DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM

TOEIC Certificate is becoming more and more popular all over the world in general and in particular, Vietnam. It is considered as one of the most compulsory demands for graduating university, especially at Tay Do university. Listening seems to be a skill that many students usually face difficulties in learning. Therefore, the survey research “Difficulties in studying TOEIC Listening Comprehension of non – English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” was conducted to figure out common difficulties in studying TOEIC listening of non-English majored students. Freshmen of Bachelor of Tourism and Travel Management class at Tay Do university were chosen as the participants. Questionnaire and interview were used as instruments to collect the data. The findings of the study would point out learners’ difficulties consisting of general difficulties (vocabulary, pronunciation, background knowledge and psychological) and difficulties in each part in the TOEIC listening test. Thanks to the results, some solutions would be suggested for students’ improvement. Article visualizations

Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever in the South of Vietnam during 1975-1992 and Its Control Strategy

The incidence of dengue (DEN) virus infection in Vietnam has increased dramatically in the past 30 years. From 1960 up to now, the number of dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) cases has been continuing to increase and recorded as the greatest one in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific Regions. DHF was endemic in South Vietnam and 30-380 cases/100,000 population were reported annually. Major epidemics have occurred in a 3-4 years frequency, as in 1975, 1978-1979, 1983 and 1987. The 1987 outbreak was the largest one with 83,905 cases and 904 deaths. DHF epidemics usually took place from June to November every year. The peak transmission was recorded in July-August and September, coinciding with the rainy season and the breeding period of Aedes aegypti. The majority of confirmed cases was children of 5-6 year-old-group, in which there was no sex difference. In the virological surveillance in Ho Chi Minh City and in some surrounding provinces, several DEN virus strains were isolated from patients\u27 blood as well as from the mosquitoes. In the 1987 DHF outbreak, DEN-2 was the dominant sero-type (90.5%). But from 1990 the epidemic sero-type has changed, DEN-1 was introduced and was continuing to grow-up (58%). Then in 1992 outbreak, the DEN-2 was reintroduced, from 26.3% in 1991 has increased to 41.4%. Serological investigation of healthy persons in 12/17 southern provinces had demonstrated that there were relatively wide circulations of DEN, Japanese encephalitis (JE) and chikungunya (Chik) viruses and the endemic strains of DEN were found different in some studied areas. There had been augmentation of primary infection rate and decrease of the susceptibility rate in children prior to the DHF epidemic. Seven JE virus strains were isolated from dengue fever (DF) patients\u27 blood. This fact has introduced as a new concept in the isolation of JE virus. In the final pant of the report, the authors stressed on the "Active surveillance" as a new strategy for controlling the DHF epidemic in South Vietnam. The goal of this active surveillance is to have early warning and predictive capability for epidemic dengue, based on serological and clinical surveillance. Because dengue cases were detected in January-February of every year, so the base line is: when first cases of DF/DHF were detected, it needs to be promptly implemented the larval control and insecticide must be sprayed around the patient\u27s houses. But now almost Provincial Centers of Hygiene and Epidemiology often waited and when big DHF epidemic had already occurred, they started to implement its control measures, so it is too late to control the DHF outbreak

Current Situation of Japanese Encephalitis in the South of Vietnam, 1976-1992

Cases of "Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES)" and deaths were reported annually in all 17 provinces in the South of Vietnam. The highest morbidity of 936 patients was recorded in 1980, while highest mortality of 339 deaths in 1977. The lowest figures of morbidity was 197 cases in 1990 and lowest mortality was 34 deaths in 1985. Sporadic cases were reported throughout the year but small outbreaks with low peaks were seen in February and July annually. Twenty five strains of Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus were isolated during 1978-1992: 8 from patients\u27 blood, 5 from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), 9 from Culex quinquefasciatus, 3 from Aedes aegypti. Serologically confirmed JE cases were not many, because most of the human sera sent to us for testing were used for differential diagnosis of pernicious malaria. The anti-JE antibody prevalence among healthy human in 11/17 provinces was found to be extremely high, especially in adults. The antibody positive rate among swine to JE was found to be high: 82% with GMT 65.2 in 189 sera taken at My Tho-Tien Giang province in March 1978 and 77.4% with GMT 49.7 in 261 sera taken in the vicinity of Ho Chi Minh City in September 1992. From the above data, the Southern part of Vietnam is an endemo-epidemic area of JE virus infection

Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United States

Short-term probabilistic forecasts of the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States have served as a visible and important communication channel between the scientific modeling community and both the general public and decision-makers. Forecasting models provide specific, quantitative, and evaluable predictions that inform short-term decisions such as healthcare staffing needs, school closures, and allocation of medical supplies. Starting in April 2020, the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub (https://covid19forecasthub.org/) collected, disseminated, and synthesized tens of millions of specific predictions from more than 90 different academic, industry, and independent research groups. A multimodel ensemble forecast that combined predictions from dozens of groups every week provided the most consistently accurate probabilistic forecasts of incident deaths due to COVID-19 at the state and national level from April 2020 through October 2021. The performance of 27 individual models that submitted complete forecasts of COVID-19 deaths consistently throughout this year showed high variability in forecast skill across time, geospatial units, and forecast horizons. Two-thirds of the models evaluated showed better accuracy than a naïve baseline model. Forecast accuracy degraded as models made predictions further into the future, with probabilistic error at a 20-wk horizon three to five times larger than when predicting at a 1-wk horizon. This project underscores the role that collaboration and active coordination between governmental public-health agencies, academic modeling teams, and industry partners can play in developing modern modeling capabilities to support local, state, and federal response to outbreaks

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories, 1990-2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017.

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors 2017 includes a comprehensive assessment of incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) for 354 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2017. Previous GBD studies have shown how the decline of mortality rates from 1990 to 2016 has led to an increase in life expectancy, an ageing global population, and an expansion of the non-fatal burden of disease and injury. These studies have also shown how a substantial portion of the world's population experiences non-fatal health loss with considerable heterogeneity among different causes, locations, ages, and sexes. Ongoing objectives of the GBD study include increasing the level of estimation detail, improving analytical strategies, and increasing the amount of high-quality data. METHODS: We estimated incidence and prevalence for 354 diseases and injuries and 3484 sequelae. We used an updated and extensive body of literature studies, survey data, surveillance data, inpatient admission records, outpatient visit records, and health insurance claims, and additionally used results from cause of death models to inform estimates using a total of 68 781 data sources. Newly available clinical data from India, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Nepal, China, Brazil, Norway, and Italy were incorporated, as well as updated claims data from the USA and new claims data from Taiwan (province of China) and Singapore. We used DisMod-MR 2.1, a Bayesian meta-regression tool, as the main method of estimation, ensuring consistency between rates of incidence, prevalence, remission, and cause of death for each condition. YLDs were estimated as the product of a prevalence estimate and a disability weight for health states of each mutually exclusive sequela, adjusted for comorbidity. We updated the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a summary development indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and total fertility rate. Additionally, we calculated differences between male and female YLDs to identify divergent trends across sexes. GBD 2017 complies with the Guidelines for Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting

Erratum: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Interpretation: By quantifying levels and trends in exposures to risk factors and the resulting disease burden, this assessment offers insight into where past policy and programme efforts might have been successful and highlights current priorities for public health action. Decreases in behavioural, environmental, and occupational risks have largely offset the effects of population growth and ageing, in relation to trends in absolute burden. Conversely, the combination of increasing metabolic risks and population ageing will probably continue to drive the increasing trends in non-communicable diseases at the global level, which presents both a public health challenge and opportunity. We see considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in levels of risk exposure and risk-attributable burden. Although levels of development underlie some of this heterogeneity, O/E ratios show risks for which countries are overperforming or underperforming relative to their level of development. As such, these ratios provide a benchmarking tool to help to focus local decision making. Our findings reinforce the importance of both risk exposure monitoring and epidemiological research to assess causal connections between risks and health outcomes, and they highlight the usefulness of the GBD study in synthesising data to draw comprehensive and robust conclusions that help to inform good policy and strategic health planning