Drivers of growth in the travel and tourism industry in Malaysia: A Geweke causality analysis

The travel and tourism industry has been growing in importance for several developing countries. It has not only generated considerable foreign exchange revenues but has also contributed to the overall output and socio-economic development of these countries. Within the Asia and Pacific region, data for 2014 indicates that Malaysia was ranked very highly at no. 26 out of the 184 countries in the world in terms of the relative importance of the contribution of the travel and tourism industry to its national output. In this light, this paper aims to undertake an empirical examination of the factors driving international tourist arrivals into Malaysia. The paper attempts to identify the causal determinants of the growth of the travel and tourism industry, using quarterly data from 2000 to 2012, under a Geweke causality framework. The empirical results suggest Malaysia's government expenditures on tourism promotion as well as infrastructure investments such as enhancing airport facilities are causal and significant determinants of growth in the travel and tourism industry

Sympathy and Punishment: Evolution of Cooperation in Public Goods Game

An important way to maintain human cooperation is punishing defection. However, since punishment is costly, how can it arise and evolve given that individuals who contribute but do not punish fare better than the punishers? This leads to a violation of causality, since the evolution of punishment is prior to the one of cooperation behaviour in evolutionary dynamics. Our public goods game computer simulations based on generalized Moran Process, show that, if there exists a \'behaviour-based sympathy\' that compensates those who punish at a personal cost, the way for the emergence and establishment of punishing behaviour is paved. In this way, the causality violation dissipates. Among humans sympathy can be expressed in many ways such as care, praise, solace, ethical support, admiration, and sometimes even adoration; in our computer simulations, we use a small amount of transfer payment to express \'behaviour-based sympathy\'. Our conclusions indicate that, there exists co-evolution of sympathy, punishment and cooperation. According to classical philosophy literature, sympathy is a key factor in morality and justice is embodied by punishment; in modern societies, both the moral norms and the judicial system, the representations of sympathy and punishment, play an essential role in stable social cooperation.Public Goods Game, Cooperation, Social Dilemma, Co-Evolution, Sympathy, Punishment

The design of a multi-channel spin polarimeter

All commercial electron spin polarimeters work in single channel mode, which is the bottleneck of researches by spin-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. By adopting the time inversion antisymmetry of magnetic field, we developed a multichannel spin polarimeter based on normal incident VLEED. The key point to achieve the multi-channel measurements is the spatial resolution of the electron optics. The test of the electron optics shows that the designed spatial resolution can be achieved and an image type spin polarimeter with 100 times 100, totally ten thousand channels is possible to be realized.Comment: submitted to Chinese Physics

Influence of long-range cation order on relaxor properties of doped Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 ceramics

The 1:1 B-site cation order in Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 relaxor ferroelectric ceramics was significantly enhanced by doping of minor amounts of La3+, Sc3+, or W6+ (less than 3 at. %) combined with a slow cooling procedure. Transmission electron microscopy examination confirmed the size increase of the cation-ordered regions embedded in a disordered matrix in the samples that were slowly cooled after sintering. The average cation ordering parameter (S) determined from x-ray diffraction data in these partially ordered samples was about 0.3–0.4. The ferroelectric properties and dielectric relaxation were compared in partially ordered and disordered (S=0) samples with the same composition. It was found that typical relaxor behavior was preserved in partially ordered ceramics. Furthermore, the temperature and diffuseness of the characteristic relaxor permittivity peak and the parameters of dielectric relaxation (in particular, the distribution of relaxation times and the Vogel-Fulcher freezing temperature) were practically independent of S. In contrast, the diffuseness of the phase transition from the ferroelectric phase (induced by external electric field) to the ergodic relaxor phase appeared to be much larger in the disordered samples than in the partially ordered ones (this diffuseness was assessed using pyroelectric current and ferroelectric hysteresis loops). These results suggest that cation ordering did not influence the behavior of polar nanoregions which are responsible for the dielectric response in the ergodic relaxor phase but significantly influenced the ferroelectric phase transition. The results are interpreted in terms of different types of polar regions in the disordered matrix and cation-ordered domains