Consumer Behavior, Attitude and Perception Toward Modern Trade Stores in Rural Vietnam

Modern trade stores have been very successful in Vietnamese retail industry, espe-cially in some big cities. However, the popularity of such stores is still lagging behindthe traditional stores. In regard with this issue, many studies have been done overtime, but very few have been focused on rural regions in emerging countries likeVietnam. Thus, this study aims at exploring the reasons why Vietnamese consumersin the remote area prefer to shop at traditional stores instead of modern stores. Fur-thermore, this study attempts to fill the gap between these two types of formats. Theresearch uses quantitative method with the aid of SPSS software to analyze the data.The results show that consumers in the remote areas are still not willing to quit theirtraditional shopping habits for a new choice of store based on the current situation.Therefore, it is not the right time for investors to expand their modern business intothe country's rural areas

Standardisation of Environmental Enrichment for Laboratory Mice and Rats: Utilisation, Practicality and Variation in Experimental Results

Rats and mice are the most commonly used species as laboratory animal models of diseases in biomedical  research. Environmental factors such as cage size, number of cage mates and cage structure such as environmental  enrichment can affect the physiology and behavioural development of laboratory animals and  their well-being throughout their lives. Therefore compromising the animals’ well-being due to inadequate  environmental conditions would diminish the value of the research models. In order to improve laboratory  animals’ well-being and promote the quality of animal based biomedical research, it is fundamentally  important that the environment of the animals meets the animals’ species typical behavioural needs. Standardisation  of environmental enrichment for laboratory rats and mice therefore should provide possibilities  for the animals to engage in at least the essential behavioural needs such as social contact, nest building,  exploring and foraging. There is a wide variety of environmental enrichment items commercially available  for laboratory mice and rats. However, how these items are used by the animals, their practicality in the  laboratory and whether these enrichments might lead to increased variation in experimental results have  not been widely assessed. In this study, we implemented two standardised enrichment items (shelters, nesting  materials) for rats and mice at different animal units. We instructed the animal care staff in monitoring  the use of enrichment items by the animals by means of a daily score sheet system. The animal staff ’s  viewpoint on practicality of the standardised enrichment program was assessed with a monthly score sheet  survey. Also we assessed whether the enriched environment affected breeding results and contributed to an  increase in variation of experimental data from several participating current studies. Our results show that  the animals readily used the provided enrichment items. A slight increase in workload for the animal staff  was reported. However, the overall judgement was mainly reported as good. Breeding results and variation  in experimental data did not reveal differences as compared to data from previous housing and/or non enriched  housing conditions. Overall, the results indicate that standard environmental enrichment that is species  appropriate may enhance the animal’s well-being without undesirable side effects on the experimental  outcome and daily working routine of the animal care staff.

Tame Functions with strongly isolated singularities at infinity: a tame version of a Parusinski's Theorem

Let f be a definable function, enough differentiable. Under the condition of having strongly isolated singularities at infinity at a regular value c we give a sufficient condition expressed in terms of the total absolute curvature function to ensure the local triviality of the function f over a neighbourhood of c and doing so providing the tame version of Parusinski's Theorem on complex polynomials with isolated singularities at infinity.Comment: 20 page

Dynamical heterogeneities close to a colloidal gel

Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by two populations with different mobilities. Analyzing the statics and dynamics of both sets of particles, it is shown that the slow particles form a network of stuck particles, whereas the fast ones are able to move over long distances. Correlation functions show that the environment of the fast particles relaxes much faster than that of the slow ones, but at short times the bonds between fast particles are longer lived due to the flexibility of their structure. No string-like motion is observed for the fast particles, but they occupy preferential sites in the surface of the structure formed by the slow ones

The salivary gland transcriptome of the neotropical malaria vector Anopheles darlingi reveals accelerated evolution of genes relevant to hematophagy

BackgroundMosquito saliva, consisting of a mixture of dozens of proteins affecting vertebrate hemostasis and having sugar digestive and antimicrobial properties, helps both blood and sugar meal feeding. Culicine and anopheline mosquitoes diverged ~150 MYA, and within the anophelines, the New World species diverged from those of the Old World ~95 MYA. While the sialotranscriptome (from the Greek sialo, saliva) of several species of the Cellia subgenus of Anopheles has been described thoroughly, no detailed analysis of any New World anopheline has been done to date. Here we present and analyze data from a comprehensive salivary gland (SG) transcriptome of the neotropical malaria vector Anopheles darlingi (subgenus Nyssorhynchus).ResultsA total of 2,371 clones randomly selected from an adult female An. darlingi SG cDNA library were sequenced and used to assemble a database that yielded 966 clusters of related sequences, 739 of which were singletons. Primer extension experiments were performed in selected clones to further extend sequence coverage, allowing for the identification of 183 protein sequences, 114 of which code for putative secreted proteins.ConclusionComparative analysis of sialotranscriptomes of An. darlingi and An. gambiae reveals significant divergence of salivary proteins. On average, salivary proteins are only 53% identical, while housekeeping proteins are 86% identical between the two species. Furthermore, An. darlingi proteins were found that match culicine but not anopheline proteins, indicating loss or rapid evolution of these proteins in the old world Cellia subgenus. On the other hand, several well represented salivary protein families in old world anophelines are not expressed in An. darlingi