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This study aimed to understand better the user gaze behavior on bookshelves using eye-tracking technology.

An eye-tracking experiment in a public library with 11 participants was performed. The impact of vertical shelf location of books on the number of times the books are looked at, the impact of horizontal location and the relationship between user behavior and location impact were examined by the findings.

The results showed that the vertical location of books has a significant impact on the number of times the books are looked at. More than 80% of the time spent looking at bookshelves was spent on books on the top to fourth rows. It was also revealed that the horizontal location of books has a little impact. Books located on the left side of shelves will be looked at significantly more often than those on the right side. No significant relationships between type of user behaviors and location impact were observed.

The study explored the impact of the vertical location of books on time spent looking at bookshelves using eye-tracking methodology. Few published studies do such experiments to address user gaze behavior on bookshelves. The study explored that the vertical location of books has a great impact, and horizontal location has a little impact on user gaze behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to disseminate information about the IFLA pre‐conference in Chania, Crete, Greece on the subject of open access in libraries.

Report on visit.

The main focus of the meeting was open access. Much information was shared.

This is an original work with some quoted material.

The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory survey as part of a presentation for the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference. It seeks to understand how library institutions in the South East Asia (SEA) region have implemented Web 2.0 technologies – blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, or the use of services like Flickr, YouTube, de.lici.ous.

Libraries surveyed were in: Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, People's Republic of China, Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan. The survey relied on references in published papers, internet searches and personal contacts.

The survey found that more academic libraries than public libraries were using Web 2.0. technologies. Blogs and RSS feeds were the most common. Blogs were used mainly as web publishing tools rather than as a means to engage library users.

The survey is not comprehensive. The search relied mainly on English publications and keywords, while the native language of most countries surveyed was non‐English. Future research could comprehensively cover each country, by the type of library or language.

The paper contends that Web 2.0 does not rely on technology, but more on practice and participation. The emphasis should be on relationships rather than transactions. Suggestions are offered on how libraries can adopt a Library 2.0 mindset without focusing on technology. A call is made to establish an East Asian Librarians 2.0 directory.

The paper offers a non‐technological perspective to institutions and practising professionals who are reviewing their Web 2.0 implementation.

Both, the UK and Japan abolished the tax credit system for foreign source dividends in 2009 in favour of the exemption system. With the move towards a dividend exemption system the governments intended to enhance the international tax competitiveness of their countries. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the implications of substituting the credit system for the exemption system in the UK and Japan on cross-border transaction prices when competing for international acquisitions.

The paper uses an economic model under certainty to analyse the changes in cross-border marginal purchase and seller prices as a result of the introduction of the newly introduced dividend exemption system.

Shifting to an exemption system has ambiguous effects on the ability to compete for foreign acquisitions: investors from both countries are able to pay higher prices in the course of acquisitions, but while investors from the UK become more competitive, the relative competitive position for Japanese investors hardly changes and remains relatively constrained, independent of the form of double taxation relief. Thus the author verifies that the international tax regime is not the only determinant influencing the competitive position, ranking second to, e.g., the interaction with international tax rate differentials.

The international tax reforms in UK and Japan in 2009 offer a unique opportunity to study the impact of international tax policy on the international tax competitiveness of multinational firms in the course of foreign acquisitions. Evidence from this paper is not exclusively applicable to the UK and Japan setting. The observed effects shed new light on the intensified debate in the USA of changing the international tax system by analysing the impact on the bidding situation in international acquisitions in a real-world transition scenario.

The issuance of sweat equity shares has recently created controversies. The limitations backing the conservatism of sweat equity shares issuance can be ascribed to confabulating recipient recognition process, uneasy tax treatment and procedural inconsistencies. This paper aims to study the theoretical and legal underpinnings, rightful recipients and the procedure for issuing sweat equity shares.

The authors choose the jurisdictions of India, the USA and Japan to study the problems plaguing issuance of sweat equity shares. The USA's prototypical reference and burgeoning technical soundness coupled with the sound venture capitalism of India and Japan has inspired the choice. The regulatory regime subsisting in the above jurisdictions governing sweat equity is studied comprehensively and comparatively. The structuring of sweat equity transactions and the tax treatment of sweat equity shares in the USA, India and Japan are discussed.

It is found that due to the absence of set standards and precedents the method for identifying the right recipients has trembled abysmally.

The paper focuses on the issues surrounding the practice of employees contributing to an organization being remunerated through shares.

The problems of Super resolution are broadly discussed in diverse fields. Rather than the progression toward the super resolution models for real-time images, operating hyperspectral images still remains a challenging problem.

This paper aims to develop the enhanced image super-resolution model using “optimized Non-negative Structured Sparse Representation (NSSR), Adaptive Discrete Wavelet Transform (ADWT), and Optimized Deep Convolutional Neural Network”. Once after converting the HR images into LR images, the NSSR images are generated by the optimized NSSR. Then the ADWT is used for generating the subbands of both NSSR and HRSB images. The residual image with this information is obtained by the optimized Deep CNN. All the improvements on the algorithms are done by the Opposition-based Barnacles Mating Optimization (O-BMO), with the objective of attaining the multi-objective function concerning the “Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), and Structural similarity (SSIM) index”. Extensive analysis on benchmark hyperspectral image datasets shows that the proposed model achieves superior performance over typical other existing super-resolution models.

From the analysis, the overall analysis of the suggested and the conventional super resolution models relies that the PSNR of the improved O-BMO-(NSSR+DWT+CNN) was 38.8% better than bicubic, 11% better than NSSR, 16.7% better than DWT+CNN, 1.3% better than NSSR+DWT+CNN, and 0.5% better than NSSR+FF-SHO-(DWT+CNN). Hence, it has been confirmed that the developed O-BMO-(NSSR+DWT+CNN) is performing well in converting LR images to HR images.

This paper adopts a latest optimization algorithm called O-BMO with optimized Non-negative Structured Sparse Representation (NSSR), Adaptive Discrete Wavelet Transform (ADWT) and Optimized Deep Convolutional Neural Network for developing the enhanced image super-resolution model. This is the first work that uses O-BMO-based Deep CNN for image super-resolution model enhancement.

Japanese and American marketing executives have different perceptions of Japanese marketing approaches, concepts and strategies. Differences in perceptions of Japanese market protection, superpower status, government assistance, Westernisation, competition, organisation, consumers and decisions are investigated.

This study attempts to provide cross-cultural learning by focusing on a very important aspect of research, the study of teaching materials, known as Kyouzai Kenkyuu in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to investigate teachers’ views and awareness about the study of teaching materials, in particular, the views and awareness of Iranian teachers, who are beginning to understand their teaching practice and professional development through lesson study.

Qualitative research methods were employed for data collection. These methods included comparative analysis of an Iranian mathematics lesson from the perspective of Japanese educators and semi-structured interviews with all participants of the lesson analysis meetings.

The findings are intended to position Kyouzai Kenkyuu as an important aspect of Japanese lesson study and to make explicit the beliefs and values that underpin and shape pedagogical reasoning that support researchers and practitioners to improve the quality of teaching through lesson study. This was achieved through post-lesson discussion meetings, and the beliefs and values were those the participants were largely unaware of but could be clarified through a cross-cultural comparison. For instance, Japanese teachers focus more on learners and the study of teaching materials for raising the quality of teaching, whereas Iranian teachers focus more on the content of teaching and teacher behavior.

This study delivers a transnational learning opportunity for teachers and researchers to learn how to provide evidence-based analysis of a lesson to raise the quality of teaching. However, as this is a case study and focuses specifically on Kyouzai Kenkyuu, it opens up the possibility for comparative analysis of more sample lessons and other aspects of Japanese lesson study.

It may be interesting for teachers and researchers to see how such a study could help them revise their quality of teaching through lesson study and construct shared knowledge about how to teach and to clarify “the pedagogical theories” that underpin such knowledge building.

The value of this study is in its ability to reveal to educators their own unconscious teaching script and knowledge and “the pedagogical theories” that underpin such knowledge. It provides an opportunity for evidence-based critiques of our own teaching script, theory, view and values that we accept culturally, share tacitly and may not even be aware of in the construction process.

This study combines careful measurement with an “insider’s perspective” from Iran and an “outsider’s perspective” from Japan of differing educational concepts within the same subject area. The objective is to provide a deeper understanding of the real world of lesson study and how it can help educators to construct shared knowledge about how to teach in practice and to support teachers to revise the cultural context of teaching.

This article reviews the practice of horenso (a mnemonic for hokoku/reporting, renraku/informing and sodan/consulting) – an under-documented Japanese communication methodology – at a Japanese-owned subsidiary in Thailand. It draws on a number of cultural theories to explore how horenso was influenced by the non-biculturality of individuals at a multinational corporation.

This article draws on first-hand interviews with staff of varying responsibilities at a multinational electronic components manufacturer, Spin-eTech (a pseudonym) to understand how horenso has been utilized and perceived at this Japanese-owned subsidiary in Thailand differently from its original form and traditional use at its headquarters in Japan. This was a targeted case that captured the real time communication difficulties at the workplace.

The themes of horenso's rationale, motivation, style of communication, use for problem solving, information reporting, relation to superiority and culture of communication emerged as prominent differences for how horenso was practiced at the Thai subsidiary.

Using the emic perspective of cultural understanding, insights are offered into the impact of non-biculturality within the Asia Pacific region on the practice of horenso to extant knowledge on the under-explored “eastern vs eastern” cultural differences.

The growing emphasis on “managerialism” in police and the pressure to employ scientific methods of performance measurement warrants the need for a structured framework. The scope of police duties is large as it relates to several preventive and corrective action related to public safety and crime management. A challenge in measuring police performance is to take into consideration a range of variables that can potentially influence performance. The purpose of this paper is to provide a structured framework for measuring different facets of police efficiency, which is especially useful in managerial decision making.

This paper uses data envelopment analysis and discusses efficiency measurement in terms of the technical, managerial and scale efficiency, resources utilization patterns, returns-to-scale analysis and measurement of super-efficiency. The application of framework is based on the data of the police stations of Lahore, a large metropolitan city in Pakistan.

The paper shows the application of different measures of efficiency in making decisions pertaining resources allocation, prioritizing areas for improvement and identifying benchmarks for performance improvement. Different measures of efficiency are presented in the form of a structured framework.

Managers can use this framework to glean rich insights into different types of efficiency and sources of inefficiency. Further, a discussion of variables provided in this paper can be especially useful in determining trade-offs during the selection of inputs and outputs.

The key contribution of this paper is in providing a multifaceted efficiency measurement framework, that is capable of providing rich insights into the sources of inefficiency and helps scientific decision making. To the best of our knowledge, such a multifaceted approach has not been provided in previous publications.