Pragmatic economic valuation of adaptation risk and responses across scales Case study in Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the countries particularly vulnerable to climate change. Increased temperatures, increased salinity intrusion due to sea-level rise and altering precipitation patterns significantly affect livelihood options of smallholder farmers, resulting in losses in agricultural production. These impacts are projected to become increasingly severe, hence, adaptation to climate change and sensitivity needs to be assessed and adaptation measures taken. This study provides a vulnerability assessment based on the results for exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. This includes present and projected future climatic conditions and hazards, crop suitability analyses and socioeconomic assessments on a district scale. In addition, a case study is presented focusing on the two provinces of Tra Vinh and Ben Tre, identified as highly vulnerable in the Mekong Delta area. The case study shows opportunities, economic trade-offs and barriers of adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices to adapt to progressive climate change

The Engineering of Porous Silica and Hollow Silica Nanoparticles to Enhance Drug-loading Capacity

As a promising candidate for expanding the capacity of drug loading in silica nanoplatforms, hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles (HMSNs) are gaining increasing attention. In this study, porous nanosilica (PNS) and HMSNs were prepared by the sol-gel method and template assisted method, then further used for Rhodamine (RhB) loading. To characterize the as-synthesized nanocarriers, a number of techniques, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), nitrogen absorption-desorption isotherms, dynamic light scattering (DLS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were employed. The size of HMSN nanoparticles in aqueous solution averaged 134.0 ± 0.3 nm, which could be adjusted by minor changes during synthesis, whereas that of PNS nanoparticles was 63.4 ± 0.6 nm. In addition, the encapsulation of RhB into HMSN nanoparticles to form RhB-loaded nanocarriers (RhB/HMSN) was successful, achieving high loading efficiency (51.67% ± 0.11%). This was significantly higher than that of RhB-loaded PNS (RhB/PNS) (12.24% ± 0.24%). Similarly, RhB/HMSN also possessed a higher RhB loading content (10.44% ± 0.02%) compared to RhB/PNS (2.90% ± 0.05%). From those results, it is suggested that prepared HMSN nanocarriers may act as high-capacity carriers in drug delivery applications