• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.143-154
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to explore innovative adaptation of IT systems worldwide to support process-focus assessment. To this end, the study presents four cases from Australia, Singapore, the U.S.A., and Korea to inform educational policy and technology researchers and practitioners. Based on comparing the four chosen cases as benchmarks, the study concluded that IT systems and technologies can expedite and improve school interventions to enhance student learning in terms of time and quality. Also, educational big data and learning analytics can be used to systematically monitor and communicate individual student's progress among school stakeholders (i.e., teachers, students, parents, and administrators). Lastly, the study made some suggestions to support process-focused assessment in schools as following : 1) A more evidence-based, systems approach is needed to integrate the curriculum, instruction, and assessment to bridge the gap between educational policy and school practice; 2) It is critical to create ICT-friendly school environments so that meaningful data could be collected, analyzed, and stored from individual students and school units; 3) Teacher professional development is another area that needs special considerations and support to successfully implement process-focused assessment in schools.

• Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.11-24
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• 2007

Purpose : Health Risk behaviors are a leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality. Adolescents is a critical transitional period for establishing health behavior for healthy life. The purpose of this study was to describe the types and frequency of the health risk behaviors being performed by middle school students, examine the gender and grade differences of health risk behaviors, and identify the relationship among health risk behaviors. Methods : A total of 1952 early adolescents recruited from 7 middle schools in a district of urban setting completed questionnaires. Youth Risk Behavior Survey-Middle school questionnaires was used to identify the types of health risk behaviors among early adolescents. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and Chi-Square test using SAS program . Results : The results showed the frequency for most health risk behaviors and increased with advancing grade level. Males were more likely than females to behaviors related to smoking and violence, whereas females were more likely than males to have suicidal thoughts, be physical inactive and attempt to lose weight. Among health risk behaviors, the relationship of alcohol experience, smoking, and suicide was high. Conclusion : The findings identify a high risk target group among middle school adolescents and suggest that preventive intervention strategies should take into consideration the types with gender and grade, and provided the evidence that one of health risk behaviors may induce the other health risk behaviors.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.345-352
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• 2021

Guided by a resource-based theory, this study is the first one that takes a quantitative approach to identify determinants of competitiveness of women-owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. The study employs time series data of Vietnamese SMEs extracted from the Vietnam Small and Medium Enterprises Survey conducted biennially from 2005 to 2015 in ten Vietnamese provinces. Firm competitiveness hereby is indicated by revenue, market share, profitability, and export volume. The research reveals a number of determining factors, of all, research and development, labor skills, business environment, technology investment are the most important factors, followed by capital and headcount. It is indicated that the determining factors have different influences on competitiveness obtained by different measurements. Therefore, it is based on specific targets and situations to make wise business decisions. The authors also make comparisons among groups of women-owned enterprises divided by their firm age, location, ownership, export, age, and educational background of business owners. The findings serve as critical empirical evidence and provide policy recommendations for improving the competitiveness of women-owned SMEs in Vietnam. The recommendations range from technology support, education and professional support for female entrepreneurs, access to capital and human resources to business environment improvement.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.11
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• pp.157-167
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• 2021

The study analyzes the factors affecting the intention and recommendation to use the mobile banking applications of 314 customers from Vietnam. The study analyzes 7 factors affecting the intention and recommendation to use the mobile banking applications of customers from Vietnam, including (i) Perceived risk; (ii) Perceived ease of use; (iii) Perceived usefulness; (iv) Attitude; (v) Perceived trust; (vi) Social image; and (vii) Innovativeness. Besides, the study also analyzes 4 variables that reflect the customer's demographics, including gender, age, education, and occupation, and 6 variables describing the behavior of customers using mobile banking applications. The study findings indicate that the following factors (i) Innovativeness; (ii) Attitude; (iii) Perceived risk; (iv) Perceived ease of use, and (v) Perceived trust have the most significant impact on customers' behavior of using mobile banking applications in emerging markets such as Vietnam in the context of prolonged pandemic and continuous lockdown in many provinces and cities. The study is also of great value to studies on behavior changes among customers using mobile banking applications after the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. The study will provide additional empirical evidence useful to bank administrators in motivating customers to use mobile banking applications, helping develop a digital economy in Vietnam.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.12 no.11
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• pp.1-8
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• 2021

Purpose: For the last few decades, human civilization has observed an enormous change due to digitalization. However, question remains whether and how management accounting has been transformed to meet the demand of the digitalization. This paper provides a literary illustration of such transformation in the context of a digitalized world. Research design, data and methodology: This is a conceptual study based on extant literature. Therefore, the secondary sources of materials were used. Materials include literatures published in this domain, archival documents, and other publicly available data. Results: Drawing from literary evidence, the paper first highlights the evolving character of management accounting. Then it illustrates the changing landscape in the milieu of global and institutional settings with a focus in accounting profession. It further demonstrates the digitalization impact in management accounting. Here it also identifies the changing role of management accountants. Conclusions: The paper is critical for the management accounting professionals in identifying the attributes and nature of management accounting in the contemporary world. It also provides a sketch of the potential skillset that management accounting professionals should embrace to tackle the challenges of the new environment.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.265-275
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• 2021

This study's motivation is to investigate the association between the stock market, remittance, and the pandemic of COVID-19 for the period from March 3, 2020, to December 14, 2020. For evaluating the impact of COVID-19 and remittances on stock market behaviour during the pandemic, the study applies Autoregressive Distributed lagged (ARDL) for magnitudes estimation and directional association through the Toda-Yamamoto causality test. Study findings from ARDL estimation revealed that COVID-19 measured by detecting new cases negatively influences the stock market both in the long-term and short-term. Remittance positively influences the stock market behaviour, particularly in the long-term. Furthermore, the directional causality test disclosed unidirectional causal effects between COVID-19 and the stock market behaviour, which establishes all proxy measures for the equation's stock market. The hypothesis results explain the causal relationship between remittance inflows and the stock market in Bangladesh. The study's application will help policymakers rethink the policies for channelizing remittances for productive investment areas. Furthermore, the study's findings will reinstate the widely perceived notions, which is the critical role of remittance in the economy even though the economy passes through a great pandemic.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.29-47
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• 2018

This paper examines the relationship between diversification and financial performance of community credit unions in Korea from 2011 to 2017. To do so, I employ fixed-effects panel analyses using credit union level panel data collected from the National Credit Union Federation of Korea. This study finds evidence that business diversification is likely to lower the ratio of troubled loans, which means improving asset quality of credit unions. However, the relationship between diversification and asset quality is not linear but nonlinear, which means over-diversification would have negative effects on asset quality. Next, diversification tends to increase profitability. Specifically, although diversification results in a rise in expenditures, an increase in profits made by diversification outweighs the rise in expenditures, which contributes to profitability. Put together, diversification would be a good business strategy to improve both profitability and asset quality. Given a result that fast loan growth deteriorates asset quality, credit unions' managers might adopt the diversification strategy to enhance asset quality, and not to pursue their own objectives motivated by moral hazards.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2019

Macrophage is an important innate immune cell that not only initiates inflammatory responses, but also functions in tissue repair and anti-inflammatory responses. Regulating macrophage activity is thus critical to maintain immune homeostasis. Tyro3, Axl, and Mer are integral membrane proteins that constitute TAM family of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs). Growing evidence indicates that TAM family receptors play an important role in anti-inflammatory responses through modulating the function of macrophages. First, macrophages can recognize apoptotic bodies through interaction between TAM family receptors expressed on macrophages and their ligands attached to apoptotic bodies. Without TAM signaling, macrophages cannot clear up apoptotic cells, leading to broad inflammation due to over-activation of immune cells. Second, TAM signaling can prevent chronic activation of macrophages by attenuating inflammatory pathways through particular pattern recognition receptors and cytokine receptors. Third, TAM signaling can induce autophagy which is an important mechanism to inhibit NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages. Fourth, TAM signaling can inhibit polarization of M1 macrophages. In this review, we will focus on mechanisms involved in how TAM family of RTKs can modulate function of macrophage associated with anti-inflammatory responses described above. We will also discuss several human diseases related to TAM signaling and potential therapeutic strategies of targeting TAM signaling.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.64 no.5
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• pp.196-207
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• 2021

Over the last few decades, the rates of pediatric obesity have more than doubled regardless of sociodemographic categorization, and despite these rates plateauing in recent years there continues to be an increase in the severity of obesity in children and adolescents. This review will discuss the pediatric obesity mediated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors such as attenuated levels of satiety and energy metabolism hormones, insulin resistance, vascular endothelial dysfunction, and arterial stiffness. Additionally, early intervention to combat pediatric obesity is critical as obesity has been suggested to track into adulthood, and these obese children and adolescents are at an increased risk of early mortality. Current suggested strategies to combat pediatric obesity are modifying diet, limiting sedentary behavior, and increasing physical activity. The effects of exercise intervention on metabolic hormones such as leptin and adiponectin, insulin sensitivity/resistance, and body fat in obese children and adolescents will be discussed along with the exercise modality, intensity, and duration. Specifically, this review will focus on the differential effects of aerobic exercise, resistance training, and combined exercise on the cardiovascular risks in pediatric obesity. This review outlines the evidence that exercise intervention is a beneficial therapeutic strategy to reduce the risk factors for CVD and the ideal exercise prescription to combat pediatric obesity should contain both muscle strengthening and aerobic components with an emphasis on fat mass reduction and long-term adherence.

• 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.