• Acta Via Serica
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.125-146
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• 2019

This paper deals with the question of the origin of polo. Although it is a sport that has been mainly active in the West since the nineteenthcentury, it is well known that British troops in the northern part of Pakistan learned about the sport from the local people there. Most agree that the origin of polo is Iran. However, in this paper, rather than specifying a specific area as the birthplace of polo, it is argued that polo was a cultural phenomenon commonly found on the Silk Road. This is based on the fact that polo has been known for centuries in China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan, as well as throughout Iran, northern India, Tibet, Central Asia, and the Uighur Autonomous Region. Yet, the transmission of polo cannot be traced chronologically according to the supposed propagation route. This cultural phenomenon has changed over a long period of time according to the local environment, and the change was caused by mutual exchanges, not by one party. Therefore, there are limitations to interpreting cultural phenomena linearly. Thus, the origin of polo could also be identified with another area, namely Baltistan in modern day Pakistan, instead of Iran. These results support the argument that to understand Silk Road civilization, a process-centric approach based on 'exchanges', not a method of exploring archetypes to find 'the place of origin', should be utilized. Polo is undoubtedly an important cultural artifact with which to read the Silk Road as a cultural belt complex, as well as an example of the common culture created by the whole Silk Road.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.39-52
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• 2018

The objective of this study was to enhance understanding and appreciation of Pre-Orientalism in costumes and textiles by revealing examples of Oriental influences in Europe from the 16th century to the mid-18th century through in-depth study. The research method used were the presentation and analysis of previous literature research and visual data. The result were as follows; Pre-Orientalism had been influenced by Morocco, Thailand, and Persia as well as Turkey, India, and China. In this study, Pre-Orientalism refers to oriental influence and oriental taste in Western Europe through cultural exchanges from the 16th century to the mid-18th century. The oriental costume was the most popular subspecies of fancy, luxury dress and was a way to show off wealth and intelligence. Textiles were used for decoration and luxury. The Embassy and the court in Versailles and Vienna led to a frenzy of oriental fashion. It appeared that European in the royal family and aristocracy of Europe had been accommodated without an accurate understanding of the Orient. Although in this study, the characteristics, factors, and impacts of Pre-Orientalism have not been clarified, further study can be done. Recognizing a broad perspective on oriental influence in Europe before Orientalism, we can have a balanced view of future Orientalism and global fashion.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.77-88
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• 2021

The stock markets in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries are the leading emerging markets globally. Therefore, it is pertinent to ascertain the critical drivers of stock market development in these economies. The currrent study empirically investigates to identify the linkages between stock market development, key macro-economic factors and institutional factors in the BRICS economies. The study covers the time period from 2000 to 2017. The dependent variable is the country's stock market development and the independent variables consist of six macroeconomic variables and five institutional variables. The study employs a panel cointegration test, Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS), a Pooled Mean Group (PMG) approach and a heterogeneous panel non-causality test.The findings of the study indicate co-integration among the selected variables across the BRICS stock markets. Long-run estimations reveal that five macroeconomic variables and four variables related to institutional quality are positive and statistically significant. Further, short-run causalities between stock market capitalization and selected variables are detected through the test of non-causality in a heterogeneous panel setting. The findings suggest that policymakers in the BRICS countries should enhance robust macroeconomic conditions to support their financial markets and should strengthen the institutional quality drivers to stimulate the pace of stock market development in their countries.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.1-41
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• 2011

Southeast Asia developed maritime trade from the early period due to the suitable physical and cultural conditions. The land consists of peninsular and archipelago, and located at the junction of the two monsoons in South China Sea and India Ocean. The people inherit cultural openness to receive outer influences positively. When Portuguese came to Southeast Asia in 16th century, the region had already enjoyed certain level of commercial development and sociocultural dynamics through the long time experience of interactions with outer world. The Portuguese contact to Southeast Asia was more of participation and assimilation than of conquest and rule experienced in South America. It was due to the higher level of spiritual and material civilization existed in Southeast Asia. Portuguese brought several new elements into Southeast Asia such as colonization and new weapons, Cartaz system and commercial monopoly, and Catholic mission and Casado policy. These new elements, however, did not impact much on the existing Maritime trade that played an important role to change the sociocultural structure of Southeast Asia. Even though Portuguese contact itself did not make significant differences in Southeast Asia, it was meaningful in a sense that it opened a path and left a model case for the more powerful Europeans who came soon after her.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.3299-3309
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• 2022

Nuclear energy has the potential to play an influential role in energy transition efforts than is now anticipated by many countries. Realizing sustainable human development and reducing global climate crises will become more difficult without significantly increasing nuclear power. This paper aims to probe the role of nuclear energy, external debt, and financial globalization in sustaining human development and environmental conditions simultaneously in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries. This study applied a battery of second-generation estimation approaches over the period from 1990 to 2019. These methods are useful and robust to cross-countries dependencies, slope heterogeneity, parameters endogeneity, and serial correlation that are ignored in conventional approaches to generate more comprehensive and reliable estimates. The empirical findings indicate that nuclear energy and financial globalization contribute to human development, whereas external debt inhibits it. Similarly, financial globalization accelerates ecological deterioration, but nuclear energy and external debt promote environmental sustainability. Moreover, the study reveals bidirectional feedback causalities between human development, carbon emissions and nuclear energy consumption. The study offers useful policy guidance on accomplishing sustainable and inclusive development in BRICS countries.

• Korean Journal of Plant Taxonomy
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.108-113
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• 2022

Amblovenatum immersum (Blume) Mazumdar (Thelypteridaceae) is newly recorded in Vietnam. It is similar to A. terminans (Panigrahi) J. P. Roux in its woody rhizome and cristate spores but differs in terms of its plant size, lobed pinnae, lobed segments, veinlets, sori and indusia. It was previously found to exist in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand as well as in east Africa, tropical America, northern Australia and Micronesia. The present study provides a detailed description, photos, and line drawing of the species. Furthermore, a comparison of the diagnostic characters with the closely related species in Vietnam A. terminans is provided.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.13-40
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• 2021

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to predict corporate corruption in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) using different machine learning techniques. Since corruption is a significant problem that can affect corporate performance, particularly in emerging markets, it is important to correctly identify whether a company engages in corrupt practices. Design/methodology/approach - In order to address the research question, we employ predictive analytic techniques (machine learning methods). Using the World Bank Enterprise Survey Data, this study evaluates various predictive models generated by seven supervised learning algorithms: k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN), Naïve Bayes (NB), Decision Tree (DT), Decision Rules (DR), Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machines (SVM), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). Findings - We find that DT, DR, SVM and ANN create highly accurate models (over 90% of accuracy). Among various factors, firm age is the most significant, while several other determinants such as source of working capital, top manager experience, and the number of permanent full-time employees also contribute to company corruption. Research implications or Originality - This research successfully demonstrates how machine learning can be applied to predict corporate corruption and also identifies the major causes of corporate corruption.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.119-129
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• 2023

Purpose: The study is developed in order to describe the trends of scientific production of blockchain technologies for sustainability within the supply chains. Research design, data and methodology: This study is developed from the documentary field from the application of bibliometric techniques to analyze the trends of scientific production indexed in the Scopus database, for which processing is carried out in the R and VOS Viewer software. Results: The results show a total of 461 documents, of which 58% of the articles, 17% are conference articles and the remaining 25% are made up of other formats. Conclusions: 78% of the articles are concentrated in the years 2020, 2021 and 2022. India, United Kingdom, China, United States and Italy are the countries where 70% of all the publications were published. 23% of the articles have been published in four journals: Sustainability (Switzerland), Journal of Cleaner Production, Computers and Industrial Engineering and Business Strategy and the Environment. Sarkis, J. is the author with the most published articles with fifteen publications and, finally, 13% of the total publications were concentrated in: Uttaranchal University, Yasar University, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Centro Di Ricerca Ingegneria e Trasformazioni Agroalimentari and University of Hong Kong.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.217-227
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• 2022

Predicting return and volatility in the global Capital Market during a pandemic is challenging, and it is more difficult for a specific sector, particularly if that sector has a positive outlook. The goal of this research is to look at the impact of COVID-19 on the mean and volatility of the Information Technology Indexes of the best nine technology-driven countries based on return performance using an econometric GARCH model that is widely used. The daily returns of information technology indexes are evaluated for the same from November 2018 to February 2021. Data is taken from Yahoo Finance for CAC Tech (France), DAX Tech (Germany), FTSE All Tech (UK), KOPSI 200 IT (Korea), NIFTY IT (India), S&P 500 IT (US), S&P TSX (Canada), SSE_IT (China) and TOPIX17 (Japan). The results show daily positive mean returns for 8 countries' IT Indices and further, an uptrend in mean daily returns is observed in the crisis period for 6 countries' IT Indices. The exogenous variable COVID-19 which was taken as a regressor for the GARCH model was found to be positively significant for IT indices of all the countries. The overall results confirm the presence of the mean-reverting phenomenon for IT indices of all the countries.

• Journal of the Korean Society of International Agriculture
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.485-490
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• 2011

In Southeast Asia, Myanmar is the largest country of the continent with land area 676,577 km² that is three times higher than Korea. Nonetheless, a lot of diversity in agricultural enterprises is available in Myanmar as different climatic zones are available due to its unique location from north to south and east to west. Agriculture is considered the most important industry in Myanmar that largely relies on rice production. During 2009-10, rice and black gram are also among the major export items of Myanmar. Wheat, maize and sorghum are among the other major crops of the country and cultivation area of wheat and corn has been steadily increasing. Sesame is an important oilseed crop of Myanmar that is cultivated on the largest area. Presently, Myanmar has trade relations with Thailand, India and China.