Removal of inorganic nutrient and organic carbon from wastewater of Binh Dien market using the green alga Chlorella sp.

Traditional markets play a major role in socio-economics and constitutes a significant aspect of Vietnamese culture. However, wastewater streams discharged from the markets are generally characterized by a lot of inorganic nutrients and organic substances originated from fresh food processing units. They could lead to serious water contamination if discharged without proper treatment. This study applied microalgae Chlorella sp. for eliminating inorganic nutrients (NO3--N, NH4+-N and PO43--P) and organic carbon (Chemical oxygen demand-COD) from wastewater of the Binh Dien market. The removal efficiencies reached for NH4+-N > 86%, for NO3--N > 72%, and for PO43--P > 69%, respectively, at algal density of 49 x 104 cell mL-1, and for COD > 96% at algal density of 35 x 104 cell mL-1 after five cultivating days. The effluence satisfied the Vietnamese standard, column B, of the National technical regulation on industrial wastewater (QCVN 40:2011/BTNMT). The results demonstrated that the culture system composed of green algal Chlorella sp. could be a potential candidate for the removal of nutrients and organic carbon by a wastewater treatment process from the Binh Dien market

Coagulation for treatment of swine slaughterhouse wastewater

In this study, wastewater taken from the Nam Phong swine slaughterhouse, Ho Chi Minh City, was used to evaluate the treatment efficiency of common coagulants, including Alum (Aluminum Sulfate - Al2(SO4)3.18H2O), Poly-Aluminum Chloride (PAC), and Ferrous Sulfate (FeSO4.7H2O), using a jar-test system. The experiments were conducted using the one-factor-at-a-time method to examine three variables which are pH, stirring speed, and coagulant dosage. The results showed that both Alum and PAC perform over 90% removal of colour, turbidity, COD, and total phosphorus (TP) from slaughterhouse wastewater at pH 7 with a stirring speed of 75 revolutions per minute (RPM) and average coagulant dosages of 450 mg/L for Alum and 550 mg/L for PAC. Meanwhile, under the appropriate conditions of pH equal to 10 and 75 RPM with a chemical dosage of 350 mg/L, COD and TP removal efficiencies by Ferrous Sulfate exceed 87%, but those of turbidity and colour only reach 25%. This finding could be a promising coagulation method as a pre-treatment for the swine slaughterhouse wastewater

Relative efficiency and price discovery in the two-tier Brussels stock exchange.

Until the mid-90s, the more active among the Brussels-listed stocks were traded in parallel segments: "spot" (that is, with t + 3 settlement) and "forward" (with periodic settlement at the end of a two- or three-week period). The forward market was cheaper, deeper, unhampered by price limits, convenient also for shortsales, and played by the pros; so it looks likely to be the more efficient tier. Yet a simple variance comparison, after correcting for settlement effects,finds no such effect; in fact, the forward market may actually have been the more noisy one. Going on to the issue of price discovery, which is a more formal way of testing whether the forward market is less noisy, we extend the Margrabe-Silber price-discovery model to take into account the asynchronism in the opening forward and spot prices. Although the presence of the latent true morning return in our extended model precludes us from estimating explicitly the price adjustment coefficients, we can still identify the sign of the estimated difference of these coefficients and the lower and upper bounds of its t-statistic. This information enables us to conclude on the significance of the test. Also, our results reject the potential price discoverer status of the forward market: spot prices seem more informative than forward prices. This result raises the issue of how far the financial markets perform their central function of price discovery and how far the conventional wisdom can be trusted (e.g. the more trading volume the less noise the observed price contains).

The dynamics of price discovery in the two-tier Brussels stock exchange.

In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of price discovery in the Brussels Stock Exchange for the spot and forward stock markets. Specifically, we quantitatively analyze each market's process in impounding new fundamental information about a stock's value into its market price. Similar to the permanent-transitory decomposition procedure put forward by Gonzalo and Ng (2001), we use a vecm (Vector Error Correction Model) and decompose the vecm residuals into the permanent and transitory innovations. However, we adjust their procedure to accommodate for the asynchronism problem in the Brussels forward and spot stock exchange. From the impulse response functions of the derived structural cointegration model after the decomposition, we apply the price discovery measure proposed by Yan and Zivot (2007), which is the absolute magnitude of cumulative price errors in the process of reflecting a one-unit change in the permanent innovation. In particular, we investigate which market makes less errors while incorporating the full one-unit increase in the permanent innovation into its price. Our finding is that the spot market outperforms the forwards one in the price discovery process. This result contradicts the price discovery role conventionally ascribed to the forward market.price discovery; brussels stock exchange;

A note on time value in spot and forward prices on the Brussels stock exchange.

Until the mid-90s, the more active among the Brussels-listed stocks were traded in parallel segments: "spot" (that is, with t + 3 settlement) and "forward" (periodic settlement at the end of a two- or three-week period). The forward market was cheaper, deeper, unhampered by price limits, convenient also for shortsales, and played by the pros; so it looks likely to be the more efficient tier. In the forward markets, where the signal is stronger, we do find that time value affects prices. In spot markets there is very little evidence in favor or against a settlement effect, perhaps because the time value item has a very small variability. As expected, the time value signals are somewhat stronger in forward prices and noticeably so in forward premiums,but the estimates remain below our theoretical priors. We also find that price discrepancies are autocorrelated, probably indicating market inefficiency. A closer look reveals that positive forward premiums are persistent whereas negative ones vanish overnight. This is consistent with a market-imperfection explanation, where problems with raising cash (shorting money)are more important than problems with shorting stocks, thus creating preferred habitats for purchases (forward) and for sales (spot).dual markets; price discovery; settlement effect; microstructure;

Investigating the Influence of CHD1 on Gene Expression in Drosophila Melanogaster Using Position Effect Variegation

Position Effect Variegation (PEV) is the mosaic expression of a gene that has been moved out of its optimal environment and into a different area on the chromosome. Changing a gene’s environment may have profound effects on its eligibility for proper expression, which is a complicated process regulated by many factors. The PEV phenomenon is used as an assay to study gene expression as regulated by chromatin structure. In this study, the Drosophila melanogaster white gene was used as a reporter to study the various effects of CHD1, a chromatin regulating factor, on PEV gene expression. Inspired by preliminary data generated by the Armstrong Lab where overexpression of CHD1 resulted in suppression of gene silencing of the brown gene and loss of CHD1 resulted in enhancement of gene silencing, this study uses PEV as an assay to examine whether loss of function chd1 mutant alleles function dominantly to enhance silencing of the white gene when it is placed in a repressive chromatin environment. Surprisingly, I found that a chd1 loss of function mutant allele dominantly suppressed gene silencing (meaning I saw an increase in gene expression), suggesting that the CHD1 protein is normally required for effective silencing. The results demonstrated that CHD1 is a dominant modifier of PEV gene expression. CHD1 significantly modifies gene expression by suppressing silencing of the white gene inserted into pericentric heterochromatin on the second and fourth chromosomes and an insertion into the medial region of the fourth chromosome, while it shows no significant modification of the white gene inserted into telomeric heterochromatin of the fourth chromosome. Together, these intriguing results regarding varying gene expression at different chromosomal sites show that PEV is a dynamic phenomenon meriting further research and studying the effects of CHD1 as a modifier of PEV may be influential to understanding the mechanism and characteristics of gene expression

Promoting early entrepreneurship education in Vietnam:insights of education entrepreneurs

Abstract. The present study aimed to investigate early entrepreneurship education in Vietnam by exploring education entrepreneurs’ perceptions on how to incorporate entrepreneurship education into primary schools. Entrepreneurship education is considered a form of education that seeks to provide learners with entrepreneurship-related knowledge, skills, qualities, and personal characteristics. Accordingly, three main research questions concerned, (1) what aspects participants recognize to be considered when entrepreneurship is incorporated into education at primary schools in Vietnam? (2) what skills and qualities need to be fostered to develop children’s entrepreneurial mindset? (3) what elements in a learning environment can support early entrepreneurship education in Vietnam? In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted for five education entrepreneurs via Zoom. The data consisted of five transcripts translated from Vietnamese into English for coding. Thematic analysis was applied to analyze the data. The results showed that the education entrepreneurs had different points of view on both the concept of entrepreneurship education and appropriate student’s age as well as benefits and challenges for implementing entrepreneurship education into schools through various entrepreneurial activities. Furthermore, six significant skills and seven entrepreneurial qualities that need to be fostered to develop children’s entrepreneurial mindset were recognized in the analysis. Finally, an ideal learning environment to support early entrepreneurship education was proposed in learning design and changes in teacher’s role. The findings of this study have implications for proposing understandings of how entrepreneurship education could be incorporated in Vietnam’s primary schools. The insights from the education entrepreneurs along with their influence in both the educational and economic field would be a bridge to encourage changes regarding the education system in Vietnam, where early entrepreneurship education remains a neglected idea that has yet to receive an official introduction from the Ministry of Education

Factors Affecting the Decision to Shop Directly at Fashion Stores: A Study of Vietnamese Youth in the Context of Online Shopping 4.0

Purpose: This study was conducted to understand the factors affecting direct shopping decisions when online shopping is a new trend in the fashion retail industry, thereby making appropriate business management recommendations.   Theoretical framework: The authors have built a research model based on the factors that are used extensively in previous research models, including the following five independent variables: (1) Product experience, (2) Spiritual value, (3) Customer service, (4) Emotional commitment and (5) Price.   Design/methodology/approach: The study conducted a customer survey to identify the deciding factors to shop directly at a fashion store. Then use SPSS 23 software to process and check the data.   Findings: Research results show that there are 5 factors affecting the decision to shop directly at a fashion store: 1) Product experience, (2) Spiritual value, (3) Customer service, (4) Emotional commitment and (5) Price.   Research, Practical & Social implications: E-commerce is growing day by day at breakneck speed on the Internet. There have been speculations that online shopping will gradually overwhelm or even replace traditional shopping behavior in the future.   Originality/value: The study provides some solutions and recommendations for businesses doing business in the fashion sector in Vietnam