Scientific Research Publishing

Cirebon is an important port city in the south-western part of the Indonesian archipelago. It is located on the north coast of the most populous Indonesian island of Java. Although it is in West Java Province, it stands on the border of Central Java. This makes it an important cultural melting pot of the Sundanese and Javanese people respectively. Chinese immigrants also play an important role. As the second port of Jakarta, and one with an expanding export production zone, it is important for the whole of West Java. It is also the point of export for a large number of agricultural commodities such as tea, rice sugar, coffee, and essential oil, teak and other products of the surrounding region. Development is occurring at a high rate with Indonesian and foreign investment increasing. Cirebon is an important transportation center for goods to and from Jakarta, as well as a transit town between West Java and Central Java, where the trucks and buses pass by the busy major east-west highw...

The word “calling” comes from the west culture, originated from religion— means “The call of God”, while with the development of the times, has experienced a changing process from the sacred to the secular, becomes a concept across subjects of religious studies, sociology & organizational behavior. Especially in Chinese culture, its connotation has many features of its own. With the rapid development of social economy, life and working environment has made an enormous change, people work are not limited to survive, for every individual, there are new meanings for occupation. There are such a part of the people, they feel it’s their destiny to engage in the profession now, this kind of idea has made them put more energy in the work, more motivated, and fell more happiness. Both individuals and organizations have benefits from this positive concept, so the study of “calling” is born at the right moment. This paper first systematically sorted out the existing research on calling, e...

The explosive growth of the Internet has led to online social networking communities, allowing individuals to establish and maintain digital connections with each other. Different from a face-to-face networking environment, social network sites (SNS) are a new communication technology that gives users more or less complete control over the information that others can observe. Similar to a face-to-face environment, certain SNS profiles are perceived as more socially attractive than others. Users may be able to manage profile information so as to manipulate their perceived social attractiveness. The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of how one can use effective impression management to design and build an attractive SNS profile. This research focuses on Facebook, one of the most popular SNS worldwide with more than 1.23 billion active members in 2014. It applies impression management and social attractiveness theories to Facebook in an attempt to better compre...

Contamination of surface and underground water by sea level rise, surface runoff, and land use activities such as industrial and agricultural activities can lead to water scarcity. Water could be available and accessible but not suitable for human use. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region countries, the agriculture sector depends massively on water for farming activities, which consumes about 80% of the available water resources. In this context, the issue of environmental water scarcity is under highlighted, though the use of this term itself is still lacking in an international context (FAO). Meanwhile, the international goal of universal access to clean freshwater is included in global development targets (SDGs). This study provides some insights and deepens our understanding on environmental water scarcity, particularly MENA region countries. Water use has been growing globally as the population and economies’ economic growth.The MENA are shown in red colour.Climate ...

In the current 2010s digital scenes, characterized by interactive and instantaneous network communication, as well as the purchase experience at point of sale (POS), fashion companies increasingly include these new digital processes in their visual merchandising. This issue is relevant in fashion and in the academic area, since there are still few researches that connect new technologies applied to visual merchandising and consumer behavior. In addition, the dependent variable in most of these previous studies is only behavioral intention including purchase, repurchase, loyalty, complaints and switching behavior. Mainly, purchase intention is the most popular element studied as a response to exposure to online stimuli. Also, a fair amount of research used the approach/avoidance theory as a behavioristic response to environmental stimuli.The visual merchandising techniques interfere in the buying process, being indispensable for marketers to identify circumstances that arouse from a spe...

The survival rate of children and adolescents with cancer has increased because of the early detention and the innovation in the existing treatments. . However, it has not been possible to eliminate symptoms occasioned by the disease or its treatment, which are physical, psychological and social, which affects directly in the quality of life. Quality of life (QOL) is a subjective concept defined as the feeling of socioemotional and physical wellbeing, including the ability to participate in everyday activities according to age. As the World Health Organization suggested, it is important to evaluate the QOF in children and adolescents with cancer, in order to be able to intervene opportunely in areas affected by a cancer diagnosis. This research aims to determine the association between quality of life and sociodemographic variables in children and adolescents with cancer and their families. It provides scientific evidence about the necessity to develop personalized and opportune socio...

The problem of air pollution has been discussed for centuries, however, when most of us focus on how outdoor air pollution may affect our health; the indoor environment has been largely neglected. A number of studies revealed that the indoor particulates and gaseous exposures, resulting from the combustion of various cooking fuels, are associated with significant adverse health effects on pregnant mothers and new born babies. Thus this review paper intended to discuss reported findings focused on the ventilation and exposure to air pollution, and offered better understanding to modulate exposure profile in household condition using simple tool of ventilation measurement. Article by Sankar Sambandam, Santu Ghosh, et al, from Sri Ramachandra University and Women’s Christian College, India. Full access:  http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=46679&utm_campaign=blogger&utm_medium=ljw Image by MAVERICK PHOTO AGENCY, from flickr-cc. ...

There has been an increase in carbon assessments across global ecosystems, but some ecosystem types remain woefully understudied, and freshwater swamp forests are one such ecosystem. Located between the mangrove swamp forest and the lowland forest ecosystems, freshwater swamp forest provides a corridor for the migration of flora and fauna between these ecosystems as well as being floristically unique. Swamp forests contribute to the provision of ecosystem services, are potential stores of carbon and important for climate regulation and biogeochemical cycling. However, this ecosystem has been steadily exploited, its extent has reduced, been degraded and is now confined to small pockets. As a result, its species like in most other old growth forests across the tropics, are not only threatened and fragmented, but the ecosystem services they provide are reduced. These changes have impacted the forest landscape adversely and reduced the former extensive ecosystem into mosaics of forest isl...

The foundation for an active and healthy lifestyle is laid in childhood, and regular physical activity participation during childhood has numerous positive effects on children’s healthy growth, as well as their motor, emotional and social development. However, studies showed that migrant status affects children’s activity levels and motor abilities negatively. In this context, this paper focuses on the intervention effects of increasing daily PA regarding children’s motor skills. It is found that the school-based health promotion program “Join the Healthy Boat” could achieve an improvement of motor abilities of children with migration background after one-year of intervention. However, boys obtained better results than girls in the motor tests. Article by researchers from Ulm University Medical Centre, Germany. Full access:  http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=74889&utm_campaign=blogger&utm_medium=wh Photo by Mike Strasser, fro...

If you still remember the AR phenomenon, Pokemon Go, last year, you will understand how augmented reality moves from the industrial niches to mass technology, and has now penetrated into our daily lives. This article provided a comprehensive study of AR including its history, architecture, applications, current challenges and future trends. Though published in 2013, it quite predicted the things in the right way, and the same things we observe in nowadays. This is the reason why we respect scientific research. Even the slightest findings may become something big in the future. Article by Abrar Omar Alkhamisi, Muhammad Mostafa Monowar from King AbdulAziz University, Saudi Arabia. Read more @  https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=40277&utm_campaign=blogger&utm_medium=wh

Gao Hongna in her paper analyzes the importance of protecting minority languages, and the problems minor languages face during China’s social transition. She states that language is an important component of identity and culture for many groups. Maintaining their distinct identity and culture is usually important to minority group member’s self esteem and this will affect the degree of success achieved in the society. Without active language maintenance, language shift is almost inevitable in many contexts, and without conscious maintenance, minority languages can and probably will disappear in as few as three generations. Nothing benefits a country more than to treasure the language and cultures of its various peoples because in doing so, it fosters intergroup understanding and realizes greater dividends in the form of originality, creativity, and versatility. Over half the world’s population is bilingual and many people are multilingual. They acquire a number of languages because ...

    Mammography is widely used for the early detection and diagnosis of breast diseases in women. However, breast compression and immobilization during mammography usually give a pain to the examinee. It is believed that mammography causes not only physical burden but also psychological distress to patients. Some recent investigations revealed that communication robot can improve the situation by engender positive mental effects, such as pleasure and relaxation. This paper aims to explore effects of the communication robot on distress reduction in mammography. It suggested that communication with a robot before mammography would yield positive emotions and it would be related to the pain alleviation during mammography. Article by  Yongbum Lee, Mieko Uchiyama, Akira Hasegawa, Rika Saitoh, from from Niigata University, Japan. Full access:  http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=74856&utm_campaign=blogger&utm_medium=wh ...

There is not a unanimous conclusion about the influential elements of online customers’ repurchase intention. We established a concept model and discussed how utilitarian values (perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness), social values (satisfaction and trust) and the hedonic value (perceived enjoyment) directly and indirectly influenced customers’ repurchase intention in the context of online shopping. It adapted questionnaire to collect data and testified the hypothesis by structural equation model. The results showed that perceived usefulness, online customers’ satisfaction and perceived enjoyment had significantly positive impact on online customers’ repurchase intention. Moreover, we found that compared with utilitarian factors, the hedonic factor had a stronger positive impact on repurchase intention. With the development of the Internet, e-commerce has changed the people how to buy and customers become accustomed to using the Internet instead of the store to make purcha...

Education is one of the fundamental rights of individuals; therefore, the government of a country needs to develop and strengthen educational policy and quality as well as to ensure that everyone has equal access to basic education. The improvement of access and quality of education in the world is becoming as an essential factor in development, whereas the basic education (primary school), is acknowledged as a foundation of the higher educational development for every country. To fulfill this goal, governments introduce several policies and procedures; however, it requires some reforms and participation from the politician, policymakers, and other stakeholders to re-examine educational policy so that it can lead to multiplication and betterment of the reforms. Educational reforms actually focus on accountability. A positive educational development and reform is very challenging and needs more effort and strategy on how to use and utilize the resources effectively as such it can achie...

There is a growing dependence on GPS technology in recent years, and digital applications such as Google map, and fitness apps DO bring some convenience to our daily life. However, have you ever considered whether or not the GPS observation conducted by different software products is accurate? This article tries to look into this issue, and finds out that commercial software products can only present acceptable accuracy in small polygons of network considering their capacity and few numbers of parameters for processing of GPS data. However, if the network is more extended, there is no other choice but using scientific software products. Article by Morteza Hamidi and Peyman Javadi, from Islamic Azad University, Iran. Full access:  http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=74838&utm_campaign=blogger&utm_medium=wh Image by tom jervis, from flickr-cc.

Research shows that a balanced work-life combination creates harmony in both professional and personal life, and it is seen as a vital path to organizational success. This article aims to find out the reasons behind the work-life imbalance among working women in Bangladesh. As a result, support from the organization is believed to be helpful in maintaining work-life balance. Article by Mayesha Tasnim, Muhammed Zakir Hossain and Fabiha Enam, from State University of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Full access:  http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=74810&utm_campaign=blogger&utm_medium=wh Image by Alexandra Lehmann, from Flickr-cc.

In the present paper, we examine the effect of increasing uncertainty of immigrants’ growth on the optimal timing of investment of a firm that has a monopolistic power over the labor market. It is revealed that when the uncertainty of immigrants’ growth is more than a threshold level, increasing uncertainty of immigrants’ growth accelerates the optimal timing of firms’ investment and enhances the economic growth, even if the uncertainty of immigrants’ growth is formulated by the geometric Brownian motion, which is in sharp contrast to the standard result that an increase in the uncertainty postpones the optimal timing. With an increase in the immigrants over the past ten years, workforces in the host countries have been growing significantly to the extent that the immigrants represent 70% of the increase in the workforce in Europe, and 47% in the United States as OECD indicates. In the present paper, we attempted to investigate the effect of increased uncertainty caused by the growi...

Tourism service trade is a kind of service trade, which refers to the activities that one country or region’s tourism practitioners provide service and get paid in use of the controlled tourism resources to consumers o f other countries or regions. At present, the tourism industry is an important pillar industry in China, tourism service trade has always been an important source of China’s service trade income. However, China’s tourism service trade deficit occurred for the first time in 2009, and continued to expand. As to 2014, the deficit widened to $113.6 billion, sharing 57.7% of the service trade deficit. Although to some extent, the tourism trade deficit alleviates the relations between China and the other countries, the long-term deficit will also harm the interests of the country. In this paper, the data comes in large part from “Tourism Statistic Yearbook of China” and China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which are used to analyze the deficit of China’s tourism service tr...

The present paper is an attempt to bridge the gulf between economics and econophysics. That is, constructing a chaos-based theoretical model, we show the behavior of the goal-driven agents exhibits the behavior of the purpose-free agents. Let us consider an intertemporal economy that consists of one representative firm and two classes of people, namely, working class people (i.e., laborers) and middle class people (i.e., consumers). The firm inputs the labor of the working class people to sell the products to the middle class people whose income source is the dividend from the firm and the capital gain from their assets. As in, we assume that consumers (i.e., middle class people), who purchase either 0 or 1 unit of products, are heterogeneous in that each of these consumers has different willingness-to-pay for the products, to generate the demand curve as aggregate of such demands. We assume the willingness-to-pay of each consumer relates positively to her/his income in period t so ...

Africa's borders are bestride with many challenges ranging from religious and terrorist movements to cattle rustling, military conflicts to human trafficking. The challenges are endless, but whether the boundary disputes are terrestrial or maritime, they are mostly about security and prestige. Growing human population, political awareness and environmental challenges mean that the problems are likely to heighten, unless they are resolved. Despite the provisions of UNCLOS, Africa has several unresolved maritime boundary disputes. In this light, this article aims to examine the African situation, and discuss the challenges involved in the delimitation and management of maritime boundaries in Africa. This article presents the issues, causes, essence and the security imperative of maritime boundary disputes in Africa. At the moment, the African continent is characterized by lots of maritime boundary disputes. And unless these are resolved through negotiation or other diplomatic m...

Unsafe abortions are thought to claim 47,000 lives annually and are found more frequent in developing countries with restrictive abortion laws and limited access to health care facilities. This article aims to explore the experience of women exposed to an unsafe abortion in Sudan, and address the underlying factors that affected women’s decision. Three themes emerged: 1> unbalanced relationship dynamic between women and their partners; 2> the fear of social stigma; 3> influence of religious context. Recommendations were made by researchers according to the situation they found. Article by Wafa Elamin, Atif B. Fazari, and Khalifa Elmusharaf, Reproductive and Child Health Research Unit (RCRU), University of Medical Sciences & Technology (UMST), Khartoum, Sudan. Full access:  http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=74767&utm_campaign=blogger&utm_medium=wh Image by idiotblogid, from flickr-cc.

The particulate air pollution is a growing problem in cities with emissions generating activities. Size and chemical composition of ambient particulates strongly influence on human health, visibility and ecosystem etc. This study looked into the origin of the particles in the atmosphere, and divided particles into groups based on morphology and elemental composition. These particles morphology and chemical composition, illustrate an abundance of natural elements within the zone. It is suggested, though, some of the elements presented are directly related with human activities, and are of much interest from the public health and environmental perspectives. Article by researchers from Sonora State University, Mexico. Read more @ http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=52213&utm_campaign=blogger&utm_medium=wh Image by Kevin Dooley, from flickr-cc.