Online monitoring system using reactor and mass spectrometry

The combination of micro reactor and analytical devices are popular in research and industry, in addition to the automation of analytical tasks. An automated system for online reaction monitoring in a micro reactor using a mass spectrometer has therefore been realized. The system offers fast data acquisition at discrete time-point in a reaction process. In addition, different functions and utilities that facilitate the convenience to users are included: A dilution module, integration of the micro reactor system to an ICP-MS, two sampling methods, a heating module and a control software

Affections of Turbine Nozzle Cross-Sectional Area to the Marine Diesel Engine Working

After a long period of use, some important technical parameters of the main marine diesel engines (MDE) gradually become worse, such as the turbine speed, intake pressure, exhaust temperature, engine power, and specific fuel oil consumption (SFOC). This paper studies the affections of the turbine nozzle cross-sectional area (AT) to MDE and presents a method of AT adjustment to improve the performances of MDE. A mathematical model of an engine was built based on the existent engine construction and the theory of the diesel engine working cycle and the simulation was programmed by Matlab/Simulink. This simulation model accuracy was evaluated through the comparison of simulation results and experimental data of the MDE. The accuracy testing results were acceptable (within 5%). The influences of AT on the engine working parameters and the finding optimization point were conducted by using the simulation program to study. The predicted optimization point of the nozzle was used to improve the engine’s performances on board. The integration of the simulation and experiment studies showed its effectiveness in the practical application of the marine diesel engine field

Failed or Failing Lending Institutions Behavior and Implications for the Pricing of Mortgages.

As of 1989 more than one-fifth of the nation\u27s federally insured saving and loans institutions have negative net worth. Very little is known, however, about their pricing behavior of financial assets. Most of the existing literature has focused on whether insolvent institutions bid up their cost of funds. The asset pricing issue of insolvent institutions has not been examined in the mortgage literature. This dissertation extends the literature by examining whether failed or failing saving and loan institutions offer their conventional fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages at a discount relative to solvent institutions. A theoretical argument for the underpricing proposition is presented based on the premises that insolvent lending institution use the conditional repayment probability and do not consider capital losses due to an adverse shift in interest rates in setting credit rates. Therefore, insolvent lending institutions will tend to offer lower contractual interest rates on mortgages than well-capitalized institutions. Using a national data set three empirical tests are performed: a Chow test, a Goldfeld and Quandt test, and the Tishler and Zang maximum likelihood optimization technique. The results show that failed or failing saving and loans institutions do, indeed, offer their conventional fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages at a discount relative to healthy lending institutions

The DKAP Project The Country Report of Vietnam

Viet Nam is at the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In order to grasp the opportunities that the revolution has brought about, and to successfully build the society of digital citizens, there must be the demand of enhancing the capacity and capability for students to meet international standards in terms of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) skills. Viet Nam was selected as one of the four countries (Viet Nam, Bangladesh, Fiji, and the Republic of Korea) to join UNESCO Bangkok’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, a comparative cross-national study with the aim to seek the understanding and address children’s ICT practices, attitudes, behaviors, and competency levels within an educational context. Thanks to the project, the Vietnamese research team completely conducted the survey in twenty (20) schools from five (5) provinces in Viet Nam. With the data on the digital citizenship competency levels of 1,061 10th grade students, the research team discovered the valuable findings to draw an initial big picture for Vietnamese policy makers, educators, and teachers about digital citizenship competencies of 15-year-old Vietnamese students

Prioritizing Key Success Factor of the Internet of Things Application in Tourism Enterprise

Purpose: The objective of this study is to explore critical success factors in Internet of Things applying and their importance level in tourism companies using the fuzzy theory.   Theoretical framework: This paper uses the TOE framework and adds a customer security variable. Therefore, the framework includes four variables technology, organization, environment, and customer security (TOEC) which are the four aspects of this research framework.   Design/methodology/approach: By integrating FAHP and FAHP extension methods, the study finds that the critical success factors for IoT application in tourism companies, including technology, organization, environment, and customer security.   Findings: The result show that, the first ranking is organization factor, the second ranking belongs to technology, customer securities come with third ranking, and the fourth ranking is environment. This result also indicates that IT Human resources, Technology infrastructure, Top management support, and organization readiness are the prioritized critical success factors for IoT applications in tourism companies.   Research, Practical & Social implications: This paper contributes to the understanding of IoT, its features and highlights the importance of new technology and solutions in tourism industry.   Originality/value: This study fills the gap in the TEO model by adding the factor of customer securities so-called TEOC model

Joint Communication and Computation Framework for Goal-Oriented Semantic Communication with Distortion Rate Resilience

Recent research efforts on semantic communication have mostly considered accuracy as a main problem for optimizing goal-oriented communication systems. However, these approaches introduce a paradox: the accuracy of artificial intelligence (AI) tasks should naturally emerge through training rather than being dictated by network constraints. Acknowledging this dilemma, this work introduces an innovative approach that leverages the rate-distortion theory to analyze distortions induced by communication and semantic compression, thereby analyzing the learning process. Specifically, we examine the distribution shift between the original data and the distorted data, thus assessing its impact on the AI model's performance. Founding upon this analysis, we can preemptively estimate the empirical accuracy of AI tasks, making the goal-oriented semantic communication problem feasible. To achieve this objective, we present the theoretical foundation of our approach, accompanied by simulations and experiments that demonstrate its effectiveness. The experimental results indicate that our proposed method enables accurate AI task performance while adhering to network constraints, establishing it as a valuable contribution to the field of signal processing. Furthermore, this work advances research in goal-oriented semantic communication and highlights the significance of data-driven approaches in optimizing the performance of intelligent systems.Comment: 15 pages; 11 figures, 2 table

Salinity Gradient Energy from Expansion and Contraction of Poly(allylamine hydrochloride) Hydrogels

publishedVersio

Tuberculosis among economic migrants: a cross-sectional study of the risk of poor treatment outcomes and impact of a treatment adherence intervention among temporary residents in an urban district in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam.

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major cause of avoidable deaths. Economic migrants represent a vulnerable population due to their exposure to medical and social risk factors. These factors expose them to higher risks for TB incidence and poor treatment outcomes. METHODS This cross-sectional study evaluated WHO-defined TB treatment outcomes among economic migrants in an urban district of Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. We measured the association of a patient's government-defined residency status with treatment success and loss to follow-up categories at baseline and performed a comparative interrupted time series (ITS) analysis to assess the impact of community-based adherence support on treatment outcomes. Key measures of interest of the ITS were the differences in step change (β) and post-intervention trend (β). RESULTS Short-term, inter-province migrants experienced lower treatment success (aRR = 0.95 [95% CI: 0.92-0.99], p = 0.010) and higher loss to follow-up (aOR = 1.98 [95% CI: 1.44-2.72], p  55 years of age (aRR = 0.93 [95% CI: 0.89-0.96], p < 0.001), relapse patients (aRR = 0.89 [95% CI: 0.84-0.94], p < 0.001), and retreatment patients (aRR = 0.62 [95% CI: 0.52-0.75], p < 0.001) had lower treatment success rates. TB/HIV co-infection was also associated with lower treatment success (aRR = 0.77 [95% CI: 0.73-0.82], p < 0.001) and higher loss to follow-up (aOR = 2.18 [95% CI: 1.55-3.06], p < 0.001). The provision of treatment adherence support increased treatment success (IRR(β) = 1.07 [95% CI: 1.00, 1.15], p = 0.041) and reduced loss to follow-up (IRR(β) = 0.17 [95% CI: 0.04, 0.69], p = 0.013) in the intervention districts. Loss to follow-up continued to decline throughout the post-implementation period (IRR(β) = 0.90 [95% CI: 0.83, 0.98], p = 0.019). CONCLUSIONS Economic migrants, particularly those crossing provincial borders, have higher risk of poor treatment outcomes and should be prioritized for tailored adherence support. In light of accelerating urbanization in many regions of Asia, implementation trials are needed to inform evidence-based design of strategies for this vulnerable population

A comparative impact evaluation of two human resource models for community-based active tuberculosis case finding in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam

Background: To achieve the WHO End TB Strategy targets, it is necessary to detect and treat more people with active TB early. Scale–up of active case finding (ACF) may be one strategy to achieve that goal. Given human resource constraints in the health systems of most high TB burden countries, volunteer community health workers (CHW) have been widely used to economically scale up TB ACF. However, more evidence is needed on the most cost-effective compensation models for these CHWs and their potential impact on case finding to inform optimal scale-up policies. Methods: We conducted a two-year, controlled intervention study in 12 districts of Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. We engaged CHWs as salaried employees (3 districts) or incentivized volunteers (3 districts) to conduct ACF among contacts of people with TB and urban priority groups. Eligible persons were asked to attend health services for radiographic screening and rapid molecular diagnosis or smear microscopy. Individuals diagnosed with TB were linked to appropriate care. Six districts providing routine NTP care served as control area. We evaluated additional cases notified and conducted comparative interrupted time series (ITS) analyses to assess the impact of ACF by human resource model on TB case notifications. Results: We verbally screened 321,020 persons in the community, of whom 70,439 were eligible for testing and 1138 of them started TB treatment. ACF activities resulted in a + 15.9% [95% CI: + 15.0%, + 16.7%] rise in All Forms TB notifications in the intervention areas compared to control areas. The ITS analyses detected significant positive post-intervention trend differences in All Forms TB notification rates between the intervention and control areas (p = 0.001), as well as between the employee and volunteer human resource models (p = 0.021). Conclusions: Both salaried and volunteer CHW human resource models demonstrated additionality in case notifications compared to routine case finding by the government TB program. The salaried employee CHW model achieved a greater impact on notifications and should be prioritized for scale-up, given sufficient resources