Hectic Slowness: Precarious Temporalities of Care in Vietnam’s Digital Mamasphere

CARGC Paper 14, “Hectic Slowness: Precarious Temporalities of Care in Vietnam’s Digital Mamasphere,” by Giang Nguyen-Thu explores the temporal entanglements of care and precarity in Vietnam by unpacking the condition of “hectic slowness” experienced by mothers who sell food on Facebook against the widespread fear of dietary intoxication. Crafted during Nguyen-Thu’s CARGC Postdoctoral Fellowship, originally presented as a CARGC Colloquium, and drawing on thirty months of ethnographic fieldwork with Vietnamese mothers, CARGC Paper 14 paper offers an incredibly nuanced and fine-grained engagement with the everyday digital practices of Vietnamese mothers and grandmothers in cities such as Hanoi. This grounded attention to digital life and motherhood is, then, entered in productive dialogue with feminist and media scholarship in order to build a rich analysis that challenges our continued reliance on Western-centric notions such as autonomy to make sense of care, mothering, and media practices.https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/1014/thumbnail.jp

Exploring collaborative consumption business models - case peer-to-peer digital platforms

The global economic downturn is one of the reasons that make us reevaluate our relationship with possessions and consumption. Thanks to the rise of technology and the mainstream use of social networks, collaborative consumption has become a buzz word during the past few years. The literature on the field, however, is scarce and mainly comprises of industry reports and articles. This research aims to fill in this gap by exploring the business models of five leading peer-to-peer digital platforms, using a framework developed from a theoretical review. Another objective of the research is to identify lessons managers from peer-to-peer startups can learn in order to launch and run a successful peer-to-peer platform. The framework used in the study's empirical analysis is developed from a literature review on e-business models and two-sided markets. Osterwalder (2002)'s e-business ontology was chosen as the backbone of the analysis due to the comprehensiveness of the model in analyzing different elements of an e-business model, including product innovation, infrastructure management, customer relationship and financial aspects. Two-sided markets and platform management literature uncovers fundamental features of a two-sided market such as indirect network effects, multihoming, as well as pricing and critical mass challenges for two-sided platforms. Because of the idiosyncratic features of two-sided markets, peer-to-peer platform managers have to take into consideration these issues when developing strategies and activities for all the elements of the platform's business model. The study utilizes a qualitative approach with the multiple case study method. Five leading peer-to-peer platforms from various industries are chosen as case studies and their business models are explored in-depth through the application of the developed framework. One of the most important findings is that peer-to-peer platforms' value proposition can be divided into two groups: the experience group, which makes use of idle resources such as time, space or labor, and the passion group, which connects people with the same interest and passion. The empirical analysis also reveals that critical mass, growth and trust and safety are central issues of the case peer-to-peer platforms and their entire activities circle around solving these issues, using innovative processes and continuous application of technology

A comparative research on Communities of Practice, University Knowledge Exchange and Business Model Changes between the United Kingdom and Vietnamese Agri-tech Startups

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The paper explores the expectation that agri-tech startups in the United Kingdom and Vietnam gain benefits of Communities of Practice (CoP), and how CoP help those businesses to tackle the challenges of business model changes for their growth enhancement. The co-creational collaboration between academics and agri-tech startups when working together on knowledge/experience-sharing through CoP is also investigated. The research uses a case-study approach, meetings, interviews, and documentary data to capture the events, actions and changes of attitudes, behaviours, and expectations of eight agri-tech startups towards their use of CoP. The research indicates a significant change in the business models of the startups when integrating into temporal CoP. These agri-tech startups often exploit their existing business models, while exploring a portfolio of new business opportunities that could generate new growth engines. Some of them quickly move into a value creation phase by which they achieve quick-wins and medium-term actions that generate both financial and non-financial business value. The research results may have implications for policymakers and practitioners who want to develop these types of interventions. Businesses in other fields can also better understand the value and potential of temporal CoP and start applying them. Keywords: Agri-tech, business model change (s), university knowledge exchange, communities of practice, startup (s). *Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Business Leaders' mindset and the Firms' capabilities change towards the adoption of technology and innovation through government sponsored entrepreneurial training programs: the case of Hertfordshire, UK

© ICECH - International Conference on Emerging Challenges.Research purpose: The paper aims to: (1) Understand SMEs’ current mindset and capabilities, and their future expectations towards the adoption of technology and innovation and; (2) Explore the relative influence and impact of the Help to Grow: management programme on the leaders’ mindset and business capabilities of Hertfordshire business participants. Research motivation: The UK Government and many of the key sectors are increasingly focusing on growth, sustainability, and diversity. The paper explores the impact of a national programme to help the small business community (including micro and SMEs) to grow their businesses, with particular focus on the entrepreneurial mindset and businesses’ capabilities to adopt technology and innovation. Research design, approach and method Two surveys were conducted with different sizes to supplement information and make the analysis more accurate. The first survey was taken in 2019 and 2020 with 425 SMEs in Hertfordshire and in 2022, the second survey (and interviewed) were typically selected from the group of enterprises that were initially surveyed (n=20) to see more insight into the research issue. Main findings: The initial analysis (Hertfordshire-wide business community) and follow-on analysis (attendees of the Help-to-Grow: Management programme at UH) highlight the value of these short-intensive business leader skills programmes focused on developing the leadership and management skills of these business entrepreneurs and their small businesses capabilities. Practical/ managerial implications The research results have important implications for small and medium enterprises in identifying, evaluating and changing their mindsets as well as capabilities towards technological improvement and innovation. In addition, the research also provides more evidence and practical basis for the government and related agencies to improve such programs to better support small and medium businessesPeer reviewe

Lipschitz continuity of solutions and corresponding multipliers to distributed and boundary semilinear elliptic optimal control problems with mixed pointwise control-state constraints

This paper is concerned with the existence and regularity of mininizers as well as of corresponding multipliers to an optimal control problem governed by semilinear elliptic equations, in which mixed pointwise control-state constraints are considered in a quite general form and the controls act simultaneously in the domain and on the boundary. Under standing assumptions, the minimizers and the corresponding multipliers do exist. Furthermore, by applying the bootstrapping technique and establishing some calculation tools for functions in Sobolev spaces of fractional order, the optimal solutions and the associated Lagrange multipliers are shown to be Lipschitz continuous

Payment Methods in Acquisitions of Association of Southeast Asian Nations Bidders

This paper examines the determinants of methods of payment in M&A transactions in ASEAN countries. We take into account the effects of characteristics of bidders, targets and countries on the choice of method of payment. The findings document the importance of bidders' technology status, targets' ownership status, relative size of bidders and targets, and especially the corporate governance variables in the countries that involved in those M&A transactions. In addition, crisis periods also distinguish the choices of payment method for domestic and cross-border M&As in ASEAN countries. Keywords: Methods of payment, ASEAN countries, Mergers, Acquisitions JEL Classifications: G32, G34, G3

Genetic variation within and between three Vietnamese pine populations (Pinus merkusii) using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers

Pinus merkusii is an important species in Vietnam with many economic and biological contributions. The information on diversity within and between populations of a species is necessary for plantation programs, breeding and conservation strategies. Genetic diversity of three Vietnamese populations (NA, QB and QN) was analyzed using the random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. Nine RAPD primers produced 82 markers, 77 of which were polymorphic with 93.9% of polymorphism. The results showed higher genetic variation within populations (72%) than between populations (28%) and low Nei’s genetic differentiation index among populations (0.1867). The populations also clustered based on PCoA analysis where cluster I included NA and QB populations and Cluster II, the QN population. These results suggest that P. merkusii populations in Vietnam is necessary to develop the genetic resources.Keywords: DNA markers, genetic diversity, Pinus merkusii, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Vietna

Constraints on Early Star Formation and Mixing from Nucleosynthesis in Protogalactic clouds

We calculate the stochastic chemical evolution of pre-galactic clouds as a means to constrain the degree of mixing in the early Galaxy. We employ a model based upon the cold-dark-matter paradigm for hierarchical galaxy formation. We argue that a significant dispersion in the metallicity for the alpha elements as a function of heavy elements is unavoidable for models with realistic stellar nucleosynthesis yields and a reasonable initial mass function. Although the calculated scatter in light-element abundance can be reduced by restricting the stellar initial mass function. The observed lack of dispersion requires inevitably requires that extensive mixing of the supernova eject containing alpha elements to have occurred. We use the difference between the observed and calculated dispersion of alpha to determine the degree of mixing of the early Galaxy. We argue that the large dispersion for heavy r-process elements suggests that they arise from rare events which did not have time to mix during the formation of the Galactic halo

Nitrite metabolism of several bacterial strains isolated from abattoir and swine wastewater after biogas treatment

In nitrogen treatment with biological methods, nitrite metabolism is an intermediate process that facilitates other processes involving different bacteria strains. In this study, we isolated two nitrite-oxidising bacteria strains from abattoir wastewater and wastewater from biogas tanks of an industrial pig farm in Ha Tinh province. The bacteria strains grow, develop, and metabolise nitrite at pH 6–8 and 30–37 °C. The samples with the nitrite concentration up to 750 mg·L–1 were oxidised within four days of incubation, and the nitrite metabolism rate was proportional to the concentration of nitrite tested. Under severe conditions (salinity up to 3% NaCl, a low dissolved oxygen level of 0.1 mg·L–1), the two isolated bacterial strains exhibited their effective growth and nitrite metabolism capacity. The results enrich the database of nitrite-oxidising bacteria and are prospective in wastewater treatment

Investigation of anti-inflammatory lignans from the leaves of Symplocos sumuntia Buch-Ham ex D Don (Symplocaceae)

Purpose: To investigate the anti-inflammatory activity of Symplocos sumuntia Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don and identify the main secondary metabolites responsible for this effect.Methods: The in vitro anti-inflammatory activity of the plant extract and isolated compounds was determined in terms of the ability to inhibit the production of nitric oxide (NO), and expressions of iNOS and COX-2 proteins in RAW264.7 cells stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Compounds were isolated and identified by spectroscopic methods.Results: The methanol extract of S. sumuntia leaves showed strong inhibitory effects on nitric oxide (NO) production and expression of iNOS and COX-2 in LPS-induced RAW264.7 cells. A phytochemical assay-guided fractionation of the methanol extract of S. sumuntia leaves led to the isolation of four lignans which are arctigenin (1), matairesinol (2), monomethylpinoresinol (3) and pinoresinol (4). These compounds were identified for the first time from S. sumuntia. All four compounds inhibited the production of nitric oxide (NO), with arctigenin showing the most potent activity with half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) value of 4.08 μM.Conclusion: S. sumuntia is a promising source of anti-inflammatory agents, which may clarify to the therapeutic use of this plant in Vietamese traditional medicine.Keywords: Symplocos sumuntia, Symplocos caudata, Lignan, Arctigenin, Anti-inflammator