Sustainable Growth and Ethics: a Study of Business Ethics in Vietnam Between Business Students and Working Adults

Sustainable growth is not only the ultimate goal of business corporations but also the primary target of local governments as well as regional and global economies. One of the cornerstones of sustainable growth is ethics. An ethical organizational culture provides support to achieve sustainable growth. Ethical leaders and employees have great potential for positive influence on decisions and behaviors that lead to sustainability. Ethical behavior, therefore, is expected of everyone in the modern workplace. As a result, companies devote many resources and training programs to make sure their employees live according to the high ethical standards. This study provides an analysis of Vietnamese business students’ level of ethical maturity based on gender, education, work experience, and ethics training. The results of data from 260 business students compared with 704 working adults in Vietnam demonstrate that students have a significantly higher level of ethical maturity. Furthermore, gender and work experience are significant factors in ethical maturity. While more educated respondents and those who had completed an ethics course did have a higher level of ethical maturity, the results were not statistically significant. Analysis of the results along with suggestions and implications are provided

The effect of NOM characteristics and membrane type on microfiltration performance

Efforts to understand and predict the role of different organic fractions in the fouling of low-pressure membranes are presented. Preliminary experiments with an experimental apparatus that incorporates automatic backwashing and filtration over several days has shown that microfiltration of the hydrophilic fractions leads to rapid flux decline and the formation of a cake or gel layer, while the hydrophobic fractions show a steady flux decline and no obvious formation of a gel or cake layer. The addition of calcium to the weakly hydrophobic acid (WHA) fraction led to the formation of a gel layer from associations between components of the WHA. The dominant foulants were found to be the neutral and charged hydrophilic compounds, with hydrophobic and small pore size membranes being the most readily fouled. The findings suggest that surface analyses such as FTIR will preferentially identify hydrophilic compounds as the main foulants, as these components form a gel layer on the surface while the hydrophobic compounds adsorb within the membrane pores. Furthermore, coagulation pre-treatment is also likely to reduce fouling by reducing pore constriction rather than the formation of a gel layer, as coagulants remove the hydrophobic compounds to a large extent and very little of the hydrophilic neutral components

Submicrometric Films of Surface-Attached Polymer Network with Temperature-Responsive Properties

Temperature-responsive properties of surface-attached poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) network films with well-controlled chemistry are investigated. The synthesis consists of cross-linking and grafting preformed ene-reactive polymer chains through thiol--ene click chemistry. The formation of surface-attached and cross-linked polymer films has the advantage of being wellcontrolled without any caution of no-oxygen atmosphere or addition of initiators. PNIPAM hydrogel films with same cross-link density are synthesized on a wide range of thickness, from nanometers to micrometers. The swelling-collapse transition with temperature is studied by using ellipsometry, neutron reflectivity, and atomic force microscopy as complementary surface-probing techniques. Sharp and high amplitude temperature-induced phase transition is observed for all submicrometric PNIPAM hydrogel films. For temperature above LCST, surface-attached PNIPAM hydrogels collapse similarly but without complete expulsion of water. For temperature below LCST, the swelling of PNIPAM hydrogels depends on the film thickness. It is shown that the swelling is strongly affected by the surface attachment for ultrathin films below $\sim$150 nm. For thicker films above 150 nm (to micrometers), surface-attached polymer networks with the same cross-link density swell equally. The density profile of the hydrogel films in the direction normal to the substrate is confronted with in-plane topography of the free surface. It results that the free interface width is much larger than the roughness of the hydrogel film, suggesting pendant chains at the free surface.Comment: in Langmuir, American Chemical Society, 2015, LANGMUIR, 31 (42), pp.11516-1152

HIV with contact-tracing: a case study in Approximate Bayesian Computation

Missing data is a recurrent issue in epidemiology where the infection process may be partially observed. Approximate Bayesian Computation, an alternative to data imputation methods such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo integration, is proposed for making inference in epidemiological models. It is a likelihood-free method that relies exclusively on numerical simulations. ABC consists in computing a distance between simulated and observed summary statistics and weighting the simulations according to this distance. We propose an original extension of ABC to path-valued summary statistics, corresponding to the cumulated number of detections as a function of time. For a standard compartmental model with Suceptible, Infectious and Recovered individuals (SIR), we show that the posterior distributions obtained with ABC and MCMC are similar. In a refined SIR model well-suited to the HIV contact-tracing data in Cuba, we perform a comparison between ABC with full and binned detection times. For the Cuban data, we evaluate the efficiency of the detection system and predict the evolution of the HIV-AIDS disease. In particular, the percentage of undetected infectious individuals is found to be of the order of 40%

Markov and Neural Network Models for Prediction of Structural Deterioration of Stormwater Pipe Assets

Storm-water pipe networks in Australia are designed to convey water from rainfall and surface runoff. They do not transport sewerage. Their structural deterioration is progressive with aging and will eventually cause pipe collapse with consequences of service interruption. Predicting structural condition of pipes provides vital information for asset management to prevent unexpected failures and to extend service life. This study focused on predicting the structural condition of storm-water pipes with two objectives. The first objective is the prediction of structural condition changes of the whole network of storm-water pipes by a Markov model at different times during their service life. This information can be used for planning annual budget and estimating the useful life of pipe assets. The second objective is the prediction of structural condition of any particular pipe by a neural network model. This knowledge is valuable in identifying pipes that are in poor condition for repair actions. A case study with closed circuit television inspection snapshot data was used to demonstrate the applicability of these two models

ZFOURGE: Extreme 5007A˚\AA emission may be a common early-lifetime phase for star-forming galaxies at z>2.5z > 2.5

Using the \prospector\ spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting code, we analyze the properties of 19 Extreme Emission Line Galaxies (EELGs) identified in the bluest composite SED in the \zfourge\ survey at $2.5 \leq z \leq 4$. \prospector\ includes a physical model for nebular emission and returns probability distributions for stellar mass, stellar metallicity, dust attenuation, and nonparametric star formation history (SFH). The EELGs show evidence for a starburst in the most recent 50 Myr, with the median EELG having a specific star formation rate (sSFR) of 4.6 Gyr$^{-1}$ and forming 15\% of its mass in this short time. For a sample of more typical star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at the same redshifts, the median SFG has a sSFR of 1.1 Gyr$^{-1}$ and forms only $4\%$ of its mass in the last 50 Myr. We find that virtually all of our EELGs have rising SFHs, while most of our SFGs do not. From our analysis, we hypothesize that many, if not most, star-forming galaxies at $z \geq 2.5$ undergo an extreme H$\beta$+[\hbox{{\rm O}\kern 0.1em{\sc iii}}] emission line phase early in their lifetimes. In a companion paper, we obtain spectroscopic confirmation of the EELGs as part of our {\sc MOSEL} survey. In the future, explorations of uncertainties in modeling the UV slope for galaxies at $z>2$ are needed to better constrain their properties, e.g. stellar metallicities.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures (main figure is fig 5), accepted for publication in Ap

Integrative genomic mining for enzyme function to enable engineering of a non-natural biosynthetic pathway.

The ability to biosynthetically produce chemicals beyond what is commonly found in Nature requires the discovery of novel enzyme function. Here we utilize two approaches to discover enzymes that enable specific production of longer-chain (C5-C8) alcohols from sugar. The first approach combines bioinformatics and molecular modelling to mine sequence databases, resulting in a diverse panel of enzymes capable of catalysing the targeted reaction. The median catalytic efficiency of the computationally selected enzymes is 75-fold greater than a panel of naively selected homologues. This integrative genomic mining approach establishes a unique avenue for enzyme function discovery in the rapidly expanding sequence databases. The second approach uses computational enzyme design to reprogramme specificity. Both approaches result in enzymes with >100-fold increase in specificity for the targeted reaction. When enzymes from either approach are integrated in vivo, longer-chain alcohol production increases over 10-fold and represents >95% of the total alcohol products

Resolved Spectroscopy of the Narrow-Line Region in NGC 1068. I. The Nature of the Continuum Emission

We present the first long-slit spectra of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068 obtained by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS); the spectra cover the wavelength range 1150 - 10,270 Angstroms at a spatial resolution of 0.05 - 0.1 arcsec and a spectral resolving power of 1000. In this first paper, we concentrate on the far-UV to near-IR continuum emission from the continuum ``hot spot'' and surrounding regions extending out to +/- 6 arcsec (+/-432 pc) at a position angle of 202 degrees In addition to the broad emission lines detected by spectropolarimetry, the hot spot shows the ``little blue bump'' in the 2000 - 4000 Ang. range, which is due to Fe II and Balmer continuum emission. The continuum shape of the hot spot is indistinguishable from that of NGC 4151 and other Seyfert 1 galaxies. Thus, the hot spot is reflected emission from the hidden nucleus, due to electron scattering (as opposed to wavelength-dependent dust scattering). The hot spot is ~0.3 arcsec in extent and accounts for 20% of the scattered light in the inner 500 pc. We are able to deconvolve the extended continuum emission in this region into two components: electron-scattered light from the hidden nucleus (which dominates in the UV) and stellar light (which dominates in the optical and near-IR). The scattered light is heavily concentrated towards the hot spot, is stronger in the northeast, and is enhanced in regions of strong narrow-line emission. The stellar component is more extended, concentrated southwest of the hot spot, dominated by an old (> 2 x 10 Gyr) stellar population, and includes a nuclear stellar cluster which is ~200 pc in extent.Comment: 32 pages, Latex, includes 11 figures (postscript), to appear in the Astrophysical Journa

The First Data Release of the KODIAQ Survey

We present and make publicly available the first data release (DR1) of the Keck Observatory Database of Ionized Absorption toward Quasars (KODIAQ) survey. The KODIAQ survey is aimed at studying galactic and circumgalactic gas in absorption at high-redshift, with a focus on highly-ionized gas traced by OVI, using the HIRES spectrograph on the Keck-I telescope. KODIAQ DR1 consists of a fully-reduced sample of 170 quasars at 0.29 < z_em < 5.29 observed with HIRES at high resolution (36,000 <= R <= 103,000) between 2004 and 2012. DR1 contains 247 spectra available in continuum normalized form, representing a sum total exposure time of ~1.6 megaseconds. These co-added spectra arise from a total of 567 individual exposures of quasars taken from the Keck Observatory Archive (KOA) in raw form and uniformly processed using a HIRES data reduction package made available through the XIDL distribution. DR1 is publicly available to the community, housed as a higher level science product at the KOA. We will provide future data releases that make further QSOs, including those with pre-2004 observations taken with the previous-generation HIRES detectors.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, Submitted to AJ. All data products available at the Keck Observatory Archive beginning May 15, 2015. URL: https://koa.ipac.caltech.edu/applications/KODIA