Search

Globally, coastal cultivation regions (CCRs) are facing irrigation water shortages due to the impacts of climate change (ICV). CCRs have repeatedly suffered from saline irrigation water, increases in temperature, and reduced rainfall, resulting in irrigation water shortages. The aim of this study was, therefore, to evaluate the impacts of weather variables on the rice water requirement (RWR) in CCRs in Kien Giang Province. The response of rice grain yield to weather variables was estimated by simulating the AquaCrop model under different crop cultivation schedules (CCSs). These schedules involved advancing or delaying the sowing date by 30 days compared to the current common sowing date (baseline) for winter-spring (WS) and summer-fall (SF) vegetation seasons. The AquaCrop model demonstrated accurate simulation capabilities, as indicated by the high correlation values of statistical error indexes during the validation and calibration procedures. The findings revealed that rice grain yields would enhance up to 7.8% and 5.6% compared to the baseline when CCSs involve sowing 20 days earlier for WS vegetation season and are advanced by 20 days for SF vegetation season. Overall, modifying CCSs for coastal rice paddies in the study area, while considering weather variables, would have a positive contribution by mitigating the adverse effects of ICV.

On-wafer measurements are of fundamental importance to the characterization of active and passive devices at millimetre-wave frequencies. They have been commonly known to be ambitious and challenging due to the occurrence of parasitic effects originating from probes, multimode propagation, crosstalk between adjacent structures and radiation. While a lot of investigations have been performed for conventional coplanar waveguides (CPW) measured on ceramic chucks, the parasitic effects occuring in conductor-backed CPWs (CB-CPWs) have not been fully understood yet. Therefore, this paper presents a thorough study for CB-CPWs based on electromagnetic simulations. Additionally, this paper proposes an analytical description accounting for the probe geometries to predict the occurrence of resonance effects due to the propagation of the parallel-plate-line (PPL) mode. For the first time, a new analytical description including the effects of the probe geometries is presented and validated by both measurements and simulations.

Poverty in rural areas remains a major concern for developing countries. In order to improve the lives of poor rural people, it is important to identify the key factors behind their poverty. Over the past two decades, rural development policy and research have focused on livelihood perspectives that help to explain intertwining factors affecting the way rural residents make a living. Yet, critics point out that the livelihood perspective focuses heavily on the livelihoods of households at the micro level and does not recognize the impact of wider socioeconomic contexts in the lives of rural people. The livelihood literature also gives little attention to power relationships, particularly gender issues. This paper seeks to address these knowledge gaps by investigating the livelihoods of poor women in Ca Mau province, a coastal region of Vietnam. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods with questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews, observations, and focus group discussions. Research findings show that women in the area possess poor livelihood capitals, particularly in human capacity and financial capacity. Moreover, some rural development policies are still not accessible, and they do not provide sufficient inputs for farming. The findings presented here uncover the deep interlinkages between livelihood capitals and the impact of the wider socioeconomic contexts on household livelihood activities and outcomes.