CIRUS: an elastic cloud-based framework for Ubilytics

International audienceThe Internet of Things (IoT) has become a reality with the availability of chatty embedded devices. The huge amount of data generated by things must be analysed with models and technologies of the " Big Data An-alytics " , deployed on Cloud platforms. The CIRUS project aims to deliver a generic and elastic cloud-based framework for Ubilytics (ubiquitous big data analytics). The CIRUS framework collects and analyses IoT data for Machine to Machine services using Component-off-the-Shelves (COTS) such as IoT gateways, Message brokers or Message-as-a-Service providers and Big Data analytics platforms deployed and reconfigured dynamically with Roboconf. In this paper, we demonstrate and evaluate the genericity and elasticity of CIRUS with the deployment of an Ubilytics use case using a real dataset based on records originating from a practical source

STEM education and outcomes in Vietnam: Views from the social gap and gender issues

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 4 Quality Education has highlighted major challenges for all nations to ensure inclusive and equitable quality access to education, facilities for children, and young adults. The SDG4 is even more important for developing nations as receiving proper education or vocational training, especially in science and technology, means a foundational step in improving other aspects of their citizens’ lives. However, the extant scientific literature about STEM education still lacks focus on developing countries, even more so in the rural area. Using a dataset of 4967 observations of junior high school students from a rural area in a transition economy, the article employs the Bayesian approach to identify the interaction between gender, socioeconomic status, and students’ STEM academic achievements. The results report gender has little association with STEM academic achievements; however, female students (αa_Sex[2] = 2.83) appear to have achieved better results than their male counterparts (αa_Sex[1] = 2.68). Families with better economic status, parents with a high level of education (βb(EduMot) = 0.07), or non-manual jobs (αa_SexPJ[4] = 3.25) are found to be correlated with better study results. On the contrary, students with zero (βb(OnlyChi) = -0.14) or more than two siblings (βb(NumberofChi) = -0.01) are correlated with lower study results compared to those with only one sibling. These results imply the importance of providing women with opportunities for better education. Policymakers should also consider maintaining family size so the parents can provide their resources to each child equally

Linking Ethical Leadership to Employee Creative Performace: The Role of Leader-Member Exchange and Work Engagement

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to investigate the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) and work engagement in the relationship between ethical leadership and creative performance.   Theoretical framework: The study is based on the theoretical foundation that ethical leadership positively influences creative performance. It further posits that this relationship is mediated by both leader-member exchange (LMX) and work engagement.   Design/Methodology/Approach: Data for this study was collected from a Vietnamese service firm, with a sample comprising 78 leaders and 354 employees. The collected data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the proposed relationships.   Findings: The findings of the study indicate a significant and positive correlation between ethical leadership and creative performance. Additionally, the study reveals that ethical leadership exerts an influence on both leader-member exchange (LMX) and work engagement, which subsequently enhance employees' demonstration of creativity in their work.   Research, practical & social implications: This research sheds light on the mediating mechanisms through which ethical leadership impacts creative performance. The findings highlight the importance of fostering positive leader-member relationships and promoting work engagement in order to enhance employees' creative behaviors. Practically, the study suggests that organizations should prioritize the development of ethical leadership qualities to foster a creative work environment. Moreover, the research contributes to the broader social implications by emphasizing the significance of ethical leadership in promoting creativity and innovation within organizations.   Originality/Value: This research contributes to the existing literature by examining the mediating role of leader-member exchange and work engagement in the relationship between ethical leadership and creative performance. The study provides valuable insights into the mechanisms through which ethical leaders can enhance creativity in the workplace. The findings of this research contribute to the understanding of the importance of ethical leadership and its impact on organizational outcomes, thereby adding to the originality and value of the study

Roboconf: a Hybrid Cloud Orchestrator to Deploy Complex Applications

International audienceThis paper presents Roboconf, an open-source distributed application orchestration framework for multi-cloud platforms, designed to solve challenges of current Autonomic Computing Systems in the era of Cloud computing. It provides a Domain Specific Language (DSL) which allows to describe applications and their execution environments (cloud platforms) in a hierarchical way in order to provide a fine-grained management. Roboconf implements an asynchronous and parallel deployment protocol which accelerates and makes resilient the deployment process. Intensive experiments with different type of applications over different cloud models (e.g. private, hybrid, and multi-cloud) validate the genericity of Roboconf. These experiments also demonstrate its efficiency comparing to existing frameworks such as RightScale, Scalr, and Cloudify

An Adaptable Framework to Deploy Complex Applications onto Multi-cloud Platforms

International audienceCloud computing is nowadays a popular technology for hosting IT services. However, deploying and reconfiguring complex applications involving multiple software components, which are distributed on many virtual machines running on single or multi-cloud platforms, is error-prone and time-consuming for human administrators. Existing deployment frameworks are most of the time either dedicated to a unique type of application (e.g. JEE applications) or address a single cloud platform (e.g. Amazon EC2). This paper presents a novel distributed application management framework for multi-cloud platforms. It provides a Domain Specific Language (DSL) which allows to describe applications and their execution environments (cloud platforms) in a hierarchical way in order to provide a fine-grained management. This framework implements an asynchronous and parallel deployment protocol which accelerates and make resilient the deployment process. A prototype has been developed to serve conducting intensive experiments with different type of applications (e.g. OSGi application and ubiquitous big data analytics for IoT) over disparate cloud models (e.g. private, hybrid, and multi-cloud), which validate the genericity of the framework. These experiments also demonstrate its efficiency comparing to existing frameworks such as Cloudify

DNA barcoding for identification of some fish species (Carangidae) in Vietnam coastal area

Carangidae family has got about 148 species belonging to 32 genera. In Vietnam, Carangidae is of high commercial value and playing an important role in the ecosystem. In the context Vietnam has received yellow card for seafood since Nov. 2017 by the EU, in which one of the main reasons was related to the restriction of traceability. In this study, DNA barcoding technique of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene was used to classify 56 specimens of Carangidae from three coastal areas (Northern, Central and Southern) in Vietnam to evaluate the effectiveness compared to the morphological classification method. Results showed that 21 species belonging to 16 genera were determined by the COI barcode while 18 species (16 genera) were determined when using morphological method. Seriola quinqueradiata and Trachinotus anak were newly recorded in Vietnam. From 56 sequences with 660 bp of mtDNA (COI), total 27 haplotypes were detected; haplotype diversity (h) and nucleotide diversity (π) were 0.903 ± 0.00060 and 0.14%, respectively. The DNA barcodes of COI gene of 21 species in Carangidae which were developed in this study could be used as a basis for comparison and traceability of their products. In addition, the results showed the high potentiality in using COI barcode to identify Carangidae fish in Vietnam

Policy Response, Social Media and Science Journalism for the Sustainability of the Public Health System Amid the COVID-19 Outbreak: The Vietnam Lessons

Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis

How Digital Natives Learn and Thrive in the Digital Age: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students

Crystal structure of 4-amino-3-(thio-phen-3-ylmeth-yl)-1<i>H</i>-1,2,4-triazole-5(4<i>H</i>)-thione.

In the title compound, C7H8N4S2, the thio-phene ring shows rotational disorder over two orientations in a 0.6957 (15):0.3043 (15) ratio. The plane of the 1,2,4-triazole ring makes a dihedral angle of 75.02 (17)° with the major-disorder component of the thiophene ring. In the crystal, two types of inversion dimers, described by the graph-set motifs R22(8) and R22(10), are formed by N-H⋯S inter-actions. Chains of mol-ecules running in the [101] direction are linked by weaker N-H⋯N inter-actions. The thio-phene ring is involved in π-π and C-H⋯π inter-actions

Study on synthesis of carboxymethyl cellulose from pineapple leaf waste and its potential applications as a thickener

In this study, cellulose and hemicellulose were successfully extracted from pineapple leaf waste at yields of 58.8 and 16.1% by dried weight, respectively. Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) was synthesised from pineapple leaf cellulose by an esterification process using sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and monochloroacetic acid (MCA) with isopropanol as the supporting medium. Preparation of CMC was investigated by varying three free factors, namely, NaOH concentration, MCA dose, and cellulose size. The carboxymethylation process was optimised to produce CMC with differing degrees of substitution (DS). The highest DS of CMC (0.86) was obtained with 15% (w/v) NaOH solution, 0.6 g of MCA/g cellulose, and 50 μm cellulose. The obtained CMC were characterised by FTIR spectroscopy, SEM images and XRD diffractions. Moreover, the thickening performance of obtained CMC was also determined. The influence of the CMC’s molecular weight and degree of substitution on the viscosity of 1% (w/v) aqueous solution was tested. The experimental results suggest that the viscosity of the solution increases with increasing molecular weight and degree of substitution of CMC