Life history-related organotin body burden in the catadromous eels Anguilla marmorata and A. bicolor pacifica in Vietnam.

In order to understand the ecological risks caused by organotin compounds (OTs) in diadromous fish migrating between sea and freshwater, tributyltin (TBT) and triphenyltin (TPT) compounds, and their breakdown products, were determined in the catadromous eels Anguilla marmorata and A. bicolor pacifica, collected in Vietnam waters. Ontogenic changes in otolith strontium (Sr) and calcium (Ca) concentrations were examined along life history transects in order to determine habitat use in the eel. There were generally no significant correlations between TBT and TPT accumulation and various biological characteristics such as total length (TL) and body weight (BW). In A. bicolor pacifica, TBT and the total butyltin (BT) concentrations of yellow-stage eels (immature eels) were significantly higher than those in silver-stage eels (mature eels). This suggests that yellow-stage eels have a higher risk of contamination by TBT than silver-stage individuals. Positive linear relationships were found between Sr:Ca ratios, total BTs and total phenyltins. These results suggest that the ecological risk of OTs in these eels increases with increasing sea residence period. Thus, migratory history and maturation stage are the most important factor for OT accumulation in catadromous eels

Extractive spectrophotometric methods for determination of ciprofloxacin in pharmaceutical formulations using sulfonephthalein acid dyes

Three simple, rapid, sensitive and accurate extractive-spectrophotometric method for the determination of ciprofloxacin in pharmaceutical preparation has been developed. These methods are based on the formation of yellow ion-pair complexes between the examined drug and three sulfonephthalein  acid dyes, namely; bromophenol blue (BPB), bromocresol green (BCG),  and bromothymol blue (BTB) in  acidic medium. The formed complexes were extracted with chloroform and measured at 420, the colored chromogen was stable for twenty four hours. The effect of optimum conditions via pH, dye concentration, time and solvent are studied. Beer’s law is obeyed in the concentration ranges 0.50-25.0 μg/mL with  molar absorptivity of 1.46´104, 1.83´104 and 2.07´104 L. mol-1. cm-1 and limit of detection (LOD) of 0.105, 0.101, 0.084 for BPB, BCG and BTB methods, respectively. No interference was observed from common excipients present in pharmaceutical formulations. The proposed method has been applied successfully to determine ciprofloxacin in pharmaceutical preparation (tablets, infusion and eye drops). Keywords. Ciprofloxacin, extraction-spectrophotometry, ion pair complex; sulfonephthalein  dyes

Toward global fits using Higgs STXS data with Lilith

In this talk, we present the program Lilith, a python package for constraining new physics from Higgs measurements. We discuss the usage of signal strength results in the latest published version of Lilith, which allows for constraining deviations from SM Higgs couplings through coupling modifiers. Moreover, we discuss the on-going development to include Higgs STXS data and SMEFT parametrizations in Lilith with the aim of performing global fits of the ATLAS and CMS data. As we point out, detailed information on Standard Model uncertainties and their correlations is important to enable the proper reuse of the experimental results.Comment: content unchanged, citation and references made more explici

Enhancing Few-shot Image Classification with Cosine Transformer

This paper addresses the few-shot image classification problem, where the classification task is performed on unlabeled query samples given a small amount of labeled support samples only. One major challenge of the few-shot learning problem is the large variety of object visual appearances that prevents the support samples to represent that object comprehensively. This might result in a significant difference between support and query samples, therefore undermining the performance of few-shot algorithms. In this paper, we tackle the problem by proposing Few-shot Cosine Transformer (FS-CT), where the relational map between supports and queries is effectively obtained for the few-shot tasks. The FS-CT consists of two parts, a learnable prototypical embedding network to obtain categorical representations from support samples with hard cases, and a transformer encoder to effectively achieve the relational map from two different support and query samples. We introduce Cosine Attention, a more robust and stable attention module that enhances the transformer module significantly and therefore improves FS-CT performance from 5% to over 20% in accuracy compared to the default scaled dot-product mechanism. Our method performs competitive results in mini-ImageNet, CUB-200, and CIFAR-FS on 1-shot learning and 5-shot learning tasks across backbones and few-shot configurations. We also developed a custom few-shot dataset for Yoga pose recognition to demonstrate the potential of our algorithm for practical application. Our FS-CT with cosine attention is a lightweight, simple few-shot algorithm that can be applied for a wide range of applications, such as healthcare, medical, and security surveillance. The official implementation code of our Few-shot Cosine Transformer is available at https://github.com/vinuni-vishc/Few-Shot-Cosine-Transforme

ĐÁNH GIÁ TỔNG HỢP VÀ ĐỊNH HƯỚNG PHÁT TRIỂN HỆ THỐNG 50 ĐẢO VEN BỜ BẮC BỘ VIỆT NAM ( CÓ DIỆN TÍCH TỪ 1KM2 TRỞ LÊN)

Vietnam has about 2,773 islands located in the coastal areas of different seas, including around 100 islands with an area of 1 km2 or more (these islands are large enough for socio-economic development). Northern coastal area has 50 islands with an area of 1 km2 or more, distributed in two provinces Quang Ninh (47 islands), Hai Phong (3 islands). According to a combined assessment of the potential and position of 50 Northern coastal islands for the purpose of economic development, defense and security, 9 islands have been recognized as having the capability of defense and economic development; 6 islands have the advantages of economic development and national defense; 16 islands have the primary function of economic development and 19 islands should focus on their advantages of tourism and agroforestry, which will also be considered as a reserved resource for future island economic development.Tóm tắt: Việt Nam có khoảng 2773 hòn đảo với diện tích 1721 km2, phân bố ở ven bờ các vùng biển khác nhau, trong đó có khoảng 100 đảo có diện tích từ 1km2 trở lên (là các đảo có diện tích đủ lớn để phát triển kinh tế xã hội). Ven bờ Bắc Bộ là nơi tập trung nhiều đảo nhất (2321 đảo), chiếm tới 83,7% tổng số đảo và 48,9% tổng diện tích đảo ven bờ của cả nước và có tới 50 đảo có diện tích từ 1km2 , phân bố ở 2 tỉnh Quảng Ninh (47 đảo), Hải Phòng (3 đảo). Trên cơ sở đánh giá tổng hợp tiềm năng và vị thế của 50 đảo ven bờ Bắc Bộ cho các mục đích phát triển kinh tế và quốc phòng an ninh, đã xác định được 9 đảo có chức năng quốc phòng và phát triển kinh tế; 6 đảo có ưu thế chức năng phát triển kinh tế kết hợp với quốc phòng; 16 đảo có chức năng chủ yếu phát triển kinh tế và 19 đảo có thể khai thác lợi thế để phát triển du lịch và nông lâm nghiệp, cũng như được coi là nguồn lực dự trữ cho phát triển kinh tế biển đảo sau này

Gravity terrain correction for mainland territory of Vietnam

Terrain corrections for gravity data are a critical concern in rugged topography, because the magnitude of the corrections may be largely relative to the anomalies of interest. That is also important to determine the inner and outer radii beyond which the terrain effect can be neglected. Classical methods such as Lucaptrenco, Beriozkin and Prisivanco are indeed too slow with radius correction and are not extended while methods based on the Nagy’s and Kane’s are usually too approximate for the required accuracy. In order to achieve 0.1 mGal accuracy in terrain correction for mainland territory of Vietnam and reduce the computing time, the best inner and outer radii for terrain correction computation are 2 km and 70 km respectively. The results show that in nearly a half of the Vietnam territory, the terrain correction values ≥ 10 mGal, the corrections are smaller in the plain areas (less than 2 mGal) and higher in the mountainous region, in particular the correction reaches approximately 21 mGal in some locations of northern mountainous region. The complete Bouguer gravity map of mainland territory of Vietnam is reproduced based on the full terrain correction introduced in this paper

Discovering Water Quality Changes and Patterns of the Endangered Thi Vai Estuary in Southern Vietnam through Trend and Multivariate Analysis

Temporal and spatial water quality data are essential to evaluate human health risks. Understanding the interlinking variations between water quality and socio-economic development is the key for integrated pollution management. In this study, we applied several multivariate approaches, including trend analysis, cluster analysis, and principal component analysis, to a 15-year dataset of water quality monitoring (1999 to 2013) in the Thi Vai estuary, Southern Vietnam. We discovered a rapid improvement for most of the considered water quality parameters (e.g., DO, NH4, and BOD) by step trend analysis, after the pollution abatement in 2008. Nevertheless, the nitrate concentration increased significantly at the upper and middle parts and decreased at the lower part of the estuary. Principal component (PC) analysis indicates that nowadays the water quality of the Thi Vai is influenced by point and diffuse pollution. The first PC represents soil erosion and stormwater loads in the catchment (TSS, PO4, and Fetotal); the second PC (DO, NO2, and NO3) determines the influence of DO on nitrification and denitrification; and the third PC (pH and NH4) determines point source pollution and dilution by seawater. Therefore, this study demonstrated the need for stricter pollution abatement strategies to restore and to manage the water quality of the Thi Vai Estuary

HYDROGEN-PLASMA-TREATED NANO TIO2 FOR PHOTOCATALYTIC OXIDATION OF VOCS IN AIR STREAM

Unlike water treatment processes, the photocatalytic oxidation of VOCs in air stream exhibits many challenges. This study will develop the hydrogen-plasma-treated TiO2 with improvement in photocatalytic activity. The hydrogen-plasma-treatment was carried out in the non-thermal atmospheric pressure reactor at room temperature or above. The catalysts were prepared and analyzed by advanced techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electro-microscopy (SEM) and transmission electro-microscopy (TEM). The photocatalytic activity of the catalyst has been investigated under UV light with various reaction conditions such as different initial toluene/formaldehyde concentrations and water content. Significantly, the conversion of toluene by a plasma-treated sample was 1.5 times higher than the bare TiO2 in a similar reaction condition

Literature Review of Knowledge Sharing and Issues Raised for Vietnamese Universities

This study aims to review previous studies in the field of knowledge sharing. Data being used in this study was collected from researches related to the topic of knowledge sharing. We summarize literature on knowledge sharing in terms of (i) Necessity of knowledge sharing, (ii) Supporting from information and communication technology tools (ICT), (iii) Context of knowledge sharing, (iv) Participants knowledge sharing, (v) Receiver knowledge and (vi) advantages and disadvantages when participating in knowledge sharing. Some implications are recommended for Vietnamese universities to better support knowledge sharing activities in Vietnam and around the world. Keywords: Knowledge management, Knowledge sharing, Information technology, Management information system. DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-18-17 Publication date:September 30th 201