS 15, and GOSE ≥ 5 over time.At 7 years, 115 patients had died and 48% (138/285) of the survivors responded. The annual mortality rate (AMR) of the trauma cohort was consistently higher than the expected mortality rate from the general population. Forty-one percent of respondents had upper good recovery (GOSE = 8) at 7 years. Seven-year mean PCS and MCS were 45.06 and 52.06, respectively. LMM showed PCS improved over time in patients aged 65 years and with baseline GOSE ≥ 5, and the MCS improved over time with baseline GOSE ≥ 5. Higher mortality rate, limited functional recovery and worse physical health status persisted up to 7 years post-injury.Long-term mortality and morbidity should be monitored for Asian trauma centre patients to understand the impact of trauma beyond hospital discharge.

In this work, the sensor data from a gas turbine system is analyzed with the objective of failure modeling and prediction. Several maintenance incidents were recorded by the sensor system in two separate vehicles. Two approaches to selecting training data were used in the analysis. The first followed a traditional method of randomly selecting a certain percentage of data points to include in training. The second data selection strategy was to select certain incidents to include in training, with the remaining incidents unseen for testing. Using classifier and anomaly detection techniques, models of the system using 76 predictor variables were trained to distinguish between healthy and failed system states in a two-class problem. Significant differences in performance results were noted depending on the selection of data included in training. A rule-based classifier model was then applied to leverage the predictions from both the classifier and anomaly detection models yielding promising results. The construction of an ensemble model was an effective way to mitigate the challenges presented in the training strategies, where a single individual model would not succeed in both scenarios. The simplification of the system into two states could be regarded as restrictive when the 'healthiness' of a system is nuanced; however, despite this simplification, good performance and accurate predictions could still be achieved., 2020 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI), Dec. 1-4, 2020, Canberra, Australia

Object Verbal fluency (VF) is the cognitive test which shows the most consistent and persistent post-operative decline after subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) in Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the reasons are not completely understood, and the debate has focused on two hypotheses: a surgical effect or an acute STN-DBS effect. Methods We recruited 3 PD samples: (1) a group assessed before and after STN-DBS surgery (2) a group assessed On vs. Off STN-DBS and (3) an unoperated PD control group. All groups performed letter, category and switching category VF tasks. The total number of correct words generated were noted and measures of clustering and switching were also obtained. Results We found a significant effect of STN-DBS surgery on all VF tasks which was associated with a post-operative decline in the total number of words generated, and a reduction of phonemic switching during the letter and category VF tasks, and a reduction of semantic clustering for category VF. By contrast to the effects of surgery, acute On vs. Off stimulation did not influence the number of words generated on any of the VF tasks. Acute stimulation only produced two effects on the category VF task: increased semantic cluster size and decreased number of semantic switches when STN-DBS was switched On. Conclusions This study differentiates between the effects of STN-DBS surgery and acute stimulation on VF performance. Our findings indicate that the STN-DBS effect on VF are a surgical and not an acute STN stimulation effect.

Background Patients receiving peritoneal dialysis (PD) endure an ongoing regimen of daily fluid exchanges and are at risk of potentially life-threatening complications and debilitating symptoms that can limit their ability to participate in life activities. The aim of the study was to identify the characteristics, content and psychometric properties of measures for life participation used in research in PD. Methods We searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsychInfo, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials from inception to May 2020 for all studies that reported life participation in patients on PD. The characteristics, dimensions of life participation and psychometric properties of these measures were extracted and analyzed. Results Of the 301 studies included, 17 (6%) were randomized studies and 284 (94%) were nonrandomized studies. Forty-two different measures were used to assess life participation. Of these, 23 (55%) were used in only one study. Fifteen (36%) measures were specifically designed to assess life participation, while 27 (64%) measures assessed broader constructs, such as quality of life, but included questions on life participation. The 36-Item Short Form Health Survey and Kidney Disease Quality of Life Short Form were the most frequently used measures [122 (41%) and 86 (29%) studies, respectively]. Eight (19%) measures had validation data to support their use in patients on PD. Conclusions The many measures currently used to assess life participation in patients receiving PD vary in their characteristics, content and validation. Further work to pilot and validate potential measures is required to establish a core patient-reported outcome measure to assess life participation in patients receiving PD.

Within luxury hotels targeting multinational segments, frontline service staff are essential to creating unique, personalized experiences for high-value, discerning clientele. Performing emotional labor and utilizing cultural intelligence are key to ensuring exceptional cross-cultural service encounters, but which also create additional pressures for frontline staff. This study aims to assess the impacts of a comprehensive range of emotional labor and cultural intelligence (CQ) on employees’ job satisfaction. Cognitive CQ, motivational CQ, emotive dissonance, and expression of naturally felt emotions were shown to influence job satisfaction. Moreover, the study engaged senior executives from luxury hotels to further discuss the survey results. This approach helped the researchers and practitioners to (re)contextualize the study’s key findings, which were used to reflect on managers’ understanding of cultural intelligence, emotional labor and job satisfaction. The discussions highlighted how these issues were incorporated in luxury hotels’ human resource practices in general and especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

This paper attempts to examine the effects of active learning, academic motivation, and student engagement on academic satisfaction. Specifically, it aims to test the conceptual model of academic satisfaction with hospitality and tourism education in Macao. For this purpose, data from 480 students attending higher education institutions in Macao were analysed. Using structural equation modelling, the empirical results confirmed and validated the conceptual model of academic satisfaction and four hypotheses within the model. Active learning and academic motivation were positively related with student engagement and academic motivation and student engagement were positively related with academic satisfaction. The findings of the present study contribute to educational research on academic satisfaction and can be used by tertiary institutions to enhance academic satisfaction. Prior studies have shown that academic satisfaction can help retain students and encourage them to pursue continuing education...

In a highly complex and culturally diverse hospitality context, service employees are expected to perform high levels of culturally acceptable behaviour to culturally different guests, both verbal and non-verbal, during times of service interaction to boost guest satisfaction. Unarguably, cultural intelligence (CQ) is pivotal to both service employees and hospitality organisations. Nevertheless, there has been no empirical study of CQ conducted in the hospitality industry. The present study aims to investigate the performance and behaviour of hotel service employees’ CQ by employing a 14-item Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) in a questionnaire survey. A total of 719 valid responses from 10 hotels in Hong Kong were collected. The results suggest that the hotel service employees generally possess CQ in all four dimensions, namely metacognitive, cognitive, motivational and behavioural, which enables them to appropriately interact with hotel guests from different cultural backgrounds even though their cognitive CQ scored lower than the overall CQ. Furthermore, the specific CQ behaviours of the hotel employees in each dimension were scrutinised. In view of the importance of CQ in the hospitality industry, hospitality practitioners are duty-bound to nurture and develop the CQ of their service employees in the hope of attaining guest satisfaction in cross-cultural service encounters.

The internet environment enables effective promotion of tourism destinations to tourists; creating advantages for operating and managing destination marketing websites. This study makes the first a...

This study examines the hospitality leadership characteristics that are essential, as perceived by emerging hospitality leaders. Four focus group interviews were conducted in mainland China involvi...

Smart hotel is a novel concept in the hospitality industry, and few studies have examined hotel consumers’ intentions to visit smart hotels. This study investigates the relationship between technology readiness (TR) and technology amenities (TA) as antecedents to visiting intentions, using an extended technology acceptance model (TAM). Based on an online survey with 648 valid responses, the results indicate that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are correlated with TA, but not with TR. Furthermore, TR affects intentions to visit smart hotels, but TA does not. The findings enrich the hospitality literature and have practical implications for hospitality marketers designing technology-related marketing strategies to maintain competitiveness. This study contributes to raising awareness of the importance of technological amenities and services for the future visiting intentions of hotel consumers.

Despite existing studies on memorable tourism experiences that often involve interpersonal sharing, the broader question of how a listener could influence tourists’ memories, including their evaluations of posttravel experiences and destination image, remains relatively unexplored. Interpersonal sharing with a listener could elicit a process called capitalization in which an individual (re)constructs details of an experience to make it more memorable. To address this gap, this research examines the effects of capitalization on travel memories (study 1), and the influence of listener responsiveness on tourists’ destination image (study 2). This research reinforces the notion that separating the act of remembering from the act of sharing is difficult and contributes to research on the malleability of travel memories by highlighting the influence of the listener’s feedback in shaping tourists’ memorable experiences. This research also provides relevant implications for tourism practitioners involved in service experiences and tourist relationship building.

Active learning connects students to the real life situations they will encounter in their future jobs. In hospitality education, active learning implements various lively, fun activities to introduce practical scenarios students may experience in their hospitality careers. This study identifies 18 essential active-learning items of hospitality education through a comprehensive literature review and in-depth personal and focus group interviews with 19 hospitality educators and eight hospitality students in Asia. This paper discusses the potential benefits of using active learning, and its relationship with two major student engagement themes: “knowledge seeking” and “skills enhancement.”

Workplace sexual harassment is an issue that has gained increasing prominence in recent years. Owing to factors such as long working hours, night shifts, the prevalence of alcohol and the intimacy of “hospitality service”, the hospitality/tourism industry is particularly susceptible to the problem of sexual harassment (Davis, 1998; Poulston, 2008b; Yagil, 2008). Sexual harassment can have numerous negative effects, including poor working relationships, monetary loss (Gutek, 1985; Schneider et al., 1997), employee dissatisfaction, loss of attachment to the organisation (Boyd, 2002; Gettman & Gelfand, 2007) and increased employee turnover intentions (Burke, 1995; Laband & Lentz, 1998). At an organisational level, high turnover and labour costs are recognised human resource management challenges in the hospitality/tourism industry and, therefore, it is critical for the industry to pay attention to the problem of sexual harassment. However, protecting associates from unwanted sexual attention, whether from colleagues, managers or customers, is also about an employer’s duty of care for their staff and touches on a range of associated equal opportunities and wider ethical concerns (Goldsmith et al., 1997).The purpose of the study is to investigate sexual harassment among tour leaders in Taiwan. The research objectives of this study are as follows:1.To investigate tour leaders’ experiences of sexual harassment behavior at work; 2.To investigate tour leaders’ awareness of the organisational policies/regulations relating to sexual harassment in the workplace.

Task analyses are useful when teaching children how to complete tasks by breaking the tasks into small steps, particularly when children struggle to learn a skill during typical classroom instruction. We describe how to create a task analysis by identifying the steps a child needs to independently perform the task, how to assess what steps a child is able to do without adult support, and then decide how to teach the steps the child still needs to learn. Using task analyses can be the key to helping a young child become more independent.

With changes to aircraft usage due to expanded roles, operators need to monitor the usage of the aircraft and component loads to ensure safe operation of the components within their fatigue lives. Accurate load monitoring of aircraft component loads during flight is a challenge that has inspired the implementation of computational intelligence and machine learning techniques to replace the need for costly sensor systems. Much research has been carried out to develop a methodology for load signal and fatigue life estimation using only data from standard flight state and control system parameters. The National Research Council’s approach to load and usage monitoring is centered on leveraging the data recorded by existing instrumentation using machine learning models and data mining techniques. This flexible approach has been demonstrated on several helicopter platforms manufactured by different original equipment manufacturers. Results from the Australian S-70A-9 Black Hawk and Canadian Forces CH-146 Griffon (Bell 412) are provided to demonstrate the analysis and outputs enabled by accurate load monitoring. These outputs include load signal estimates, fatigue damage accumulation, and load exceedance plots and comparisons. For many operators, access to component material information that supported initial design analysis is very limited, so the provided outputs do not assume that this type of information is readily available. Using this analysis, valuable insights can still be obtained, particularly through load exceedance comparisons. Accurate load and usage monitoring is a universal goal that is not easily achieved on older aircraft without the sophisticated and powerful health and usage monitoring systems that are available today. This research targets these smaller legacy fleets to help satisfy their usage monitoring requirements and ensuring structural integrity., 30th Symposium of the International Committee on Aeronautical Fatigue, June 2-7, 2019, Krakow, Poland, Series: Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering

Prognosis of CLL patients has historically been determined by categorization into Rai or Binet risk groups based on physical examination and blood counts, however given heterogeneity within Rai or ...

Social decision making is often challenging for autistic individuals. Twenty autistic adolescents made decisions in the socially interactive context of a one-shot ultimatum game, and performance was compared to a large matched typical reference sample. Theory of mind, executive functioning and emotion regulation were measured via direct assessments, self- and parent report. Relative to the reference sample, autistic adolescents proposed fewer fair offers, and this was associated with poorer theory of mind. Autistic adolescents responded similarly to the reference sample when making decisions about offers proposed to them, however they did not appear to down regulate their negative emotion in response to unfair treatment in the same way. Atypical processes may underpin even apparently typical decisions made by autistic adolescents.

Pressure ulcer interventions are commonly assessed with measures of seating interface pressure, such as peak pressure gradients (PPGs). Decreases in PPG magnitudes may reduce pressure ulcer risk by decreasing tissue deformation and increasing tissue perfusion of at-risk weight-bearing tissues. Changes in PPG directions, which have previously been overlooked in the seating pressure literature, may provide a transient increase in blood flow to at-risk tissues, even if the PPG magnitude and location remain the same. The purpose of this study was to assess both PPG components in response to combinations of wheelchair tilt and recline angles. Thirteen power wheelchair users were recruited into the study. Six combinations of wheelchair tilt (15°, 25°, and 35°) and recline (10° and 30°) were tested in random order. Each combination was tested with 5-min upright sitting, 5-min tilt and recline, and 5-min maximal pressure relief recovery. Changes in PPG magnitudes and PPG directions under the left ischial tuberosity were computed for the six angle combinations. The findings in this study suggested that when combining wheelchair tilt and recline, the recline function may be particularly useful in reducing PPG magnitudes, while the tilt function may be particularly useful in manipulating PPG directions.

The aim of this study was to examine how experiential learning (EL) activities influence the employability skills of entry-level hotel employees/graduates and their resulting learning satisfaction. Four hypotheses pertaining to the constructs of EL, employability skills and learning satisfaction were developed on the basis of a comprehensive literature review. The results of 450 valid questionnaires were tested within the proposed structural model using AMOS, showing EL to be positively associated with employability skills and learning satisfaction. Further, employability skills were found to mediate the relationship between EL and graduate learning satisfaction. The study's findings will benefit the career development of hospitality graduates and the validation of universities’ hospitality curricula.

Much of the literature on authenticity is Western-centric, while little work addresses the concept in the Asian environment. The literature relating to authenticity from Asian tourists’ point of view is even underdeveloped. This study therefore aims to fill the knowledge gap by investigating Chinese tourists’ perspective of authenticity. It also examines tourists’ perceived authenticity as a multi-dimensional construct in a consumer-based model, the relationship with heritage motivation and tourist satisfaction. Findings indicate that Chinese tourists’ perceptions of authenticity are closely related to objective and constructive authenticity. The study demonstrates that heritage motivation has a significant positive influence on perceived authenticity and that perceived authenticity has a strong ability to predict tourist satisfaction.

Advances in technology have enabled the installation of an increasing number of sensors in various mechanical systems allowing for more detailed equipment health monitoring capabilities. It is hoped the sensor data will enable development of predictive tools to prevent system failures. This work describes continued analysis of sensor data surrounding a seizure of a turbocharger within a propulsion system. The objective of the analysis was to characterize and distinguish healthy and failed states of the turbocharger. The analysis approach included mapping of multi-dimensional sensor data to a low-dimensional space using various linear and nonlinear techniques in order to highlight and visualize the underlying structure of the information. To provide some physical insight into the structure of the low-dimensional representation, the transformation plots were analyzed from the perspective of several engine signals. By overlaying operating ranges of individual sensor signals, certain regions of the mappings could be associated with distinct operational states of the engine, and several anomalies could be related to various points in the turbocharger seizure. Although the failed points did not map to an obvious outlier location in the transformations, incorporating expert domain knowledge with the data mining tools significantly enhanced the insight derived from the sensor data.

This study aims to explore the extent of gender differences among Chinese tour leaders’ roles and the relationship of such differences to emotional labour, perceived organisational support and perceived supervisor support. The findings revealed surface acting and deep acting to be the two major strategies of emotional labour. Gender difference is found in performing surface acting strategies. Further analysis of gender differences showed that women tour leaders perform better with more care from organisation and rewards. Men tour leaders perform better with more supervisors’ care, concern, recognition and appreciation; and job training and facilitation.

The amount of sensors installed for equipment health monitoring on board engines, aircraft, and vehicles has increased steadily in the digital age. Developing strategies and capabilities to extract useful information from the tremendous amounts of data collected is a separate challenge that can be used to establish the indicators of system health, a necessary precursor to the implementation of condition based maintenance, that could be explored through the use of data analytics tools and methods. In this work, initial analysis of the sensor data related to a diesel engine system and specifically its turbocharger subsystem was carried out. An incident involving seizure of the turbocharger was captured by the sensor data, and hence analysis of this event provides an opportunity to identify changes in equipment indicators with a known outcome. Several data analysis tools were used, including the transformation of the original highdimensional sensor data to a low-dimensional space. The data analysis is focused on characterizing the healthy and failed states of the turbocharger system and identifying the change in behaviour of the system during that transition., 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Robotics and Intelligent Sensors (IRIS), October 5-7, 2017, Ottawa, ON

This study examines the factor structure of the employability skills model for entry-level hotel staff in China. A survey was conducted with 25 hotels within eight cities in China. The proposed measurement model was tested using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The AMOS software package was used to test 15 measurement scale items, which resulted in the identification of the four skill dimensions of job performance and self-management, organization and time management, creativity and innovation, and problem solving. After exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, both the convergent validity and discriminant validity were found to be satisfactory. This research is the first empirical study to develop a clear, acceptable, and updated model of employability skills for entry-level hotel employees in Chinese hotels.

In this study, the authors explored the benefits of understanding employee cross-cultural competency and strengthening team performance, which are essential for improving the organizational effectiveness of multi-national hotel companies as they expand globally. Data were collected from six multi-national hotel companies in Thailand. A total of 738 valid questionnaires were obtained and analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the proposed relationships, in which cross-cultural competency was developed as determinant of multi-cultural team performance. The results indicate that cross-cultural competency had a positive, direct effect on team performance. The authors provide significant cross-cultural theoretical and practical management advice for stakeholders in the hospitality industry. In addition, the authors establish the foundation for future studies into cross-cultural competency and multi-cultural team performance in the context of Thai multi-national hotels.

The accurate estimation of helicopter component loads is an important goal for ensuring safe operation as well as for life cycle management and life extension efforts. In this research, the use of computational intelligence, neural network, and machine learning techniques is explored to estimate helicopter component loads and their fatigue life, in particular the main rotor yoke load of the CH-146 Griffon helicopter. This paper describes efforts to reduce the number of dimensions of the input data using feature generation techniques in the load estimation methodology, beginning with intrinsic dimension analysis to determine the number of intrinsic dimensions in the data. The data set is then mapped using different implicit methods to a low-dimension representation of the original data, which is then used for load estimation and fatigue life analysis for comparison with the results of the original 26-dimension input data. The resulting load signal and fatigue life estimates from the low-dimension representations are in most cases equally if not more accurate than those for the original input data. These promising results show that the low-dimension representations retain the relevant data from the original input data set and perhaps discard spurious data resulting in more accurate estimates., International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 14-19 May 2017, Anchorage, AK, USA, Series: Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Neural Networks

As aircraft fleets are required to expand their roles and usage, the accurate estimation of component loads in a helicopter is an important capability for safety and security reasons as well as for life cycle management and life extension efforts. Although dynamic component loads can be measured and monitored directly, these measurement methods are not reliable and are costly and difficult to maintain. Computational intelligence techniques have been successfully used for estimating helicopter dynamic loads and their resulting fatigue life using flight system and control parameters. However, other approaches work on low dimensional spaces with the advantage of smaller number of features and noise reduction due to information fusion. Nonlinear transformations have been used for this purpose, but their computation via implicit methods becomes more complex, time consuming and impractical with data growth. Moreover, the relationships between the features of the original and the target spaces are more difficult to uncover. Extreme Learning Machines (ELM) are used as an explicit functional representation for implicit methods, in particular for the t-SNE mapping. It was found that ELMs provided a good approximation to the implicit mapping, which preserves the appropriateness of the load prediction and damage estimation of critical helicopter components. In addition, the ELM model can be used for processing incoming streams of data, overcoming the limitation of the computation of the low dimensional mapping inherent to the use of implicit methods., International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 14-19 May 2017, Anchorage, AK, USA, Series: Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Neural Networks

This study aims to develop a scale to measure experiential learning (EL) activities in China’s hospitality higher education. The scale development procedure involved four stages: developing the initial items, implementing purifying measures, collecting data, and assessing the reliability and validity of the proposed measurement scale. After exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the development process resulted in a reliable and valid scale for measuring EL. The scale consists of nine items with three dimensions: (1) practical learning activities, (2) school-based activities, and (3) professional skills-related activities. This study contributes to the literature by developing a measurement scale for EL that lays the groundwork for future study. A better understanding of EL activities can contribute to graduates’ career development, universities’ curriculum validation, and hotels’ service quality.

To provide an overview of the assessment and management of risk factors for falls in older adults.This continuing education activity is intended for physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurses with an interest in skin and wound care.After participating in this educational activity, the participant should be better able to:1. Outline the components of an evidence-based falls assessment and identify risk factors for falls.2. Specify strategies to reduce falls in older adults, especially as related to maintaining skin integrity.Older adult patients may present to skin and wound care clinicians with skin injuries as a result of falls. In addition, chronic wounds associated with the patient's conditions may also increase his/her falls risk. Hence, appropriate assessment and management of the risk of falls in older adult patients are key elements of patient-centered care.

In this work, the sensor data related to a diesel engine system and specifically its turbocharger subsystem were analyzed. An incident where the turbocharger seized was recorded by dozens of standard turbocharger-related sensors. By training models to distinguish between normal healthy operating conditions and deteriorated conditions, there is an opportunity to develop prognostic and predictive tools to ideally help prevent a similar occurrence in the future. Analysis of this event provides an opportunity to identify changes in equipment indicators with a known outcome. A number of data analysis tools were used to characterize the healthy and deteriorated states of the turbocharger system, including various supervised classification as well as semi-supervised and unsupervised anomaly detection techniques. The leader clustering algorithm was also implemented to reduce the amount of data to train and develop the models. This paper describes the results of this modeling process, validated by testing on healthy data from the same propulsion system and a second distinct one. Although this problem posed challenges due to the severely imbalanced class distribution, the supervised classifiers, in particular Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF), performed very well in all metrics while the unsupervised anomaly detection models achieved near-perfect accuracy for identifying healthy turbocharger states.

Background Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a disorder in which the tempo of disease progression is highly variable, and prognostic markers that can be utilized at diagnosis are regarded as clinically important. Currently, there are several prognostic factors, such as immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgV H) mutational status, and ZAP-70 protein expression in neoplastic B-cells, that have demonstrated significant discriminative power in the prognostication of CLL. They are, however, largely unavailable in the routine diagnostic laboratory setting. Methods In this study, we characterized the IgVH status and ZAP-70 expression by molecular techniques in a cohort of 108 patients with CLL, and correlated these results with three different methods of ZAP-70 expression by flow cytometry. We then assessed the results of these methods in terms of prognostic power as characterized by time to first treatment (TTFT). Results By comparing three different flow cytometry methods using receiver-operator curve (ROC) analysis, we identified that by utilizing a corrected mean fluorescence intensity (CorrMFI) algorithm for assessing ZAP-70 expression, there was good correlation with both IgVH mutational status, and ZAP-70 expression as assessed by qPCR. We were also able to show that ZAP-70 expression, as assessed by both qPCR and the CorrMFI method, was prognostic of TTFT. Conclusions While confirmation in a larger patient cohort, with longer follow-up is required, we believe that the CorrMFI represents the most promising method currently available in a routine diagnostic setting for the assessment of ZAP-70 expression in CLL patients. © 2013 International Clinical Cytometry Society

Based on the brand equity and behavioral theories, this study measures customer-based casino brand equity and its relationship with three consequences (i.e., perceived value, brand preference, and revisit intention) using 525 customers from six Macau casinos as the sample. The study confirms that customer-based casino brand equity is a higher order factorial structure measuring the four first-order constructs identified a priori. The strongest association was found to be with brand image, followed by perceived quality, brand loyalty, and brand awareness. Perceived value and revisit intention were found to be the two direct consequences of customer-based casino brand equity. Customer-based casino brand equity also affects revisit intention indirectly through perceived value and brand preference. To increase customers’ revisit intention, casinos should not only work on uplifting their casino brand equity, but also allocate resources to elevate perceived value and brand preference to indirectly help...

Heritage, especially with World Heritage status, is increasingly becoming the main attraction of many tourist destinations. Heritage tourism is also the major tourism product in Hue city, Vietnam. Hitherto, there are almost no official statistics and research pertaining to heritage tourism as well as heritage tourists in Hue. This study aims at providing a preliminary profile of heritage tourists to Hue city and identifying different categories of heritage tourists, with a special focus on package tourists. The international heritage tourists’ profile seems to be similar to official statistics of international arrivals, indicating almost no difference in socio-demographic profile between heritage tourists and general tourists in the context of Hue. Various significant differences were found between international and domestic tourists in terms of tourist characteristics, trip profile and the perception of Hue. Adopting McKercher’s [(2002) Towards a classification of cultural tourists. International Journal of Tourism Research, 4, 29–38] cultural tourist classification, five categories of heritage tourists were identified, including purposeful heritage tourists, sightseeing heritage tourists, casual heritage tourists, incidental heritage tourists and serendipitous heritage tourists. Among these, sightseeing heritage tourists and purposeful heritage tourists were dominant.

A majority of earlier studies on customers’ perception of casino service quality and customers’ repeat visitation factors were mainly conducted in Western countries. With significant growth of the casino gaming industry in Asia, particularly in the case of Macau far surpassing the gaming revenue generated by the traditional gaming mecca of Las Vegas, it is important for the industry to understand customers’ perceived service quality of the casinos in Macau and to identify the factors that make them return. In this study, Mainland Chinese visitors were asked to rate their perception of the service quality attributes of the casinos they visited most recently in Macau. Three hundred and ninety-nine usable samples were obtained. The service quality dimensions for casinos derived from this study include tangibles, fairness, responsiveness, professionalism, and variety. Three of these five factors, namely, professionalism, variety, and fairness, significantly contributed to the Mainland Chinese visitors’ intent...

This paper is about the position of workforce and employment considerations within the sustainable tourism narrative. The paper aims to address the relative neglect of this area within the discourse of sustainable tourism and highlights references to the workforce within the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The discussion follows the emerging field of sustainable human resource management and the contribution that this can make to meeting both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to enhancing the recognition of workforce and employment issues within the related debate in tourism. The body of the paper highlights examples of key dimensions of work and employment across varied tourism contexts, where sustainability is of increasing consequence and significance. The paper concludes by drawing together the implications of these “mini-cases” and locating them within key principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Background: Breast conserving surgery (BCS) is preferred for suitable candidates, while mastectomy (MTX) with reconstruction (MTX + R) is considered a better option for patients requiring MTX. In Hong Kong, the rates of BCS and breast reconstruction are relatively low. This paper aims to study the surgical options and their predictors among Hong Kong breast cancer patients. Methods: Data is retrieved from the Hong Kong Breast Cancer Registry (HKBCR) from 2007 to 2013. A total of 4519 Stage I–II breast cancer patients who had surgical treatments were included in this retrospective study. Results: Our multivariate logistic regression shows that people who were younger (age

Resistance to therapeutic antibodies in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) is common. In this study, we show that therapeutic antibodies against CD62L (CD62L-Ab) or CD20 (obinutuzumab) were able to induce antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) and phagocytosis (ADP) in primary cultures of CLL cells. CLL cells derived from patients with active disease requiring treatment displayed resistance to these antibodies, whereas patients with stable disease were sensitive. Using enrichment strategies and transcriptomic analyses, we show that antibody-dependent tumour cell killing was FcγR-dependent and mediated by macrophages. Moreover, we show that resistance cannot be attributed to total numbers or established subtypes of monocytes/macrophages, or the efficiency with which they bind an immune complex. Rather, ADCC/ADP resistance was due to reduced signalling activity through the activating FcγRs resulting in the transfer of dominance to the inhibitory FcγRIIb within macrophages. Most significantly, we show that resistance is an actionable event that could be reversed using inhibitors of FcγRIIb signalling in primary cultures of CLL cells that were previously insensitive to obinutuzumab or CD62L-Ab.

This paper describes a review of articles published in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly in the period 2008 to 2011. A content analysis approach was used to analyze 133 research articles making original contributions to the development of knowledge. The findings indicate that accounting and finance was the most researched area and that the hospitality sector receiving most attention from scholars was hotels. The authorship analysis also shows that most of the articles were written by academic researchers from the United States, illustrating the concentration of experience and practical expertise in that country. This paper is of interest to readers seeking information on the recent progress and development of hospitality research and practice in a top-tier hospitality journal.

This study aims to explore the determinants and outcome of career competencies. Based on the notion that organizations and individuals have respective obligations in the career management of employees’, this study developed perceived “organizational career management’ (OCM) and “career commitment” as determinants and career satisfaction as an outcome of career competencies. Data were collected in the state-owned hotels in China, and structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed relationships. The findings indicate that both perceived OCM and career commitments have positive, direct effects on career competencies. The findings of this study may benefit both hotels and hotel employees by providing valuable implications.