Does Heterogeneity in Transfer Pricing Regulation affect Foreign Direct Investment?

Does multinational firm take advantage of arbitrage opportunities when heterogeneity in transfer pricing regulations exist between home and host country? Using data on U.S. based multinational firms’ reinvestment earnings abroad as a proxy for FDI activity, provided by the BEA Survey of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad and the Balance of Payments Survey, we analyze the effect of transfer pricing regulation of multination firm FDI’s decision. The analysis results provide no empirical evidence that differences in transfer pricing regulation between home and host country affect FDI activity by U.S. based multinational firms. Host country’s specific characteristics such as market size, distant from the U.S., trade openness, as well as tax rates differential seem to be the primarily determinants of FDI activity

Comparing the effectiveness of online and onsite learning in English proficiency classes: Learners’ perspectives

Online education has significantly gained popularity due to new technology and more importantly, the growing impact of the digitalization of the economy. Despite its prominent advantages such as accessibility, affordability and flexibility, the effectiveness of online education is still a constant debate and needs extensive investigations in different research contexts. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of online learning in comparison to traditional learning in the context of English language teaching. This descriptive study was undertaken with learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in English proficiency preparation classes, employing an online questionnaire together with final scores of proficiency tests. The results revealed that the participants had relatively positive perceptions towards online learning in all four aspects: course content, teachers, learning environment and course supports. The significant finding was that when comparing the final results of the VSTEP exams, the online learners generally were able to perform better than the learners in traditional classrooms, though the difference was not largely remarkable. Online education in the new normal will continue to excel and the effectiveness of this learning mode certainly needs further investigation from different perspectives

Recycling and Recharging of Supreme Garnet in Abrasive Waterjet Machining

Abrasive waterjet (AWJ) technology is widely used for cutting technical materials, cleaning contaminated surfaces, polishing hard-to-machine materials, etc. However, its main disadvantage is high cutting cost. Therefore, recycling and recharging abrasives used in the AWJ cutting process have been subject to many studies. This chapter presents a study on the recycling and recharging of Supreme garnet (or IMC garnet) in abrasive waterjet machining. In this study, the reusability of the recycled and recharged garnet was explored. Also, the cutting performance and the cutting quality of the recycled and recharged abrasive were investigated. Finally, the optimum particle size for recycling and recharging was found

Trade Liberalization and Development in ICT Sector and its impact on household welfare in Viet Nam

The ICT sector in Viet Nam had not been developed until the 1980s. However, over the last decade of rapid growth, it has had a powerful impact on many aspects of life in this country. Although the ICT sector is still at an early stage of development and lags behind many other countries in the region, the government of Viet Nam made strong commitments to upgrade the nation’s ICT capability and implemented significant reforms in terms of trade and investment liberalization in ICT sector over the last decade.Trade Liberalization, ICT, Household welfare, Viet Nam

Simulation of non‑dilute fibre suspensions using RBF‑based macro–micro multiscale method

The multiscale stochastic simulation method based on the marriage of the Brownian Configuration Field (BCF) and the Radial Basis Function mesh-free approximation for dilute fibre suspensions by our group, is further developed to simulate non-dilute fibre suspensions. For the present approach, the macro and micro processes proceeded at each time step are linked to each other by a fibre contributed stress formula associated with the used kinetic model. Due to the feature of non-dilute fibre suspensions, the interaction between fibres is introduced into the evolution equation to determine fibre configurations using the BCF method. The fibre stresses are then determined based on the fibre configuration fields using the Phan–Thien–Graham model. The efficiency of the simulation method is demonstrated by the analysis of the two challenging problems, the axisymmetric contraction and expansion flows, for a range of the fibre concentration from semi-dilute to concentrated regimes. Results evidenced by numerical experiments show that the present method would be potential in analysing and simulating various suspensions in food and medical industries

Growth, survival and food utilization efficiency of longfin batfish (<em>Platax teira</em> Forsskål, 1775) larvae reared under different salinity levels

Salinity is crucial in fish larval rearing. In longfin batfish (Platax teira), little research has been conducted regarding the specific effects of salinity on growth, survival, deformity, and food utilization efficiency. This study aimed to determine the optimal salinity level for larval rearing of the longfin batfish by testing five different salinity levels (10, 15, 20, 25, and 30‰). Larvae of 1.5 cm in length and 0.2 g/fish in weight were stocked in cylindrical fiberglass tanks (300 L) at a density of 1 fish/L. The fish were fed to meet their dietary requirement and divided into four daily feedings. Each treatment was replicated three times over a 28-day period of rearing. The results revealed that salinity significantly influenced the growth (length, weight, biomass), and food utilization efficiency of the longfin batfish larvae. Overall, larvae reared at salinity levels of 15-20‰ exhibited superior performance compared to those exposed to salinity levels of 10, 25, and 30‰. However, salinity did not affect the coefficient of variation, survival, and deformity. From these findings, it is recommended to rear longfin batfish larvae at a salinity of 15-20‰ to achieve optimal growth and food utilization efficiency. This study provides valuable insights for longfin batfish larval rearing guidance, contributing to the aquaculture development of this economically valuable species

Qsun: an open-source platform towards practical quantum machine learning applications

Currently, quantum hardware is restrained by noises and qubit numbers. Thus, a quantum virtual machine that simulates operations of a quantum computer on classical computers is a vital tool for developing and testing quantum algorithms before deploying them on real quantum computers. Various variational quantum algorithms have been proposed and tested on quantum virtual machines to surpass the limitations of quantum hardware. Our goal is to exploit further the variational quantum algorithms towards practical applications of quantum machine learning using state-of-the-art quantum computers. This paper first introduces our quantum virtual machine named Qsun, whose operation is underlined by quantum state wave-functions. The platform provides native tools supporting variational quantum algorithms. Especially using the parameter-shift rule, we implement quantum differentiable programming essential for gradient-based optimization. We then report two tests representative of quantum machine learning: quantum linear regression and quantum neural network.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

CDIO-based teaching at universities: A case study for students majoring in electrical and electronic engineering technology, Vietnam

In the 1980s of the twentieth century, universities in developed countries began to realize the growing gap between the capabilities of new graduate engineers and the actual requirements of engineering branches. The strong progress of technology requires engineers to have the intellectual abilities and necessary job-specific skills to master that progress. This paper focuses on Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate (CDIO) approach-based teaching for students majoring in electrical and electronic engineering technology at engineering universities in Vietnam to demonstrate the feasibility of the teaching model. The experimental method of synthesizing qualitative and quantitative results for 90 students in control and experimental classes was used. The experimental and control classes both had 45 students. SPSS software version&nbsp;22 was used to gather data and evaluate the learning results of the two experimental and control groups. According to the findings of the T-test analysis of the independent variables for the two groups, the experimental class performed better in academics and had students in the experimental group who were more satisfied with their post-test scores. This result contributes to confirm that the use of the CDIO-based teaching model in Vietnam is effective for students majoring in electrical and electronic engineering technology

Robust and Hierarchical Stop Discovery in Sparse and Diverse Trajectories

The advance of GPS tracking technique brings a large amount of trajectory data. To better understand such mobility data, semantic models like “stop/move” (or inferring “activity”, “transportation mode”) recently become a hot topic for trajectory data analysis. Stops are important parts of tra- jectories, such as “working at office”, “shopping in a mall”, “waiting for the bus”. There are several methods such as velocity, clustering, density algorithms being designed to discover stops. However, existing works focus on well-defined trajectories like movement of vehicle and taxi, not working well for heterogeneous cases like diverse and sparse trajectories. On the contrary, our paper addresses three main challenges: (1) provide a robust clustering-based method to discover stops; (2) discover both shared stops and personalized stops, where shared stops are the common places where many trajectories pass and stay for a while (e.g. shopping mall), whilst personalized stops are individual places where user stays for his/her own purpose (e.g. home, office); (3) further build stop hierarchy (e.g. a big stop like EPFL campus and a small stop like an office building). We evaluate our approach with several diverse and spare real-life GPS data, compare it with other methods, and show its better data abstraction on trajectory

Burden of diarrheal diseases from biogas wastewater exposure among smallholder farmers in Ha Nam province, Vietnam

Livestock production has developed rapidly in Vietnam in recent years, particularly at the small-scale which account for 65% of the total livestock production. Biogas systems are commonly used to treat livestock waste, however, the health risks from biogas wastewater exposure at smallholder farms are not yet well understood. A quantitative microbial risk assessment approach was applied to estimate the burden of diarrheal diseases from biogas wastewater exposure among 451 smallholder farmers using biogas systems in Ha Nam province. A total of 150 biogas wastewater samples were collected and analysed for E. coli, Giardia, and Cryptosporidium. The study showed that farmers faced diarrheal disease risks due to exposure to biogas wastewater at different exposure scenarios. The calculated annual risk of diarrheal disease by E. coli ranked from 0.15 to 0.21; by Giardia ranked from 0.022 to 0.095; and by Cryptosporidium ranked from 0.006 to 0.015. The estimated diarrheal diseases burden from pathogens in all exposure scenarios largely exceeded the reference level of health outcome target of 10-6DALYs loss per person per year recommended by WHO. The results suggest the importance in reducing concentrations of pathogens in biogas wastewater before use in the fields as a means for mitigating public health impacts