Organic Fertilizer Production and Application in Vietnam

Crop production is an important subsector of Vietnam’s agriculture, has an impressive achievement in last 30 years and based on the intensive production with increasing use of chemical fertilizer and pesticide. Consequences are the negative effects on environment and human health and food safety. Organic agriculture has become a trend worldwide and is developing rapidly in the world. In Vietnam the certified organic farming area has expanded since 2012. Organic market revenue in Vietnam is estimated to be at $132.15 million a year. Most Vietnamese certified organic products are exported to international markets. Organic agriculture using organic fertilizer is one of Vietnam government’s priorities. Vietnam already produced organic fertilizer from different materials by using different production technologies, but the production capacity is small and does not meet the demand for organic agriculture. Vietnam government encourages, promotes the organic fertilizer production, application and has the policy to develop the organic fertilizer in Vietnam

Impact of foaming conditions on quality for foam-mat drying of Butterfly pea flower by multiple regression analysis

In recent years, the Butterfly pea flower has been increasingly interested in its color and function. However, the preservation of the extract faced many difficulties; therefore, foam drying technology was applied to solve this problem. The study was conducted to determine the effect of foaming conditions, including albumin ratio, carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) ratio, and whipping time on foam characteristics. At the same time, the multi-dimensional regression method was also used to determine the most suitable foaming conditions for the following process. The research results showed that all 3 factors strongly influenced the foaming process of pea flower extract. It could be concluded that the most suitable condition for foaming is to use 9.3% albumin, 0.79% CMC and stir for 19 min. Under these conditions, the foam expansion and stability were 584.79% and 96.44% respectively. The powder obtained from the foam drying of Butterfly pea flower extract was also analyzed for quality. The temperature of 65 oC for 4 hrs gave relatively high-quality powder with protein content, anthocyanin and antioxidant activity of 9.89 g/100g, 1.15 mg/g and 87.34% respectively. In conclusion, the foam-mat dried powder from butterfly pea flower extract is suitable for other processing processes, especially in the processing of folk cakes, pasta and bread industry

The Mediating Effects of Switching Costs on the Relationship between Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty: A Study in Retail Banking Industry in Vietnam

This paper develops and empirically tests the mediating role of switching costs in service quality - loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships. Especially, different types of switching costs are tested separately providing more insights into their roles. A research model about the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, switching costs and customer loyalty is developed. Based on this model, a survey is conducted with retail banking customers, with and 261valid respondents. The hypotheses are then proposed and tested using Structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The analysis reveals that: positive switching cost is a significant mediator for both service quality-loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships, while negative switching cost only mediates the service quality-loyalty relationship. These findings suggest that building and managing switching costs are necessary following-up steps after customer satisfaction for achieving long-term customer loyalty

The mediating effects of switching costs on the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty: A study in retail banking industry in Vietnam

This paper develops and empirically tests the mediating role of switching costs in service quality - loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships. Specially, different types of switching costs are tested separately providing more insights about their roles. This approach extended the insights on mediating effects of switching costs by differentiate the roles of positive switching costs and negative switching costs in the model. A research model about the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, switching costs and customer loyalty is developed. Based on this model, a survey is conducted with retail banking customers, with and 261 valid respondents. The hypotheses are then proposed and tested using Structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The analysis reveals that: positive switching cost is a significant mediator for both service quality-loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships, while negative switching cost only mediates the service quality-loyalty relationship. These findings suggest that building and managing switching costs are necessary following-up steps after customer satisfaction for achieving long-term customer loyalty. However, using the right types of switching costs is necessary to significantly boost the loyalty from customers. © ExcelingTech Pub, UK

Effect of phosphate fertilizer-coated Dicarboxylic Acid Polymer on rice yield and components under greenhouse conditions

A significant amount of phosphorus (P) becomes fixed by aluminium (Al) and iron (Fe) in acidic soils, leading to decreased efficiency in P utilization and subsequently lowering crop yield. Enhanced P fertilization offers a potential solution, as the dicarboxylic acid polymer (DCAP) coating on P fertilizer promotes increased plant productivity and more effective P utilization. The improvement achieved through enhanced P fertilization can contribute to higher rice yields in acidic soils, accompanied by an increase in P solubility. The study aimed to determine the impact of DCAP-mixed phosphate fertilizer on P uptake by plants, absorption efficiency, and rice yield. The results demonstrated a significant increase in available P (about 3.5 mg P/kg) when DCAP was used in a greenhouse setting, resulting in elevated yields and total P absorption (ranging from 0.03 to 0.05 grams/pot). However, the addition of 60 kg of phosphate mixed with DCAP has not yet demonstrated a significant increase in available phosphorus in the soil compared to adding just 60 kg of phosphate. The application of phosphate at a dose of 30 kg of P2O5 mixed with DCAP for growth and phosphorus absorption yield results equivalent to using 60 kg of P2O5 without DCAP. Furthermore, the use of DCAP in conjuction with 50% P fertilizer increased P availability by the same amount as that achieved with 100% P fertilizer. Consequently, DCAP reduced chemical P fertilizer in the soil by approximately 50%. However, it is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of mixed phosphate fertilizer (DCAP) under field conditions before recommending its widespread use

Lactic Acid Fermentation of Radish and Cucumber in Rice Bran Bed

The Lactobacillus plantarum (L. plantarum) strain XK1.4 isolated from pickled vegetables was applied for cucumber and radish fermentation using rice bran. Fermented radish and cucumber pickles are the lactic acid fermentation products formed through the influence of microorganisms present in the environment. The main objective of the study is to select the appropriate rice bran type (white/yellow rice bran) and treatment methods (roasting time), and also choose suitable fermentation conditions (initial microbial population and added salt content) for traditional pickled cucumber and white radish with appropriate lactic acid content and high acceptability by consumers. The results showed that the quality of white bran was better than yellow bran and less oxidized, the total free fatty acid was also much lower than that of yellow bran. It was found that the lactic acid content analyses provided significant different results for the samples, compared to the control (without inoculant addition). The pickled samples for which L. plantarum strain XK 1.4 was used displayed a better fermentation process. The lower concentration of bacteria added in the initial stage, the lower the acid content of the rice bran medium and the fermented products where L. plantarum strains were added. L. plantarum grew rapidly in rice bran fermenting bed of 10 CFU g at 25-26 °C and 3% NaCl. With the appropriate selection of fermentation parameters, it only takes about 4 days for the fermentation process (2 days of preparing rice bran medium and 2 days of fermenting white radish and cucumber) with high lactic acid content and consumer’s acceptability

Lactic Acid Fermentation of Radish and Cucumber in Rice Bran Bed

The Lactobacillus plantarum (L. plantarum) strain XK1.4 isolated from pickled vegetables was applied for cucumber and radish fermentation using rice bran. Fermented radish and cucumber pickles are the lactic acid fermentation products formed through the influence of microorganisms present in the environment. The main objective of the study is to select the appropriate rice bran type (white/yellow rice bran) and treatment methods (roasting time), and also choose suitable fermentation conditions (initial microbial population and added salt content) for traditional pickled cucumber and white radish with appropriate lactic acid content and high acceptability by consumers. The results showed that the quality of white bran was better than yellow bran and less oxidized, the total free fatty acid was also much lower than that of yellow bran. It was found that the lactic acid content analyses provided significant different results for the samples, compared to the control (without inoculant addition). The pickled samples for which L. plantarum strain XK 1.4 was used displayed a better fermentation process. The lower concentration of bacteria added in the initial stage, the lower the acid content of the rice bran medium and the fermented products where L. plantarum strains were added. L. plantarum grew rapidly in rice bran fermenting bed of 10 CFU g at 25-26 °C and 3% NaCl. With the appropriate selection of fermentation parameters, it only takes about 4 days for the fermentation process (2 days of preparing rice bran medium and 2 days of fermenting white radish and cucumber) with high lactic acid content and consumer’s acceptability

Histopathological Imaging Classification of Breast Tissue for Cancer Diagnosis Support Using Deep Learning Models

According to some medical imaging techniques, breast histopathology images called Hematoxylin and Eosin are considered as the gold standard for cancer diagnoses. Based on the idea of dividing the pathologic image (WSI) into multiple patches, we used the window [512,512] sliding from left to right and sliding from top to bottom, each sliding step overlapping by 50% to augmented data on a dataset of 400 images which were gathered from the ICIAR 2018 Grand Challenge. Then use the EffficientNet model to classify and identify the histopathological images of breast cancer into 4 types: Normal, Benign, Carcinoma, Invasive Carcinoma. The EffficientNet model is a recently developed model that uniformly scales the width, depth, and resolution of the network with a set of fixed scaling factors that are well suited for training images with high resolution. And the results of this model give a rather competitive classification efficiency, achieving 98% accuracy on the training set and 93% on the evaluation set.Comment: International Conference on Industrial Networks and Intelligent Systems (INISCOM-2022), Springer, Vol. 444, pp. 152-16

Deep Learning-Aided Multicarrier Systems

This paper proposes a deep learning (DL)-aided multicarrier (MC) system operating on fading channels, where both modulation and demodulation blocks are modeled by deep neural networks (DNNs), regarded as the encoder and decoder of an autoencoder (AE) architecture, respectively. Unlike existing AE-based systems, which incorporate domain knowledge of a channel equalizer to suppress the effects of wireless channels, the proposed scheme, termed as MC-AE, directly feeds the decoder with the channel state information and received signal, which are then processed in a fully data-driven manner. This new approach enables MC-AE to jointly learn the encoder and decoder to optimize the diversity and coding gains over fading channels. In particular, the block error rate of MC-AE is analyzed to show its higher performance gains than existing hand-crafted baselines, such as various recent index modulation-based MC schemes. We then extend MC-AE to multiuser scenarios, wherein the resultant system is termed as MU-MC-AE. Accordingly, two novel DNN structures for uplink and downlink MU-MC-AE transmissions are proposed, along with a novel cost function that ensures a fast training convergence and fairness among users. Finally, simulation results are provided to show the superiority of the proposed DL-based schemes over current baselines, in terms of both the error performance and receiver complexity