An Examination of Social Adaptation Processes of Vietnamese Adolescents

The purpose of the study was to examine the factors that affect the ways in which Vietnamese youth feel about themselves and their place in society. More specifically, the purpose was to determine the relationship between sociocultural factors (L e. language proficiency, length of residence, socioeconomic class, ethnic identity, and cultural continuity) and such person-oriented variables as depression and alienation. Thrity-one college and fifteen high school students responded to a series of questions about themselves, family, relationships, personality, and achievement motivation. It was found that perceived problems with one\u27s ethnic group, cultural continuity, and parental attitudes toward schooling significantly predicted depression. Degree of attachment to one\u27s ethnic community, English speaking and writing abilities, and outlets for derpession tended to predict future outlook or feelings of hope versus alienation. Several variables were highly predictive of acculturation. Some of those variables are native language ability, English speaking and writing ability, outlets for depression, and perceived problems with one\u27s ethnic group. Implications of the findings for Vietnamese youth and future directions are discussed

High affinity and temperature sensitivity of blood oxygen binding in <em>Pangasianodon hypophthalmus</em> due to lack of chloride-hemoglobin allosteric interaction

Air-breathing fishes represent interesting organisms in terms of understanding the physiological changes associated with the terrestrialization of vertebrates, and, further, are of great socio-economic importance for aquaculture in Southeast Asia. To understand how environmental factors, such as high temperature, affect O2transport in air-breathing fishes, this study assessed the effects of temperature on O2binding of blood and Hb in the economically important air-breathing fish Pangasianodon hypophthalmus. To determine blood O2binding properties, blood was drawn from resting cannulated fishes and O2binding curves made at 25°C and 35°C. To determine the allosteric regulation and thermodynamics of Hb O2binding, Hb was purified, and O2equilibria were recorded at five temperatures in the absence and presence of ATP and Cl−. Whole blood had a high O2affinity (O2tension at half saturation P50= 4.6 mmHg at extracellular pH 7.6 and 25°C), a high temperature sensitivity of O2binding (apparent heat of oxygenation Δ Happ= −28.3 kcal/mol), and lacked a Root effect. Further, the data on Hb revealed weak ATP binding and a complete lack of Cl−binding to Hb, which, in part, explains the high O2affinity and high temperature sensitivity of blood O2binding. This study demonstrates how a potent mechanism for increasing O2affinity is linked to increased temperature sensitivity of O2transport and provides a basic framework for a better understanding of how hypoxia-adapted species will react to increasing temperatures.</jats:p

Analysing Bottlenecks in the Logistics flow of Finnish Freight Forwarding Companies : a study on efficiency and optimization.

Bottlenecks within the freight forwarding industry, which disrupt the smooth flow of goods, may results in delays, increased costs, and dissatisfied customers. Therefore, this study aims to identify these bottlenecks in sea transportation of selected freight forwarding companies in Finland and suggests potential improvements in efficiency and optimisation. The chosen method is qualitative with an inductive approach where common ground theories and themes are identified and organised in the analysing process. Data is collected from four open-ended, semi-structured interviews with sea freight experts from respective companies. From that, the author seeks to answer the research questions by thematising and evaluating the received answers. The main findings are categorised based on the three-flow model in logistics. In information flow, delays, errors, and added costs are the effects caused by a non-universal and non-standardised information system. Material flow bottlenecks remain in the difficulties in tracking shipment’s status and congestions at ports. In capital flow, fluctuated freight rates and potential money risk when operating with certain partners are considered to be challenging for freight forwarders. According to these bottlenecks, suggestions for efficiency and optimisation improvement are given, with an emphasis on the development of information flow by utilising AI and recent technology in the field. The results are somewhat surprising and unexpected, as there were few previous studies regarding this specific transport mode to compare with. Due to its limited scope in focusing only on sea freight, the work offers good opportunities for future studies in risk management of other modes such as air, road, and railway transport in Finland as well as other Nordics countries

Increased circulating ANG II and TNF-α represents important risk factors in obese Saudi adults with hypertension irrespective of diabetic status and BMI

Central adiposity is a significant determinant of obesity-related hypertension risk, which may arise due to the pathogenic inflammatory nature of the abdominal fat depot. However, the influence of pro-inflammatory adipokines on blood pressure in the obese hypertensive phenotype has not been well established in Saudi subjects. As such, our study investigated whether inflammatory factors may represent useful biomarkers to delineate hypertension risk in a Saudi cohort with and without hypertension and/or diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2). Subjects were subdivided into four groups: healthy lean controls (age: 47.9±5.1 yr; BMI: 22.9±2.1 Kg/m2), non-hypertensive obese (age: 46.1±5.0 yr; BMI: 33.7±4.2 Kg/m2), hypertensive obese (age: 48.6±6.1 yr; BMI: 36.5±7.7 Kg/m2) and hypertensive obese with DMT2 (age: 50.8±6.0 yr; BMI: 35.3±6.7 Kg/m2). Anthropometric data were collected from all subjects and fasting blood samples were utilized for biochemical analysis. Serum angiotensin II (ANG II) levels were elevated in hypertensive obese (p<0.05) and hypertensive obese with DMT2 (p<0.001) compared with normotensive controls. Systolic blood pressure was positively associated with BMI (p<0.001), glucose (p<0.001), insulin (p<0.05), HOMA-IR (p<0.001), leptin (p<0.01), TNF-α (p<0.001) and ANG II (p<0.05). Associations between ANG II and TNF-α with systolic blood pressure remained significant after controlling for BMI. Additionally CRP (p<0.05), leptin (p<0.001) and leptin/adiponectin ratio (p<0.001) were also significantly associated with the hypertension phenotype. In conclusion our data suggests that circulating pro-inflammatory adipokines, particularly ANG II and, TNF-α, represent important factors associated with a hypertension phenotype and may directly contribute to predicting and exacerbating hypertension risk

Studies on semi-cylindrical solar tunnel dryer for drying wastewater sludge

Drying plays an important process for wastewater sludge management, as it can minimise the volume of wastewater sludge before disposal, and consequently the cost of storage, handling and transport. In this study, the wastewater sludge was dried by using a solar tunnel greenhouse drying system. The performance of the dryer for drying wastewater sludge has been analyzed through no load and full load test. The three full load drying tests recorded that the temperature inside the tunnel dryer fluctuated around 55±5°C; while the no load drying test, the temperature of the drying tunnel maintained within 60±5°C; as compared to the ambient temperature of 30±5°C. The average moisture content of solar dried sludge decreased from 88.69 - 90.84% to 7.78 – 13.30% in the mixing conditions and 14.78 – 19.52% in the non-mixing conditions, in 5 days. The study suggests that the semi-cylindrical solar tunnel dryer of wastewater sludge has given satisfactory results within five days

Involvement of Noradrenergic Neurotransmission in the Stress- but not Cocaine-Induced Reinstatement of Extinguished Cocaine-Induced Conditioned Place Preference in Mice: Role for β-2 Adrenergic Receptors

The responsiveness of central noradrenergic systems to stressors and cocaine poses norepinephrine as a potential common mechanism through which drug re-exposure and stressful stimuli promote relapse. This study investigated the role of noradrenergic systems in the reinstatement of extinguished cocaine-induced conditioned place preference by cocaine and stress in male C57BL/6 mice. Cocaine- (15 mg/kg, i.p.) induced conditioned place preference was extinguished by repeated exposure to the apparatus in the absence of drug and reestablished by a cocaine challenge (15 mg/kg), exposure to a stressor (6-min forced swim (FS); 20–25°C water), or administration of the α-2 adrenergic receptor (AR) antagonists yohimbine (2 mg/kg, i.p.) or BRL44408 (5, 10 mg/kg, i.p.). To investigate the role of ARs, mice were administered the nonselective β-AR antagonist, propranolol (5, 10 mg/kg, i.p.), the α-1 AR antagonist, prazosin (1, 2 mg/kg, i.p.), or the α-2 AR agonist, clonidine (0.03, 0.3 mg/kg, i.p.) before reinstatement testing. Clonidine, prazosin, and propranolol failed to block cocaine-induced reinstatement. The low (0.03 mg/kg) but not high (0.3 mg/kg) clonidine dose fully blocked FS-induced reinstatement but not reinstatement by yohimbine. Propranolol, but not prazosin, blocked reinstatement by both yohimbine and FS, suggesting the involvement of β-ARs. The β-2 AR antagonist ICI-118551 (1 mg/kg, i.p.), but not the β-1 AR antagonist betaxolol (10 mg/kg, i.p.), also blocked FS-induced reinstatement. These findings suggest that stress-induced reinstatement requires noradrenergic signaling through β-2 ARs and that cocaine-induced reinstatement does not require AR activation, even though stimulation of central noradrenergic neurotransmission is sufficient to reinstate

Real-time Human Detection in Fire Scenarios using Infrared and Thermal Imaging Fusion

Fire is considered one of the most serious threats to human lives which results in a high probability of fatalities. Those severe consequences stem from the heavy smoke emitted from a fire that mostly restricts the visibility of escaping victims and rescuing squad. In such hazardous circumstances, the use of a vision-based human detection system is able to improve the ability to save more lives. To this end, a thermal and infrared imaging fusion strategy based on multiple cameras for human detection in low-visibility scenarios caused by smoke is proposed in this paper. By processing with multiple cameras, vital information can be gathered to generate more useful features for human detection. Firstly, the cameras are calibrated using a Light Heating Chessboard. Afterward, the features extracted from the input images are merged prior to being passed through a lightweight deep neural network to perform the human detection task. The experiments conducted on an NVIDIA Jetson Nano computer demonstrated that the proposed method can process with reasonable speed and can achieve favorable performance with a [email protected] of 95%.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, 2 table