• Informatization Policy
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.3-18
• /
• 2020

In the growing digitalized world, the European Union implemented the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) to establish a comprehensive data protection framework across member states. Given the constitutional roots of GDPR, the EU's regulatory approach is different than other data protection regimes. The new regulation has strengthened individual rights to data protection, but it also introduced several obligations for businesses that collect and process personal data. We review the existing literature on privacy, particularly GDPR, from a policy perspective. The evidence outlines data regulation's effects on competition, innovation, marketing activities, and cross-border data flows. The discussion highlights the tradeoffs between increased regulation of data protection and its effects on the market.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.145-154
• /
• 2003

As the life-expectancy is ever-increasing, and the proportion of the elderly population is growing steadily in every society of the world, it is ever more important to establish what factors allow certain elderly people to age successfully and remain relatively independent while others grow old less successfully and require extensive intervention. However, there is no consensus yet as to what successful aging means. Researchers have defined successful aging in a variety of ways. This study attempted to define the concept of successful aging and to clarify some dimensions of it through literature review. Previous approaches of studying successful aging and related themes were examined. Early perspectives including activity, disengagement, and continuity theories, Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) model by Baltes and Baltes, three different conceptions of successful aging, that is, psychological well-being, physical health, and wisdom, and MacArthur research on successful aging have been reviewed for this study. The definition derived from the review is: Keeping up continuous developmental processes to achieve wisdom or ego-integrity, without suffering any major disabilities in either physical or mental functioning, while maintaining psychological well-being and employing SOC strategies, and participating in positive relationships with significant others. The dimensions of successful aging are 1) personal resources, including physical health, cognitive competences, self esteem, and social support 2) adaptation process of SOC, and 3) psychological aspects, including psychological well-being and wisdom.

• International Journal of Costume and Fashion
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.29-45
• /
• 2014

In the contemporary world, fashionable bodies are socially constructed in light of current idealized images. Media portrayal of such images can have negative health implications. This issue has long been problematic for women. Nowadays, men are subject to more scrutiny regarding their bodies, although male body image has been studied far less than female body image. In this position paper based on a review of the major studies that have been conducted on men and body image, we summarize the findings from these state-of-the-art studies that have been recently published in academic journals. Three themes related to male body image were extracted: socio-cultural ideals, masculinity, and minority men. This study adds to the literature I that it demonstrates that men experience and view their bodies differently from women, though some behaviors, such as disordered eating, are similar. Other behaviors, such as the drive for muscularity, are couched in the context of the social construction of gender and power. Most of the studies were done on white, heterosexual populations of young men, and nearly all used quantitative research methods. Little research has been conducted on ethnic and sexual minorities. We conclude with a discussion of what we need to know, and to that end, we suggest future avenues of research.

• Proceedings of the Technology Innovation Conference
• /
• 2002.02a
• /
• pp.59-89
• /
• 2002

The rapid diffusion of information and telecommunication (IT) technologies during the recent decennia produced fundamental changes in the economic activity at a global level, resulting in what became coined as the "new economy". However, empirical evidence on the contribution of IT equipment to growth and productivity is at best mixed, with the more or less consistent results on the positive link between the two relating to the United States in the 1990-s. Although the empirical literature on the link between IT investment and economic performance employs a wide variety of methodologies, the overwhelming majority of the studies appears to be employing the assumption of linearity of the IT-performance relationship and predominantly explores the direct nature thereof. In this study we relax both these assumptions and find that the indirect, or aggregate productive efficiency, effects of IT investment are as important as are the direct ones The estimated non-linear nature of the indirect relationship between IT investment intensity and productive efficiency accommodates the concepts of critical mass and complementary (infrastructure) capital offered in the literature. Our key finding is that the world economy′s average level of IT investment intensity remained below the estimated critical mass. Since in this study we developed a methodology that allows one to explicitly measure the critical mass of IT investment intensity, its individual estimation at a country or industrialsector level may help evaluate the extent to which IT investment activity has to be encouraged or discouraged.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.19-25
• /
• 2015

Purpose - This study aims to explore students'perceptions of different quality aspects in Indian higher education, viz. tangible facilities, competence, attitudes, content, delivery, and reliability. Research design, data, and methodology - Following a comprehensive literature review, the researchers used a well-structured questionnaire and in-depth personal interviews with 500 students. The selected sample was chosen from graduate and postgraduate programs in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, using convenience sampling; data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and frequency distribution. Hypotheses were based on the literature and empirical studies. Result - 50.28 and 49.88 percent of students were positive towards tangible facilities and competence, respectively. Further, 48.92 percent and 48.97 percent were negative towards faculty attitudes and course content, respectively. Finally, 48.72 percent reacted positively on the overall quality, while 51.28 were discontented. Conclusion - This study provides reliable and conclusive information to all stakeholders, facilitating systemic improvements. It reveals students'perceptions of different quality aspects of the higher education system, and is the first study of its kind in this part of the world.

• Journal of Korean Medical Science
• /
• v.33 no.46
• /
• pp.287.1-287.14
• /
• 2018

Integrity of authorship and peer review practices are important considerations for ethical publishing. Criteria for authorship, as delineated in the guidelines by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), have undergone evolution over the decades, and now require fulfillment of four criteria, including the need to be able to take responsibility for all aspects of the manuscript in question. Although such updated authorship criteria were published nearly five years ago, still, many major medical and specialist journals have yet to revise their author instructions to conform to this. Inappropriate authorship practices may include gift, guest or ghost authorship. Existing literature suggests that such practices are still widely prevalent, especially in non-English speaking countries. Another emerging problem is that of peer review fraud, mostly by authors, but also rarely by handling editors. There is literature to suggest that a proportion of such fake peer review may be driven by the support of some unscrupulous external editing agencies. Such inappropriate practices with authorship malpractices or disagreement, or peer review fraud, have resulted in more than 600 retractions each, as identified on the retractions database of Retractionwatch.com. There is a need to generate greater awareness, especially in authors from non-English speaking regions of the world, about inappropriate authorship and unethical practices in peer review. Also, support of any external editing agency should be clearly disclosed by authors at the time of submission of a manuscript.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.58 no.2
• /
• pp.305-325
• /
• 2012

It is by the mad scientists that the ontological and epistemological turn was made in that scientific era. They achieved a scientific revolution although they were regarded as eccentric, comic, unsound, and evil ones in the dark and dismal labs. Likewise, a scientist who would like to create an anomaly, something novel and abnormal, tended to be considered mad and treated as such either because of his scientific theory which differed from those of other scientists or because his obstinate methodology was often blamed for its immorality and profaneness. Despite the fanciful purpose and the anomalous way in which the mad scientists did their experiments, these were attempts to explore new scientific terrain and find something new or unexpected, which often raised controversies between the old paradigm and the new one. As Thomas Kuhn manifests, subsequently, "an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one" and then, "there must be a conflict between the paradigm that discloses anomaly and the one that later renders the anomaly lawlike." In that sense, Frankenstein's, Jekyll's, and Moreau's eerie challenges can be interpreted as efforts to achieve the ambitious goal of solving the scientific mysteries of the world in such unfavorable environmental conditions as specified in the three novels.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.54 no.4
• /
• pp.579-597
• /
• 2008

This article discusses David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly as a suggestive text for examining Western masculinity in crisis in the post-imperialist age, in which territorial imperialism is no longer valid. Previous scholarship on M. Butterfly has centered around the interlocking dynamics of imperialism, racism and sexism. Such critical attentions focus on how Hwang deconstructs racialized significations of the East and the West. In these discussions, the issue of gender is often addressed merely as a trope to represent the power relations between the East and the West. As such, gender as well as sexuality is highlighted as the very source of subversion of the power relations. My discussion departs from a critique of the gendered trope of the East and the West, highlighting a postmodern agent, the allegedly feminized character Song Lining: a Chinese actor who passes for a woman for political purposes in postcolonial China. Remaining an "inappropriate/d other" in the gendered imperialist discourse, Song becomes an emergent subject, who is capable of playing gender ambiguity for reclaiming a devalued identity, that of homosexual Asian man. Discussing how the central character Rene Gallimard's masculine identity is constructed in a cross-cultural space and how it evolves, I also argue that Gallimard's melancholic death signifies a historical unsustainability of imperialist masculinity in the postmodern/postcolonial age since World War II.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.157-173
• /
• 2021

In the transition to a multipolar international system, the literature has focused on great power competition while little attention has been given to the strategic possibilities of smaller states. However, as a result of globalization, states are so closely interconnected that the primary strategies of even major powers are not to achieve zero-sum solutions but to create asymmetric dependency through which they can influence the behavior of other states and non-state actors. States are assisted in this effort by a variety of tools, including setting up institutions, direct economic influence and through building different forms of infrastructure connectivity networks. By discussing asymmetric dependency situations from the perspective of the great powers, the literature presents smaller states primarily as passive actors, paralyzed by their dependence on great powers. Our paper argues that interdependence allows smaller states to effectively influence larger actors and examines strategies from which smaller states can choose in order to influence the behavior of larger states. Despite an extremely asymmetric relationship between Myanmar and China, actors in Myanmar have sought to influence China's Myanmar policy. We examine a case study of the Myitsone Dam, including Myanmar's strategic aims, chosen strategy and limitations in maneuvering space. Semi-structured interviews with local decision-makers and stakeholders are conducted in order to portray the full picture. Our study concludes that further research on the influencing strategies of small states in response to asymmetric dependence can contribute to a better understanding of the interdependence of states.

• International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.29-44
• /
• 2021

The study provides a quantitative and qualitative description of global research in the domain of quantum machine learning (QML) as a way to understand the status of global research in the subject at the global, national, institutional, and individual author level. The data for the study was sourced from the Scopus database for the period 1999-2020. The study analyzed global research output (1374 publications) and global citations (22434 citations) to measure research productivity and performance on metrics. In addition, the study carried out bibliometric mapping of the literature to visually represent network relationship between key countries, institutions, authors, and significant keyword in QML research. The study finds that the USA and China lead the world ranking in QML research, accounting for 32.46% and 22.56% share respectively in the global output. The top 25 global organizations and authors lead with 35.52% and 16.59% global share respectively. The study also tracks key research areas, key global players, most significant keywords, and most productive source journals. The study observes that QML research is gradually emerging as an interdisciplinary area of research in computer science, but the body of its literature that has appeared so far is very small and insignificant even though 22 years have passed since the appearance of its first publication. Certainly, QML as a research subject at present is at a nascent stage of its development.