English teachers’ perception and attitudes of scaffolding method in teaching academic writing: An exploratory study at universities in Vietnam

The primary aim of this research is to investigate the impact of utilizing the scaffolding method on teaching academic writing in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at universities in Vietnam. This mixed-method study examined the attitudes and perceptions of 88 EFL educators from diverse backgrounds and degree levels who were randomly selected for the research. Methodologically, data were gathered and analyzed using the appropriate methods for each instrument, including a questionnaire and focus group discussion (FGD). Theoretically, the study is a medley of relevant theories and approaches such as Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory of Learning, the Scaffolding theory, and the ‘High challenge - High support’ pedagogy. The results of this study suggest that participants used scaffolding to some extent and had strongly positive attitudes and perceptions regarding its practical aspects; however, the findings also revealed that the surveyed lecturers are deficient in the necessary knowledge and skills. In addition, the study's findings imply that EFL teachers need training on how to properly use scaffolding as a pedagogical strategy to facilitate teaching academic writing to EFL students

FACTORS INFLUENCING STUDENT SATISFACTION OF ONLINE LEARNING WITHIN A VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITY CONTEXT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Covid-19 created an unprecedented and severe crisis in Ho Chi Minh City. One of the more serious consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic has been social distancing. For the education system, the pandemic has directly affected students’ learning processes. Students have to study online at the begining of the new school year. This study aimed to investigate and clarify the impact of factors affecting the satisfaction of university students in Ho Chi Minh City in the online learning process. A total of 999 university students participated in a student satisfaction survey. The survey results show that most of students participating in the survey are satisfied with their online learning process. Many factors had a positive influence on students’ satisfaction in online learning, in which learning conferencing software had the greatest influence. Another finding was that there is a huge difference in students’ responses to learning conferencing software. The study determined that the experience of using learning conferencing software influences student satisfaction, and it evaluated which learning conferencing software is the most optimal. Students satisfaction also varied depending on the number of academic years which the respondents had previously completed. This study’s findings are valuable for higher education administrators who want to improve student satisfaction with online learning as it makes suggestions and recommendations to improve the quality of online learning and student satisfaction in Vietnam

Aspects of Life Insurance Agents' Performance in Vietnam: A Study from the Impact of Customer-Oriented Behavior

This study examined the influence of life insurance agents' customer-oriented action research on aspects of agents' personal sales performance. In particular, the agent's performance is considered in terms of behavioral effectiveness and outcome performance. The research was conducted through interviews and surveys of insurance agents of life insurance businesses in Hanoi city, with 158 feedback forms received. Data collection is group processed through supporting software support SPSS and PLS-SEM. The study results show that customer-oriented behavior substantially impacts life insurance agents' behavioral performance more than outcome performance. At the same time, behavioral performance also plays a mediating role in providing the performance of customer-oriented behavior to the performance outcomes of life insurance agents. The research results are the basis for the authors to propose some key tips for life insurance businesses in the current context of Vietnam's insurance market

Bisbenzylisoquinoline alkaloids from Mahonia nepalensis

From the wood of Mahonia nepalensis DC. 1821, two bisbenzylisoquinolines homoaromoline (1) and isotetrandrine (2) were isolated by using various chromatoghraphies. Their structures were characterized on the basis of the spectroscopic data (1D-NMR, HSQC, HMBC, ESI-MS) in comparison with the literature. This is the first report of 1 - 2 from Mahonia nepalensis. Keywords: Mahonia nepalensis, Isotetrandrine, Homoaromoline, Bisbenzylisoquinoline

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Search for excited leptons in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Metal-Based Nanoparticles Enhance Drought Tolerance in Soybean

Drought is a major abiotic stress that negatively impacts plant growth and crop production. Among various techniques used to alleviate drought stress in plants, nanoparticle application is considered to be effective and promising. In this study, the responses of plants treated with iron, copper, cobalt, and zinc oxide nanoparticles (NPs) were analyzed in soybean under drought-induced conditions. The obtained results indicated that these metal-based NPs supported the drought tolerance of NP-treated plants. The desired physiological traits, viz., relative water content, drought tolerance index, and biomass reduction rate, were significantly improved, especially in iron NP-treated plants. At the molecular level, quantitative PCR analysis of several drought-responsive genes revealed a gene-, tissue-, and NP-dependent upregulation of gene expression. Iron NP treatment promoted the expression of all tested genes in roots; additionally, the expression of three drought-responsive genes increased in leaves of all NP-treated plants, while the expression of GmERD1 (Early Responsive to Dehydration 1) was induced in both roots and shoots under the four NP treatments tested. Our findings suggest that NP application can improve drought tolerance of soybean plants by triggering drought-associated gene expression

Development of a Cell Suspension Culture System for Promoting Alkaloid and Vinca Alkaloid Biosynthesis Using Endophytic Fungi Isolated from Local Catharanthus roseus

Cell and tissue cultures of Catharanthus roseus have been studied extensively as an alternative strategy to improve the production of valuable secondary metabolites. The purpose of this study was to produce C. roseus callus and suspension cell biomass of good quality and quantity to improve the total alkaloids and bis-indole alkaloids. The young stem derived-callus of C. roseus variety Quang Ninh (QN) was grown on MS medium supplemented with 1.5 mg/L 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) plus 1.5 mg/L kinetin, and the growth rate increased by 67-fold after 20 days. The optimal conditions for maintaining the cell suspension culture were 150 mg/50 mL cell inoculum, a medium pH of 5.5 and a culture temperature of 25 °C. The low alkaloid content in the culture was compensated for by using endophytic fungi isolated from local C. roseus. Cell extracts of endophytic fungi—identified as Fusarium solani RN1 and Chaetomium funicola RN3—were found to significantly promote alkaloid accumulation. This elicitation also stimulated the accumulation of a tested bis-indole alkaloid, vinblastine. The findings are important for investigating the effects of fungal elicitors on the biosynthesis of vinblastine and vincristine, as well as other terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs), in C. roseus QN cell suspension cultures

Effect of the Optimize Heart Failure Care Program on clinical and patient outcomes – The pilot implementation in Vietnam

Background: The Ho-Chi-Minh-city Heart Institute in Vietnam took part in the Optimize Heart Failure (OHF) Care Program, designed to improve outcomes following heart failure (HF) hospitalization by increasing patient awareness and optimizing HF treatment. Methods: HF patients hospitalized with left ventricular ejection-fraction (LVEF) <50% were included. Patients received guideline-recommended HF treatment and education. Clinical signs, treatments and outcomes were assessed at admission, discharge, 2 and 6 months (M2, M6). Patients' knowledge and practice were assessed at M6 by telephone survey. Results: 257 patients were included. Between admission and M2 and M6, heart rate decreased significantly, and clinical symptoms improved significantly. LVEF increased significantly from admission to M6. 85% to 99% of patients received education. At M6, 45% to 78% of patients acquired knowledge and adhered to practice regarding diet, exercise, weight control, and detection of worsening symptoms. High use of renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system inhibitors (91%), mineralocorticoid-receptor-antagonists (77%) and diuretics (85%) was noted at discharge. Beta-blocker and ivabradine use was less frequent at discharge but increased significantly at M6 (from 33% to 51% and from 9% to 20%, respectively, p < 0.001). There were no in-hospital deaths. Readmission rates at 30 and 60 days after discharge were 8.3% and 12.5%, respectively. Mortality rates at 30 days, 60 days and 6 months were 1.2%, 2.5% and 6.4%, respectively. Conclusions: The OHF Care Program could be implemented in Vietnam without difficulty and was associated with high usage of guideline-recommended drug therapy. Although education was delivered, patient knowledge and practice could be further improved at M6 after discharge. Keywords: Heart failure, Optimize, Education, Knowledge, Mortality, Readmissio