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The purpose of this paper was to develop a new interactive guiding system allowing people to use their own smart mobile devices, such as smart phones or tablet PCs, to activate the guiding services at the art gallery. The system provided interactions between visitors and exhibit items. It focused on the highly interactive functions between visitors and artworks authors as well as among visitors at both exhibition sites and social network sites (SNSs).

The system used quick response (QR) codes as the context aware elements, Facebook as the platform of SNSs, and smart mobile devices as the human-machine interfaces. Visitors carrying their own smart phones or tablet PCs can activate the guiding services by scanning the QR codes of the interested exhibit items. A system usability scale (SUS) survey was conducted to understand the visitors' perceptions on system usability. A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect the visitors' and authors' attitudes on releasing messages through Facebook.

The system was implemented at an art centre where lacquer artworks were on display. The SUS survey showed that 94 per cent of the participated visitors have satisfactorily rated this new guiding system, indicating rather high usability of the system. Most participated visitors agreed on Facebook as an ideal channel to release messages and they would pay more attention to the highly-recommended exhibit items. All the artworks authors consented to this new guiding system with potential power to disseminate their works over the cyberspace.

This new system possesses some important features in blending real world and cyberspace activities. Visitors at exhibit sites can become more informed and captivated because the interactive guiding system enables them to share knowledge and commentary opinions with others who were, are or will be at the same exhibition. It also allows people to share with their cyberspace friends who may have no times or opportunities to visit the exhibition. Most importantly, the new system may immensely expand the number of potential visitors in ways to make the authors and their artworks rapidly recognized.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a formative assessment framework to expose individual student's cognitive learning difficulties in English public speaking. The paper aims to provide student feedback and information during the teaching and learning process. A grey student-construct (S-C) chart is developed to represent the students’ cognitive mapping of the speech difficulties in relation to their overall speech conceptualization. This grey S-C chart can facilitate the instructors to ameliorate the classroom teaching and learning performance in English public speaking.

In total, 26 students in a class of English Speech and Rhetoric participate in the experiment – each student views the online video segments of a great speaker's speech, and then decides what segments would best support the speaking skill constructs and also reflects on his/her own difficulties in the same constructs. The grey relational analysis (GRA) method is used to analyze the empirical data. The individual student's construct localization grey relation grade values are calculated to rank the grey relation for both students and constructs. Accordingly, a grey S-C matrix is constructed and a grey S-C chart can thus be developed.

The grey S-C chart manifestly displays the cognitive difficulties in sequences of both students and constructs.

According to the grey S-C chart, the instructors may modify teaching strategies to enhance the overall classroom performance. The students may adjust learning strategies to eliminate their specific difficulties. Offering individualized advanced and remedial practices to those largely deviating from the norm is also possible.

The study is the first of its kind to apply the GRA method to expose individual student's cognitive learning difficulties in English public speaking. The grey S-C chart is novel in education literature, which can reveal individual student's learning difficulty patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a benchmarking framework to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the hotel industry, in a multi‐period context, with consideration of perishable traits and carry‐over activities. The sustained high performers in the case study are identified and their business strategies are discussed.

The dynamic DEA (data envelopment analysis) approach is used to identify the multi‐period sustained high performers. The super‐efficiency DEA approach is employed to conduct a thorough ranking under an input‐output‐consumption structure. The supplementary analysis is further implemented to help elucidate the benchmarking results.

In total, nine out of 80 international tourist hotels in Taiwan during 2006‐2010 are identified as the sustained high performers. These hotels have diverged business strategies in terms of employees (intensive versus economical labor forces), products (room versus F&B (food and beverage) services), prices (extremely expensive versus very inexpensive room rates), guests (business versus tourism guests), and others (e.g. location advantages).

This study contributes to benchmarking literature and to hotel industry in several aspects. Compared with conventional single‐period benchmarking in efficiency aspect only, the proposed multi‐period benchmarking framework under input‐production‐consumption structure can take into account the carry‐over activities, account for perishable traits, provide more robust results, and add more useful information to facilitate the hotel managers to ameliorate the efficiency and effectiveness. The proposed framework should be readily applied to other service industries (e.g. transport).

This study aims to develop a highly interactive exhibition guiding system which enables both authors and visitors to interact with one another on an exhibition site.

The guiding system was designed with a “pull‐type” concept in a way that a handheld device must be close to a specific work to “pull” the information out of that work. The highly interactive functions between visitors and authors or among visitors were enabled by the Web 2.0. Verification and validation of the system's functions were tested in an art gallery with PDAs utilizing passive RFID readers and tags. A questionnaire survey was conducted to learn of the opinions from authors and visitors after they used the system.

The verification and validation test showed that all the functions have met the predefined requirements. The results of the questionnaire survey also revealed that the majority were satisfied with the interactive guiding system.

Not only can the system perform the guide tasks well, but it also allows the users to select interested modules so as to avoid overloading the irrelevant information. Additionally, the visitors can chat with unacquainted visitors who are onsite and have the same taste on a specific artwork, and the authors can visualize the visitors' comments, recommendations, and suggestions on their works in a real‐time manner.

The paper shows that the proposed system has some innovative features. It enables the authors to interact with the visitors, to understand the visitors' thoughts and opinions on their works, and to share the ideas of their creativity with the interested visitors onsite. On the other hand, it also enables the visitors to interact with the authors and other visitors. The visitors can recommend appreciated works to others, provide their comments and suggestions, visualize others' comments and suggestions, and exchange their views with those who are onsite and even recommend the same works.

The aim of this paper is to propose a novel evaluation framework to explore the “root causes” that hinder the acceptance of using internal cloud services in a university.

The proposed evaluation framework incorporates the duo‐theme DEMATEL (decision making trial and evaluation laboratory) with TAM (technology acceptance model). The operational procedures were proposed and tested on a university during the post‐implementation phase after introducing the internal cloud services.

According to the results, clear understanding and operational ease under the theme perceived ease of use (PEOU) are more imperative; whereas improved usefulness and productivity under the theme perceived usefulness (PU) are more urgent to foster the usage of internal clouds in the case university.

Based on the findings, some intervention activities were suggested to enhance the level of users' acceptance of internal cloud solutions in the case university. However, the results should not be generalized to apply to other educational establishments.

To reduce the resistance from using internal clouds, some necessary intervention activities such as developing attractive training programs, creating interesting workshops, and rewriting user friendly manual or handbook are recommended.

The novel two‐theme DEMATEL has greatly contributed to the conventional one‐theme DEMATEL theory. The proposed two‐theme DEMATEL procedures were the first attempt to evaluate the acceptance of using internal clouds in university. The results have provided manifest root‐causes under two distinct themes, which help derive effectual intervention activities to foster the acceptance of usage of internal clouds in a university.

Explores the extent of employee surveillance in the western world and queries why the USA uses surveillance measures to a greater extent than other developed nations. Suggests that American managers choose surveillance methods which include the control of workers’ bodies in the production process. Lists the batteries of tests and monitoring to which US employees can now be subjected – including searching employee computer files, voice/e‐mail, monitoring telephone calls, drug tests, alcohol tests, criminal record checks, lie detector and handwriting tests. Notes also the companies which are opposed to worker and consumer privacy rights. Pinpoints the use of surveillance as a means to ensure that employees do not withold production. Reports that employees dislike monitoring and that it may adversely affect their performance and productivity. Argues that Americans like to address complex social problems with technological means, there are no data protection laws in the USA, and that these two factors, combined with the “employment‐at‐will” doctrine, have all contributed to make it possible (and easy) for employers to use technological surveillance of their workforce. Outlines some of the ways employers insist on the purification of workers’ bodies.

Americans have become increasingly interested in their ethnic heritage in recent years. Assimilated Euro‐Americans, whose ancestors arrived in the New World generations ago, are rediscovering their roots and are enrolling in foreign language classes, taking up folk dancing, learning ethnic cuisine, tracing their genealogical pedigrees, and returning to the religious traditions their parents may or may not have passed on to them. Now it's “in” to be ethnic.

Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) is emerging as a way to control unmanned aircraft with flight control constraints and nonlinear and unsteady aerodynamics. However, these predictive controllers do not perform robustly in the presence of physics-based model mismatches and uncertainties. Unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances are unpredictable and unsteady, which can dramatically degrade predictive controllers’ performance. To address this limitation, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new systematic approach using frequency-dependent weighting matrices.

In this framework, frequency-dependent weighting matrices jointly minimize closed-loop sensitivity functions. This work presents the first practical implementation where the frequency content information of uncertainty and disturbances is used to provide a significant degree of robustness for a time-domain nonlinear predictive controller. The merit of the proposed method is successfully verified through the design, coding, and numerical implementation of a robust nonlinear model predictive controller.

The proposed controller commanded and controlled a large unmanned aerial system (UAS) with unsteady and nonlinear dynamics in the presence of environmental disturbances, measurement bias or noise, and model uncertainties; the proposed controller robustly performed disturbance rejection and accurate trajectory tracking. Stability, performance, and robustness are attained in the NMPC framework for a complex system.

The theoretical results are supported by the numerical simulations that illustrate the success of the presented technique. It is expected to offer a feasible robust nonlinear control design technique for any type of systems, as long as computational power is available, allowing a much larger operational range while keeping a helpful level of robustness. Robust control design can be more easily expanded from the usual linear framework, allowing meaningful new experimentation with better control systems.

Such algorithms allows unstable and unsteady UASs to perform reliably in the presence of disturbances and modeling mismatches.