Hanoi’s early 20th century: “On the second floor - Phố Phái”

And not just look; one needs to know where to look as well. In this case: look upwards, on the second floor of the old townhouses, which has not been replaced by showcasing pavilions or modern glass doors. Some houses have been repainted, but the architecture – the form of the story, the shapes, and construction of the balconies, the decorating sculptures – still exudes a century-old familiarity. So it turns out that Phố Phái, though no longer intact, is still present here

The question of quality

Phuong-Thao T. Trinh, Thu-Hien T. Le, Thu-Trang Vuong, Phuong-Hanh Hoang (2019). Chapter 6. The question of quality. In Quan-Hoang Vuong, Trung Tran (Eds.), The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road (pp. 121–142). Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter. DOI:10.2478/9783110686081-011. Online ISBN: 9783110686081 © 2019 Sciendo / De Gruyte

On how religions could accidentally incite lies and violence: folktales as a cultural transmitter

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm

Multi-faceted insights of entrepreneurship facing a fast-growing economy: A literature review

This study explores entrepreneurship research in Vietnam, a lower-middle-income country in Southeast Asia that has witnessed rapid economic growth since the 1990s but has nonetheless been absent in the relevant Western-centric literature. Using an exclusively developed software, the study presents a structured dataset on entrepreneurship research in Vietnam from 2008 to 2018, highlighting: low research output, low creativity level, inattention to entrepreneurship theories, and instead, a focus on practical business matters. The scholarship remains limited due to the detachment between the academic and entrepreneur communities. More important are the findings that Vietnamese research on entrepreneurship, still in its infancy, diverges significantly from those in developed and emerging economies in terms of their content and methods. These studies are contextualized to a large extent to reflect the concerns of a developing economy still burdened by the high financial and nonfinancial costs

APPLICATION OF DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS FOR MEASURING SERVICE QUALITY FROM DISTRIBUTORS’ PERSPECTIVE IN SUPPLY CHAIN

Abstract: Vietnam’s textile and apparel sector has achieved fast and sustainable growth over the past years and played an important role in national socio-economic development. The export value of textile and garment products in recent years has ranked number two in the country’s total export revenue. In this scenario, an attempt was made to examine the service quality at the manufacturer – distributor interface of the textile supply chain and provide clear guidelines for benchmarking of service quality in multi-unit services. A sample of 144 distributors from Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in major regions of South Vietnam was selected. Exploratory Factor Analysis was used to identify the critical factors of service quality. This research applies the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to the computation of a measure of overall service quality and benchmarking when measuring service quality with the Service Performance model. Dealing with the five dimensions of Service Performance (SERVPERF) as outputs, the proposed approach uses DEA as a tool for multiple criteria decision making (MCDM), in particular, the pure output DEA model without inputs. Data envelopment analysis measures the relative efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs) and identifies a set of corresponding efficient DMUs that can be used as benchmarks for the improvement of inefficient DMUs. The findings shed valuable insights on measures and critical underlying dimensions of service quality in the context of the supply chain in the textile industry, specifically from the distributor perspective. The results also give the best performer in textile SMEs and set the benchmarking guideline within each group among SEMsKeywords: service quality, data envelopment analysis, SERVPER

Enhancing light scattering effect of white LEDs with ZnO nanostructures

Pc-LEDs, the lighting method that blends blue LED light with yellow light from phosphor to discharge white radiation, is one of the most advance known for high lumen output. However, pc-LEDs has inferior due to angular CCT deviation, which prevent pc-LEDs from reaching better performance. As a result, this research is conducted to address the need of pc-LEDs development by introducing a configuration doped with ZnO nanoparticles. The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method and the phosphor layer containing ZnO were applied in the experiments. The effect of ZnO-filled on the performance of color quality pc-LEDs is confirmed through calculated results. In particular, the uniformity of scattered light is improved with the presence of ZnO. In addition, ZnO particles also minimize the deviation of color temperature and enhance the color quality. Although there is a small decline in lumen output to achieve better color temperature uniformity, however, with suitable concentrations such as 0.25% N-ZnO, 0.25% S-ZnO, and 0. 75% R-ZnO, the decline is acceptable. The research on ZnO pc-LEDs demonstrates that this affordable and simple configuration can improve lighting properties and create other directions to enhance white ligh

Clustering lifestyle risk behaviors among Vietnamese adolescents and roles of school : a Bayesian multilevel analysis of global school-based student health survey 2019

Background: Adolescence is a vulnerable period for many lifestyle risk behaviors. In this study, we aimed to 1) examine a clustering pattern of lifestyle risk behaviors; 2) investigate roles of the school health promotion programs on this pattern among adolescents in Vietnam. Methods: We analyzed data of 7,541 adolescents aged 13–17 years from the 2019 nationally representative Global School-based Student Health Survey, conducted in 20 provinces and cities in Vietnam. We applied the latent class analysis to identify groups of clustering and used Bayesian 2-level logistic regressions to evaluate the correlation of school health promotion programs on these clusters. We reassessed the school effect size by incorporating different informative priors to the Bayesian models. Findings: The most frequent lifestyle risk behavior among Vietnamese adolescents was physical inactivity, followed by unhealthy diet, and sedentary behavior. Most of students had a cluster of at least two risk factors and nearly a half with at least three risk factors. Latent class analysis detected 23% males and 18% females being at higher risk of lifestyle behaviors. Consistent through different priors, high quality of health promotion programs associated with lower the odds of lifestyle risk behaviors (highest quality schools vs. lowest quality schools; males: Odds ratio (OR) = 0·67, 95% Highest Density Interval (HDI): 0·46 – 0·93; females: OR = 0·69, 95% HDI: 0·47 – 0·98). Interpretation: Our findings demonstrated the clustering of specific lifestyle risk behaviors among Vietnamese in-school adolescents. School-based interventions separated for males and females might reduce multiple health risk behaviors in adolescence. Funding: The 2019 Global School-based Student Health Survey was conducted with financial support from the World Health Organization. The authors received no funding for the data analysis, data interpretation, manuscript writing, authorship, and/or publication of this article. © 2021 The Author(s

Using CaCO3-doped package to improve correlated color temperature uniformity of white light-emitting diodes

The white light-emitting diode (WLED) has been the most advance lighting method currently, however, the fabrication process of this configuration still has drawbacks which negatively affect its color quality. This research was conducted to provide a method for WLED’s lighting output enhancement. Since CaCO3 particles are excellent for thermal stability enhancement, especially when being combined with an adhesive substance, we decided to integrate CO3 particles into resin matrix such as melamine formaldehyde (MF) and investigate their influences on the optical properties, including color uniformity and lumen output, of the WLED. The results showed that CaCO3 and MF resin are beneficial to the light scattering efficiency, which results in higher luminous flux and chromatic quality for WLED packages. In addition to that, the appropriate amounts of MF resin and CaCO3 for reaching the best lumen efficiency and color quality are figured out at 1% and 10%, respectively. Moreover, another advantage of using MF resin and CaCO3 for fabricating WLEDs is cost effectiveness. Hence, it has turned out that CaCO3 and MF resins can be potential materials for next high-quality WLED generations

On how religions could accidentally incite lies and violence: Folktales as a cultural transmitter

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument

STUDY ON CAUSE-EFFECT RELATIONS AND OPTIMIZATION OF TABLETS CONTAINING AQUILARIA CRASSNA SPRAY-DRIED EXTRACT

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop and optimize the formulation of tablets containing Aquilaria crassna extract using the direct compression method.Methods: D-optimal design based on three independent variables was applied to evaluate the cause-effect relations and optimize the A. crassna tablet formulation. The weight variation (Y1), disintegration time (Y2), hardness (Y3) and friability (Y4) were investigated with respect to three independent variables including % dicalcium phosphate anhydrous (DCPA) in filler (X1), % filler (X2) and % croscarmellose sodium (CCNa) (X3). The dissolution study of the optimized A. crassna tablets were investigated in simulated gastric fluid (SGF) (pH 1.2) using a validated high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for mangiferin analysis.Results: All investigation factors were found to have significant effects on the physical properties of A. crassna tablet. The tablet hardness and the disintegration time increased in positive relations with the ratios of DCPA. The results exhibited the negative relations between disintegration time and the percentages of CCNa. The optimized A. crassna tablet formulation which included 35 % (w/w) DCPA in filler, 60 % (w/w) filler and 7% (w/w) CCNa possessed the weight variation of 1.38 % (w/w), the disintegration time of 6.29 min, the hardness of 85.63 N and the friability of 0.41 % (w/w). The optimized A. crassna tablet formulation was experimentally examined which demonstrated a good agreement between the experimental and predicted values. Mangiferin was found to release completely from the optimized A. crassna tablets within 30 min.Conclusion: The cause-effect relations and optimization of A. crassna tablet formulation were investigated and reported for the first time. The A. crassna spray-dried extract could be formulated into tablet by direct compression method with good mechanical properties and acceptable release profile