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Truc Thanh Thai,1 Thinh Huu Nguyen,2 Phuong Thu Thi Pham,3 Han Hy Thi Bui,4 Tam Ngoc Minh Bui2 1Faculty of Public Health, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; 2Training and Scientific Research Department, University Medical Center Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; 3Hospital for Rehabilitation - Occupational Diseases at Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; 4Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, Hanoi, VietnamCorrespondence: Truc Thanh ThaiFaculty of Public Health, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, VietnamTel +84 908 381 266Email thaithanhtruc@ump.edu.vnTam Ngoc Minh BuiTraining and Scientific Research Department, University Medical Center Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, VietnamTel +84 906 951 668Email tam.bnm@umc.edu.vnPurpose: Healthcare workers (HCWs) are a crucial resource in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic but are vulnerable to both SARS-CoV-2 infection and negative psychological consequences. This study evaluated HCWs’ emotions, stressor experiences and coping strategies during the pandemic.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among HCWs at the University Medical Center in Ho Chi Minh City. The questionnaire was adapted from the MERS-CoV Staff Questionnaire to measure HCWs’ emotions, stressor experiences and coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic.Results: Among the 1423 participants eligible in the data analysis, the majority were female (71.1%) with a mean age of 34.2 (standard deviation 7.8) years. While most participants reported that they did their job because of their professionalism and duty as HCWs (87.4%), a high number reported feeling nervous and scared (86.0%). Most participants reported worry about transmitting SARS-CoV-2 to their families or friends (76.6%) and concern that a small mistake or lapse in concentration could infect themselves and others (76.7%). The most common coping strategies were following strict personal protective measures (95.3%), avoiding going out (92.5%) and reading about SARS-CoV-2 (92.3%). Females who had a higher educational level and less than 5-years work experience and those who worked at clinical departments and subclinical departments were more vulnerable.Conclusion: This study indicates an urgent need for psychological support for HCWs, especially for those at high risk of having stress. Interventions and support should utilize psychological resources and approaches effectively to adapt to the new situation during the COVID-19 pandemic.Keywords: stressor experience, coping strategy, motivational factors, health care worker, COVID-19

Introduction: Insomnia is a common disease in all societies and age groups. Among them, medical students are one of the population most susceptible to sleep problems. Studies from many countries have shown high prevalence of insomnia among medical students. Sleep diary is the gold standard for evaluating subjective insomnia and other sleep disorders. This research aims to study the prevalence of insomnia in Vietnamese medical students, associated factors, and their sleep patterns. Method: In a cross-sectional survey using stratified random sampling, a total of 176 medical students was recruited, each completed a self-administered questionnaire and a 7-consecutive-day sleep diary. Demographic data and lifestyle factors were obtained from the questionnaire, while sleep patterns and quality were collected from the sleep diary. We performed data analysis using SPSS ver 22, p

Prior studies on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation focus mainly on large firms. This paper aims to suggest new factors associated with CEO compensation for small, homogeneous firms, specifically, Australian early‐stage mining exploration entities (MEEs). We document a set of predictors of CEO compensation proxying for economic performance, including geological prospectivity components of the exploration and evaluation (E&E) asset account and proceeds from equity raisings that enhances survival probabilities. We find positive associations between these predictors and CEO remuneration. In terms of CEO pay mix, we find that E&E asset acquisitions and equity proceeds are both positively associated with the proportion of option value in CEO total compensation. This suggests MEEs allocate their cash resources to investment opportunities, rather than CEO compensation. Overall, these findings, coupled with a significant and positive pay‐performance relation, provide evidence supporting efficient compensation practices in the MEE context.

The article points out the shortcomings in the labor arrangement at the 11th long wall. The analysis results have shown: (i) The actual number of employees assigned to use is often much higher than expected. It is because Ha Lam Coal Joint Stock Company only designs for good conditions, but actually, the company faces many obstacles due to the characteristic production conditions; (ii) the actual productivity is much lower than the designed labor productivity because the calculation of the number of employees is not consistent with the production conditions of the long wall; at the same time, the number of manual workers for ancillary work is too much arranged according to actual needs; (iii) The current level of direct labor productivity at the 11th long wall is still low compared to the actual capacity, not motivating workers to increase labor productivity. The solutions to overcome the problems are (i) Complete the calculation of the number of employees considering the specific production conditions and the number of auxiliary workers; (ii)Re-arrange labor in manual auxiliary production to reduce labours; (iii) Recalculate the direct labor productivity assigned to the 11th long wall. With these solutions, the company will increase the initiative in production, improve labor productivity and lower product costs.

This study examines the current situation of responsibility accounting and proposed management solutions according to responsibility centers on public universities in Vietnam. The study applies quantitative research methods, and collected data through structured questionnaires to 138 public universities in Vietnam in 2019, receiving back 55 valid questionnaires. The data was cleaned and analyzed with SPSS software. The results show that most public universities in Vietnam assigned management responsibility to their departments, but responsibility accounting was not comprehensive since many universities are not financially autonomous. The Kruskal Wallis Test was conducted to compare the current situation of responsibility accounting among universities by the degree of autonomy and by geographic area. The research found out that totally autonomous universities assigned management responsibility to responsibility centers better than semiautonomous and non-autonomous universities did. Regarding the evaluation of management responsibility, universities in Central Vietnam rated specific quantitative criteria, residual income (RI) and returns on investment (ROI) higher than universities in the North and the South of Vietnam did. However, universities in the South of Vietnam rated the evaluation of profits by department higher than the rest. The study also suggests structure for establishing responsibility centers in accordance with public universities in Vietnam.

This study aims to research credit solutions for sustainable marine economic development in Tra Vinh Province on the case of aquaculture by using themethod of collecting secondary data from reports of the State Bank in Tra Vinh Province, Department of Statistics Tra Vinh Province, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Tra Vinh Province in the period of 2016 to 2018. By using statistical and general, evaluating and analyzing methods, the authors have assessed the realities of financing credit, clarified advantages and challenges for marine economy in Tra Vinh Province. Thereby, the study has implied policies for sustainable development of marine economy in Tra Vinh Province in the coming time.

This paper investigated the level of management accounting application in Vietnamese enterprises in relation to the management functions of planning, controlling, assessing and decision making. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used. Qualitative research was conducted with 23 directors and chief accountants. Quantitative research was conducted by sending questionnaires to 120 enterprises. The results showed that 100 percent of Vietnamese enterprises have been applying management accounting. The level and content of management accounting applications in enterprises varied by size, length of business operation and business sector. Small companies often applied conventional management accounting techniques while large ones used contemporary management accounting techniques such as activity-based costing, activity-based budgeting, analysis for decision making, target costing and strategic planning. The research provides an overview of the reality, effects of management accounting on enterprises, helping enterprises understand management accounting and ways to use it effectively in the future.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine effects of regional economic integration on the concentration of manufacturing firms in provinces of Thailand on the border with Cambodia. It aims to clarify the interactions between dispersion and agglomeration forces within a firm’s location choice in the presence of economic integration and thereby to explain the feasibility of the border SEZs. Design/methodology/approach The theory of industrial clustering and New Economic Geography provides a theoretical framework to understand the locations of economic activities when regional economies are integrated. This paper employs provincial level data to calculate industry location quotients across a 10-year period from 2007 to 2017 in central Thailand and uses firm-level data from industrial censuses in 2006 and 2011 to estimate logit models for two border provinces with Cambodia and three eastern seaboard provinces. Two base models and extended models are tested to explain the persistent agglomeration of Thai firms in each manufacturing industry. Findings The authors found a positive correlation between the agglomeration level in 2006 and the choice of firms toward the border provinces in 2011. The disaggregated analysis shows that depending on the initial level of concentration in each industry, there can be agglomeration or dispersion effects. The advantage of low trade costs and labor costs of unskilled migrant workers are not significant factors attracting firms to the border. Firms in industries with increasing returns are more likely to stay in the hub. Practical implications The disaggregated analysis by industry provides very important implications for SEZ policy interventions. The important role of agglomeration economies limits the extent to which such policies can be successful. It would be an enormous challenge for policy makers to initiate forces which are strong enough to induce firms to relocate away from areas with high agglomerations. Policy interventions with attractive incentives should be very selective to industries already have a certain degree of concentration in the provinces so as to reinforce the agglomeration effects. Originality/value The research extends the empirical literature on SEZs by offering a unique case study of an emerging economy with a strong market foundation rather than a transitional or developed economy. It is also different from other research on SEZs when taking into account the effects of regional integration on border SEZ formation and firms’ location choices. In addition, this study employs firm-level data rather than provincial data to bring empirical insights and fill in the knowledge gap on agglomeration economies in Thailand with the presence of regional economic integration.

We investigate whether bilateral exports of goods flowing from Vietnam to its 46 top trading partners are affected by corruption over the period 2000–2014. We capture the effects of corruption of V...

Sediment bioelectrochemical systems (SBESs) can be integrated into brackish aquaculture ponds for in-situ bioremediation of the pond water and sediment. Such an in-situ system offers advantages including reduced treatment cost, reusability and simple handling. In order to realize such an application potential of the SBES, in this laboratory-scale study we investigated the effect of several controllable and uncontrollable operational factors on the in-situ bioremediation performance of a tank model of a brackish aquaculture pond, into which a SBES was integrated, in comparison with a natural degradation control model. The performance was evaluated in terms of electricity generation by the SBES, Chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal and nitrogen removal of both the tank water and the tank sediment. Real-life conditions of the operational parameters were also experimented to understand the most close-to-practice responses of the system to their changes. Predictable effects of controllable parameters including external resistance and electrode spacing, similar to those reported previously for the BESs, were shown by the results but exceptions were observed. Accordingly, while increasing the electrode spacing reduced the current densities but generally improved COD and nitrogen removal, increasing the external resistance could result in decreased COD removal but also increased nitrogen removal and decreased current densities. However, maximum electricity generation and COD removal efficiency difference of the SBES (versus the control) could be reached with an external resistance of 100 Ω, not with the lowest one of 10 Ω. The effects of uncontrollable parameters such as ambient temperature, salinity and pH of the pond (tank) water were rather unpredictable. Temperatures higher than 35°C seemed to have more accelaration effect on natural degradation than on bioelectrochemical processes. Changing salinity seriously changed the electricity generation but did not clearly affect the bioremediation performance of the SBES, although at 2.5% salinity the SBES displayed a significantly more efficient removal of nitrogen in the water, compared to the control. Variation of pH to practically extreme levels (5.5 and 8.8) led to increased electricity generations but poorer performances of the SBES (vs. the control) in removing COD and nitrogen. Altogether, the results suggest some distinct responses of the SBES under brackish conditions and imply that COD removal and nitrogen removal in the system are not completely linked to bioelectrochemical processes but electrochemically enriched bacteria can still perform nonbioelectrochemical COD and nitrogen removals more efficiently than natural ones. The results confirm the application potential of the SBES in brackish aquaculture bioremediation and help propose efficient practices to warrant the success of such application in real-life scenarios.

In Vietnam’s society where the economy is under restructuring into a market one, the renovation of education started in 1982 and the comprehensive educational renovation have created huge changes in the national educational system in 2001. The educational renovation has been led by the Vietnam Communist Party’s (CPV) policy course, regulated by the country’s legislation and has opened up education opportunities, reduced social inequality in education, and changing educational level structure. A number of studies have clarified factors of educational opportunities and their relationship to the human resource and economy, but these studies are relevant mainly to societies with developed and developing market economy. Therefore, based on the systematical theory approach and literature analysis method, this paper concentrates on clarifying the education renovation triangle comprising education policy, education opportunity, and educational level in a society restructuring into a market economy in Vietnam.

Truc Thanh Thai,1 Mairwen K Jones,2 Thao Phuong Nguyen,1 Thao Van Pham,1 Han Hy Thi Bui,3 Loan Xuan Kim,1 Tap Van Nguyen4 1Faculty of Public Health, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam; 2Faculty of Medicine & Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; 3Woolcock Institute of Medical Research Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; 4Department of Medicine and Pharmacy, Tra Vinh University, Tra Vinh, VietnamCorrespondence: Truc Thanh ThaiFaculty of Public Health, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, VietnamTel +84 908381266Email thaithanhtruc@ump.edu.vnTap Van NguyenDepartment of Medicine and Pharmacy, Tra Vinh University, Tra Vinh, VietnamTel +84 914064340Email nvtap@tvu.edu.vnPurpose: Research conducted across different countries has consistently identified non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) to be a common and significant public health problem. This study examined the prevalence, associated factors and functions of NSSI, among a large sample of Vietnamese adolescents.Methods: A total of 1316 high school students (15– 18 years old, 63.3% female) across urban and suburban areas in Ho Chi Minh City, participated in this cross-sectional study. NSSI was assessed by the Functional Assessment of Self-Mutilation.Results: Almost half (43.9%) of the adolescents engaged in at least one type of NSSI within the preceding 12-month period and more than one quarter (26.1%) engaged in multiple types of NSSI. Hitting self on purpose (23.1%), picking at a wound (17.0%), or biting self (16.7%) were the most frequent behaviours. Severe forms of NSSI such as scraping, burning or erasing skin were reported by 17.2%. The most common functions for NSSI were to stop bad feelings (56.0%), to punish self (48.7%), to get control of a situation (44.0%) and to feel relaxed (42.2%). Symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress were significant factors associated with NSSI, particularly for participants who engaged in moderate/severe NSSI and multiple types of NSSI.Conclusion: High rates of NSSI were found in Vietnamese adolescents. There is a pressing need for the development and implementation of effective interventions to reduce NSSI. Strategies that promote positive mental health and reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress as well as approaches that help adolescents manage their internal emotions are likely to be beneficial.Keywords: non-suicidal self-injury, functions, high school students, adolescents, associated factors, Vietnam

Background. Preservation and restoration of skin integrity following surgery is paramount for optimal patient wound healing outcomes. Acute wounds such as incisional wounds, skin tears, trauma or burn injury cause pain, reduce quality of life and are a considerable economic burden to the Australian healthcare system. Despite considerable advances in surgical technique and even with a panacea of innovative novel wound dressings, our scientific and clinical understanding of wound healing prevention and management of acute wound complications continue to present a considerable challenge to clinicians and policy makers. Understanding the gaps in knowledge and identifying clinical practice deficits are key for prevention and management of acute wounds. Aims. This scoping review aims to (i) map current research evidence and outcomes in acute wounds management, (ii) map current research evidence and outcomes in acute wounds prevention and (iii) determine research gaps in acute wound research relevant to Australia. Methods. The framework for this scoping review will utilise the PRISMA-ScR framework developed by Tricco et al.1. We will search the following databases – Medline, CINAHL, Embase, Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI), Cochrane Library and PubMed from January 2010 to March 2021. Trial registries (e.g. ISRCTN, ANZCTR and clinicaltrials.gov) and websites and publications of professional associations for wound care will also be searched. Two reviewers will independently screen all titles, abstracts and full text for articles to include. Conflicts will be solved by a third reviewer. This scoping review will include both qualitative and quantitative studies on acute wounds conducted in Australia. We will extract data from eligible articles and results will be grouped according to area of research and synthesised in a narrative review. Ethics and dissemination. As we will use data (i.e., journal articles) from publicly available platforms this scoping review does not require ethical approval. Findings will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed journal and conference presentation and social media platforms.

This study investigated whether screening for symptoms of mental disorders and referral to mental health services was associated with decreased depression symptoms among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) in Vietnam. Four hundred PLHIV (63.5% male, mean age 34.8 (SD = 6.8) years) at two outpatient clinics in Ho Chi Minh City were interviewed by psychiatrists and also completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale (CES-D). One hundred and seventy-four (43.5%) were identified with symptoms of a range of mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety, alcohol use disorder, substance use disorder and HIV associated dementia and were referred to mental health services. Of the 174 PLHIV referred, 162 (93%) returned and completed the CES-D three months later and 125 of these 162 (77%) had attended a mental health service and undertaken treatment. A significant improvement was found in the mean CES-D scores of the 125 attenders from baseline (M = 19.0, SD = 7.5) to month three (M = 11.7, SD = 7.9, p < 0.001). PLHIV who had attended a mental health service and undertaken treatment demonstrated a greater reduction of mean scores on the CES-D compared to PLHIV who had either received a referral but not attended a mental health service to undertake treatment, or not been referred initially.

This paper analyzes recreation demand on the fringe of an urban center in Norway. Specifically, it investigates the potential impact of wind energy projects on local recreation values. Recreation areas near cities are often scarce and under increasing pressures from growing populations with associated real-estate development and expanding or emerging industries. Hence, public planners and policy makers who seek to make optimal resource management decisions need information on all opportunity costs, including those associated with diminished recreational access or quality. Two separate case studies utilize the travel cost method (TCM) to derive baseline recreation demands. Supplementary information from contingent behavior (CB) scenarios provides identification of the impact of wind turbines on recreation benefits. For a unique comparison, one case examines a possible inland wind farm near a popular local mountain area, whereas the other case examines an offshore wind farm near local beaches. Econometric estimations are performed in a joint revealed preference (RP) – stated preference (SP) pseudo-panel count-data framework. The analysis generates baseline consumer surplus estimates in the range of NOK 70–155 per trip and indicates that the wind turbines would have negative impacts that are both statistically and economically significant.

This literature review aimed to provide a narrative review of evidence on validity of clinical and microbial indicators of infection and to gain insights into the diagnosis of infection in chronic leg ulcers (CLUs). A search was conducted in Cinahl, Medline, the Cochrane Library databases, Embase, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Pubmed, PsycINFO, ProQuest dissertations, and Google Scholar from January 1990 to July 2017. The inclusion criteria were original studies, systematic reviews, and consensus documents focused on "infection" in CLUs, English language, clinical and community settings, and human. The reviewed studies were inconsistent in criteria for infection between investigated wound types and lack of specificity regarding wound types. There were few studies investigating the criteria for diagnosis of infection in leg ulcers. The identification of leg ulcer infection still remains problematic and relies on out-of-date and not uniform evidence. Literature in this area was mostly limited to level III and IV evidence based on The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Levels of Evidence, or expert opinion. This literature review showed seven clinical signs and symptoms that could be diagnostic for infection in CLUs, including: new, increased, or altered ulcer pain; malodour; increased ulcer area; wound breakdown, delayed or non-healing; and erythema and increased local temperature, whilst the microbial indicators used to diagnose infected leg ulcers were varied and regarded as less important.

Groundwater plays a key role in public water supplies around the world, and consideration of the social dimension is a key issue in sustainable groundwater management. In Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, the situation of groundwater resources is disastrous because the quality has seriously degraded recently. Hence, in this study, a social sustainability assessment framework of groundwater resources with a focus on Hanoi is proposed for the first time. An analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach was used to generate the main components (aspects and indicators) of this framework, which has been considered one of the most challenging tasks in AHP sustainability applications. To overcome these challenging tasks, we carefully reviewed and explored the current problems of Hanoi groundwater resources to propose 3 main aspects (quantity, quality, and management) and appropriately selected their 13 sustainability indicators for this target area. We introduce a sustainability index function (SIF) for indicators to clarify the relationship between each indicator value and its sustainability index. Furthermore, we consider both the conventional linear relationship, as it is usually developed in the literature, as well as a non-linear SIF to arrive at a reasonable sustainability assessment. For the Hanoi case study, the sustainability indices obtained using a combined linear and non-linear SIF method reflect the current problems well, that is, the social sustainability assessment is closer to reality. The sustainability indices of the quantity, quality, and management aspects of the groundwater were appropriately assessed as good, poor, and acceptable, respectively, resulting in Hanoi being rated at the acceptable level in the final social sustainability assessment. This result reveals that the population of Hanoi is satisfied with the quantity of water but dissatisfied with its current poor quality and its relatively high price.

Aims In RCT of adults with decompensated cirrhosis, GCSF mobilizes hematopoietic stem cells HSC and improves short-term outcome. An FDA-IND for sequential Kasai-GCSF treatment in biliary atresia BA was approved. This phase 1 study examines GCSF safety in Kasai subjects. Preliminary short-term outcome was evaluated. Methods GCSF (Neupogen) at 5 or 10 μg/kg (n = 3/group) was given in 3 daily doses starting on day 3 of Kasai surgery (NCT03395028). Serum CD34+ HSC cell counts, and 1-month of GCSF-related adverse events were monitored. The 6-months Phase 1 clinical outcome was compared against 10 subsequent post Phase 1 Kasai patients who did not receive GCSF. Results With GCSF, WBC and platelet count transiently increased, LFT and serum creatinine remained stable. Reversible splenic enlargement (by 8.5–20%) occurred in 5/6 subjects. HSC count increased 12-fold and 17.5-fold for the 5 μg/kg and10 ug/kg dose respectively; with respective median total bilirubin levels for GCSF vs no-GCSF groups of 55 vs 91 μM at 1 month, p = 0.05; 15 vs 37 μM at 3 months, p = 0.24); and the 6-months cholangitis frequency of 40% vs 90%, p = 0.077. Conclusions GCSF safely mobilizes HSC in Kasai infants and may improve short-term biliary drainage and cholangitis. Phase 2 efficacy outcome of GCSF adjunct therapy for sequential Kasai and GCSF is pending.

To provide an analysis of papers published by the Journal of Cancer Survivorship (JCSU) from March 1, 2007 (its inception) until December 31, 2020. Characteristics (locations, study type, cancer type, keywords assigned by original authors) of all included articles were extracted into EndNote X9 and were coded and analyzed using Excel, NVivo v.R1.3 and VOSviewer, v.1.616. Journal Impact Factor and citation counts of each manuscript were downloaded from Clarivate Journal Citation Reports and Scopus®, respectively. Published papers are predominantly from the USA, Australia, and the UK. While breast cancer continues to be the dominant cancer type, a range of different cancer types and populations with mixed-cancer types have been addressed in the journal. Cross-sectional designs were the most used. JCSU’s impact factor experienced a steady growth between 2011 and 2015 and stabilized over recent years (2016–2020), at 3.296 (1 year) and 3.830 (5 years). Keyword co-occurrence analyses indicated prominent themes including quality of life, physical activity, late effects, follow-up care, and psychosocial aspects of cancer survivorship. JCSU has made a significant contribution thus far by disseminating knowledge in cancer survivorship. This paper provides insights of JCSU’s success to date and recommends further diversification and directions for practice areas that are novel or have received less attention by the cancer survivorship community. This journal stands ready to publish new information that informs the cancer survivorship community on the multidimensional nature of cancer and facilitates translation into quality care across many different settings and across the globe.

Background:Data about the risk factors and pancreatic cancer in developing countries remain limited. We investigated for the first time the role of a number of risk factors (family cancer history, smoking, alcohol consumption, diabetes, inflammation disease, HBV infection) associated with pancreatic cancer among Vietnamese patients.Methods:We included all patients hospitalized at 4 Northern Vietnamese hospitals (Vietnam National Cancer Hospital, Bach Mai, Viet Duc, Thai Nguyen) and diagnosed with pancreatic cancer during the period from 2017 to 2019. Risk factors of eligible patients were collected and assessed the associations using a matched control study and logistic regression model analysis.Results:We identified 196 patients with diagnosis of pancreatic cancer of which 114 males and 82 females. The average age of the patient at the time of diagnosis was 58.28 years (standard deviation of 12.94, ranging from 25 to 87). Most of patients were diagnosed at advanced stage (85%). Smoking, diabetes, inflammation disease significantly increased the cancer risks (OR and 95% CI were 2.42 (1.38-4.37), 3.09 (1.54-6.68), 2.21 (1.42-3.45), respectively). HBV infection demonstrated a significant link with pancreatic cancer in univariate model (OR = 2.94 (1.08-9.36)), but not in multivariate model. However, cancer family history and alcohol drinkers did not show any significantly increased risk related to pancreatic cancer.Conclusions:Our finding showed smoking, diabetes, inflammation disease significantly increased the risk of pancreatic cancer in Vietnam.

Opinion mining (also known as sentiment analysis) through customers’ reviews or feedbacks which can identify the user opinion about different product features has received a lot of attention exhibited in numerous studies. The majority of recommender systems have recommended products based only on overall evaluation and primarily based on expert’s evaluation. In this work, we propose a method to explore Vietnamese reviews extracted from e-commerce websites in Vietnam to provide suggestions in products selection based on products’ features/functions. The proposed approach introduces a topic-based model to identify products’ features which are mentioned in customer comments/reviews. The proposed system is implemented with the integration combining the VietSentiWordnet to calculate the importance scores for the features of each product. We also construct a product recommendation database which can store customers preference and purchases history. The work is analysed on more than 2,000 Vietnamese comments/reviews about laptop products and is expected to be feasible to apply in practical cases.

Recent advances in deep learning facilitate the development of end-to-end Vietnamese text-to-speech (TTS) systems that produce Vietnamese voices with high intelligibility and naturalness. However, enabling these systems to speak Vietnamese and English words in the same utterance fluently remains a challenge known as the code-switching (CS) problem in speech synthesis. The main reason is that it is not easy to obtain a large amount of high-quality CS corpus from a Vietnamese speaker. In this paper, we explore the efficacy of three approaches, which are based on the Tacotron-2 end-to-end framework, to build such a Vietnamese TTS system under a limited code-switched data scenario: (1) CS synthesis based on grapheme-to-syllable (G2S), (2) CS synthesis based on speaker embedding, and (3) CS synthesis based on speaker embedding and language embedding. We handle English and Vietnamese words in the code-switched input text by converting them into Vietnamese syllables using our G2S model. For the speaker-embedding based approach, we combine Vietnamese monolingual data in our dataset with an English public dataset to train a multi-speaker Tacotron-2 system. The experimental results show that adding language embedding is effective, and training with character input representations outperforms phonemes. Thus, the speaker and language-embedding based approach achieves strong results in naturalness for CS speech. Besides, the G2S-based CS synthesis also has good results, with almost absolute English pronunciation accuracy.

Text normalization for Text-To-Speech includes several challenging tasks in natural language processing such as verbalizing abbreviations, Out-Of-Vocabulary (OOV) words, and chunking phrases for long sentences without punctuation. Instead of dealing with these tasks independently, we propose a multi-task end-to-end model based on a denoising auto-encoder. As enriching information via multi-task learning and text denoising, the proposed approach shows improvement in the text normalization task, especially for complicated cases which require context and language understanding. In addition, we also design a novel process of data prepossessing to leverage annotated data for training. According to experiments on a handcrafted test set of 200,000 sentences in Vietnamese, our model achieves an overall accuracy of 95.5%.

Background: Tumor budding (Bd) has been demonstrated to be a promising prognostic factor in many carcinomas and in gastric cancer. It may represent an optimal additional parameter that is helpful for risk stratification in gastric adenocarcinoma. Hence, the present research was designed to predict the survival outcomes of gastric cancer in Vietnam, applying the tumor budding criteria of the International Tumor Budding Consensus Conference (ITBCC) 2016. Methods: The present study was conducted on 109 gastric cancer patients who underwent surgery but did not receive neo-adjuvant chemotherapy from 2012 to 2015. The patients’ clinicopathological features were recorded. Bd was evaluated according to the 2016 ITBCC criteria and classified as Bd1 (0–4 buds), Bd2 (5–9 buds), and Bd3 (≥10 buds) grades, in addition to being categorized into 2 main Bd groups: low (Results: Of all the patients, 22.9% were classified as Bd1, 31.2% as Bd2, and 45.9% as Bd3 grades. Furthermore, 54.1% patients were categorized into the low and 45.9% into the high Bd groups. Patients with Bd1 and Bd2 grades (the low Bd group) exhibited the best prognosis, with 5-year overall survival (OS) rates of 85.7%, 90.8%, and90.3%, respectively. Patients with Bd3 grade (the high Bd group exhibited the worst prognosis, and none of them lived for 5 years (p < 0.001). Similar to OS rates, disease-free survival (DFS) rates markedly reduced from the Bd1 to Bd3 grade: Bd1, 95.0%; Bd2, 84.7%; and Bd3, 0% (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Patients with different gastric cancer Bd grades exhibited significantly different OS and DFS rates. The present study findings suggest that the ITBCC criteria can be used to stratify Bd for the treatment and prognosis of gastric cancer patients in Vietnam.

Background Clonorchiasis, caused by the fish-borne trematode Clonorchis sinensis, is a neglected tropical disease and a public health issue in endemic countries. In Vietnam, an in-depth analysis of risk factors for the condition is missing up to now. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of C. sinensis infection and associated risk factors in rural communities in northern Vietnam. Methodology/Principal findings A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 4 communes in Yen Bai and Thanh Hoa provinces where clonorchiasis is known to be present and raw fish consumption is a common. Using a simple random sampling approach, stool was collected from 841 participants over 6 years old for coprological examination, and a questionnaire measured knowledge, attitudes, and practices with regard to clonorchiasis in 757 participants over 15 years old. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression models were run to identify risk factors for infection with C. sinensis. The overall prevalence of C. sinensis infection was 40.4%, with commune prevalences ranging between 26.5% and 53.3%. In the final model, males were significantly more likely to be infected with C. sinensis (OR 2.00; 95% CI 1.31–3.05). Recent (i.e. last year) consumption of raw fish (OR 8.00, 95% CI 4.78–13.36), low education level (OR 5.57; 95% CI 2.37–13.07), lack of treatment (OR 1.82, 95% CI 1.15–2.89), being between 19 to 39 years old (OR 6.46; 95% CI 1.25–33.37), and the presence of an unhygienic toilet (OR 2.74, 95% CI 1.53–4.92) were significantly associated with C. sinensis infection. Conclusion/Significance This study demonstrated a high prevalence of C. sinensis infection in rural communities in northern Vietnam. Thus, control measures including, mass drug administration for those communes should be applied to reduce the prevalence. Moreover, specific health education activities should be developed for risk groups in C. sinensis endemic areas., Author summary Clonorchiasis, caused by the fish-borne trematode Clonorchis sinensis, is a chronic liver infection and is classified as a neglected tropical disease, particularly in some Asian countries such as Vietnam. Light infections with C. sinensis are asymptomatic, yet heavy chronic infections are associated with clinical complications such as, bile duct obstruction, hepatic fibrosis and the most serious complication being bile duct cancer. We carried out a community-based study on C. sinensis infection in rural communities in northern Vietnam. Our results indicated that the Thac Ba lake area in Yen Bai province is a hot spot of C. sinensis infection, and that Thanh Hoa province remains an area with widespread small liver fluke infection. Eating raw fish was confirmed to be an important risk factor for C. sinensis infection in Vietnam. Presence of infection was furthermore associated with gender, age, education and hygienic practices. Mass drug administration and improved awareness campaigns for the population in these regions are needed. Setting-specific interventions targeting different risk groups should be considered to reduce the disease transmission.

Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) have been developed to detect influenza A virus for the swift diagnosis and management of patients. However, despite the simplicity and convenience, the low sensitivity of RDTs remains a limitation for their use in point of care testing (POCT). In this study, we developed a rapid fluorescent immunochromatographic strip test (FICT) and the performance of FICT was confirmed by the real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) of H1N1, compared with that of RDT. The limit of detection (LOD) of FICT was improved by 16-fold compared to RDT. FICT showed 85.29% sensitivity (29/34) (95% Confidence Interval [95% CI]: 68.94 to 95.05), 100% specificity (26/26) (95% CI: 86.78 to 100.00), and a strong correlation (kappa; 0. 92) compared with rRT-PCR (20 ≤ Ct ≤ 36). In contrast, RDT (Standard Diagnostics [SD] BIOLINE Influenza Ag A/ B/ A(H1N1) Pandemic) showed 55.88% sensitivity (19/34) (95% CI: 37.87 to 72.82), 100% specificity (26/26) (95% CI: 77.07 to 100), and had a fair correlation with rRT-PCR (kappa; 0. 75). FICT had better sensitivity than RDT (P

This paper presents a solution for smart airport parking systems developed for Gold Coast airport. The solution introduces an innovative way of integrating industry standard parking sensors with OpenALPR and IBM IoT cloud-based platform to address a number of challenges in airport parking management including ability to automatically detect vehicle plate number and vehicle model at each parking slot, ability to operate in both indoor and outdoor environment, fast and easy in deployment and at the same time being cost effective. Although the solution is developed for airport parking, it is fully applicable to other parking management problems.

Background: Clinically, there are many systems of visual field staging parallel exist. The agreement between glaucoma function and appearance is still uncertain. This study was to compare visual field staging classifications (as function staging) with disc damage likelihood scale (DDLS as appearance staging) in primary open angle glaucoma (POAG).Methods: Cross-section study on 55 patients (90 eyes) examined and treated in Vietnam National Institute of Ophthalmology from 9/2016 – 9/2017. The MD (mean deviation), PSD (pattern standard deviation), VFI (visual field index) indexes were recorded and were used to classify glaucoma staging according to categories of eGSS (enhance glaucoma severity staging), mGSS (modified glaucoma severity staging), HPA (Hoddaps – Palmela – Adersons), AGIS (advance glaucoma intervention study) and DDLS. Using SPSS 16.0 software, statistically significance was tested with proper tests as Chi – square test, Fisher exact test, Kappa (to assess the agreement - disagreement), Spearman Rank (to assess the level of correlation).Results: Mean visual field indexes were -11.49 dB (MD), 5.85 dB (PSD), 74.2% (VFI). Compared to the DDLS, all systems had slight agreement (K < 0.2). The disagreement percentage was highest in eGSS (70%) then followed by mGSS (50%) and HPA (48.9%). In terms of definitive diagnosis, HPA and mGSS showed a substantial agreement (K > 0.6) with AGIS which is higher than that between eGSS and AGIS (retrospectively 0.773 and 0.75 vs 0.399) with p < 0.001. In terms of staging detection, the agreement between HPA &mGSS and AGIS was substantial (K > 0.6) while that between eGSS and AGIS was fair (K < 0.4).Conclusion: mGSS and HPA tend to show the stronger agreement with standard classifications than eGSS. mGSS should be used in clinical practice and research.

Hydropower has made a significant contribution to the economic development of Vietnam, thus it is important to monitor the safety of hydropower dams for the good of the country and the people. In this paper, dam horizontal displacement is analyzed and then forecasted using three methods: the multi-regression model, the seasonal integrated auto-regressive moving average (SARIMA) model and the back-propagation neural network (BPNN) merging models. The monitoring data of the Hoa Binh Dam in Vietnam, including horizontal displacement, time, reservoir water level, and air temperature, are used for the experiments. The results indicate that all of these three methods can approximately describe the trend of dam deformation despite their different forecast accuracies. Hence, their short-term forecasts can provide valuable references for the dam safety.

Mutations and amplification of the fms-like receptor tyrosine kinase FLT3 gene, such as those found in MV-4-11 cells, are common in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Such mutations result in aberrant activation of FLT3, increased growth and survival of tumor cells, and the development of refractory forms of AML with poor patient outcomes. In addition, AXL receptor tyrosine kinase imparts chemotherapeutic resistance in AML. MV-4-11 is a human biphenotypic B myelomonocytic leukemia with t(4;11)(q21;q23) chromosomal translocation commonly found in AML patients; it possesses a homozygous in-frame tandem repeat insertion in the FLT3 allele resulting in constitutively phosphorylated FLT3. Commonly employed preclinical orthotopic models of AML are primarily evaluated based on morbidity and mortality, which provide limited real time information on tumor burden and dissemination. The purpose of this study is to develop a MV-4-11 mouse model that allows the quantification and anatomical localization of the AML cells by monitoring bioluminescent signal in live animals and to utilize this model to investigate the efficacy of a FLT3/AXL inhibitor, gilteritinib. This poster describes a) the production of luciferase-expressing human MV-4-11 (MV-4-11-luc) cells via lentiviral transduction, b) the characterization of MV-4-11-luc progression in two models of immunocompromised mice, c) the efficacy of the FLT3/AXL kinase inhibitor gilteritinib against systemic MV-4-11-luc compared with two standard AML therapies, cytarabine and cyclophosphamide and d) the development of a humanized MV-4-11 tumor bearing model in NCG mice. Bioluminescence imaging revealed dose dependent tumor growth localized to the hind limbs and peritoneal cavity, which disseminated and intensified over time. Characteristic moribundity associated with disease progression was observed in this model. By comparison, robust growth of both parental and luc-transduced MV-4-11 was also observed in the highly immunodeficient NCG mice with or without prior myeloablation. Efficacy studies in NCG mice bearing parental or luciferase-tagged MV-4-11 cells demonstrated potent anti-tumor activity using the FLT3/AXL inhibitor. Bioluminescent imaging of orthotopic MV-4-11-luc xenografts in immunocompromised mice is a quantitative and sensitive method that provides anatomical context for assessing the efficacy of AML therapeutics. Ongoing and future work is focused on a) genetic profiling of MV-4-11 tumors after treatment with gilteritinib, b) further characterization of a humanized MV-4-11 model to evaluate immune-modulating therapeutics, and c) utilizing the model to evaluate activity of cell therapies that target AML. Citation Format: Na Li, Vivek Mahajan, Lindsay Butler, Elizabeth Rainbolt, Shasta Kidder, Kay Meshaw, Diana Gietl, Susan Yeyeodu, Anya Avrutskaya, Jing Wan, Thi Bui, Chassidy Hall, David P. Harris. Inhibition of FLT3 and AXL by gilteritinib controls systemic tumor growth in luciferase-transduced MV-4-11 acute myeloid leukemia [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021; 2021 Apr 10-15 and May 17-21. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(13_Suppl):Abstract nr 2933.

Greater than 50% of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy at some point during their cancer treatment to control solid tumor growth (Harrington 2011). In addition to the direct action of radiation on tumor cell proliferation, radiation also has the potential to stimulate an anti-tumor immune response (Weichselbaum 2017). The success of immune checkpoint therapies such as anti-PD-1, anti-PD-L1, and anti-CTLA-4 inhibitory antibodies has driven large investment into the discovery of novel immune-oncology therapies. While the clinical response to immune checkpoint inhibitors can be profound for those patients that respond, there still exists a large percentage of patients that do not see benefit. In order to expand the number of patients that may respond to immune checkpoint inhibition, combination with radiation therapy needs to be tested and in fact a large number of preclinical and clinical studies are being conducted (for review see Asna 2019). Preclinical syngeneic tumor models are a critical means to assess new immunotherapies and drive preclinical programs. E0771 is a medullary breast adenocarcinoma cell line originally isolated from a spontaneous tumor and can be implanted subcutaneously in C57BL/6 mice (Ewens 2005). In order to characterize the E0771 syngeneic breast tumor model for future studies with radiation and immunotherapy, we assessed the efficacy changes in response to various schedules of radiation doses with and without either anti-PD-1 or anti-CTLA-4 antibody therapies. In addition, we analyzed the tumor infiltrating immune cell populations following radiation therapy. E0771 is sensitive to radiation therapy with a clear dose response. Radiation administered either as a single dose, hypofractionated, or hyperfractionated gave similar tumor responses. Flow cytometry analysis shows a higher infiltration of T regulatory cells compared with CD8+ T cells at baseline, which is exacerbated by irradiation. The CD8/Treg ratio is reversed with the addition of anti-CTLA-4 treatment to radiation and resulted in curative responses for 9 of 10 mice in the combination group. Citation Format: Patrick Fadden, Thi Bui, Kelli Davis, David Hurtado, Emily Sugg, Abigail Svancarek, Ian Belle, Chassidy Hall. Radiation therapy and immune checkpoint inhibitor combinations in the E0771 medullary breast adenocarcinoma [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021; 2021 Apr 10-15 and May 17-21. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(13_Suppl):Abstract nr 1558.

Objectives People with diabetes are at high risk of polypharmacy owing to complex treatment of diabetes and comorbidities. Polypharmacy is associated with increased risk of adverse reactions and decreased compliance. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to assess polypharmacy in people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and associated diabetes-related factors in rural areas in Vietnam. Method People with T2D (n = 806) who had received treatment for diabetes at a district hospital were invited to participate in a questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey. Polypharmacy was defined as ≥5 types of medicine and assessed as a) prescription medicine and non-prescription/over the counter (OTC) medicine and b) prescription medicine and non-prescription/OTC, herbal and traditional medicine, and dietary supplement. Multiple logistic regression was used to investigate the association between polypharmacy and diabetes specific factors: duration, comorbidities and diabetes-related distress. Results Of the people with T2D, 7.8% had a medicine use corresponding to polypharmacy (prescription medicine and non-prescription/OTC), and 40.8% when herbal and traditional medicine, and dietary supplement were included. Mean number of medicine intake (all types of medicines and supplements) were 3.8±1.5. The odd ratios (ORs) of polypharmacy (medicine and supplements) increased with diabetes duration (5 years OR = 1.74; 95%CI: 1.14–2.64 as compared to ≤1-year duration of diabetes), number of comorbidities (1–2 comorbidities: OR = 2.0; 95%CI: 1.18–3.42; ≥3 comorbidities: OR = 2.63;95%CI: 1.50–4.61 as compared to no comorbidities), and suffering from diabetes-related distress (OR = 1.49; 95%CI: 1.11–2.01) as compared to those without distress. Conclusions In rural northern Vietnam, persons with longer duration of T2D, higher number of comorbidities and diabetes-related stress have higher odds of having a medicine use corresponding to polypharmacy. A high proportion of people with T2D supplement their prescription, non-prescription/OTC medicine with herbal and traditional medicine and dietary supplements.

The mining sector faces some of the most difficult sustainability challenges of any industrial sector. The mining sector is remarkably significant to the development of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) region, because the majority of global trade and investment in this region depends on this sector. Therefore, the assessment of mining sector sustainability at national and global scales in APEC economies is an important task. So far, however, mining sector sustainability assessment frameworks have only been developed at small scales, such as companies and cities. In this study, therefore, it is proposed an indicator-based sustainability assessment framework (iSAF) to assess mining sector sustainability at national and global scales. In this framework, fuzzy logic was utilized to adequately deal with the uncertainty and vagueness of human expressions. The conventional fuzzy scales were suitably modified in the proposed framework to facilitate confident decision-making by the relevant stakeholders. In order to avoid repeatedly conducting the judgment until the acceptable consistency was obtained, iSAF implemented an innovative theory to deal with unacceptable consistencies in judgment. The proposed iSAF was applied to the mining sector of APEC economies using data from the APEC 2010 Project. As for the results, three important criteria including economic, environmental, and social criteria and twenty significant indicators were appropriately selected to cover the actual situation in the sector. The results showed that iSAF was a suitable framework for preventing uncertainty and vagueness in decision-making. iSAF was found to provide crucial support to decision-makers, not only in identifying and structuring the main components contributing to sustainability, but also in pointing out the factors in which significant investment should be made to effectively improve sustainability.

© 2017 International Council of Nurses Aim: To identify the practice patterns of the Australian registered nurse workforce according to position title and to map these disparate titles across all jurisdictions of the country. Introduction: Effective nursing workforce planning can contribute to improved patient care and increased effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare systems. Background: The prevailing approach to nursing workforce planning focuses on number of nursing staff needed in relation to the number of patients. The level of expertise and skill mix of registered nurses as a variable in workforce planning is rarely considered. Methods: A national cross-sectional electronic survey of registered nurses in Australia was conducted using the validated Advanced Practice Role Delineation tool developed from the Strong Model of Advanced Practice. The study involved a sample of 5599 registered nurses. Results: Sixty-six nursing position titles nationally were mapped using cluster analysis technique and gave rise to seven clusters of equivalent Australian jurisdictional nursing position titles and practice profiles. Discussion: Effective workforce policy and planning is reliant upon access to reliable evidence. This research is an international first in that it has provided comprehensive knowledge of the clinical level and practice profiles of a national nursing workforce. Implications for nursing policy: Effective, patient-centred workforce planning must consider both the numerical and expertise mix of a nursing workforce. This research provides Australian health service and policy planners with evidence-base knowledge of the nursing workforce. Internationally, this research establishes a platform from which to develop validated tools and established processes to support replication of this research.

We investigate aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characters of bulk tetraphenylethene (TPE) derivatives with nonpolar and polar exterior chains. The bulk TPE derivatives with nonpolar dodecyl and polar di(ethylene oxide) chains are in liquid crystal (LC) and crystalline phases, respectively, at room temperature. The mobile LC character of the TPE derivatives in bulk is crucial for high AIE efficiency because the mobile LC character is effective in minimizing the number of undesirable nonemissive local sites in aggregates and inducing a homogeneous zigzag-stacked columnar structure with j-type coupled transition dipoles of the TPE derivatives. The mobile LC characteristics of AIE luminogens can be advantageous for highly efficient solid-state emission.

Horizontal displacement of hydropower dams is a typical nonlinear time-varying behavior that is difficult to forecast with high accuracy. This paper proposes a novel hybrid artificial intelligent approach, namely swarm optimized neural fuzzy inference system (SONFIS), for modeling and forecasting of the horizontal displacement of hydropower dams. In the proposed model, neural fuzzy inference system is used to create a regression model whereas Particle swarm optimization is employed to search the best parameters for the model. In this work, time series monitoring data (horizontal displacement, air temperature, upstream reservoir water level, and dam aging) measured for 11 years (1999–2010) of the Hoa Binh hydropower dam were selected as a case study. The data were then split into a ratio of 70:30 for developing and validating the hybrid model. The performance of the resulting model was assessed using RMSE, MAE, and R 2. Experimental results show that the proposed SONFIS model performed well on both the training and validation datasets. The results were then compared with those derived from current state-of-the-art benchmark methods using the same data, such as support vector regression, multilayer perceptron neural networks, Gaussian processes, and Random forests. In addition, results from a Different evolution-based neural fuzzy model are included. Since the performance of the SONFIS model outperforms these benchmark models with the monitoring data at hand, the proposed model, therefore, is a promising tool for modeling horizontal displacement of hydropower dams.

Background: Since chronic hyperglycemia-related damage to small blood vessels results in complications, patients with longer durations of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are more likely to develop microvascular complications, such as retinopathy, neuropathy and nephropathy, which are very harmful to the health of humans. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the prevalence of diabetes-related microvascular complications and to explore their risk factors in patients with T2DM in Tianjin, China. Methods: This observational, cross-sectional study was conducted at 8 hospitals in urban and suburban regions of Tianjin, China. The information collected from the subjects mainly included demographic characteristics, anthropometric measurements and clinical information. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression was used to identify the possible risk factors for microvascular complications (retinopathy, neuropathy and nephropathy). Results: A total of 4,490 patients with T2DM from 8 hospitals in Tianjin, China were selected from November 2015 to January 2016. Of the study subjects, 2,270 (50.6%) were males. The median age was 64.0±13.0 years. The percentage of patients with T2DM who had at least one microvascular complication was 34.5%. The prevalence rates of neuropathy, retinopathy, and nephropathy were 23.5%, 17.4%, and 10.8%, respectively. The results of the multivariate logistic regression showed that the duration of diabetes, insulin use, and the presence of hypertension and dyslipidemia were the main risk factors for developing microvascular complications of T2DM. Conclusions: The incidence of diabetes complications in Tianjin is high. Increasing the control of risk factors can reduce the occurrence of complications to reduce the disease burden and improve the quality of life of patients.

Aims and objectives : To validate the ability of factors to predict infection in adults with chronic leg ulcers over a 12-week period. Background: Leg ulcers affect ~3% of older adults and are often hard to heal. Infection is a leading contributor for delayed healing, causing delayed wound healing, increased hospitalisation, increased healthcare costs and reduced patient quality of life. The importance of early identification of infection has been highlighted for decades, yet little is known about factors that are associated with increased risk of infection in this specific population. Design : A longitudinal, prospective observational study in a single centre. Methods : Between August 2017 and May 2018, a total of 65 adults with chronic leg ulcers were prospectively observed for a 12-week period. Patients were recruited from an outpatient wound clinic at a tertiary hospital in Australia. Data were collected from recruitment (baseline) and each visit (weekly or fortnightly) up until 12 weeks. Descriptive statistics were calculated for all variables. A Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to identify predictive factors for infection. The TRIPOD guidelines for reporting were followed (See Data S1). Results : The sample consisted of 65 adults with chronic leg ulcers, and 9.2% of these had their ulcer infected at baseline. Two predictive factors, using walking aids and gout, were found to be significantly related to increased likelihood of developing infection within 12 weeks. Conclusion : The present study showed that patients who either used walking aids or were diagnosed with gout were at greater risk of infection compared to those without these factors. Relevance to clinical practice: These findings provide new information for clinicians in early identification of patients at risk of infection, and for patients in enhancing their awareness of their own risk.

BackgroundMathematical and computational models are widely used for examining transmission, pathogenicity and propagation of infectious diseases. Software implementation of such models and their accompanied modelling tools do not adhere to well established software engineering principles. These principles include bothmodularityandclear separation of concernsthat can promotereproducibilityandreusabilityby other researchers. On the contrary the software written for epidemiology is monolithic, highly coupled and severely heterogeneous. This reality ultimately makes these computational models hard to study and to reuse, both because of the programming competence required and because of the incompatibility of the different approaches involved. Our goal withKendrickis to simplify the creation of epidemiological models through a unified Domain-Specific Language for epidemiology that can support a variety of modelling and simulation approaches classically used in the field. This goal can be achieved by promotingreproducibilityandreusewith modular modelling abstractions.ResultsWe show through several examples how our modular abstractions and tools can reproduce uniformly complex mathematical and computational models of epidemics, despite being simulated by different methods. This is achieved without requiring sophisticated programming skills from the part of the user. We then successfully validate each kind of simulation through statistical analysis between the time series generated and the known theoretical expectations.ConclusionsKendrickis one of the few DSLs for epidemiology that does not burden its users with implementation details or expecting sophisticated programming skills. It is also currently the only language for epidemiology that supports modularity through clear separation of concerns that promote reproducibility and reuse.Kendrick’s wider adoption and further development from the epidemiological community could boost research productivity in epidemiology by allowing researchers to easily reproduce and reuse each other’s software models and simulations. The tool can also be used by people who are not necessarily epidemiology modelers.

Prior studies on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation have mainly focused on large firms from a broad spectrum of industries. This study aims to provide further evidence on the determinants of CEO compensation for small, homogeneous firms. Using a sample of Australian early-stage mining exploration entities (MEEs) over the 2004−2017 period, we document a set of predictors of CEO compensation that are unique to this group of firms. First, fluctuations in commodity prices are found to be positively associated with CEO stock options value. Second, we find that signals of MEEs’ future prospects, conveyed through additions to and acquisition of capitalised exploration and evaluation expenditure, have positive impacts on CEO compensation. Third, proceeds from equity raisings indicate CEOs’ effort and skills to improve shareholder wealth, resulting in higher compensation. Lastly, we find some evidence supporting the relevance of non-executive directors’ advisory role over their monitoring role.

Acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) have been found to contribute, predominantly, to increasing costs of COPD&mdash, a major public health issue. This study aimed to fill the gap in literature concerning costs of AECOPD in Vietnam, by examining the direct cost of AECOPD hospitalization and determining potentially associated factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted at the Respiratory Center of Bach Mai Hospital, Hanoi. A total of 57 participants were selected. Information regarding sociodemographic features, clinical characteristics, and hospitalization costs were collected. A multivariate generalized linear regression model was utilized to determine the factors associated with hospitalization costs. The mean total and daily hospitalization cost were 18.3 million VND (SD = 12.9) and 2.5 million VND (SD = 3.2), respectively. Medication cost accounted for 53.9% of hospitalization cost (from 44.0% in the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease Classification A (GOLD A) to 55.3% in GOLD C). Patients having GOLD D COPD (Coef. = 5.78, 95% CI = 0.73&ndash, 10.83), higher age (Coef. = 0.37, 95% CI = 0.13&ndash, 0.61), and higher duration of hospitalization (Coef. = 1.91, 95% CI = 1.28&ndash, 2.53) had higher hospitalization costs (p &lt, 0.05). This study suggested that interventions to screen COPD patients as well as provide timely treatment should be conducted widely in the community in order to avoid any unnecessary hospitalization cost, consequently reducing the economic burden of COPD.

The arrival of cloud computing platform Google Earth Engine (GEE) in 2010 has brought a breakthrough for analysing and processing spatial data. Applying algorithms on this platform has overcome the limitations of commercial software while processing data in building thematic databases, including land cover data. These data are a critical factor for climate change and hydrological models. This study applied Object-based Random Forest (RF) classification in the Google Earth Engine platform to produce land cover data from Landsat 8 data of the Vu Gia - Thu Bon river basin. The classification results showed 7 categories of land cover consisting of artificial forest, natural forest, paddy area, urban area, rural area, bare land, and body water, with an overall accuracy Kappa of 0.70.

Exposing to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) has been identified as one of the major contributing factors to poor mental health and suicide in adolescents. However, little is known about this relationship in Vietnamese adolescents. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of ACEs on depression, psychological distress and suicidal thought among Vietnamese adolescents across different areas in Vietnam. Cross-sectional surveys were conducted among 4957 secondary school and high school students aged 13-20 in urban area, rural area, border area and mountainous area. The students were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire which included the Center for Epidemiological studies - Depression, the Kessler-10 and ACE questionnaire from the WHO Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. Suicidal thought was evaluated by a single question from the U.S. Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Among 4720 students included in the analysis, 54.4% were female. The prevalence of depression, psychological distress and suicidal thought was 22.9%, 30.6% and 10.9% respectively. About 86% of participants experienced at least one type of ACEs and nearly 56% reported multiple types of ACEs. Students with four or more types of ACEs had 6.98 (95% CI 5.09 -9.56), 4.72 (95 % CI 3.58-6.23) and 6.43 (95 % CI 4.45-9.30) times higher in odds of having depression, psychological distress and suicidal thought respectively. In conclusion, ACEs are common in Vietnamese adolescents and are strongly associated with depression, psychological distress and suicidal thought. Our finding indicates urgent needs for interventions targeting both ACEs and depression, psychological distress in Vietnamese adolescents.

Antibiotic residues in aquatic products in Vietnam were investigated. A total of 511 fish and shrimp samples were collected from markets in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Thai Binh (TB), and Nha Trang (NT) from July 2013 to October 2015. The samples were extracted with 2% formic acid in acetonitrile and washed with dispersive C18 sorbent. Thirty-two antibiotics were analyzed by LC-MS/MS. Of the 362 samples from HCMC, antibiotic residues were found in 53 samples. Enrofloxacin was commonly detected, at a rate of 10.8%. In contrast, samples from TB and NT were less contaminated: only 1 of 118 analyzed samples showed residues in TB and only 1 of 31 showed residues in NT. These differences were attributed to the local manufacturing/distribution systems. To understand the current status of antibiotic use and prevent adverse effects that may be caused by their overuse, continual monitoring is required.

Basing on the structure, stratigraphic, depositional conditions and petroleum system the petroleum prospect, Song Hong northern basin, particularly, blocks A and B was evaluated. SIgnificantly high gas potential areas are Hong Ha, Sapa and Bach Long Bac structural sections. Predominantly oil potential is found in Hau Giang and Vam Co Dong structural areas. Low gas potential is found in Cay Quat and Ben Hai structural sections and low oil potential is found in Vam Co Tay, Chi Linh, Do Son and Tien Lang structural areas. The result of the calculation of a petroleum accumulattion capacity at the local, enhanced recoveral volume, risk parameters for stored gas and oil amount in blocks A and B are the oil potential in Kainozoi basement rock (KZ): oil accumulation volume at the local is 1722.9 million barrels (273.9 million cubic meters); oil recovery coefficient is 0.25 %; oil recoverable amount is 430.7 million barrels (68.5 million cubic meters). The gas potential in Miocene structural areas: gas accumulation volume at the local is 1620 BSCF (45.8 billion cubic meters); gas recoverable amount is 972 BSCF (27.5 billion cubic meters). The coefficient of success is quite low at 0.18 - 0.31 for gas and 0.08 – 0.23 for oil. Suggestion for the exploitation and exploration in further steps is to servey the 3D seismic in a 1500 square kilometer area and drill 2 wells for the exploration.

Targeting CTLA-4 has shown remarkable long-term benefits and thus remains a valuable approach for combating cancers of many types. A number of preclinical models have been developed over the years to evaluate the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade in promoting antitumor immunity. In particular, knock-in (KI) humanized mouse models offer the possibility to study clinical grade immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) in the context of a fully functional immune system. Here we show the response to ipilimumab in a newly developed hCTLA-4 KI humanized mouse model. Our results demonstrate significant tumor growth inhibition as well as complete tumor regressions in the MC38 colorectal cancer model following treatment with ipilimumab. We have extended these studies by re-challenging the tumor-free surviving animals with tumors cells implanted opposite to the original tumor site. We established that all re-challenged hCTLA-4 KI mice remained tumor free suggesting potent T cell memory was maintained. To identify the immune cells and cytokines that could be responsible for the durable responses, we used multiparameter flow cytometry to characterize and compare blood, spleen and tumors tissues from the control, ipilimumab and mCTLA-4 treated mice. Comprehensive multichromatic phenotyping and functional intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) using validated 18-color flow cytometry panels showed a significant increase in CD8+ T cell frequencies when mice were treated with anti-hCTLA-4 but not with the mouse counterpart or the isotype control. Importantly, hCTLA-4 blockade reduced the regulatory T cell (FoxP3+ Treg) frequency and increased leukocyte infiltration into the tumor in the hCTLA-4 treated mice but not in the other two treated groups. Although equivalent numbers of CD4+ and CD8+ total T lymphocytes where found in the blood of all groups after each treatment, the quality of the T cell responses was found to be significantly different. CD45+ lymphocytes from the blood analyzed from the hCTLA-4 treated mice showed significant increases in both central memory (CM) CD8+ and CD4+ T cells consistent with increased anti-tumor efficacy seen in these mice. Furthermore, treatment of MC38 tumor-bearing mice with ipilimumab enhanced significantly the secretion of IFNγ from CD8+ and CD4+ T cells and the proliferation of both T cell populations as shown by the upregulation of Ki67 staining. These results indicate that immune cells were actively proliferating and had the appropriate effector functions to impact tumor growth. Altogether, the data presented here demonstrates that hCTLA-4 KI humanized mice are a robust model for evaluating the immune-modulatory effects and the activity of clinical grade ICI against tumors. Citation Format: Elizabeth Reap, Fabiane SÔNEGO, Emily O'Koren, Martin Gaëlle, Anya Avrutskaya, Jacob Hauser, Robin Ball, Thi Bui, Ian Belle, Chassidy Hall, Paula L. Miliani De Marval, Kader Thiam. Enhanced anti-tumor lymphocyte function and frequencies measured by multichromatic flow cytometry in human CTLA-4 knock-in mice in a colorectal carcinoma model after treatment with ipilimumab [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 2020; 2020 Apr 27-28 and Jun 22-24. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(16 Suppl):Abstract nr 5635.