Long term sustainable product development at the packaging sector

This paper outlines the importance of sustainable product developments and their role in securing a sustainable future through current practices and procedures. It discusses the difficulties faced within organisations through the complexities and swamping of regulations when considering sustainability and the problems in policing such a system to ensure compliance. Focus is centred on the design stage, where large numbers of standards and interests must be factored in to create specifications that are highly compliant. Where there is a limited understanding of the complexities that are presented at this stage, less optimum specifications will be dispatched. This presents the need to think strategically with new systems and approaches which adapt to company behaviour, where decisions that are made at a design stage have impacts up and down the supply chain, changes that are made must be in line with company strategic objectives and provide influential returns on investment

Proposed data compression schemes for the Galileo S-band contingency mission

The Galileo spacecraft is currently on its way to Jupiter and its moons. In April 1991, the high gain antenna (HGA) failed to deploy as commanded. In case the current efforts to deploy the HGA fails, communications during the Jupiter encounters will be through one of two low gain antenna (LGA) on an S-band (2.3 GHz) carrier. A lot of effort has been and will be conducted to attempt to open the HGA. Also various options for improving Galileo's telemetry downlink performance are being evaluated in the event that the HGA will not open at Jupiter arrival. Among all viable options the most promising and powerful one is to perform image and non-image data compression in software onboard the spacecraft. This involves in-flight re-programming of the existing flight software of Galileo's Command and Data Subsystem processors and Attitude and Articulation Control System (AACS) processor, which have very limited computational and memory resources. In this article we describe the proposed data compression algorithms and give their respective compression performance. The planned image compression algorithm is a 4 x 4 or an 8 x 8 multiplication-free integer cosine transform (ICT) scheme, which can be viewed as an integer approximation of the popular discrete cosine transform (DCT) scheme. The implementation complexity of the ICT schemes is much lower than the DCT-based schemes, yet the performances of the two algorithms are indistinguishable. The proposed non-image compression algorith is a Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) variant, which is a lossless universal compression algorithm based on a dynamic dictionary lookup table. We developed a simple and efficient hashing function to perform the string search

An exploratory study on the elders\u27 needs and attitudes towards radio programmes

Not many studies in the literature were to investigate the positive impacts of radio on health of the elderly in Hong Kong. If listening to radio has a positive impact on older people’s health, there would be important implications to the social services in Hong Kong, with regard to further studies on an in-depth understanding of this issue and policy recommendations for the Hong Kong government to improve social services of the elderly population. In light of the above rationale, the present study was designed to explore the qualitative impacts of listening radio on the well-being of elderly people in Hong Kong. The specific aims of the study were: 1. to explore the profile and the listening patterns of elderly audiences; 2. to explore the preference and needs of the elderly audience on radio programme in HK; 3. to explore impacts of the radio programmes on elderly’s life satisfaction and the quality of life. 4. to explore the notions of lifelong learning through the medium, which Radio 5 is serving such a function

Privacy Attitudes among Early Adopters of Emerging Health Technologies.

IntroductionAdvances in health technology such as genome sequencing and wearable sensors now allow for the collection of highly granular personal health data from individuals. It is unclear how people think about privacy in the context of these emerging health technologies. An open question is whether early adopters of these advances conceptualize privacy in different ways than non-early adopters.PurposeThis study sought to understand privacy attitudes of early adopters of emerging health technologies.MethodsTranscripts from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with early adopters of genome sequencing and health devices and apps were analyzed with a focus on participant attitudes and perceptions of privacy. Themes were extracted using inductive content analysis.ResultsAlthough interviewees were willing to share personal data to support scientific advancements, they still expressed concerns, as well as uncertainty about who has access to their data, and for what purpose. In short, they were not dismissive of privacy risks. Key privacy-related findings are organized into four themes as follows: first, personal data privacy; second, control over personal information; third, concerns about discrimination; and fourth, contributing personal data to science.ConclusionEarly adopters of emerging health technologies appear to have more complex and nuanced conceptions of privacy than might be expected based on their adoption of personal health technologies and participation in open science. Early adopters also voiced uncertainty about the privacy implications of their decisions to use new technologies and share their data for research. Though not representative of the general public, studies of early adopters can provide important insights into evolving attitudes toward privacy in the context of emerging health technologies and personal health data research

An evaluation study on the elderly housing initiative in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Housing Society (HKHS) of the Hong Kong Government launched the Senior Citizen Residence Scheme (SEN) in 2001 to provide housing units for the middle-class elders aged 60 and above, who have pre-set limits of asset and guaranteed income (Hong Kong Housing Society, n.d.). As a result, two public estates came into operation one year after in 2002. At present, a total of about 800 elders live in these two estates. The present study is under the auspices of the HKHS to evaluate the satisfaction of the residents in the two estates, to make recommendations on the improvement of the residence services and the living conditions in the two estates, and to make recommendations on future development of the SEN project. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were adopted in the present study. First of all, a total of seven focus-group sessions, within each having 8-10 elders led by an experienced facilitator, were conducted to collect information on residents’ satisfaction on their living environment and the provision rendered in the housing estates. The members of the focus group consisted of males and females, younger and older elderly persons, and were selected from the healthy and active residents in the two housing estates. Secondly, three independent observers were appointed to sit in the focus-group discussion and daily routine activities and meetings taken part by the residents of the housing estates. The observers submitted their observation reports of residents’ views on their living environment and the provision rendered in the housing estates as well as the interaction in their communication. Thirdly, an accessible sample was drawn from all target residents through a face-to-face questionnaire survey. Since some residents were either reluctant to be interviewed or having difficulties to answer questions due to poor health, all other residents were interviewed by trained staff. The findings of the study are as follows: 1. In general, the majority of the residents living in the two Housing Estates are satisfied with the management, the facilities and the services provided. 2. There are differences in the domains of satisfaction between the residents in the two Housing Estates. Specifically, the Cheerful Court (one of the two Housing Estates) residents are more satisfied with their living environment whereas the Jolly Place (another one of the two Housing Estates) residents are happier with the basic optional services provided for them. 3. Improvement on the particulars of the facilities and services provided in the two Housing Estates, as shown in the analysis results, should be made in order to raise the satisfaction level of the residents

An exploratory study of pet raising and health of the elderly people in Hong Kong

Introduction: Pets such as dogs, cats and fish were popular in many other countries (Marx et al., 1988; Gammonley, 1991; Brodie & Biley, 1999; PIAS, 2002). In Hong Kong, pet owners increased to 0.26 million (Census and Statistics Department, 2006). Dating back to 1980s, a research study reported the association between pet ownerships and health benefits for humans (McNicholas et al., 2005). According to the report, domesticated pets brought a sense of companionship and provided pet owners with pleasure. These pets could be tools for enhancing human social relationship and could also provide their owners with emotional comfort. Recent studies also revealed that the influence of the complex and rich relationship between pets and owners might far surpass daily pleasure in terms of improving physical, psychological and mental health of the elderly (Serpell, 1991; Garrity et al., 1989; Murrell et al., 1983). 1.2. Objectives : Not many studies in the literature were to investigate the positive impacts of pet raising on health of the elderly in Hong Kong. If pet raising had a positive impact on older people’s health, there would be important implications to the health services in Hong Kong, with regard to further studies on an in-depth understanding of this issue and policy recommendations for the Hong Kong government to improve the health services of the elderly population. In light of the above rationale, the present study was designed to explore the qualitative impacts of pet raising on well-being of the elderly people in Hong Kong. The specific aims of the study were: To explore the value of pet raising as perceived by the elderly people in Hong Kong; To explore the impacts of pet raising on the physical, psychological and overall life satisfaction of the elderly people in Hong Kong; To identify the critical factors influencing the physical, psychological and overall life satisfaction of the elderly people in Hong Kong; and To make suggestions to policy makers regarding effective health services for the elderly people in Hong Kong

Academics’ understandings of the authorial academic writer: a qualitative analysis of authorial identity

Research on authorial identity has focused almost exclusively on the attitudes and beliefs of students. This paper explores how academics understand authorial identity in higher education. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 professional academics and analysed using thematic analysis, identifying themes at two levels. At the semantic level was a main theme called ‘the authorial writer’, with five subthemes: ‘authorial confidence’, ‘valuing writing’, ‘ownership and attachment’, ‘authorial thinking’, and ‘authorial goals’. At the latent level were two integrative themes: ‘tacit learning’ and ‘negotiating identities’. The semantic subthemes represent attributes that could be targets for pedagogic interventions. The integrative themes suggest processes in the development of authorial identity, which can inform more effective teaching. By identifying attributes and processes associated with authorial identity, these findings help towards a psychological understanding of authorial identity, informing development of more effective pedagogy to help students improve their academic writing and avoid plagiarism.Postgraduate studentship awarded to Kevin Yet Fong Cheung by the Teaching Informed by Research fund at the University of Derb

Sustainability assessment of transport infrastructure projects: a review of existing tools and methods

Attempts to integrate sustainability in the decision-making process for transport infrastructure projects continue to gain momentum. A number of tools and methodological frameworks are available — such as rating systems, traditional decision-making techniques, checklists, and different evaluation frameworks and models. While these tools are highly valuable, some practical issues remain unsolved. There is also a need for more standardized tools to appraise the sustainability of transport projects. This paper is a presentation of a review on the current assessment tools of sustainability applied to transport infrastructure projects. The preliminary part of the paper is an explanatory and comparative analysis of the tools and methods in terms of their effectiveness to appraise sustainability. The analysis is a critical evaluation of the current state of the art to identify the limitations of existing approaches, point out new areas of research, and propose a sustainability appraisal agenda for the future