Suchergebnisse

The changes and scale of globalization are underway to grow gradually, those economic, social, political, cultural and environmental aspects are continuous to be affected by this social process and influence almost everyone and everything. The world is experiencing mostly on the effects of commerce and government. As economic power increases, there exists a corresponding tension that compels policymakers to face new challenges and opportunities that arise from the current global economic system, as well as providing a response and contingency plan to the public. However, as local culture is influenced by the rapid development of global culture, discussions between culture and globalization remain fewer compared to those in political and economic spheres. However, cultural globalization has expanded on several problems, such as cultural homogenization, cultural imperialism, national identity, and popular culture threats. This study aims to observe the impacts of globalization on culture which include two main issues, how globalization accelerates global homogenization, and why countries retain different cultures despite scholarly arguments that cultural homogenization is an inevitability. Lots of academic and scientific journals as foundation for pursuing evidence and summarizing explanation. Secondary research has been used for more comprehensive perspectives regarding the relation between globalization and culture. By applying iceberg theory, cultural homogenization mostly occur on the tip of iceberg, 90% culture elements hidden under iceberg are hard to be altered or disappeared. As a result, cultural heterogenization is more proper to describe the status of world, people keep unique feature of cultures but also remain close connections due to the impact globalization. ; submitted by Tzu Hua Wang ; Universität Linz, Masterarbeit, 2020 ; (VLID)5392484

Taiwan offers affordable access to health care through the National Health Insurance (NHI) Program, but this increases the risk of waste of medications and pollution caused by improper disposal. This research aimed to: (1) understand methods of disposal of unused medications, and public awareness of related issues, (2) understand the sources and types of unused medications and reasons for their disposal, and (3) propose improvements to current disposal practices. Data on practices and perspectives on the disposal of medications were collected from members of the public using a questionnaire, and subjected to chi-square analysis of demographic variables. The survey found that many respondents disposed of medications inappropriately, but most believed the government should establish a return system. The majority of discarded medications came from hospitals, and were most frequently discarded because patients had forgotten to take them. Based on these findings, the study proposes that receiving stations be established across Taiwan for the safe and environmentally friendly disposal of unused medications, along with a system of monthly checks and compensation for pharmacists' costs. The study also suggests that pharmacists strengthen medication guidance, spend more time on medication counseling, better understand the reasons for medication waste, and offer health education and advice to physicians and the public.

Teachers' professional identity influences the way they think and teach. For pre-service non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs), they are at the crucial stage of constructing self-image and self-perception as English language teaching (ELT) professionals, their beliefs about English teaching and learning and their attitudes towards changing teaching contexts. Applying a closed-ended questionnaire and in-depth interviews, this study investigated the impact of Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) on 258 pre-service NNESTs' professional identity in Taiwan through the lens of social relationality. The results show that NESTs as significant "others" to the participants have brought conflicting discourses to the ELT profession (the micro-social context) and the policy discourse and the society (the macrosocial context). In the micro-social context, the participants encounter contradictory discourses brought by the presence of NESTs in terms of what the participants can offer as opposed to what ideal English teachers should possess. In the macro-social context, the participants face competing discourses caused by the presence of NESTs, in terms of what constitutes good teaching practice, as opposed to what is valued by the government and the major stakeholders in the society. Arguably, the participants' professional identity is shaped through the process of interpreting and conjoining these contradictory and competing discourses. To help pre-service NNESTs construct a positive professional identity to support their professional lives, reforms in teacher education programs should focus on developing the teachers' "non-native" status into resources for ascertaining the needs of the teaching contexts they are operating within.

Nuclear power is a highly controversial and salient example of environmental risk. The siting or operating of a nuclear power plant often faces widespread public opposition. Although studies of public perceptions of nuclear power date back to 1970s, little research attempts to explain the spatial heterogeneity of risk attitude toward nuclear power among individuals or communities. This article intends to improve the knowledge about the major factors contributing to nuclear power plant risk perceptions by mapping the geographical patterns of local risk perception and examining the determinants in forming the nature and distribution of the perceived risk among potentially affected population. The analysis was conducted by a case study of the Second Nuclear Power Plant (SNPP) in Taiwan by using a novel methodology that incorporates a comprehensive risk perception (CRP) model into an ethnographic approach called risk perception mapping (RPM). First, we examined the determinants of local nuclear power risk perceptions through the CRP model and multivariate regression analysis. Second, the results were integrated with the RPM approach to map and explain the spatial pattern of risk perceptions. The findings demonstrate that the respondents regard the nuclear power plant as an extremely high‐risk facility, causing them to oppose the SNPP and reject the compensation payment to accept its continuing operation. Results also indicate that perceptions of nuclear power risk were mainly influenced by social trust, psychological and socioeconomic attributes, proximity, and the perceived effects of the SNPP on the quality of everyday life.

The status of English as a global language has played a significant role in contemporary language education policies across the world. In East Asia, the hegemony of English has been reflected in a number of central governments' policies of recruiting native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) to participate in English language education. This paper focuses on the NESTs recruitment policies in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan with the aim of examining how teacher professionalism is represented in these policy discourses and how this conceived teacher professionalism impacts on English teaching and learning in these countries. Through the analysis of policy texts and documents, we argue that teacher professionalism has been assigned a different agenda by the governments who subscribe to "native speaker norms" and legitimise unqualified and inexperienced NESTs in the profession of English language teaching (ELT). These antiprofessionalism policies have not achieved the intended consequence of improving students' English proficiency, but have instead resulted in the unintended consequences of damaging the quality of English instruction and jeopardising the professional identity of local non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in these countries. The results reveal an urgent need to evaluate the effectiveness of these NEST recruitment programmes.

Computational intelligence (CI), as an alternative to statistical and econometric approaches, has been applied to a wide range of economics and finance problems in recent years, for example to price forecasting and market efficiency. This book contains research ranging from applications in financial markets and business administration to various economics problems. Not only are empirical studies utilizing various CI algorithms presented, but so also are theoretical models based on computational methods. In addition to direct applications of computational intelligence, readers can also observe

AbstractThis paper constructs a two‐country trade model to examine the optimal policies relating to the export of final and intermediate products under Cournot as well as Bertrand competition when firms engage in symbiotic production internationally. The paper shows that given linear demand for the final product, the optimal export policies are to tax the exports of both the final and intermediate goods under symbiotic production, regardless of whether firms engage in Cournot or Bertrand competition in the final good market, which is contrary to the conventional wisdom.