COMPUTER AIDED TAXI DISPATCHING. SPECIFICATION OF THE SYSTEM.

Taxi is one of the most important transporters in the public. However, how to make the taxi services more efficient in order to benefit not only taxi owners but also taxi drivers is one of the most interesting questions recently, especially when other competitors in this service are becoming more and more. In the current situation, there is no suggested service that drivers can rely on, which would recommend the highly possible pickup point that will most likely to have the customers at the particular time and location. At the moment, taxi drivers only believe in their routines to go to the station that is believed to have awaiting customers. Therefore, the idea of building a solution which can have a logical suggestion for drivers could be a promising project, that will satisfy not only taxi owners but also drivers and customers. The aim of the thesis is going to find a general solution in order to make the idea becoming real. Besides, some interesting topic such as the machine learning technique and neural network are also the main parts of the thesis as they were selected as the solution for the problem

Microplastics Contamination in a High Population Density Area of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok

Microplastics (MPs) are distributed globally, including in aquatic environments. While a large number of studies on MPs in marine environments have been performed, few studies are available in freshwater environments. Therefore, the distribution of MPs in surface water and sediment from the Chao Phraya River at Tha Prachan, a high population density area of Bangkok, was investigated. Water samples were collected by a manta trawl with a net mesh size of 300 mm. Sediment samples were collected by a Van Veen grab sampler. The total number and concentration of MPs in the water samples were found to be 104 particles/m3 and 805.20 mg/m3, respectively. The dominant MPs were fragments, 0.5 to 1.0 mm in size, for the water samples. In the sediment, MPs were detected only in a size range of 0.053 to 0.5 mm with a total number and concentration of 2,290 particles/kg and 650 mg/kg, respectively. The presence of different types of MPs was confirmed by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy with a dominant abundance of polypropylene, polyethylene, and polystyrene. In brief, this study suggests that high levels of MPs occur not only in the water but also in the sediment of the Chao Phraya River at Tha Prachan area

Serum interleukin 6 concentration in patients with pemphigus

Pemphigus is a rare autoimmune blistering disease that detrimentally affects the integumentary system and decreases patients’ quality of life. Recent studies have shown that interleukin 6 (IL-6) is closedly involved in the immunophathogenesis of pemphigus. Therefore, this study was performed to evaluate the role of IL-6 in the pathogenesis and severity of pemphigus disease. The case-series study was conducted in Ho Chi Minh City Hospital of Dermato-Venereology from January 2022 to August 2022, involving 26 patients with pemphigus vulgaris (PV), 4 patients with pemphigus foliaceus (PF), and 20 healthy volunteers. The serum IL-6 concentrations of patients with PV and PF were significantly higher than those of the healthy volunteers (P < 0.001). Serum IL-6 concentrations were significantly higher in patients with a positive than a negative Nikolsky sign (P < 0.001). A significant correlation was found between the serum IL-6 concentration and the pemphigus disease area index (r = 0.8, P < 0.001). Our results suggest that IL-6 may play an important role in the pathogenesis and severity of pemphigus. Therefore, new therapies targeting IL-6 may be a promising choice for treating pemphigus, especially in its severe forms

Influence of ASE Noise on Performance of DWDM Networks Using Low-power Pumped Raman Amplifiers

We present the results of investigation  for  influence of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise, noise figure (NF) and  chromatic dispersion on the performance of middle-distance Dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) networks using low-power pumped distributed Raman amplifiers (DRAs) in two different pump configurations, i.e., forward and backward pumping. We found that the pumping configurations, ASE noise, and dispersion play an important role for improving network performance by decrease of noise figure and bit error rate (BER) of the system. Simulation results show that the lowest bit error rate and low noise figure were obtained, when using forward pumping configuration. Moreover, we have also compared ASE noise powers of the simulation with these of the experiment. These results conclude that DRA with low pump power  ($1$~W) is the promising key technology for short-- and/or middle-distance DWDM transmission networks

An Ultra-high Quality Factor Terahertz Photonic Crystal Cavity

oai:ojs.rev-jec.org:article/345High quality factor Terahertz (THz) cavities are highly desired for many THz applications. This paper presents an ultra-high quality factor terahertz planar photonic crystal cavity at 300 GHz range. Two approaches are employed to reduce the losses in the cavity increasing the quality factor of the cavity. Firstly, short embedded photonic crystal waveguides are employed to reduce the in – plane loss. Secondly, a novel way of hole displacement is adopted for four edged holes of the L3 – type photonic crystal cavity to decrease the radiation loss. An ultra – high quality factor of 65000 at a resonant frequency of 315.3 GHz was achieved for the designed cavity. This result could enable promising applications such as THz sensing

Prenatal maternal depression alters amygdala functional connectivity in 6-month-old infants

10.1038/tp.2015.3Translational Psychiatry52GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes

Evaluation of EBNA-1 (epstein-barr virus nuclear antigen-1) gene prevalence in nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Vietnamese patients

This study examined the presence of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) based on the detection of EBNA-1 (Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen-1) by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), in Vietnamese population. Firstly, we systematically analyzed the mean of percentage weighted of the presence of EBNA-1 in previous relevant studies. Experimentally, 31 nasopharyngeal cancer biopsies and 20 healthy samples were enrolled in current to evaluate the frequency of candidate genes. As the results, the frequency of EBNA-1 was 77.42%, whereas, none of any cases of healthy samples were found to positive to target gene. The p value < 0.05 (p = 0.0001) showed that it was significant correlation between the presence of this candidate gene and nasopharyngeal cancer. Moreover, a high odds ratio (OR) and relative risk (RR) of candidate gene, (OR = 68.16, RR = 2.41) were calculated. Therefore, the detection of EBNA-1, which performed by PCR, could serve as a good supplement to early diagnosis and prognosis of NPC in Vietnamese population

Outpatient antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections in Vietnamese primary care settings by the WHO AWaRe (Access, Watch and Reserve) classification: An analysis using routinely collected electronic prescription data

Background: This study aims to investigate patterns of antibiotic prescribing and to determine patient-specific factors associated with the choice of antibiotics by the World Health Organization's Access-Watch-Reserve (WHO AWaRe) class for acute respiratory infections (ARIs) in rural primary care settings in northern Vietnam. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed health records for outpatients who were registered with the Vietnamese Health Insurance Scheme, visited one of 112 commune health centres in 6 rural districts of Nam Dinh province, Vietnam during 2019, and were diagnosed with ARIs. Patient-level prescription data were collected from the electronic patient databases. We used descriptive statistics to investigate patterns of antibiotic prescribing, with the primary outcomes including total antibiotic prescriptions and prescriptions by WHO AWaRe group. We identified patient-specific factors associated with watch-group antibiotic prescribing through multivariable logistic regression analysis. Findings: Among 193,010 outpatient visits for ARIs observed in this study, 187,144 (97.0%) resulted in an antibiotic prescription, of which 172,976 (92.5%) were access-antibiotics, 10,765 (5.6%) were watch-antibiotics, 3366 (1.8%) were not-recommended antibiotics. No patients were treated with reserve-antibiotics. The proportion of watch-antibiotic prescription was highest amongst children under 5-years old (18.1%, compared to 9.5% for 5–17-years, 4.9% for 18–49-years, 4.3% for 50–64-years, and 3.7% for 65-and-above-years). In multivariable logistic regression, children, district, ARI-type, comobid chronic respiratory illness, and follow-up visit were associated with higher likelihood of prescribing watch-group antibiotics. Interpretation: The alarmingly high proportion of antibiotic prescriptions for ARIs in primary care, and the frequent use of watch-antibiotics for children, heighten concerns around antibiotic overuse at the community level. Antimicrobial stewardship interventions and policy attention are needed in primary care settings to tackle the growing threat of antibiotic resistance

Prevalence and correlates of zinc deficiency in pregnant Vietnamese women in Ho Chi Minh City

Background: Although Vietnam is a region with a plant-based diet that has a high zinc deficiency, epidemiological data showing how this affects pregnant women are limited. This study explores the prevalence of zinc deficiency and possible correlates in pregnant Vietnamese women in Ho Chi Minh City. Methods: This was a crosssectional study conducted at a general hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. All pregnant women who came to their first antenatal care visit from November 2011 to June 2012 were recruited. Those taking a vitamin and/or mineral supplement were excluded. Serum zinc concentrations, determined by a standard colorimetric method, of 10.7 mol/L-17.5 mol/L (70.0 g/dL-114 g/dL) were classified as normal and under 10.7 mol/L (70.0 g/dL) as zinc deficient. Results: In total, 254 pregnant women were invited and 107 (42%) participated. The mean age of participants was 29 years, and mean gestational age was 10 weeks. Median zinc concentration in serum was 13.6 mol/L, and the prevalence of zinc deficiency was 29% (95% CI=21%-39%). The daily intake of a milk product supplement was the only significant correlate of zinc deficiency of the items investigated (adjusted OR=0.40, p=0.049). Discussion: This is the first study reporting that more than 25% of pregnant Vietnamese women in Ho Chi Minh City are zinc deficient. Further academic and clinical input is needed to confirm the scale of this neglected issue and to investigate the potential of milk product supplementation in this population