• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• 제59권5호
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• pp.439-445
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• 2021

Coccidiosis in chickens is an intestinal parasitic disease caused by protozoan parasites named Eimeria spp. In some Eimeria infections, intestinal lymphocytes are known to highly express chicken NK-lysin (cNK-lysin), an antimicrobial peptide with anticoccidial activity. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the expression of cNK-lysin in E. necatrix-infected chickens and its role in E. necatrix infection. The expression of cNK-lysin transcript was significantly increased in E. necatrix sporozoites-treated lymphocytes. In E. necatrix infection, cNK-lysin transcript was induced in intestinal lymphocytes but not in the spleen. The recombinant cNK-lysin exhibited anticoccidial activity against E. necatrix sporozoites as well as immunomodulatory activity on macrophages by inducing proinflammatory cytokines. These results indicated that E. necatrix infection induces high local expression of cNK-lysin and the secreted cNK-lysin helps protect coccidiosis.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권12호
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• pp.75-83
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• 2021

Variation in demand, natural resource availability, and technological advancement within a country are the main reasons for necessitating export and import activities between nations. Accordingly, this paper aims to analyze the effect of economic openness on Multifactor Productivity (MFP) in selected Asian countries (Vietnam, Thailand, The Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and Singapore) based on data for the period 1990-2018. The analysis conducted in the study employed the panel ARDL approach based on the estimation by Pooled Mean Group (PMG), Mean Group (MG), and Dynamic Fixed Effect (DFE). The Hausman test conducted indicates that the PMG estimation is better than that of MG and DFE since it has a higher variability value than the significance value. The results revealed that economic openness is able to elicit significant and positive effects on short-term and long-term MFP growth. In addition, the study established that other variable, such as the number of schooling years, are also able to produce a positive and significant effect on MFP growth in the long term. Since economic openness can impact MFP growth, every country should thus increase its export activities through more capital and worker inputs that will stimulate greater production.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권10호
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• pp.229-238
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• 2021

The article applies the ECM - ARDL model to examine the relationship between economic indicators and the existence of the disease in the long run of 10 ASEAN countries from 2000 to 2019. There are two models: The first model investigates the impact of GDP per capita, net inflow FDI, unemployment rate, and inflation rate on the proportion of export to GDP of ASEAN countries, the second model is similar to the first one but adds one more variable to the independent variable list - 'the variable for disease'. The results prove the long-run effect of GDP per capita, FDI, unemployment and inflation rate on export of the selected countries, though individual country shows differences in the sign and magnitude of these impacts. Surprisingly, the number of people suffering from disease does not affect the export of all selected countries as expected. The results of the two models also indicate that the disequilibrium in the short run converges to the equilibrium in the long run with a high proportion, especially in the case of Cambodia and the Philippines, with the rate of 95.65% and 151.94%, respectively. The findings can be useful for policymakers in promulgating efficient policies to enhance the trading activities of the selected countries.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권11호
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• pp.41-46
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between unemployment and shadow economy for 7 selected ASEAN countries using panel data from 2000-2017. This study uses a sample of 7 ASEAN countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam covering the 2000-2017 period. The stationarity of the variables is determined by Pesaran panel unit-root tests. The Westerlund panel co-integration technique is used to examine the long-run relationship among the variables. In addition, dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) methods are also employed. The DOLS and FMOLS results indicate that unemployment acts as an important driver for the increase in the shadow economy. In addition, the study results also reveal that GDP per capita has a negative impact on the shadow economy. Moreover, government expenditure, bank credit, and inflation are positively related to the shadow economy. The empirical results indicate that the size of the shadow economy is boosted by unemployment in the selected ASEAN economies. In addition, it is also evident that an increase of GDP per capita in the sample countries results in a lower shadow economy. Besides, government expenditure, bank credit, and inflation play a crucial role in the shadow economy.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.53-64
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• 2021

Upselling is often a critical factor in revenue generation for businesses in the tourism and travel industry. Utilizing passenger data from a major international airline company, we develop the PAX (Passenger, Airline, eXternal) model to predict passengers that are most likely to accept an upgrade offer from economy to premium. Formulating the problem as an extremely unbalanced, cost-sensitive, supervised binary classification, we predict if a customer will take an upgrade offer. We use a feature vector created from the historical data of 3 million passenger records from 2017 to 2019, in which passengers received approximately 635,000 upgrade offers worth more than $422,000,000 U.S. dollars. The model has an F1-score of 0.75, outperforming the airline's current rule-based approach. Findings have several practical applications, including identifying promising customers for upselling and minimizing the number of indiscriminate emails sent to customers. Accurately identifying the few customers who will react positively to upgrade offers is of paramount importance given the airline 'industry's razor-thin margins. Research results have significant real-world impacts because there is the potential to improve targeted upselling to customers in the airline and related industries.

• Korean Journal of Breeding Science
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• 제40권2호
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• pp.101-105
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• 2008

The germplasm of 246 rice cultivars was analysed for iron and zinc contents using a Inductively Coupled Argon Plasma (ICP) at International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Philippines. Iron contents ranged from 2.0 to 12.0, and zinc ranged from 10.0 to 33.0 (mg/kg), showing with the mean values of 4.3 and 22.8 (mg/kg), respectively. In genotypes tested, there was approximately a two-fold difference in iron and zinc concentrations, suggesting a genetic potential to increase these micronutrients in rice grain. A highly significant positive correlation ($r^2=0.503$) was found between iron and zinc contents. Iron contents decreased drastically as polishing time increased, whereas zinc decreased only slightly. In the interaction between genotype and environment on iron contents, genotype (G), environment (E), and the G ${\times}$ E interactions accounted for 69%, 5% and 26% of the sums of squares, respectively. Indicating that genotype is would be the most significant factor for the to improve iron contents of rice in rice breeding, suggesting that therefore identifying genotypes with relatively stable performance across various environments is important as staple food crops.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Business Review
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.45-60
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• 2019

Proposing that the main barriers to mini-packaging success in China, in contrast to India and the Philippines, is Chinese consumers' sociocultural values and attitudes toward products in mini packages, this study investigates the factors that potentially make the China market relatively not conducive to buying products in mini packages via a survey of 468 Chinese adults in Shanghai (first-tier city) and Zhuhai (second-tier city). Results show that respondents agree that products in mini packages are difficult to store once opened, are more expensive than are larger-sized products, do not provide good value for money, entail frequent shopping, are harmful to the environment, are not advertised, and are mainly for trying new products and for traveling. They disagree with many possible reasons for the unpopularity of products in mini packages. This study's contributions are (1) providing in-depth quantitative analysis of the possible reasons mini-packaging is not popular in China, (2) offering managerial advice for using mini-packaging to increase brand competitiveness, (3) developing a scale to measure attitudes toward products in mini packages; and (4) being empirical as opposed to merely anecdotal/speculative like some studies in this area.

• ALGAE
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• 제34권1호
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• pp.23-33
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• 2019

Freshwater red algal diversity and the relationship with water conditions in 22 stream segments in the area around Khao Luang National Park, Nakhon Si Thammarat province, southern Thailand, were studied during a period of twelve months (May 2014 to April 2015). Sixteen species of freshwater red algae, belonging to eight genera (Audouinella, Balliopsis, Batrachospermum, Caloglossa, Compsopogon, Kumanoa, Sirodotia, and Thorea) were identified, which were all reported earlier for the country. Thorea clavata (Thoreaceae) was the most common species occurring in eight stream segments. Caloglossa beccarii sensu lato (Delesseriaceae) and Sirodotia huillensis Skuja (Batrachospermaceae) had the highest percent cover with up to 40% and 20% per stream segment, respectively. The water quality showed most sites to be unpolluted or ultra-oligotrophic to oligotrophic. Canonical Correspondence Analysis revealed some trends in occurrence of individual species with stream environmental variables: Batrachospermum sp.with strong current velocity; Kumanoa hirosei with high turbidity, total dissolved solid and alkalinity; Caloglossa beccarii with high conductivity; Kumanoa tabagatenensis with high ammonia-nitrogen and Thorea siamensis with high calcium and magnesium. In view of the scarce studies on the stream ecology of freshwater red algae in Philippines and neighbouring countries, it is expected that the data presented here would be helpful in more critical further studies in south-east Asia in general.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• 제26권
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• pp.509-533
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to examine the sociolinguistic competence of female marriage-immigrants through analyzing their free colloquial discourse. Because previous studies on female marriage-immigrants have not been performed based on the natural illocutionary data, an accurate diagnosis of their communication method will be necessary for the efficiency of the Korean education aimed at them, and for the development of their communication ability. For this study, the colloquial discourse situation from five female marriage-immigrants from China, the Philippines and Vietnam was recorded. The sociolinguistic characteristics were analyzed centering on the use of designation, respect terms, and regional words. 'Eomma' was used as a designation for their husband's mother, which means that 'intimacy' worked for the designation of their husband's mother. The respect-word classes for others were limited to the 'haeyo' form and the 'hae' one, and the reception for listeners was often discarded. In addition, the influence of regional words was found in the vocabulary and grammar, and the more proficient the Korean language, the more frequent the regional word occurrence. Based on the above result, the teaching method of Korean for the immigrants shall be suggested as follows: the teaching has to focus on respect words positively influencing the relationship with the counterpart.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• 제27권1호
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• pp.65-74
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• 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to gain insights into empathy, cyberbullying, and cybervictimization among Filipino adolescents. Methods: The participants were 168 junior high school students in the 7th to 10th grades at a public high school in Cavite Province, Philippines. Data were collected on demographic characteristics, the Basic Empathy Scale, and Revised Cyber Bullying Inventory-II scores. The data were analyzed in SPSS using descriptive statistics (frequency and mean), the independent t-test, bivariate correlation, and one-way analysis of variance. Results: The degree of empathy did not show a statistically significant relationship with cyberbullying (r=-.07, p=.359) but did show a significant relationship with cybervictimization (r=.18, p=.025). Furthermore, cyberbullying had a statistically significant association with cybervictimization (r=.60, p<.001). Conclusion: Although empathy does not necessarily affect cyberbullying, higher levels of empathy were found among cyberbullying victims. However, an alarming result of this study is the possibility that victims may become cyberbullies. Therefore, we should highlight empathy as part of efforts to prevent cyberbullying and to solve various cyber-related problems. Since cyberbullying and cybervictimization are closely related, it is important to focus on this relationship and to make multilateral efforts to ensure that cyberbullying does not lead to other negative issues.