Effects of different feeds and stocking densities on growth and survival rates of mud crab (<em>Scylla paramamosain</em>) at the stage from megalopa to crablet-1

Mud crabs (Scylla genus) are luxury foods in high demand internationally. The efficient techniques for mud crab hatcheries are vital for providing breeds for their aquaculture, which is rapidly growing in many countries. This study aims to investigate the effects of different feeds and stocking densities on mud crabs' growth and survival rates (Scylla paramamosain) in the stage from megalopa to crablet-1 stage. Two separate experiments were conducted indoors in the 60-liter round plastic tanks (containing 50 liters of water at a 28‰ salinity). Experiment 1 investigated four feeds: frozen Artemia biomass, pureed shrimp meat, Lansy pellet feed (48% protein), and NRD pellet feed (55% protein). Megalopae (mean weight of 5.8 mg) were stocked at a density of 10/L. In experiment 2, the megalopae (mean weight of 5.4 mg) were stocked at densities of 20, 30, and 40/L and were fed the Lansy pellet feed, which was the best one selected from experiment 1. High survival rates were obtained at all four feeds (82.2–87.5%) and three stocking densities (88.4–90.1%). The growth performances in Lansy feed and frozen Artemia biomass were better than those in pureed shrimp meat and NRD pellet feed, which was seen through higher indicators of daily weight gain (DWG) and specific growth rate in weight (SGRw) (p p > 0.05). The investigated feeds and stocking densities suit the nursing mud crab (S. paramamosain) megalopa. In contrast, the Lansy pellet feeds had a stocking density of 20/L, resulting in the highest nursing efficiency

The impact of corporate social responsibility on the sustainable financial performance of Italian firms: mediating role of firm reputation

This research examines the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions (employee, customer, community, and environment) on the sustainable business performance of the manufacturing industry. Manifestly, the mediating impact of firm reputation is also analyzed between CSR and sustainable business performance. In doing so, we have collected primary data from Italian manufacturing firm’s employees using simple random sampling. Smart-PLS was used to test the reliability of the covariates and relationships among the variables. The results revealed that CSR has a positive association with firm reputation and sustainable business performance. The findings also indicated that firm reputation has a significant and positive association with sustainable business performance. Moreover, firm’s reputation plays a positive and significant mediating role between CSR and sustainable business performance. These results provide valuable recommendations

An efficient approach to measure the difficulty degree of practical programming exercises based on student performances

oai:ojs.www.rev-jec.org:article/282This study examines the generality of easy to hard practice questions in programming subjects. One of the most important contributions is to propose four new formulas for determining the difficulty degree of questions. These formulas aim to describe different aspects of difficulty degree from the learner's perspective instead of the instructor's subjective opinions. Then, we used clustering technique to group the questions into three easy, medium and difficult degrees. The results will be the baseline to consider the generality of the exercise sets according to each topic. The proposed solution is then tested on the data set that includes the results of the two subjects: Programming Fundamentals, Data Structures and Algorithms from Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology. The most important result is to suggest the instructors complete various degrees according to each topic for better evaluating student's performance

The Role of Cultural and Institutional Distances in International Trade

Despite the effectiveness of the observed barriers such as taxes and quotas to adjust bilateral trade, they are still not well supported by governments in general and the World Trade Organization in particular. Therefore, in recent years, unobserved barriers have been critical tools to modify the trade flows between nations worldwide. China’s exports account for a massive proportion of global trade. However, the role of cultural and institutional distance in China’s trade flow has not been much explored. This study analyzes the impact of cultural and institutional differences on China's exports between 2006-2017 by adopting a system-GMM estimator. The main findings are, first, that cultural and institutional differences between China and its trading partners reduce China's exports. Second, cultural and institutional distances have the strongest influence on China's exports to high-income countries, followed by low-income countries, and finally middle-income countries. Third, manufactured products are the most sensitive to cultural and institutional distances. Based on these findings, several policies for China, as well as for emerging economies in general, are suggested for reducing cultural and institutional distances and boosting their exports. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2023-07-02-015 Full Text: PD

Identifying the influence of airbag structure on driver injury during a crash using a dummy model

This study undertakes the analysis of collision scenario using a car model with a dummy and airbags, in the event of a direct collision with a hard wall, one of the necessary studies of passive safety. To describe in detail, the input conditions, a simulation problem of the driver's seat displacements was performed and this displacements data was exported as boundary conditions for the collision simulation. The results simulation crash show that the calculated energy values and simulation results are approximately the same (7.381E+07 and 7.367E+07), energy is converted from kinetic energy into internal energy of the elements. The airbag deployment simulation results are similar to NHTSA's previous research, both in terms of graph shape and maximum value. The impact of the collision incident on the driver is not excessively large, as evidenced by surveys on head (HIC&nbsp;300), thigh (F&nbsp;2.8&nbsp;kN), and neck (F3,098&nbsp;kN; T&nbsp;190&nbsp;Nm) injuries. However, the study proceeds to further analyze and assess the airbag's structure, examining its influence on these metrics, concluding that changes in the exhaust valve size (increase from 1000&nbsp;mm2 to 2000&nbsp;mm2) lead to a reduction in the evaluated parameters. These results suggest changes to the airbag structure to enhance driver safety, as well as a simpler simulation model to save analysis tim

Sub-National Institutions and Firm Survival in Vietnam

By combining two sets of survey data - provincial competitiveness index (PCI) from VNCI-VCCI and USAID and annual enterprise census from Vietnam General Statistics Office (GSO) for the period between 2005 and 2011, we estimate the effects of sub-national institutions measured by Provincial Competitiveness Index on firm survival in Vietnam. Our results show that sub-national institutions have a positive effect on firm’s survival in both short-run and long-run. The effect, however, diminishes over time, indicating that newly entered firms are more likely to survive

Sub-National Institutions and Firm Survival in Vietnam

By combining two sets of survey data - provincial competitiveness index (PCI) from VNCI-VCCI and USAID and annual enterprise census from Vietnam General Statistics Office (GSO) for the period between 2005 and 2011, we estimate the effects of sub-national institutions measured by Provincial Competitiveness Index on firm survival in Vietnam. Our results show that sub-national institutions have a positive effect on firm’s survival in both short-run and long-run. The effect, however, diminishes over time, indicating that newly entered firms are more likely to survive

The role of technological innovation and cleaner energy towards the environment in ASEAN countries: proposing a policy for sustainable development goals

The association between economic growth (EG) and environmental degradation (ED) has been highlighted extensively in prior studies. However, investigation regarding ‘technological innovation and clean energy role’ in dealing with environmental concerns has comprised limited context while considering the ASEAN economies under sustainable development goals. Therefore, the study attempts to investigate the phenomenon by using CS-ARDL analysis under short as well as long run. The findings through CSARDL in long- and short-run indicate that REN have impact carbon emission and ecological footprints negatively. Additionally, the EG in targeted economies is causing a higher level of CE and ecological footprints. Whereas, GDP2ofund to be significant in lowering the ED in the form of CE and ecological footprints. It is suggested that policies related to CE through EG should be developed in order to control the environmental issues in the future

Towards Efficient Communication and Secure Federated Recommendation System via Low-rank Training

Federated Recommendation (FedRec) systems have emerged as a solution to safeguard users' data in response to growing regulatory concerns. However, one of the major challenges in these systems lies in the communication costs that arise from the need to transmit neural network models between user devices and a central server. Prior approaches to these challenges often lead to issues such as computational overheads, model specificity constraints, and compatibility issues with secure aggregation protocols. In response, we propose a novel framework, called Correlated Low-rank Structure (CoLR), which leverages the concept of adjusting lightweight trainable parameters while keeping most parameters frozen. Our approach substantially reduces communication overheads without introducing additional computational burdens. Critically, our framework remains fully compatible with secure aggregation protocols, including the robust use of Homomorphic Encryption. The approach resulted in a reduction of up to 93.75% in payload size, with only an approximate 8% decrease in recommendation performance across datasets. Code for reproducing our experiments can be found at https://github.com/NNHieu/CoLR-FedRec.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 4 table