34,586 research outputs found
Willingness to Pay for the Preservation of Lo Go - Xa Mat National Park in Vietnam
No full textLo Go - Xa Mat National Park has great value in terms of biodiversity but preserving the park is a great challenge for the Vietnamese government. This study estimated the willingness to pay of households to preserve Lo Go - Xa Mat National Park, using the contingent valuation method. We employed the single-bounded dichotomous choice question format to estimate how much households in Ho Chi Minh City were willing to contribute towards a preservation plan for the park. This plan comprised twelve preservation activities and compensating the local communities for their foregone income. The study found that households in Ho Chi Minh City were willing to pay at least VND 6,209 per month for three years for the preservation of Lo Go - Xa Mat National Park. With protest votes included, factors strongly affecting households' willingness to pay were bid amount and the amount of their monthly electricity bill. The education level of the respondents and the number of working people in the household had significant but lesser impact on their willingness to pay. Without protest votes, the bid amount, monthly electricity bill amount and education level of respondents significantly affected willingness to pay. We found that the annualized benefit value of the project was larger than its annualized cost. This indicated that the preservation plan was economically viable. This study does not provide the total value of Lo Go - Xa Mat National Park, but it shows the great value of the park in terms of local households' willingness to pay for its preservation and this is important information for policy-makers in deciding how to protect the park efficiently.willingness to pay, Vietnam
Design and strength evaluation of an anodically bonded pressurized cavity array for wafer-level MEMS packaging
No full textExperimental evaluation of anodic bonding process using Taguchi method for maximum interfacial fracture toughness
No full textβ-Lapachone ameliorates L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia in a 6-OHDA-induced mouse model of Parkinson's disease
No full textThe dopamine precursor 3,4？dihydroxyphenyl？ l？alanine (L？DOPA) is the most widely used symptomatic treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD); however, its prolonged use is associated with L？DOPA？induced dyskinesia in more than half of patients after 10 years of treatment. The present study investigated whether co？treatment with β？Lapachone, a natural compound, and L？DOPA has protective effects in a 6？hydroxydopamine (6？OHDA)？induced mouse model of PD. Unilateral 6？OHDA？lesioned mice were treated with vehicle or β？Lapachone (10 mg/kg/day) and L？DOPA for 11 days. Abnormal involuntary movements (AIMs) were scored on days 5 and 10. β？Lapachone (10 mg/kg) co？treatment with L？DOPA decreased the AIMs score on both days 5 and 10. β？Lapachone was demonstrated to have a beneficial effect on the axial and limb AIMs scores on day 10. There was no significant suppression in dopamine D1 receptor？related and ERK1/2 signaling in the DA？denervated striatum by β？Lapachone？cotreatment with L？DOPA. Notably, β？Lapachone？cotreatment with L？DOPA increased phosphorylation at the Ser9 site of glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK？3β), indicating suppression of GSK？3β activity in both the unlesioned and 6？OHDA？lesioned striata. In addition, astrocyte activation was markedly suppressed by β？Lapachone？cotreatment with L？DOPA in the striatum and substantia nigra of the unilateral 6？OHDA model. These findings suggest that β？Lapachone cotreatment with L？DOPA therapy may have therapeutic potential for the suppression or management of the development of L？DOPA？induced dyskinesia in patients with PD.
Oral History of Ho Van Khoi
No full textAn oral history of Mr. Ho Van Khoi (Khoi Van Ho, western-style) who was born in 1949 in Go Cong, Vietnam. He spent his childhood in Go Cong and then lived in Saigon during his high school years. The oldest in a family of 10 kids, he described his family as being poor. In 1968 he volunteered to join the military training school in Thu Duc and described several of his deployments in Cambodia. After the war ended, he was imprisoned in reeducation camp for 4.5 years. His family escaped Vietnam by boat, passing through an Indonesia refugee camp, resettled in San Diego and then moved again to San Jose during the technology industry boom in California. He is active in political and cultural activities in the Bay Area Vietnamese American community.Recorded Digitall
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Snapping microswitches with adjustable acceleration threshold
No full textThis paper presents the design, fabrication and testing of prestressed bimorph microbeams for applications to tunable acceleration switches. The prestressed bimorph beams are buckled due to the residual stress difference between two dissimilar films, thereby generating initial beam deflections upon fabrication. Necessary and sufficient conditions for snapping action of the deflected bimorph beam have been derived from snap-through buckling analysis. A set of SiO2/p(+)-silicon bimorph beams has been designed and fabricated in three different lengths, 800, 900 and 1000 mu m. The electrostatic snap-through voltage for each microbeam has been measured as 32, 56.3 and 76.5 V, respectively. Micromechanical properties of beam materials have been measured from on-chip test structures. It is demonstrated that the three different microswitches with a 7 mu g proof-mass can be applicable to acceleration switches, where threshold acceleration levels can be adjustable within the ranges 0-14, 0-35 and 0-47 g, respectively, under inter-electrode bias voltages of 0-76 V
GO Barometer: meer wantrouwen en onvoldoende capaciteit binnen het vakgebied
No full textDe tweede editie van de GO Barometer is uit! De Stichting Kennis Gebiedsontwikkeling (SKG) brengt ook dit jaar de stand van zaken binnen het vakgebied van gebiedsontwikkeling in kaart. Gebiedsontwikkeling is een zaak van lange adem, dus er zijn veel overeenkomsten met 2022 – maar toch ook enkele opvallende verschillen. Vooral het stijgende onderlinge wantrouwen tussen partijen is opvallend. Daarnaast zet onvoldoende personele capaciteit de uitvoering van uitdagende ruimtelijke projecten verder onder druk.Urban Development ManagementPractice Chair Urban Area Developmen
Sodium phenylbutyrate reduces repetitive self-grooming behavior and rescues social and cognitive deficits in mouse models of autism
No full textAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopment disorder characterized by deficits in social interaction and restrictive, repetitive, and stereotypical patterns of behavior. However, there is no pharmacological drug that is currently used to target these core ASD symptoms. Sodium phenylbutyrate (NaPB) is a well-known long-term treatment of urea cycle disorders in children. In this study, we assessed the therapeutic effects of NaPB, which is a chemical chaperone as well as histone deacetylase inhibitor on a BTBR T + Itpr3tf/J (BTBR) mice model of ASD. We found that acute and chronic treatment of NaPB remarkably improved, not only core ASD symptoms, including repetitive behaviors and sociability deficit, but also cognitive impairment in the BTBR mice. NaPB substantially induced histone acetylation in the brain of the BTBR mice. Intriguingly, the therapeutic effects of NaPB on autistic-like behaviors, such as repetitive behaviors, impaired sociability, and cognitive deficit also showed in the valproic acid (VPA)-induced mouse model of autism. In addition, pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-induced seizure was significantly attenuated by NaPB treatment in C57BL/6J and BTBR mice. These findings suggest that NaPB may provide a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of patients with ASD.
- …
