Can Vietnam Achieve One of its Millennium Development Goals? An analysis of schooling dropouts of children

The objectives of this study are to identify the underlying determinants of the schooling dropout in Vietnam and to project its trend in the future up to 2015. Our examination is largely based on the three Vietnam’s Living Standard Surveys conducted in 1992/93, 1997/98 and 2001/02 and the conventional framework of educational investment at the household level. The major determinants of the schooling dropout choice by households are found to be variables of child’s characteristics (such as age, working time, primary education, and number of siblings) and household economic situation (such as parental education, household’s per capita expenditure, and cost of schooling). In general, the effects of these determinants on the schooling dropout probability are statistically significant. In particular, the schooling dropout probability has been very sensitive to the changes in the household’s per capita expenditure and the direct costs of schooling, whereas recently the other determinants have had only minor impacts. In terms of schooling, girls have benefited more than boys did from their household's per capita expenditure increase, while they have suffered more than boys did from an increase in the direct cost of schooling. These differences, however, recently have narrowed substantially. The dropout situation is also regional specific and hence, a comprehensive approach is needed to deal with it. Moreover, at present the low quality of education is serious problem. Together with the parents' incorrect perception of and the community’s attitude to education values, this may increase the possibility of children’s schooling dropout. The dropout situation is also very much dependent on the public funding for education, which is still not effective in reducing the household current excessive financial burden and still biased against the poor regions. The projection outcomes of the schooling dropout probability of children in the future up to 2015 is very much depending on the assumptions of the changes in the household’s per capita expenditure and the cost of schooling. When the growth rate of the cost of schooling is much higher (for example, by 1.2 percentage points) than that of the household’s per capita expenditure, the dropout rate would first decrease and increase again after 2010. The tentative assessments suggest that in these cases, there is a chance for Vietnam to achieve the national targets of the primary and lower secondary net enrolment rates in 2010. However, Vietnam could very hardly to achieve the MDG on the universal completion of primary education in 2015 and moreover, the achievements recorded by 2010 would be deteriorated. Regarding the scenarios, where the pace of changes in the cost of schooling is lower than that of the household’s per capita expenditure, the projections seem to provide a rather bright picture in terms of achieving the national education targets in 2010 and the MDG on education in 2015. The projections also show that there is a reason to be more optimistic about the elimination of the gender gap in education by 2010.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40162/3/wp776.pd

Can Vietnam Achieve One of its Millennium Development Goals? An analysis of schooling dropouts of children

The objectives of this study are to identify the underlying determinants of the schooling dropout in Vietnam and to project its trend in the future up to 2015. Our examination is largely based on the three Vietnam’s Living Standard Surveys conducted in 1992/93, 1997/98 and 2001/02 and the conventional framework of educational investment at the household level. The major determinants of the schooling dropout choice by households are found to be variables of child’s characteristics (such as age, working time, primary education, and number of siblings) and household economic situation (such as parental education, household’s per capita expenditure, and cost of schooling). In general, the effects of these determinants on the schooling dropout probability are statistically significant. In particular, the schooling dropout probability has been very sensitive to the changes in the household’s per capita expenditure and the direct costs of schooling, whereas recently the other determinants have had only minor impacts. In terms of schooling, girls have benefited more than boys did from their household's per capita expenditure increase, while they have suffered more than boys did from an increase in the direct cost of schooling. These differences, however, recently have narrowed substantially. The dropout situation is also regional specific and hence, a comprehensive approach is needed to deal with it. Moreover, at present the low quality of education is serious problem. Together with the parents' incorrect perception of and the community’s attitude to education values, this may increase the possibility of children’s schooling dropout. The dropout situation is also very much dependent on the public funding for education, which is still not effective in reducing the household current excessive financial burden and still biased against the poor regions. The projection outcomes of the schooling dropout probability of children in the future up to 2015 is very much depending on the assumptions of the changes in the household’s per capita expenditure and the cost of schooling. When the growth rate of the cost of schooling is much higher (for example, by 1.2 percentage points) than that of the household’s per capita expenditure, the dropout rate would first decrease and increase again after 2010. The tentative assessments suggest that in these cases, there is a chance for Vietnam to achieve the national targets of the primary and lower secondary net enrolment rates in 2010. However, Vietnam could very hardly to achieve the MDG on the universal completion of primary education in 2015 and moreover, the achievements recorded by 2010 would be deteriorated. Regarding the scenarios, where the pace of changes in the cost of schooling is lower than that of the household’s per capita expenditure, the projections seem to provide a rather bright picture in terms of achieving the national education targets in 2010 and the MDG on education in 2015. The projections also show that there is a reason to be more optimistic about the elimination of the gender gap in education by 2010.Vietnam, education, MDGs

Higuchi Fractal Properties of Onset Epilepsy Electroencephalogram

Epilepsy is a medical term which indicates a common neurological disorder characterized by seizures, because of abnormal neuronal activity. This leads to unconsciousness or even a convulsion. The possible etiologies should be evaluated and treated. Therefore, it is necessary to concentrate not only on finding out efficient treatment methods, but also on developing algorithm to support diagnosis. Currently, there are a number of algorithms, especially nonlinear algorithms. However, those algorithms have some difficulties one of which is the impact of noise on the results. In this paper, in addition to the use of fractal dimension as a principal tool to diagnose epilepsy, the combination between ICA algorithm and averaging filter at the preprocessing step leads to some positive results. The combination which improved the fractal algorithm become robust with noise on EEG signals. As a result, we can see clearly fractal properties in preictal and ictal period so as to epileptic diagnosis

Microgrid Renewable Energy Integration

The Microgrid is a small-scale electrical system that is designed to give Cal Poly students hands-on experience on power generation, system protection, distribution, and automation that would otherwise be very difficult to experiment in a large-scale model. To closely replicate the modern electrical grid, a renewable energy source shall be added to the Microgrid in conjunction with the existing synchronous generators. Electrical engineering student, Virginia Yan initiated this effort, namely Grid-Tied Solar System project [1], by designing and constructing a set of solar panels and microinverter for future connection to the Microgrid. The scope of Virginia’s project was, however, limited to designing and constructing the panels and microinverter. This Microgrid Renewable Energy Integration project aims to integrate the designed solar panels and microinverter to the Microgrid by testing the microinverter when running on islanded mode that replicates the Microgrid and eventually running with the Microgrid. The project develops test methods and solutions to enhance integration capability from the test results. In addition, this project implements basic power protection elements such as over-current and under-voltage. Protection schemes and monitoring are configured using Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) relays, such as SEL-751 Feeder Protection Relay and SEL-735 Power Quality Meter. The success of the Microgrid Renewable Energy Integration project guarantees a smooth synchronization and secured operation of the microinverter to the Microgrid

On the Interference Alignment Designs for Secure Multiuser MIMO Systems

In this paper, we propose two secure multiuser multiple-input multiple-output transmission approaches based on interference alignment (IA) in the presence of an eavesdropper. To deal with the information leakage to the eavesdropper as well as the interference signals from undesired transmitters (Txs) at desired receivers (Rxs), our approaches aim to design the transmit precoding and receive subspace matrices to minimize both the total inter-main-link interference and the wiretapped signals (WSs). The first proposed IA scheme focuses on aligning the WSs into proper subspaces while the second one imposes a new structure on the precoding matrices to force the WSs to zero. When the channel state information is perfectly known at all Txs, in each proposed IA scheme, the precoding matrices at Txs and the receive subspaces at Rxs or the eavesdropper are alternatively selected to minimize the cost function of an convex optimization problem for every iteration. We provide the feasible conditions and the proofs of convergence for both IA approaches. The simulation results indicate that our two IA approaches outperform the conventional IA algorithm in terms of average secrecy sum rate.Comment: Updated version, updated author list, accepted to be appear in IEICE Transaction

Suitability assessment and recommendations for Urban agricultural development: A case study in Cai Rang District, Can Tho City, Viet Nam

This study aimed to assess the contributing aspects and design decentralized adaptive models for urban agriculture. The research techniques included data collection, surveying and interviewing farmers, statistical analysis and FAO land suitability assessment techniques. The results show that the model of growing green vegetables, fruits and vegetables outside, together with decorative plants, orchids and raising cattle, is the most effective. Moreover, job-creating models boost income, calm down people, spread joy, supply clean food right away, provide room for greenery, recycle agricultural waste and reduce environmental pollution. The outcome is the foundation for selecting the best foreign investment model for future growth. According to the study's findings, sustainable agricultural options for the area assist people in living better, protecting the environment, and earning more money in the future

Effects of Frequency and Mass of Eccentric Balls on Picking Force of The Coffee Fruit for The As-Fabricated Harvesting Machines

Currently, Vietnam ranks second about the coffee export in the world. To match that position, the use of coffee harvesting tools/machines according to the automatic trend is essential. However, the most common forms of coffee harvesting in Vietnam are manual, improved manual-coffee picking machines that are imported from foreign countries. The above harvesting forms have low productivity and have some disadvantages such as labor cost, labor hiring, high labor cost, and long harvesting time, low harvesting, and post-harvesting quality. Studies of scientists around the world have applied the principle of vibration to produce the picking force for coffee fruits, and the picking force is known to be different from many factors in every region of the world growing coffee. The paper presents the method of design and manufacturing an automatic coffee harvesting machine based on the evaluation of picking force for coffee in Vietnam. The influences of eccentric ball mass and vibrating frequency on the magnitude of the picking force are carefully calculated. On that basis, the experimental programming is applied to find the optimal working point of the picking machine for coffee. The results showed that the eccentric ball mass of 8.5 kg, the rotation speed of the eccentric ball from 480 to 574 rpm would produce the picking force by the coffee fruit of Vietnam