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Japanese Studies undergraduate programs offer students an engaging curriculum that provides a deep understanding of the Japanese language and culture. A degree in Japanese Studies equips students with valuable skills that are relevant in various fields, making it a popular choice worldwide. College students’ motivation is a critical factor in academic success and has been extensively studied in education. The paper aims to review the existing theories related to study motivation, language acquisition, study abroad drives, and motivation, then to consider the approaches and details that we could prioritize for investigating the motivations and drives of students majoring and minoring in Japanese Studies in universities.

© 2022 Institution of Structural EngineersIn this paper, a new C0 four-node quadrilateral plate element (MiQ4) is proposed for the static bending analysis of functionally graded (FG) plates based on a C0 higher-order shear deformation theory. By introducing a quadratic shape function for higher-order terms and a constant shear result, which is eliminated at the element level, the transverse shear stresses are free on two surfaces of the plates. The present finite element model has high accurateness and a fast rate of convergence, especially for both thin and very thin plates. In addition, the proposed element is insensitive to distorted mesh, hence, it is compatible with the investigation of complex geometrical plates. Although the proposed element does not need any shear correction coefficients and selected or reduced integrations, the shear-locking phenomenon does not appear even for very thin plates. Therefore, the computation cost and time are reduced and the spurious deformation or hourglass modes are avoided. A large number of examples have been exhibited that help to validate the convergence rate, correctness, and reliability of the proposed element. Then the present element is applied for analysis of FG structures to demonstrate the potential applications of the present plate element. Significantly, the paper provides a good element that can be used in many areas of engineering for the design, testing, analysis, and optimization of complex structures to reduce the computation cost and time as well as increase the reliability of the numerical results.

Hairy root induction system has been widely applied for studies of gene function, gene expression, and genome editing in numerous plant species. In this study, we developed and evaluated the performance of an in vitro hairy root induction system via Agrobacterium rhizogenes on several Vietnamese and international soybean cultivars. The efficacy of in vitro hairy root induction and of transformation using this system was varied and depended on soybean cultivars as well as transgenic constructs. The hairy root induction frequency of different soybean cultivars ranged from 61.67% to 100% after 5 days on culture medium. From 43.8% to 79.8% of hairy roots transformed with GFP-expressing construct showed transgene expression, while that for the construct with the gus gene was from 38.07% to 72.33%. Among tested soybean cultivars, DT26 demonstrated the highest transformation and gene expression efficacy with both investigated vectors. This hairy root induction system was further utilized for targeted knockout mutagenesis via CRISPR/Cas9 of two genes which are G03 and G09 in the DT26 soybean cultivar. Successful mutagenesis in the regions of targeted genes was confirmed by shifted and multiple bands compared to which of non-transgenic hairy root in PAGE analysis. Sequencing results of targeted regions presented various nucleotide deletions ranging between -3 bp and -25 bp in size in both two genes of interest. This study laid an important basis for future gene function studies and targeted gene editing investigations on soybean plants in Vietnam.

Endophytic fungi, microfungi that internally infect living plant tissues, are reported to have the ability to synthesize many enzymes, plant growth hormones and pharmaceutically active compounds similar to those in their hosted plants. This has opened a potential path of using endophytic fungi as a bioreactor for mass production of bioactive compounds at a lower cost. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a robust procedure for the isolation and identification of potential fungal strains that are capable of producing desired biological compounds. In this study, we reported an effective procedure for surface sterilization of 3 types of tissue samples (root, shoot and leaf) of 2 herbaceous plants (Catharanthus roseus and Scutallaria barbata) using commercial bleach (5% NaOCl), isolation of endophytic fungi from the sterilized samples and identification of isolated fungal strains by ITS sequencing analysis. A total of 48 endophytic fungi were successfully isolated from plant samples collected from Dan Phuong (Ha Noi), Phu Dien (Ha Noi) and Hai Duong city (Hai Duong). Based on results of morphological observation and ITS sequencing analysis, 48 endophytic fungi were classified to one of the four species, including Clasdosporium colombiae, Cladosporium halotolerans, Corynespora cassiicola and Albifimbria terrestris. The potential of the isolated endophytic fungal species for the mass production of pharmacologically active compounds will be investigated in future studies.

Forward osmosis (FO) considered as a promising separation process for nutrient enrichment in wastewater, is attracting increasing interest in integration with chemical precipitation and other technologies for recovering nutrients in wastewater treatment. In the chapter, the processes of nutrients recovery via FO-based systems are introduced in terms of mechanisms and influencing factors. Additionally, the key challenges related to the recovery systems discussed and some approaches are proposed to resolve these challenges. Future roadmap for future research and development on the nutrients recovery using FO-based systems are identified. Compared to aerobic FO-based systems, anaerobic FO-based processes need more investigations of their integrations’ efficiency in the context of nutrient recovery from wastewater. Emphasis is given to carry out more economic assessment and pilot- and plant-scale evolutions of the recovery systems, which makes the nutrients recovery via FO-based technologies more sustainable in wastewater treatment.

The study focused on the orientations of building sustainable new rural areas associated with urbanization. This was very necessary, in order to develop a concentrated, commodity agriculture and to form residential areas and infrastructure, which were suitable to the process of industrialization and modernization of agriculture and rural areas. The agricultural sector was restructured, and the living conditions of rural people were improved close to those in urban areas. The project of the National Target Program on building new rural areas in Vietnam was analyzed. The program has achieved many expected results. In which, the construction of new rural areas has achieved great achievements. The basic socioeconomic infrastructure in the rural areas was strengthened in a synchronous direction. The sustainable development of the rural economy was in the direction of increasing added values and raised people’s incomes and gradually narrowed the gap between rural and urban areas. The work of landscape construction, implementation of environmental sanitation had a remarkable change.