Indoor assistance for visually impaired people using a RGB-D camera

In this paper a navigational aid for visually impaired people is presented. The system uses a RGB-D camera to perceive the environment and implements self-localization, obstacle detection and obstacle classification. The novelty of this work is threefold. First, self-localization is performed by means of a novel camera tracking approach that uses both depth and color information. Second, to provide the user with semantic information, obstacles are classified as walls, doors, steps and a residual class that covers isolated objects and bumpy parts on the floor. Third, in order to guarantee real time performance, the system is accelerated by offloading parallel operations to the GPU. Experiments demonstrate that the whole system is running at 9 Hz

Towards high-resolution large-scale multi-view stereo

International audienceBoosted by the Middlebury challenge, the precision of dense multi-view stereovision methods has increased drastically in the past few years. Yet, most methods, although they perform well on this benchmark, are still inapplicable to large-scale data sets taken under uncontrolled conditions. In this paper, we propose a multi-view stereo pipeline able to deal at the same time with very large scenes while still producing highly detailed reconstructions within very reasonable time. The keys to these benefits are twofold: (i) a minimum s-t cut based global optimization that transforms a dense point cloud into a visibility consistent mesh, followed by (ii) a mesh-based variational refinement that captures small details, smartly handling photo-consistency, regularization and adaptive resolution. Our method has been tested on numerous large-scale outdoor scenes. The accuracy of our reconstructions is also measured on the recent dense multi-view benchmark proposed by Strecha et al., showing our results to compare more than favorably with the current state-of-the-art

REGIONAL LINKAGE IN TOURISM: THE CASE OF VIETNAM

Abstract. This research is conducted for investigating the current situations of regional linkage in tourism development in the areas of Midlands and Northern Mountains in Vietnam. Data were collected from a survey of 755 people, including officials from State management bodies in charge of tourism, officials and staffs at tourism resorts, tourism firms, tourism scientists and tourists. In addition, we conducted focus group and interviewed tourism agency officials and tourism firms in the Midland and Mountainous provinces of Vietnam. The results show that tourism development in Vietnam in general and the Northwest region in particular is extremely fragmented, not yet forming a regional linkage; regional and national tourism development projects are just formalistic. Some causes are the limited regional integration policy, lack of appropriate regional governance mechanisms and inactive participation of the private sector in regional integration. Based on the findings, we propose a tourism sector linkage model; besides, policyimplications are given for fulfilling the linkage policies in Vietnam in particular, and more broadly for emerging countries in general.Keywords: Midlands and Northern Mountains, tourism linkage, Vietnam

Formal accounting harmonization - A new measurement scheme demonstrated by Vietnam’s data and International Financial Reporting Standards

We are living in a “flat world” of international integration and adaptive trends. This requires countries to integrate their own regulations to those from other countries. Accounting regulations are no exception. It is necessary to measure how much a nation’s accounting regulations are the same or different from those of another country or from International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Extant literature reveals a rich discussion about this topic. Many measurement schemes have been initiated and employed. However, it is argued that data classification processes in those works contain some flaws. This paper contends the data specifically used to evaluate accounting measurement issues. The data will be divided into initial and subsequent recognition because such partition collectively affects the financial report figures. Therefore, the similarity of accounting regulations as a whole should be the multiplication of initial and subsequent recognition similar degree. To this extend, this work contributes to the research theme

The impact of corruption on the performance of newly established enterprises : empirical evidence from a transition economy

This paper investigates the effects of corruption on the performance of newly established enterprises. Using longitudinal data from enterprise surveys containing virtually all firms over the period from 2011 to 2015 in Vietnam, we find that corruption deteriorates firm financial performance, and subsequently exposes them to a greater failure probability. We further find that, while corruption imposes more harmful effects on the performance and survival of private domestic firms, it exerts no significant impact on state-owned firms. On the other hand, foreign firms are also able to take advantage of corruption to enhance their performance and survivability. In addition, our results suggest that the more mature firms are better at dealing with corruption and can eventually take advantage of it to enhance their performance. The results are robust after various model specifications as well as alternative classifications of newly established firms.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Using YouTube Videos to Promote Universities : A Content Analysis

In today’s global higher education environment, international students represent not only an important source of external income for universities: the degree of cross-border student mobility also reflects the internationalization of higher education sector. Universities have engaged in efforts to sell themselves to prospective students and promotional videos are among the most widely used marketing tools for this purpose. This study reports the results of a study analyzing the content of 140 higher education promotional videos from 14 countries available on YouTube. The results reveal that while the pattern of use of YouTube for two-waycommunication with viewers, information contents and appeal messages among sampled universities is fairly homogenous, some marked differences emerge when cultural background and global position ranking of the university are taken into account. The implications of these findings are that, although, transnational higher education has been profoundly globalized, culture still plays a significant role in marketing practice for the recruitment of mobile students. In addition, different universities have various student-targeted segments. These findings provide the basis of a series of recommendations for universities looking to optimize their use of YouTube and promotional video design to market to international students

Economic linkage in key economic zones: The case of Vietnam

This study was conducted to measure the level of economic linkage in key economic zones in central Vietnam generally and to measure the level of economic linkage in the tourism sector. Secondary data were collected from the Statistical Yearbook published by the General Statistics Office and the Local Bureau of Statistics and primary data collected from surveys of 102 hotels and tourism firms in the center of Vietnam. We used the Moran Index (I) to quantify overall economic aggregation across the region and that scoring method was used to measure the degree of linkage in regional tourism. The results show that the level of overall regional economic linkages was very low and this was also relevant when analyzing the tourism sector in some areas of the center of Vietnam. Based on the results, some recommendations are given for strengthening economic linkages in key economic regions of Vietnam

Survey on Vietnamese teachers’ perspectives and perceived support during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented damage to the educational system worldwide. Besides the measurable economic impacts in the short-term and long-term, there is intangible destruction within educational institutions. In particular, teachers – the most critical intellectual resources of any schools – have to face various types of financial, physical, and mental struggles due to COVID-19. To capture the current context of more than one million Vietnamese teachers during COVID-19, we distributed an e- survey to more than 2,500 randomly selected teachers from two major teacher communities on Facebook from 6th to 11th April 2020. From over 373 responses, we excluded the observations which violated our cross-check questions and retained 294 observations for further analysis. This dataset includes: (i) Demographics of participants; (ii) Teachers' perspectives regarding the operation of teaching activities during the pandemic; (iii) Teachers' received support from their schools, government bodies, other stakeholders such as teacher unions, and parents' associations; and (iv) teachers' evaluation of school readiness toward digital transformation. Further, the dataset was supplemented with an additional question on the teachers' primary source of professional development activities during the pandemic

Discorvery of Entomopathogenic fungi Cordyceps takaomontana at Langbian Mountain, Lam Dong, Vietnam

The stromata of Cordyceps takaomontana Y. Kobayashi (1941) were found on the Langbian Mountain, Da Lat, Vietnam at the height of 1.650 meter above sea level, on the larva of Lepidoptera. Stromata were lemon-yellow, clavate to enlongated clavate, arising from a white pseudosclerotium. The fertile head was on the top part of stromata, darker colored in comparison to the stipe. Perithecium was narrowly ovoid, superficial and forming dark yellow punctate on the surface of stromata. Ascus was cylindrical with semi-spherical cap. Ascospores were cylindrical, truncated and separately after discharge from the ascus. Pure culture was isolated on Potato Glucose Agar (PGA) medium: white colony in young and yellow in old. The isolated mycelium was not homogenous in thickness and in growth rate at the peripheral area. Conidiophores were phialide, tapering to both apexes. Conidia had elliptical shape and formed into chains after maturation. DNA was isolated, then purified from pure mycelium and used to amplifying the nrLSU (nuclear ribosomal large subunit) and rpb1 (RNA polymerase II largest subunit) genes. The amplified products were used for sequencing, proof-reading by some professional softwares before combining with other nrLSU and rpb1 sequences. Then this database was used to search for the suitable evolution model as well as to construct the phylogenetic trees. The results of phylogenetic analysis completely supported the morphological classification: DL0038A and DL0038B were Cordyceps takaomontana Y. Kobayashi (1941)