Search

Based on the absolute dynamic topography data from the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service, this paper applies the Topographic Position Index to develop a new approach for mapping the anticyclonic eddies in the South China Sea (SCS). The results show that anticyclonic eddies are active in the deep basin of SCS, and the five selected parameters (number or frequency, lifetime, kinetic energy, amplitude, and area or radius) of anticyclonic eddies have a similar temporal variation and a similar spatial distribution pattern. (1) As for monthly variations, anticyclonic eddies are active in late spring and most active in summer. (2) The El Niño–Southern Oscillation had a stronger impact on the inter-annual variations of anticyclonic eddies in the SCS before 2013, resulting in a significant transition of inter-annual variations of these five parameters in around 2004. After 2013, most of these five parameters had a minimum in 2015 and a maximum in 2017. (3) Analyses show that the eddy activities in the SCS are significantly influenced by the monsoon wind and the western boundary current like Kuroshio. Therefore, the areas southwest of Taiwan Island and east of Vietnam are the two areas where the anticyclonic eddies are most active, with much larger eddy kinetic energy and much higher eddy amplitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labor exports are currently considered among the most important foreign economic sectors, implying that they contribute to a country's economic development and serve as a strategic solution for employment creation. Therefore, with the support of data collected between 1992 and 2020, this paper proposes that labor exports contribute significantly to Vietnam's socio-economic development. This study also aims to employ the Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN), k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN), and Random Forest Regression (RFR) models to analyze labor migration forecasting in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. The study results indicate that the BPNN model was able to achieve the highest accuracy regarding the actual labor exports. In terms of these accuracy metrics, this study will aid the Vietnamese government in establishing new legislation for Vietnamese migrant workers in order to improve the nation's economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will compare the ritual performance in two transnational Buddhist organizations in contemporary Taiwan in attempt to investigate the influencing factors in shaping transnational Buddhism. The traditions of both Buddhist organizations studied in this paper are foreign in Taiwan: one is of Sri Lankan Theravada tradition and the other is of Vietnamese Mahayana tradition. The ritual performance chosen for the discussion is commonly translated into English as "Ghost Festival", though as to be shown later, the translation is somehow inappropriate. I will provide the ethnographic accounts of the Ghost Festival performed by the two organizations for discussion and comparison. Two influencing factors emerge from the comparative study are the role of ritual participants and the perception of the sacred. My discussion will show how these two factors shape Buddhist discourse in transnational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconstructing the role of provenance and transport mechanism of sediments deposited in deep-water environments is often complex because of myriad of factors such as variability in sediment sources, tectonics, bottom morphology, climatic changes and sea level fluctuations as well as current regime. The South China Sea (SCS) is situated at the tectonic intersection of the Pacific, Eurasian, and Indo-Australian plates, and provides an excellent natural laboratory for understanding source-to-sink transport processes of fluvial sediments. The Qiongdongnan Basin (QDNB) is located in the northern part of the SCS, and the deep-water area (>300 m) of the QDNB has a good hydrocarbon source and hydrocarbon accumulation conditions with a tremendous thickness since the late Miocene-Quaternary. However, the complex sources and transport mechanisms of sediments in the QDNB are undefined. In previous study QDNB may have a major provenance or a mixture of sources. In this paper, the sediments of two cores from the deep-water area of QDNB have been analyzed using several sedimentological and geochemical approaches, including measurements of grain size distribution(433 samples), the occurrence of minerals, and trace element geochemistry(37 samples)as well as strontium and neodymium isotopes(20 samples).The granularity analysis results first show that the 19S37 core can be divided into three stages while the 19S40 core is divided into two stages by clear vertical variations in grain size characteristics. Chlorite (62.0%) and Muscovite (33.6%) appear to be the predominant minerals in the 19S37 core, while the mineral assemblage of sediments from 19S40 mainly consists of kaolinite (37.4%), muscovite (29.2%) and chlorite (27.1%). The primitive mantle standardization curves and chondrite standardized distribution patterns of 19S37 and 19S40 are consistent and display enrichments in Th, U, Pb, and Nd and depletions in Ba, Nb, Sr, and Eu. In addition, the content of Sr fluctuates greatly with depth, which should reflect the influences of sea level changes and the relative proportion of various provenance components. The 143Nd/144Nd ratios and εNd values of the sediments from 19S37 are higher than those of the sediments from 19S40, and all the εNd values show narrow variations and range from −10.085 to −11.080. We conclude that the sediments of the deep-water area in the upper Pleistocene-Holocene were mainly from the sources of the Red River, Taiwan, Pearl River, Hainan Island, and Vietnam. The transport mechanism of the sediments from Hainan Island can be explained by the short distance between the source region and the sedimentary site, while the large amounts of terrigenous sediment inputs derived from the Red River and advantageous morphology make the Red River the largest sediment source to cores 19S37 and 19S40. The transport distance and amount of Deep Water Current could be even more powerful to make Taiwan be the second largest source of modern sediments in QDNB. • 19S37 core can be divided into three stages while the 19S40 core is divided into two stages. • The sediment of the deep-water area QDNB is mainly from the sources of the Red River. • The Pearl River and Taiwan Island have significant contributions to the whole NSCS. • The deep-water current and shallower Kuroshio current are the main pathways. • Sediments from the Pearl River were mainly transported by the Guangdong Coastal Current. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Rare diseases, also referred to as orphan diseases, are characterised by their low prevalence with majority of them are chronically debilitating and life threatening. Given the low prevalence and the widely dispersed but very small patient base for each disease, there may often be a disproportion in the availability of treatments and resources to manage patients, spur research and train experts. This is especially true in Southeast Asian countries that are currently in the process of implementing or revising their universal health coverage schemes. This paper aims to examine the status of rare disease management in Southeast Asian countries. It will serve as the basis for a more active discussion on how countries in the region can address an under-recognised rare disease burden and enhance national and regional capacities.Methods: The study consists of literature reviews and key stakeholders interviews in six focus countries, including the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand and five countries as best practice, comprising of France, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea. Rare disease management initiatives across each country were examined based on the World Health Organization's framework for action in strengthening health systems.Results: The results suggest rare disease management remains challenging across Southeast Asia, as many of the focus countries face fundamental issues from basic healthcare systems to funding. Nonetheless, there are substantial improvement opportunities, including leveraging best practices from around the world and organising a multi-stakeholder and regional approach and strategy.Conclusions: Southeast Asian countries have made significant progress in the management of rare disease, but there remain key areas for substantial development opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines generalized trust and trust in institutions in Confucian Asia, covering six countries namely, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, and one dependent region, Hong Kong. Using data from the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey, our study affirms the reliability and validity of using a two-item scale to measure generalized trust. Our analysis suggests that due to demographic differences, there are variations in the level of generalized trust of countries in Confucian Asia, despite the fact that these societies share a similar background in Confucian philosophy. The relationships between generalized trust and political trust, and between generalized trust and trust in public institutions, are weak but positive. The positive relationship between generalized trust and trust in economic institutions is only significant for some of the economies, while trust in international institutions has the weakest relationship with generalized trust for all societies. We conclude the paper with research implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwanese-managed factories in Vietnam treat workers better than in China. This paper seeks to explain this unexpected phenomenon. Four factors are seen to contribute to this difference: the two country's household registration systems, the living arrangements of workers in these factories, the behavior of the two nations' trade unions and, crucially, the role played by the two governments. This comparative study concludes that intervention by the state is critical in improving labor conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a recently developed functional analysis tool, Multiscale Window Transform (MWT) and the MWT-based theory of canonical transfer, this study investigates the dynamical processes responsible for the seasonal variability of the mesoscale eddies in the South China Sea (SCS). A three-scale energetics framework is employed, in which the original fields are decomposed into subfields on a nonstationary background flow window, a mesoscale eddy window and a high-frequency synoptic eddy window. Three local regions of high mesoscale eddy kinetic energy (EKE) levels, namely, the southwest of Taiwan Island (SWT), the southeast of Vietnam (SEV) and the northeast of the Natuna Island (NEN), are identified. The seasonal cycles of the mesoscale EKE in the three regions are not in phase, with peaks occurring around January, October and December, respectively. By diagnosing the canonical transfers between the background flow and the mesoscale eddies, we find that the seasonal cycle of the eddy variability in the SWT region is due to a mixed instability (baroclinic and barotropic instabilities), while barotropic instability plays a dominant role in determining the EKE seasonality in the SEV and NEN regions. This is quite different from the previous argument that baroclinic instability dominates the seasonal EKE in the SCS. The three-scale framework further reveals that high-frequency synoptic motions act to dissipate the lower-frequency mesoscale eddies through forward energy cascades. Besides the internal processes, external wind forcing is also found to influence the seasonal eddy variability, but is only limited to the NEN region. Our results highlight different mechanisms controlling the seasonal modulations of the mesoscale eddies in different regions of the SCS. • A Mixed instability controls seasonal eddy variability southwest of Taiwan. • Barotropic instability dominantly controls the eddy energy seasonality. • Wind only influences the seasonal eddy variability northeast of the Natuna Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]