My Story as a First-Generation Student from Vietnamese Immigrant Backgrounds and Implications for Asian American Students

Expressing myself in my own voice has never felt so liberating and uplifting, especially when it comes to writing in the academic world. Thanks to the Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) methodology of Dr. Robert Nash, I have a chance to share my voice from my perspective as a marginalized student. Neither of my parents went to college. What does this mean for me as an Asian American first-generation student? What does my background say about me, specifically as a student and generally as an individual person? What are some of the obstacles and opportunities in my journey and in my education? How do my own stories connect to others from similar backgrounds, and hopefully to others from different backgrounds as well? What do I want my readers to take away from my own learning experiences? In my thesis, I discuss my experiences as a first-generation student from my Vietnamese background. I describe in detail about my family backgrounds, some major events in my childhood, and how these changes shape who I am today. In order for me to move forward, I need to pause and rediscover my roots, my heritage, and my family\u27s values and learn to appreciate them. I discuss my experiences of going to high school and college in the U.S. I also explain how I experience the issues of race and social class when living in the U.S. I address some of the obstacles that I face as well as the opportunities that arise throughout my journey. What have I learned from these experiences thus far? I believe that sharing my story gives me the opportunity to connect with other students, educators, and administrators in higher education. This will allow us to acknowledge some issues that students of color have and how we can work together to address these issues. Based on my experiences, I have made some recommendations for students of color, especially Asian American first-generation college students. I also have some recommendations for educators when working with this marginalized population, specifically students from underrepresented groups and students from first-generation backgrounds

CSA Practices for Sustainable Cocoa Farming Systems

Climate change will shape the future production of cocoa and requires mutual cooperation amongst sector stakeholders to tailor responses to its differentiated impacts. Identifying and prioritizing climate smart agriculture (CSA) responses requires integration of multiple objectives and managing trade-offs between food security, adaptation and mitigation. Impact of future climates on growing regions is needed to select locally appropriate CSA practices. Zones of adaptation needs in Indonesia are identified and the ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ of tailored CSA practices are illustrated in an accessible guidebook format

Embedding problems with local conditions and the admissibility of finite groups

Let $k$ be a field of characteristic $p>0$, which has infinitely many discrete valuations. We show that every finite embedding problem for \Gal(k) with finitely many prescribed local conditions, whose kernel is a $p$-group, is properly solvable. We then apply this result in studying the admissibility of finite groups over global fields of positive characteristic. We also give another proof for a result of Sonn.Comment: 8 page

Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning with Human Strategies

Deep learning has enabled traditional reinforcement learning methods to deal with high-dimensional problems. However, one of the disadvantages of deep reinforcement learning methods is the limited exploration capacity of learning agents. In this paper, we introduce an approach that integrates human strategies to increase the exploration capacity of multiple deep reinforcement learning agents. We also report the development of our own multi-agent environment called Multiple Tank Defence to simulate the proposed approach. The results show the significant performance improvement of multiple agents that have learned cooperatively with human strategies. This implies that there is a critical need for human intellect teamed with machines to solve complex problems. In addition, the success of this simulation indicates that our multi-agent environment can be used as a testbed platform to develop and validate other multi-agent control algorithms.Comment: 2019 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT), Melbourne, Australi

The effects of corporate governance mechanisms on the financial leverage–profitability relation

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the moderating effects of corporate governance mechanisms on the financial leverage–profitability relation in emerging market firms. Design/methodology/approach The paper examines the impacts by estimating the empirical model in which a firm’s accounting profitability is a dependent variable, while financial leverage, board size, board independence, CEO duality, CEO ownership, state ownership and the interaction variables are predictors. The paper uses the panel data set of 295 listed firms in Vietnam in the period 2011-2015 and two key econometric methods for panel data, namely, the two-stage least square instrumental variable and general moments method. Findings The paper finds the evidence for the significant and positive effect of board size, board independence and state ownership on the financial leverage–profitability relation. The effect of CEO duality on the financial leverage–profitability relation tends to be negative, and the impact CEO ownership inclines to be positive, although both of them are statistically insignificant. The results are consistent across different estimation methods. Originality/value This paper is the first investigating the moderating effect of various corporate governance mechanisms on the financial leverage–profitability relationship in emerging market firms