Is Nonfarm Diversification a Way Out of Poverty for Rural Households? Evidence from Vietnam in 1993-2006

school. Using the four high quality household living standards surveys available to date this paper reveals that Vietnam’s rural labour force has been markedly diversifying toward nonfarm activities in the doi moi (renovation) reform period. The employment share of the rural nonfarm sector has increased from 23 percent to 58 percent between the years 1993 and 2006. At the individual level, the results indicate that participation in the rural nonfarm sector is determined by a set of individual-, household-, and community-level characteristics. Gender, ethnicity, and education are reported as main individual-level drivers of nonfarm diversification. Lands as most important physical assets of rural households are found to be negative to nonfarm employment. It is also evident that both physical and institutional infrastructure exert important influences on individual participation in the nonfarm sector. At the household level, a combination of parametric and semi-parametric analysis is adopted to examine whether nonfarm diversification is a poverty exit path for rural households. This paper demonstrates a positive effect of nonfarm diversification on household welfare and this effect is robust to different estimation techniques, measures of nonfarm diversification, and the usage of equivalent scales. However, the poor is reported to benefit less than the non-poor from nonfarm activities. Though promoting a buoyant nonfarm sector is crucial for rural development and poverty reduction, it needs to be associated with enhancing access to nonfarm opportunities for the poor.Rural nonfarm sector, nonfarm diversification, household welfare, Vietnam

Stability of Cracked Plates with Nonlinearly Variable Thickness Resting on Elastic Foundations

In this paper, the stability of rectangular cracked plates with nonlinearly variable thickness resting on the elastic foundations is studied. The thickness of the plate varies exponentially along the x-axis. Meanwhile, the elastic foundation is modeled by a two-parameter Pasternak elastic foundation type. The crack is assumed at the center of the plate with variable length and angle of inclination. The establishment of the stability equations of the cracked plate is based on the Higher Order Shear Deformation Theory (HSDT) combined with the phase field theory. Next, using the finite element method to solve the equations to find the minimum force that causes plate instability. To test the reliability of the computational theory, the results are compared with several reputable published papers. Then, the article will investigate the influence of elastic foundation, crack location, crack length and crack inclination on the stability of plate. The results show that the elastic foundation has a great influence on the plate stability, while the crack inclination angle has less influence. Finally, there are some images of the destabilization patterns of cracked plates placed on an elastic foundation

Checking the Compliance of Business Process in Business Process Life Cycle

International audienceBusiness process compliance has become more and more important function for business process management (BPM). One of challenges in this area is to check the business process compliance in the business process life-cycle (design-time, run-time). In this paper, we propose a description logic-based approach for business process compliance checking during two phases of the business process life-cycle. In our approach, business process and the set of regulations are represented in a machine readable form. And we use that knowledge bases to check the compliance between them

A Ontology-based Approach for Business Process Compliance Checking

International audienceThe early detection of flaws and errors has become a significant feature of a business process modeling tool. This paper proposes an ontology-based approach for business process compliance checking. The business processes and the business rules are represented in a machine understandable form, a reasoner is used to reason on this knowledge base for detecting the potential semantic error by using a set of predefined rules

Stability of Cracked Plates with Nonlinearly Variable Thickness Resting on Elastic Foundations

In this paper, the stability of rectangular cracked plates with nonlinearly variable thickness resting on the elastic foundations is studied. The thickness of the plate varies exponentially along the x-axis. Meanwhile, the elastic foundation is modeled by a two-parameter Pasternak elastic foundation type. The crack is assumed at the center of the plate with variable length and angle of inclination. The establishment of the stability equations of the cracked plate is based on the Higher Order Shear Deformation Theory (HSDT) combined with the phase field theory. Next, using the finite element method to solve the equations to find the minimum force that causes plate instability. To test the reliability of the computational theory, the results are compared with several reputable published papers. Then, the article will investigate the influence of elastic foundation, crack location, crack length and crack inclination on the stability of plate. The results show that the elastic foundation has a great influence on the plate stability, while the crack inclination angle has less influence. Finally, there are some images of the destabilization patterns of cracked plates placed on an elastic foundation

Robust control for a wheeled mobile robot to track a predefined trajectory in the presence of unknown wheel slips

In this paper, a robust controller for a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot (WMR) is proposed for tracking a predefined trajectory in the presence of unknown wheel slips, bounded external disturbances, and model uncertainties. The whole control system consists of two closed loops. Specifically, the outer one is employed to control the kinematics, and the inner one is used to control the dynamics. The output of kinematic controller is adopted as the input of the inner (dynamic) closed loop. Furthermore, two robust techniques were utilized to assure the robustness. In particular, one is used in the kinematic controller to compensate the harmful effects of the unknown wheel slips, and the other is used in the dynamic controller to overcome the model uncertainties and bounded external disturbances. Thanks to this proposed controller, a desired tracking performance in which tracking errors converge asymptotically to zero is obtained. According to Lyapunov theory and LaSalle extension, the desired tracking performance is guaranteed to be achieved. The results of computer simulation have shown the validity and efficiency of the proposed controller

A Rule-Based Language for Integrating Business Processes and Business Rules

International audienceBusiness process modeling has become a popular method for improving organizational efficiency and quality. Automatic validation of process models is one of the most valuable features of modeling tools, in face of the increasing complexity of enterprise business processes and the richness of modeling languages. This paper proposes a formal language, Event-Condition-Action-Event (ECAE), for integrating Colored Petri Nets (CPN)-based business process with a set of business rules. We automate the integration process for validating the business process model. The ECAE language has several important features: its reasoning capabilities, its ability to express complex actions and events, and its declarative semantics. By enabling simulation of business process behavior, the reasoning capabilities facilitate the early detection of flaws The widespread use of business process modeling has helped enterprises to design, control and analyze many operational processes. Unfortunately, syntactic and semantic inconsistencies often appear in business process models, especially as the complexity of the models increases. Flaw detection and automation are essential for ensuring cost-effective and correct process models. The challenge for system designers is to build a flexible intelligent system, which accepts and verifies the change on business process and business rules automatically. The business process must be integrated with a set of business rules, and a correspondence between the process and the rules must be created. This must be flexible since the business process and the business rules may be modified during runtime. The verification should be a rule-based system, which can reason and deduce new knowledge or a new decision based on a set of rules and facts. This paper proposes a formal language ECAE for business process modeling, which takes advantage of both the graphical representation of colored Petri nets and the easy to represent ECA rule. It designs a business process model through CPN and translate