An Examination of the Perceptions of Educational Leaders on the Ensuring Literacy For All Initiative’s Impact on Student Reading Achievement in Louisiana

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine the experiences of Louisiana’s Ensuring Literacy For All (ELFA) initiative from the perspective of educational administrators in order to identify: (a) the factors within ELFA that contributed to student reading performance; (b) the effects of the perceptions of ELFA administrators on student achievement; and (c) the components of effective leadership that attributed to the success of ELFA implementation. Bandura‘s (1993) socio-psychological theory of self efficacy was used to frame this study, which included six ELFA administrators from the state, district, and school level. The five findings of this study revealed the following: (1) high quality job-embedded professional development strengthened teachers’ capacity to achieve a shared purpose; (2) efficacious ELFA leaders believed that they could alter their school culture and increase student achievement, despite having a low performing student population; (3) the gradual elimination of funds detrimentally impacted all levels of governance and created a snowball effect that ultimately decreased student achievement; (4) the urgency to help students read on grade level ignited a willingness for ELFA educators to trust each other; and (5) the standardization of practices resulted in a common language that ELFA leaders used to produce results, ensure compliance, and build teacher capacity. This study revealed that ELFA leaders believed that they could overcome challenges such as having a low performing student population and obstacles such as shortage of funding and low parental involvement. The ELFA leaders’ self efficacy beliefs directly impacted their actions and behaviors as well as those under their supervision

Research on Aeroelasticity Phenomenon in Aeronautical Engineering

Aeroelasticity phenomena arise when structural deformations induce changes on aerodynamic forces due to airplane structures that are not completely rigid. The additional aerodynamic forces cause an increase in the structural deformations, which leads to greater aerodynamic forces in a feedback process. These interactions may become smaller until reaching a condition of equilibrium or may diverge catastrophically if resonance occurs. Flutter is an instability aeroelasticity phenomenon which is the most difficult to predict. In this chapter, a numerical method and an experimental method were realized to predict aeroelastic response and characteristic parameters of a wing structure. The numerical method was firstly developed based on the interaction between computational fluid dynamic and computational structural dynamic methods using a coupling system, fluid–solid interaction (FSI), in the ANSYS software. Then, an experiment was set up in suitable conditions to study aeroelasticity characteristics with the goal of comparing the numerical results with the experimental results on the same wing structure at low speed. After that, a developed code based on immersed boundary method (IBM) was realized to predict aeroelasticity response and characteristic parameters of the wing structure. AGARD 445.6 wing model was chosen for this developed procedure at high speed. Obtained results were compared to other numerical and experimental results

The Impact of Education on Child Abuse Prevention

This research investigates the impact of education on child abuse prevention in Vietnam by using Vietnamese government's reports (2012 – 2019) on child abuse. In order to analyze the impact of education on child abuse prevention, this study focuses on reviewing the previous policies in preventing child abuse, surveying three main determinants of parents, teachers and children and testing the data collected from the survey. The result shows that education plays an important role in improving the ability to take actions against child abuse. Some recommendations to parents, teachers, children and the government are also proposed for encouraging improvements in child abuse prevention education. Keywords: Child Abuse Prevention, Education, Vietnam DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-20-09 Publication date:July 31st 202

New Betweenness Centrality Node Attack Strategies for Real-World Complex Weighted Networks

In this work, we introduce a new node attack strategy removing nodes with the highest conditional weighted betweenness centrality (CondWBet), which combines the weighted structure of the network and the node's conditional betweenness. We compare its efficacy with well-known attack strategies from literature over five real-world complex weighted networks. We use the network weighted efficiency (WEFF) like a measure encompassing the weighted structure of the network, in addition to the commonly used binary-topological measure, i.e., the largest connected cluster (LCC). We find that if the measure is WEFF, the CondWBet strategy is the best to decrease WEFF in 3 out of 5 cases. Further, CondWBet is the most effective strategy to reduce WEFF at the beginning of the removal process, whereas the Strength that removes nodes with the highest sum of the link weights first shows the highest efficacy in the final phase of the removal process when the network is broken into many small clusters. These last outcomes would suggest that a better attacking in weighted networks strategy could be a combination of the CondWBet and Strength strategies

Improving indigenous Vietnamese Black Rabbit frozen sperm quality: the role of glycine and sperm selection methods

[EN] Rabbit sperm are known to undergo damage during both cryopreservation and thawing, leading to decreased viability, motility and membrane integrity. Glycine can protect sperm and reduce damage during freezing. Swim-up is a simple semen processing method for selecting good motile sperm. The study evaluated the effect of the swim-up method and glycine with different concentrations supplemented to the frozen medium. Three indigenous black rabbits were selected for semen collection by artificial vagina. Next, semen was selected by swim-up method and diluted with glycine-added frozen medium. The samples were then transferred to 0.5 mL straws, cooled to 15°C and 5°C, placed in liquid nitrogen vapour, and finally placed directly into liquid nitrogen (-196°C). The samples were thawed and evaluated for sperm quality. The results showed that the medium supplemented with 10mM glycine in combination with swim-up method for 30 min gave the best results and was significantly different from the remaining concentrations (P<0.01), with viability rate, overall mobility and membrane integrity of 68.0%, 58.7% and 49.7%, respectively. In conclusion, 10 mM glycine concentration combined with swim-up for 30 min is the optimal choice for freezing local black rabbit semen. The study highlights the importance of optimising freezing protocols to improve the quality of frozen rabbit sperm, which can have important implications for animal breeding and conservation efforts.This study is funded in part by the Can Tho University, Code: T2022-133Tran, TTT.; Duy, NLK.; Hang, NT.; Ngoc, PK.; Tuyen, DND. (2023). Improving indigenous Vietnamese Black Rabbit frozen sperm quality: the role of glycine and sperm selection methods. World Rabbit Science. 31(4):229-236. https://doi.org/10.4995/wrs.2023.1969022923631

Molecular docking screening, dynamics simulations, ADMET, and semi-synthesis prediction of flavones and flavonols from the COCONUT database as potent bifunctional neuraminidase inhibitors

Finding new neuraminidase (N) inhibitors to improve anti-influenza treatment is necessary because of the high mutation rates of N protein. Over 3,000 flavones/flavonols and their synthesized products from the COCONUT database were performed in silico docking screening with N1-H274Y-oseltamivir protein (PDB ID: 3CL0). Several derivatives containing nitrogen heterocyclic groups or aromatic rings showed higher anti-neuraminidase potential than that of laninamivir. Especially, the linker groups between the flavone aglycone and nitrogen heterocyclic group created the interactions with the triad of arginine residues Arg118-Arg292-Arg371, which suggested these compounds could become bifunctional inhibitors against the influenza virus strains at the sialic acid binding site and the adjacent 430-cavity position through triad of arginine residues binding. ADMET indicators and the synthesis design strategy of the most suitable compound, ethyl 4-{2-[(5-hydroxy-4-oxo-2-phenyl-4H-chromen-7-yl)oxy]acetyl}piperazine-1-carboxylate, were also successfully predicted and it could be a concerned candidate for further wet-lab synthesis, in vivo and clinical study

Contract Farming in the Mekong Delta's Rice Supply Chain: Insights from an Agent-Based Modeling Study

We would like to thank Michael Maes and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive feedback. The first author, H. K. Nguyen, would like to acknowledge support from an Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship to study a PhD degree in Computer Science at The University of Newcastle, Australia. R. Chiong is the corresponding author of this paper. The third author, M. Chica, is supported through the Ramón y Cajal program (RYC-2016-19800)In this paper, we use agent-based modeling (ABM) to study different obstacles to the expansion of contract rice farming in the context of Mekong Delta (MKD)'s rice supply chain. ABM is a bottom-up approach for modeling the dynamics of interactions among individuals and complex combinations of various factors (e.g., economic, social or environmental). Our agent-based contract farming model focuses on two critical components of contractual relationship, namely financial incentives and trust. We incorporate the actual recurrent fluctuations of spot market prices, which induce both contractor and farmer agents to renege on the agreement. The agent-based model is then used to predict emergent system-wide behaviors and compare counterfactual scenarios of different policies and initiatives on maintaining the contract rice farming scheme. Simulation results firstly show that a fully-equipped contractor who opportunistically exploits a relatively small proportion (less than 10%) of the contracted farmers in most instances can outperform spot market-based contractors in terms of average profit achieved for each crop. Secondly, a committed contractor who offers lower purchasing prices than the most typical rate can obtain better earnings per ton of rice as well as higher profit per crop. However, those contractors in both cases could not enlarge their contract farming scheme, since either farmers' trust toward them decreases gradually or their offers are unable to compete with the benefits from a competitor or the spot market. Thirdly, the results are also in agreement with the existing literature that the contract farming scheme is not a cost-effective method for buyers with limited rice processing capacity, which is a common situation among the contractors in the MKD region. These results yield significant insights into the difficulty in expanding the agricultural contracting program in the MKD's rice supply chain.Ramón y Cajal program (RYC-2016-19800