Study of different strategies and approaches followed by footwear companies in vietnam to comply with reach regulation

The European Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical (REACH) is the world’s most ambitious initiative governing the use of chemicals not only on their own but in mixtures or articles. REACH assures the supply of safe products that do not present any hazards to end users or if there is a hazard, it must be communicated properly along with risk management plans. Theoretically, REACH compliance is only mandatory for European companies. In fact, REACH could influence company’s activities beyond its border through economic interdependence. Outsourced manufacturing is a good example as European buyers play an important role on fostering REACH application in other countries. By taking advantages of low labor cost and favorable tariff reduction from Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) which Vietnam has signed with Europe, Vietnam becomes an attractive outsourcing destination of many European footwear buyers. Since “made in China” is no longer cheap, it could be foreseen that Europeans would soon move their manufacturing to Vietnam which is now maintaining the second position after China. However, there is a risk that Vietnam loses its opportunity due to REACH compliance issues. REACH compliance is not easy and it is much more challenging in developing countries, where gaps in technologies and stringency of standards each country applies are encountered. The objective of this thesis has been to assess the difficulties felt by Vietnamese companies, in particular footwear companies, when faced with the requirements of REACH regulations. To address the compliance situation in Vietnam, an online survey was developed and disseminated to Vietnam footwear suppliers with the support of Vietnam Leather, Footwear and Handbag Association (LEFASO) and Decathlon (a European brand having its manufacturing in Vietnam). The survey has sets of questions that allow the researcher to assess Vietnam footwear supplier’s awareness of REACH regulation, particularly, Substances of Very High Concern (SVHCs) communication obligations and Restricted Substances (RS) management. The survey also digs into difficulties Vietnam footwear suppliers are facing as well as solutions they are applying to overcome these difficulties. None of LEFASO’s company member participated in the survey. Out of suppliers of Decathlon in Vietnam, only 13 companies responded. The results of the study are largely based on these answers. Data from the survey reveals that almost all of the suppliers are familiar with the REACH regulation and aligning REACH requirements to their operations. Major concerns identified by suppliers when trying to comply with REACH regulation are costs of testing products against chemical lists, lack of knowledge of where regulated chemicals are introduced to the supply chain and frequent addition of new chemicals in the regulated list. These issues would be resolved if information of chemical compositions of materials supplied to the industry is made available. Although suppliers are coming up with individual processes to improve information flow throughout their supply chain, there are still shortcomings which would become another problem in the future. In the light of that, an approach proposed by the researcher is also discussed in the study to tackle both current and foreseeable problem

The development of depsipeptides as tissue engineering scaffolds : synthesis, characterization, and self-assembly into hydrogels

textThe development of novel, peptide based structures for tissue engineering materials has been widely researched, and its popularity can be attributed to advancements in technological analysis methods. Using principles based on protein structure and organization, this work describes the novel self-assembly of depsipeptides, which incorporate alternating esters within a native peptide backbone. Chapter 1 introduces and reviews peptide mimics for their utility for tissue engineering applications. Chapter 2 describes the methodology in synthesizing and characterization a depsipeptide library using both solution and solid phase methods. Chapter 3 discusses the effects of depsipeptide length, concentration, and sequence within a range of ionic concentrations and pH ranges on the self-assembly of depsipeptides into spherical nanostructures, fibers, or hydrogels. Chapter 4 describes proposed methods to increase the rate of gelation, followed by discussions of biocompatibility studies from other self-assembling peptide and modified-peptide systems in vitro and in vivo. The work described in this dissertation demonstrates that the synthesis and self-assembly of a depsipeptide family which alternates esters into a native peptide backbone does not disrupt the formation of higher order structures. This study illustrates the potential to synthesize a wide range of depsipeptides with variable side chains and hydrophobic character, as understanding these effects on self-assembly is imperative to the development of biomimetic materials for tissue engineering applications.Biomedical Engineerin

Pursuing environmental sustainability in the fast fashion industry: A qualitative exploratory research

Objectives: The main objectives of this study were to explore processes associated with producing fast fashion apparels that negatively impact the environment, to explore the sustainability initiatives that big clothing manufacturers and retailers in the fast fashion industry have adopted, and to explore the reporting practice of fast fashion firms concerning their environmental performance. Summary: For this study, a qualitative content analysis was conducted to analyze a sample of five corporate reports or sustainability reports of fast fashion companies for the fiscal year of 2016. The findings related to the environmental impact of fast fashion industry were addressed by the literature review, while findings on environmental initiatives and reporting practices on environmental performance of fast fashion companies were based on the content analysis of the reports. Conclusions: The environmental impact of the fast fashion industry stems from transportation, cultivation of raw materials, processing of fibers, and textile waste. Environmental initiatives taken by fast fashion companies can be categorized into product design, process design, supply chain, and customer engagement and awareness. Reporting practices of fast fashion firms on their performance are found to be focused on certain indicators; putting the environmental indicators within the context of the sustainability measures taken, it can be concluded that the measures bring about positive environmental performance outcomes for companies

Discovering the participation rights of children in Sweden and Vietnam: a study about Vietnamese parents' perspectives towards influencing factors on children's participation rights practices in the families

Children’s participation rights have been considered as one of the most radical and democratic rights of children that not only aim at protecting children’s rights but also enhance children’s competence and thus, giving children a higher position in the society. The aim of the study is to explore social and cultural factors that influence the practice of children’s participation rights in Vietnamese families in Vietnam and Sweden so as to contribute to a better understanding of the meaning of children’s participation rights in different contexts. Hence, qualitative method and semi-structure interviews have been employed for gathering parents’ experiences and opinions in relation to children’s participation rights. Ecological Theory has been employed in order to study children’s participation rights from macro level to micro level. Especially, The Family Change Theory and Family Change Model has been applied to explore the interrelationship between parents and children in the family so as to understand how parenting orientations influence the participation rights of children. The findings show that factors influencing children’s participation are embedded in a broad system from macro level to micro level. From macro level, cultural values are one of the constraining factors to the implementation of children’s participations rights. Besides, parents’ perspectives towards children’s competence are one of the factors creating the barriers to children’s participation rights practice. On the other hand, welfare policies for children and families in Sweden are considered as enabling conditions to support children’s participation rights practices whereas the lack of welfare policies for Vietnamese families in Vietnam may become a constraining condition. More importantly, it appears from the data that Vietnamese parents in both Vietnam and Sweden showed positive views toward children’s participation in decision-making process. Children’s voices have been listened and taken into consideration with due weight. Nevertheless, the age and experiences of the child contribute to the variations in practicing participation rights considerably. Furthermore, the Family Change Model provided insights on how the interrelationship between parents and children affect children’s participation and children’s autonomy. The study finds that the Interdependent Family Model is more common among Vietnamese parents in Vietnam with the childrearing orientation towards obedience and family loyalties. On the other hand, Vietnamese families in Sweden have the patterns of the Emotional Interdependence Family Model with higher level of autonomy and focus more on emotional bonds. Lastly, the Vietnamese parents living in Sweden show a sense of ambivalence towards the roles of adult children for the elderly care in the future

Effects of Frequency and Mass of Eccentric Balls on Picking Force of The Coffee Fruit for The As-Fabricated Harvesting Machines

Currently, Vietnam ranks second about the coffee export in the world. To match that position, the use of coffee harvesting tools/machines according to the automatic trend is essential. However, the most common forms of coffee harvesting in Vietnam are manual, improved manual-coffee picking machines that are imported from foreign countries. The above harvesting forms have low productivity and have some disadvantages such as labor cost, labor hiring, high labor cost, and long harvesting time, low harvesting, and post-harvesting quality. Studies of scientists around the world have applied the principle of vibration to produce the picking force for coffee fruits, and the picking force is known to be different from many factors in every region of the world growing coffee. The paper presents the method of design and manufacturing an automatic coffee harvesting machine based on the evaluation of picking force for coffee in Vietnam. The influences of eccentric ball mass and vibrating frequency on the magnitude of the picking force are carefully calculated. On that basis, the experimental programming is applied to find the optimal working point of the picking machine for coffee. The results showed that the eccentric ball mass of 8.5 kg, the rotation speed of the eccentric ball from 480 to 574 rpm would produce the picking force by the coffee fruit of Vietnam

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND THEIR PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES –ED AND -S: A CASE IN THE MEKONG DELTA OF VIETNAM

This study examined the relationship between high school students' phonological awareness and their performance in pronouncing allomorphs of English inflectional morphemes -ed and -s. The study involved 31 high school students in Can Tho City in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Data of the study were collected through a pronunciation written test (PWT) and a pronunciation oral test (POT). The findings pointed out that all the students had phonological knowledge of the two morphemes; however, the majority of the participants made errors in pronouncing them which indicated their lack of pronunciation performance. In addition, there was no correlation between the students’ phonological awareness and their pronunciation performance detected in the study. Based on the results, pedagogical implications were suggested.  Article visualizations

Improved Sensor Fault-Tolerant Control Technique Applied to Three-Phase Induction Motor Drive

An improved fault-tolerant control (FTC) method using mathematical functions is applied to the induction motor drive (IMD) against current sensors and speed encoder failures, which occur when the sensor is disconnected or completely damaged. The IMD with two current sensors and an encoder is speed controlled based on the field-oriented control (FOC) technique in regular operation. In this paper, an FTC unit is implemented in the FOC controller to detect and solve the sensor fault to increase the reliability of the speed control process. The measured stator currents and the feedback speed signal are integrated into the diagnosis algorithms to create a sensor fault-tolerant control function. Three diagnosis functions operating in a defined sequence are proposed for determining the health status of current and speed sensors. The FTC function performs isolation and replaces the faulty sensor signals with the proper estimated signals; then, the IMD will operate in the corresponding sensorless mode. Simulations will be performed to verify the accuracy and reliability of the proposed method under various sensor faults

EFL TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS AND THEIR REPORTED PRACTICES OF ENACTING THE COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE SECTION IN THE NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK

The development of globalization and integration requires a modern workforce with 21st-century skills, especially intercultural communicative competence (ICC). Thanks to the National Foreign Language 2020 project, the new English textbooks were introduced to Vietnamese students with the hope prepare them for ICC. Research on how EFL teachers explored the new teaching materials has been made, but previous findings show limitations on EFL teachers’ practices in the communication and culture section. Hence, this descriptive research was conducted to investigate EFL teachers’ perceptions and their reported practices of enacting this section. A mixed-method approach was employed to collect quantitative and qualitative data. Seventy-two EFL teachers in the Mekong Delta responded to the questionnaire and seven of them joined the semi-structured interviews. Results revealed various EFL teachers’ perceptions and high levels of agreement on their practices of four dimensions of ICC. The study also suggested further research should look into students’ perspectives.  Article visualizations

A Large-Scale Software-Defined Internet of Things Platform for Provisioning IoT Services on Demand

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Internet of Things (IoT) has developed into an interconnected platform infrastructure for providing essential services ranging from personal health care, smart homes and cities to the manufacturing industry. Relying on such an infrastructure, a multitude of emerging IoT services will no doubt be developed for not only local regions but also multiple separated regions spreading over a wide geographical area. However, existing IoT systems are mostly rigid and cannot be easily adapted or programmed to accommodate new services. The challenge is also in orchestrating a large number of sensors/IoT devices, many with limited capability, into intelligent, useful, and on-demand services. Many efforts have been made to address the issue, but very little has been attempted to consider an overall solution to a programmable IoT ecosystem that includes IoT service provision components, IoT devices, and transporting infrastructure. Moreover, there is no framework/platform that allows an end-to-end control, management, and orchestration of IoT resources in accordance with IoT demands. We apply the benefits of the two promising technologies including software-defined networking and network function virtualization in provisioning IoT services on demand over a wide region, and overcome challenges in applying the technologies to constrained IoT devices/systems. We propose a large-scale software-defined IoT (LSSD-IoT) model and develop the LSSD-IoT platform. The model provides two levels of management and orchestration at the cluster and device level. At the cluster level, we develop a software-defined Internet of Things Cluster (SD-IoTC) controller that is capable of controlling and managing both IoT clusters and network infrastructure that accommodates the IoT systems. At the device level, each IoT cluster under the control and management of the SD-IoTC controller needs to be programmable and manageable for provisioning IoT services on demand. For that purpose, we propose a software-defined Internet of Things (SD-IoT) model (local platform) with three novel components, including the IoT device-constrained controller, the S-MANAGE protocol, and the software-defined virtual sensor. The novelty of this research lies in the novel approach to programmable and re-usable devices in the provision of IoT services on demand over a wide area. It enables i) IoT service providers to control end-to-end quality of services of IoT services provision over a large-scale IoT environment; ii) owners of IoT systems to be able to gain benefits from sharing their IoT resources; iii) IoT application developers to develop innovative and comprehensive IoT applications on demand with more options regarding QoS, security, mobility, or billing

Innvirkning av syklisk-di-GMP signalisering på antimikrobiell resistens i Acinetobacter baumannii. Undersøkelser av relativ genekspresjon og fenotypiske effekter hos transposon insersjonsmutanter i putative c-di-GMP signaliseringsgener.

Antimikrobiell resistens (AMR) utgjør en av de tre viktigste helseproblemene i verden i dag, og kan medføre alvorlige konsekvenser ifølge Verdens helseorganisasjon (WHO). Resistensutviklingen fører til terapisvikt mot infeksjonssykdommer som tidligere lot seg behandle av antimikrobielle midler og flere millioner menneskeliv kan gå tapt, hvis ikke tiltak iverksettes for å redusere forekomsten av AMR. Utviklingen av resistens inkluderer en av de mest kritiske karbapenem-resistente bakterier, Acinetobacter baumannii. Evnen til å kunne erverve og uttrykke AMR, samt eksepsjonell overlevelse på både biotiske og abiotiske overflater, gjør at A. baumannii grupperes som en av de seks hyppigst forekomne multiresistente (MDR) bakteriene i verden i dag, også kjent som ESKAPE patogener. Formålet med oppgaven var å undersøke om gener involvert i c-di-GMP signalering kunne være koblet til resistens mot selekterte antimikrobielle midler i A. baumannii. Dette skulle gjøres ved å screene ekspresjonen av målgener ved eksponering for sub-MIC nivåer av utvalgte antibiotika ved hjelp av RT-qPCR, samt ved screening for endring i resistensmønster hos et sett transposon insersjonsmutanter i c-di-GMP relaterte gener (cdg) i den multiresistente stammen A. baumannii AB5075-UW relativt til villtype, ved MIC-analyse. I første del av oppgaven ble det etablert MIC-screening oppsett for A. baumannii i laboratoriet, først ved å bruke den apatogene A. baylyi ADP-1, og så en ikke MDR-stamme, A. baumannii ATCC 17978. Av tekniske årsaker kunne ekspresjonsnivået av cdg-genene ikke bestemmes, og forsøket bør gjentas. MIC-screeningen viste at insersjonsmutant i genet ABUW_2255 var minimum fire ganger mer følsom mot amikacin, relativt til villtype. ABUW_2255 koder for et protein med PilZ-domene, et domene som klassisk er kjent å kunne binde c-di-GMP og fungere som effektorproteiner som responderer på endringer i c-di-GMP nivåer i cellen under intracellulær signalisering. Dette studiet utgjør et av de første som viser effekt av c-di-GMP relaterte gener på antimikrobiell resistens. Genet for det ortologe pilZ-domene proteinet er i P. aeruginosa identifisert som essensielt for type 4 pilus dannelse og twitching motilitet, dette antas også for pilZ-domene proteinet i A. baumannii. Ytterligere studier kreves for å forklare de molekylære mekanismene for hvordan ABUW_2255 påvirker resistens mot amikacin, og for å kartlegge funksjonen av proteinet