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It is undeniable that proper planning of spatial development and local regional policies are paramount to ensure whether a country is prosperous or not. In order to ensure its prosperity, discussion on administrative arrangement, spatial development, and regional policy issues in the Malaysian context will be focused. In addition, the importance of Malaysian major development policies and the authorities responsible for its development and implementation are highlighted, followed by the roles of urban development planning. Lastly, Malaysian regional economic corridors, specifically the Northern Corridor Economic Region, are highlighted to show the emphasis given by the Malaysian Government on regional spatial development issues.

Japan has long occupied a unique place in East Asia and continues to do so in an era of increased global interconnectivity. Beginning with the Meiji Restoration (1868), it became the first in the region to make a decisive, sustained, and highly successful attempt to “modernize” its political, economic, and social structures, thereby largely avoiding Western domination. This particular historical trajectory built directly on social foundations laid during the prolonged closure of the Tokugawa period and largely allowed Japan free reign to craft its own version of modernity, educational and otherwise. One result of this conscious, directed process of “catch-up” was an impressive “compression” of the transition to modernity – a phenomenon that had stretched out over hundreds of years in most Western countries – to little more than a half century (Kariya, 2010); a feat unmatched by any country in the first half of the twentieth century. Following the devastation of the Second World War, Japan redoubled its efforts to “catch-up” and through a combination of high birth rates following the war, export-driven economic growth leading to an explosion of manufacturing jobs, a commitment to egalitarian growth and full employment, and the creation of an educational meritocracy that meticulously selected the country's best and brightest, the country quickly moved up the value-added chain until, by the early 1980s, the Japanese economy was globally dominant (Katz, 1998; Okita, 1992). As such, by the 1980s, Japan became unique, first, in being the only country in the region whose social conditions facilitated genuine comparison with the “advanced” countries of the West and, second, a model for “modernization” that other countries in the region could emulate, first the four Asian Tigers and then (although rarely explicitly) China in the post-Mao “Reform and Opening” period (Rappleye, 2007; Kojima, 2000).

The paper underpins an advanced domestic manufacturing that comes with some advanced employment specialization status of individual industries as the key determinant of foreign direct investment (FDI) and considers how FDI in the food processing industry in India relates to this focal point.

This paper investigates how inward FDI inflows relate to domestic investment and revival in the industry using Auto Regressive Distributed lags (ARDL) model over the period 2000–2017. The model allows for different specifications to study whether FDI is responsible for the revival or the prior revival induces the FDI.

The results show the lack of proper advanced specialized employment status of the food processing industry. FDI in food processing is mainly guided by exports and imports opportunities and FDI plays no role in the revival of advanced growth in the industry. This finding explains why FDI in the industry is predominantly service sector oriented.

The paper underlines (1) the proper conceptualization of human capital as an important determinant of FDI; (2) reinterpretation of Kaldor's technical progress function that uncovers how employment dynamics embedded in intermediate goods specializations play a key role in supporting a higher pace of investment (and FDI); (3) labor costs' importance should involve not only the wage rate but also the advantages that a specialized employment base and (4) FDI in manufacturing demands a greater policy focus on developing domestic bases of intermediate goods specializations.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the two main existing text input techniques based on “eye gestures” – namely EyeWrite and Eye-S – and compare them to each other and to the traditional “virtual keyboard” approach.

The study primarily aims to assess user performance at the very beginning of the learning process. However, a partial longitudinal evaluation is also provided. Two kinds of experiments have been implemented involving 14 testers.

Results show that while the virtual keyboard is faster, EyeWrite and Eye-S are also appreciated and can be viable alternatives (after a proper training period).

Writing methods based on eye gestures deserve special attention, as they require less screen space and need limited tracking precision. This study highlights the fact that gesture-based techniques imply a greater initial effort, and require proper training not only to gain knowledge of eye interaction per se, but also for learning the gesture alphabet. The author thinks that the investigation can drive the designers of gaze-controlled writing techniques based on gestures to put more consideration on the intuitiveness of gestures themselves, as they may greatly influence user performance in the first stages of the learning process.

This is the first study comparing EyeWrite and Eye-S. Moreover, unlike other analyses, the investigation is mainly aimed at assessing user performance with the three text entry methods at the inception of the learning procedure.

This paper aims to uncover the significance of capacity, capacity utilization (CU) and its role in the quality and productivity improvement in an industrial environment. Besides, the current study is also aiming to explore the various ways to estimate CU and its status across the world.

In the present study, a comprehensive literature review on capacity and CU is carried out to expose the research direction in the field of CU. This work is primarily focused on capacity, CU and their estimation methods based on the research in various industries of different countries and current status in present scenario across the world.

The literature reveals that CU estimation is carried out by some government/central agencies at the national or sector level rather than the industry level in most of the productive nations. As far as industrial growth is concerned, capacity management should be carried out at a particular industry level so that engineering managers can be able to find out loopholes for huge capacity waste within the plant. It is observed that CU in the industrial sectors mainly computed by time series method, survey method, economic approach and engineering approach worldwide.

This paper tries to cover almost all research work in the field of CU in various industrial sectors. However, the organizations which are producing the product with limited demand may get benefit inadequately.

This paper provides a vision to management toward productivity improvement through optimal utilization of available resources. As in most organizations, CU issues are much neglected areas.

This paper provides valuable insights on capacity and CU in the industrial sector across the world. Besides, it focused on comprehensive literature of capacity and various methods to estimate CU in industrial sectors.

In the past three decades India has been one of the fastest growing countries in the world. Per capita income has increased fourfold, from $229 in 1980 to $318 in 1990 to nearly $900 in 2010 (constant 2000 dollars). Although there is growing evidence of increases in income inequality, standard measures of inequality such as the Gini coefficient are still considerably less in India than in other Brazil, Russia, India, Chinas (BRICs) (or the United States). Consequently this rapid growth has led to a substantial expansion of India's middle class (and a concomitant decline in poverty).

Research at the intersection of neurotoxicology, cognitive neuroscience, genetics, and behavior – “toxicogenomics” – promises to improve understanding of behavior and public policies. Many toxicants modify neurotransmitters with effects depending on genotype, development, and experience. For example, lead and manganese downregulate dopaminergic or serotonergic function, weaken behavioral inhibition, and are positively correlated with hyperactivity (ADHD), substance abuse, or violent crime. Within this context, the chapter argues that neurotoxicology holds great promise for improving public policies in areas such as criminal justice and education. After discussing research methods, the chapter surveys previous work in neurotoxicology as it pertains to educational outcomes and to crime. Data are summarized linking: (1) children's blood lead levels with poor educational performance; (2) hair and blood levels of heavy metals with violent crime; and (3) uptake of multiple toxicants with pollution from abandoned mines. The chapter concludes by drawing lessons for ongoing research agendas at the intersection of neurotoxins, behavior, and policy.

This paper discusses the status of information and communication technologies usage in Indian libraries with special reference to special libraries and the efforts made by various institutions to propagate e‐information products and services. This paper highlights the consortia efforts in India like JCCC Consortium, INDEST Consortium, CSIR E‐journal Consortia, and UGC Infonet. It further discusses digitisation efforts in India at NISCAIR, New Delhi, IIITM, Kerala, C‐DAC Pune, and the Digital Library of India. In addition it incorporates details on major information systems in India (such as NISSAT)and major library networks in India (such as INFLIBNET, DELNET, CALIBNET etc.). The paper concludes with challenges for library and information science professionals and an overview of initiatives taken by Government of India.

The purpose of this study is to construct a new index to assess the impact of an energy price shock on macroeconomic indicators of India. This paper also shows a comparative analysis of the constructed index along with pre-existing World Bank and International Monetary Fund indices on energy.

This paper uses three vector autoregressions and compute the long-term impact of the indices on the considered macroeconomic variables through impulse response functions.

This paper finds that an energy price shock has a detrimental impact on the macroeconomic indicators of India in the long run. This study also finds that the constructed index acts as a relatively more sensitive index in comparison to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank indices, which is bespoke to a developing economy case. This sensitivity is ascribed to dynamic weighting for a different basket of energy components, which are more pertinent to an Indian context.

The novelty of this research lies in the construction of a new index and its comparison to the existing ones. This study justifies why a developing economy would require a different measure of energy as opposed to the existing indices.

This paper aims to estimate the technical efficiency (TE) and its determinants in the handloom micro-enterprises of Assam (India) using the double-bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique.

The study uses a random sample of 340 handloom micro-entrepreneurs from the three districts of Assam in India. The double-bootstrap DEA was used to calculate the TE and its determinants.

The findings reveal that handloom enterprises are only 60% technically efficient, suggesting room for improvement. The bootstrap truncated regression results demonstrate that the handloom firms’ TE is influenced by both entrepreneur-specific and firm-specific factors.

The implication lies in the fact that the management of a firm may figure out how much it can reduce its input utilization to produce the existing amount of output so that it can move along the TE ladder. Moreover, it can crosscheck the factors to weed out inefficiency.

This paper has made two significant contributions to the extant literature. Firstly, it fills the gap by way of accounting the TE of handloom micro-enterprises, which has so far been neglected. Secondly, it used the bootstrap approach, which otherwise is very rare in the discourse on the Indian manufacturing industry, let alone in the micro, small and medium scale enterprises sector.