Private Sector Corruption in Vietnam: From Legislation to its Impact on the Economy

Purpose: The objective of this study was to analyze Vietnamese legal legislation regarding corruption in the private sector, identify its current shortcomings, and assess its impact on the Vietnamese economy since its adoption in 2018.   Theoretical framework: There have been many studies to assess corruption in Vietnam in many aspects, including the overview of corruption in Vietnam, the influence of corruption on economic development, and the consequences of corruption. However, there is still much to investigate and learn about the impact of the current provisions on corruption in the private sector on Vietnam’s economy.   Design/methodology/approach:  The study uses secondary data from the Provincial Competitiveness Index Report (PCI Vietnam) issued by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Besides, the article analyzes Vietnam's Corruption Control Index (CCI), which is assessed annually by the World Bank (WB). At the same time, the authors refer to the data on Vietnam's GDP and make a comparison with the CC index to  clarify the article’s objective. The authors also use a qualitative method by analyzing previous studies to assess the corruption in the private sector in Vietnam, the rules of law concerning private corruption, and its impact on the economy.   Findings:  Vietnam has had specific legislative achievements in criminalizing private corruption in the 2015 Criminal Law and promulgating anti-corruption provisions in the 2018 Anti-Corruption Law. These regulations had a positive impact on Vietnam's economy. However, corruption in the private sector in Vietnam is quite severe, especially bribery in business.   Research, Practical & Social implications:  We suggest future research of in-depth analysis of the causes and effects of specific kinds of corruption acts in the private sector.   Originality/value:  The results indicate that the new provisions on corruption in the private sector since it was adopted have positively affected the development of Vietnam's economy and the fight against corruption

A Comprehensive Study on Home Care Needs Among Elderly in an Urban Area of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Homecare service for elderly has been available in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam since 2009, but it is unknown whether homecare needs of elderly are met. Therefore, the objective of the study is to investigate homecare needs among elderly with the aim of providing baseline information to inform policy development to improve homecare services in the city.A cross-sectional study was conducted from 12 July to 12 November, 2015. Three hundred and nine older adults (≥ 60 years old) living in the District 12 of Ho Chi Minh City were randomly chosen and completed interviews using a structured questionnaire. Chi Square tests or ANOVA tests were used to examine the significant associations between elderly characteristics and homecare needs.The mean scores of activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) were 5.72 out of 6 and 5.16 out of 8, respectively. The mean score of Affect Balance was 6.23 out of 10. Only 54 of 309 participants (17.48%) had home health care needs, whereas 274 (88.67%) participants had health information needs. Factors having statistically significant associations with homecare needs included older age, male gender, low allowance, living alone and higher number of comorbidities.Elderly in District 12 had low ADLs needs, low psychological needs, low health care needs, but high health information needs and IADLs needs. Services including private care service, chatting service, home health care and health information services may be developed to meet those needs. Keywords: homecare needs, elderly, ADLs, IADL

ASEAN- Australia Trade Relations by Stages of Processing: Comparative Research

ASEAN and Australia became the dialogue partner in 1974. Over 46 years of cooperation and development, ASEAN- Australia relations have achieved many good results, especially in recent years when two sides participate in several free trade agreements (FTAs) at bilateral levels and multilateral levels. In 2014, Australia and ASEAN formally became strategic partners, recognizing the importance of the relationship in building mutual benefits. Participation in FTAs and relationship upgrading has helped bilateral trade growth. In 2018-2019, Australia was the seventh-largest trading partner of ASEAN and ASEAN was one of Australia's top three trading partner, however, the two sides face many challenges such as the difficulties after the global crisis since 2009, the "spaghetti bowl" phenomenon of joining many agreements at the same time. Thus, to solve these problems, the production and exporting of comparative advantage goods by the stages of processing to participate in an ideal regional supply chain are very important. Based on the comparative theory and supply chain perspectives The paper compared revealed comparative advantage indexes of ASEAN countries and Australia from 2009 through 2018 to find which country in ASEAN is Australia's suitable partner from which provided the ideal effective supply chain distribution. After that, through trade value comparison, the paper examed if ASEAN countries and Australia specialized in production by stages of processing. From the results, appropriate recommendations were provided to enhance the trade relations between ASEAN and Australia

Sparsity exploitation via discovering graphical models in multi-variate time-series forecasting

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have been widely applied in multi-variate time-series forecasting (MTSF) tasks because of their capability in capturing the correlations among different time-series. These graph-based learning approaches improve the forecasting performance by discovering and understanding the underlying graph structures, which represent the data correlation. When the explicit prior graph structures are not available, most existing works cannot guarantee the sparsity of the generated graphs that make the overall model computational expensive and less interpretable. In this work, we propose a decoupled training method, which includes a graph generating module and a GNNs forecasting module. First, we use Graphical Lasso (or GraphLASSO) to directly exploit the sparsity pattern from data to build graph structures in both static and time-varying cases. Second, we fit these graph structures and the input data into a Graph Convolutional Recurrent Network (GCRN) to train a forecasting model. The experimental results on three real-world datasets show that our novel approach has competitive performance against existing state-of-the-art forecasting algorithms while providing sparse, meaningful and explainable graph structures and reducing training time by approximately 40%. Our PyTorch implementation is publicly available at https://github.com/HySonLab/GraphLASS

Flexible Pavement Life Cycle Cost Analysis by Using Monte-Carlo Method and the Suggestions for Developing Countries

Flexible road pavement plays an essential role in developing an effective, economic, and safe operation road network of any country. In Vietnam, a developing country, the selection of a suitable flexible pavement structure is always a challenge due to fiscal limitations. The traditional determinant method (TDM) by which pavement structures are selected mainly on the basis of initial construction costs and traffic load has been used for many years in the nation. This paper presents the use of Monte Carlo simulation to analyze the entire flexible pavement life cycle cost. Data including initial and maintenance costs and road user costs were collected from several different types of existing flexible pavement in Nghe An province, Vietnam. Random variations of several main inputs were explored in order to develop density distribution functions. These functions then were used as the bases for Monte Carlo simulation. One million simulation runs were implemented and the Net Present Values (NPVs) among pavement types were compared under the light of risk analysis. Research results showed that TDM method provided bias and uncertain results compared to that of Monte Carlo one. In terms of long- term pavement performance, a low-cost pavement structure should not always be considered as a wise selection. Some other suggestions for a developing country as Vietnam were also included

Parameter Identification Method for a 3-phase Induction Heating System

This paper describes a new method for the on-line parameter estimation of an induction heating system. Simulations and experiments are presented in order to measure its impedance matrix for more exact control in closed loop. In previous papers, various parameter identification methods including off-line methods were introduced and compared for current inverters. It has been demonstrated that parameter identification is necessary to achieve good control of the inductor currents. A “pseudo-energy” method for a simple and fast implementation is compared to a classical “V/I with phase shift” method. They are experienced on a reduced power 3-phase coupled resonant system supplied with voltage inverters with satisfying results

Factors affecting green food purchase intention in Ho Chi Minh City

This study adopts Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to measure factors affecting green food purchase intention in Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC). The survey data was collected from 197 students during the period of 1st to 20th September, 2017. Testing the conceptual model by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), we find that perceived usefulness of green food and perceived ease of purchase impact on attitudes towards green food purchase. We also find that subjective norm, perceived usefulness of green food, attitudes towards green food purchase are positively associated with green food purchase intention. From the research findings, some recommendations are proposed accordingly

Gut microbiota of migrating wild rabbit fish (Siganus guttatus) larvae have low spatial and temporal variability

We investigated the gut microbiota of rabbit fish larvae at three locations in Vietnam (ThuanAn-northern, QuangNam-intermediate, BinhDinh-southern sampling site) over a three-year period. In the wild, the first food for rabbit fish larvae remains unknown, while the juveniles and adults are herbivores, forming schools near the coasts, lagoons, and river mouths, and feeding mainly on filamentous algae. This is the first study on the gut microbiota of the wild fish larvae and with a large number of individuals analyzed spatially and temporally. The Clostridiales order was the most predominant in the gut, and location-by-location alpha diversity showed significant differences in Chao-1, Hill number 1, and evenness. Analysis of beta diversity indicated that the location, not year, had an effect on the composition of the microbiota. In 2014, the gut microbiota of fish from QuangNam was different from that in BinhDinh; in 2015, the gut microbiota was different for all locations; and, in 2016, the gut microbiota in ThuanAn was different from that in the other locations. There was a time-dependent trend in the north-south axis for the gut microbiota, which is considered to be tentative awaiting larger datasets. We found limited variation in the gut microbiota geographically and in time and strong indications for a core microbiome. Five and fifteen OTUs were found in 100 and 99% of the individuals, respectively. This suggests that at this life stage the gut microbiota is under strong selection due to a combination of fish-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions

The effect of perceived educational support, self-efficacy and planned behavior predictors on entrepreneurial intention of Ho Chi Minh City University students

The research attempts to quantify the significance of perceived education support, self-efficacy, and the theory of planned behavior in predicting the entrepreneurial intention among undergraduate students in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). The paper employs a 28-item questionnaire to acquire information on undergraduate demographics and six variables based on the five-point Likert scale. SmartPLS version 3.0 was applied to analyze statistical data collecting from 312 students in three selected universities in Ho Chi Minh City. The findings indicate that perceived education support and two elements of theory planned behavior, specifically, attitude towards entrepreneurship and perceived behavioral control positively and significantly affect entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, perceived education support had a strong correlation on attitude towards entrepreneurship. Overall, the paper suggests practical implications in increasing entrepreneurship intention toward undergraduates

STREPTOCOCCUS INIAE, TÁC NHÂN GÂY BỆNH ?ĐEN THÂN? TRÊN CÁ RÔ ĐỒNG (ANABAS TESTUDINEUS)

Nghiên cứu mô tả lần đầu tiên phân lập vi khuẩn Streptococcus iniae là tác nhân gây bệnh ?đen thân? trên cá rô đồng (Anabas testudineus). Nghiên cứu đã thu được 114 mẫu cá rô đồng bệnh có dấu hiệu đen thân ở các ao nuôi thâm canh khác nhau ở các tỉnh đồng bằng sông Cửu Long. Cá bệnh có dấu hiệu khắp vùng lưng màu đen, mắt cá mờ đục, xuất huyết nội quan, gan, thận và tùy tạng sưng to. Các mẫu cá được kiểm tổng quát các tác nhân gây bệnh. Sau thời gian ủ 24-36 giờ ở 28°C, các khuẩn lạc thuần dạng nhỏ li ti, trắng đục được phân lập từ các mẫu gan, thận, tỳ tạng, máu, mắt và não cá bệnh xuất hiện nhiều trên môi trường brain heart infusion  agar (BHI ) và thạch máu (BA). Quan sát tế bào vi khuẩn nhuộm Gram có hình cầu, dạng chuỗi, Gram dương. Kết quả kiểm tra đặc điểm hình thái, sinh lý, sinh hóa, kít API 20Strep và giải trình tự gen 16S rRNA đã xác định vi khuẩn phân lập trên cá rô đồng bệnh ?đen thân? là Streptococcus iniae. Hai chủng vi khuẩn S. iniae điển hình được sử dụng để gây thí nghiệm cảm nhiễm trên cá rô đồng giống khỏe (trọng lượng 3-6 g) bằng phương pháp tiêm 4 nồng độ từ 103 đến 106 CFU/mL. ..