The influence of CEO characteristics on corporate environmental performance of SMEs: Evidence from Vietnamese SMEs

Drawing on upper echelon theory, this study investigates the impact of CEOs’ (chief executive officers) demographic characteristics on corporate environmental performance (CEP) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We hypothesized that CEO characteristics, including gender, age, basic educational level, professional educational level, political connection, and ethnicity, affect SMEs’ environmental performance. Using the cross-sectional data analysis of 810 Vietnamese SMEs, this study provides evidence that female CEOs and CEOs’ educational level (both basic and professional) are positively related to the probability of CEP. We also find that based on the role of institutional environment on CEP, political connections had a negative effect on CEP in the context of Vietnam. Another finding is that SMEs with chief executives from ethnic minority groups show a higher level of the probability of corporate environmental performance than companies operated by Kinh chief executives. Since CEP is an essential dimension of corporate social responsibility, a strategic decision for SMEs, it is crucial for the company to select appropriate CEOs based on their demographic characteristic

DETERMINATION OF VARIABLE LAW OF THE TURBULENT DIFFUSION PARAMETERS WITH TIME INTERVAL IN THE AIR ENVIRONMENT IN VIETNAM

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart

The effects of question prompt-based scaffolding and social presence enhancement on students' argumentation and ill-structured problem solving

Asynchronous online discussions have the potential to facilitate meaningful learning activities, such as ill-structured problem-solving, due to their asynchronicity and connectivity. However, the literature identifies two significant challenges in effectively supporting students' ill-structured problem-solving in these environments - argumentation and social interactions. Although argumentation is critical for ill-structured problem-solving, students tend to avoid engaging in critical argumentation activities, such as generating rebuttals and counterarguments, to construct meaning in discussion forums. Similarly, social interactions are essential to ill-structured problem-solving, but students tend to display low levels of engagement in asynchronous online discussions. This study aimed to explore how these two critical components of problem-solving can be supported in asynchronous online discussions using question prompt-based argumentation scaffolds in combination with social presence enhancement strategies. The primary focus was to compare the differential effects of question prompts alone and the combination of question prompts with social presence enhancement prompts on students' argumentation behaviors, problem-solving processes during discussions, and post-test problem-solving performance. This study randomly assigned 44 students to three conditions (control, question prompt-based, and question prompt with social presence enhancement) to analyze their argumentation behaviors, problem-solving processes, and problem-solving performance in asynchronous online discussions. The findings reveal that: (1) lower level interactive argumentation behaviors dominate over higher level interactive ones; (2) students focus more on identifying problem representations and generating solutions than on justifying and evaluating them; (3) there is no significant difference in argumentation behaviors and problem-solving processes in asynchronous online discussions across the conditions. However, students who received both the question prompt scaffolds and the social presence enhancement strategies consistently showed more evidence of engaging in argumentation, especially higher level interactive argumentation, and in problem-solving processes; and (4) there is a significant difference in post-test problem-solving performance across conditions, where students in the condition that received both the question prompt scaffolds and the social presence enhancement strategies performed significantly better than students in the control condition. The study's findings underscore the importance of supporting students' social presence to engage them in interactive argumentation and problem-solving processes, thereby enhancing their problem-solving performance. This study contributes to the understanding of argumentation scaffolding and social interactions in asynchronous online discussion environments and provides design recommendations for instructional designers and instructors seeking to support students' argumentation and social presence in these environments.Includes bibliographical references

Navigating toward an uncertain future:how students regulated goals during the emergency remote learning

Abstract. This study aims to examine the goal-setting regulation of higher students in the context of emergency remote learning. Using Emergency Remote Learning (ERL), Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) and Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) as the main theoretical frameworks, this study sought to examine which type of goals students set during the pandemic, how the emergency remote learning influenced students’ goal setting and regulating, which challenges students confronted and strategies to successfully overcome them. The thesis targets international higher students who started their studies in 2020, using qualitative methods and designed individual in-depth interviews to gain insights about students of 2020’s goals. Besides, a small set of quantitative data is also collected and analyzed to investigate the situated awareness of students about emergency remote learning. The findings reveal several notable points. First, studying under the circumstance of emergency remote learning is not only in an emergency manner but also has a persistency characteristic, thus long time of online teaching might cause a relatively high extent of stress in students. Second, students in their first year (during the emergency remote learning) tended to pay more attention to their mastery ambitions. After the emergency remote learning, there was a tendency to shift goals to performance-orientation. Third, not all goal changes were related to the influence of emergency remote learning, since goal change is a natural phenomenon in life. Forth, among challenges confronted during the emergency remote learning, instructional challenges and emotional and motivational challenges are most repeated and notable. Fifth, students shared numerous useful tips and strategies to overcome the hard situation, noteworthily, some of them are avoidance-oriented. The implications of this study include the potential for instructors to design their teaching to better facilitate students in emergency remote learning, especially to compensate for the shortcomings of support systems and ill-designed instructions. Besides, insights from the finding also contribute to furthering research on the consequences of emergency remote learning not only during but after the pandemic, focusing on goal-setting, one of the key elements of self-regulated learning

The welfare of small livestock producers in Vietnam under trade liberalisation-- Integration of trade and household models

Vietnam has negotiated a series of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements and has made significant steps in integrating into the world economy. This integration is likely to have both positive and negative effects on different stakeholders in the economy. This paper seeks to measure the effects on the welfare of Vietnam’s small livestock producers' by linking a household model and the GTAP trade model. A GTAP utility SplitCom is used to separate out pig and poultry prior to several trade liberalisation scenarios being run. A recursive household model with a two-stage LES-AIDS model on consumption side and Cobb-Douglas functions on production side are used. Impacts of likely changes in the prices of inputs and outputs arising from different trade scenarios on behavior and welfare of the farm household are presented.International Relations/Trade, Livestock Production/Industries,

The VATLY Radio Telescope

A small radio telescope (SRT) has been installed on the roof of the Hanoi astrophysics laboratory VATLY. It is equipped with a 2.6 m diameter mobile parabolic dish remotely controlled in elevation and azimuth and with super-heterodyne detection around the 21 cm hydrogen line. First results of observations of the Sun and of the centre of the Milky Way are presented. They demonstrate the high quality of the telescope performance and are used to evaluate lobe size, signal to noise ratios, anthropogenic interferences and measurement accuracies. Particular attention is given to the measurement of the pointing accuracy. The rich measurement programme that is now at hand is briefly sketched

Simulation of proton-induced and iron-induced extensive air showers at extreme energies

The development of extensive air showers at extreme energies is studied using a simulation model much simpler and cruder, but also more transparent and flexible, than existing sophisticated codes. Evidence for its satisfactory performance is presented. As an illustration, shower elongation rates are evaluated in the $10^{18}$ to $10^{20}$ eV region and compared with recently published data. Lateral distribution functions of both muons and electrons/photons are also briefly discussed. Reliable results are obtained in the comparison between proton-induced and iron-induced showers.Comment: 22 pages, Preprint submitted to Astroparticle Physic

The regularity and exponential decay of solution for a linear wave equation associated with two-point boundary conditions

This paper is concerned with the existence and the regularity of global solutions to the linear wave equation associated with two-point type boundary conditions. We also investigate the decay properties of the global solutions to this problem by the construction of a suitable Lyapunov functional.Comment: 18 page

On a nonlinear heat equation associated with Dirichlet -- Robin conditions

This paper is devoted to the study of a nonlinear heat equation associated with Dirichlet-Robin conditions. At first, we use the Faedo -- Galerkin and the compactness method to prove existence and uniqueness results. Next, we consider the properties of solutions. We obtain that if the initial condition is bounded then so is the solution and we also get asymptotic behavior of solutions as. Finally, we give numerical resultsComment: 20 page