Tác giả: Đào Thu Hằng

I'm from Hanoi, Viet Nam. I'm an author of Dot Chuoi Non (dotchuoinon.com/author/hangbelu/), a blog on Positive thinking, founded by Dr. Tran Dinh Hoanh, an attorney in Washington DC. I'm a co-founder of Conversations on Vietnam Development - cvdvn.net, a virtual think tank. I am a co-founder of two companies in Viet Nam working on children education services. I advise companies on STEAM education, English language education for children and students in Vietnam. I'm studying the Buddha's teaching and the teaching of Jesus. I practice mindful living including meditation. I hold a PhD on Sustainable Energy Systems from University of Lisbon and Aalto University. I graduated from Hanoi University of Technology on Environmental Engineering. I obtained a Master degree of the same major from Stanford University and Nanyang Technological University. My English-language blog at: hangbelu.wordpress/. I play table tennis as a hobby.

Widening wealth gap threatens Vietnam’s stability

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Widening wealth gap threatens Vietnam’s stability

Globalriskinsights.com – A joint report issued earlier this month by the Vietnam General Statistics Office and the World Bank has drawn attention to a growing wealth gap in the Southeast Asian nation. The gap is both economic and geographical, with the majority of the rural community growing increasingly poor in contrast to a wealthier urban populace. If the government does not respond to this growing disparity, political instability could be on the horizon in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese economy has achieved impressive growth in the last two decades, undeniably benefitting large areas of the population with some 30 million people being lifted out of poverty. Today the poverty rate stands at 7.8 percent compared with nearly 58 percent in 1993. This growth, however, has to a certain extent masked the fact that a proportion of the population are being left behind – namely the rural poor and ethnic minorities. Tiếp tục đọc “Widening wealth gap threatens Vietnam’s stability” →

The Next Great GMO Debate

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Biomedicine

Deep inside its labs, Monsanto is learning how to modify crops by spraying them with RNA rather than tinkering with their genes.

by Antonio Regalado August 11, 2015

technologyreview – The Colorado potato beetle is a voracious eater. The insect can chew through 10 square centimeters of leaf a day, and left unchecked it will strip a plant bare. But the beetles I was looking at were doomed. The plant they were feeding on—bright green and carefully netted in Monsanto’s labs outside St. Louis—had been doused with a spray of RNA.
The experiment took advantage of a mechanism called RNA interference. It’s a way to temporarily turn off the activity of any gene. In this case, the gene being shut down was one vital to the insect’s survival. “I am pretty sure 99 percent of them will be dead soon,” said Jodi Beattie, a Monsanto scientist who showed me her experiment.

The discovery of RNA interference earned two academics a Nobel Prize in 2006 and set off a scramble to create drugs that block disease-causing genes. Using this same technology, Monsanto now thinks it has hit on an alternative to conventional genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. It can already kill bugs by getting them to eat leaves coated with specially designed RNA. And if the company succeeds in developing sprays that penetrate plant cells, as it’s attempting to, it could block certain plant genes, too. Imagine a spray that causes tomatoes to taste better or helps plants survive a drought. Tiếp tục đọc “The Next Great GMO Debate” →

The Asia-Pacific Region Is ‘Growing’, but Millions Are Living in Poverty

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
By Kanya D’Almeida
If current urbanisation trends continue, an additional 500 million people could be living in cities in the Asia-Pacific region by 2020. Credit: Padmanaba01/CC-BY-2.0

If current urbanisation trends continue, an additional 500 million people could be living in cities in the Asia-Pacific region by 2020. Credit: Padmanaba01/CC-BY-2.0

ipsnews.net – UNITED NATIONS, May 14 2015 (IPS) – Home to an estimated 3.74 billion people, the Asia-Pacific region holds over half the global population, determining to a great extent the level of economic stability, or chaos, in the world. Tiếp tục đọc “The Asia-Pacific Region Is ‘Growing’, but Millions Are Living in Poverty” →

Requiem for a river: Can one of the world’s great waterways survive its development?

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

economist – GUO, the driver, pulls his car to a merciful halt high above a crevasse: time for a cigarette, and after seven hours of shuddering along narrow, twisting roads, time for his passengers to check that their fillings remain in place. Lighting up, he steps out of the car and dons a cloth cap and jacket: sunny, early-summer days are still brisk 3,500 metres above sea level. Mr Guo is an impish little dumpling of a man, bald, brown-toothed and jolly. He is also an anomaly: a Shanghainese in northern Yunnan who opted to stay with his local bride rather than return to his booming hometown.

The ribbon of brown water cutting swiftly through the gorge below is rich with snowmelt. With few cars passing, its echoing sound fills the air. In the distance, the Hengduan mountains slump under their snowpack as if crumpled beneath its weight. Mr Guo recalls the drivers who have taken a switchback too quickly and fallen to their deaths in the valley below. He tells of workers who lost their footing or whose harnesses failed while building a bridge near his home town of Cizhong, 20 or 30 kilometres south. He pulls hard on his cigarette. “This river”, he says, “has taken so many lives.”

Tiếp tục đọc “Requiem for a river: Can one of the world’s great waterways survive its development?” →

Despite Stay, America’s Economy and Climate Need the Clean Power Plan

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

by Sam Adams Sam Adams and David Waskow – February 10, 2016

WRI – Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court paused implementation of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) to allow an appeals court to consider a legal challenge from a number of states, corporations and industry groups. That case is being expedited, and a decision is expected by the fall.

Importantly, the Supreme Court’s decision to grant a temporary stay was not based on the legal merits of the CPP, which calls for emissions reductions throughout states’ power sectors. Experts agree that the CPP is on solid legal ground and will prevail. Indeed, previously the Supreme Court not only upheld the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act (which the Clean Power Plan builds upon), the Court found the agency had the obligation to do so to protect Americans’ health.

We expect yesterday’s ruling to be only a temporary time out as the CPP heads to full implementation. As the legal case proceeds, the EPA has indicated it will continue to help states put in place the plans and tools they need to comply with the rule, and the Obama administration has committed to continue taking aggressive steps to reduce emissions and lead in the fight against climate change.

Clean Power Plan: Smart, Balanced and Beneficial

The benefits of the plan are clear, far-reaching and worth fighting for. The CPP offers a smart, balanced approach that will cut dangerous pollution as it drives innovation, creates new job opportunities and improves public health. The CPP is one of the most important near-term tools the United States can use to help reach its goal of reducing emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. In addition, the plan will make our air safer to breathe by reducing Americans’ exposure to particulate matter and ground-level ozone, benefiting our health and the economy by an estimated $25 billion to $65 billion – far more than the $7 billion to $9 billion cost of compliance, according to the EPA.
Tiếp tục đọc “Despite Stay, America’s Economy and Climate Need the Clean Power Plan” →

Industrial Policy: A Guide for the Perplexed

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Uri Dadush | February 01, 2016

 Download English Version

ocppc – For the purpose of this short note, industrial policy is defined as government intervention in a specific sector which is designed to boost the growth prospects of that sector and to promote development of the wider economy. I exclude from this definition horizontal policies, such as investment in education, reinforcement of the rule of law and property rights, and so on, even though these horizontal policies can affect different sectors differently and so can be part of an industrial policy. I do so for the sake of brevity and because the importance of horizontal policies is widely understood, and there is much less controversy surrounding them than around sectoral interventions. To sharpen the focus further, I also exclude interventions at the sectoral level which aim to achieve other objectives than growth and employment, such as improving environmental and safety standards, as these interventions aim to correct well-recognized market failures and are also relatively uncontroversial.

Industrial policy so defined takes many shapes, including regulatory reform, subsidies, protection, and direct government ownership of enterprises, and it has a checkered past. Its heyday was in the 1950s and 1960s, a period characterized by post-war recovery, rapid growth, decolonization, and import substituting industrialization (ISI). Following the ideas of Hirschman (1958)dynamic industrial sectors paying high wages and exhibiting strong backward linkages received special attention. While many developing countries did well during this phase, their inability to sustain growth following the oil shocks and inflation of the 1970s, the international interest rate hikes and Latin American debt crisis that followed, severely discredited ISI. Drawing on the example of a small number of successful “Asian tigers”, a new “outward-oriented” model of industrial policy became increasingly accepted. This entailed systematic promotion of key manufacturing export sectors which could exploit large world markets, but which also required imports of state-of-the-art machinery, the know-how of foreign investors, and maintenance of a competitive exchange rate (Dani Rodrik, Middle East Development Journal, 2008). Encouraged by some international organizations such as UNIDO and UNCTAD, many developing countries, for example, Brazil and India, continue to practice this model today, or at least, attempt to do so.

Tiếp tục đọc “Industrial Policy: A Guide for the Perplexed” →

Nữ giáo sư gốc Việt Caroline Kiều Linh và cuốn sách Transnationalizing Viet Nam

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Transnationalizing Viet Nam Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora

Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde

“Bridging Asian Studies and Asian American Studies, Transnationalizing Viet Nam is a rich and nuanced study of transnational linkages between Viet Nam and its diaspora in the United States. Through fascinating case studies of Vietnamese popular music productions, Internet virtual communities, diasporic art and community politics, Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde provides a rare glimpse into how Vietnamese have connected their worlds and made meanings for themselves.”
—Yen Le Espiritu, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego

temple.edu – Vietnamese diasporic relations affect—and are directly affected by—events in Viet Nam. In Transnationalizing Viet Nam, Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde explores these connections, providing a nuanced understanding of this globalized community. Valverde draws on 250 interviews and almost two decades of research to show the complex relationship between Vietnamese in the diaspora and those back at the homeland.

Arguing that Vietnamese immigrant lives are inherently transnational, she shows how their acts form virtual communities via the Internet, organize social movements, exchange music and create art, find political representation, and even dissent. Valverde also exposes how generational, gender, class, and political tensions threaten to divide the ethnic community.

Transnationalizing Viet Nam paints a vivid picture of the complex political and personal allegiances that exist within Vietnamese America and shape the relations between this heterogeneous community and its country of origin.

 

Cancer burden in Vietnam: Avoidable consequences, preventable illness

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Tuoi Tre News

Updated : 12/17/2015 07:55 GMT + 7

Death and the detrimental effects of cancer, which is itself a preventable disease, can be avoided by early detection and proper treatment.

>> Cancer burden in Vietnam: P2 – The culprits
>> Cancer burden in Vietnam – P1: Liabilities

tuoitrenews – Contrary to popular belief that a diagnosis of cancer means a death penalty, experts have asserted otherwise.

The cancer burden would be significantly eased by adopting a comprehensive preventative model, made possible with competent agencies’ effective administrative role and improved awareness.

Dr. Nguyen Chan Hung, chair of the Cancer Association of Vietnam, warned that diets rich in animal fat and meat, tainted food, dried salty fish or pickled vegetables, or insufficient vegetables and fruits are among the contributory factors of different types of cancer.

Those who smoke or drink heavily, and lead a sedentary lifestyle, also stand higher risks of contracting the illness.

According to Dr. Tran Thi Anh Tuong, vice head of the Nutrition Department of Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital, all cancers start because abnormal cells grow out of control.

Cancerous cell growth is different from normal cell growth.

Instead of dying, cancerous cells continue to grow and form new, abnormal cells.

Cancer cells can also invade, or grow into, other tissues, something that normal cells cannot do.

Except for some unavoidable factors including genetic elements and old age, other causes are preventable thanks to a healthy lifestyle and adequate knowledge of the disease.

Early diagnosis saves lives, cuts costs

Dr. Mai Trong Khoa, deputy director of Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi and director of the Nuclear Medicine and Oncology Center, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper earlier this month that approximately 100,000 out of 125,000 new cancer patients in Vietnam die of the illness each year.

New cancer cases have gone up especially fast recently, while the mortality rate has also been on the rise. Tiếp tục đọc “Cancer burden in Vietnam: Avoidable consequences, preventable illness” →

Pressure mounts on AIIB for greater clarity on green lending

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

 

The China-led development bank needs to provide greater assurances, writes Liu Qin

 AIIB formally established, civil society still concerned safeguards lack binding requirements for assessments
Article image
(Image by AIIB)

chinadialogue – The China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) formally came into existence on January 16, but many environmental campaigners want to see greater clarity from the world’s newest multilateral development lender.

The bank’s president, Jin Liqun, has said repeatedly that the AIIB is serious about protecting the environment and limiting the human impact of development.

But many environmental groups are concerned that the bank’s draft Environmental and Social Framework document, available on its website, lacks detail and firm commitments to sustainable lending. They call for rules on lending to be made more explicit and for improved consultation with local people.

Yu Xiaogang of Chinese NGO Green Watershed told chinadialogue: “There is a gap between the stance described by Jin Liqun and the contents of that draft.” For example, at present there are no binding requirements to carry out environmental or social impact assessments before projects start.
Tiếp tục đọc “Pressure mounts on AIIB for greater clarity on green lending” →

The Problem with Biofuels

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

The U.S. Navy is touting its “Great Green Fleet,” but why haven’t biofuels made a bigger splash despite a decade of hype and investment?

technologyreview – Last week the U.S. Navy, with its accustomed pomp and fanfare, launched its first carrier strike group powered partly by biofuel—in this case, a blend made primarily from beef fat. The biofueled warships form a central element of the Navy’s Great Green Fleet program to draw half of its power from clean energy sources, rather than petroleum, by 2020.

Attended by secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, the ceremony masked what has been nearly a decade of problems for biofuels—an energy source once touted as capable of virtually eliminating the use of petroleum in the transportation sector. Today biofuels production and consumption stand at a fraction of the levels foreseen under the Renewable Fuel Standard, a federal mandate signed by President George W. Bush that requires fuels made from corn, sugarcane, and other biological sources to be mixed into the nation’s gasoline supply. Tiếp tục đọc “The Problem with Biofuels” →

Is 3-D Printing the Key to Cheap Carbon-Fiber Parts?

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Technologyreview – Someday, carbon fiber might live up to its hype and make all of our cars and airplanes more lightweight and efficient. Today, though, parts made of the material are very expensive, and are used mainly in race cars, high-end sports cars, and new jetliners. Some entrepreneurs are now betting that the key to making carbon-fiber parts much cheaper and more widely used is 3-D printing technology.

The three objects, made by MarkForged, show different points in the printing process. The finished part is a component of a race car spoiler.
The Mark One printer lays down polymer and carbon fiber layers.

The benefits of carbon fiber are so great—parts made of it can be as strong as aluminum ones while weighing less—that “anyone who can afford it” is already using it in aerospace and automotive applications, says Greg Mark, CEO and founder of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup MarkForged. But it’s too expensive for the mainstream, and a big reason for that is the way it’s made: a complicated, labor- and time-intensive process with many steps that must be done by hand (see “Where’s the Affordable Carbon-Fiber Automobile?”). Mark says the new process his company has developed is as simple as designing the part on the computer, pushing a button, and retrieving the part several hours later.

Top: An automotive cold air intake made by Impossible Objects.
Bottom: A drone propeller made via the process Impossible Objects has developed.

The ability to print carbon-fiber parts will make 3-D printing much more useful for many industries, according to Robert Swartz, chairman, founder, and chief technology officer for Chicago-based startup Impossible Objects. Most of the plastic parts made using existing 3-D printing technologies don’t perform well enough to be used, say, in a drone. “There’s a real need for functionality,” says Swartz, and that requires better materials. Tiếp tục đọc “Is 3-D Printing the Key to Cheap Carbon-Fiber Parts?” →

Cybersecurity: The Age of the Megabreach

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

We haven’t stopped huge breaches. The focus now is on resilience, with smarter ways to detect attacks and faster ways to respond to them.

Technologyreview – In November 2014, an especially chilling cyberattack shook the corporate world—something that went far beyond garden-variety theft of credit card numbers from a big-box store. Hackers, having explored the internal servers of Sony Pictures Entertainment, captured internal financial reports, top executives’ embarrassing e-mails, private employee health data, and even unreleased movies and scripts and dumped them on the open Web. The offenders were said by U.S. law enforcement to be working at the behest of the North Korean regime, offended by a farcical movie the company had made in which a TV producer is caught up in a scheme to kill the country’s dictator.

Cyber Survival
With cyberattacks getting worse, the urgent need today is for faster responses, smarter technologies, and wider encryption.

The results showed how profoundly flat-footed this major corporation was. The hack had been going on for months without being detected. Data vital to the company’s business was not encrypted. The standard defensive technologies had not worked against what was presumed to have been a “phishing” attack in which an employee clicked a link that downloaded powerful malware. Taken together, all this showed that many of today’s technologies are not adequate, that attacks can now be more aggressive than ever, and that once breaches occur, they are made worse by slow responses. Tiếp tục đọc “Cybersecurity: The Age of the Megabreach” →

Who’s afraid of cheap oil?

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Low energy prices ought to be a shot in the arm for the economy. Think again Jan 23rd 2016 | From the print edition Timekeeper

economist – ALONG with bank runs and market crashes, oil shocks have rare power to set monsters loose. Starting with the Arab oil embargo of 1973, people have learnt that sudden surges in the price of oil cause economic havoc. Conversely, when the price slumps because of a glut, as in 1986, it has done the world a power of good. The rule of thumb is that a 10% fall in oil prices boosts growth by 0.1-0.5 percentage points.

In the past 18 months the price has fallen by 75%, from $110 a barrel to below $27. Yet this time the benefits are less certain. Although consumers have gained, producers are suffering grievously. The effects are spilling into financial markets, and could yet depress consumer confidence. Perhaps the benefits of such ultra-cheap oil still outweigh the costs, but markets have fallen so far so fast that even this is no longer clear.

The new economics of oil

The world is drowning in oil. Saudi Arabia is pumping at almost full tilt. It is widely thought that the Saudis want to drive out higher-cost producers from the industry, including some of the fracking firms that have boosted oil output in the United States from 5m barrels a day (b/d) in 2008 to over 9m b/d now. Saudi Arabia will also be prepared to suffer a lot of pain to thwart Iran, its bitter rival, which this week was poised to rejoin oil markets as nuclear sanctions were lifted, with potential output of 3m-4m b/d. Tiếp tục đọc “Who’s afraid of cheap oil?” →

IFC finances Canadian Solar Vietnam, Brazil fab projects to tune of $70m

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Canadian Solar CEO Shawn Qu welcomed the partnership with the IFC: "With IFC's commitment, we are able to expand our production capacity to meet the increasing demand for solar energy worldwide."

Canadian Solar CEO Shawn Qu welcomed the partnership with the IFC: “With IFC’s commitment, we are able to expand our production capacity to meet the increasing demand for solar energy worldwide.”

pv-magazine: The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has entered into an agreement with Chinese Tier-1 solar power company Canadian Solar to deliver a finance package worth $70 million to aid the company’s overseas expansion plans.

The terms of the deal include a $60 million loan and a $10 million subscription in Canadian Solar common shares. Tiếp tục đọc “IFC finances Canadian Solar Vietnam, Brazil fab projects to tune of $70m” →