PROVISION CAPACITY OF SERVICE DELIVERY FACILITIES FOR CHILDREN WITH HEARING LOSS IN HAI PHONG, VIETNAM

Objective: Hearing loss is a commonly occurring disability that affects 466 million people worldwide. This study aimed at determining the actual situations of early intervention delivery facilities for children with hearing loss. Out of this affected population, 7% are children (34 million) who, along with their families, grapple with the serious lifelong problems that accompany the disease. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with facilities investigated consisting of a school for the deaf, hospitals, an audiology center, and a social agency in Hai Phong province from January 2013 to December 2014. A sample composed of 353 children was also recruited. Results: The examined facilities suffer from shortcomings in provision capacity, which manifest in deficient materials, supplies and equipment, and human resources; the lack of interdisciplinary coordination of activities; inadequate community awareness; and the unaddressed need for early detection and intervention. The conditions of most of the children (98%) were detected by their families, and among those who were clinically diagnosed, the majority (76.8%) received such diagnosis at central hospitals. Hearing impairment among the children were detected, diagnosed, and subjected to intervention at a very late stage (on average, at ages 22.3, 34, and 32.5 months, respectively), thereby compelling up to 63.6% of the families to struggle with their children’s hearing loss. Conclusion: Solutions to current interventions are needed to enhance service delivery systems and guarantee early detection as well as timely and appropriate treatment

On the Effectiveness of Adversarial Samples against Ensemble Learning-based Windows PE Malware Detectors

Recently, there has been a growing focus and interest in applying machine learning (ML) to the field of cybersecurity, particularly in malware detection and prevention. Several research works on malware analysis have been proposed, offering promising results for both academic and practical applications. In these works, the use of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) or Reinforcement Learning (RL) can aid malware creators in crafting metamorphic malware that evades antivirus software. In this study, we propose a mutation system to counteract ensemble learning-based detectors by combining GANs and an RL model, overcoming the limitations of the MalGAN model. Our proposed FeaGAN model is built based on MalGAN by incorporating an RL model called the Deep Q-network anti-malware Engines Attacking Framework (DQEAF). The RL model addresses three key challenges in performing adversarial attacks on Windows Portable Executable malware, including format preservation, executability preservation, and maliciousness preservation. In the FeaGAN model, ensemble learning is utilized to enhance the malware detector's evasion ability, with the generated adversarial patterns. The experimental results demonstrate that 100\% of the selected mutant samples preserve the format of executable files, while certain successes in both executability preservation and maliciousness preservation are achieved, reaching a stable success rate

Liver Involvement Associated with Dengue Infection in Adults in Vietnam

Globally, the number of adults hospitalized with dengue has increased markedly in recent years. It has been suggested that hepatic dysfunction is more significant in this group than among children. We describe the spectrum and evolution of disease manifestations among 644 adults with dengue who were prospectively recruited on admission to a major infectious disease hospital in southern Vietnam and compare them with a group of patients with similar illnesses not caused by dengue. Transaminase levels increased in virtually all dengue patients and correlated with other markers of disease severity. However, peak enzyme values usually occurred later than other complications. Clinically severe liver involvement was infrequent and idiosyncratic, but usually resulted in severe bleeding. Chronic co-infection with hepatitis B was associated with modestly but significantly increased levels of alanine aminotransferase, but did not otherwise impact the clinical picture

Fed-LSAE: Thwarting Poisoning Attacks against Federated Cyber Threat Detection System via Autoencoder-based Latent Space Inspection

The significant rise of security concerns in conventional centralized learning has promoted federated learning (FL) adoption in building intelligent applications without privacy breaches. In cybersecurity, the sensitive data along with the contextual information and high-quality labeling in each enterprise organization play an essential role in constructing high-performance machine learning (ML) models for detecting cyber threats. Nonetheless, the risks coming from poisoning internal adversaries against FL systems have raised discussions about designing robust anti-poisoning frameworks. Whereas defensive mechanisms in the past were based on outlier detection, recent approaches tend to be more concerned with latent space representation. In this paper, we investigate a novel robust aggregation method for FL, namely Fed-LSAE, which takes advantage of latent space representation via the penultimate layer and Autoencoder to exclude malicious clients from the training process. The experimental results on the CIC-ToN-IoT and N-BaIoT datasets confirm the feasibility of our defensive mechanism against cutting-edge poisoning attacks for developing a robust FL-based threat detector in the context of IoT. More specifically, the FL evaluation witnesses an upward trend of approximately 98% across all metrics when integrating with our Fed-LSAE defense

Influence of biofertilizer produced using drumstick (Moringa oleifera L.) unused parts on the growth performance of two leafy vegetables

The non-edible parts of Moringa oleifera, such as stems, branches or leaf petioles, have often been discarded while the leaves are consumed as a vegetable or are used to produce organic fertilizer. This study aimed to determine the optimal conditions for producing Moringa organic fertilizer (MOF) from previously unused parts and to compare these fertilizers with cow manure and bio-organic fertilizer. Seventy kilograms of the unused Moringa parts were blended with fifty kilograms of manure, 0.2 kilogram of Trichoderma-based product and two kilograms of superphosphate. The mixture was incubated at different intervals, including 5, 7 or 9 weeks. Next, the effects of MOF on the growth, yield, ascorbic acid content and Brix of lettuce and mustard spinach were also determined and compared with other organic fertilizers (cow manure and bio-organic fertilizer). Results of the study revealed that 25 tons per ha of MOF were significantly superior to those treated with cow manure and bio-organic fertilizer in the case of vegetable yields. Further, 7 weeks of MOF incubation was found suitable to produce an optimal yield during the various incubation period. These results suggested that the Moringa non-edible parts can make organic fertilizer and enhance growth, yield, and leafy vegetable production

Status of acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) and other emerging diseases of penaeid shrimps in Viet Nam

Acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND), formerly called early mortality syndrome (EMS), was first reported in 2010 among penaeid shrimps cultivated in the Mekong Delta Region of Viet Nam albeit without any laboratory confirmation. The disease subsequently spread to a wide range of shrimp production areas in the same region (Soc Trang: 1,719 ha; Bac Lieu: 346 ha; and Ca Mau: 3,493 ha), so that the Government of Viet Nam requested for technical assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in 2011. In 2012, FAO supported Viet Nam through the project TCP/VIE/3304 Emergency assistance to control the spread of an unknown disease affecting shrimps in Viet Nam, under which the Department of Animal Health of Viet Nam (DAH) collaborated with the University of Arizona and FAO experts to carry out indepth studies to identify the etiologic agent of the disease. As a result, unique isolates of Vibrio parahaemolyticus was identified as the causative agent of AHPND in 2013. Viet Nam has been vigilant and transparent with regard to aquatic animal diseases through official notifications to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA). AHPND outbreaks have no clear temporal pattern with black tiger (Penaeus monodon) and whiteleg (P. vannamei) shrimps showing similar incidence risk. The disease occurs at any stage of shrimp cultivation, i.e. on average about 35 days after stocking. To date, unwarranted outbreaks of AHPND in major shrimp-producing provinces in Viet Nam have been apparently regulated. Aside from AHPND, white spot disease (WSD) has also been a persistent problem responsible for serious economic losses in many shrimp-producing areas in Viet Nam. To prevent and control the further spread of infectious diseases of shrimps including AHPND and WSD, multiple control measures have been implemented including guidance of farmers to improve production conditions, facilities and biosecurity application, active surveillance of shrimp production areas for early warning, screening of broodstock and postlarvae for any OIE listed diseases, regulation on movement of stocks, and collaboration with regional and international organizations in carrying out in-depth epidemiological studies that will be needed in the formulation of pragmatic and holistic disease interventions

All-dielectric Metamaterial for Electromagnetically-induced Transparency in Optical Region

Metamaterial (MM) is emerging as a promising approach to manipulate electromagnetic waves, spanning from radio frequency to the optical region. In this paper, we employ an effect called electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) in all-dielectric MM structures to create a narrow transparent window in opaque broadband of the optical region (580-670 nm). Using dielectric materials instead of metals can mitigate the large non-radiative ohmic loss on the metal surface. The unit-cell of MM consists of Silicon (Si) bars on Silicon dioxide (SiO$_{2}$) substrate, in which two bars are directed horizontally and one bar is directed vertically. By changing the relative position and dimension of the Si bars, the EIT effect could be achieved. The optical properties of the proposed MM are investigated numerically using the finite difference method with commercial software Computer Simulation Technology (CST). Then, characteristic parameters of MM exhibiting EIT effect (EIT-MM), including Q-factor, group delay, are calculated to evaluate the applicability of EIT-MM to sensing and light confinement