Environment: Should hybrid (taxis) be incentivised?

LPG taxis in Hong Kong
Image from pxhere.com

Locky Law, director of education at ChargedHK, a non-profit group that promotes electric vehicle use, said the government could consider offering short-term incentives for taxi drivers to switch to hybrid models, if the official data offered by the hybrid carmakers was trustworthy, and if there was evidence to prove that hybrid taxis emitted lower emissions.

#TeslaFriendly #hybridvehicles #EV

Extra note: In summary, if we could either trust the official data offered by the hybrid automakers (which some reports disagree, e.g. Greenpeace's) or government departments could perform their own highly-rigorous emission testing on every model, and that the government and electric companies would not improve the fuel mix in the short run (e.g. in the next five years), then those low-emission hybrids and plug-in hybrids could enjoy short-term incentives. Lots of 'if's.

Read more:
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/transport/article/3094763/hong-kong-taxi-distributor-says-including-hybrid-models 
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cleaner-cars-cradle-grave 
https://thedriven.io/2020/06/28/plug-in-hybrids-may-not-be-delivering-emissions-cuts-new-report-finds/

Academic Research: Applying partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in an investigation of undergraduate students’ learning transfer of academic English

Image from Journal of English for Academic Purposes

My latest publication / innovation:

Law, L., & Fong, N. (2020). Applying partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in an investigation of undergraduate students’ learning transfer of academic English. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 46, 100884. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100884

Abstract:

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is a statistical analysis technique that has been widely adopted in marketing and strategic management disciplines, yet there is a paucity of application in language education research. This study applies PLS-SEM in an investigation of undergraduate students’ learning transfer by analysing their perceptions of learned skills they find transferable in a general EAP course and the extent of transferability to interdisciplinary-organised Common Core courses. A theoretical model was proposed to examine the interrelationships of variables, namely content relevance, understanding of learning, transfer/applicability and transfer outcome. Two rounds of in-class e-survey were administered with 675 (63.2%) and 689 (64.3%) valid responses respectively. The results from the PLS-SEM reveal that there are significant relationships between the variables. This study not only can fill the research space of learning transfer in EAP in language learning, it can also model a new quantitative empirical research method which can be used to explain and predict learning transfer. Implications for future EAP research using PLS-SEM are discussed.

Keywords:

EAP, Learning transfer, Training transfer, PLS-SEM, Partial least squares, Content relevance

Download a free copy using this URL before 20 August 2020:

https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bKZt_XYery-jR 

#ResearchInnovation #PLSSEM #SmartPLS

Academic Research: My first-ever book chapter is finally out!

Image from Springer

My first-ever book chapter is finally out! Many thanks to my The Hong Kong Polytechnic University - Department of English PhD supervisors Prof. Christian Matthiessen and Prof. Francisco Veloso for their teaching and guidance.

Cite this chapter as:

Law L. (2020) Creativity and Television Drama: A t-Score and MI Value Cut-off Analysis of Pattern-forming Creativity in House M.D.. In: Yang B., Li W. (eds) Corpus-based Approaches to Grammar, Media and Health Discourses. The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series. Springer, Singapore

Link:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-981-15-4771-3_14

 #Creativity #Statistics #Media #Health #TV #HouseMD #Springer