State management of social media in Vietnam

The development of Internet in Vietnam since late 2000s represents an unprecedented opportunity for economic growth; it also poses a major challenge to political stability insofar as its development has coincided with the emergence of civil society and the rise of the social media. Vietnamese social media has been studied by many scholars from different point of views. Yet, the organisational side of Internet gouvernance and its inherent vulnerability remain obscure in the literature. Our paper will scrutinize the state management dilemma of social media. We will overview the two-pronged strategy which alternates development with control vis--vis social media; then we will examine how several management and control measures are combined and how the boundaries may blur between the political and online public spheres, making the states digital governance vulnerable and uncertain. Our analysis is based on the states regulations and information published online by official and social media, and foreign news services.

Penetration of Energised Metal Fragments to Porcine Thoracic Tissues

Energised fragments from explosive devices have been the most common mechanism of injury to both military personnel and civilians in recent conflicts and terrorist attacks. Fragments that penetrate into the thoracic cavity are strongly associated with death due to the inherent vulnerability of the underlying structures. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of fragment-simulating projectiles (FSPs) to tissues of the thorax in order to identify the thresholds of impact velocity for perforation through these tissues and the resultant residual velocity of the FSPs. A gas-gun system was used to launch 0.78-g cylindrical and 1.13-g spherical FSPs at intact porcine thoracic tissues from different impact locations. The sternum and rib bones were the most resistant to perforation, followed by the scapula and intercostal muscle. For both FSPs, residual velocity following perforation was linearly proportional to impact velocity. These findings can be used in the development of numerical tools for predicting the medical outcome of explosive events, which in turn can inform the design of public infrastructure, of personal protection, and of medical emergency response.

Why Are Firms with Lower Performance More Volatile and Unpredictable? A Vulnerability Explanation of the Bowman Paradox

This study investigates the negative relationship between firm risk and accounting performance known in the strategy field as the Bowman paradox, which has been generally attributed to differences across firms in their willingness to take risk. Most research to date relies on the behavioral theory of the firm to suggest that underperformers take greater risks to increase their performance to their reference point. As an alternative explanation, we suggest that the Bowman paradox may result from the inherent vulnerability of low performers to negative external shocks. Our panel analysis of 2,681 U.S. firms from 1980 to 2010 confirms that firms with lower performance within their industry are more affected by negative shocks to the economy. The asymmetric vulnerability of low performers to external events makes their overall accounting performance more volatile and difficult to predict by market analysts, even if all firms have a similar attitude toward risk taking and capabilities to manage change. Our vulnerability explanation is also supported by our empirical analysis of the 2008 global financial crisis as a natural experiment. Furthermore, we find strong evidence of a negative risk–return relationship using different methods to control for their endogeneity.

The ‘Question of Palestine’: From liminality to emancipation

While the gravity of the injustice and inequality experienced by Palestinians is now widely documented, evidenced, and acknowledged, when it comes to action the situation appears ‘impervious’ to international law and norms of global politics, with Israel largely enjoying impunity. This article argues that this state of affairs can be most coherently understood through a critical interdisciplinary emancipatory framework centred on ‘liminality’. Referring to situations and actors ‘betwixt and between’, the framework of liminality offers significant potential for understanding how particular actors and spaces are intentionally marginalised, disempowered, and silenced within global politics and international law. Furthermore, in revealing the root causes of liminality, and the inherent vulnerability of such spaces to contestation and subversion, the framework also opens up potential pathways of transformative emancipation. Applying the lens of liminality to Palestine, it is demonstrated that Palestinians have been deliberately corralled to a liminal space within international law and global politics in order to enable an expansionist Zionist/Israeli settler colonial enterprise. After exploring how Palestinian liminality manifests in global politics and international law, the article turns to a range of efforts to subvert Palestinian liminality and assesses prospects for a teleological emancipation for Palestinians.

Review of Fault Tolerance Frameworks in the Cloud

Fault tolerance is the most imperious issue in the cloud to provide reliable services. Inherent vulnerability to failure hampers the performance and reliability of cloud services. Hence, to achieve reliability, fault tolerance becomes a mandatory feature which is hard to implement due to the dynamic infrastructure and complex interdependencies. Numerous fault tolerance techniques have been developed in the literature to address the challenges of cloud reliability. A recent research survey presented in this paper attempts to integrate the different fault tolerance architecture. This study presents a critical research review on various existing fault tolerance techniques to improve services reliability, availability, and applications execution in the cloud. A comparative analysis, based on different critical metrics like failure prediction, detection strategy, failure history, VM placement, and limitations, of the reviewed framework systems is also included in the paper. This review intends to facilitate the development of the new fault tolerance technique for the cloud environment.