SOCIAL NETWORK IN MOTHER GODDESS WORSHIP: A CASE STUDY OF MEDIUM DANG THI MAT, HANG PAGODA-QUAN TAM TEMPLE, THANH MY COMMUNE, SON TAY TOWN, HANOI

Many authors, domestic and foreign, have studied different aspects of Mother Goddess worship. Studying Mother Goddess worship on the basis of  social network theory is a modern research trend, and is valuable in determining the complexity of social relationships that people build, maintain, and develop in their real lives as members of society. This article adopts some points of view in social network theory to study a specific social network in Mother Goddess worship, that of medium Dang Thi Mat, of Hang Pagoda-Quan Tam Temple, Thanh My Commune, Son Tay Town, Hanoi to clarify the characteristics, structure, homophily, operating principles, and development of this social network in modern society. The analysis in the article is based on long-term fieldwork (2015-2018), observations, and in-depth interviews with many individuals to obtain objective and tangible research results

Molecular Kondo effect in flat-band lattices

The Kondo effect of a single magnetic impurity embedded in the Lieb lattice is studied by the numerical renormalization group. When the band flatness is present in the local density of states, it quenches the participation of all dispersive electrons in the Kondo singlet formation, and reduces the many-body Kondo problem to a two-electron molecular Kondo problem. The two-electron analog of the many-body Kondo singlet, a quantum entanglement of two spins, is stable at low temperature, and the impurity contributions to thermodynamical and dynamical quantities are qualitatively different from that obtained in the conventional Kondo effect in systems without flat bands. The existence conditions of the molecular Kondo effect in narrow band systems are also discussed

Air-drying and osmotic dehydration of banana: their effects on changes of volatile components of dehydrated product

The effect of air-drying and osmotic dehydration of banana slices (Cavendish variety of Australia) on the flavour and volatile components of dried banana was studied. This was conducted to obtain a better understanding of the drying kinetics of banana, and the influence of process parameters on maintaining or enhancing the quality of dried product in terms of volatile retention. Air-drying of banana was found to occur mainly in the falling rate period. A diffusion model based on Pick\u27s Second Law was used to predict the changes of moisture content as a function of diying time at different temperatures, and thickness of banana slabs. Green and ripe banana slices were dried to investigate the influence of different maturity of banana on the drying behavior

SOME COMMON DIFFICULTIES IN LISTENING OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM

The aim of the research “Some common difficulties in listening of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University" is to figure out some major factors causing difficulties for students in listening to English. The research is carried out within 12 weeks. Participants of this study are 100 English majored freshmen course 13, chosen randomly (including students in class 13A, 13B, and 13C) at Tay Do University. During the research time, participants are given questionnaires and paper interviews to show their ideas. The questionnaire and paper interview are two main instruments of this study, which are used to gather information about students' problems facing in listening. As a result, the research through the expected outcome will show some difficulties in listening of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University that related to linguistics like vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, accents and intonation, and background knowledge and unfamiliar topics, psychological obstacle, and the length and speed rate of speech. Article visualizations

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEARNING STRATEGY USE IN ENGLISH AND MOTIVATION OF STUDENTS AT A COLLEAGUE IN CAN THO CITY, VIETNAM

Among the many factors that increase students’ achievement in the mastery of foreign languages, including English, are motivation and use of language learning strategies. Previous studies by a range of researchers have identified these two elements as the most important in obtaining success in language learning. This study carried out on 152 university students, roughly equal in gender, studying at a university in Can Tho, Vietnam, sought to discover the relationships between these two factors within the Vietnamese language learning context. In particular, the study sought to 1) discover which of two types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, is most prevalent among the students studied; 2) their use of language learning strategies; 3) reveals the relationship between students' motivation and use of language learning strategies; and 4) describe the differences in their use of language learning strategies based on whether their motivation was high, medium or low. Research instruments included Schmidt et al.'s Questionnaire on Motivation in Learning English, and Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (both modified for the Vietnamese language learning context and translated into Vietnamese), plus an interview with 18 of the students to gain greater insight into the answers they gave on the questionnaires. Results were obtained using standard deviations and t-tests. They showed that Vietnamese university students are mainly extrinsically motivated; that all strategies were used at least at a medium level, amidst other fluctuations; and that those metacognitive strategies are most prevalent among medium and high motivated students but affective strategies are most common among low motivation students. Recommendations flowing from these results are that teachers should prioritize the formal teaching of learning strategies and should attempt to increase intrinsic motivation by putting greater emphasis on making language learning fun and relevant to the students' interests and passions. Article visualizations

THE READING CULTURE OF ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM

In the 21st century, the development of many modern entertainment facilities makes people rarely focus on reading books. So, the reading culture gradually fell into oblivion. In reality, when teachers ask students about their reading habit, students often say “we seldom read books”, they mostly read books because of teacher requests or school assignments. Therefore, the research “The reading culture of English majored students at Tay Do University” was conducted with the purpose of helping English linguistic students to acknowledge the importance of reading books. Thanks to this, they can find their own situations and spend more time reading books. The participants of this study were 100 English majored students of four classes including English Linguistic 10B, 11A, 12C and 13A at Tay Do University that were chosen randomly. The instrument used in this thesis was the questionnaire. The data from questionnaires were statistically analyzed by SPSS English version 20.0 package. Based on research results, the researcher found out some common students’ thoughts on reading culture as well as solutions to develop their reading culture in the future.  Article visualizations

Fast Resource Allocation for Resilient Service Coordination in an NFV-Enabled Internet-of-Things System

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a new way of leveraging an Internet-of-Things (IoT) system to provide real-time and highly flexible service creation. In an NFV-enabled Internet-of-Things (NIoT) system, several IoT functions implemented as Virtual Network Functions can be linked as a service function chain to build a customized IoT service quickly. It is important for an IoT service to be able to recover from a failure. However, the supply of a resilient IoT service in an NIoT system is challenging due to the coordination of distributed VNF instances. In this paper, we formulate the problem of resilient service coordination in an NIoT system as a mixed-integer linear programming model, namely RSO\textsubscript{d}. The model offers the optimal resource allocation for minimizing service disruption when a failure happens at a node of an NIoT system. We also develop two modified versions of RSO\textsubscript{d} for different use cases required by an IoT provider. Further, two approximation algorithms are proposed to provide a resilient service for a large-scale NIoT system. The evaluation results show that RSO\textsubscript{d} and its modified versions produce the optimal resource allocation in significantly reduced time compared to previous work. The results suggest that an IoT provider should carefully select an appropriate resource allocation strategy as it has to pay a resource cost to minimize the service disruption. The results also show that our proposed priority-based heuristic algorithm outperforms an approximation algorithm based on Simulated Annealing in terms of the service disruption and computation time

A longitudinal Perspective on Efficiency of Airlines in Europe and the U.S

The aviation industries in Europe and the US have been well-established since a very early age and have attracted great attention from both industry practitioners and academics. To derive a different perspective on the efficiency levels of airlines operating in the two matured markets, we adopted dynamic data envelopment analysis (DEA). Using the data of the period 2014 – 2016 of 7 European airlines and 9 US airlines that are publicly traded, the study offers an overall picture of airlines' efficiency in the two regions. Notably, the resource flow between the consecutive periods is incorporated into the measure to yield a longitudinal perspective on airlines' efficiency. The study reveals the two major findings. First, most publicly traded airlines in Europe and the US are efficient, except for Hawaiian airline headquartered in the US. Second, Hawaiian airline's inefficiency is majorly contributed by the overuse of the number of employees, consumed fuel, and the deficit of revenue seat-miles in 2014 and 2015. To improve the efficiency level, Hawaiian airlines could consider increasing employee productivity, using more fuel-efficient aircraft, and implementing new marketing strategies to boost sales