A Trade-Based Analysis of the Economic Impact of Non-Compliance with Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing: The Case of Vietnam

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a threat to the sustainable use of fishing resources. To eliminate the destructive fishing practices, the whole value chain of fish trade needs to be well regulated. Trade-related policy measures show potential for contributing towards the elimination of unsustainable fishing practices. The EU’s launch of the IUU-combating fishing program and the introduction of measures to deal with countries that exploit, produce and export fishery products with illegal fishing origin, is indispensable in addressing harmful trends and a concern of the whole world, especially the fishing community. The program includes the flagship use of a warning card system. The EU is a very important trading partner for Vietnam and major importer of Vietnam’s fish products, of which seafood plays an important role. The EU market helps pave the way for Vietnamese seafood to enter the world market. Vietnam’s seafood export to the EU has increased sharply over the past 20 years, from USD 90 million in 1999 to nearly USD 1.5 billion in 2017 (and since decreased to closer to USD 1.3 billion in 2019). The year of 2017 marked a critical turning point for Vietnam’s fisheries when the EU issued a yellow card warning to Vietnam for not cooperating and making enough efforts to combat IUU fishing. The EU made nine recommendations to improve the Vietnamese fisheries management system following the warning. Over the past two years, the Government of Vietnam, ministries and the entire Vietnamese fishing community have actively improved to meet the recommendations of the EU to remove the IUU yellow card. The EU has appreciated Vietnam’s efforts to combat IUU exploitation, however, so far, the IUU yellow card has not yet been removed. In the past two years, the quantity of seafood exports to the EU have decreased significantly, showing the immediate impact of the yellow card warning on Vietnam’s seafood industry. However, that is only part of the negative impact as visible in export figures. There will be many other consequences from the IUU yellow card warning and the impact will be more serious if Vietnam does not remove the yellow card soon or receives a red card warning

A Knowledge-Based Model For Context-Aware Smart Service Systems

The advancement of the Internet of Things, big data, and mobile computing leads to the need for smart services that enable the context awareness and the adaptability to their changing contexts. Today, designing a smart service system is a complex task due to the lack of an adequate model support in awareness and pervasive environment. In this paper, we present the concept of a context-aware smart service system and propose a knowledge model for context-aware smart service systems. The proposed model organizes the domain and context-aware knowledge into knowledge components based on the three levels of services: Services, Service system, and Network of service systems. The knowledge model for context-aware smart service systems integrates all the information and knowledge related to smart services, knowledge components, and context awareness that can play a key role for any framework, infrastructure, or applications deploying smart services. In order to demonstrate the approach, two case studies about chatbot as context-aware smart services for customer support are presented

Influence of silica resource from rice husk on structure of HZSM-5 zeolite

HZSM-5 zeolites were successfully synthesized by hydrothermal treament using silica  from rice husk and glasses water. The samples were characterized by XRD, IR, SEM, TEM, BET and 27Al-NMR methods. Characterization results revealed that HZSM-5 material synthesized from rice husk silica has crystallinity and acidity as high as HZSM-5 sample synthesized from glasses water. HZSM-5 material synthesized from rice husk silica not only has  the conventional pores system as shown structure of HZSM-5 sample synthesized from glasses water, but also has mesoporous system with kinetic diameter in range of 10-50 nm. This multi-porous system is expected to increase significantly the catalytic activity of synthesized material in the reactions with the present of large molecules . Keywords: Rice husk silica, ZSM-5, multi-porous syste

Life-Cycle Land-Use Requirement for PV in Vietnam

Over the last 15 years, photovoltaics (PV) in Vietnam has experienced development. The increased installed capacity of PV requires more land for installation sites as well as for manufacturing the plants’ component and waste treatment during the plants’ decommissioning. As a developing country, in which more than 80% of the population’s livelihood depends on agriculture, there are concerns about the competition of land for agriculture and solar development. This paper estimates the life-cycle land-use requirement for PV development in Vietnam, to provide the scientific-based evidence for policy makers on the quantity of land required, so that the land budget can be suitably allocated. The direct land-use requirement for PV ranges from 3.7 to 6.7 m2 MWh−1 year, and the total fenced area is 7.18 to 8.16 m2 MWh−1 year. Regarding the life-cycle land use, the land occupation is 241.85 m2a and land transformation is 16.17 m2 per MWh. Most of the required land area is for the installation of the PV infrastructure, while the indirect land use of the background process is inconsiderable

Design of a fast cassette autoclaves for medical devices

Ensuring patient safety in healthcare necessitates the sterilization of medical devices. However, traditional autoclaves are impractical for certain medical settings due to their size, bulkiness, and time-consuming nature. To address this, a compact and portable alternative called a cassette autoclave was developed. This paper presents the design and manufacturing process of a high-speed cassette autoclave for medical devices. The autoclave features small dimensions, lightweight construction, and user-friendly operation. It achieves remarkable speed, sterilizing devices in approximately 3.5 minutes. Made of durable stainless steel, it includes a digital control panel for seamless management. Extensive testing and validation ensure compliance with sterilization standards. The results highlight the autoclave's effectiveness and safety, making a significant contribution to medical device sterilization

Targeting effect of folate on cancer cell through curcumin carrier nano-system

Folate receptor (FR) is well known for its overexpression on surface of various cancer cell lines, which is identical to normal tissue. Folic-based targeting drug delivery systems, therefore, are one of the most effective targeting carriers that effectively bind to FR up-regulated cancer cells. Curcumin was used both for labeling and chemotherapy. The materials were characterized and structurally confirmed by FT-IR spectra, fluorescent images and FE-SEM images. Bioassays were conducted on HeLa and HT29 cancer cell lines after 4 and 12 hours. Results show that folic acid significantly enhanced both targeting efficiency and internalization of curcumin to FR-expressing cancer cells