Owing to the lack of consensus in formal negotiations, unilateral statements do not create legal obligations on states. Thus, a unilateral statement is not considered a source of international law under Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. In practice, however, these statements can be legally binding on the states making them and play an important role in the development of international law. The paper aims to examine the characteristics of unilateral declarations and statements in international law and address the Vietnam’s position over the legal effects of the Diplomatic Note 1958 with special references to the South China Sea dispute. This paper will analyze the characteristics and significance of unilateral statements in international law, and argue the conditions for legal binding force. Finally, this paper will provide an in-depth clarification on Vietnamese position on the legal effect of the Diplomatic Note 1958.

We reported the synthesis of dendrite-like carbon nanotube-confined polymeric sulfur composite by modifying the surface of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with trithiocyanuric acid (TTCA) and then copolymerizing with sulfur. DSC results show the successfully formation of robust chemical bonds between sulfur and TTCA modified CNTs, which effectively avoid the dissolution of polysulfide when used as cathodes for lithium–sulfur batteries. The composite with a high sulfur content of 78 wt% exhibits an initial charge capacity of 698 mAh g− 1 and the residual capacity of 553 mAh g− 1 after 1000 cycles at a rate of 1 C.

Activated carbon (AC) was modified by ammonium persulphate or nitric acid, respectively. AC and the modified materials were used as catalyst supports. The oxygen groups were introduced in the supports during the modifications. All the supports were characterized by N2-physisorption, Raman, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and thermogravimetric analysis. Methanol synthesis catalysts were prepared through wet impregnation of copper nitrate and zinc nitrate on the supports followed by thermal decomposition. These catalysts were measured by the means of N2-physisorption, X-ray diffraction, XPS, temperature programmed reduction and TEM tests. The catalytic performances of the prepared catalysts were compared with a commercial catalyst (CZA) in this work. The results showed that the methanol production rate of AC-CZ (23 mmol- CH3OH/(g-Cu·h)) was higher, on Cu loading basis, than that of CZA (9 mmol-CH3OH/ (g-Cu·h)). We also found that the modification methods produced strong metal-support interactions leading to poor catalytic performance. AC without any modification can prompt the catalytic performance of the resulted catalyst.

With the rapid development of science and technology, big data has been applied in many fields and has brought commercial revolution[1]. The scientific community generally regards big data as "massive data + complex types of data". Commercial applications are more concerned about big data as an analytical (prediction) method and focus on the potential commercialization of analysis results. All walks of life will produce large amounts of data every day. The transition of data-scale brings huge commercial value, which will certainly bring the innovation of business model[2]. Particularly in the internet and other emerging industries, because they get data more convenient and fast. Like Amason, Facebook, Google etc, they use analysis of big data to innovate their business model for maximizing their profits[3], actually business model refers to "an enterprise’s profitable operation mode plus ways to make money"[4]. So the effectiveness of business model innovation of big data on emerging industries has been remarkable. But the impact of big data on traditional industries is still in the exploratory stage. Traditional industry mainly refers to the labor intensive, manufacturing oriented industries, including the traditional commerce and service industry[5]. Learning from the experience of big data on business model innovation of emerging industries, traditional industries can use big data to subvert the business model and accelerate the transformation and upgrading.

The present issue of insect resistance and environmental toxicity of pesticides is triggering deep discussion about the pest management tactics, in which pest monitoring and control activity are mainly involved. Novel control agents, hopefully overcoming the present issues and problems, should be researched and commercially applied to the farm fields. With the monitoring-based research, additionally we have to focus on the control-based, particularly control agent-based research and application. Entomo- pathogenic fungi can used as one of the possible novel control agents once considerations are given to the control of soil- or water-dwelling pests. In our research group, the entomopathogenic fungal library has been constructed using the mealworm-based isolation system, which showed a variety of opportunities of their use in pest control. Important key production technologies including granular formulation have been developed to increase their industrialization. Some entomopathogenic fungal isolates showed high biological performance in the control of rice weevils, western flower thrips and Japanese bettles in field stands. To elucidate the fungal mode of action, a fungal transformation system using AtMT and gene identification tools were established. Recently a more deep study about the relationship between insect and entomopathogenic fungi is be investigated using RNA seq. We suggest that to make the entomopathogenic fungal products be applied to agricultural farm field, R&D of down-stream process should be seriously considered as the key step.

A new process of pulsed electric current sintering was developed. It combines compaction with activated sintering effectively and can manufacture bulky nano-crystalline materials very quickly. A nano-structured steel is obtained with high relative density and hardness by this process. The average grain size of iron matrix is 58nm and the carbide particulate size is less than 100 nm. The densification temperature of ball-milled powders is approximately lower than that of blended powders. When the sintering temperature increases, the density of as-sintered specimen increases but the hardness of as-sintered specimen first increases and then decreases.

We have analyzed vector magnetograms and Hβ filtergrams of two sunspot groups, one in a growing phase and the other in a decaying phase. In this study, the temporal evolution of their magnetic morphology has been investigated in association with solar activity. The morphological variations of the growing and decaying phase of these sunspots revealed in detail the coalescence of small spots into a large spot and the fragmentation of a large spot into many small spots, respectively. Numerous small flares were detected in the spot group during the decaying phase. This seems to be intimately associated with the shearing motions of many spots with different polarities created by fragmentation of a large sunspot. The magnetic flux and the average shear angle are found to be substantially reduced during the decaying phase, especially in the course of the flarings. This implies that the decaying phase of the sunspot is, to some degree, involved with magnetic field cancellation. The growing spot group has not shown any large activities, but numerous small spots have grown into a typical bipolar sunspot.

Food design is a new interdisciplinary subject. In the Netherlands, France, the United States and other countries, the academic research and practical application of food design have been developed. By contrast, research of Food Design in China is still in its infancy. Firstly, This paper summarizes the history of food design, secondly discusses the current category and three focuses of this discipline. Then draw a conclusion of the designer role, and finally predicts the development prospect of the subject to provide reference for academic research on Food Design.

The neoclassical economic supporters have suggested that foreign direct investment and raw material (e.g., coal, electricity, gas, and oil) are critical economic growth inputs. Few previous studies have analyzed the relationship between foreign direct investment and energy consumption on economic growth. However, existing studies usually have applied the frequentist inference. The limitation of the frequentist inference is that, if the coefficient of the independent variable is not yet significant, then conclusions might be unreliable. By applying the Bayesian approach, the main aim of this study is to revisit the impact of foreign direct investment, electricity consumption, and urbanization on economic growth in six ASEAN countries from 1980 to 2016. The obtained outcome shows that the impact of electricity consumption is evident and positive on economic growth in both frequentist and Bayesian inferences. However, the influence of foreign direct investment is not identified by frequentist inference, while Bayesian inference provides evidence that foreign direct investment is a moderately positive impact on economic growth. The empirical result from Bayesian inference contributes to the literature on foreign direct investment modeling and could be of significant importance for a more efficient foreign direct investment attracting and achieve sustainability in the long-term.

Tourism is considered one of the key economic sectors in Vietnam as it helps to promote the economic development, increase foreign exchange earnings, create jobs, and improve the living standards of local people. So, this study aims to identify factors affecting the competitiveness of Soc Trang ecotourism associated with Khmer culture based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Qualitative research was conducted through focus group discussions with experts, and quantitative research was conducted through direct interviews with visitors at ecotourism sites in Soc Trang province. The study involves questionnaire surveys and multivariate data analysis methods (Cronbach’s Alpha test, EFA, CFA, SEM). Research results from 350 respondents demonstrate that all factors have a positive impact on the competitiveness of ecotourism associated with Khmer culture in Soc Trang province. It shows that the competitiveness of ecotourism associated with Khmer culture is influenced by five factors, including: (1) religious ritual customs of the Khmer people; (2) ecotourism infrastructure; (3) traditional festival activities of Khmer people; (4) culinary culture of Khmer people; and (5) folk ritual customs of the Khmer people. From these findings, the study offers some managerial implications to improve the competitiveness of Soc Trang ecotourism associated with Khmer culture.

This paper examines the factors that drive temporal income diversification in rural areas of the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, based on a framework that conceptualized diversification as a function of a household’s capacity to diversify and incentives (both push and pull factors) to diversify. Drawing from five rounds of the Vietnam Living Standard Measurement Surveys covering a 13-year span (1993-2006), two panel datasets made from five cross-sectional samples are used for the analyses. The data are drawn from the Vietnam General Statistics Office. Both tobit model and Ordinary Least Squares model with random and fixed effects are applied. The main points emerging from the analysis is that income diversification is strongly influenced by household labor capacity. The relationship between household labor capacity and increasing insertion in non-farming wage activities is not driven by unobserved time-invariant factors such as household ability and motivation, but is instead driven by the higher labor capacity of households. In terms of the other household capacity variables, the effect of farm size is much larger in terms of retaining households in traditional occupations as compared to pushing them towards non-farm wage employment. Other variables such as household access to financial capital do not play an important role.

This paper investigates the determinants on decision to conduct seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) of listed companies on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange in Vietnam. Seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) are defined as the issue of more stocks by a firm to raise more capital after a primary issue. Using panel data collected from audited financial statements of 99 listed companies on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange during 2014-2018, the study employs a logit regression model by fixed effects method to examine factors that affect the decision to implement seasoned equity offerings of those companies. The findings of this study show that profit, revenue growth and company’s size have a positively significant impact on the decision, while dividend pay-out ratio negatively significantly influences the equity issuing decision. Furthermore, these results are robust after controlling for the forms of equity offerings, i.e. bonus stocks, stock dividends and rights to buy shares. These findings are consistent with economic theories such as agency theory, pecking order theory, and growth opportunity theory, and also could be explained by the real situations of the Vietnamese stock exchange. This study has important implications for corporate managers, policy makers and investors.