University teachers' perceptions of their roles in curriculum decision making: A case study at Hanoi National University of Education (Vietnam)

This study is concerned with university teachers' perceptions of their roles in curriculum decision making in the setting of Hanoi National University of Education (Vietnam). This is one of the largest teacher training universities in Vietnam. Since research on teachers' curriculum decision making at tertiary institutions has been carried out internationally, it is suggested that these issues should be examined with due consideration within the Vietnamese higher education context. Information for the research was gathered using a qualitative approach. Individual, face-to-face interviews were conducted with eight teachers at Hanoi National University of Education. These teachers taught different disciplinary subjects and some of them held positions as Deans of Faculties and Heads of Departments at the university. The teachers were interviewed in Vietnam through May to June 2009. The interview responses were then analyzed and interpreted using my own approach adapted from literature on qualitative research methods. From my research findings, it was evident that ways Hanoi National University of Education teachers conceptualized curriculum and curriculum decision making were influenced by the top-down, centralized model of management dominating over Vietnamese education in the last 3 decades (1980s-present). Curriculum was frequently defined by looking at its legality and authority. Meanwhile, curriculum decision making was seen as a function of authoritative agencies rather than the activities of university teachers themselves. My research also found that university teachers possessed a high degree of self-awareness about their responsibilities and professional capacity related to curriculum decision making. Although most university teachers thought they were encouraged to engage in curriculum decision making, they expressed an expectation of being given more roles and involvement in this process. Additionally, a majority of university teachers were worried about the limitations in their professional competence and the lack of professional development opportunities. They, therefore, suggested recommendations for facilitating Vietnamese university teachers' participation in curriculum decision making. These recommendations involved educational management and policy changes, professional development for university teachers, and changes in the curriculum perceptions of university teachers themselves

Text-To-Speech à base de HMM (Hidden Markov Model) pour le vietnamien : modélisation de la segmentation prosodique, la conception du corpus, la conception du système, et l’évaluation perceptive

The thesis objective is to design and build a high quality Hidden Markov Model (HMM-)based Text-To-Speech (TTS) system for Vietnamese – a tonal language. The system is called VTED (Vietnamese TExt-tospeech Development system). In view of the great importance of lexical tones, a “tonophone” – an allophone in tonal context – was proposed as a new speech unit in our TTS system. A new training corpus, VDTS (Vietnamese Di-Tonophone Speech corpus), was designed for 100% coverage of di-phones in tonal contexts (i.e. di-tonophones) using the greedy algorithm from a huge raw text. A total of about 4,000 sentences of VDTS were recorded and pre-processed as a training corpus of VTED.In the HMM-based speech synthesis, although pause duration can be modeled as a phoneme, the appearanceof pauses cannot be predicted by HMMs. Lower phrasing levels above words may not be completely modeled with basic features. This research aimed at automatic prosodic phrasing for Vietnamese TTS using durational clues alone as it appeared too difficult to disentangle intonation from lexical tones. Syntactic blocks, i.e. syntactic phrases with a bounded number of syllables (n), were proposed for predicting final lengthening (n = 6) and pause appearance (n = 10). Improvements for final lengthening were done by some strategies of grouping single syntactic blocks. The quality of the predictive J48-decision-tree model for pause appearance using syntactic blocks combining with syntactic link and POS (Part-Of-Speech) features reached F-score of 81.4% Precision=87.6%, Recall=75.9%), much better than that of the model with only POS (F-score=43.6%)or syntactic link (F-score=52.6%) alone.The architecture of the system was proposed on the basis of the core architecture of HTS with an extension of a Natural Language Processing part for Vietnamese. Pause appearance was predicted by the proposed model. Contextual feature set included phone identity features, locational features, tone-related features, and prosodic features (i.e. POS, final lengthening, break levels). Mary TTS was chosen as a platform for implementing VTED. In the MOS (Mean Opinion Score) test, the first VTED, trained with the old corpus and basic features, was rather good, 0.81 (on a 5 point MOS scale) higher than the previous system – HoaSung (using the non-uniform unit selection with the same training corpus); but still 1.2-1.5 point lower than the natural speech. The quality of the final VTED, trained with the new corpus and prosodic phrasing model, progressed by about 1.04 compared to the first VTED, and its gap with the natural speech was much lessened. In the tone intelligibility test, the final VTED received a high correct rate of 95.4%, only 2.6% lower than the natural speech, and 18% higher than the initial one. The error rate of the first VTED in the intelligibility test with the Latin square design was about 6-12% higher than the natural speech depending on syllable, tone or phone levels. The final one diverged about only 0.4-1.4% from the natural speech.L’objectif de cette thèse est de concevoir et de construire, un système Text-To-Speech (TTS) haute qualité à base de HMM (Hidden Markov Model) pour le vietnamien, une langue tonale. Le système est appelé VTED (Vietnamese TExt-to-speech Development system). Au vu de la grande importance de tons lexicaux, un tonophone” – un allophones dans un contexte tonal – a été proposé comme nouvelle unité de la parole dans notre système de TTS. Un nouveau corpus d’entraînement, VDTS (Vietnamese Di-Tonophone Speech corpus), a été conçu à partir d’un grand texte brut pour une couverture de 100% de di-phones tonalisés (di-tonophones) en utilisant l’algorithme glouton. Un total d’environ 4000 phrases ont été enregistrées et pré-traitées comme corpus d’apprentissage de VTED.Dans la synthèse de la parole sur la base de HMM, bien que la durée de pause puisse être modélisée comme un phonème, l’apparition de pauses ne peut pas être prédite par HMM. Les niveaux de phrasé ne peuvent pas être complètement modélisés avec des caractéristiques de base. Cette recherche vise à obtenir un découpage automatique en groupes intonatifs au moyen des seuls indices de durée. Des blocs syntaxiques constitués de phrases syntaxiques avec un nombre borné de syllabes (n), ont été proposés pour prévoir allongement final (n = 6) et pause apparente (n = 10). Des améliorations pour allongement final ont été effectuées par des stratégies de regroupement des blocs syntaxiques simples. La qualité du modèle prédictive J48-arbre-décision pour l’apparence de pause à l’aide de blocs syntaxiques, combinée avec lien syntaxique et POS (Part-Of-Speech) dispose atteint un F-score de 81,4 % (Précision = 87,6 %, Recall = 75,9 %), beaucoup mieux que le modèle avec seulement POS (F-score=43,6%) ou un lien syntaxique (F-score=52,6%).L’architecture du système a été proposée sur la base de l’architecture HTS avec une extension d’une partie traitement du langage naturel pour le Vietnamien. L’apparence de pause a été prédit par le modèle proposé. Les caractéristiques contextuelles incluent les caractéristiques d’identité de “tonophones”, les caractéristiques de localisation, les caractéristiques liées à la tonalité, et les caractéristiques prosodiques (POS, allongement final, niveaux de rupture). Mary TTS a été choisi comme plateforme pour la mise en oeuvre de VTED. Dans le test MOS (Mean Opinion Score), le premier VTED, appris avec les anciens corpus et des fonctions de base, était plutôt bonne, 0,81 (sur une échelle MOS 5 points) plus élevé que le précédent système – HoaSung (lequel utilise la sélection de l’unité non-uniforme avec le même corpus) ; mais toujours 1,2-1,5 point de moins que le discours naturel. La qualité finale de VTED, avec le nouveau corpus et le modèle de phrasé prosodique, progresse d’environ 1,04 par rapport au premier VTED, et son écart avec le langage naturel a été nettement réduit. Dans le test d’intelligibilité, le VTED final a reçu un bon taux élevé de 95,4%, seulement 2,6% de moins que le discours naturel, et 18% plus élevé que le premier. Le taux d’erreur du premier VTED dans le test d’intelligibilité générale avec le carré latin test d’environ 6-12% plus élevé que le langage naturel selon des niveaux de syllabe, de ton ou par phonème. Le résultat final ne s’écarte de la parole naturelle que de 0,4-1,4%

Difference of Gain and Loss on Currency Translation and Conversion

This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of translation and conversion of currency. Foreign currency translation is the process of reporting financial information from one currency to another. Foreign currency transactions take place on the spot, forward, or swap markets. Currencies bought or sold on the spot generally have to be delivered as soon as possible, that is, within 2 working days. Foreign currency translation is carried out to prepare joint financial reports. Translation is simply a change in monetary units, just as a balance sheet expressed in British pounds is restated into its US dollar equivalent. No physical exchange takes place, and no related transaction occurs as if a conversion were made

PREVENTION DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND CHILD ABUSE - SITUATION AND SOLUTION

To contribute to improving the effectiveness of domestic violence prevention and control in particular and child abuse in general, within the scope of this article, we would like to present the current situation, solutions, and recommendations to strengthen public relations propaganda, dissemination, and education of laws, knowledge, and skills on domestic violence prevention and control in particular and child abuse in general; organization and operation of child protection service providers; support and intervention when children are at risk of being abused or abused

Vietnam Inbound M&A Activity: the Role of Government Policy and Regulatory Environment

With a robust recent history of reform and opening, joining of the World Trade Organization, and negotiating a myriad of regional and global trade agreements, Vietnam has emerged as a promising destination for foreign direct investment(FDI) and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In this paper, we providean overview of Vietnam’s inbound mergers and acquisitions and review the twomain driving forces of inbound M&A, which are the legal framework reformprocess and the equitization of State-owned enterprises. We close by providingdirections for future research in the area of cross-border M&As

Assessing Soil Physicochemical Properties and Soil Organic Matter Stability across a Grassland-Cropland Edge at an Ecotone in Saskatchewan

Farming production may move northward since climate change is making the south warmer and drier. The expansion of agricultural land impacts several properties and functions of native soils due to changes in land use management and vegetation covers. The current edge between native land and cropland that exists within the prairie-forest ecotone might be the first area to be impacted by changes in both land use management and climatic conditions (i.e., temperature and moisture conditions). Our goal was to find out which land use in this area would be more stable under land use change induced by climatic conditions changes. To achieve our goal, we evaluated physicochemical properties, soil organic matter (SOM) fractionation and biological stability of two main aggregate size fractions (> 2000 µm, and 150–2000 µm) of soils across a grassland-cropland edge in central Saskatchewan, Canada. Additionally, we examined changes in SOM stability of these soils under different temperature and moisture conditions. Our result showed that both land use and soil depth were primary factors controlling soil physiochemical properties. The amount of TOC, TC, TN, and OC:TN ratio gradually declined from grassland to cropland in topsoil (0–12 cm). Since SOM light fraction (LF) is decomposed faster than heavy fraction (HF), HF had significantly higher mass, C and N contents, and C:N ratio compared to LF. Among land uses, cropland had the highest HF mass within two main aggregate size fractions, while all land uses had similar amount of LF mass. Furthermore, the proportion of decomposable C within two main aggregate size fractions of grassland was higher than that of cropland, but the large aggregate size fraction of cropland mineralized more N per g TN than that of grassland. As for SOM stability under different climatic conditions, soils from all land uses mineralized more C and N at higher temperatures regardless of moisture conditions. Besides temperature, land use was another main factor influencing C mineralization, but soil moisture was the other main factor affecting N mineralization. Our results indicated that cropland was more stable than the edge and grassland in terms of C mineralization, but less stable in terms of N mineralization. In addition, the edge was more sensitive to climactic conditions than other land uses in terms of N mineralization. Understanding soil physiochemical properties, SOM stabilization and fractionation, and how these properties of soil might react to land use management change induced by climate change would aid in developing sustainable management which brings benefits to both the producers and the environment

AMEE: A Robust Framework for Explanation Evaluation in Time Series Classification

This paper aims to provide a framework to quantitatively evaluate and rank explanation methods for the time series classification task, which deals with a prevalent data type in critical domains such as healthcare and finance. The recent surge of research interest in explanation methods for time series classification has provided a great variety of explanation techniques. Nevertheless, when these explanation techniques disagree on a specific problem, it remains unclear which of them to use. Comparing the explanations to find the right answer is non-trivial. Two key challenges remain: how to quantitatively and robustly evaluate the informativeness (i.e., relevance for the classification task) of a given explanation method, and how to compare explanation methods side-by-side. We propose AMEE, a Model-Agnostic Explanation Evaluation framework for quantifying and comparing multiple saliency-based explanations for time series classification. Perturbation is added to the input time series guided by the saliency maps (i.e., importance weights for each point in the time series). The impact of perturbation on classification accuracy is measured and used for explanation evaluation. The results show that perturbing discriminative parts of the time series leads to significant changes in classification accuracy. To be robust to different types of perturbations and different types of classifiers, we aggregate the accuracy loss across perturbations and classifiers. This allows us to objectively quantify and rank different explanation methods. We provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis for synthetic datasets, a variety of UCR benchmark datasets, as well as a real-world dataset with known expert ground truth.Comment: Pre-prin

A simple nonlinear companding transform for nonlinear compensation of direct-detection optical OFDM systems

In direct-detection OFDM systems, the nonlinear effects caused by optical modulation and fiber transmission can degrade the system performance severely. In this study, we propose a new nonlinear companding transform to improve the performance of direct detection optical OFDM transmission systems. The demonstration is realized by Monte-Carlo simulation of the intensity modulation and direct-detection DCO-OFDM optical transmission system at 40 Gbps over a 80 km of standard single mode fiber link. The influence of the companding parameters on the performance of system in different nonlinear transmission conditions has been investigated via simulation