ASSESSING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR TOWARDS FISH SAUCE PRODUCTS BY USING FOOD CHOICE QUESTIONNAIRE

This study aims to assess Vietnamese consumer behavior towards fish sauce product. It consists of two experiments. In the first experiment, consumer concept was explored using word association method. It was performed on 300 Vietnamese consumers with the prompt word as “fish sauce”. The data were analyzed by a triangulation method. The results evoke six factors associated with fish sauce as Sensory Appeal, Health, Price, Convenience, Traditional Value, Quality and Safety. These findings were the starting point for a modification of food choice questionnaire (FCQ) adapted to fish sauce product. In the second experiment, the modified FCQ with 18 items was used to assess the consumer behavior. The survey was performed on 300 Vietnamese consumers. The data were analyzed by using Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The obtained model with five factors was adapted to fish sauce for Vietnamese consumers ( = 1.67, GFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.92, RSME = 0.47). In this, Sensory Appeal is the most important factor which might affect consumer food choice motivations. We expect that these results will be useful for the local manufacturers who want to develop traditional food products and/or enlarge national market

Contribution à la conception d'un système d'identification et de classification de véhicules par les ondes électromagnétiques

Les activités de transport de passagers et de marchandises augmentent sans cesse dans le monde et en particulier dans l'Union Européenne, entre autres au bord des péages. Afin d'améliorer la fluidité et réduire les risques d encombrements, une des solutions consiste à rendre les péages plus performants. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'améliorer la performance des systèmes d'identification de véhicules et de contribuer à la conception d'un système de classification des types de véhicules par ondes électromagnétiques pour application au télépéage. Ce système permet un paiement automatique sans arrêt des véhicules. La première partie de la thèse est consacrée à l'étude de deux systèmes d'identification de véhicules : RFID UHF et DSRC. Notre recherche s'est focalisée sur l'augmentation de la distance de communication ainsi que sur la réduction de la taille et du prix du système grâce à 5 nouvelles antennes à bas coûts, très directives et faciles à industrialiser. La deuxième partie est consacrée à l'étude d'un système de classification à distance des différents types de véhicules, basé sur les ondes diffusées par les véhicules. Il détecte la présence d'un véhicule et mesure la distance entre ce véhicule et le système avec une bonne précision. Ce système est basé sur la technique de radar Ultra-Large-Bande. Le signal émis est une impulsion monocyle de très courte durée. Dans cette partie, nous proposons et testons trois méthodes de classification de véhicules dans un environnement proche du milieu routier.The activities of passenger and goods transport are constantly increasing worldwide and especially in the European Union, including the edge of tolls. To improve the fluidity and reduce the risk of congestion, one of the solutions is automatic toll payments. The objective of this thesis is to enhance the performance of vehicle identification systems and to contribute to develop a design of a classification vehicles system by using electromagnetic waves for free-flow electronic toll collection system application. This system allows an automatic payment without stopping vehicles. The first part of this thesis deals with the study of two vehicle identification systems: UHF RFID and DSRC. Five new antennas were realized with the purpose to increase the communication range as well as to reduce the size and cost of the system. They are high gain and easy to be industrialized. The second part of this thesis is devoted to the study of a classification of different types of vehicles from the scattered waves captured by the system. Three methods of vehicle classification are proposed and tested in the road environment. Such system detects the presence of vehicle and measures the distance between vehicle and itself with a good accuracy. The principle of the system is based on Ultra-Wideband radar technology in which transmitting signal with a very short duration pulse is used.SAVOIE-SCD - Bib.électronique (730659901) / SudocGRENOBLE1/INP-Bib.électronique (384210012) / SudocGRENOBLE2/3-Bib.électronique (384219901) / SudocSudocFranceF

Topology optimization of periodic lattice structures taking into account strain gradient

International audienceWe present a topology optimization for lattice structures in the case of non-separated scales, i.e. when the characteristic dimensions of the periodic unit cells in the lattice are not much smaller than the dimensions of the whole structure. The present method uses a coarse mesh corresponding to a homogenized medium taking into strain gradient through a non-local numerical homogenization method. Then, the topological optimization procedure only uses the values at the nodes of the coarse mesh, reducing drastically the computational times. We show that taking into account the strain gradient within the topological optimization procedure brings significant increase in the resulting stiffness of the optimized lattice structure when scales are not separated, as compared to using a homogenized model based on the scale separation assumption

Physicochemical and Biological Characteristics of Shrimp Pond Sludge in the Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

This study has been carried out to analyze the physical and biological indicators of shrimp pond sludge samples obtained from the Phu Vang and Phu Loc districts of the Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam. All standard methodologies have been used to analyze the selected parameters like pH, organic carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphate, and microbial density.  The results of the study revealed that the sludge was characterized by a neutral to alkaline pH (6.9 - 7.5), and the total organic carbon content was in the range of 103.8–173.5 mg/kg. The sludge was rich in organic matter (17.8–29.9%), total nitrogen (13.5–32.5 g/kg), and total phosphate (7.9-20.1 g/kg). Further, in the case of the microbial density of pathogenic microorganisms, the density of total bacteria, coliform, E.coli, Salmonella spp., Vibrio spp., and Clostridium spp. was also estimated at two opposing weather conditions (spring, February to March; summer, June to July). The microbial community increased rapidly during the cool spring months. The total bacterial levels were recorded as 8.77 log10 CFU/mL in the Phu Loc district and 9.11 log10 CFU/mL in the Phu Vang district. The levels decreased during the hot summer months, and the level of total bacteria, Coliform, E.coli, Salmonella spp., and Vibrio was reported 2.57, 1.49, 1.06, 0.56, and l2.54 log10 CFU/mL respectively from the Phu Loc district of Vietnam. The results obtained using the anaerobic decomposition model showed that on the 60th day, the amount of CH4 generated at the high output value for the Phu Vang district was 22385 ppm. The results reported here revealed that CH4 gas can be potentially produced from shrimp waste sludge in this province

Open-Vocabulary Affordance Detection in 3D Point Clouds

Affordance detection is a challenging problem with a wide variety of robotic applications. Traditional affordance detection methods are limited to a predefined set of affordance labels, hence potentially restricting the adaptability of intelligent robots in complex and dynamic environments. In this paper, we present the Open-Vocabulary Affordance Detection (OpenAD) method, which is capable of detecting an unbounded number of affordances in 3D point clouds. By simultaneously learning the affordance text and the point feature, OpenAD successfully exploits the semantic relationships between affordances. Therefore, our proposed method enables zero-shot detection and can be able to detect previously unseen affordances without a single annotation example. Intensive experimental results show that OpenAD works effectively on a wide range of affordance detection setups and outperforms other baselines by a large margin. Additionally, we demonstrate the practicality of the proposed OpenAD in real-world robotic applications with a fast inference speed (~100ms). Our project is available at https://openad2023.github.io.Comment: Accepted to The 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023

Data frauds, health risks, and the growing question of ethics during the COVID-19 pandemic

In this essay, we advocate that the issue of health data ethics should no longer be considered on the level of individual scientists or research labs, but rather as a problem involving all stakeholders, from publishers, funders, ethical committees to governments, for the sake of research integrity

Exploring the effects of paranormal belief and gender on precognition task: An application of the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework on parapsychological research

Precognition is an anomaly in information transmission and interpretation. Extant literature suggests that paranormal beliefs and gender may have significant influences on this unknown information process. This study examines the effects of these two factors, including their interactions, on precognition performance by employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics. Using Bayesian analysis on secondary data of 60 participants, we found that men may have higher chances to score a hit in a precognition task compared to women. Interestingly, stronger beliefs in the paranormal may decrease the success probability in performing precognition tasks. Considering the interactions between the two factors, the effect of paranormal beliefs on precognition task performance is stronger in men than women. Using mindsponge-based reasoning, we argue that paranormal beliefs may increase the interference of imagination in the reception of hypothetical precognitive information. Women tend to rely more on intuition, which may lessen the interference effect of imagination on hypothetical psi reception. Based on the findings, we suggest that researchers should be careful when assessing participants’ psi potential for experiments. We also demonstrate some advantages of utilizing the BMF in parapsychological research

Environments and cultures that nurture serendipity strikes

Based on the properties and mechanism of serendipity presented in former chapters, this chapter discusses how to create an environment for higher serendipity encounters and attainment possibilities. We examine four types of environments with different navigational and useful information concentration combinations. Building a pro-serendipity culture will help create environments that value and supports serendipity across fields. Additionally, we also address the notion that serendipity is a skill. Thus, it can produce either good or bad impacts on a collective level, depending on the ultimate purposes behind it