An ecological perspective on the motivational trajectories of high school students learning English in rural areas in Vietnam : A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

This study explores the motivational trajectories of four students learning English at a rural high school in Southern Vietnam. It draws on a person-in-context relational view of motivation (Ushioda, 2009) as the overarching theoretical framework and uses ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1993) as an analytical tool to develop insights into the ways motivation is implicated in a multiplicity of settings and social relationships. Specifically, it aims to identify motivational affordances for these students, the synergistic effects across settings on their language learning motivation, and their motivational trajectories within and across settings and relationships. The study utilises a qualitative case study design, relying primarily on interviews from social practice perspectives and observations. The data collection, spanning approximately one and a half years, comprised two main phases, one on-site and one off-site. In the first phase, data were gathered in different settings, including the school, the participants’ homes as a site for private tuition, and other more informal public spaces such as food stores. In the second phase, Skype interviews and Facebook exchanges were the main means of data collection. The findings suggest that while language affordances were evident in both formal and informal learning settings, students developed diverse individual motivational trajectories. Their motivational constructions resulted from a synergy of environmental and idiosyncratic elements pertinent to their own language learning conditions, social relationships, and personal appraisals of such affordances and learning opportunities. These relationships and students’ agentive use of resources were shaped and reshaped by their interactions with significant others within and across settings. Sociocultural features related to the school systems, local and national education policies, family traditions, cultural values, and future prospects also have synergistic impacts on their L2 motivation. The present study illustrates the value of interpreting the situated and dynamic nature of L2 motivation using an ecological paradigm. It also points to the need to adopt a set of data collection methods, tools, and data sources that diverge from more conventional means to explore L2 motivation. The study offers a fresh theoretical and methodological approach for future research geared towards lifewide adaptive perspectives on English language teaching and learning

The Satisfaction of Corporate Customer at Agribank in Ho Chi Minh City

In this paper, the authors use analytical method of explore factor analysis to determining factors that are components of the corporate customer satisfaction in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). This paper conducted during the period from March 2012 to December 2014. The exploratory factor analysis result showed that there were five factors, which included of factors following the service behavior, the tangible and the competitive price, the reliance, the convenience and the Agribank Image that are components of the corporate customer satisfaction with significance level 5 %. In addition, the research result processed from SPSS 20.0 software. The research result showed that there were nearly 550 corporates of Agribank in HCMC interviewed but 503 corporates (47 samples mistaken) to be processed and answered about 30 questions. The researcher had analyzed KMO test. The corporate responses measured through an adapted questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale. Hard copy and interview the corporate by questionnaire distributed among corporate of Agribank in HCMC. At the same time, the result was also a scientific evidence and important for researchers, and policy makers who apply them for improving the corporate customer satisfaction in HCMC. The researchers had obtained the main objectives of this study were to: 1. The first objective, the authors had to conduct a survey to find factors that are components of the corporate customer satisfaction of Agribank in HCMC. 2. The second objective, the authors had to identify some factors that are components in the corporate customer satisfaction in HCMC

Enhancing Few-shot Image Classification with Cosine Transformer

This paper addresses the few-shot image classification problem, where the classification task is performed on unlabeled query samples given a small amount of labeled support samples only. One major challenge of the few-shot learning problem is the large variety of object visual appearances that prevents the support samples to represent that object comprehensively. This might result in a significant difference between support and query samples, therefore undermining the performance of few-shot algorithms. In this paper, we tackle the problem by proposing Few-shot Cosine Transformer (FS-CT), where the relational map between supports and queries is effectively obtained for the few-shot tasks. The FS-CT consists of two parts, a learnable prototypical embedding network to obtain categorical representations from support samples with hard cases, and a transformer encoder to effectively achieve the relational map from two different support and query samples. We introduce Cosine Attention, a more robust and stable attention module that enhances the transformer module significantly and therefore improves FS-CT performance from 5% to over 20% in accuracy compared to the default scaled dot-product mechanism. Our method performs competitive results in mini-ImageNet, CUB-200, and CIFAR-FS on 1-shot learning and 5-shot learning tasks across backbones and few-shot configurations. We also developed a custom few-shot dataset for Yoga pose recognition to demonstrate the potential of our algorithm for practical application. Our FS-CT with cosine attention is a lightweight, simple few-shot algorithm that can be applied for a wide range of applications, such as healthcare, medical, and security surveillance. The official implementation code of our Few-shot Cosine Transformer is available at https://github.com/vinuni-vishc/Few-Shot-Cosine-Transforme

Double-Curvature Test of Reinforced Concrete Columns Using Shaking Table: A New Test Setup

This paper proposes a new test setup to study the double-curvature behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) columns using shaking table. In this setup, the seismic action is simulated by the horizontal movement of a long-heavy rigid mass sitting on the top of only one test specimen. The double-curvature mechanism of specimen is affected by the movement of the concrete mass on a test rig consisting four steel hollow-section columns fully anchored to the shaking table. Application of axial load on the specimen is made possible through a pre-stressing equipment connecting to its top and bottom bases. The current setup offers two improvements over the previous ones. First, it makes available greater ranges of test data for conducting bigger sizes of the specimens. Second, it allows to directly measure the variation of axial force in the test specimens while the test implementation can be fast and easy with a high safety margin even until the complete collapse of the test units. The current test setup has been successfully applied on two ½ scaled V-shaped columns. It has been shown that the column specimen with a low axial load level of 0.05f’cAg, where f’c is the concrete strength and Ag is the cross-sectional area of the specimen, can well survive at a ground peak acceleration up to 5.5 (m/s2) with a drift ratio of approximately 2.91%. Meanwhile, the column subjected to moderate axial load level of 0.15f’cAg can survive at a higher ground peak acceleration of 8.0 (m/s2) with a drift ratio of 3.75%. Furthermore, it is experimentally evidenced that the V-shaped cross-section does not deform in-plane under seismic action. The angle between two planes corresponding to the column web and flange are up to 0.03 (rad). This finding is significant since it contradicts the plane strain assumption available in the current design practice

Adaptation options for agricultural cultivation systems in the South Central Coast under the context of climate change: Assessment Report.

This report highlights the results of consultation meetings and field visits organized by the Department of Crop Production and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security in Southeast Asia in association with the three offices of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in the South Central Coast provinces of Binh Thuan, Ninh Thuan, and Khanh Hoa, in combination with consultation with the provinces in the conference: “Summing up crops production in the Winter-Spring season in 2018-2019, implementing the Summer-Autumn season, Main rice season in 2019 for the South Central Coast and the Central Highlands” held by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Tam Ky City, Quang Nam Province on 12 April 2019. The meetings underlined the progress made by the provinces on climate change adaptation and mitigation, options for risk reductions in agricultural production, and conversion of crop structure as results of implementing the guidelines of the provinces and the Sector, especially, solutions for reservation and efficient and economic use of water under the context of climate change. This assessment report also reviews some issues related to the agricultural transformation of the region in adapting to risks caused by climate change. They are based on comparative advantages in terms of geographical location and market of key agricultural products. This report also points out shortcomings in using land and unreasonable points in managing and using important natural resources, especially water, and provides recommendations for the agricultural transformation and inter-regional connection with the Central Highlands and the Southeast. The team also introduces climate-related risks maps and adaptation plans (CS MAP) which is applied in the five provinces in the Mekong Delta Region, and hopes this solution’s expansion shall be supported by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the provinces