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)

ObjectiveThe goal of the study was to explore the relationship between parent–children relationships related to using the internet among kids and potentially associated factors.Materials and MethodsA sample of 1.216 Vietnamese students between the ages of 12 and 18 agreed to participate in the cross-sectional online survey. Data collected included socioeconomic characteristics and internet use status of participants, their perceived changes in relationship and communication between parents and children since using the internet, and parental control toward the child’s internet use. An (...) Ordered Logistic Regression was carried out to determine factors associated with parent–children relationship since using the internet.ResultsThe characteristics of the relationship between children and their parents since using the Internet were divided into three levels: deterioration, stability, and improvement. The topics that children most often communicate with their parents include learning, housework, and future directions. Two-way interactive activities, such as supporting parents to use the Internet, have a positive impact on the parent–child relationship. Stubborn parental control, such as establishing rules about contact or allowing Internet access and setting up global positioning system to track negatively affecting parent–child relationships.ConclusionFindings indicated that changes in the quality of the parent–child relationship were self-assessed by participants regard to kids’ internet use, especially in the COVID-19 epidemic context. Educational campaigns and programs to raise awareness of parents as to the dangers and negative influences that their children may encounter online, psychology of children’s behaviors and effects of different responding strategies are recommended. (shrink)

Post-mortem reproduction is a complex and contested matter attracting attention from a diverse group of scholars and resulting in various responses from a range of countries. Vietnam has been reluctant to deal directly with this matter and has, accordingly, permitted post-mortem reproduction implicitly. First, by analysing Vietnam’s post-mortem reproduction cases, this paper reflects on the manner in which Vietnamese authorities have handled each case in the context of the contemporary legal framework, and it reveals the moral questions arising therefrom. The (...) article then offers an account of Vietnamese social norms as an explanation for the tendency to conduct post-mortem reproduction. In arguing that a deeper and more thorough examination of the moral and ethical reasoning is required, the paper advocates in favour of supportive post-mortem reproduction regulation. In doing so, the paper seeks to reconcile the Vietnamese legal framework and post-mortem reproduction experiences of other countries. The article concludes that Vietnam and countries sharing the similar cultural traits should permit post-mortem reproduction explicitly. This would require full engagement with the ethical and legal issues arising, and careful promulgation of regulations and guidelines based on comparative experiences of a range of countries in handling this matter. (shrink)

Within the research community, it is generally accepted that consent processes for research should be culturally appropriate and tailored to the context, yet researchers continue to grapple with what valid consent means within specific stakeholder groups. In this study, we explored the consent practices and attitudes regarding essential information required for the consent process within hospital-based trial communities from four referral hospitals in Vietnam. We collected surveys from and conducted semi-structured interviews with study physicians, study nurses, ethics committee members, and (...) study participants and family members regarding their experiences of participating in research, their perspectives toward research, and their views about various elements of the consent process. In our findings, we describe three interrelated themes related to the consent process: words and regulation; reimbursement, suspicions, and joining; and responsibilities. In general, stakeholders had highly varied perspectives of nghiên cứu and researchers used varying levels of detail regarding all aspects of the study in the consent process to build trust with and/or promote potential research participants’ choices about taking part in research. Findings additionally highlight how researchers felt that offering financial reimbursements in a hospital setting, where payment for services was routine, would be unfamiliar to participants and could raise suspicions about the research. Participants, however, focused their discussions on reimbursement or alternative reasons for joining the study, such as health related benefits or altruism. Finally, participants often relied on their physician to help them decide about joining a study or not. Further research is needed to understand how researchers and participants make sense of and practice consent, and how that impacts participants’ decision-making about research participation. To promote valid consent within this context, it is important to engage with hospital-based trial communities as a whole. The data from this study will inform future research on consent, guide the revisions of consent related policies within our research sites and point to several larger issues surrounding researcher-participant expectations, communication, and trust. (shrink)

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 904-922, October 2022.

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology of the work (...) and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the (...) central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts. (shrink)

This essay examines the theological method employed by Newman in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by considering its objective content and subjective methodology. The objective content concerns the principles of authentic development of doctrine that culminated in his identification of Roman Catholicism as the true Apostolic Church. The subjective methodology consists of his heuristic application of the notes that guided him to the attainment of certitude. Newman’s Essay on Development thus resulted in his conviction in the overpowering (...) vision of truth in the Roman claim in which ecclesial faith is experienced as simultaneously wholly objective and wholly personal. (shrink)

This essay examines the theological method employed by Newman in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by considering its objective content and subjective methodology. The objective content concerns the principles of authentic development of doctrine that culminated in his identification of Roman Catholicism as the true Apostolic Church. The subjective methodology consists of his heuristic application of the notes that guided him to the attainment of certitude. Newman’s Essay on Development thus resulted in his conviction in the overpowering (...) vision of truth in the Roman claim in which ecclesial faith is experienced as simultaneously wholly objective and wholly personal. (shrink)

Case law retrieval is the task of locating truly relevant legal cases given an input query case. Unlike information retrieval for general texts, this task is more complex with two phases (legal case retrieval and legal case entailment) and much harder due to a number of reasons. First, both the query and candidate cases are long documents consisting of several paragraphs. This makes it difficult to model with representation learning that usually has restriction on input length. Second, the concept of (...) relevancy in this domain is defined based on the legal relation that goes beyond the lexical or topical relevance. This is a real challenge because normal text matching will not work. Third, building a large and accurate legal case dataset requires a lot of effort and expertise. This is obviously an obstacle to creating enough data for training deep retrieval models. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called supporting model that can deal with both phases. The underlying idea is the case–case supporting relation and the paragraph–paragraph as well as the decision-paragraph matching strategy. In addition, we propose a method to automatically create a large weak-labeling dataset to overcome the lack of data. The experiments showed that our solution has achieved the state-of-the-art results for both case retrieval and case entailment phases. (shrink)

Coastal protection is crucial to human development since the ocean has many values associated with the economy, ecosystem, and culture. However, most ocean protecting efforts are currently ineffective due to the burdens of finance, lack of appropriate management, and international cooperation regimes. For aiding bottom-up initiatives for ocean protection support, this study employed the Mindsponge Theory to examine how the public’s perceived economic and cultural values influence their willingness to support actions to protect the ocean. Analyzing the European-Union-Horizon-2020-funded dataset of (...) 709 respondents from 42 countries, we discovered that perceived economic values have negative effects on the tendency of ocean protection supports (i.e., food, transportation, renewable energy, oil and gas, and recreation). In contrast, certain perceived cultural values can help increase the willingness to do so (i.e., mental well-being and sense of identity). However, the effects of perceived cultural values are only moderately reliable. These findings suggest that designing cultural information delivery campaigns can help promote coastal reserve supports, such as fundraisings and preserving the oceans from the community. (shrink)

Today, many people have realized that the climate change and biodiversity loss issues lie in how and to what extent humans consume products for their lives in the Anthropocene era. Consumerism has pushed natural resource exploitation to its peak, and the depletion of resources is becoming increasingly prevalent. The beauty and personal care industry has a large market and high profits, especially in the high-income segment. However, this advantage also carries the risk of facing scrutiny, investigations, and criticism from civil (...) society organizations, environmental activists, and consumers. More than anyone else, the industry is vulnerable to the perils of unfavourable societal assessments, particularly the repercussions of consumer-led boycott actions. In this discourse, we suggest that, given the current circumstances, it is imperative for multinational beauty corporations to take a proactive role in allocating resources towards the development of sustainable agriculture practices. This entails not only advocating for the widespread adoption of environmentally conscious production methods but also dedicating efforts towards conducting research and innovation in the area of nature-friendly manufacturing techniques. Doing so will help demonstrate their commitment to the environment and actively provide convincing evidence to consumers of their social responsibility through emission reduction and biodiversity conservation activities. (shrink)

Separation of powers is one of the ideas with profound theoretical and practical significance, especially in the field of political science. The birth of the theory of separation of powers marked the transition from the barbaric use of power in authoritarian societies to the exercise of civilized power in democratic societies. Therefore, separation of powers is considered an objective necessity in democratic states, a condition to ensure the promotion of liberal values, and a criterion for assessing the existence and development (...) of the Rule of Law where people's sovereignty plays a paramount role. On the way to perfecting political thinking, the theory of separation of powers has developed into a complete system in the main philosophy of John Locke. Within the scope of the article, the author focuses on analyzing Locke's ideology of separation of powers in terms of the nature of separation of powers, the basis and some principles of power division, and the roles of the different parts of government power and the relationship between them. (shrink)

What is the value of intellectual playfulness? Traditional characterizations of the ideal thinker often leave out playfulness; the ideal inquirer is supposed to be sober, careful, and conscientiousness. But elsewhere we find another ideal: the laughing sage, the playful thinker. These are models of intellectual playfulness. Intellectual playfulness, I suggest, is the disposition to try out alternate belief systems for fun – to try on radically different perspectives for the sheer pleasure of it. But what would the cog-nitive value be (...) of such playfulness? I suggest that intellectual playfulness function as, at the very least, a kind of intellectual insurance policy against epistemic traps. An epistemic trap is a belief system that re-directs good-faith inquiry to bad results. Am epistemic trap manipulates background beliefs to fend off contrary evidence. For example, a conspiracy theory might include a set of beliefs about how the mainstream media has been taken over by some vicious cabal. Normal epistemic attempts will be captured by a well-wrought epistemic trap, because normal attempts at inquiry are guided by these background beliefs -- which set what counts as a plausible path to explore, and what is implausible or beyond the pale. And a clever epistemic trap will manipulate those background beliefs for ill effect. Intellectual playfulness, on the other hand, isn’t motivated by an epistemic interest in the truth, but in the sheer pleasure of intellectual exploration. Since intellectual playfulness isn’t oriented towards the truth, it won’t be constrained by an agent’s background beliefs – it won’t, for example, prefer to investigate apparently more plausible pathways. Intellectual playfulness offers an opportunity to escape from epistemic traps. But intellectual playfulness has its own limitations. It will only drive us to explore belief systems when that exploration is fun. What we need is an array of differently-motivated exploratory tendencies – empathy, curiosity, playfulness – each of which will each cover for the others’ limitations. (shrink)

In The Great Endarkenment, Elijah Millgram argues that the hyper-specialization of expert domains has led to an intellectual crisis. Each field of human knowledge has its own specialized jargon, knowledge, and form of reasoning, and each is mutually incomprehensible to the next. Furthermore, says Millgram, modern scientific practical arguments are draped across many fields. Thus, there is no person in a position to assess the success of such a practical argument for themselves. This arrangement virtually guarantees that mistakes will accrue (...) whenever we engage in cross-field practical reasoning. Furthermore, Millgram argues, hyper-specialization makes intellectual autonomy extremely difficult. Our only hope is to provide better translations between the fields, in order to achieve intellectual transparency. I argue against Millgram’s pessimistic conclusion about intellectual autonomy, and against his suggested solution of translation. Instead, I take his analysis to reveal that there are actually several very distinct forms intellectual autonomy that are significantly in tension. One familiar kind is direct autonomy, where we seek to understand arguments and reasons for ourselves. Another kind is delegational autonomy, where we seek to find others to invest with our intellectual trust when we cannot understand. A third is management autonomy, where we seek to encapsulate fields, in order to manage their overall structure and connectivity. Intellectual transparency will help us achieve direct autonomy, but many intellectual circumstances require that we exercise delegational and management autonomy. However, these latter forms of autonomy require us to give up on transparency. (shrink)

According to some, the current political fracture is best described as political polarization – where extremism and political separation infest an entire whole population. Political polarization accounts often point to the psychological phenomenon of belief polarization – where being in a like-minded groups tends to boost confidence. The political polarization story is an essentially symmetrical one, where both sides are subject to the same basic dividing forces and cognitive biases, and are approximately as blame-worthy. On a very different account, what's (...) going on is best described propaganda – where a discrete set of bad actors have manipulated some part of the media environ-ment. The propaganda story is usually told as a highly asymmetrical story, where only some media consumers are under the spell of the propagandists. Which is right? I consider two analyses of the 2016 American election: Robert Talisse's polarization-style account in Overdoing Democracy, and Benkler et. al.'s propaganda-style account in Network Propaganda. I suggest that the propaganda account has better empirical support. I also offer a diagnosis of the appeal of the polarization story. Those who accept a polarization account are often political centrists, who accuse those at the political extremes of motivated reasoning – of believing what they find comfortable. Such centrists also tend to treat political extremism as the product of the irrational belief polarization, arising from living in like-minded groups. But, I argue, these arguments are too quick. First, we can’t dismiss a group as irrational merely be-cause they are likeminded. The existence of like-minded group can be explained in terms of irrational belief polarization, but it can also be explained by rational convergence on the truth. Second, belief polarization is not always irrational, such as when its emotional effects are used to repair impaired self-confidence. Third, political centrists are also subject to similar debunking argument. When we accept a polarization account, we get to feel the comfort of being “above it all”. Political centrists are just as plausibly subject to the irrational effects of living in like-minded groups. Belief polarization isn’t just for extremists. (shrink)

Is there a right or wrong way to play a game? Many think not. Some have argued that, when we insist that players obey the rules of a game, we give too much weight to the author’s intent. Others have argued that such obedience to the rules violates the true purpose of games, which is fostering free and creative play. Both of these responses, I argue, misunderstand the nature of games and their rules. The rules do not tell us how (...) to interpret a game; they merely tell us what the game is. And the point of the rules is not always to foster free and creative play. The point can be, instead, to communicate a sculpted form of activity. And in games, as with any form of communication, we need some shared norms to ground communicative stability. Games have what has been called a “prescriptive ontology.” A game is something more than simply a piece of material. It is some material as approached in a certain specified way. These prescriptions help to fix a common object of attention. Games share this prescriptive ontology with more traditional kinds of works. Novels are more than just a set of words on a page; they are those words read in a certain order. Games are more than just some software or cardboard bits; they are those bits interacted with according to certain rules. Part of a game’s essential nature is the prescriptions for how we are to play it. What’s more, we investigate the prescriptive ontology of games, we will uncover at least distinct prescriptive categories of games. Party games prescribe that we encounter the game once; heavy strategy games prescribe we encounter the game many times; and community evolution games prescribe that we encounter the game while embedded in an ongoing community of play. (shrink)

Vietnam has seen fast-rising debts, both domestic and external, in recent years. This paperreviews the literature on credit market in Vietnam, providing an up-to-date take on the domesticlending and borrowing landscape. The study highlights the strong demand for credit in both therural and urban areas, the ubiquity of informal lenders, the recent popularity of consumer financecompanies, as well as the government’s attempts to rein in its swelling public debt. Given thehigh level of borrowing, which is fueled by consumerism and geopolitics, (...) it is inevitable that theamount of debt will soon be higher than the saving of the borrowers. Unlike the conventional wisdom that creditors have more bargaining power over the borrowers, we suggest that—albeitlacking a quantitative estimation—when the debts pile up so high that the borrowers could not repay, the power dynamics may reverse. In this new politics of debt, the lenders fear to lose the money's worth and continue to lend and feed the insolvent debtors. The result is a toxic lending/borrowing market and profound lessons, from which the developing world could learn. (shrink)

The accession and implementation of new generation free trade agreements bring numerous opportunities as well as challenges to Viet Nam, regarding trade, labor and investment. The increasing number of workers abroad puts a pressure on Vietnamese government to support them in new working cultures and environments. The application of chatbot, which has been known to help certain vulnerable groups such as patients, women and migrants could be one of the tools to support Vietnamese migrant workers by providing immediate information, network (...) connection and consultation. Analyzing the results of the qualitative interviews with 11 migrant workers and the group discussion with two sections from three public social media groups and three active informants, the article argues that migrant workers as a vulnerable group who are supposed to be promising users of chatbot due to their great demand and needs, may have a complicated form of trust and expectation in chatbot. (shrink)

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

Legal text retrieval serves as a key component in a wide range of legal text processing tasks such as legal question answering, legal case entailment, and statute law retrieval. The performance of legal text retrieval depends, to a large extent, on the representation of text, both query and legal documents. Based on good representations, a legal text retrieval model can effectively match the query to its relevant documents. Because legal documents often contain long articles and only some parts are relevant (...) to queries, it is quite a challenge for existing models to represent such documents. In this paper, we study the use of attentive neural network-based text representation for statute law document retrieval. We propose a general approach using deep neural networks with attention mechanisms. Based on it, we develop two hierarchical architectures with sparse attention to represent long sentences and articles, and we name them Attentive CNN and Paraformer. The methods are evaluated on datasets of different sizes and characteristics in English, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Experimental results show that: (i) Attentive neural methods substantially outperform non-neural methods in terms of retrieval performance across datasets and languages; (ii) Pretrained transformer-based models achieve better accuracy on small datasets at the cost of high computational complexity while lighter weight Attentive CNN achieves better accuracy on large datasets; and (iii) Our proposed Paraformer outperforms state-of-the-art methods on COLIEE dataset, achieving the highest recall and F2 scores in the top-N retrieval task. (shrink)

Human contact is a key issue in social interactions for autonomous systems since robots are increasingly appearing everywhere, which has led to a higher risk of conflict. Particularly in the real world, collisions between humans and machines may result in catastrophic accidents or damaged goods. In this paper, a novel stop strategy related to autonomous systems is proposed. This control method can eliminate the vibrations produced by a system’s movement by analysing the poles and zeros in the model of autonomous (...) vehicles and goods. Using the pole placement technique, the motion of a system is guaranteed to be more stable, more flexible and smoother. Moreover, several control profiles are employed in the switching mechanism to choose the proper vibration-free effect. The main contributions of this paper are the recommendation of an active stopping planner using different smooth generators from a modelling study, the validation of their physical characteristics and the launching of a switching algorithm based on the socially aware navigation framework of a robot. This theoretical work is based on the virtual environment of MATLAB, and the experiment is implemented in the practical platform of an automated guided vehicle. From these results, it can be seen that the proposed approach is robust, effective and feasible for applications in storehouse management, public transportation or factory manufacturing. (shrink)

On April 19, 2024, the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness was announced at the “Emerging Science of Animal Consciousness” conference held at New York University. The New York Declaration is an effort to showcase a scientific consensus on the presence of conscious experiences across all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and many invertebrates (at least including cephalopods, decapod crustaceans, and insects). Scientifically, the New York Declaration marks a significant advancement for humanity. However, it also brings heightened awareness to (...) the moral challenges associated with animals that have conscious experiences (or phenomenal consciousness). This article will discuss philosophical approaches to the moral issue of killing sentient beings, thereby highlighting an existing moral dilemma in human society: In sustaining human survival, a species considered to have morality, we have to violate our own moral standards by killing other species with intrinsic value, consciousness, or sentience. This moral dilemma has long been present in human society. Various solutions have been proposed and implemented in practice to address this issue, such as the non-violence and vegetarian approach of Buddhism, the application of Islamic law and sacred rituals to animals in Islam, animal rights movements and voluntary extinction in Western countries, and the technology producing meat using animal cells. However, despite these approaches, we have not yet been able to fully resolve the dilemma, as sentient beings continue to be killed for our survival. We believe the most feasible solution is to change the current food consumption culture, build an eco-surplus culture to mitigate climate change, prevent deforestation, and promote peace. (shrink)

Cancer care has transitioned from clinical-based to home-based care to support longterm care in a more familiar and comfortable environment. This care transition has put family caregivers (FCGs) in a strategic position as care providers. Cancer care at home involves psychological and emotional treatment at some point, making FCGs deal with the stress of cancer patients frequently. Due to their limited care competencies, they need supportive care from healthcare professionals in cancer stress management. This study aims to examine how types (...) of demanded healthcare information affect the FCG’s role in reducing the stress of female cancer patients. The mindsponge theory was used in conceptual development and interpretation. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics were used for statistical analysis on a dataset of 48 spouses (husbands) and 12 other family members in five congested communities of Surabaya, Indonesia. Results showed that among the six types of healthcare information, FCGs with higher demand for cancer-specific information were more likely to need support in reducing the stress of female cancer patients. Meanwhile, FCGs with a higher demand for information about support services were less likely to need support to reduce cancer patients’ stress. Other types of healthcare information have ambiguous effects on the need for support in reducing cancer-induced stress. This study reveals that the demanded cancer-specific information, e.g., cancer prognosis or likely outcome, must be prioritized to assist FCG’s role in managing cancer stress. (shrink)

Duff offered an argument for the conclusion that just or legitimate punishment of socially deprived offenders in our unjust society is impossible. One of the claims in his argument is that our courts have the standing to blame an offender only if our polity has the right to do so since our courts are acting as the representatives of, or to use the exact phrases by Duff, “in the name of”, or “on behalf of”, the whole polity. In this paper (...) I will challenge that claim. I will argue that the courts can be seen as acting, not on behalf of the whole polity, but only on behalf of a subset of its citizens, namely, the just citizens (i.e. the citizens who cannot be seen to have wronged the deprived offenders). (shrink)

Bare plural generic sentences pervade ordinary talk. And yet it is extremely controversial what semantics to assign to such sentences. In this paper, I achieve two tasks. First, I develop a novel classification of the various standard uses to which bare plurals may be put. This “variety data” is important—it gives rise to much of the difficulty in systematically theorizing about bare plurals. Second, I develop a novel account of bare plurals, the radical account. On this account, all bare plurals (...) fail to express propositions. The content of a bare plural has to be pragmatically “completed” by a speaker in order for her to make an assertion. At least the content of a quantifier expression has to be supplied. But sometimes, the content of a sentential operator or modal verb is also supplied. The radical account straightforwardly explains the variety data: Speakers’ communicative intentions vary wildly across different contexts. (shrink)

Objectives: The official implementation of clinical pharmacy in Vietnam has arrived relatively late, resulting in various stressors. This study aims to evaluate job stress level and suggest viable solutions.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on clinical pharmacists in 128 hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City. Job stress questions were derived from the Healthcare Profession Stress Inventory.Results: A total of 197 CPs participated, giving a response rate of 82.4%. Participants were found to have moderate job stress with an overall mean stress (...) score of 1.5 and stress rate of 52.8%. The sample size was statistically adequate and the HPSI was valid and reliable. Patient care responsibility was the main stressor, especially in public hospitals, followed by job conflicts. Lack of experience, low income, and inability to participate in clinical ward rounds caused significant stress to CPs regarding job recognition and job uncertainty. More practice-oriented training programs in bachelor curricula and clinical practice should be applied to help CPs gain more experience, self-confidence, and diminish job stress.Conclusion: CPs in HCMC have moderate stress. More practice-oriented training programs should be prioritized to lessen stress for CPs. (shrink)

Environmental activism is crucial in increasing awareness of environmental degradation and preventing actions that harm the environment. A radical environmentalist movement has emerged within the community of activists. They advocate using illegal measures to attain their goals. This paper discusses these radical environmentalist groups’ motivations, their actions and their consequences. Activities that many consider unacceptable, such as art vandalism and road blockades, may result in adverse outcomes and diminish public support for environmental endeavors. We propose an alternative solidarity approach whereby (...) activists focus their efforts on disseminating information to the general public on climate change and other environmental issues, advocating for the adoption of eco-surplus culture, and fostering cooperation among governments, businesses, and individuals to develop effective solutions. (shrink)

This research proposes a modified metaheuristic optimization algorithm, named as improved stochastic fractal search, which is formed based on the integration of the quasiopposition-based learning and chaotic local search schemes into the original SFS algorithm for solving the optimal capacitor placement in radial distribution networks. The test problem involves the determination of the optimal number, location, and size of fixed and switched capacitors at different loading conditions so that the network total yearly cost is minimized with simultaneous fulfillment of operating (...) constraints. Also, the hourly on/off scheduling plans of switched shunt capacitors considering a modified cost objective function are obtained. The proposed ISFS algorithm has been tested on two IEEE 69-bus and 119-bus RDNs and a practical 152-bus RDN. For clarifying the effectiveness and validation of the ISFS, the simulated results have been compared with those of other previously utilized solution approaches in the literature as well as the original SFS. From result comparison, the proposed ISFS outperforms other previous approaches regarding solution quality and statistical performance for the compared cases, especially in the complex and large-scale networks. Notably, compared with the original SFS, the proposed ISFS shows a significantly better performance in all the tested cases. (shrink)

This study aims to predict the shear strength of reinforced concrete deep beams based on artificial neural network using four training algorithms, namely, Levenberg–Marquardt, quasi-Newton method, conjugate gradient, and gradient descent. A database containing 106 results of RC deep beam shear strength tests is collected and used to investigate the performance of the four proposed algorithms. The ANN training phase uses 70% of data, randomly taken from the collected dataset, whereas the remaining 30% of data are used for the algorithms’ (...) evaluation process. The ANN structure consists of an input layer with 9 neurons corresponding to 9 input parameters, a hidden layer of 10 neurons, and an output layer with 1 neuron representing the shear strength of RC deep beams. The performance evaluation of the models is performed using statistical criteria, including the correlation coefficient, root mean square error, mean absolute error, and mean absolute percentage error. The results show that the ANN-CG model has the best prediction performance with R = 0.992, RMSE = 14.02, MAE = 14.24, and MAPE = 6.84. The results of this study show that the ANN-CG model can accurately predict the shear strength of RC deep beams, representing a promising and useful alternative design solution for structural engineers. (shrink)

Vietnam is a communist country. For a Marxist ideologue, “religion is the opium of the masses.” But many communist countries—over the years—have evolved from a strictly atheistic persuasion to a tolerance for religious practices. Except probably in North Korea, this transformation from an atheistic perspective to religious tolerance has become a phenomenon in communist countries like Russia and China.Vietnam did not have that experience. This paper will show that religious pluralism was tolerated, even accepted, in communist Vietnam. I will show (...) how vibrant this religious amalgamation is in Vietnam and demonstrate, as in the case of market economics thriving in communist countries, that Vietnamese communism and religious pluralism can robustly coexist with each other. (shrink)

Structure and organization seems to be at the root of many of the questions raised about institutional behaviour; however, with respect to research on university capacity building, few studies have examined research organizational problems, particularly in developing countries. This study investigates academic reactions to the structure and organization of research at four leading Vietnamese universities. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 55 participants, the study finds that the four case-study Vietnamese universities have accomplished a number of the more visible (...) tasks of research management such as creating research and research management positions; deciding primary organizational units for research delivery; creating a research office; and creating research oversight committees. However, they seem to neglect the other less visible tasks of organizing and structuring research such as developing rules for research integrity; developing a mechanism for evaluating the quality of research outcomes; preparing researchers and research managers for the necessary skills and knowledge; and deciding vertical and horizontal decentralization. The study concludes that even though research has been formally structured and organized, the management of research has not yet been professionalized. The key problem in organizing and structuring research is the lack of an effective system for research behaviour formalization. A more effective system for better formalizing research behaviours should be developed so that Vietnamese universities can integrate more successfully into the global research. (shrink)

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of climate change research.

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of waste management research.

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of water pollution research.

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of air pollution research.

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of biodiversity research.

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)

The weaver ant, Oecophylla smaragdina Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), has long been known as perhaps the first example of human manipulation of a natural predator population to enhance the natural biological control of insect pests. The practice of ant husbandry in Vietnamese citrus orchards and the knowledge associated with the use of weaver ants in the Mekong delta are described. In contrast to other regions of Asia, where weaver ants are noted for their role in the protection of citrus from insect (...) damage, citrus farmers in the Mekong delta explain the benefits of ant husbandry in terms of an improvement in fruit quality, likened to the influence of fertilizers, that occurs in direct response to excretory products deposited by the weaver ants as they patrol the fruit. A series of tests, carried out in 1993–94, rated the external shine, sweetness, juiciness, and overall appeal, as characteristics of fruit quality, for paired comparisons of sweet orange, mandarin, and pummelo fruit that had been grown in the presence of weaver ants or from which ants had been excluded. The tests indicate a strong influence of the presence of the weaver ant on external shine, juiciness, and overall appeal for each of the citrus fruits, but particularly for mandarin. The significance of these results and ant husbandry practices in the Mekong delta are discussed in relation to the development of citrus production in Vietnam. (shrink)

Fear of cancer is mostly related to cancer recurrence, metastasis, additional cancer, and diagnostic tests. Its legacy as a lethal disease has raised fear of approaching death. Currently, cancer’s total suffering and the worsening phenomena have raised fear, especially among female patients. Family caregivers (FCGs) who are responsible for the day-to-day cancer care at home need to help the patients deal with this fear frequently. Due to the limited care competencies, they need supportive care from healthcare professionals in cancer fear (...) management. This study aims to assess how types of demanded healthcare information affect the FCG’s role in reducing the fear of female cancer patients. The mindsponge theory was used in conceptual development and interpretation. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics were used for statistical analysis on a dataset of 48 spouses (husbands) and 12 other family members in five congested communities of Surabaya, Indonesia. Results showed that among the six types of healthcare information, FCGs with higher demand on cancer-specific information and information on cancer physical needs were more likely to need support in reducing the fear of female cancer patients. Meanwhile, FCGs with a higher demand for information on support services were less likely to need support to reduce cancer patients’ fear. Other types of healthcare information have ambiguous effects on the need for support in reducing cancer-induced fear. This study reveals that the demanded cancer-specific information, e.g., cancer’s prognosis or likely outcome and information on cancer physical needs, need to be met in priority to assist FCG’s role in cancer fear management. (shrink)

The Coronavirus disease pandemic of 2019 is a vast worldwide public health hazard, impacting people of all ages and socioeconomic statuses. Vaccination is one of the most effective methods of controlling a pandemic like COVID-19. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the number of vaccination injections and fear of COVID-19 and test whether beliefs benefit from vaccination COVID-19 mediate the effect of fear of COVID-19 on the number of vaccination injections. A total of 649 Vietnamese adults were enrolled (...) online to finish answering, including scales The Health Belief Model (HBM) and The Fear of COVID-19 (FCV-19S), consisting of 340 (52.4%) males and 309 (47.6%) females. The data were analyzed using variance, regression, and a simple mediation model. The total score of COVID-19 fear wasM= 22.26,SD= 5.49. Vietnamese fear of COVID-19 was at a medium level. Our results suggest that 18- to 20-year-olds are more fearful of COVID-19 than others. People who received the first dosage exhibited a greater fear of COVID-19 than those who received the second dose and were not inoculated. Additionally, the beliefs benefit of vaccination COVID-19 has a role in the relationship between the number of vaccination injections and fear of COVID-19. During the pandemic, adults in Vietnam are more afraid of COVID-19 than during prior outbreaks. Besides, the Vietnamese populace demonstrated a considerable demand for and high acceptability of the COVID-19 vaccine. The current study indicates that psychological counselors and therapists should counsel clients on the value of vaccination and address the fear of COVID-19 as public understanding of the benefits of vaccines increases. To further clarify the effect of this issue on the correlation between fear of COVID-19 and the number of vaccinations, the results of this study indicate that the existing vaccine communication factor for COVID-19 vaccination should be modified to increase confidence in the benefits of immunization. (shrink)

Since their introduction in the early 2000s, the use of social networking websites has exploded. Many businesses are seeing increased revenue due to their social commerce strategy. Despite the popularity of social commerce websites, some consumers are still hesitate to use them. This study aims to evaluate the factors that influence the adoption of social commerce. A sample of 721 Chinese We Chat users took part in the research. The findings reveal that social capital mediates the positive effect of social (...) commerce adoption and perceived ease of use on techno-stress and online impulse purchasing. Likewise, information overloading mediates the positive effect of social commerce adoption and PERU on techno-stress and online impulse purchasing. The findings have implications for both practice and research in understanding social commerce adoption in emerging economies. (shrink)

No research thus far has attempted to examine ethical decision- making in corporate entrepreneurial organizations. Results of such study would provide management executives with insights on what action, if any, is essential for achieving business ethics and corporate entrepreneurship simultaneously. This paper argues, theoretically, that the work characteristics, organizational characteristics, and some individual characteristics in a corporate entrepreneurial organization are conducive to ethical decisions. These characteristics help mitigate the adverse impact of the turbulent environments on ethical decision- making behavior. Based (...) on these arguments, a tentative model of ethical decison-making in corporate entrepreneurial organization is constructed. (shrink)

Climate change and environmental degradation are threatening the existence of humanity. The youth have the potential and capability to play a pivotal role in tackling these challenges. Therefore, the current study aims to examine how school and family environmental education can enhance environmental knowledge, willingness to take action, and pro-environmental behaviors among children and young people. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was utilized on a nationally representative dataset of 2069 Vietnamese primary, secondary, and high school students. The analysis results (...) suggest that school and family environmental education is beneficial for improving students’ environmental knowledge and willingness to take environmental actions. Notably, the effect of school education is more substantial for cultivating environmental knowledge, whereas family education has a stronger impact on raising students’ willingness than school education. Students with higher levels of environmental knowledge are more likely to conduct pro-environmental behaviors only when they are willing to take environmental actions. If students are unwilling to act, higher environmental knowledge is negatively associated with the likelihood of pro-environmental behavior. Following these findings, we call for coordinated education efforts of schools and families to cultivate students’ eco-surplus culture. The education efforts should be implemented along with exposing students to environmental settings and encouraging them to read environmental books. (shrink)

Pride expressions draw attention to one’s achievement, and therefore can enhance one’s status. However, such attention has been linked to negative interpersonal consequences (i.e. envy). Fortunately, people have been found to regulate their pride expressions accordingly. Specifically, pride expressions are lower when the domain of the achievement is of high relevance to observers. We set out to replicate this effect in a non-Western sample. Additionally, we extended the current finding by investigating the moderating role of self-monitoring, an individual’s ability and (...) willingness to adjust their behaviours under different social contexts to cultivate status. This allows us to explore the previously assumed underlying status motive in regulating pride expressions. Data from two preregistered studies (N1 = 913; N2 = 1081) replicated the effect that pride expressions are inhibited when the achievement domain is relevant. A significant main effect of self-monitoring was found, such that high self-monitors express more pride than low self-monitors, consistent with the conceptualisation of self-monitoring as rooted within a status-enhancement motive. The assumed interaction effect between domain relevance and self-monitoring was not significant. Our findings suggest that the effect of domain relevance on pride expression is robust and status driven. (shrink)

This book examines the relationship between law and scientific advancement, with a particular focus on the theory of evolution and medical innovation. Historically, the law has struggled to keep pace with modern medical advances. The authors demonstrate that the laws that govern human behaviour must evolve in response to such advances."--Provided by publisher.

Climate change has become one of the most pressing problems that can threaten the existence and development of humans around the globe. Almost all climate scientists have agreed that climate change is happening and is caused mainly by greenhouse gas emissions induced by anthropogenic activities. However, some groups still deny this fact or do not believe that climate change results from human activities. This essay discusses the causes, significance, and skeptical arguments of climate change denialism, as well as the roles (...) of scientists and science communication in addressing the issues. Through this essay, we call for the active participation of scientists in science communication activities with the public, the opening of new science communication sectors specified for climate change, and more attention to social sciences and humanities in addressing climate change issues. (shrink)

The value-free ideal for science prohibits noncognitive values from influencing the practice of science. After all, a scientist should not reject an empirical theory on religious grounds. But while motivated by reasonable concerns, VFI overlooks legitimate roles for noncognitive values in science. Contra VFI, Hugh Lacey explains that noncognitive values can promote scientific aims by grounding new methodologies that may lead to novel theories and extend to new domains. Yet, Lacey agrees with one aspect of VFI: noncognitive values should not (...) serve as grounds in the empirical evaluation of theories. This has led some critics to misidentify his view merely as an updated version of VFI. I argue that views of the kind Lacey endorses, which I call Dialectical Empiricism, deserve further investigation. They capture what VFI gets right; but they also show that noncognitive values are essential to good science. Throughout the dissertation I explore variants of DE, demonstrating its potential and flexibility. Furthermore, I defend DE against its critics, especially those who mistake it for a version of VFI. In stark opposition to VFI, DE reveals how the illusion of value-freedom sometimes blinds us to promising alternatives to mainstream scientific approaches. I demonstrate this by applying the framework of DE to contemporary research in agricultural and nutritional science. These case studies show that noncognitive values really do influence scientific practices. And, most importantly, they demonstrate how embracing a value-laden view of science can open our eyes to promising alternative approaches that may have the potential to increase our knowledge of the world and of possibilities for human flourishing. (shrink)