Exploring Vietnamese logistics service quality in the run up to AEC 2015

Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Logistics and Transport, 17th to 20th November, Lyon, France. Abstract: The logistics and supply chain management domain faces a number of ongoing trends and resultant challenges including costs, the globalisation of supply and markets, time compression, product complexity and shrinking product life cycles, quality of performance and service, a shortage of logistics and supply chain management talent, their impact on the natural environment, and risk and disruption and supply chain security (Grant, 2014). This is particularly true in and important for developing economies such as Vietnam

Adapting recent statistical techniques to the study of nutrition in Vietnam

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'adapter des méthodes récentes de statistique pour apporter une vision nouvelle de la transition nutritionnelle au Vietnam. Chapitre 1, nous faisons une brève introduction. Nous considérons que le Vietnam est une étude pilote sur le problème de la nutrition. Chapitre 2, nous revenons sur la question de l'estimation de la relation entre la prise de calories par personne et le revenu en utilisant six vagues de l'enquête VHLSS Survey sur la période 2004-2014. Nous adoptons plutôt la famille des modèles généralisés additifs (GAM) dans lesquels seul le revenu intervient de façon non linéaire. Nous comparons ces modèles avec une procédure récente. Les résultats mettent en relief une réponse forte de la prise de calories à un accroissement du revenu pour les foyers les plus pauvres. Chapitre 3, nous utilisons des méthodes de décomposition pour évaluer les déterminants des changements de consommation de macronutriments au Vietnam en utilisant les vagues 2004 et 2014. La méthode de décomposition récente proposée par Rothe (2015) a pour but de poursuivre la décomposition plus loin en décomposant l'effet de composition en trois composantes: la contribution directe de chaque covariable, plusieurs effets d'interaction d'ordre deux ou supérieur et un effet de la dépendance. Rothe utilise des copules pour modéliser les effets de dépendance. Chapitre 4, nous nous concentrons sur la composition de la diète en modélisant les proportions de protéines, de matières grasses et de glucides dans la prise moyenne de calories par personne. Nous utilisons des outils descriptifs pour montrer l'évolution des trois composantes au travers du temps et modélisons ensuite la consommation de macronutriments en fonction des caractéristiques des ménages avec des modèles de régression pour données de composition. Nous établissons la formule permettant le calcul des semi-elasticités de la consommation de macronutriments par rapport à la dépense totale de nourriture. Chapitre 5, nous nous penchons sur la relation entre les parts de macronutriments et l'indice de masse corporelle (IMC). Nous construisons un modèle de régression compositionnelle incluant un total pour expliquer les quantiles de l'indice de masse corporelle. Nous calculons ensuite les élasticités de l'IMC par rapport à chaque macronutriment. Notre travail est basé sur l'utilisation de la base de données de l'enquête GNS 2009-2010. Les résultats révèlent d'abord des effets significatifs de facteurs socio-économiques.The objective of this thesis is to adapt recent statistical techniques and to bring new insights on the nutritional transition in Vietnam. Vietnam is a lower middle income country but it now faces the double burden of malnutrition characterized by the coexistence of undernutrition along with overweight and obesity, or diet-related noncommunicable diseases. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to this thesis. We consider Vietnam is a pilot case study about nutrition. Chapter 2, we revisit the issue of estimating the relationship between per capita calorie intake and income using six waves of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey over the period 2004-2014. Characterizing the response of calorie intake to income for the poorest households is a prerequisite for considering policies aimed at reducing starvation and correcting nutritional deficiencies. The classical log-log specification does not capture the nonlinearity of this relationship. We adopt rather various generalized additive models (GAM) specifications where only income is supposed to act in a nonlinear fashion and compare them with a recent procedure. The results highlight the strong response of calorie intake to an increase in income for the poorest households. A byproduct of the proposed methodology is the decomposition of the evolution of average calorie intake between the two waves into the part due to the change of population characteristics distributions and those coming from the change in calorie-income relationship, shedding new light on the nutritional transition in Vietnam. Chapter 3, we use decomposition methods to assess the determinants of changes in macronutrients consumption in Vietnam using the 2004 and 2014 waves. The common objective of decomposition methods is to decompose between-group differences in economic outcomes such as wage or income, into two components: a composition effect due to differences in observable covariates across groups, and a structure effect due to differences in the relationship that links the covariates to the considered outcome. The recent decomposition procedure proposed by Rothe (2015) aims at decomposing further the composition effect into three types of components: the direct contribution of each covariate, several two way and higher order interaction effects and a dependence. Rothe (2015) uses a parametric copula to model the dependence effects and we adapt this approach to the case of a mixture of continuous and discrete covariates. Chapter 4, we focus on food composition in terms of diet components. We consider modeling the proportions of protein, fat and carbohydrate in the average per capita calorie intake. We use descriptive tools, such as compositional biplots and ternary diagrams, to show the evolution of the three components over the years and then model macronutrients composition as a function of household characteristics, using compositional regression models. We derive the expression of the semi-elasticities of macronutrients shares with respect to food expenditure. We then compare the interpretations of these shares semi-elasticities to that of volumes of macronutrients and of total calorie intake obtained using classical linear models. Chapter 5, we focus on the relationship between macronutrient balances and body mass index. We develop a compositional regression model including a total at various quantile orders. We then compute the elasticities of BMI with respect to each macronutrient and to the total consumption. Our empirical research is based on the General Nutrition Survey 2009-2010. The results first reveal significant impacts of some socio--economics factors. All elasticities of BMI with respect to each macronutrient increase as BMI increases until a threshold (BMI=20) and then remain stable. Chapter 6, we briefly give our perspectives of future research in both mathematics and nutrition

Adapting recent statistical techniques to the study of nutrition in Vietnam

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'adapter des méthodes récentes de statistique pour apporter une vision nouvelle de la transition nutritionnelle au Vietnam. Chapitre 1, nous faisons une brève introduction. Nous considérons que le Vietnam est une étude pilote sur le problème de la nutrition. Chapitre 2, nous revenons sur la question de l'estimation de la relation entre la prise de calories par personne et le revenu en utilisant six vagues de l'enquête VHLSS Survey sur la période 2004-2014. Nous adoptons plutôt la famille des modèles généralisés additifs (GAM) dans lesquels seul le revenu intervient de façon non linéaire. Nous comparons ces modèles avec une procédure récente. Les résultats mettent en relief une réponse forte de la prise de calories à un accroissement du revenu pour les foyers les plus pauvres. Chapitre 3, nous utilisons des méthodes de décomposition pour évaluer les déterminants des changements de consommation de macronutriments au Vietnam en utilisant les vagues 2004 et 2014. La méthode de décomposition récente proposée par Rothe (2015) a pour but de poursuivre la décomposition plus loin en décomposant l'effet de composition en trois composantes: la contribution directe de chaque covariable, plusieurs effets d'interaction d'ordre deux ou supérieur et un effet de la dépendance. Rothe utilise des copules pour modéliser les effets de dépendance. Chapitre 4, nous nous concentrons sur la composition de la diète en modélisant les proportions de protéines, de matières grasses et de glucides dans la prise moyenne de calories par personne. Nous utilisons des outils descriptifs pour montrer l'évolution des trois composantes au travers du temps et modélisons ensuite la consommation de macronutriments en fonction des caractéristiques des ménages avec des modèles de régression pour données de composition. Nous établissons la formule permettant le calcul des semi-elasticités de la consommation de macronutriments par rapport à la dépense totale de nourriture. Chapitre 5, nous nous penchons sur la relation entre les parts de macronutriments et l'indice de masse corporelle (IMC). Nous construisons un modèle de régression compositionnelle incluant un total pour expliquer les quantiles de l'indice de masse corporelle. Nous calculons ensuite les élasticités de l'IMC par rapport à chaque macronutriment. Notre travail est basé sur l'utilisation de la base de données de l'enquête GNS 2009-2010. Les résultats révèlent d'abord des effets significatifs de facteurs socio-économiques.The objective of this thesis is to adapt recent statistical techniques and to bring new insights on the nutritional transition in Vietnam. Vietnam is a lower middle income country but it now faces the double burden of malnutrition characterized by the coexistence of undernutrition along with overweight and obesity, or diet-related noncommunicable diseases. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to this thesis. We consider Vietnam is a pilot case study about nutrition. Chapter 2, we revisit the issue of estimating the relationship between per capita calorie intake and income using six waves of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey over the period 2004-2014. Characterizing the response of calorie intake to income for the poorest households is a prerequisite for considering policies aimed at reducing starvation and correcting nutritional deficiencies. The classical log-log specification does not capture the nonlinearity of this relationship. We adopt rather various generalized additive models (GAM) specifications where only income is supposed to act in a nonlinear fashion and compare them with a recent procedure. The results highlight the strong response of calorie intake to an increase in income for the poorest households. A byproduct of the proposed methodology is the decomposition of the evolution of average calorie intake between the two waves into the part due to the change of population characteristics distributions and those coming from the change in calorie-income relationship, shedding new light on the nutritional transition in Vietnam. Chapter 3, we use decomposition methods to assess the determinants of changes in macronutrients consumption in Vietnam using the 2004 and 2014 waves. The common objective of decomposition methods is to decompose between-group differences in economic outcomes such as wage or income, into two components: a composition effect due to differences in observable covariates across groups, and a structure effect due to differences in the relationship that links the covariates to the considered outcome. The recent decomposition procedure proposed by Rothe (2015) aims at decomposing further the composition effect into three types of components: the direct contribution of each covariate, several two way and higher order interaction effects and a dependence. Rothe (2015) uses a parametric copula to model the dependence effects and we adapt this approach to the case of a mixture of continuous and discrete covariates. Chapter 4, we focus on food composition in terms of diet components. We consider modeling the proportions of protein, fat and carbohydrate in the average per capita calorie intake. We use descriptive tools, such as compositional biplots and ternary diagrams, to show the evolution of the three components over the years and then model macronutrients composition as a function of household characteristics, using compositional regression models. We derive the expression of the semi-elasticities of macronutrients shares with respect to food expenditure. We then compare the interpretations of these shares semi-elasticities to that of volumes of macronutrients and of total calorie intake obtained using classical linear models. Chapter 5, we focus on the relationship between macronutrient balances and body mass index. We develop a compositional regression model including a total at various quantile orders. We then compute the elasticities of BMI with respect to each macronutrient and to the total consumption. Our empirical research is based on the General Nutrition Survey 2009-2010. The results first reveal significant impacts of some socio--economics factors. All elasticities of BMI with respect to each macronutrient increase as BMI increases until a threshold (BMI=20) and then remain stable. Chapter 6, we briefly give our perspectives of future research in both mathematics and nutrition

Optimizing Bio-Retention Locations For Stormwater Management Using Genetic Algorithm

To minimize the change of hydrological regime due to urbanization, stormwater best management practices have been enforced in the past few decades in certain urban areas. One approach is to implement small-scale hydrologic controls, such as bio-retention systems, throughout a catchment. Optimization techniques have also been applied to determine the locations that give the most hydrological benefits. However, optimization tools are commonly built in together with specific hydrological models. Thus, the choices and components of hydrological models are usually restricted. Furthermore, it is redundant to build another hydrological model that has a built-in optimization tool if a hydrological model, and possibly more comprehensive one, has already been developed for the study area. The objective of this study is to develop a genetic algorithm (GA) that is independent from and can therefore be coupled with any existing integrated distributed hydrological model to optimize the locations of bio-retention systems. The GA is able to utilize results of any hydrological model, allowing users to simulate processes that are most relevant to their studies. The GA is written in Fortran considering factors such as topography, distance from the river and groundwater table depth. The alternative combinations of bio-retention locations suggested by the GA are used as inputs of an integrated distributed hydrological model. The combination that gives the lowest outlet discharge is then regarded as the best solution. We demonstrate the approach by taking Marina catchment in Singapore as a case study and feeding the GA with results from MIKESHE. Overall, the GA developed is not only transferable to other study area but also can also be coupled with any hydrological model that is the most suitable for that particular case study

A STUDY OF SUSTAINABLE COLORATION OF LYOCELL FABRICS USING EXTRACTS OF TROPICAL ONION SKINS

Lyocell is considered as a new fiber that represents a milestone in the development of environmentally sustainable textiles.  Lyocell is spun from wood pulp cellulose via a green chemical process with NMMO (N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide) solvent. Following the concept of lower the environmental impact of fashion clothing, this study aims to determine the suitable natural dyes recipes with the color extracting from tropical onion skins. Colorants were extracted by dissolving crushed dried onion skins with boiled in water at 100ºC for 20-25 minutes. The ratio of extracting and dyeing are 1:25 and 1:30 respectively. The optimal dyeing condition was found out at 80ºC, 45 minutes with 75% v/v. In addition, a variety of the most commonly used mordants including Potassium aluminum sulfate, Copper (II) sulphate and Iron (II) sulphate were used for mordanting in order to compare the differently mordanted and unmordanted dyed fabrics via color strength (K/S) and CIE L*a*b* color values. It was found that mordant type had an effect on color strength and the color coordinates of fabric dyed with onion skin, which can supply variety of color choices for the same colorants

SALT TOLERANCE OF RICE CULTIVARS IN GREENHOUSE

Abstract: The response of 10 rice cultivars, including the salt-tolerant variety (Pokkali) and salt-susceptible variety (IR29) as controls at five salinity levels (i.e., 0, 4, 6, 8, and 10 dS·m–1) under hydroponic conditions was studied at the seedling stage in the greenhouse. The heading stage was evaluated at the salinity level of 8 dS·m–1 in a completely randomized block with 3 replications per each cultivar under non-saline and saline conditions. The results show that the growth of cultivars is retarded severely at the external salinity levels. Almost all leaves dried and died completely (score 7 and 9) at the level of 8 to 10 dS·m–1. Cultivars IR29 and OM7347 died (score 9) at 10 dS·m–1; whereas, Pokkali and IR93350 were evaluated at score 5. Salinity induces the reduction of overall agronomic parameters of cultivars, especially in dry weight relative-to-reduction over control (ROC%), salt tolerance index (STI%), pollen germination, and grain yield. Salinity-sensitive cultivars decreased their pollen viability by more than 50%, leading to a poor grain yield at a salt level of 8 dS·m–1. Tested cultivars as an initial response to salinity stress were ranked as follows: OM7347, IR87832-303-1-B, and IR29 – susceptible; OM8104, IR93340, and IR93343 – moderately tolerant, and IR86385-8D-1-2-B, IR5040, IR93350, and Pokkali – tolerant.Keywords: heading stage, pollen germination, susceptible, seedling stage, salinity-toleran

ANTIBACTERIAL FINISHING ON COTTON 100% AND CVC FABRICS WITH TANNIN FROM PIPER BETLE EXTRACT

Following the recent trend of using natural ingredients from bio-macromolecules, biomaterials, plant extract in textile chain, this research aims to develop an antibacterial textiles finishing with Tannin extracted from piper betle plant. The extracting processes were carried out with different solvent: distilled water, Ethanol 30%, Ethanol 50%, Ethanol 70% in 60 minutes. Two important types of fabric, including Cotton and CVC (Cotton/Polyester) were padded with piper betle extracts, then dried at 60oC in 5 minutes. The presence of tannin on fabric after treatment was determined by FeCl3 test and FT-IR spectrum. The antibacterial effect of finished fabrics was proved according to ASTM 2149-01 standard. The test was performed with Escherichia Coli ATCC 25922 and Staphylococus aureus AATCC 6538. The final results exhibited good antibacterial activity of 83.02%, 65,33% against the bacteria Ecoli and 93.88 %, 85.14% against the bacteria S.Aureus on cotton and then CVC fabrics

UNDERSTANDING THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN VEGETATION AND HYDROLOGICAL SYSTEMS IN TROPICAL URBAN AREAS FOR SUSTAINABLE WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Calorie intake and income in China

Recent research on calorie intake and income relationship abounds with parametric models but usually gives inconclusive results. Our paper aims at contributing to this literature by using recent advances in the estimation of generalized additive models with penalized spline regression smoothing (GAM). These semi-parametric models enable mixing parametric and nonparametric functions of explanatory variables and enlarge the distribution of the response variable. The revealed performance test (Racine and Parmeter, 2014), supported by simulation data, shows that GAM models outperform the parametric models. Using data from CHNS in 2006, 2009 and 2011, we find a positive and statistically significant relationship between household calorie intake and household income for the poor. Then the impact of increasing income on calorie consumption slows down for the middle class and the rich. In addition, we find that income-calorie elasticities are generally small, ranging from 0.07 to 0.12

Decomposition of changes in the consumption of macronutrients in Vietnam between 2004 and 2014

Vietnam is undergoing a nutritional transition like many middle-income countries. This paper proposes to highlight the socio-demographic drivers of this transition over the period 2004-2014. We implement a method of decomposition of between-year differences in economic outcomes recently proposed in the literature. This method allows decomposing the composition effect on the distribution of the outcome under study, which is due to the differences in covariates across years, into direct contributions of each covariate and effects of their interactions. This method is applied to VHLSS data. The results show the importance of between-year changes in the distributions of covariates on between-year changes in the distributions of total calorie intake and calorie intakes from proteins and fat. This effect is more contrasted in case of calorie intake from carbohydrates. Food expenditure and household size appear to be the main drivers of the observed evolutions in macronutrients consumption. On the contrary, the urbanization of the population has a negative effect on these evolutions, except on fat consumption. The effect of urbanization is, nevertheless, less important than the positive effects of the previous two variables