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Confucian Ethics And The Critique Of Ideology, Alan Kam Leung Chan

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The debate between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas provides a fresh perspective from which Confucian philosophy may be approached. In this paper, focusing on the Lunyu (Analects), I argue that the sayings of Confucius reflect an essentially 'conservative' orientation, finding in tradition a reservoir of insight and truth. There is a critical dimension to it in that ethical reflection and self-cultivation would enable the individual to challenge particular claims of tradition. However, can self-cultivation transcend tradition as a whole and enable the individual to effect radical change? Following the strategy of Habermas' critique of Gadamer, what happens if tradition is …

Cultural Policy In Singapore: Negotiating Economic And Socio-Cultural Agendas, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this paper, I examine the role of cultural policy in a newly industrialised economy, which is at the same time a state with a short history and only nascent beginnings in nation-building and efforts to construct a distinctive cultural identity. Using Singapore as the site of analyses, develop an understanding of the intersection between the economic and socio-cultural agendas behind cultural development policies. I illustrate the hegemony of the economic, supported by the ideology and language of pragmatism and globalisation. At the same time, I explore the reception of and attempts to negotiate (and at times, contest) state policies …

The Protection Of Well-Known Marks In Taiwan: From Case Study To General Theory, Kung-Chung Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Although the use of trademarks in China can be traced back over one thousand years (Liu's needle shop with the "white rabbit" mark ca. A.D. 960-1126), a statutory regulation of trademarks was not undertaken until very late in the Qing dynasty, and this only happened due to foreign pressure.' In 1904, the British Herd helped draft the "Shang Piao Chu Ts'e Shih Pan Chang Ch'eng," which never took effect.2 In 1923, the government promulgated the Trade Mark Act and in 1927 the "Ch'iian Kuo Chu Ts'e Chii Chu Ts'e T'iao Li."3 In 1930, the "New Trade Mark Act," 4 which …

Motion-Based Video Representation For Scene Change Detection, Chong-Wah Ngo, Ting-Chuen Pong, Hong-Jiang Zhang, Roland T. Chin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present a new ly developed scheme for automatical ly partitioning videos into scenes. A scene is general ly referred to as a group of shots taken place in the same site. In this paper, we first propose a motion annotation algorithm based on the analysis of spatiotemporal image volumes. The algorithm characterizes the motions within shots by extracting and analyzing the motion trajectories encoded in the temporal slices of image volumes. A motion-based keyframe computing and selection strategy is thus proposed to compactly represent the content of shots. With these techniques, we further present a scene change detection algorithm …

Causality Analysis Of Decision Entrapment, Chia-Wu Lin, Bor-Shiuan Cheng, Ming-Hong Tsai

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

"Decision entrapment" refers to the phenomenon that decision-makers commit to the negative or failure choices, and tend to throw more resources in some projects that seem to fail certainly. We try to combine two contradictory viewpoints, self-justification vs. information-processing perspectives, to clarify the causality of decision entrapment through experimental approach. Staw suggests that the emotional “self-justification" is the major mechanism of decision entrapment. Adopting the information-processing perspective, Kahneman & Tversky propose that “certainty effect" bring about perception distortion, which is the main cause of entrapment behavior. We used computer programs to simulate a decision-making scenario, and manipulated “personal responsibility" and …

The Ethics Of Placebo-Controlled Trials In Developing Countries To Prevent Mother-To-Child Transmission Of Hiv, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Placebo-trials on HIV-infected pregnant women in developing countries like Thailand and Uganda have provoked recent controversy. Such experiments aim to find a treatment that will cut the rate of vertical transmission more efficiently than existing treatments like zidovudine. This scenario is first stated as generally as possible, before three ethical principles found in the Belmont Report, itself a sharpening of the Helsinki Declaration, are stated. These three principles are the Principle of Utility, the Principle of Autonomy and the Principle of Justice. These are taken as voices of moral imperative. But although each has intuitive appeal, it can be shown …

A Meta-Analysis On Relationship Modeling Accuracy: Comparing Relational And Semantic Models, Qing Cao, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Semantic data modeling, such as entity-relationship (ER) modeling and extended/enhanced entity-relationship (EER) modeling, has emerged as an alternative to relational data modeling. The majority of research in data modeling suggests that the use of semantic data models leads to better performance. However the findings are not conclusive and sometimes inconsistent. In this research, we investigate modeling relationship correctness in relational and semantic models. The meta-analysis carried out in this research is an attempt to alleviate inconsistent results in previous studies.

Injunctions Restraining Calls On Performance Bonds: Is Fraud The Only Ground In Singapore?, Quentin Loh, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper traces the divergence of Singapore law from English law with regard to the grounds upon which a call on a performance bond can be restrained, in particular the recent recognition of the Singapore Court of Appeal's ruling that "unconscionability" is a separate ground to restrain the call of a performance bond. This article examines the legal nature of an on demand performance bond and seeks to challenge the assumption that a performance bond is a mirror image of a letter of credit. This paper also discusses the recent case of Cargill International v. Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries …

Cryptanalysis Of The M-Permutation Protection Schemes, Hongjun Wu, Feng Bao, Dingfeng Ye, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Anderson and Kuhn have proposed the EEPROM modification attack to recover the secret key stored in the EEPROM. At ACISP ’98, Fung and Gray proposed an m-permutation protection scheme against the EEPROM modification attack. At ACISP ’99, Fung and Gray pointed out that in their original scheme, a secret key with too small or too large Hamming weight could be recovered easily. Then they proposed a revised m- permutation protection scheme and claimed that their revised scheme does not leak any information of the secret key. In this paper, we break completely both the original and the revised …

Density Forecasting: A Survey, Anthony S. Tay, Kenneth F. Wallis

Research Collection School Of Economics

A density forecast of the realization of a random variable at some future time is an estimate of the probability distribution of the possible future values of that variable. A selective survey is presented of applications of density forecasting in macroeconomics and finance, and some issues concerning the production, presentation, and evaluation of density forecasts are discussed.

Motion Characterization By Temporal Slices Analysis, Chong-Wah Ngo, Ting-Chuen Pong, Hong-Jiang Zhang, Roland T. Chin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes an approach to characterize camera and object motions based on the analysis of spatio temporal image volumes. In the spatio-temporal slices of image volumes, motion is depicted as oriented patterns. We propose a tensor histogram computation algorithm to represent these oriented patterns. The motion trajectories in a histogram are tracked to describe both the camera and object motions. In addition, we exploit the similarity of the temporal slices in a volume to reliably partition a volume into motion tractable units.

Positivity And The Construction Of Life Satisfaction Judgments: Global Happiness Is Not The Sum Of Its Parts, Ed Diener, Christie N. Scollon, Shigehiro Oishi, Vivian Dzokoto, Mark Eunkook Suh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The present study investigated how reports of satisfaction with specific versus global domains can be used to assess a disposition towards positivity in subjective well-being reports. College students from 41 societies (N = 7167) completed measures of life satisfaction and ratings of global and specific aspects of their lives. For example, participants rated satisfaction with their education (global) and satisfaction with their professors, textbooks, and lectures (specific). It was hypothesized that global measures would more strongly reflect individual differences in dispositional positivity, that is, a propensity to evaluate aspects of life in general as good. At both the individual and …

From Selling Peanuts And Beer In Yankee Stadium To Creating A Theory Of Transformational Leadership: An Interview With Bernie Bass, Robert Hooijberg, Jaepil Choi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This issue's interview is with Bernard Bass. He started in academia in 1946 and began teaching 52 years ago. When he publishes in the year 2000, he will have published in seven different decades. Besides all of his work in the area of leadership, Dr. Bass is also the co-founder (with Bob House and Henry Tosi) of The Leadership Quarterly.

A New Statistic For Regression Transformation, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

A new statistic for testing a regression transformation is proposed based on a result of Yang (1999). This statistic is shown to be stable, having a null distribution almost independent of model type and parameter values, accurate and easy to implement. The statistic is of the Wald-type and thus is compared with the Wald statistic given by Lawrence (1987) in terms of size, null distribution and power using simulation. The simulation results show that the new statistic generally outperforms that of Lawrence.

Re-Engineering Structures From Web Documents, Moh Chuang Hue, Ee Peng Lim, Wee-Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To realize a wide range of applications (including digital libraries) on the Web, a more structured way of accessing the Web is required and such requirement can be facilitated by the use of XML standard. In this paper, we propose a general framework for reverse engineering (or re-engineering) the underlying structures i.e.,the DTD from a collection of similarly structured XML documents when they share some common but unknown DTDs. The essential data structures and algorithms for the DTD generation have been delveloped and experiments on real Web collections have been conducted to demonstrate their feasibilty. In addition, we also proposed …

Decision Support Methods In Diabetic Patient Management By Insulin Administration Neural Network Vs. Induction Methods For Knowledge Classification, B. V. Ambrosiadou, S. Vadera, Venky Shankaraman, D. Goulis, G. Gogou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Diabetes mellitus is now recognised as a major worldwide public health problem. At present, about 100 million people are registered as diabetic patients. Many clinical, social and economic problems occur as a consequence of insulin-dependent diabetes. Treatment attempts to prevent or delay complications by applying ‘optimal’ glycaemic control. Therefore, there is a continuous need for effective monitoring of the patient. Given the popularity of decision tree learning algorithms as well as neural networks for knowledge classification which is further used for decision support, this paper examines their relative merits by applying one algorithm from each family on a medical problem; …

Predictive Adaptive Resonance Theory And Knowledge Discovery In Databases, Ah-Hwee Tan, Hui-Shin Vivien Soon

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper investigates the scalability of predictive Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) networks for knowledge discovery in very large databases. Although predictive ART performs fast and incremental learning, the number of recognition categories or rules that it creates during learning may become substantially large and cause the learning speed to slow down. To tackle this problem, we introduce an on-line algorithm for evaluating and pruning categories during learning. Benchmark experiments on a large scale data set show that on-line pruning has been effective in reducing the number of the recognition categories and the time for convergence. Interestingly, the pruned networks also …

The Trusted General Manager And Unit Performance: Empirical Evidence Of A Competitive Advantage, James H. Davis, F. David Schoorman, Roger C. Mayer, Hwee Hoon Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Employee trust for the general manager is proposed as an internal organizational characteristic that provides a competitive advantage for the firm. This paper empirically examines the relationship between trust for a business unit's general manager and organizational performance. Trust was found to be significantly related to sales, profits and employee turnover in the restaurant industry. Managers who were either more or less trusted differed significantly in perceptions of their ability, benevolence and integrity.

Laminar Entry Flow Of Herschel-Bulkley Fluids In A Circular Pipe, R. C. Gupta, Yibao Zhao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Fargie and Martin used an elegant approach to obtain the entry region flow of Newtonian fluids in a circular pipe. They combined the differential and integral momentum equation in such a way that elimination of pressure gradient leads to a closed form solution. In this paper we extend this procedure to study the laminar entry region flow of Herschel-Bulkley fluids in a circular pipe. The solution procedure involves certain approximations. Applicability of these approximations to Herschel-Bulkley fluids has been discussed and the flow description has been obtained for various values of the flow behavior index and the Herschel-Bulkley number. Results …

Virtual Auditing Agents: The Edgar Agent Challenge, Kay M. Nelson, Alex Kogan, Rajendra P. Srivastava, Miklos Vasarhelyi, Hai Lu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Intelligent agents can be used as agents of organizational change. This potential exists in the domain of accounting audit, where much of what is currently done manually in batch mode could be done continuously and on-line. We discuss the use of intelligent Internet agents as a way of changing and expanding audit practices in the virtual world. A quality/service framework is presented that suggests ways that accounting firms can evolve in this era of on-line opportunities. The EDGAR Agent is presented as an example of an intelligent Internet agent that gathers financial information. The challenges involved in the development of …

On The Validity Of Digital Signatures, Jianying Zhou, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An important feature of digital signatures is to serve as non-repudiation evidence. To be eligible as non-repudiation evidence, a digital signature on an electronic document should remain valid until its expiry date which is specified by some non-repudiation policy. As signature keys may be compromised and the validity of signatures may become questionable, additional security mechanisms need to be imposed on digital signatures. This paper examines the mechanisms for maintaining the validity of digital signatures, and provides a guideline on the use of these mechanisms in various context of applications.

Sap Implementation At The University Of Nebraska, T. Sieber, Keng Siau, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, M. Sieber

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The University Community will have access to information, including human, physical, and financial, through an integrated administrative system. The system will be user-driven and flexible in a seamless and distributed environment to support efficient and effective business processes necessary to accommodate the mission of the University and its campuses.

Treatment Of Multi-Courts Jurisdiction Agreements, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

An increasingly popular manner of drafting jurisdiction clauses in cross-border contracts involves the selection of the courts of more than one jurisdiction. Traditionally, parties would submit all disputes to the courts of a particular country under an exclusive jurisdiction agreement or agree that the transaction is subject to a particular jurisdiction without intending to create an obligation to proceed there and nowhere else. Of late, the Singapore courts have encountered litigation over multi-courts jurisdiction agreements. A common form involves the naming of a particular court with one of the parties being given the option to proceed anywhere else.

Bbm Programme Student Handbook 2000-01, Smu School Of Business

SMU Corporate Reports

The SMU Business School (School) undergraduate curriculum leads to the award of the degree of Bachelor of Business Management (BBM). The objective of the programme is to produce professionally competent graduates who are entrepreneurial, creative, capable of critical thinking and committed to life-long learning. In order to accomplish this objective, the curriculum is structured into 3 sections and a business attachment.

The School offers students a carefully designed programme in which business and management education is integrated with a broad-based foundation throughout the student's 4 years. The courses aim to equip all students with the fundamental skills and attributes needed …

Companies Act (Cap. 50): Memorandum And Articles Of Association Of Singapore Management University (Registration No. 200000267z), Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

This is to certify that Singapore Management University is incorporated under the Companies Act Cap. 50 on and from 12/01/2000 and that the company is a public company limited by guarantee.

The objects of the Company are to establish, operate, maintain and promote the Singapore Management University (hereinafter called the 'University') which will provide courses of study or instruction pertaining to management, human resource development and any other fields of knowledge.

Measurement Of The Z Resonance Parameters At Lep, R. Barate, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The properties of the Z resonance are measured from the analysis of 4.5 million Z decays into fermion pairs collected with the ALEPH detector at LEP. The data are consistent with lepton universality. The resonance parameters are measured to be MZ=(91.1885±0.0031)GeV/c2MZ=(91.1885±0.0031)GeV/c2, ΓZ=(2.4951±0.0043)ΓZ=(2.4951±0.0043) GeV, σ0had=(41.559±0.058)σhad0=(41.559±0.058) nb and, combining the three lepton flavours, Rℓ=20.725±0.039Rℓ=20.725±0.039. The corresponding number of light neutrino species is Nν=2.983±0.013Nν=2.983±0.013 and the strong coupling constant is αs(MZ)=0.114±0.004±0.002QCD+0.005log10[MH150GeV/c2]αs(MZ)=0.114±0.004±0.002QCD+0.005log10⁡[MH150GeV/c2]. The lepton pair forward-backward asymmetry is measured to be A0,ℓFB=0.0173±0.0016AFB0,ℓ=0.0173±0.0016 from which the effective weak mixing angle is derived: sin2θlepteff=0.23089±0.00089sin2⁡θefflept=0.23089±0.00089. The measurement of the leptonic width Γℓℓ=84.02±0.15Γℓℓ=84.02±0.15 MeV leads to a determination …

Supervised Adaptive Resonance Theory And Rules, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Supervised Adaptive Resonance Theory is a family of neural networks that performs incremental supervised learning of recognition categories (pattern classes) and multidimensional maps of both binary and analog patterns. This chapter highlights that the supervised ART architecture is compatible with IF-THEN rule-based symbolic representation. Specifi­cally, the knowledge learned by a supervised ART system can be readily translated into rules for interpretation. Similarly, a priori domain knowl­edge in the form of IF-THEN rules can be converted into a supervised ART architecture. Not only does initializing networks with prior knowl­edge improve predictive accuracy and learning efficiency, the inserted symbolic knowledge can also …

Some Remarks On Fair Exchange Protocol, Jianying Zhou, Robert H. Deng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Fair exchange turns out to be an increasingly important topic due to the rapid growth of electronic commerce. An exchange is deemed to be fair if at the end of exchange, either each party receives the expected item or neither party receives any useful information about the other’s item. Several protocols for fair exchange have been proposed in recent years. In this paper, we first examine a newly published fair exchange protocol and point out its flaws and weaknesses. We then put forward a more efficient and secure protocol and give an informal analysis.

Law And Values In Governance: The Singapore Way, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The article examines the role of law and the legal system in catalysing Singapore's development success. It argues that there is a dichotomy in the approach with regard to commercial law and law relating to individual freedom and rights and civil society. Universalism characterises the treatment of commercial laws while cultural relativism and a communitarian-based understanding of rights and obligations are features of the law relating to the rights of the individual. Instrumentalism, driven by a particularistic 'communitarian' political philosophy underpinned by strong Confucianist values, is very much motivated by the need for good governance as a prerequisite for economic …

Measurements Of The Structure Of Quark And Gluon Jets In Hadronic Z Decays, R. Barate, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An experimental investigation of the structure of identified quark and gluon jets is presented. Observables related to both the global and internal structure of jets are measured; this allows for tests of QCD over a wide range of transverse momentum scales. The observables include distributions of jet-shape variables, the mean and standard deviation of the subjet multiplicity distribution and the fragmentation function for charged particles. The data are compared with predictions of perturbative QCD as well as QCD-based Monte Carlo models. In certain kinematic regions the measurements are sensitive mainly to perturbatively calculable effects, allowing for a test of QCD. …