The chora has proven to be an obscure concept in contemporary philosophy. Cornelius Castoriadis seemed to retreat from the edge of its significance within his work, a significance that is capable of opening up another turn in the labyrinth of his thought. A clear interrogation into the presence of the chora in his thought has, still, yet to be elucidated. This paper proceeds with a notion of the chora defined for the purpose of highlighting its relevance for Castoriadis’thought, taking up (...) his schema trans-regional ontology and imaginary creation, which lean on the anticipation of a self-altering otherness. Locating the chora in Castoriadis’ trans-regionalarchitectonics of being. (shrink)

The historic end of the Cold War and the rising tide of globalization have significantly changed the nature of threats and security discourses in Asia. There is a notable shift of attention from military power as the core determinant of national security to several non-traditional sectors with a much enhanced role of economic, political, and societal forces. Non-traditional security issues—such as climate change, natural disasters, transnational crimes, and terrorism—require both policymakers and military strategists to deal with security threats in a (...) more comprehensive manner. Increasing interdependence among states also magnifies the impacts of these threats, urging Asian countries to forge regional cooperation in multilateral forums such as ASEAN, EAS, APEC, and ARF. Though these efforts are commendable, their effectiveness in tackling such a wide canvass of threats is still open to question. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

In Vietnam, regionalisation in the GMS occurs in different parts at different paces and levels driven by the central government and with the participation of the local governments, private sector and grassroots people in the framework of the GMS Program. So far there has been no major research either in Vietnamese or English that addresses this issue. The thesis seeks to fill this gap by examining the empirical process of regionalisation in three Vietnam’s border towns in the First-Generation GMS Economic (...) Corridor Town Development Project. Employing analytical framework based on relevant International Relations and interdisciplinary theories, and a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the thesis finds that the GMS regionalisation is a combination of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processes. The thesis commences by highlighting the significance of the Mekong River to the development of the region. Then various multilateral cooperative schemes are explored to generate a complete picture of regional cooperation. It is concluded that many multilateral mechanisms with little progress may have negative impacts on the regionalisation in the GMS. Among 13 schemes in the GMS, GMS Program is considered as one of the most well-known subregional cooperation schemes. The GMS Program came to existence just in time to assist the Mekong riparian states to integrate better into the regional and international markets in the context that there were new developments both at the regional and world’s levels. In the case of Vietnam, the GMS Program has given Hanoi an option to carry on its omni-directional foreign policy and helped it consolidate its existing relationships with its traditional and neighbouring partners. Notably, regionalisation is occurring in some parts of the country where GMS projects have been implemented. Regionalisation can be best observed in economic space where there are intensive interactions among people under various dimensions enabled by favourable policies. Although regionalisation promises to bring new cooperative opportunities in the GMS, regionalisation in the GMS will continue to meet new challenges from growing natural and man-made threats to the Mekong River. Further, the involvement of outsiders is also a real challenge to the regionbuilding process. (shrink)

Chapter 3 of an e-book 'Handbook for Logotherapists' 2024 (Niiles-Mäki Anne). Institute for Purpose-centered Philosophy Finland.

Georg Cantor was the genuine discoverer of the Mathematical Infinity, and whatever he claimed, suggested, or even surmised should be taken seriously -- albeit not necessary at its face value. Because alongside his exquisite in beauty ordinal construction and his fundamental powerset description of the continuum, Cantor has also left to us his obsessive presumption that the universe of sets should be subjected to laws similar to those governing the set of natural numbers, including the universal principles of cardinal comparability (...) and well-ordering -- and implying an ordinal re-creation of the continuum. During the last hundred years, the mainstream set-theoretical research -- all insights and adjustments due to Kurt G\"odel's revolutionary insights and discoveries notwithstanding -- has compliantly centered its efforts on ad hoc axiomatizations of Cantor's intuitive transfinite design. We demonstrate here that the ontological and epistemic sustainability} of this design has been irremediably compromised by the underlying peremptory, Reductionist mindset of the XIXth century's ideology of science. (shrink)

I argue that the most promising approach to understanding J.J. Gibson's "affordances" takes affordances themselves as ontological primitives, instead of treating them as dispositional properties of more primitive things, events, surfaces, or substances. These latter are best treated as coalescences of affordances present in the environment (or "coalescences of use-potential," as in Sanders (1994) and Hilditch (1995)). On this view, even the ecological approach's stress on the complementary organism/environment pair is seen as expressing a particular affordance relation between the world (...) and the analyst. That the world is parsed in any way among events and objects, perceivers and worlds, etc., reflects equally features of certain real or possible perspectives on the world and features of the world itself. In section 1, I begin by contending that, contrary to the apparent expectations of some in the field, the bare existence of affordances is surely quite uncontroversial. In section 2, I argue that the most reasonable approach to foundational ontology is a relativistic one. In section 3, I address the claim that affordances must be ontologically complemented by effectivities for the sake of completeness, and I shall argue against that claim on grounds that I take to reflect some of Gibson's most important insights. This work will help to clarify the way affordances are to be used in the fourth and final section, where I argue that ontological work, even within special sciences, should not be merely "regional," and that the most attractive general approach to ontological questions is one that is based on affordances, rather than upon things, events, surfaces, and the like. (shrink)

Consider the most recent Yale-Harvard football game, an event which occurred on 11/20/21 in New Haven, lasting about three hours. This event, like many college football games before, was composed of four quarters, each of which was composed of possessions, each of which was composed of downs, each of which was composed of particular movements, tackles and decisions of the individual players. Each of these parts of the game was itself an event, occurring in a smaller region of space and (...) time than the game itself. Each of these events involved material objects like players, helmets, jerseys, etc. Each had causes and effects, and each instantiated qualitative properties, such as being a kickoff or being a tackle. These are paradigmatic examples of events. Events are many and varied; some other examples include the melting of an ice cube, the birth of a horse, the supernova of a star, the presidential election campaign and a winter snowstorm. Each of these took place in a certain region of spacetime, had other events as parts, involved certain objects, had causes and effects, and instantiated properties. Objects and their properties are not the only furniture in the world. Events are a crucial part of our manifest and scientific pictures of the world. We go to football games, think about and participate in elections, eagerly anticipate the birth of a child, and quantify over and explain such things in our scientific theories. Yet, events have received insufficient attention from metaphysicians. Some philosophers have been skeptical of events, holding that talk of events can be paraphrased away, or that events can be reduced to objects and properties.1 When philosophers have accepted events, their motivations have usually been extrinsic—events are introduced in order to play a role in a larger philosophical system. This tendency has led philosophers to miss a number of interesting features of events. In this paper, I wish to reverse that trend by developing an ontology of events which is not an afterthought with respect to another philosophical project. In so doing, I will provide answers to substantive metaphysical questions about the relations in which events stand and their identity conditions. In the next section, I identify four basic relations in which events stand: parthood, involvement, causation and instantiation, focusing in particular on involvement. Then, I argue that events are individuated by their involvements, and criticize the identity conditions which have been offered by other philosophers, notably Quine, Davidson and Kim. I then conclude. (shrink)

The ontological turn (OT) is a loose cluster of theoretical approaches within cultural anthropology that advocates a synthetic, overarching way forward for ethnographically oriented cultural anthropology. We argue that in order to contribute substantively to ethnobiology the OT needs to distance itself from a long-standing tradition of thinking within ethnography that assumes some kind of fundamental divide between the natural and the social sciences. This distancing seems especially unlikely in light of the meta-anthropological nature of the OT as primarily a (...) perspective on ethnographic methodology. Instead, we advocate for naturalistic theoretical alternatives for thinking about human sociality, where philosophical innovation develops in concert with ongoing empirical work across the biological, cognitive, and social sciences. We illustrate this perspective by drawing on two naturalistic accounts likely to prove more fruitful for ethnobiological practice, namely, trans-genera models of sociality and progenerative views of kinship. (shrink)

In this dialogue, Mileva and Albert start to talk about physics and its subject matter, the physical. They end up in a situation that permits causal dependence between separate ontological domains. In this possible world, they continue talking. First, they Socratically agree that the physical is physical and only physical. Then, they call the physical an ontologically homogeneous domain. They then generalise the principle that the physical is causally unaffected by anything non-physical, into the principle that ontologically homogeneous domains do (...) not cause ontologically homogeneous domains. From a modern point of view talking about black hole singularities, they continue discussing the Chandrasekhar limit and the collapse of the physical laws as we know them. Mileva carries a burden and Albert stands up and carries it with her. The burden is an implication of the generalised principle. Relying on parsimony, only ontologically homogeneous domains are forbidden to cause ontologically homogeneous domains. This leaves the door open for ontologically heterogeneous domains to cause ontologically homogeneous domains. Also relying on parsimony, only ontologically homogeneous domains are forbidden to be caused by ontologically homogeneous domains and this allows ontologically heterogeneous domains to be caused by ontologically homogeneous domains. Ontologically heterogeneous domains, thus, are allowed to causally link ontologically homogeneous domains. Albert realises that the mathematical could qualify as an ontologically homogeneous domain and that the theoretical difficulties that are foreseen beyond the Chandrasekhar limit could be addressed by expanding physics into a context that contains also an ontologically heterogeneous domain. The theoretical difficulties beyond the Chandrasekhar limit would be due to an emergent mathematical-physical domain. Mileva concludes that Albert’s theory is not faulty but regional. A global theory would have to include the explanation of the mathematical-physical. (shrink)

A medical intervention is a medical procedure or application intended to relieve or prevent illness or injury. Examples of medical interventions include vaccination and drug administration. After a medical intervention, adverse events (AEs) may occur which lie outside the intended consequences of the intervention. The representation and analysis of AEs are critical to the improvement of public health. Description: The Ontology of Adverse Events (OAE), previously named Adverse Event Ontology (AEO), is a community-driven ontology developed to standardize (...) and integrate data relating to AEs arising subsequent to medical interventions, as well as to support computer-assisted reasoning. OAE has over 3,000 terms with unique identifiers, including terms imported from existing ontologies and more than 1,800 OAE-specific terms. In OAE, the term ‘adverse event’ denotes a pathological bodily process in a patient that occurs after a medical intervention. Causal adverse events are defined by OAE as those events that are causal consequences of a medical intervention. OAE represents various adverse events based on patient anatomic regions and clinical outcomes, including symptoms, signs, and abnormal processes. OAE has been used in the analysis of several different sorts of vaccine and drug adverse event data. (shrink)

There are two types of theories regarding many worlds: one is modal, while the other is temporal. The former regards reality as consisting of many possible worlds, while the latter holds that reality consists of many momentary worlds, which are usually called moments. I compare these two theories, paying close attention to the concept of transworld identity and compare trans-possible world identity with trans-momentary world identity (or transmoment identity). I characterize time from the point of many-worlds view, believing (...) this to be one of the best ways of grasping the reality of time. First, I show that there is reason to adopt the many-worlds view because transworld identity is meaningful for both of them, while it is not for space. Second, I argue that transmoment identity is different from transpossible world identity concerning reality. The former is a realistic relation, while the latter is not. Thus, I find that the reality of time is in the relation of transmoment identity. Such a view, I contend, has merit on the basis that it recognizes the reality of time in a sense that is not true of space. (shrink)

Meta-ontology (in van Inwagen's sense) concerns the methodology of ontology, and a controversial meta-ontological issue is to what extent ontology can rely on linguistic analysis while establishing the furniture of the world. This paper discusses an argument advanced by some ontologists (I call them unifiers) against supporters of or coincident entities (I call them multipliers) and its meta-ontological import. Multipliers resort to Leibniz's Law to establish that spatiotemporally coincident entities a and b are distinct, by pointing at (...) a predicate F () made true by a and false by b . Unifiers try to put multipliers in front of a dilemma: in attempting to introduce metaphysical differences on the basis of semantic distinctions, multipliers either (a) rest on a fallacy of verbalism, entailed by a trade-off between a de dicto and a de re reading of modal claims, or (b) beg the question against unifiers by having to assume the distinction between a and b beforehand. I shall rise a tu quoque, showing that unifiers couldn't even distinguish material objects (or events) from the spatiotemporal regions they occupy unless they also resorted to linguistic distinctions. Their methodological aim to emancipate themselves from linguistic analysis in ontological businesses is therefore problematic. (shrink)

Bohmian mechanics is a realistic interpretation of quantum theory. It shares the same ontology of classical mechanics: particles following continuous trajectories in space through time. For this ontological continuity, it seems to be a good candidate for recovering the classical limit of quantum theory. Indeed, in a Bohmian framework, the issue of the classical limit reduces to showing how classical trajectories can emerge from Bohmian ones, under specific classicality assumptions. In this paper, we shall focus on a technical problem (...) that arises from the dynamics of a Bohmian system in bounded regions; and we suggest that a possible solution is supplied by the action of environmental decoherence. However, we shall show that, in order to implement decoherence in a Bohmian framework, a stronger condition is required rather than the usual one. (shrink)

Biomass is one of the main sources of energy in Kenya accounting for over 68% of the total primary energy consumption. The continued dependency on biomass energy has resulted to land degradation, deforestation, drought and famine. The adoption and continued use of biogas energy technologies within the developed and developing countries is of great social, economic and environmental benefit. Although the positive benefits of using biogas is clear, in Africa and Kenya the households’ biogas adoption level is low. The main (...) purpose of this study was to analyze social, economic factors that influence adoption of biogas energy among farm households in Nandi, Uasin-Gishu and Trans-Nzoia counties in North Rift region of Kenya. The target population was all the farm households in the three counties. The study employed farm household multistage research design mainly cluster, and simple random sampling techniques to get a sample size of 295 respondents for the study. Farm households were used as units for analysis. Data was collected using questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Logit model was used to estimate the parameters of the regression model. The results indicated that: social-economic factors were significant determinants of adoption of biogas technology (p – value 0.0000 < 0. 05) for all variables in North Rift region of Kenya. From the study findings, the following recommendations are drawn: Firstly government and other stakeholders should design policies that encourage the use of sustainable energy sources such as biogas. Secondly, incentives and provision of subsidies in terms of financial support should be given to households to acquire biogas devices. Thirdly households should be educated on benefits of using biogas. Government should also ensure efficient extension services in the study area by organizing workshops, trainings and make provisions to facilitate extension. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Could space consist entirely of extended regions, without any regions shaped like points, lines, or surfaces? Peter Forrest and Frank Arntzenius have independently raised a paradox of size for space like this, drawing on a construction of Cantor’s. I present a new version of this argument and explore possible lines of response.

‘Eruv’ is a Hebrew word meaning literally ‘mixture’ or ‘mingling’. An eruv is an urban region demarcated within a larger urban region by means of a boundary made up of telephone wires or similar markers. Through the creation of the eruv, the smaller region is turned symbolically (halachically = according to Jewish law) into a private domain. So long as they remain within the boundaries of the eruv, Orthodox Jews may engage in activities that would otherwise be prohibited on the (...) Sabbath, such as pushing prams or wheelchairs, or carrying walking sticks. There are eruvim in many towns and university campuses throughout the world. There are five eruvim in Chicago, five in Brooklyn, twenty three in Queens and Long Island, and at least three in Manhattan. The US Supreme Court is (like most other major US Federal Government buildings) located within the eruv of Washington DC. In many cases, not all of those living within or near the area of an actual or proposed eruv will themselves be Orthodox Jews, and this has sometimes led to protests against eruv creation. It is such protests which triggered the writing of this essay. (shrink)

Article 8 of the African Aspirations for 2063 stipulates that the African people are confident that their countries have the ability and competence to realize or accomplish their full potential in development, culture, and peace. The vast majority of countries in Africa have worked toward establishing flourishing, inclusive, successful and prosperous societies by eradicating any forms of violation of children’s rights (African Union Commission, 2015). Nevertheless, violation of children’s rights remains present in most developing countries including the country of Cameroon. (...) This research aims to explore the forms of violation of children’s rights having a dramatic incident in school attendance in the Kadey Division of Cameroon, East Region of Cameroon. This research work is inductive, values bias and uses the grounded theory of the qualitative method approach. 15 participants have been selected from 3 major focused groups of different stakeholders in the Kadey Division, East Region of Cameroon. The theoretical saturation code was used to explain the relevance of the sample size. Data were examined using the open, axial, and selective coding processes. The results were tested for internal and external validity based on credibility, dependability, conformability, and transferability consideration. The philosophical focused on subjectivism ontology and interpretivism perspective. The study is an investigative case study model. The study showed that the forms of violation of children’s rights in the Kadey division include the recruitment and use of children, the denial of humanitarian access, the sexual violence against children and the killing and hurting of children. This study encourages school leaders in the Kadey Division to acknowledge that schools are not meant to function apart from the local community. Promoting strong collaborative work ethics between the major educational stakeholders may help prevent and reduce violence against children within and outside the school milieu and therefore duplicate school attendance. (UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia, 2016). (shrink)

In 2023, Hindawi has retracted over 8,000 articles, raising the total retracted papers of the year to more than 10,000 articles, the highest record ever recorded. As transparent retraction notice will help alleviate the negative impacts of retractions on the academia and general public, I used AI (Google Bard) to check whether important information related to the retractions had been provided.

Cải cách tiền lương là một trong những nội dung quan trọng sẽ được thảo luận tại Kỳ họp thứ 6, Quốc hội khóa XV và đây cũng là một trong những chìa khoá để mở ra các chính sách đãi ngộ nhằm góp phần xây dựng, phát triển đội ngũ trí thức nước nhà, đáp ứng yêu cầu phát triển đất nước nhanh và bền vững trong giai đoạn mới như nội dung mà Hội nghị Trung ương 8 khoá (...) XIII, Ban Chấp hành Trung ương Đảng đã thảo luận. (shrink)

By its nature, comparative education values diversity. Respectfully studying how different groups pursue education provides opportunities to learn about the variety of human experience, expand the boundaries of the field, and ultimately re-understand ourselves. At its core, the field leverages the dynamic space between life as culturally located and being human. This chapter contributes value to comparative education from an Oceanic viewpoint. Oceania is the world region with more water and languages than any other. Because of its diversity and colonial (...) histories, Oceania is a site of creative tension between regionalism and self-determination. Unsurprisingly, conflict exists in the region. However, a key need in our ‘sea of islands’ for sustainability is to live well together. Faced with the uncertainties of the future such as climate change, mutual understanding and support is at a premium. The collaboration of writers; Solomon Islander, Tongan, and Anglo-Welsh, embodies this, as does the chapter’s woven mat-based structure. The thrust of this chapter is that through walking backwards into the future and embracing solidarity through diversity, we can promote a sustainable educational journey that offers the hope of continuity in the face of the challenges ahead. (shrink)

The culture of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Văn hoá Việt Nam, chữ Hán: 文化越南) are the customs and traditions of the Kinh people and the other ethnic groups of Vietnam. -/- Originating from the Red River Delta, ancient Vietnamese cultural artifacts, such as the Đông Sơn drums, were found throughout Southeast Asia and South China, suggesting a spread of ancient Viet (the generalized term "Baiyue" i.e. "100 Yue") all the way south to Indonesia.

In the year 2020, during the global race to combat the coronavirus, the scientific community experienced a seismic shock when a research paper in the medical science journal The Lancet was retracted [1]. Since then, retractions of research papers in The Lancet have become more frequent. This not only raises concerns about the quality of research within the academic community but also has the potential to erode public trust in science. As transparent retraction notice will help alleviate the negative impacts (...) of retractions on the academia and general public, I used AI (Google Bard) to check whether important information related to the retractions had been provided. (shrink)

Corporate bond appeared in 1992-1994 in Vietnamese capital markets. However, it is still not popular to both business sectors and academic circles. This paper explores different dimensions of Vietnamese corporate bond market using a unique and perhaps, most complete data set. State not only intervenes in the bond markets with its powerful budget and policies but also competes directly with enterprises. The dominance of state-owned enterprises and large corporations also prevents small and medium enterprises from this debt financing vehicle. Whenever (...) a convertible term is available, bondholders are more willing to accept lower fixed income payoff. But they would not likely stick to it. On the one hand, prospective bondholders could value the holdings of equity when realized favourably ex ante. On the other hand, the applicable coupon rate for such bonds could turn out negative inflation-adjusted payoff when tight monetary policy is exercised and the corresponding equity holding turns out valueless, ex post. Given the weak primary market and virtually non-existent secondary market, the corporate bond market in Vietnam reflects our perception of the relationship-based and rent-seeking behaviour in the financial markets. For the corporate bonds to really work, they critically need a higher level of liquidity to become truly tradeable financial assets. Updated entries in 2010 affirm the findings and conclusions. (shrink)

Circular economy (CE), a sustainability concept that promotes resource efficiency and waste reduction, has garnered significant popularity in recent years due to its potential to address pressing environmental and economic challenges. This study employs the Bayesian mindsponge framework (BMF) to explore what drives young adults’ pro-environmental behavior and purchases of green products at different levels of price. The results show that young adult’s knowledge of CE and care about environmental protection and energy saving encourages the practice of waste classification, while (...) factors that affect their willingness to pay (WTP) more for green and energy-saving products vary at different price tiers. (shrink)

Universities and funders in many countries have been using Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as an indicator for research and grant assessment despite its controversial nature as a statistical representation of scientific quality. This study investigates how the changes of JIF over the years can affect its role in research evaluation and science management by using JIF data from annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to illustrate the changes. The descriptive statistics find out an increase in the median JIF for the top (...) 50 journals in the JCR, from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. Moreover, on average, elite journal families have up to 27 journals in the top 50. In the group of journals with a JIF of lower than 1, the proportion has shrunk by 14.53% in the 2015–2019 period. The findings suggest a potential ‘JIF bubble period’ that science policymaker, university, public fund managers, and other stakeholders should pay more attention to JIF as a criterion for quality assessment to ensure more efficient science management. (shrink)

Phát triển các thành phần kinh tế ở Việt Nam hiện nay: những vấn đề đặt ra (Trần Đình Thiên. Nghiên cứu Kinh tế số 7 (506), tháng 7-2020.

The so-called “conciliatory” norm in epistemology and meta-ethics requires that an agent, upon encountering peer disagreement with her judgment, lower her confidence about that judgment. But whether agents actually abide by this norm is unclear. Although confidence is excessively researched in the empirical sciences, possible effects of disagreement on confidence have been understudied. Here, we target this lacuna, reporting a study that measured confidence about moral beliefs before and after exposure to moral discourse about a controversial issue. Our findings indicate (...) that participants do not abide by the conciliatory norm. Neither do they conform to a rival “steadfast” norm that demands their confidence to remain the same. Instead, moral discourse seems to boost confidence. Interestingly, we also find a confidence boost for factual beliefs, and a correlation between the extremity of moral views and confidence. One possible explanation of our findings is that when engaging in moral discourse participants become more extreme in their opinions, which leads them to become more confident about them, or vice versa: they become more confident and in turn more extreme. Although our work provides initial evidence for the former mechanism, further research is needed for a better understanding of confidence and moral discourse. (shrink)

Depressive disorders have been found to be a significant health issue among industrial workers, resulting from work-related factors and causing serious burdens for the workers as well as their employers. Literature on mental health problems of Vietnamese industrial workers has been limited, despite the rapid foreign investment-fueled industrialization process of the country. This study aimed to fill the gap in literature by examining the prevalence of depressive disorders and their potential associated factors among a cohort of Vietnamese industrial workers. A (...) cross-sectional study was conducted in 3 industrial areas in Hanoi and Bac Ninh. A total of 289 workers agreed to participate in the study. Generalized linear mixed models were applied to identify associated factors with depression status of respondents. 38.6% of participants reported suffering depression. Factors found to be positively associated with the possibility of having depression and higher PHQ9 score were long working hours, suffering more health problems, and health hazards exposure at work. Meanwhile, being females, having more children, living with parents, engaging in smoking, and being local workers were found to correlate with lower likelihood of being depressed. The findings suggested the importance of regular health screening, work safety assurance, and social support outside of workplace on the mental health of the workers. (shrink)

TCCSĐT - Hơn 10 năm qua, hệ thống ngân hàng Việt Nam đã có những bước tiến rất xa. Bên cạnh các ngân hàng thương mại nhà nước đã xuất hiện ngân hàng thương mại cổ phần, ngân hàng liên doanh, ngân hàng 100% vốn nước ngoài, các văn phòng đại diện của ngân hàng nước ngoài và nhiều tổ chức tín dụng. Quan hệ cung - cầu ngày một hoàn thiện hơn trên thị trường tiền tệ, giao dịch tín (...) dụng chịu sự điều tiết mạnh hơn từ cơ chế thị trường với nhiều lựa chọn hơn cho cả bên cung lẫn bên cầu. Ý nghĩa của một công cụ mang tính chất chuyển đổi như lãi suất cơ bản giảm dần. (shrink)

Công cuộc đổi mới kinh tế ở Việt Nam hơn 30 năm qua có nội dung quan trọng là đổi mới phương thức phát triển, giúp nền kinh tế hồi sinh nhanh chóng và có bước phát triển ngoạn mục. Tuy nhiên, trong bối cảnh toàn cầu hóa gia tăng, cuộc Cách mạng công nghiệp lần thứ tư (Cách mạng công nghiệp 4.0) hiện nay… Việt Nam cần có cách tiếp cận mới đến vấn đề phát triển. Việt Nam phải (...) tích cực định hướng tìm kiếm cả những nguồn lực và động lực phát triển mới theo những cách mới, kết hợp với những động lực và phương thức truyền thống hướng tới phát triển bền vững. (shrink)

Lĩnh vực tín dụng cá nhân tuy có nhiều tiềm năng và tạo cho các ngân hàng có nguồn thu bền vững trong dài hạn nhưng hoạt động này hàm chứa nhiều rủi ro mà các ngân hàng càng quan tâm, đặc biệt trong sô' đó là rủi do không thể trả nỢ, đứng ở 2 khía cạnh là sô' nợ gôc và thời hạn trả nợ. Sẽ rất nguy hiểm nếu trong thời kỳ hiện nay ngân hàng tiếp tục (...) bổ sung vào khối lượng nợ xấu của mình từ rủi ro tín dụng cá nhân khi lượng nợ xấu từ khách hàng doanh nghiệp vẫn chưa thể xử lý được. Do đó, có thể nhận thấy trong thời điểm hiện nay cùng với sự tăng trưởng của tín dụng thì việc nhận diện và đo lường rủi ro tín dụng trở thành việc làm cấp bách. (shrink)

Năm 1999, phố cổ Hội An của Việt Nam được UNESCO công nhận là Di sản Văn hóa thế giới. Kể từ thời điểm đó, bộ mặt thành phố Hội An đã có nhiều thay đổi, biến nơi đây trở thành một điểm đến hấp dẫn khách du lịch trong và ngoài nước. Nhiều chính sách quy hoạch đã được đưa ra nhằm thúc đẩy phát triển du lịch và kinh tế. Tuy nhiên, yếu tố bảo tồn và phát huy (...) di sản cần phải được chú trọng hơn nữa để có gìn giữ trọn vẹn những giá trị truyền thống của Hội An. (shrink)

Metacognitive mental states are mental states about mental states. For example, I may be uncertain whether my belief is correct. In social discourse, an interlocutor’s metacognitive certainty may constitute evidence about the reliability of their testimony. For example, if a speaker is certain that their belief is correct, then we may take this as evidence in favour of their belief, or its content. This paper argues that, if metacognitive certainty is genuine evidence, then it is disproportionate evidence for extreme beliefs. (...) In support of the argument, we report findings from five studies with different participant samples, designs, and measures. These studies show that, the more extreme an agent’s belief (positive or negative), the more certain they are about it, and vice versa. This relationship might contribute to moralism, virtue signalling, and polarisation, which in turn may be epistemically and morally problematic. Therefore, we caution against taking metacognitive certainty as genuine evidence. (shrink)

Trung Tran, Phuong-Thao T. Trinh, Thu-Trang Vuong, Hiep-Hung Pham (2019). Chapter 1. The debates and the long-awaited reform. In Quan-Hoang Vuong, Trung Tran (Eds.), The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road (pp. 17–32). Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter / Sciendo. DOI:10.2478/9783110686081-006 -/- Online ISBN: 9783110686081 © 2019 De Gruyter / Sciendo.

Learner autonomy has gained particular attention in Vietnamese higher education since a major education reform launched in 2005. Although a number of studies have been conducted to investigate the concept in the Vietnamese higher education context, most of them have focused on exploring teachers’ and students’ perceptions and beliefs around the concept of autonomy (T. V. Nguyen, 2011; Dang, 2012; Humphreys & Wyatt, 2013; T. N. Nguyen, 2014), and on the possibility of promoting it in Vietnamese universities (Trinh, 2005; L. (...) T. C. Nguyen, 2009; Q. X. Le, 2013; Phan, 2015). There appear to be no studies on the demonstration of learner autonomy and the potential factors, including factors relating to assessment practice, that support or inhibit its demonstration in the Vietnamese higher education context. Building on a social constructivist paradigm and sociocultural theories of learning, this qualitative case study aims to investigate the demonstration of learner autonomy in the context of assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes in a university in Vietnam, and the (potential) factors in assessment that facilitate or constrain the demonstration of learner autonomy in that context. The data were collected through participant observation of teachers’ and students’ practices in three EFL classes at the university during a complete semester, one-on-one semi-structured interviews with three teachers and sixteen students, and post-observation interviews with the three teachers and their students. Additional data which characterised the context of the study were gathered and included documents at the researched university relating to higher education policies, assessment policies, English teaching and learning policies, EFL curriculum and syllabus, test samples, and English teaching textbooks. The study found that students generally demonstrated a low level of autonomy in the classroom despite their positive attitude towards the concept and their awareness of its role in English learning. Primary contributing factors included negative washback of current assessment systems on teaching and learning practices, prescribed assessment practices in the class, teachers’ and learners’ limited and divergent understanding about the concept of learner autonomy, and their limited understanding about the role of assessment in learning in general and in learner autonomy promotion and development in particular. The study also found that students who stated that English was relevant to their personal needs were generally more autonomous outside of the classroom than inside it. Findings from this study support the view that learner autonomy reflects the relationship between learners and the learning environment, and is an emergent product of the interaction between learners and contextual factors including their teacher, their peers, the learning task, class rules and values, and university values and regulations. The study’s findings are significant, as they highlight the social dimension of learner autonomy and the importance of facilitating favourable conditions for teachers to provide learner autonomy and for learners to manifest it. The study also highlights the need to reconsider assessment practices to promote learner autonomy. (shrink)

This study aims to determine driving factors significantly influencing the purchase intention and to identify impediments creating the intention –behavior gap regarding organic food consumption in Vietnam. The chosen driving factors affecting the organic food purchase intention in this study are health benefits, environmental awareness, and social norms, whereas trust, price, and convenience as well as availability are investigated as deterrent factors of the link between intention and behavior. A structured online questionnaire with snow-balling sampling method was distributed to collect (...) a representative sample of 466 Vietnamese consumers nationwide. A five-point likert scale was used for the level of approval for 36 statements. Statistical tools of SPSS 22.0 including descriptive analysis, principal component analysis, and multiple regression analysis models were used for data analysis. The results showed that health benefits, environmental awareness, and social norms were facilitators of organic food purchase intention. Although high intention to purchase organic foods was identified in Vietnam, it was not translated into actual purchase behavior. The main barriers for the inconsistency were premium price and low availability of organic products or inconvenience to buy in the market. Lack of trust insignificantly impacted on organic food choices among Vietnamese consumers in this study. These empirical findings and suggestions are beneficial for all players across supply chains. (shrink)

Drawing on upper echelon theory, this study investigates the impact of CEOs’ (chief executive officers) demographic characteristics on corporate environmental performance (CEP) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We hypothesized that CEO characteristics, including gender, age, basic educational level, professional educational level, political connection, and ethnicity, affect SMEs’ environmental performance. Using the cross-sectional data analysis of 810 Vietnamese SMEs, this study provides evidence that female CEOs and CEOs’ educational level (both basic and professional) are positively related to the probability of (...) CEP. We also find that based on the role of institutional environment on CEP, political connections had a negative effect on CEP in the context of Vietnam. Another finding is that SMEs with chief executives from ethnic minority groups show a higher level of the probability of corporate environmental performance than companies operated by Kinh chief executives. Since CEP is an essential dimension of corporate social responsibility, a strategic decision for SMEs, it is crucial for the company to select appropriate CEOs based on their demographic characteristics. (shrink)

Along with the promulgation of 2008 Law on Anti-Corruption, thanking to the comprehensive solutions and determinations of the whole governmental apparatus, there are signals of a positive change in the fight against corruption in Vietnam’s market economy. However, compared to other countries around the world, the corruption in Vietnam is still a national problem. The number of corruption cases may decline, but the scale and severity has been increasing. Many cases has involved high-ranking officials in the government with more than (...) 20 general officers in the armed forces to be sentenced. On the basis of analysing the current situation of corruption in recent years, the author hereby recommends some synchronous solutions to improve the effectiveness of anti-corruption. (shrink)

Competence structure that pre-service teachers need to develop to become a future teacher has been defined since the 1930s. For pre-service mathematics teachers, their competence has its own characteristics. ICT integration in developing competence for pre-service mathematics teachers has been been proved to be effective in many previous studies. In Vietnam, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has recommended the use of ICT to enhance teaching-learning activities in schools and universities, therefore, there have been many studies on ICT intergration (...) at different educational levels. However, there are only a few studies on the use ICT integration in developing competence for pre-service mathematics teachers. This paper presents results from a research on the feasibility of ICT integration in developing competence of Vietnamese pre-service mathematics teachers. The research was conducted by surveying on a randomly selected of 297 pre-service mathematics teachers and 40 mathematics lecturers in six universities which provide mathematics training programs. Results show that despite of the availability of technologies, ICT integration in training pre-service teachers is still limited. In addition, ICT integration in teaching activities of mathematics teachers is not really effective because the levels of their ICT skills are very different. Pre-service mathematics teachers have the ability to use ICT equipment, and good accessibility to learning systems, but their use of the learning management systems (LMS) is limited. This study can be a reference for future studies to test the effective of ICT integration in training pre-service teachers when designing activities to develop feasibly and effectively their competence. (shrink)

For a transitional market with a short history like that of Vietnam, corporate governance is a critical area of improvement. The issuance of Circular 121 in 2012 marked an important milestone of corporate governance reform in Vietnam as it includes stricter and more well-defined regulations learned from international best practices. Among them is the requirement that independent directors should make up at least one-third of the board of directors. Although improving financial reporting is not at the heart of Circular 121, (...) this Circular is expected to reduce earnings management through the mandatory requirement of board independence. Using data collected from a sample of 523 non-financial listed firms from 2009 – 2016, this study finds no significant relationship between earnings management and the proportion of independent directors, and Circular 121 has no impact on this relationship. These results are consistent across different regression approaches and various robustness tests, suggesting that board independence and corporate governance reform are not effective tools in mitigating earnings management. (shrink)

In the global fight against the rapid spread of COVID-19, a variety of unprecedented preventive measures have been implemented across the globe, as well as in Vietnam. How Vietnamese people respond to threats to their health and life remains unclear. For this reason, the current study aims to examine Vietnamese people’s protective behavior and its factors. Based on 1,798 online survey respondents’ data collected on the last three days of the nationwide social distancing campaign in mid-April, it is found that (...) gender, knowledge of COVID-19 and preventive measures, and attitudes towards the COVID-19 prevention policies are the three main factors of participants’ protective behaviors. We also find that males are less likely than females to adopt precautionary measures. People who are knowledgeable about COVID-19 may have inappropriate practices towards it. Further research is needed to examine other determinants of protective behaviors to provide more useful information for authorities, public health policy-makers, and healthcare workers to deliver the best practices to control COVID-19 in our country. (shrink)

Given the number of works in the pipeline and research problems under consideration, we expect the 2012-2015 period to become a speed-up phase before a takeoff.

This paper is the first major and a thorough study on the Merger & Acquisition (M&A) activities in Vietnam’s emerging market economy, covering almost entirely the M&A history after the launch of Doi Moi. The surge in these activities since mid-2000s by no means incidentally coincides with the jump in FDI and FPI inflows into the nation. M&A industry in Vietnam has its socio-cultural traits that could help explain economic happenings, with anomalies and transitional characteristics, far better than even the (...) most complete set of empirical data. Proceeds from the sales of existing assets and firms have mainly flowed into the highly speculative industries of securities, banking, non-bank financials, portfolio investments and real estates. The impact of M&A on Vietnam’s long-term prosperity is thus highly questionable. An observable high degree of volatility in the M&A processes would likely blow out the high ex ante expectations by many speculators, when ex post realizations finally arrive. The effect of the past M&A evolution in Vietnam has been indecisively positive or negative, with significant presence of rent-seeking and likelihood of causing destructive entrepreneurship. From a socio-economic and cultural view, the degree of positive impacts may result in domestic entrepreneurship which will perhaps be the single most important indicator. (shrink)

In general, CEO turnover has been researched widely following numerous studies in developed countries. Nevertheless, the determinants of CEO turnover are still unclear in transition countries of which the legal and regulatory framework are weak and financial systems and corporate govemance are underdeveloped. Therefore, examining determinants of CEO turnover in Vietnam, a transition country, helps to provide more evidence on the efficiency and effectiveness of corporate governance in transition countries. Furthermore, the examination helps to define weaknesses, and it, therefore, could (...) provide guidance to improve corporate governance in Vietnamese enterprises. (shrink)

Background. Small and medium enterprises play an important role in economies, including Vietnam’s. The need for information systems is now necessary in every enterprise. Most of published studies on information systems have been conducted in developed countries, with little in developing or less developed countries. From those few, there was no one focusing in Vietnam. Aims. This thesis examines the experiences of seven Vietnamese small and medium enterprises when they adopted information systems. The authors investigated the reasons for, the process (...) of, and the factors influencing information system adoption. Methods. The qualitative research method was used to answer research questions. Semi-structured interviews were used as the data collection tool to explore participants’ experiences. Content analysis of the interview transcripts was used to extract answers given during the semi-structured interviews and to identify new themes that emerged from the data. The participants’ experiences were compared to what has been reported in the existing literature. Results. The analysis resulted in important findings. It confirmed some reasons and factors found in the literature concerning information system adoption in Vietnamese small and medium enterprises. Despite some similarities, the authors found some differences, such as government role, concerning the information system adoption. (shrink)

The study involved analyzing the causes and consequences of corruption in Vietnam. Some research findings were similar to those of other low- to middle-income countries. However, there were some differences since Vietnam was a socialist republic country. The study used regression analysis to determine the correlations between government expenditure, governance indicator and corruption as well as between corruption and the economic development in selected countries. Data gathered from various sources over 18 years, from 2000 to 2017, were used to answer (...) the research questions. The study uses the corruption perception index and the shadow economy index as proxy variables of corruption. The study’s findings were then contributed to the corruption and economic development literature and used to propose a number of recommendations to policymakers and future researchers. (shrink)

This thesis was shaped from Action 13 of the recent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project adopted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and G20 countries to prevent profit shifting by multinational enterprises (MNEs). In response to the BEPS Action 13, New Zealand and Vietnam have recently introduced new transfer pricing rules. As little research has been done to examine the effects of the BEPS Action 13 on the transfer pricing landscape of respective countries, the main (...) objective of this study is to understand how the New Zealand and Vietnamese governments have reacted to and adapted the BEPS Action 13 and what tax consultants and taxpayers in both countries think about the new transfer pricing regulations. This study is exploratory in nature. As such, a qualitative case study approach has been adopted using institutional theory as a theoretical framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two tax officers and ten transfer pricing consultants in both countries to identify the differences and similarities, and to draw conclusions. Other sources of publicly available data were also used to support the study. (shrink)

The digital era brings various benefits to adolescents. However, operating on the digital environment without sufficient knowledge and skills will expose them to multiple types of risks, especially in the country with low digital safety education rate like Vietnam. The current study examines factors that can contribute to cultivating adolescents’ digital resilience using the information-processing reasoning of the Mindsponge Theory. A UNESCO dataset of 1061 Vietnamese high school students was analyzed using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics. It is found that (...) adolescents’ daily Internet usage frequency, parents’ Internet safety guidance, and teachers’ safety guidance are positively associated with digital resilience. However, the effects of parents’ and teachers’ Internet safety guidance on digital resilience are conditional on the daily Internet usage frequency. Parents’ guidance only enhances adolescents’ digital resilience if they use the Internet less than four hours per day. In contrast, the positive effect of teachers’ guidance on adolescents’ digital resilience becomes stronger when the students spend more time on the Internet (more than 1 hour). Based on these findings, we suggest that adolescents can learn to minimize risks and protect themselves by exposing more to the digital environment. Parents’ and teachers’ supports are important in enhancing adolescents’ capability to deal with digital threats, but types of supports need to be carefully considered to avoid reverse impacts on adolescents’ resilience. (shrink)