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Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Describes a competition based on the hit television series The Apprentice that UK firm Octopus Investments used to recruit new members of its sales team.

Explains what gave rise to the assessment day, the form it took and the results it has achieved.

Details how candidates took part in speed interviews (like speed‐dating), telephone‐call role plays and pitching sessions to give them a feeling of realistic everyday working scenarios. After each stage candidates moved through to the next task or were given feedback on what they did well and what they could improve.

Reveals that the assessment day helped the company to cut the amount of time spent interviewing candidates while giving them more time to demonstrate the skills the company is looking for.

Highlights how the assessment day offered candidates the chance to learn first‐hand about working for Octopus by mixing informally with current employees.

Describes a range of HR policies that have helped Octopus twice to be named among the Sunday Times Best Small Companies to Work For.

The purpose of this paper is to describe inter‐library access services in Hong Kong academic libraries and to discuss means of improving the services.

The paper takes the form of a narrative with suggestions for further development.

The introduction of the EasyRegister service has been a success.

The paper presents a detailed description of how the physical access of users can be facilitated between universities. This will be useful for all librarians concerned with this issue.

This paper aims to propose a new literacies approach to get insight into young people’s capability to detect fake news.

This study is a replication of a US empirical study in The Netherlands to examine whether schoolchildren were able to identify the spoof website “Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” as fake.

In The Netherlands, only 2 out of 27 school children (7 per cent) recognized the website as being a hoax; results that are worse, even, than those of the 2007 US study, where the website was recognized as being unreliable by slightly more than 6 out of 53 school children (11 per cent).

A similar but large-scale quantitative empirical study should be conducted in several countries to see if the trends in the US and The Netherlands are indeed significant.

It is important to start teaching children at an early age how to critically evaluate online information.

The perceived reliability of digital information is a hot issue, given the frequency with which fake news is circulated. Being able to critically evaluate digital information will help to have access to trustworthy information.

Instead of using technological fact checking by Google, Facebook and Twitter, this paper suggests the adoption of a new literacies approach, focusing on young people’s capability to detect fake news.

The increase in seafood trade in recent years motivates more detailed studies of different species, as well as evaluation of the nutritional quality of their lipid content. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the fatty acid composition, especially the concentrations and fractionation of omega‐3 essential fatty acid in classes of mussels (male and female), oysters, squid, and octopus captured on the south coast of Brazil.

Fatty acid methyl esters were prepared by methylation of total lipids and were separated by gas chromatography. Quantification of LNA, AA, EPA, and DHA was done against tricosanoic acid methyl ester as an internal standard. Total lipids were fractionated into neutral lipids and polar lipids by classical column chromatography.

The results of this study were as follows: the female mussel had the highest lipid content (3.52 per cent), followed by the male mussel (2.70 per cent), squid (1.05 per cent), octopus (0.79 per cent), and oyster (0.62 per cent). The samples that had the highest percentages of EPA and DHA in their lipid fraction were the female mussel and squid, respectively. The species belonging to the Bivalvia class (mussels and oysters) showed a predominance of PL, while those belonging to the cephalopods class (octopus and squid), showed a predominance of NL. The n‐6/n‐3 and polyunsaturated fatty acid/saturated fatty acids ratios of all samples analyzed were in accordance with the recommendations. The female mussel had the highest concentration of EPA+DHA omega‐3 fatty acids, corresponding to 1,064.63 mg EPA+DHA 100 g⁻¹ of the sample. So, the consumption of mussels caught off the southern coast of Brazil provides the omega‐3 essential fatty acids.

This paper provides important data concerning lipid quality of seafood caught off on the south coast of Brazil.

This chapter advances an articulation of the contemporary knowledge worker as an infrastructural bricoleur. The practical and pragmatic intelligence of the contemporary knowledge worker, particularly those involved in project-based work, reflects an ability to build adaptable practices and routines, and to develop a set of working arrangements that is creative and event-laden. Like Ciborra’s octopi, workers augment infrastructures by drawing on certain forms of oblique, twisted, flexible, circular, polymorphic and ambiguous thinking until an accommodation can be found. These workers understand the non-linearity of work and working, and are artful in their pursuits around, through and beyond infrastructural givens. Modern knowledge work, then, when looked at through the lens of infrastructure and bricolage, is less a story of failure to understand, a limitation in training or the shortcomings of a system, but instead is more a mirror of the contemporary realities of today’s knowledge work drift as reflected in individuals’ sociotechnical practices.

The mere sight of Disney villains have struck fear into the hearts of many a child. From the Evil Queen, to Maleficent, to Ursula. From the black flowing capes to the ashen skin and pointy horns, the aesthetic of these villains alone is often enough to evoke a sense of dread in the audience. Ursula from The Little Mermaid (1989) may not be officially a queen in the Disney universe, but she is a notorious villain amongst fans. Although The Little Mermaid was released in 1989, the film, and thus Ursula, have a fanbase that has evolved and grown up to now, despite the film not being remade into a live-action version as yet. This chapter will analyse the comments of three fan-made YouTube videos regarding Ursula, and will examine the fan comments, with specific focus on the comments regarding Ursula's physicality or any positive comments about her. This will show fan positivity towards a villainous character, despite what may be depicted as a negative body image. Ursula, an octopus, looks quite different from other villains. The primary research methodology will include participatory culture and discourse analysis in order to understand why fans adore her, and how they do not necessarily accept her as a villain, but that there is an outpouring of positivity towards her body image.

THERE ARE MANY people — far too many people, in our opinion — who are ready to state, or maybe just to agree, that manufacturers in other countries have the edge on us, whether in design or technology or even on price. On top of that, those same people, as a rule, are quick to condemn British workers as lazy, slow and ready to strike at the drop of a hat. We do not subscribe to any of this.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the proximate composition, amino acid and mineral profiles of seafood for human consumption.

A total of 21 seafood species (eight seawater, one fresh water fish, six crustacean and six mollusc species) of commercial importance were chosen and purchased from the Istanbul local fish market. The sample to amino acids analyze was prepared in accordance with the hydrolysis technique described by Waters AccQ.Tag Chemistry Package Method (HPLC). Determination of iron (Fe), sodium (Na), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca), selenium (Se), phosphorus (P) and iodine (I) was performed with thermo electron X7 inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP‐MS).

The lipid contents of species were found to be very low and considered as lean. The highest total amino acid values of fishes, crustaceans and molluscs were determined in John Dory, hake, red scorpion fish, spiny lobster, Norway lobster, sea snail and pecten. The mineral content of seafood species were found to be 9.3‐157.11 mg/kg Fe, 558.13‐6095.89 mg/kg Na, 253.25‐1032.29 mg/kg Mg, 125.43‐17174.76 mg/kg Ca, 0.18‐7.76 mg/kg Se, 1586.45‐5811.16 mg/kg P and 0.086‐2.630 mg/kg I.

This paper is helpful to consumers and academics concerning the proximate, amino acid and mineral composition of 21 estimable seafood species (nine fish, six crustacean and six mollusc species).