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Street closure following an earthquake makes life-saving and rescue work more difficult, especially in congested urban areas. After the great Chi-chi earthquake, recovery and reconstruction work became necessary. In particular, we have to investigate the street network damages and other effects. Considering the road improvement plan, not only malfunction recovery but also a comprehensive evaluation should be considered in future urban planning. The reliable street network against earthquakes is the central concern of this survey.

This study attempts to implement a case study survey of damaged areas, and analyze the effecting factors on street closure. We also try to evaluate the road function against earthquake integrated with the street-damaged characteristics. Using a discriminant model of street closure, some design guidelines for future transportation planning decisions are proposed.

Nan-tou City network has 365 links and 66.6% of them are less than 6 meters in width. Ton-shi Town network has 248 links and 35% of them are less than 6 meters in width. The same definition of street closure (impassable by vehicles) of ‘street width less than 4 meters’ was applied to these two case studies. This research considered several street network alternatives, the inaccessible nodes for all alternatives and analysis in order to determine a more reliable street network for increased safety. Results of both surveyed areas suggest that when we decrease the interval distance of the 8-M street, the percentage of the differences of inaccessible nodes will also decrease.

The Chi-chi earthquake did great harm in the disaster area. Fortunately we find the street damages of our surveying area were not too severe to maintain their functions in times of earthquake. However, it is still meaningful for a transport planner to evaluate the reliability of residential streets because the main target of planning a residential street network is to restrain through-traffic in this area to ensure safe and comfortable conditions for pedestrians while meeting residential access requirements.

The growing rate of desertification in Northwestern China and Mongolia that is occurring as a result of the conflict between economic development and natural conservation has been demonstrated in many studies. There have, for example, been some large studies using variations in bi‐weekly normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) satellite images as a parameter for evaluating the vegetation dynamics in these areas. The purpose of this paper is to identify multi‐temporal variation in vegetated and non‐vegetated areas in remotely sensed satellite images to assess the status of desertification in East Asia.

Spatial data derived from these satellite images are applied to evaluate vegetation dynamics on a regional level, to identify the areas most vulnerable to desertification.

Analytical results indicate that the desert areas in East Asia are primarily distributed over Southern Mongolia, Central and Western Inner Mongolia, and Western China (the Taklimakan Desert). These desert areas expanded from 2000 to 2002, shrunk in 2003, then expanded again from 2003 to 2005. The areas most at risk for desertification are principally distributed in Southeastern Mongolia, and Eastern Inner Mongolia.

Simulation results based on data for deserts distributed throughout Northwestern China and Mongolia indicate that the proposed fuzzy model‐based method would be helpful for assessing and monitoring desertification. These analytical results will help administrators refine planning processes, define the boundaries of protected areas, and facilitate decisions for prioritizing areas for desertification protection.

The ‘managed stock’ market in Taiwan is neglected by the authorities and general investors. In this paper, we explore the link between financial trait and stock price changes in this special market.

Overall, we analyze and discuss managerial implications for institutional investors, general investors and the authorities as well.

A rising trend has been observed to minimize extraneous cognitive load when reading by enhancing secondary knowledge through technology. For the readers to comprehend information more efficiently in their cognitive architecture, instructional procedures, which are secondary knowledge, should be aligned with the modern technology environment. With continual, rapid technological advances in modern society, people have changed their news reading habits after using mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and e-readers.

This research employed a quantitative survey to compare the changes in the news reading habits of the undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students in the Library and Information Management program of a university in Hong Kong after using mobile devices to read electronic news. A total of 102 responses were collected, which comprised 51 UGs and 51 PGs, respectively (the student population for the program was around 100 UGs and 100 PGs).

Survey results showed that mobile devices had changed the respondents’ habit of reading news to read more content on phones, with a variation on news categories. Such changes included the duration and location of news discussion among the respondents that shorter periods were used to read and that more people read while traveling and in restaurants. Notably, reading the news helped respondents in their learning. Most respondents preferred to read electronic news by using mobile devices. The convenience of reading and discussing news may also cause a potential threat that intensifies disputes, arguments or even bullying on controversial issues.

This study confirmed that the usage of the mobile devices changed the respondents’ habit of reading news. This user group constitutes the future generation of information specialists in various disciplines. This study fills the research gap of finding students’ reading habits when using mobile devices, especially in East Asia. Educators are encouraged to recommend relevant news content to students to improve their general knowledge base and arouse their interest in reading and discussing related news topics.

The purpose of this paper is to apply social network analysis (SNA) to study faculty research productivity, to identify key leaders, to study publication keywords and research areas and to visualize international collaboration patterns and analyze collaboration research fields from all Management Information System (MIS) departments in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015.

The authors first retrieved results encompassing about 1,766 MIS professors and their publication records between 1982 and 2015 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST) website. Next, the authors merged these publication records with the records obtained from the Web of Science, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Airiti Library and Springer Link databases. The authors further applied six network centrality equations, leadership index, exponential weighted moving average (EWMA), contribution value and k-means clustering algorithms to analyze the collaboration patterns, research productivity and publication patterns. Finally, the authors applied D3.js to visualize the faculty members' international collaborations from all MIS departments in Taiwan.

The authors have first identified important scholars or leaders in the network. The authors also see that most MIS scholars in Taiwan tend to publish their papers in the journals such as Decision Support Systems and Information and Management. The authors have further figured out the significant scholars who have actively collaborated with academics in other countries. Furthermore, the authors have recognized the universities that have frequent collaboration with other international universities. The United States, China, Canada and the United Kingdom are the countries that have the highest numbers of collaborations with Taiwanese academics. Lastly, the keywords model, system and algorithm were the most common terms used in recent years.

This study applied SNA to visualize international research collaboration patterns and has revealed some salient characteristics of international cooperation trends and patterns, leadership networks and influences and research productivity for faculty in Information Management departments in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015. In addition, the authors have discovered the most common keywords used in recent years.

The purpose of this study is to investigate Koreans' preferences for FCDM versus SDM and explored the influence of Asian cultural values on decision-making in the context of managing chronic illnesses, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Shared decision-making (SDM) emphasizes collaboration between providers and service recipients to decide on the best treatment options. However, it may not fully account for the role of families in managing chronic illness, particularly for people from Eastern cultural backgrounds who value active participation from their families in decisions. In response, family-centered decision-making (FCDM) has been proposed as an alternative approach. Using a vignette experiment design, data (n = 316) were collected from Koreans in the US and in Korea who were randomly presented with either SDM or FCDM processes for reaching T2DM treatment decisions. In addition to demographic information, participants reported on three dimensions of their decision-making experience: satisfaction, perceived effectiveness, and perspective-taking. They also rated their Asian cultural values and familiarity with T2DM. Results show better satisfaction, perceived effectiveness, and perspective taking for FCDM compared to SDM when examined in context of treatment types and perceived illness severity. Moderation effects were found for familiarity of illness, with familiarity effects varying by perceived severity. Study findings provided some evidence in favor of FCDM in Asian communities addressing the disabilities and chronic illness of a family member. Although the current study investigated treatment decisions for T2DM during doctor's visits, FCDM has shown potential to be applied in other service settings.

This paper uses a probit model to analyse 100 observations in terms of three hypotheses about the formation of owners’ corporations in high‐density private housing estates in Hong Kong within the context of Mancur Olson’s group theory. The findings do not reject the theory, revealing that it is more likely for an older urban estate with fewer owners to form owners’ corporations. The discussion includes a brief introduction to Olson’s group theory and the development of the probit analysis. Some speculative thoughts about public participation in local level urban management and planning are offered in the conclusion.

This paper aims to report a stretchable piezoresistive strain sensor array that can detect various static and dynamic stimuli, including bending, normal force, shear stress and certain range of temperature variation, through sandwiching an array of conductive blocks, made of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite. The strain sensor array induces localized resistance changes at different external mechanical forces, which can be potentially implemented as electronic skin.

The working principle is the piezoresistivity of the strain sensor array is based on the tunnelling resistance connection between the fillers and reformation of the percolating path when the PDMS and MWCNT composite deforms. When an external compression stimulus is exerted, the MWCNT inter-filler distance at the conductive block array reduces, resulting in the reduction of the resistance. The resistance between the conductive blocks in the array, on the other hand, increases when the strain sensor is exposed to an external stretching force. The methodology was as follows: Numerical simulation has been performed to study the pressure distribution across the sensor. This method applies two thin layers of conductive elastomer composite across a 2 × 3 conductive block array, where the former is to detect the stretchable force, whereas the latter is to detect the compression force. The fabrication of the strain sensor consists of two main stages: fabricating the conducting block array (detect compression force) and depositing two thin conductive layers (detect stretchable force).

Characterizations have been performed at the sensor pressure response: static and dynamic configuration, strain sensing and temperature sensing. Both pressure and strain sensing are studied in terms of the temporal response. The temporal response shows rapid resistance changes and returns to its original value after the external load is removed. The electrical conductivity of the prototype correlates to the temperature by showing negative temperature coefficient material behaviour with the sensitivity of −0.105 MΩ/°C.

The conductive sensor array can potentially be implemented as electronic skin due to its reaction with mechanical stimuli: compression and stretchable pressure force, strain sensing and temperature sensing.

This prototype enables various static and dynamic stimulus detections, including bending, normal force, shear stress and certain range of temperature variation, through sandwiching an array of conductive blocks, made of MWCNT and PDMS composite. Conventional design might need to integrate different microfeatures to perform the similar task, especially for dynamic force sensing.