香港志 ‧ 總述 大事記

Editors : 丁新豹 ; 陳佳榮 ; 劉智鵬 ; 劉蜀永
Type : Edited Book
Published Year: 2021
Publisher : 中華書局(香港)有限公司
ISBN : 9789888676682

國有史，地有志。編修地方志是中華民族悠久而獨特文化傳統。《香港志》旨在全面系統地記述香港地區自然和社會各方面的歷史和現狀。《總述》與《大事記》將合為《香港志》的首卷，是本項大型文化工程啟動的標誌。

大事記是記載在某個行政區域內，一定歷史時期重大事件和重要人物活動的編年體史書。本卷《大事記》將以《香港志》整體篇目為綱，並以前人的研究成果為基礎，增補缺漏要項，全面、系統記述香港自遠古以來之歷史大事，突出香港特殊的地理、歷史、文化、經濟和國際地位，從而發揮資政、存史、教化的功能和使命。

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Impacts of social and environmental perceptions on preparedness and knowledge of air pollution risk : a study of adolescent males in an urbanized, high-density city

Authors : Hung Chak HO; Paulina P. Y. WONG; Chunlan GUO
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Sustainable Cities and Society
DOI : 10.1016/j.scs.2020.102678

Background: Adolescent males are often considered as less medically vulnerable, resulting in less community healthcare but stronger influences of environmental awareness (preparedness and knowledge) on self-preventive strategies of air pollution risk. However, socio-environmental experiences can alter subjective understandings of the environment, thereby modifying their environmental awareness.
Method: A two-stage analysis was applied to evaluate the impacts of socio-environmental perceptions on the preparedness and knowledge of air pollution risk among 551 adolescent males. In the first stage, we evaluated the impacts on the overall preparedness and knowledge with Gaussian regressions, and in the second stage, we evaluated specific preparedness and knowledge with binomial regressions.
Results: First-stage analyses showed that socio-environmental perceptions impacted overall preparedness but not overall knowledge. Particularly, perceivably low environmental knowledge of oneself negatively influenced overall preparedness, and a perceivably large household positively influenced overall preparedness. The second-stage analyses further implied a complex mechanism between perception, preparedness, and knowledge. Specifically, poor outdoor air quality surrounding the home and perceivably low environmental knowledge of oneself negatively influenced specific preparedness for caring for family members. Perceivably low environmental knowledge of oneself also negatively influenced preparedness for outdoor air pollution and knowledge of visibility, wearing masks, cardiovascular diseases, and mortality risk. Poor indoor environment negatively influenced preparedness of wearing a mask. However, participating in few sports activities negatively influenced preparedness for wearing mask, and knowledge of wearing masks, greenhouse gases, and tropospheric ozone, but positively influenced preparedness for outdoor activities during hazy days. Perceivably low school grade positively influenced knowledge of tropospheric ozone. Perceivably low environmental knowledge of the parents and a large household also positively influenced specific preparedness. Poor indoor air quality at home positively influenced knowledge of mortality risk.
Conclusions: Due to the complexity of adolescent males’ preparedness and knowledge, further environmental and health actions (e.g., community services, environmental education, and health workshops) with appropriate preventive strategies should be targeted and specified.

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Towards purchase prediction : a transaction-based setting and a graph-based method leveraging price information

Authors : Zongxi LI; Haoran XIE; Guandong XU; Qing LI; Mingming LENG; Chi ZHOU
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : May 2021
Source : Pattern Recognition
DOI : 10.1016/j.patcog.2021.107824

Targeting at boosting business revenue, purchase prediction based on user behavior is crucial to e-commerce. However, it is not a well-explored topic due to a lack of relevant datasets. Specifically, no public dataset provides both price and discount information varying on time, which play an essential role in the user’s decision making. Besides, existing learn-to-rank methods cannot explicitly predict the purchase possibility for a specific user-item pair. In this paper, we propose a two-step graph-based model, where the graph model is applied in the first step to learn representations of both users and items over click-through data, and the second step is a classifier incorporating the price information of each transaction record. To evaluate the model performance, we propose a transaction-based framework focusing on the purchased items and their context clicks, which contain items that a user is interested in but fails to choose after comparison. Our experiments show that exploiting the price and discount information can significantly enhance prediction accuracy.

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Intranasal oxytocin in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders : a multilevel meta-analysis

Authors : Yi HUANG; Xin HUANG; Richard P. EBSTEIN; Rongjun YU
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
DOI : 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.028

Intranasal oxytocin has been shown to promote social functioning and has recently been applied as a treatment for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current meta-analysis aims to assess the crucial question of oxytocin's efficacy in the treatment of ASD. We performed a systematic literature search, including randomized, single- or double-blind/open-label and placebo-controlled clinical trials as well as single-arm, non-randomized and uncontrolled studies investigating exogenous oxytocin effect on ASD. A total of 28 studies (N = 726 ASD patients) met our predefined inclusion criteria. We used a multilevel meta-analytic model and found that oxytocin had beneficial effects on social functioning, but did not find strong evidence for symptoms improvement in the non-social domain. Our findings suggest that oxytocin administration can be regarded as an effective treatment for some core aspects of ASD, especially in the domain of social functioning, highlighting the promise of using oxytocin as a new-generation therapeutic to address core social impairments in ASD.

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Profit‐tax relationship, business group affiliation, and external monitoring in China

Authors : Kenny Z. LIN; Shanshan SHI; Feng TANG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Jan 2021
Source : Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting
DOI : 10.1111/jifm.12128

This study examines whether business group affiliation weakens the sensitivity of income tax expense to pretax income, while external monitoring mechanisms mitigate the effect of group affiliation. We find that this sensitivity is weaker for Chinese listed firms affiliated with a top 500 business group than for unaffiliated firms. Economically, our coefficient estimate implies that group affiliation weakens tax sensitivity to income by 5.2% in relative terms. However, we find that tax sensitivity improved in the post‐2008 period and with the presence of strong monitoring mechanisms by means of tax enforcement, analyst scrutiny, and long‐term institutional shareholding. To the extent that unexplained variation in current tax expense at a given income level is indicative of aggressive tax behavior, our results suggest that effective external monitoring can mitigate this behavior in group‐affiliated firms.

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Social movements and politics of violence in cohabiting non-marital families

Authors : Anna W. M. CHOI; Alhassan ABDULLAH; Pik Ying CHAN; Peter Y. L. TO; Chuen Yee LO
Type : Book Chapter
Published Year : 2020
Source : The Sage handbook of domestic violence
ISBN : 9781526494863

Violence in cohabiting non-marital families seldom draws public attention, and protections for these families are limited. Even with the growing number of cohabiting non-marital families of heterosexual and same-sex relationships around the world, concern about and understanding of cohabiting non-marital families in crises are general weak, and this seems to be true both for policymakers and for helping professionals. Recognition of cohabiting non-marital families of heterosexual and same-sex couples has gradually emerged during the social movements that promote diversity and inclusive community. Some members of the general public find it difficult to accept these family forms as 'proper' family forms under the influence of traditional culture and the social policy made primarily for supporting and protecting married couples. Domestic violence in cohabiting non-marital families may face even more challenges in seeking a way out. Their needs are different from the needs of those in marries families, and thus they may not get immediate and practical support provided by typical social services. Legal protection for victims from cohabiting non-marital families is also limited as most social and legal preventive and protective measures were established based on the situation of nuclear marital families. Therefore, this chapter aims to discuss the social movements and politics in combating violence in cohabiting non-marital families by literature on reviewing cohabiting non-marital families, especially in cohabiting heterosexual relationships and in same-sex couples.

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單周堯教授七秩華誕國際學術研討會論文集

Editors : 李雄溪 ; 招祥麒 ; 郭鵬飛 ; 許子濱 ; 蕭敬偉 ; 潘漢芳
Type : Edited Book
Published Year: 2020
Publisher : 中華書局(香港)有限公司
ISBN : 9879888675500

單周堯教授，字文農，號勉齋，五十以後又號澹齋。自1975年起，即任職於香港大學中文系（現稱中文學院），講授《左傳》、文字學、音韻學等課程，研究範圍包括文字學、音韻學、訓詁學、出土文獻、粵方言、《尚書》、《左傳》等，俱有突出的學術成就，被譽為香港經學第一人。發表論文二百餘篇，專著有《中國語文論稿》、《文字訓詁叢稿》、《左傳學論集》、《勉齋小學論叢》、《漢字漢語解碼──咬文嚼字集》等，飲譽學界。學問以外，單周堯教授的人品和道德亦廣受稱頌，並在栽桃樹李、造育人才方面有傑出貢獻，單門弟子遍佈海內外學術界。2017年是單周堯教授七秩華誕，在多個合辦單位的努力下，「單周堯教授七秩華誕國際學術研討會」得以於2017年12月9日在香港饒宗頤文化館舉行。與會學者提交近百篇論文，涵蓋了單周堯教授專研的範疇，為相關領域提出了新發現，掀開了新局面。會上會下進行了熱烈而卓有成效的討論和交流，成為本地學界的佳話。為保存研討會的豐碩成果，籌委會把研討會上的論文以及開幕辭和閉幕辭加以結集出版，以見證單周堯教授和好朋友聚首論學的珍貴時光。

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Everyday erotics in urban density : an ethnography of older lesbian and bisexual women in Hong Kong

Author : Tse Shang Denise TANG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Dec 2020
Source : Gender, Place, and Culture
DOI : 10.1080/0966369X.2020.1859464

Lesbian spaces, in terms of their social, cultural, sexual or political purposes, have been dwindling in recent years within global North lesbian geographies. For this article, I would like to put forward a historical analysis of social spaces in Hong Kong through a qualitative ethnographic study of 12 older lesbians and bisexual women aged 60 years and above. Expanding upon Yue and Leung’s theoretical assertion of disjunctive modernity and urban neoliberalism, I proceed to develop my argument that lived experiences in an urban environment diffuses and decenters the assertion of one’s lesbian identity and sexual subjectivity across time and space. Under the British colonial era, the assertion of one’s Chinese womanhood as independent and modern intersects with rapid industrialization and social transformations which lead to culturally-specific spatial practices in locating lesbian desires. I call this mode of spatial practice as everyday erotics in density to describe the way of navigating sexual desires in relation to urban development, where becoming a woman with lesbian desires mean not only carving out one’s alternative erotic space but also disengaging with traditional gender roles in one’s life course and redefining gender and sexuality for an older generation of women.

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Information policy

Author : Diana Lucy LEMBERG
Type : Book Chapter
Published Year : 2020
Source : Information : a historical companion
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN : 9780691179544

The phrase “information policy” is not entirely commonplace in contemporary English. It does not possess the same self-evident significance as “foreign policy” or “public policy,” which point to a government’s respective interactions with international actors and with its domestic inhabitants. By contrast, a certain ambiguity sets in when we speak of information policy. Does it refer to a state’s efforts to gather information within its borders? The control of what information is available to its residents? The use of information for diplomatic purposes? International standard-setting? The public’s protections against governmental abuses of power, in the form of transparency or privacy laws? At times its constituent parts even seem to pull in opposite directions: “information,” as the word is deployed in the digital age, often seems to be characterized by a tendency to transgress national borders and contravene government planning—in other words, to subvert precisely the kinds of strategic designs for which policy is the instrument.

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The effects of message tone and formats of CSR messages on engagement in social media

Author : Myoung Jin CHAE
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Oct 2020
Source : Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
DOI : 10.13106/jafeb.2020.vol7.no10.501

As more consumers are interested in sustainability issues and evaluate brands based on their social responsibility issues involved, firms are using social media platforms in order to communicate with consumers about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. However, the current literature focuses mostly on factors drive engagement of promotional messages, while little evidence was found in the literature on how to design effective CSR messages on social media to engage consumers. Using over 3,000 branded posts on Facebook and Twitter, this research explores factors that help CSR messages become more engaging in social media. The results show that, on average, CSR messages had a negative significant effect on consumer engagement. However, CSR messages became more engaging when designed with emotional appeals, longer texts, and a hashtag. While marginal, CSR messages with informational appeals and humor undermined the effect of CSR messages on engagement. Finally, we explore different types of CSR messages by their beneficiary scope and the role of brands in the message and discuss what message contents drive more engagement in social media. This research contributes to the academic literature and managers by providing new insights on how to design CSR messages for effective communications in social media.

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Managing the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and changing welfare regimes

Authors : Ka Ho MOK; Yeun-wen KU; Tauchid Komara YUDA
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Dec 2020
Source : Journal of Asian Public Policy
DOI : 10.1080/17516234.2020.1861722

This article aims at setting out a broader context for the debates and discussions on welfare transformations driven by rapid global challenges and restructuring. Confronted with challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and societies across the globe must rethink and reimagine their social welfare approaches to make them appropriate and effective to manage the risks and crises. The papers in this special issue address three major themes: 1) democratisation and changing welfare regimes / social policy provision; 2) reflections of social service delivery; 3) rethinking state-market-society relationships when managing welfare needs.

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How critical activities within COVID-19 intensive care units increase nurses’ daily occupational calling

Authors : Yue ZHU; Tingting CHEN; Jie WANG; Mo WANG; Russell E. JOHNSON; Yanghua JIN
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Nov 2020
Source : Journal of Applied Psychology
DOI : 10.1037/apl0000853

During normal and predictable circumstances, employees’ occupational calling (i.e., a transcendent passion to use their talent and competencies toward positive societal impact and a sense of meaningfulness derived from working in a chosen occupational domain) is observed to be relatively stable. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, circumstances have become anything but normal and predictable, thus putting employees’ sense of occupational calling to the test. In this study, we investigate the possibility that occupational calling fluctuates across days during situations of crisis, and we identify antecedents and consequence of such fluctuations. To test our model, we conducted a daily diary study of 66 nurses working in intensive care units over 5 consecutive work days in a specialized Wuhan hospital that only admitted confirmed COVID-19 patients during the peak of the pandemic in China. We found that the daily number of code blue events (i.e., cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts with the primary goal of patient revival) was positively related to daily occupational calling for nurses. Moreover, individual differences in prosocial motivation predicted the average level and variability of occupational calling over the 5 days, which subsequently related to the nurses’ job performance. Our study sheds light on how occupational calling enables people with the needed occupational knowledge and skills to function effectively in crisis situations.

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