Consumer Behavior, Attitude and Perception Toward Modern Trade Stores in Rural Vietnam

Modern trade stores have been very successful in Vietnamese retail industry, espe-cially in some big cities. However, the popularity of such stores is still lagging behindthe traditional stores. In regard with this issue, many studies have been done overtime, but very few have been focused on rural regions in emerging countries likeVietnam. Thus, this study aims at exploring the reasons why Vietnamese consumersin the remote area prefer to shop at traditional stores instead of modern stores. Fur-thermore, this study attempts to fill the gap between these two types of formats. Theresearch uses quantitative method with the aid of SPSS software to analyze the data.The results show that consumers in the remote areas are still not willing to quit theirtraditional shopping habits for a new choice of store based on the current situation.Therefore, it is not the right time for investors to expand their modern business intothe country's rural areas

Standardisation of Environmental Enrichment for Laboratory Mice and Rats: Utilisation, Practicality and Variation in Experimental Results

Rats and mice are the most commonly used species as laboratory animal models of diseases in biomedical  research. Environmental factors such as cage size, number of cage mates and cage structure such as environmental  enrichment can affect the physiology and behavioural development of laboratory animals and  their well-being throughout their lives. Therefore compromising the animals’ well-being due to inadequate  environmental conditions would diminish the value of the research models. In order to improve laboratory  animals’ well-being and promote the quality of animal based biomedical research, it is fundamentally  important that the environment of the animals meets the animals’ species typical behavioural needs. Standardisation  of environmental enrichment for laboratory rats and mice therefore should provide possibilities  for the animals to engage in at least the essential behavioural needs such as social contact, nest building,  exploring and foraging. There is a wide variety of environmental enrichment items commercially available  for laboratory mice and rats. However, how these items are used by the animals, their practicality in the  laboratory and whether these enrichments might lead to increased variation in experimental results have  not been widely assessed. In this study, we implemented two standardised enrichment items (shelters, nesting  materials) for rats and mice at different animal units. We instructed the animal care staff in monitoring  the use of enrichment items by the animals by means of a daily score sheet system. The animal staff ’s  viewpoint on practicality of the standardised enrichment program was assessed with a monthly score sheet  survey. Also we assessed whether the enriched environment affected breeding results and contributed to an  increase in variation of experimental data from several participating current studies. Our results show that  the animals readily used the provided enrichment items. A slight increase in workload for the animal staff  was reported. However, the overall judgement was mainly reported as good. Breeding results and variation  in experimental data did not reveal differences as compared to data from previous housing and/or non enriched  housing conditions. Overall, the results indicate that standard environmental enrichment that is species  appropriate may enhance the animal’s well-being without undesirable side effects on the experimental  outcome and daily working routine of the animal care staff.

Tame Functions with strongly isolated singularities at infinity: a tame version of a Parusinski's Theorem

Let f be a definable function, enough differentiable. Under the condition of having strongly isolated singularities at infinity at a regular value c we give a sufficient condition expressed in terms of the total absolute curvature function to ensure the local triviality of the function f over a neighbourhood of c and doing so providing the tame version of Parusinski's Theorem on complex polynomials with isolated singularities at infinity.Comment: 20 page

Dynamical heterogeneities close to a colloidal gel

Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by two populations with different mobilities. Analyzing the statics and dynamics of both sets of particles, it is shown that the slow particles form a network of stuck particles, whereas the fast ones are able to move over long distances. Correlation functions show that the environment of the fast particles relaxes much faster than that of the slow ones, but at short times the bonds between fast particles are longer lived due to the flexibility of their structure. No string-like motion is observed for the fast particles, but they occupy preferential sites in the surface of the structure formed by the slow ones

Structural analysis of ultrafast extended x-ray absorption fine structure with subpicometer spatial resolution: Application to spin crossover complexes

We present a novel analysis of time-resolved extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra based on the fitting of the experimental transients obtained from optical pump/x-ray probe experiments. We apply it to the analysis of picosecond EXAFS data on aqueous [FeII (bpy)3] 2+, which undergoes a light induced conversion from its low-spin (LS) ground state to the short-lived (τ≈650 ps) excited high-spin (HS) state. A series of EXAFS spectra were simulated for a collection of possible HS structures from which the ground state fit spectrum was subtracted to generate transient difference absorption (TA) spectra. These are then compared with the experimental TA spectrum using a least-squares statistical analysis to derive the structural change. This approach reduces the number of required parameters by cancellation in the differences. It also delivers a unique solution for both the fractional population and the extracted excited state structure. We thus obtain a value of the Fe-N bond elongation in the HS state with subpicometer precision (0.203±0.008 Å). © 2009 American Institute of Physics.This work was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation via Contract Nos. 620–066145, 200021–107956, PP002–110464, 200020–116023, 200021–105239, and 200020-116533.Peer Reviewe

INVESTIGATION OF ARSENIC CONTAMINATION IN GROUNDWATER IN HANOI AREA

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart