すり身加工品で感知される塩味強度とテクスチャーの関係に関する研究

東京海洋大学博士学位論文 平成29年度(2017) 応用生命科学 課程博士 甲第447号指導教員: 岡﨑惠美子東京海洋大学201

Towards improved detection, prevention and integrated control of scrub typhus in Central Vietnam

SUMMARY Background Scrub typhus is a zoonotic infectious disease caused by obligate intracellular bacteria Orientia spp, transmitted to humans by the bites of infected larval-stage trombiculid mites, which are found mainly on rodents of forests and rice fields across the Asia-Pacific region. Scrub typhus is a severe public health problem, with one billion people at risk globally, causes illness in an estimated one million people every year, and became a leading cause of treatable non-malarial febrile illness. Case fatality reports vary widely around a median mortality of 6.0% (range 0-70%) for untreated and 1.4% (range 0-33%) for treated scrub typhus patients. In Vietnam, after 40 years of neglect, scrub typhus (ST) is re-emerging as evidenced by expanding geographical distribution and increase in new cases. Unfortunately, both the clinical and laboratory diagnoses of ST remain challenging, even at the national hospital. Due to late diagnosis and late treatment effects, a severe case complication rate of 17% and a mortality rate of 1.2% among 251 infected and diagnosed patients was reported at the national hospital in 2003. Epidemiological and ecological information on scrub typhus is very scant in Vietnam, and there is no updated evidence on practical preventive measures and fostered case-detection. Dengue fever (DF) has made a substantial impact over the two past decades in Vietnam and is unequivocally the leading cause of febrile illness throughout the country. Dengue incidence per 100,000 population has steadily increased from 32.5 in the year 2000 (24,434 cases) to 149.9 in 2018 (141,927 cases), at the third rank among the 28 most common communicable diseases. Because of non-specific symptoms such as high fever, headache, skin rash or myalgia are common to both ST and DF, differential diagnosis is required to decide on the treatment strategies. The overall aim of the present PhD research was to contribute to a better understanding and improving case detection and practical prevention of scrub typhus in Vietnam. Specifically, the work aimed to i) differentiate scrub typhus from dengue fever using admission clinical manifestations and routine blood tests; ii) investigate behavioural and environmental related risk factors of scrub typhus; iii) evaluate temporal dynamics of DNA and serology-based assays and its efficacy in early diagnosis of scrub typhus in Vietnam. Methods First, a study including 221 and 387 confirmed acute cases of ST and DF, respectively, and use of multivariable logistic regression and classification and regression trees (CART), identified clinical and laboratory parameters differentiating ST from DF. Then in 2018/2020, a clinical hospital-based active surveillance study, and a retrospective residence-enrolment date-age-matched case-control study were conducted to investigate the risk factors of ST in Khanh Hoa, Vietnam. Finally, were used data of two hospital active surveillances of suspected ST patients that were done in Khanh Hoa in the periods of 2013-2014 and 2018-2020. The PCR, IgM ELISA, IgM rapid test (RDT) results and days of fever on admission of these patients were used to evaluate temporal dynamics of DNA and serology-based assays and their efficacies in early diagnosis of scrub typhus in Vietnam. Results The main variables to distinguish scrub typhus from dengue included i) the eschar; ii) regional lymphadenopathy; iii) an occupation in nature; iv) increased days of fever on admission; v) increased neutrophil count; vi) decreased ratio of neutrophils/lymphocytes; vii) increased platelet count; and viii) the higher age of patients. Sensitivity and specificity of predictions for scrub typhus based on these seven factors reached 93.7% and 99.5%, respectively, in multi. When excluding the “eschar” variable, the values dropped to 76.3% and 92.3%, respectively. Using the CART model, the corresponding values for the alternative decision tree model were 95.0% and 96.9% when including the variable “eschar” and 77.4% and 90.7% without eschar. Several factors were significantly associated with acquisition of scrub typhus, including sitting/laying directly on the household floor (adjusted OR=4.9, 95%CI:1.6–15.1), household with poor sanitation/conditions (aOR=7.9, 95%CI:1.9–32.9), workplace environment with risk (aOR=3.0, 95%CI:1.2–7.6), observation of mice around the home always (aOR=3.7, 95%CI:1.4–9.9), and use of personal protective equipment in the field (aOR=0.4, 95%CI:0.1–1.1). PCR buffy coat performed best from day 1 to day 6, compared to ELISA and RDT, with an overall positivity rate of 73% during this early phase. ELISA IgM and RDTs performed better after day 7 of fever, with positivity rates of 90% and 81%, respectively, in the later phase – but contributed to diagnosis from day 3 of fever. The combination of PCR buffy coat with an RDT detected 93% to 100% of all positive cases during the first 14 days of fever. Conclusions This work provides evidence for better understanding on fostered case-detection and practical preventive measures of scrub typhus in Vietnam. A combined package with clinical training, risk factors training, and RDTs should be implemented at primary health care level to promote accurate diagnostic for scrub typhus in the hotspot area. The findings from this study are useful for training courses at the community level, support the establishment of preventive measures, create better awareness among the public and inform regional surveillance, and promote much-needed effective public health responses against scrub typhus - this after many decades of neglect in Vietnam

Board and corporate social responsibility disclosure of multinational corporations

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the effects of board model and board independence on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of multinational corporations (MNCs). Design/methodology/approach: The authors developed an empirical model in which CSR disclosure is the dependent variable and board model (two-tier vs one-tier), board independence (a proportion of independent directors on a board) and the interaction variable of board model and board independence together with several variables conventionally used as control variables are independent variables. The authors collated the panel dataset of 244 Fortune World’s Most Admired (FWMA) corporations from 2005 to 2011 of which 117 MNCs use the one-tier board model, and 127 MNCs use the two-tier board model from 20 countries. They used the random-effect regression method to estimate the empirical models with the data they collated and also ran regressions on the alternative models for robustness check. Findings: The authors found a significantly positive effect of a board model on CSR disclosure by MNCs. Two-tier MNCs tend to reveal more CSR information than one-tier MNCs. The results also confirm the significant moderating impact of board model on the effect of board independence on CSR disclosure. The effect of board independence on CSR disclosure in the two-tier board MNCs tends to be higher than that in the one-tier board MNCs. The results do not support the effect of board independence on CSR disclosure in general for all types of firms (one-tier and two-tier board). The impact of board independence on CSR disclosure is only significant in two-tier board MNCs and insignificant in one-tier board MNCs. Practical implications: The authors advise the MNCs who wish to improve CSR reporting and transparency to consider the usage of two-tier board model and use a higher number of outside directors on board. They note that once a firm uses one-tier model, number of IDs on a board does not matter to the level of CSR disclosure. They advise regulators to enforce an application of two-tier board model to improve CSR reporting and transparency in MNCs. The authors also recommend regulators to continue mandating publicly traded companies to include more external members on their boards, especially for the two-tier board MNCs. Originality/value: This paper is the first that investigates the role of board model on CSR disclosure of MNCs

Application of chitosan solutions for rice production in Vietnam

Preparing chitosan solutions from shrimp shells for rice production was investigated. The chitosan produced from shrimp shells using dilute acetic acid proved effective in controlling plants infection by microbial agents leading to higher yields. The field data of our studies showed that the yields of rice significantly increased (~31%) after applying chitosan solution. In general, applying chitosan increased rice production and reduced cost of production significantly.Keywords: Chitosan solution, rice production, common brown backed rice plant hoppersAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(4), pp. 382-38

Vibrational Study of the Hydrogen Adsorption on the Missing Row Platinum (110) Surface

The hydrogen vibration was investigated to analyze its affect on the hydrogen adsorption on the missing row platinum surface (H/Pt(110)-(1$\times$2) model) in the ultrahigh vacuum (UHV). The density functional theory (DFT) combined with the approximation oscillation of the hydrogen atom on the surface was used. When the hydrogen coverage ΘH on the surface is 100% ($\Theta$ = 1 ML), and taking into account the vibrational effect, the bond formed at the edge of the first layer (short bridge) is the most stable site. The vibrational effect on the adsorption model H/Pt(110)-(1$\times$2) is significant

Anomaly Detection in Video

Anomaly detection is an area of video analysis that has great importance in automated surveillance. Although it has been extensively studied, there has been little work on using deep convolutional neural networks to learn spatio-temporal feature representations. In this thesis we present novel approaches for learning motion features and modelling normal spatio-temporal dynamics for anomaly detection. The contributions are divided into two main chapters. The first introduces a method that uses a convolutional autoencoder to learn motion features from foreground optical flow patches. The autoencoder is coupled with a spatial sparsity constraint, known as Winner-Take-All, to learn shift-invariant and generic flow-features. This method solves the problem of using hand-crafted feature representations in state of the art methods. Moreover, to capture variations in scale of the patterns of motion as an object moves in depth through the scene,we also divide the image plane into regions and learn a separate normality model in each region. We compare the methods with state of the art approaches on two datasets and demonstrate improved performance. The second main chapter presents a end-to-end method that learns normal spatio-temporal dynamics from video volumes using a sequence-to-sequence encoder-decoder for prediction and reconstruction. This work is based on the intuition that the encoder-decoder learns to estimate normal sequences in a training set with low error, thus it estimates an abnormal sequence with high error. Error between the network's output and the target is used to classify a video volume as normal or abnormal. In addition to the use of reconstruction error, we also use prediction error for anomaly detection. We evaluate the second method on three datasets. The prediction models show comparable performance with state of the art methods. In comparison with the first proposed method, performance is improved in one dataset. Moreover, running time is significantly faster

Optimization of Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol Production from Cassava Starch by a Mixed Culture of Clostridium sp. and Bacillus sp. in Batch and Fed-batch Fermentation

Thesis (Ph.D., Biotechnology)--Prince of Songkla University, 200

Building Comprehensive Sex Education Plans for Teenagers: Groundwork-Based Research Design Application

Although sexual education is an important part of a child’s education and upbringing, in Vietnam, sex education is not an official subject in school, and young people’s awareness of Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) is still limited. While sex education at school is necessary, it is not the only way nor sufficient enough to change teenage sexual behavior. A parent’s role could involve communicating about values, providing a positive family environment, and monitoring their children’s behavior. This topic explores the awareness of teenagers about CSE and the availability of teaching CSE in Vietnamese schools and families. Data was collected via an online survey of 89 teenagers and 119 parents whose children are teenagers. The findings revealed that the target group is not fully aware of CSE and in particular, they also feel the importance of the family in this regard but are afraid to share gender issues with their parents and tend to find information on their own through the internet. Keywords: teenagers, sex education, reproductive health, Vietnam, sex and sexualit

A full permutation polygon synthetic indicator (FPPSI) approach for measuring and evaluating city prosperity: case study in Da Nang City, Vietnam

Economic growth has dominated development strategies and goals for many years, but prosperity encompasses more than that. In 2013, UN-Habitat proposed the City Prosperity Initiative (CPI) as a tool to quantify cities' prosperity and sustainable development. The CPI is accompanied by six essential components with 62 indicators associated with the urban settlement, incorporating productivity, infrastructure development, quality of life, social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and urban governance and legislation. The research aims to use the indicators of CPI and adopted the Full Permutation Polygon Synthetic Indicator method to measure and evaluate the level of prosperity of Da Nang City of Vietnam with data from 2004 to 2019. According to the findings of our study, the value of a synthetic indicator for the prosperity of Da Nang City increased, from 0.34 in 2004 to 0.36 in 2009, 0.43 in 2014, and 0.45 in 2019, which indicates a moderate level of wealth. On the one hand, Da Nang City has high levels of quality of life, equity and social inclusion, and urban governance and legislation. However, the city still has modest determinants of prosperity in terms of the environment, productivity and infrastructure. The Full Permutation Polygon Synthetic Indicator technique provides a comprehensive solution that illustrates the system integration idea. As a result, the proposed methodology offers a potential foundation for decision-making to promote sustainable urban development strategies and assess the effectiveness of these action