A Change Support Model for Distributed Collaborative Work

Distributed collaborative software development tends to make artifacts and decisions inconsistent and uncertain. We try to solve this problem by providing an information repository to reflect the state of works precisely, by managing the states of artifacts/products made through collaborative work, and the states of decisions made through communications. In this paper, we propose models and a tool to construct the artifact-related part of the information repository, and explain the way to use the repository to resolve inconsistencies caused by concurrent changes of artifacts. We first show the model and the tool to generate the dependency relationships among UML model elements as content of the information repository. Next, we present the model and the method to generate change support workflows from the information repository. These workflows give us the way to efficiently modify the change-related artifacts for each change request. Finally, we define inconsistency patterns that enable us to be aware of the possibility of inconsistency occurrences. By combining this mechanism with version control systems, we can make changes safely. Our models and tool are useful in the maintenance phase to perform changes safely and efficiently.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, 4 table

AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT: A REAL LIFE APPROACH TO WRITING SKILL DEVELOPMENT

 Since assessment is an indispensable part of education, curriculum makers, educators and teachers have engaged in an ongoing discussion of how to address student performance. A variety of assessments including both short-term and long-term ones can be applied during or at the end of the learning process. Among such types, authentic assessment is a prominent approach. This paper is going to advocate authentic assessments as it fosters students' growth and teachers' pedagogical strategies. In addition, it helps to reach the goals of educational practices through the authenticity of equity and innovation when students actively seek their own ways to appreciate what they have learnt. Particularly, in a writing skills class, learners can take this opportunity to improve step by step their own proficiency in the use of written words. The paper, hence, discusses how authentic assessment can be applied to develop college students' writing through classroom observation and a set of semi-structured interviews. The result of the study revealed that using authentic assessment is an effective strategy for enhancing students’ interest in writing process and writing task fulfillment. Students would find it easier to become skillful writers at their English levels. The study, therefore, recommends more uses of authentic assessment in teaching writing skills as well as in teaching and learning the English language in general

Evolution of Commercial Facilities in New Urban Areas of Hanoi: Potential of Sustainable Neighborhood-level Third Place Making

Shopping contributes largely to how people feel part of and enjoy KDTMs (Khu Do Thi Moi - new urban areas) - the carefully planned new sites, well provided with infrastructure, and very attractive of Hanoi in the market economy. Among the three facilities that are rated as most important by KDTM’s residents - education, health care, and shopping, the third is considered a pure civil space. This space clearly reflects the changes of politico-economic context and decision-making actors. Participation of the private sector in the newly formed market economy after a long period under State-run subvention and the consumerism entailed various ways to develop neighborhood-level commercial facilities. This paper aims to analyze and discuss on: firstly, the neighborhood-level commercial facilities have ‘promptly’ updated the changes in Vietnam's political-economic; secondly, the classify of KDTMs has resulted in a corresponding differentiation of commercial facilities according to the will of the project owners and the target consumer-resident; finally, facing the global ‘death’ of shopping malls, the KDTMs malls are trying to find themselves a new ‘vitality’: they are being ‘publicized’ to (re)create the third places in KDTM, that encourage social interaction in the limited spaces - intersperse public and private practices

Functional redundancy of necrotrophic effectors – consequences for exploitation for breeding

Necrotrophic diseases of wheat cause major losses in most wheat growing areas of world. Tan spot (caused by Pyrenophora tritici-repentis) and septoria nodorum blotch (SNB; Parastagonospora nodorum) have been shown to reduce yields by 10–20% across entire agri-ecological zones despite the application of fungicides and a heavy focus over the last 30 years on resistance breeding. Efforts by breeders to improve the resistance of cultivars has been compromised by the universal finding that resistance was quantitative and governed by multiple quantitative trait loci (QTL). Most QTL had a limited effect that was hard to measure precisely and varied significantly from site to site and season to season. The discovery of necrotrophic effectors has given breeding for disease resistance new methods and tools. In the case of tan spot in West Australia, a single effector, PtrToxA and its recogniser gene Tsn1, has a dominating impact in disease resistance. The delivery of ToxA to breeders has had a major impact on cultivar choice and breeding strategies. For P. nodorum, three effectors – SnToxA, SnTox1, and SnTox3 – have been well characterized. Unlike tan spot, no one effector has a dominating role. Genetic analysis of various mapping populations and pathogen isolates has shown that different effectors have varying impact and that epistatic interactions also occur. As a result of these factors the deployment of these effectors for SNB resistance breeding is more complex. We have deleted the three effectors in a strain of P. nodorum and measured effector activity and disease potential of the triple knockout mutant. The culture filtrate causes necrosis in several cultivars and the strain causes disease, albeit the overall levels are less than in the wild type. Modeling of the field disease resistance scores of cultivars from their reactions to the microbially expressed effectors SnToxA, SnTox1, and SnTox3 is significantly improved by including the response to the triple knockout mutant culture filtrate. This indicates that one or more further effectors are secreted into the culture filtrate. We conclude that the in vitro-secreted necrotrophic effectors explain a very large part of the disease response of wheat germplasm and that this method of resistance breeding promises to further reduce the impact of these globally significant diseases

Reconceptualizing the Public Spaces of New Urban Areas in Hanoi: The End or the New of Public-Making?

Public spaces are designed and managed in many different ways. In Hanoi, after the Doi moi policy in 1986, the transfer of the public spaces creation at the neighborhood-level to the private sector has prospered nature of public and added a large amount of public space for the city, directly impacting on citizen's daily life, creating a new trend, new concept of public spaces. This article looks forward to understanding the public spaces-making and operating in KDTMs (Khu Do Thi Moi - new urban areas) in Hanoi to answer the question of whether ‘socialization’/privatization of these public spaces will put an end to the urban public or the new means of public-making trend. Based on the comparison and literature review of studies in the world on public spaces privatization with domestic studies to see the differences in the Vietnamese context leading to differences in definitions and roles and the concept of public spaces in KDTMs of Hanoi. Through adducing and analyzing practical cases, the article also mentions the trends, the issues, the ways and the technologies of public-making and public-spaces-making in KDTMs of Hanoi. Win/loss and the relationship of the three most important influential actors in this process (municipality, KDTM owners, inhabitants/citizens) is also considered to reconceptualize the public spaces of KDTMs in Hanoi

GWAS analysis reveals distinct pathogenicity profiles of Australian Parastagonospora nodorum isolates and identification of marker-trait-associations to septoria nodorum blotch

The fungus Parastagonospora nodorum is the causal agent of septoria nodorum leaf blotch (SNB) and glume blotch which are common in many wheat growing regions in the world. The disease is complex and could be explained by multiple interactions between necrotrophic effectors secreted by the pathogen and matching susceptibility genes in wheat. An Australian P. nodorum population was clustered into five groups with contrasting properties. This study was set to identify their pathogenicity profiles using a diverse wheat panel of 134 accessions which are insensitive to SnToxA and SnTox1 in both in vitro and in vivo conditions. SNB seedling resistance/susceptibility to five representative isolates from the five clusters, responses to crude culture-filtrates (CFs) of three isolates and sensitivity to SnTox3 semi-purified effector together with 11,455 SNP markers have been used for linkage disequilibrium (LD) and association analyses. While quantitative trait loci (QTL) on 1D, 2A, 2B, 4B, 5B, 6A, 6B, 7A, 7D chromosomes were consistently detected across isolates and conditions, distinct patterns and isolate specific QTL were also observed among these isolates. In this study, SnTox3–Snn3-B1 interaction for the first time in Australia and SnTox3–Snn3-D1 interaction for the first time in bread wheat were found active using wild-type isolates. These findings could be due to new SnTox3 haplotype/isoform and exotic CIMMYT/ICARDA and Vavilov germplasm used, respectively. This study could provide useful information for dissecting novel and different SNB disease components, helping to prioritise research targets and contributing valuable information on genetic loci/markers for marker-assisted selection in SNB resistance wheat breeding programme

Chromosome-level genome assembly and manually-curated proteome of model necrotroph Parastagonospora nodorum Sn15 reveals a genome-wide trove of candidate effector homologs, and redundancy of virulence-related functions within an accessory chromosome

Background: The fungus Parastagonospora nodorum causes septoria nodorum blotch (SNB) of wheat (Triticum aestivum) and is a model species for necrotrophic plant pathogens. The genome assembly of reference isolate Sn15 was first reported in 2007. P. nodorum infection is promoted by its production of proteinaceous necrotrophic effectors, three of which are characterised – ToxA, Tox1 and Tox3. Results: A chromosome-scale genome assembly of P. nodorum Australian reference isolate Sn15, which combined long read sequencing, optical mapping and manual curation, produced 23 chromosomes with 21 chromosomes possessing both telomeres. New transcriptome data were combined with fungal-specific gene prediction techniques and manual curation to produce a high-quality predicted gene annotation dataset, which comprises 13,869 high confidence genes, and an additional 2534 lower confidence genes retained to assist pathogenicity effector discovery. Comparison to a panel of 31 internationally-sourced isolates identified multiple hotspots within the Sn15 genome for mutation or presence-absence variation, which was used to enhance subsequent effector prediction. Effector prediction resulted in 257 candidates, of which 98 higher-ranked candidates were selected for in-depth analysis and revealed a wealth of functions related to pathogenicity. Additionally, 11 out of the 98 candidates also exhibited orthology conservation patterns that suggested lateral gene transfer with other cereal-pathogenic fungal species. Analysis of the pan-genome indicated the smallest chromosome of 0.4 Mbp length to be an accessory chromosome (AC23). AC23 was notably absent from an avirulent isolate and is predominated by mutation hotspots with an increase in non-synonymous mutations relative to other chromosomes. Surprisingly, AC23 was deficient in effector candidates, but contained several predicted genes with redundant pathogenicity-related functions. Conclusions: We present an updated series of genomic resources for P. nodorum Sn15 – an important reference isolate and model necrotroph – with a comprehensive survey of its predicted pathogenicity content

Taxonomy of the genus Paris L. (Melanthiaceae) in Vietnam

Paris L. is a small genus distributed widely in Eurasia. In Vietnam Paris occur in evergreen broad-leaved forests in some mountainous areas of the North and the Central highlands. Due to over-exploitation as well as habitat loss, populations of some Paris species are seriously declining. This genus has not been studied extensively in Vietnam. The aim of this study was to define the morphological characteristics of the genus Paris in Vietnam. Morphological description, dichotomous key for identification, ecology and distributions of the genus in Vietnam are reported. The results show that this genus in Vietnam comprises 8 species and 2 varieties, possesing unilocular ovary with parietal placenta

A Review of Salary Policies for Vietnamese Civil Servants from 2010 to 2019

The public- sector salary policy is an important part of the socio-economic policy system, directly related to the balances of the economy, state budget and the life of the salary earners. This paper rests on secondary data that are legal documents on salary policy, related data and literature officially published to describe and analyse the salary system for Vietnamese civil servants in governmental agencies from 2010 to 2019. Some issues are outlined for consideration. First, how civil servants are ranked and salary policies for them from 2010 to 2019 are. The salary policy includes salary formula, base pay, minimum wage, allowances, components of the pay scale, pay rise rules. Second, their four characteristics are drawn out consisting of the stable and unified legal system; career-based grade pay system; many allowances; the salary system tends to pay for performance, be market-oriented but not really achieved. Third, some comments, pros and cons of the salary system in this period are explored. Finally, it is summarized that some suggestions, recommendations to improve Vietnamese civil service salary system through minimizing its disadvantages and promoting inherent advantages. Keywords: Vietnam, salary policy, salary system, public sector, civil servants, career-based system DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/9-11-03 Publication date: November 30th 201