• Title/Summary/Keyword: Excellence

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Perceptions of Research Excellence in Thailand and Japan

  • Kongsmak, Kasama;Pungpit, Punchalee;Kano, Mitsunobu R.;Komai, Shoji;Piyawattanametha, Wibool;Phanraksa, Orakanoke
    • STI Policy Review
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    • v.4 no.2
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    • pp.113-135
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    • 2013
  • This paper explores how research excellence is perceived among researchers in Thailand and Japan with an aim to explore whether there are any new indicators that could later be proposed and adopted as criteria of excellence. Based on a questionnaire survey, the findings reflect ideas and viewpoints that could be found among researchers in both countries. Creative researchers are crucial to a strong national research and innovation system. Institutions should provide an environment or incentives based on research performance for their researchers to flourish and be productive. For decades, bibliometrics have been used to evaluate individual research performance for its easy approach and faster speed than a qualitative assessment would warrant. Nonetheless, there have been a number of studies on research performance evaluating systems that point out how a purely bibliometric approach is inadequate in summarizing the quality of the scientific performance. The pressures on researchers today influence their thinking and oppose their creativity. To investigate the perception of research excellence, three key research questions were set in this study: what counts as excellence, how to measure excellence, and how to support excellence. The findings confirm that traditional granting criteria that frames an idea of excellence remain valid, but they also suggest novel criteria be considered and prioritized. This paper argues that the existing evaluating system is insufficient for unleashing the curiosity and creativity of researchers and fostering excellence. In the final section, the paper discusses factors that contribute to scientific creativity that we should not overlook.

Software approach towards understanding meteorological data for environmental monitoring and assessment of peninsular Malaysia

  • Quadri, Sayed Abulhasan;Sidek, Othman;Jafar, Hadi;binti Amran, Nur Amira;bt Zabah, Ummi Nurulhaiza;bin Abdullah, Azizul
    • Advances in environmental research
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    • v.3 no.1
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    • pp.87-106
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    • 2014
  • The concern for the global environment ensues researchers from various disciplines to work in collaboration to tackle with the issues of sustainability and environmental conservation for well-being of the people. In this study, we have selected and focused on few basic environment-effecting factors such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and oxygen concentration level and referred them as meteorological data. In this paper, we present the development of our own customized hardware setup, environmental monitoring device (EMD) to obtain the data. Utilizing the relationship among these basic parameters, represented in the form of formulas and equations, we tried to encode them using Matlab programming. Data visualization is achieved by plotting the graphs of basic parameters obtained from EMD as well for the derivatives using Matlab programs.

Characteristics of long-range transported PM2.5 at a coastal city using the single particle aerosol mass spectrometry

  • Cai, Qiuliang;Tong, Lei;Zhang, Jingjing;Zheng, Jie;He, Mengmeng;Lin, Jiamei;Chen, Xiaoqiu;Xiao, Hang
    • Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.24 no.4
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    • pp.690-698
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    • 2019
  • Air pollution has attracted ever-increasing attention because of its substantial influence on air quality and human health. To better understand the characteristics of long-range transported pollution, the single particle chemical composition and size were investigated by the single particle aerosol mass spectrometry in Fuzhou, China from 17th to 22nd January, 2016. The results showed that the haze was mainly caused by the transport of cold air mass under higher wind speed (10 m·s-1) from the Yangtze River Delta region to Fuzhou. The number concentration elevated from 1,000 to 4,500 #·h-1, and the composition of mobile source and secondary aerosol increased from 24.3% to 30.9% and from 16.0% to 22.5%, respectively. Then, the haze was eliminated by the clean air mass from the sea as indicated by a sharp decrease of particle number concentration from 4,500 to 1,000 #·h-1. The composition of secondary aerosol and mobile sources decreased from 29.3% to 23.5% and from 30.9% to 23.1%, respectively. The particles with the size ranging from 0.5 to 1.5 ㎛ were mainly in the accumulation mode. The stationary source, mobile source, and secondary aerosol contributed to over 70% of the potential sources. These results will help to understand the physical and chemical characteristics of long- range transported pollutants.