CO2 methanation on hydrotalcite-derived catalysts and structured reactors: A review

CO2 methanation reaction has attracted renewed interest since the power-to-gas (PtG) concept emerged as a promising alternative for CO2 emission abatement using surplus renewable electricity. Although the reaction has been reported for more than a century, improvements in the catalytic system and reactor design remain challenging. Recently, hydrotalcite (HT) materials known for their facile synthesis and high performance are extensively used as precursors for supported catalysts in a wide range of reactions, including CO2 hydrogenation to CH4. Herein, a comprehensive overview on HT-derived catalysts applied for CO2 methanation is provided. More importantly, new reactor concepts are extensively investigated, such as honeycomb and microchannel reactors, to overcome issues related to the high exothermic nature of the reaction. The latest achievements with respect to structured reactors are also comprehensively reviewed and thoroughly discussed.publishedVersio

Students’ Perceptions and Design Considerations of Flipped Interpreting Classroom

Digital technologies have become a driver of change that exerts tremendous impact across the disciplines, including education. The Flipped classroom model, carried out in a technology-enhanced environment, has been proven to bring educational innovations.  However, in the Vietnamese educational context, the adoption of the flipped model in interpreting courses for undergraduate students has been hardly touched upon in the existing literature. This current study is, therefore, an attempt to examine English-majored students’ perceptions about this teaching model on Moodle Learning Management Platform and put forward some proposals in the design and implementation of the Flipped Interpreting course. The data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative methods, including a Likert-scale questionnaire and individual interviews. The results revealed that students had positive perceptions toward the adoption of Flipped model and Moodle platform. Analyzing the interconnection of three domains in CoI framework and the additional domain of Technology Use, the authors then offer further recommendations for effective implementation of the model in the EFL classroom context

MOTIVATION TO STUDY ENGLISH OF NON-ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN

Motivation is regarded as an influential factor in the success of any activity. It plays a significant role in reaching the desired goals, including learning English. This research aims to analyze the students' motivation and factors affecting their motivation to learn English. The population of this study was 326 freshmen in nine faculties of natural sciences at Tay Do University. The quantitative data was collected through the questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS software. The results show that the students had motivation to learn English, but their motivation levels were not high. Additionally, the students had both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. However, the latter was higher than the former. Moreover, the results also indicate factors affecting learners’ motivation. The research findings contribute to improving English teaching and learning quality in Vietnam in general and in Tay Do University in particular. Article visualizations

SEROTYPES, TOXINS AND ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE OF Escherichia coli (E.COLI) STRAINS ISOLATED FROM DIARRHEIC RABBITS IN PHU VANG, THUA THIEN HUE

This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of E. coli in rabbits, their biochemical and serological characteristics, common virulence genes, and antibiotic resistance. The diarrhea rabbit feces were collected from households and rabbit farms in Phu Vang - Thua Thien Hue with a total of 250 samples for testing. The results showed that rabbits age from 31 to 45 days old had the highest incidence of diarrhea disease caused by E.coli (92.0%) and the lowest infection rate was observed in rabbits over 60 days old with an infection rate of 30%. Further, the isolated E.coli strains tested biochemical characteristics showed 100% motile, positive for indole and methyl red, fermenting glucose and lactose. Simultaneously these strains were detected belong to 7 serotypes O103, O157, O158, O169, O44, O125, O153 and susceptible to cefuroxime (95.45%), akamicin (86.37%), streptomycin (81.82%), amoxicillin (81.82%), tetracycline (68.18%), colistin (68.18%), ampicillin (63.63%), gentamycin (59.10%) and levofloxacin (50.0%), whilst resistant to doxycycline (100%), sulfamethoxazole-bactrim (95.46%), and neomycin (86.37%). By using PCR assay for detection of virulence genes of the isolated E. coli strains, there were 7 strains carried virulence genes, of which 4/7 E. coli strains carried eaeA and tsh genes (57.14%), 2/7 strains carried stx2 gene (28.57%); 1/7 E. coli strains carried stx1 gene (14.28%) and the F4, F5 and F6 genes were not found in all serotypes in this study

Sovereign bonds and flight to safety: Implications of the COVID-19 crisis for sovereign debt markets in the G-7 and E-7 economies

This study investigates the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for sovereign debt in the G-7 and E-7 economies and explores the notion of sovereign bonds as a safe haven. Using a set of panel regression and dynamic connectedness TVP-VAR approaches, our results reveal that the impact of COVID-19 global case numbers on sovereign bonds has been contingent on the level of the country's financial and economic development. More precisely, our findings suggest that G-7 countries, where economic development is typically higher, have seen a negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on sovereign bond yield: sovereign 10-year bond yields declined as the number of COVID-19 global confirmed cases increased in G-7 countries. However, in E-7 countries, where economic growth and development are typically lower, sovereign bond yields responded positively to the initial increase in COVID-19 global confirmed case numbers, but this positive effect is not statistically significant. We also find that the G-7 and E-7 economies have a strong time-varying connectedness in relation to their bond markets and this effect is more pronounced in G-7 economies. Daily Infectious Disease Equity Market Volatility is likely to be the strongest predictor of total connectedness. Concomitantly, we shed new light on the predictive power of the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths, and the Daily Infectious Disease Equity Market Volatility Tracker on the interdependence of these sovereign bond markets. Overall, this paper highlights the heterogeneous effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on sovereign bond yields in G-7 and E-7 countries and the notion that the developed economies, with their developed sovereign bond markets, are still seen as a safe haven during times of crisis

BIOSTIMULATION METHOD IN SHORELINE CLEAN-UP-AN APPROACH OF COASTAL ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT IN RESPONSE TO OIL-SPILL HAZARD-CASE STUDY GANH RAI GULF-VIET NAM

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart

Topic Modelling Meets Deep Neural Networks: A Survey

Topic modelling has been a successful technique for text analysis for almost twenty years. When topic modelling met deep neural networks, there emerged a new and increasingly popular research area, neural topic models, with over a hundred models developed and a wide range of applications in neural language understanding such as text generation, summarisation and language models. There is a need to summarise research developments and discuss open problems and future directions. In this paper, we provide a focused yet comprehensive overview of neural topic models for interested researchers in the AI community, so as to facilitate them to navigate and innovate in this fast-growing research area. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first review focusing on this specific topic.Comment: A review on Neural Topic Model

Tuning the interfacial sites between copper and metal oxides (Zn, Zr, In) for CO2 hydrogenation to methanol

The influence of different metal oxides (ZnO, ZrO2, In2O3) in CO2 hydrogenation to methanol over Cu-based catalysts was studied. The catalysts were characterized using x-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), N2-physisorption, N2O chemisorption, H2 temperature-programmed reduction (H2-TPR), and CO2 temperature-programmed desorption (CO2-TPD). It was found that impregnating ZrO2 onto Cu/ZnO enhances the methanol formation rate from 14.7 mmol∙gcat−1∙h−1 to 15.6 mmol∙gcat−1∙h−1 (230 °C, 30 bar, 38 000 cm3/(gcat h)), which is attributed to the formation of Cu-ZrO2 sites. The results also indicate that In-doping of the Cu-based catalysts generates CuxIny alloys, which seems to inhibit the active sites on the Cu surface. However, new sites for methanol synthesis are present when Cu/ZrO2/In2O3 is prepared by co-precipitation. This is attributed to In-Zr mixed oxide species that increases the methanol formation rate from 53.2 mmol∙gcat−1∙h−1 to 60.5 mmol∙gcat−1∙h−1 (270 °C, 30 bar, 140 000 cm3/(gcat h)).publishedVersio

Drought stress - related functional characterization of transcription factor GmNAC085 in soybean

Studies on soybean GmNAC085 transcription factor revealed that the gene expression in plants was induced by water shortage treatments and its overexpression in the model plant Arabidopsis displayed improved plant tolerance characteristics towards drought stress. In this study, we continued analyzing the biological functions of GmNAC085 using transgenic soybean system overexpressing GmNAC085 gene, by targeting at a number of plant physiological features and biochemical activities in response to limited water growing condition. Compared to the wild-type, the transgenic line demonstrated that it possessed stress tolerance characters, including enhanced elongation of taproot, minimized reduction of shoot growth, lower intracellular H2O2 content and stronger peroxidase enzyme activity under drought condition. The results of this study therefore suggest the transgenic plants had better drought tolerance and the GmNAC085 plays important role in aiding plants to cope with water deficit condition, probably via regulating the growth of roots and shoots, and activities of reactive-oxygen-species- scavenging enzymes