Influence of water temperature and salinity on pH during dry season in lower Dong Nai river system, Vietnam

This paper uses the gvSIG 2.2.0 software, IDW interpolation method, river and stream network data, and 36 sampling sites to build the maps of three monitored parameters such as pH, water temperature, and salinity in the Lower Dong Nai River system (2009–2010) in dry season. Based on an analysis of these maps and statistical assessment by using the R software, the correlations between pH, temperature, and salinity are clarified. The results show that the pH and temperature values have a tendency to decrease, whereas the salinity tends to increase annually. The pH value has good and significant correlations with the water temperature and salinity in both simple and multiple linear regression models. The results aim to provide a scientific reference for further research on the water environment in this area

Numerical Framing and Emotional Arousal as Moderators of Review Valence and Consumer Choices

Online reviews are gaining importance in determining consumers’ purchase decisions since many consumers trust them as much as personal word-of-mouth. One aspect of reviews that has received great research attention is valence. Valence refers to consumers’ positive or negative evaluations of products. It can be reflected by star ratings or dichotomous choices such as recommendation rates and thumbs up or down rates. The effects of valence reported in previous studies have been equivocal at best. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to identify factors that help reconcile these inconclusive findings. The first essay examined emotional arousal (e.g., sad versus angry) as a moderator of the relationship between valence and consumer decisions. Through two lab experiments and one field study utilizing the browsing and purchasing data from a major online retailer, I find that the effect of emotional arousal can be different along the consumer purchase journey. During the search stage, consumers use emotional arousal as a heuristic to make their choices. Extreme reviews (e.g., five-star or one-star rating) with high emotional arousal indicate reviewers’ bias and lack of self- control and are deemed less informative about product performance. Therefore, emotional arousal weakens the effect of valence on consumers’ consideration choices. However, when consumers are at the purchase stage, a more complex cognitive process emerges. Even though they believe that extremely negative reviews with high emotional arousal are uninformative, their anticipated regret leads them to reject products associated with those reviews. The second essay suggests that how consumers process valence and volume (i.e., the total number of a product’s reviews) depends on the framing of the numeric information, which subsequently determines the importance of valence in relation to that of volume in consumers’ purchase decisions. Specifically, consumers will utilize different approaches to processing valence and volume information when valence is framed as a percentage of volume (60% of 500 customers recommend) versus when it is represented as an absolute number (e.g., 300 out of 500 customers recommend). Through five lab experiments (including an eye-tracking study), I find that due to the fundamental differences between these approaches, consumers are likely to tradeoff valence for high volume if the valence information is expressed as percentages. However, the dominant effect of review volume diminishes if the absolute number format is applied. The effect of numerical framing thus helps newly introduced high-quality products overcome their disadvantage due to low review volume

FINTECH ECOSYSTEM IN VIETNAM

This paper reviews current status of the fintech ecosystem in Vietnam through the lens of critical actors of a fintech ecosystem and in comparison with Singapore. It is to find out which actors are for setting up an ecosystem now and maintaining a healthy ecosystem in the future. The intention in doing so is to assess the role of each actor and reflect the relationship among them. The final aim is to understand the emergence of fintech ecosystem in Vietnam, from which to suggest some ways to develop the ecosystem. This study adopts theory of Nicoletti (2017) and Adner and Kapoor (2016). From Nicoletti (2017), five actors of a fintech ecosystem are recognized. They are demand,talent, solutions, capital and policy. All individuals, businesses and financial institutions have demand for modern financial products and services, originating from prevalence of technology in nearly all aspects of life now. Good academic performance at school shown by PISA result is not enough to bring excellence to technology and financial institutions. Talent of technology places has little been mentioned. Some banks are incorporating fintech in their operations. Fintech entrepreneurs are generally potential but they need to be better equipped with expertise knowledge and more innovative. Solutions from academic resources are almost zero, from fintech companies not diverse,from crowdsourcing too tiny. The collaboration between fintech companies and banks is bringing advantages to both parties. Angel investors and IPO are now not a viable option for fintech companies in Vietnam. Venture capital is easier to reach. Both local and foreign venture funds are showing interest in Vietnam’s fintech. Policy is still more in paper than in practice. After discussing the role of each actor and their correlation, the discussion moved to recommendations drawn from the theory of Adner and Kapoor (2016). Based on their framework, Vietnam is now in the first stage, in which traditional financial services do not completely meet growing customer need while fintech started to be paid special attention to. A sensible approach is to devote huge effort to fintech. This is proven in reality of Singapore. Fintech companies are in the heart of their ecosystem and all the actors are working hard. Some lessons can be learned from Singapore are: focusing on fintech companies – this is also emphasized in Nicoletti (2017)’s framework, policy offering more incentives to investors in fintech companies and supporting to improve quality of talent and solutions

How to interpret the growing phenomenon of private tutoring : human capital deepening, inequality increasing, or waste of resources ?

Private tutoring is now a major component of the education sector in many developing countries, yet education policy too seldom acknowledges and makes use of it. Various criticisms have been raised against private tutoring, most notably that it exacerbates social inequalities and may even fail to improve student outcomes. This paper surveys the literature for evidence on private tutoring-the extent of the tutoring phenomenon, the factors that explain its growth, and its cost-effectiveness in improving student academic performance. It also presents a framework for assessing the efficiency and equity effects of tutoring. It concludes that tutoring can raise the effectiveness of the education system under certain reasonable assumptions, even taking into account equity concerns, and it offers guidance for attacking corruption and other problems that diminish the contributions of the tutoring sector.Teaching and Learning,Tertiary Education,Education For All,Primary Education,

Determining the Intracellular Concentrations of Flavonoids in MDA-MB-231 Cells Using HPLC-Coupled Mass Spectrometry

Flavonoids are polyphenolic compounds found in a wide variety of plants. In recent years, flavonoids have been found to be beneficial to human health. Our lab has investigated the ability of flavonoids to induce cytotoxicity in human breast cancer cell lines. We have discovered that some compounds can induce cytotoxicity very readily, whereas others cannot. We hypothesized that this difference is attributable to a compound\u27s ability to transverse the cell membrane. Therefore, we used LC-MS to measure the amount of each flavonoid that is able to enter into MDA-MB-231 cells, human breast cancer cells. We tested 14 flavonoids. MDA-MB-231 cells were plated and treated with 100 μM flavonoids for 24 and 48 hr. After treatment, cells were extracted using methanol. Flavonoids from extracts were characterized and quantitated by LC-MS. We found that intracellular flavonoid concentration increased over time for some of the flavonoids. We could not detect quercetin, myricetin, and catechin in cell extracts. However, quercetin was found to be a moderate inducer of cytotoxicity, whereas myricetin and catechin were not. We found that quercetin dimerized over time in the cell medium only in the presence of serum. The quercetin dimer could not be detected in cellular extracts, which suggested that it was unable to cross the membrane. Additionally, synthetic quercetin dimer did not induce cell death. Our results suggest that only fresh quercetin killed cells; once quercetin dimerized, it could not induce cell death