Hesitant Madams in a Global City: Japanese Expat Wives and their Global Householding in Hong Kong

Care work, once a sanctioned labor of love, is increasingly commodified in transnational contexts. The picture of migrant women shouldering the housework and child care of local professonal women may seem like a mutually beneficial arrangement—matching the “needs” of the haves and have-nots—, but the global care chain ultimately works to maintain the traditional gendered division of labor as well as global inequality. To this trend of globalization of care work, Japan has been an exception; however, how much longer it will be so is now in a question, as the government paves the way for importing domestic labor from abroad. This article focuses on Japanese expat wives in Hong Kong in order to locate Japanese women vis-à-vis the global care chain. The narrative analysis on how they decide whether to hire a domestic worker in their home away from home highlights the sociopolitical nature of their supposedly private choices. Some drew on cultural ideal of wifehood and motherhood to rationalize their choice while others referred to racialized or even overtly racist and classist images of foreign domestic workers. A few women spoke against the system itself, showing awareness of its inherent social injustice. All such narratives are never purely personal; their decisions and the rationalization behind them sustain the prevailing discourses of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, and class, which, in turn, envelop their attempts at global householding.     

An Application of Markov Chain Analysis to the Game of Squash*

If the score in a squash game is tied late in the game, one player has a choice of how many additional points (from a prespecified set of possibilities) are to be played to determine the winner. This paper constructs a Markov chain model of the situation and solves for the optimal strategy. Expressions for the optimal strategy are obtained with a symbolic algebra computer package. Results are given for both international and American scoring systems. The model and analysis are very suitable for educational purposes. The resulting Markov chain is small enough that it can be easily presented in a classroom setting, yet the model is sufficiently complex that algebraic manipulation is nearly hopeless. The final results illustrate the power of the combination of mathematical and computer modeling applied to a problem of practical interest.     

后文学产业链:无形文化资产的价值实现路径

通过解剖典型的个案,概括出作为无形文化资产(遗产)的文学,从无形转为有形的物化形态,衍生为产业链,从而走向当代价值实现的三个重要前提条件;并论述了“后文学产业链”的三级资源化过程,以及被资源化之后,传统文学活动系统中的作家、作品、读者三大要素的地位和功能的蜕变,分析了文学作为审美意识形态具有“不可资源化”的特质。     

大数据背景下产业链内部间隙弥补与企业运营效率提升

近年来,电子商务从产生到不断壮大,越来越多地受到相关信息技术和商业模式影响。大数据分析和数据挖掘技术逐渐运用于各行各业,电子商务及相关交易作为典型的经济活动,其相互交融与影响对产业经济发展具有重要意义。然而,渠道完备化的电子商务产业链整合由于部分机制的低效性,其内部存在基于要素与终端、数据融通、需求满足层面的诸多间隙,需要通过大数据等技术支撑及渠道、市场的有效对接实现产业链企业的整合。通过对这些作用机制及优化路径的研究发现：应通过价值提升维度实现大数据在产业链内部企业融通中的应用,提高其在目标群体识别和需求预测中的应用,同时提高大数据在企业布局推广中的应用,以有效提升企业运营效率。     

零售商双渠道供应链定价及协调研究

研究了零售商双渠道供应链的定价策略和协调问题,建立制造商和零售商两方博弈模型,分析了集中决策和分散决策两种情境下的定价决策均衡解,并设计收入共享契约来解决零售商双渠道存在的双重边际化效应。结果表明,零售商需要提供合理的收入分配比例才能实现供应链各成员利润的Pareto改进,并最终协调整个双渠道供应链。在双渠道竞争环境下,线上线下不能采取完全同价策略,企业应针对不同渠道的具体情况制定不同的销售价格。     

Integrating Neural Networks and Semi-Markov Processes for Automated Knowledge Acquisition: An Application to Real-time Scheduling*

Recently, artificial neural networks (ANN) have gained attention as a promising modeling tool for building intelligent systems. A number of applications have been reported in areas varying from pattern recognition to bankruptcy prediction. In this paper, we present a creative methodology that integrates computer simulation, semi-Markov optimization, and ANN techniques for automated knowledge acquisition in real-time scheduling. The integrated approach focuses on the synergy between operations research and ANN in eliciting human knowledge, filtering inconsistent data, and building competent models capable of performing at the expert level. The new approach includes three main components. First, computer simulation is used to collect expert decisions. This step allows expert knowledge to be obtained in a non-intrusive way and minimizes the difficulties involved in interviewing experts, constructing repertory grids, or using other similar structures required for manual knowledge acquisition. The data collected from computer simulation are then optimized using a semi-Markov decision model to remove data redundancies, inconsistencies, and errors. Finally, the optimized data are used to build ANN-based expert systems. The integrated approach is evaluated by comparing it with the human expert and using ANN alone in the domain of real-time scheduling. The results indicate that ANN-based systems perform worse than human experts from whom the data were collected, but the integrated approach outperforms human experts and ANN models alone.     

农机零售连锁经营模式探讨

整合国内农机零售渠道,需借鉴国内外成功的连锁经营模式经验。结合农机市场的特点,农机连锁企业应首先确立以突出选址为重点的经营战略,吸收连锁企业“联邦制”和“集权制”的优点,建立“民主集中制”的管理模式和组织结构,从议价销售起步,逐步实现连锁经营的明码标价,构建以品类计划、OTB计划为主的销售预算和市场调研、战略性现金流管理为重点的经营技术。     

基于全球供应链的产业集群发展战略

产业集群和供应链管理是提升地区或产业竞争力的两种重要途径。将两种竞争战略结合在一起,可以最大化地获得分工经济和规模经济,促进地域专业化分工体系的形成,并强化地区或产业链持续的竞争优势。     

On the use of quasi-likelihood for estimation in hidden-Markov random fields

This paper illustrates the use of quasi-likelihood methods of inference for hidden Markov random fields. These are simple to use and can be employed under circumstances where only the model form and its covariance structure are specified. In particular they can be used to derive the same estimating equations as the E-M algorithm or change of measure methods, which make full distributional assumptions.     

第三方物流外包服务综合绩效评估模型的构建

本文根据全面性、特殊性、可比性、可操作性原则,参考评价第三方物流企业的一般评价指标的选取原则,选取了包括运力资源利用率、固定资产周转率、订单完成率、配送资源利用率等20个具有代表性的指标,详细地构建了第三方企业物流系统综合评价指标体系,并采用主成分因子分析法对企业物流系统进行了综合评价。