The Impact of Increased Import Competition from the People’s Republic of China on Income Inequality and Household Welfare in Viet Nam

This paper examines the surge of imports from the PRC to Viet Nam from 2000 to 2014 in order to evaluate the effects of increased exposure to trade with the PRC on income inequality and household welfare in Viet Nam. Using household level data from the Viet Nam Household Living Standard Survey and combining it with measures of trade exposure, we find that increased imports led to a fall in inequality at the provincial and district level. We distinguish between intermediate and final goods and find similar results. In order to better understand the relative gains and losses across income groups, we apply a quantile regression approach. Our results indicate that increased imports were more often positively correlated with household income for households located in the lower quantiles. In contrast, for households in the upper quantiles the correlation is either negative or less pronounced

HybridMingler: Towards Mixed-Reality Support for Mingling at Hybrid Conferences

Mingling, the activity of ad-hoc, private, opportunistic conversations ahead of, during, or after breaks, is an important socializing activity for attendees at scheduled events, such as in-person conferences. The Covid-19 pandemic had a dramatic impact on the way conferences are organized, so that most of them now take place in a hybrid mode where people can either attend on-site or remotely. While on-site attendees can resume in-person mingling, hybrid modes make it challenging for remote attendees to mingle with on-site peers. In addressing this problem, we propose a collaborative mixed-reality (MR) concept, including a prototype, called HybridMingler. This is a distributed MR system supporting ambient awareness and allowing both on-site and remote conference attendees to virtually mingle. HybridMingler aims to provide both on-site and remote attendees with a spatial sense of co-location in the very same venue location, thus ultimately improving perceived presence

Federated Deep Reinforcement Learning-based Bitrate Adaptation for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP

In video streaming over HTTP, the bitrate adaptation selects the quality of video chunks depending on the current network condition. Some previous works have applied deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms to determine the chunk's bitrate from the observed states to maximize the quality-of-experience (QoE). However, to build an intelligent model that can predict in various environments, such as 3G, 4G, Wifi, \textit{etc.}, the states observed from these environments must be sent to a server for training centrally. In this work, we integrate federated learning (FL) to DRL-based rate adaptation to train a model appropriate for different environments. The clients in the proposed framework train their model locally and only update the weights to the server. The simulations show that our federated DRL-based rate adaptations, called FDRLABR with different DRL algorithms, such as deep Q-learning, advantage actor-critic, and proximal policy optimization, yield better performance than the traditional bitrate adaptation methods in various environments.Comment: 13 pages, 1 colum

Effect of Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction on Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin chain in a longitudinal magnetic field

Using functional integral method for the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin chain with the added Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction in the presence of the longitudinal magnetic field, we find out expression for free energy of the spin chain via spin fluctuations, from which quantities characterize the antiferromagnetic order and phase transition such as staggered and total magnetizations derived. From that, we deduce the significant effect of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction on the reduction of the antiferromagnetic order and show that the total magnetization can be deviated from the initial one under the influence of canting of the spins due to a combination of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and the magnetic field. Besides, the remarkable role of the transverse spin fluctuations due to the above factors on the antiferromagnetic behaviours of the spin chain is also indicated. &nbsp

The evolution of social health insurance in Vietnam and its role towards achieving universal health coverage

Our research examines the development of social health insurance (SHI) in Vietnam between 1992 and 2016 and SHI's role as a financial mechanism towards achieving universal health coverage (UHC). We reviewed and analysed legislation from the Government of Vietnam (GoV) and performance data from the GoV and the World Bank. Stages of development were identified from legislative change leading to change in SHI functioning as a public financing mechanism: revenue collection, pooling of risk, and purchasing. Movement towards UHC was assessed relative to: population coverage, benefit coverage, and financial protection. Vietnam has implemented SHI through five stages: Stage I (1992–1998), Stage II (1998–2005), Stage III (2005–2008), Stage IV (2008–2014), and Stage V (2014 onwards). Coverage has widened from a compulsory scheme for civil servants and pensioners and a voluntary scheme for others, to a scheme that targets the entire population. However, UHC has not been achieved with 19% of the population uninsured in 2016 and high out-of-pocket payments. The benefit package includes a wide range of services and many expensive medications and considered to be generous. It is recommended that Vietnam focus on improving population coverage rather than further expanding the benefit package to achieve UHC

On the stability of standing waves of Klein-Gordon equations in a semiclassical regime

We investigate the orbital stability and instability of standing waves for two classes of Klein-Gordon equations in the semi-classical regime.Comment: 9 page

Synthesis and Photocatalytic Activity for Toluene Removal of CDs/TiO2 - Zeolite Y

Hydrothermally synthesized carbon nanodots (CDs) were impregnated on TiO2. The product (CDs/TiO2) was mechanically mixed with zeolite Y for application in toluene photocatalytic oxidation reaction under UV radiation. Material properties of the samples were investigated by different methods. Toluene vapor was chosen as a typical volatile organic compound to investigate the performance of CDs/TiO2 – zeolite Y photocatalyst when these technological parameters were changed: toluene concentration, gas flow rate, humidity and UV light intensity. In each reaction, only one parameter was changed and the remaining conditions were fixed. The toluene concentrations at the beginning and the end of each reaction were analyzed with the use of gas chromatography (GC). The results of different reaction conditions show the trends for toluene treatment of the CDs/TiO2 – zeolite Y catalyst, thereby providing specific explanations for these trends. The experiments also show that toluene removal is highest when the toluene concentration in the inlet gas is 314 ppmv, the flow rate is 3 L/h, the humidity is 60%, and the catalyst (CDs/TiO2 – zeolite Y composite with 70% zeolite in weight) is illuminated by 4 UV lamps. Copyright © 2022 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).

A nonlinear fractional Rayleigh–Stokes equation under nonlocal integral conditions

In this paper, we study the fractional nonlinear Rayleigh–Stokes equation under nonlocal integral conditions, and the existence and uniqueness of the mild solution to our problem are considered. The ill-posedness of the mild solution to the problem recovering the initial value is also investigated. To tackle the ill-posedness, a regularized solution is constructed by the Fourier truncation method, and the convergence rate to the exact solution of this method is demonstrated.This research was funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea under grant number NRF-2020K1A3A1A05101625 and received the support from the Institute of Construction and Environmental Engineering at Seoul National University

Transplanckian axions !?

We discuss quantum gravitational effects in Einstein theory coupled to periodic axion scalars to analyze the viability of several proposals to achieve superplanckian axion periods (aka decay constants) and their possible application to large field inflation models. The effects we study correspond to the nucleation of euclidean gravitational instantons charged under the axion, and our results are essentially compatible with (but independent of) the Weak Gravity Conjecture, as follows: Single axion theories with superplanckian periods contain gravitational instantons inducing sizable higher harmonics in the axion potential, which spoil superplanckian inflaton field range. A similar result holds for multi-axion models with lattice alignment (like the Kim-Nilles-Peloso model). Finally, theories with $N$ axions can still achieve a moderately superplanckian periodicity (by a $\sqrt{N}$ factor) with no higher harmonics in the axion potential. The Weak Gravity Conjecture fails to hold in this case due to the absence of some instantons, which are forbidden by a discrete $\mathbf{Z}_N$ gauge symmetry. Finally we discuss the realization of these instantons as euclidean D-branes in string compactifications.Comment: 46 pages, 6 figures. Added references, clarifications, and missing factor of 1/2 to instanton action. Conclusions unchange