cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.893
title: Reaching the unreached : the role of civil society in providing access to education for migrant children from Myanmar in Thailand

description: The aim of the thesis is toexamine the current educational situation for Burmese migrant children in Thailand; and to analyse the different roles NGOs play, including the possible collaboration between local authorities, public schools and NGOs. Despite international agreements and national policies there are numerousmarginalized people without access to schools; no education has individual as well as collective consequences; and studies have shown that through cooperation between national authorities and NGOs can these children fully gain access to schools. Findings report a growing number of migrant children enrolling in either learning centers or a public school. Local authorities support, to a certain degree, with teacher training, curriculum development and network meetings; while NGOs and public schools cooperate in improving the children’s language skills. NGOs fill an educational gap for migrant children due tolack of engagement from authorities.Yet research discovers a great diversity in quality, opportunities and collaboration between the three provinces studied. Awareness of these children’s situation and needs is missing; the importance of providing education is not fully recognized and it is a deficiency of policy implementation. Nonetheless the responsibility for this inadequacy does not only rely on what the authorities are carrying out. There are also faults amongst public schools and NGOs; hence, there are several factors that acquire enhancement for future administration of the Thai education services; and quality of accommodation for migrants. Neither the pace of the process, nor the magnitude of educational opportunities provided Burmese migrant children today, are sufficient. This study suggests advanced capacity building, increasing awareness and enhancing progress as means to improve future access to education for Burmese migrant children.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.894
title: The rise of the Nguyen Dynasty and change in the power paradigm of early nineteenth century mainland Southeast Asia

description: This is a study of simultaneous political development during the last chapter of “traditional” state of the Mekong valley in terms of centralized expansion, spatial territorialization, and ethnic and peripheral cooperation prior to the coming of colonialism. It is constructed as a series of related case studies, connected by the theme of early state making project. The phenomenon evoked dynamic political and geopolitical development along the Mekong valley in shaping modern contours of the region by two main players of Vietnamese and Siamese who unprecedentedly produced state infrastructure and state institution into the complex terrain and margins. Given the Mekong valley as an integrated social and political space regardless of diverse physical terrains and cultures, interaction between ethnics and principalities created a certain “power paradigm” of political relationship which is described as “a “field of power”. The field was dominantly run by various form traditional power relationship, “network of loyalty”, kinship, and central-peripheral model. State power recognized the existence of this inhomogeneous political space and maintained vast area of ambiguity and unidentification along the frontier of core-state. Such power paradigm has been severely challenged by early nineteenth century Vietnamese state making project in order to approach closer to modern form of centralized state establishment. The extinguishment of traditional power relationship and replacement of directly territorial and administrative management from center gradually and fundamentally produces a new geopolitical structure throughout the Mekong region by design of unprecedented emerging state.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.895
title: Factors affecting the employment of Thai workers in the EPS in the small and medium-sized industrial sector of South Korea

description: The objective of this thesis is to study factors affecting employment permit system for foreign workers or EPS in the small and medium-sized manufacturing industry in South Korea. It focuses on the significance of employment and renewal of the employment contract of Thai labors after completion of three years’ work. The secondary data in this thesis are collected from various academic papers and the internet while the primary data are obtained from in-depth interviews with the director of the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, EPS center in Thailand and the Ministry of Labor that holds TOPIK test. It also includes questionnaires responded by certain numbers of Korean employers who employ foreign workers in EPS and have business in the small and medium-sized manufacturing industry in South Korea. The results showed that the factors affecting the employment of Thai labors that already pass the Korean language test, according to Korean employers, include gender, age and educational level. The factors affecting the renewal of employment contract after completion of three years’ work, according to the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, EPS center in Thailand and Korean employers, consist of four main elements: the ability to communicate in Korean, the skill at work, behavior and performance. In addition, Korean employers have commented that most Thai labors could barely understand Korean. Therefore, employers suggest that Thai labors receive proper Korean language training and knowledge about Korean culture, rules and work regulations as well as acquire more understanding when faced with 3D works in Korea to avoid any problems in the workplace and personal problems after working in Korea.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.896
title: Developing health impact assessment tools : a case study of cement factory in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Thailand

description: The main objective of this study was to develop health impact assessment tools (HIA) specific to the roofing fiber cement industry. This study has been conducted in two phases. The first phase is a descriptive review and basis of the study. The drafted HIA tools were appraised by HIA experts. The second phase is the implementation and evaluation of HIA tools through pilot testing in a fiber cement factory. The developed HIA tools were drafted according to the 5 steps of HIA approaches including: screening, scoping, appraisal or assessment, reporting and reviewing, and monitoring and evaluation. Both qualitative and quantitative measurements were used for assessing the occupational exposure risks in the factory and the community nearby. A cross-sectional study was utilized. Personal and environmental samplings and spirometry measurements were also collected. In this study, the HIA tools focused on risks and impacts on human health based on specific health determinants. Percentage values were categorized into five groups as follows: minimal health risk, low, moderate, high, and very high impacts on human health. The appraisal for HIA in fiber cement factories could lead to the employment of systematic determination of potential health impacts. This study employed the impacts on human risks into two-dimensions: health risk matrix of exposure rating and health effect rating. The health risk matrix score (HRM) was determined through the quantitative measurements on the health risk assessment. The affected populations in the near group (2-km; score = 20) have a HRM score slightly higher than the far group (5-km; score = 10), but the employees had a higher HRM score (score = 40) than both of the affected populations. In conclusion, the application of the HRM score as a HIA tool for roofing fiber cement factories could be employed for quantitative risk assessment. However, further study is warranted. This study suggested that the HIA conducting should be initially started with a preparation stage to gather important data and resources. Experts and/or the advisory committee should also step in at this stage. Stakeholders and affected populations should be involved in all stages from the pre-step through the monitoring and evaluation stages.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.897
title: A binary search algorithm for impulsive noise removal in compressed sensing reconstruction

description: Impulsive noise in compressed measurement signal (y) leads to the reconstruction of the sparse signal whose energy distribution is different than the original signal. In Approximated Measurement Preprocessing (AMP), the highest elements in y are successively removed until the energy distribution conforms to the one of images. This thesis proposes two greedy algorithms, namely Greedy Boundary Finder (GBF) and Greedy Steep Slope Finder (GSSF), with an aim to reduce the computational cost of AMP. Images are assumed to be sparse in octave discrete wavelet domain. The ratio of energy outside L3 subband and the total energy is used to detect the impulsive noise. Information in an image is highly redundant; therefore, some largest elements can be removed without causing severe degradation to the reconstruction result. Binary search is used to estimate the number of the noisy element to within +g of the actual number, where g is the predefined constant. The number of the reconstruction is a fixed number, when g is set as the unit of the percent to the length of y. GBF and GSSF uses the energy ratio and the change of energy ratio as the cost function for binary search, respectively. GBF and GSSF were compared with AMP, the reconstruction with Huber penalty function (HUBER) and Lorentzian Iterative Hard Thresholding (LIHT). The experiment on 100 1616 image blocks and 20 256256 images revealed that GBF and GSSF provided the comparable PSNR and visual quality to AMP, and required less computational time when the noise probability was higher than 0.05. Furthermore, GBF, GSSF and AMP were better than HUBER and LIHT. GBF provided higher PSNR with lower computational cost than GSSF. However, GSSF was more robust when the noise magnitude was smaller than the largest element in y. GBF and GSSF were not efficient in case that (1) an image could not be sparsified by wavelet shrinkage thresholding or (2) the noise magnitude was smaller than the largest element in y. The integration of the energy ratio to HUBER is being investigated for the rejection of small noise.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.786
title: Synthesis of poly(styrene-co-methyl methacrylate)/SiO₂ and polyisoprene/SiO₂ nanoparticles via differential microemulsion polymerization

description: Nanosized ethylene-propylene rubber (EPM) latex with a particle size of 47 nm was synthesized via an alternative route consisting of isoprene polymerization followed by hydrogenation. EPM yield of 94% produced from nanosized polyisoprene had high thermal stability and high storage modulus due to the saturated carbons domains of the ethylene segments in the polymer chains. Differential microemulsion polymerization was proposed for the synthesis of poly(styrene-co-methyl methacrylate) (ST-co-MMA)-SiO₂ and polyisoprene (PIP)-SiO₂ nanocomposites. To achieve the monodispersion and reduce nano-SiO₂ aggregation, core-shell morphology was designed, consisting of silica as the nano-core encapsulated by polymer as the nano-shell. Poly(ST-co-MMA)-SiO₂ with a particle size of 40 nm having a narrow size distribution could be synthesized using a low surfactant amount (surfactant/monomer weight ratio of 1/57). PIP-SiO₂ with a particle size of 20-60 nm and high polymer grafting efficiency of 78% was obtained. An approach of diimide hydrogenation was applied to synthesize hydrogenated polyisoprene (HPIP)-SiO₂ as new nanocomposite. The highest hydrogenation degree of 98% was achieved using a ratio of hydrogen peroxide to hydrazine at 1.5:1 and HPIP-SiO₂ nanocomposites showed the maximum degradation temperature of 521ºC resulting in an excellent thermal stability. PIP-SiO₂ and HPIP-SiO₂ nanocomposites could be used as new nanofiller in natural rubber (NR) latex due to a dramatic improvement in the storage modulus, tensile strength, tensile modulus, and anti-ageing properties and ozone resistance.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.787
title: A Rising tide lifts all boats? : the impacts of tourism on livelihoods and human rights in Ngwe Saung, Myanmar

description: Myanmar, a country that only officially opened its borders to tourists in 1996, has a new level of visibility amongst international travelers with the recent political transformations and lifting of both U.S. and E.U. sanctions. The government of Myanmar has officially adopted tourism development as one of its economic priorities, recognizing it as one of its biggest potential growth areas in the near term future. Myanmar represents an important case study in tourism development and human rights because of its historic isolation to foreigners, its poor track record on human rights, and the relatively new open door policy to tourism. This paper examines the impact of the tourism industry on the local people of Ngwe Saung, a coastal town in western Myanmar. This paper challenges the theory of modernization which attests that tourism developments produced by the rich will trickle-down to benefit the poor in aspects of improving livelihoods and more importantly, ensuring social and economic human rights. The research used a qualitative design, including 100 personal interviews, expert interviews from those in the tourism industry, and a small survey of villagers from Ngwe Saung. A key priority of this research is to determine how tourism impacts the daily life of a local villager and if livelihood and rights have been advanced by the development of tourism. Key findings from this study indicate that after the initial shock of the land seizure individuals from the Ngwe Saung community of all ages, occupations and ethnic groups experienced a positive increase in sustainable livelihoods through increased job opportunity and additional income, but to varying degrees. Livelihood improvements directly impacted human rights to education, health, hygiene, electricity, transportation, freedom of information and religious opportunity. Results show that tourism development reduced poverty significantly, elevating participants from extreme poverty to a level above subsistence which was otherwise unattainable without the jobs and income that tourism generated. These benefits are mainly due to inputs from the tourism industry itself, and not government assistance.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.788
title: Empowerment of Myanmar migrant workers as health volunteers for improving community health knowledge of common infectious diseases in Tak Province, Thailand

description: About two million migrants from Myanmar are residing in Thailand. Incidence of infectious diseases such as diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, malaria, Tuberculosis is higher among the Myanmar migrants compare to the incidence in the host community. Formation of teams of community health volunteers in the migrant community would improve the knowledge of people about common infectious diseases and mitigate the problems. There were 2 phases in the study. Phase (I) was a cross sectional study and the objective was to investigate the community health knowledge in relation to socio-demographic factors. Phase (II) was a quasi-experimental study to assess the changes in self esteem and self efficacy among the Myanmar migrant community health volunteers (CHV) after participating in empowerment program and their ability in improving health knowledge of common infectious diseases in their communities. There were 2 groups of participants in the study. One group was community members and another group was Community Health Volunteers (CHV). In Phase (II), recruited CHV from both intervention and control clusters received initial 2 day training related to common infectious diseases. After initial training, only CHV in the intervention clusters received follow-up booster trainings once a month for six months. The knowledge about infectious diseases was significantly related to age (χ² = 26.39, P &lt; 0.001) education level (χ² = 21.64, P &lt; 0.001), occupation (χ² = 39.3, P &lt; 0.001), legal stay status in Thailand (χ² = 21.16, P &lt; 0.001) and income (χ² = 9.81, P = 0.044), duration of stay in the community (χ² = 21.51, P &lt; 0.001) and Thai language proficiency (χ² = 6.16, P = 0.046). In phase (II), there were significant improvements in self-esteem and self-efficacy mean scores of CHV in intervention clusters. There were also significant increases in the community health knowledge in intervention clusters at the end of project. Based on the findings of the phase (I), uneducated young migrant agricultural farmers, without any legal stay documentation, with limited Thai language skill were marginalized people and therefore further health promotion intervention for Myanmar migrants should focus on this vulnerable group. The findings in phase (II) indicate that regular follow up meetings with technical and moral supports were necessary for a successful migrant CHV program. For sustainability, it should be linked up to CHV system of the host country.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.898
title: Conformance verification of finite state machines based on machine inference and model checking

description: The conformance problem has attracted much interest in the research field of software verification, since the implementation that doesn’t conform to the specification may cause some errors such as the communicating interruption in the composited application. However, the earlier works in conformance verification assume that the internal structures of the implementation are explicit. It may not always be the case such as the applications that implemented in .NET or Java. In this dissertation, we propose an alternative approach for verifying a conformance between the specification and the implementation whose only external behaviors can be observed. We use an adapted version of Angluin’s algorithm to infer a deterministic Finite State Machine (FSM) from the implementations. By transforming the obtained model to the modeling formalism LTS, the model checker LTSA can be used for checking the conformance criterion in our framework. From the experiment based on Web services composition, we can detect the execution trace of the implemented Web service that does not conform to the choreography specification. Moreover, since the assumption that the implementations have to be deterministic may be too restricted in some applications (such as, a communication system or a component-based system), we also present a novel learning algorithm, namely , which can be applied to infer both deterministic and non-deterministic FSMs.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2012.899
title: Cost-effectiveness analysis of public-private mixed models in national tuberculosis program in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

description: Public-private mixed system (PPM) in Tuberculosis (TB) program is internationally recommended by WHO to increase cooperation between public and private sector for effectively providing TB treatment. Although clinical benefits of PPM are apparent, the economic impacts of PPM are still unclear compared with the conventional system (previous TB system), in which only public health system provided TB treatments following DOTS. This study aims to measure the cost-effectiveness of TB treatment and incremental cost-effectiveness in the PPM models compared to the previous TB system from a health system perspective under Vietnamese National TB Program (NTP) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.Using activity-based costing method, costs were included financial and economic costs, excluded any costs related to patients. Effectiveness of TB program was measure through detection rate, successful treatment, and life-years gained. All data were collected for the year 2011, using USD in 2011.This study found that PPM was significantly increasing detection rates of all type of TB from 22.49% to 41.71%, of newly infected TB were from 40.52% to 98.41%; reducing total cost per life-year gained from 17.75 USD to 11.89 USD. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of PPM implemented was around 5.4515 USD per life-year gained. One-way sensitivity analysis and Probabilistic sensitivity analysis proved robustness of these results on ICER which can be variable from 0.3 USD (at 10%) to 15.3 USD (at 90%). Cost effectiveness acceptability analysis showed that the PPM system will meet 100% being cost effective if the willingness to pay is at least 704 USD.TB program in Ho Chi Minh City was cost effective, and PPM implemented lead to more cost effective. Particularly, the model 1 – “referring model” of PPM, in which TB suspects were screened in contractors, and then referred to the NTP system for detecting and treating, was strongly proven that it should be sustained, or even expanded because of the obvious improved effectiveness. PPM was more cost respecting with more effective.
DOI: 10.21227/76hc-4174
title: Power Density Modification Options on Paper Based Microbial Fuel cell

description: Microbial fuel cells (MFC) are one of the best sources of renewable energy but the power density achieved till now is not enough for present as well as future application purpose. Recent research gives us hope that a high amount of power density can be achieved by doing various modifications at different functional levels on the paper based MFC. This literature survey shows various modifications which are done in Microbial Fuel Cells till now such as improvement in Anode, Cathode and Proton Exchange Membrane, stacking that can be implemented in Paper based Microbial Fuel Cell to improve the power density. We think this survey helps people to understand what research is currently going on for MFC and how high power can be achieved from MFC.
DOI: 10.17632/d3x3s6nkcx.1
title: Data for: Gamble Evaluation and Evoked Reference Sets: Why Adding a Small Loss to a Gamble Increases Its Attractiveness

description: Data files for Exps 1- 5