Review and Evaluation of Agricultural Policies in Years 2015-2017

This journal article describes main results of the OECD Annual Report published in 2018, titled “Review and evaluation of agricultural policy in 2017” for 51 selected countries in the world, including Vietnam. The report is closely prepared by MARD and OECD experts. The journal article emphasizes more on Vietnam by updating and adjusting data, information and policies in 2017 and 2018. The description presents the changing trend of agricultural policies applied in the world, considering whether this trend is in the direction of achieving sustainable productivity growth, environmental protection, and adaptation to climate change. On average in the last 20 years, trend of world policies has been better but far to catch above purposes. The development of international trade has made the commodity movement more freely and price gaps narrowed between countries and regions. This trend made agricultural markets developed more toward reflecting the scarcity of good and services. Average level of total agricultural supports has been reducing. Consequently, the world price indices and the total support have been converted between countries and commodities. However, the total agricultural support reduction is mainly in developed countries like OECD countries. Emerging and developing countries have increased their agricultural supports. Relative to GDP, the level of the total agriculture support in Vietnam has been reducing.Inside the total agricultural support, producer supports accounted 78% while general service support accounted only for 14%. Inside the producer support, market price support accounted for more than 50% in many countries. Payments based on outputs and inputs also accounted more than 50% in many countries. In Vietnam, the producer support is very small, negative level in 2015 and 2016 and became positive in 2017 and 2018. The agricultural producer support in 2017 is about 900 million USD. In the overall service support, many countries mainly invest in infrastructure construction, for example in Japan and Vietnam over 70%, while investments in other items are too small, for example that in Vietnam is only about 16%.In conclusion, OECD suggests that market price support should be reduced and finally eliminated. Similarly, output and input payments should be reduced and eliminated. Future policies should focus on general support service that helps producers to achieve sustainable productivity growth in the context of a changing and uncertain climate. OECD especially emphasizes on appropriate investments in research, together with efforts to ensure that the outputs of this research reach farmers. OECD also emphasizes on research that help producers to better manage risks including business risk, weather risk, and climate changes. Agricultural production and climate changes are strongly interacted. Future research should be the better co-operation between public and private sectors with the leading role of public sector. The future research should be co-operated more strongly between countries and regions because of the differences in histories, cultures, geology and climate

Synthesis and Optical Characterization of Building-Block Plasmonic Gold Nanostructures

Plasmonics, the field involves manipulating light at the nanoscale, has been being an emergent research field worldwide. Synthesizing the plasmonic gold nanostructures with controlled morphology and desired optical properties is of special importance towards specific applications in the field. Here, we report the chemical synthesis and the optical properties of various plasmonic Au nanostructures, namely Au nanoparticles (AuNPs), Au nanorods (AuNRs) and random Au nano-islands (AuNI) that are the building blocks for plasmonic research. The results show that the AuNPs exhibited a single plasmonic resonance, the AuNRs displayed two identical and separated modes of the resonance, and the random Au nano-islands presented a very broad resonance. Specifically, tailoring the anisotropy of the Au nanorods enabled extending their resonant frequencies from the visible to the near infrared ones, which is in accordance with the finite different time domain simulations

Rapid expression and purification of the hepatitis delta virus antigen using the methylotropic yeast Pichia pastoris

Objective: Patients with dual hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis D (HDV) virus infection are at an increased risk of progression to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma than patients with a single viral infection. Treatment of viral hepatitis due to dual HBV/HDV infection represents a challenge. Currently there is no vaccine against HDV. Recombinant production of HDV antigen (HDAg) is the first step towards a potential vaccine candidate and the development of assays for HDV detection. Results: This study demonstrates the expression of one HDAg isoform, S-HDAg, in Pichia pastoris. A recombinant vector carrying a tagged gene encoding S-HDAg under the control of the methanol-inducible promoter AOX1 was designed and integrated into P. pastoris X33. The protein, which was purified using a Ni2+ affinity column and eluted at 100-150 mM imidazole, has potential as a recombinant antigen for further study

Video captioning in Vietnamese using deep learning

With the development of today's society, demand for applications using digital cameras jumps over year by year. However, analyzing large amounts of video data causes one of the most challenging issues. In addition to storing the data captured by the camera, intelligent systems are required to quickly analyze the data to correct important situations. In this paper, we use deep learning techniques to build automatic models that describe movements on video. To solve the problem, we use three deep learning models: sequence-to-sequence model based on recurrent neural network, sequence-to-sequence model with attention and transformer model. We evaluate the effectiveness of the approaches based on the results of three models. To train these models, we use microsoft research video description corpus (MSVD) dataset including 1970 videos and 85,550 captions translated into Vietnamese. In order to ensure the description of the content in Vietnamese, we also combine it with the natural language processing (NLP) model for Vietnamese

Sequencing Batch Reactor and Bacterial Community in Aerobic Granular Sludge for Wastewater Treatment of Noodle-Manufacturing Sector

The sequencing batch reactor (SBR) has been increasingly applied in the control of high organic wastewater. In this study, SBR with aerobic granular sludge was used for wastewater treatment in a noodle-manufacturing village in Vietnam. The results showed that after two months of operation, the chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen and total phosphorous removal efficiency of aerobic granular SBR reached 92%, 83% and 75%, respectively. Bacterial diversity and bacterial community in wastewater treatment were examined using Illumina Miseq sequencing to amplify the V3-V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene. A high diversity of bacteria was observed in the activated sludge, with more than 400 bacterial genera and 700 species. The predominant genus was Lactococcus (21.35%) mainly containing Lactococcus chungangensis species. Predicted functional analysis showed a high representation of genes involved in membrane transport (12.217%), amino acid metabolism (10.067%), and carbohydrate metabolism (9.597%). Genes responsible for starch and sucrose metabolism accounted for 0.57% of the total reads and the composition of starch hydrolytic enzymes including α-amylase, starch phosphorylase, glucoamylase, pullulanase, α-galactosidase, β-galactosidase, α-glucosidase, β-glucosidase, and 1,4-α-glucan branching enzyme. The presence of these enzymes in the SBR system may improve the removal of starch pollutants in wastewater

Climate change threatens the conservation of one of the world’s most endangered transboundary tree species: Magnolia grandis

The Sino-Vietnamese border region is known for having unique and high levels of biodiversity. Global climate change is expected to alter the region’s climate and related changes in habitats and ecosystems will result in shifts in species’ distributions and increase the likelihood of local and global extinctions. Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) are widely used to predict the magnitude of potential species distribution shifts in response to climate change and inform conservation planning. Here, we present climate-based ENM projections of future climatically suitable habitat for the Daguo Mulian tree (Magnolia grandis), a critically endangered species of high ecological and cultural value in the Sino-Vietnamese border region. Projections of modeled climatically suitable habitat for M. grandis, both for the 2050s and 2070s, suggest significant habitat loss within conservation areas, and a defining shift in the location of suitable habitat. Future projections are conservative and do not account for dispersal limitations or species interactions or other factors, and thus may overestimate potential shifts and underestimate losses. Our results suggest that current conservation management efforts for M. grandis, which include community forest conservation monitoring combined with nursery cultivation efforts, can continue to have success if implemented in an adaptive management framework with long-term research and monitoring to inform forward-thinking decisions with future climatic suitability in mind. The results also underline how endangered species’ distributions may shift across borders as they track suitable climates, emphasizing that nations will need to cooperate to effectively manage threatened species and habitats and prevent extinctions

Climate change threatens the conservation of one of the world’s most endangered transboundary tree species: Magnolia grandis

The Sino-Vietnamese border region is known for having unique and high levels of biodiversity. Global climate change is expected to alter the region’s climate and related changes in habitats and ecosystems will result in shifts in species’ distributions and increase the likelihood of local and global extinctions. Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) are widely used to predict the magnitude of potential species distribution shifts in response to climate change and inform conservation planning. Here, we present climate-based ENM projections of future climatically suitable habitat for the Daguo Mulian tree (Magnolia grandis), a critically endangered species of high ecological and cultural value in the Sino-Vietnamese border region. Projections of modeled climatically suitable habitat for M. grandis, both for the 2050s and 2070s, suggest significant habitat loss within conservation areas, and a defining shift in the location of suitable habitat. Future projections are conservative and do not account for dispersal limitations or species interactions or other factors, and thus may overestimate potential shifts and underestimate losses. Our results suggest that current conservation management efforts for M. grandis, which include community forest conservation monitoring combined with nursery cultivation efforts, can continue to have success if implemented in an adaptive management framework with long-term research and monitoring to inform forward-thinking decisions with future climatic suitability in mind. The results also underline how endangered species’ distributions may shift across borders as they track suitable climates, emphasizing that nations will need to cooperate to effectively manage threatened species and habitats and prevent extinctions

Autosomal recessive hyper‐IgE syndrome due to DOCK8 deficiency: An adjunctive role for omalizumab

Abstract Autosomal recessive hyper‐IgE syndrome (AR‐HIES) is a rare primary immunodeficiency disorder characterized by high serum IgE levels, recurrent viral skin infections, severe allergies, and early‐onset malignancies, associated with mutations in the gene encoding the dedicator of cytokinesis 8 protein (DOCK8). We report a rare case of AR‐HIES with DOCK8 deficiency in a young Japanese male with a past medical history of chronic atopic dermatitis, severe food allergies, and severe herpes simplex virus infection. Treatment was successfully based on infection management, skincare, and dietary elimination. In addition, anti‐IgE therapy with omalizumab was the target treatment for this syndrome

Predictive Factors of Mortality in Patients with Severe COVID-19 Treated in the Intensive Care Unit: A Single-Center Study in Vietnam

Abstract Introduction The fourth outbreak of COVID-19 with the delta variant in Vietnam was very fierce due to the limited availability of vaccines and the lack of healthcare resources. During that period, the high mortality of patients with severe and critical COVID-19 caused many concerns for the health system, especially the intensive care units. This study aimed to analyze the predictive factors of death and survival in patients with severe and critical COVID-19. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional and descriptive study on 151 patients with severe and critical COVID-19 hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit of Binh Duong General Hospital. Results Common clinical symptoms of severe and critical COVID-19 included shortness of breath (97.4%), fatigue (89.4%), cough (76.8%), chest pain (47.7%), loss of smell (48.3%), loss of taste (39.1%), and headache (21.2%). The abnormal biochemical features were leukopenia (2.1%), anemia, thrombocytopenia (18%), hypoxia with low PaO2 (34.6%), hypocapnia with reduced PaCO2 (29.6%), and blood acidosis (18.4%). Common complications during hospitalization were septic shock (15.2%), cardiogenic shock (5.3%), and embolism (2.6%). The predictive factors of death were being female, age > 65 years, cardiovascular comorbidity, thrombocytopenia (< 137.109/l), and hypoxia at inclusion or after the first week or blood acidosis (pH < 7.28). The use of a high dose of corticosteroids reduced the mortality during the first 3 weeks of hospitalization but significantly increased risk of death after 3 and 4 weeks. Conclusions Common clinical symptoms, laboratory features, and death-related complications of critical and severe COVID-19 patients were found in Vietnamese patients during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of this study provide new insight into the predictive factors of mortality for patients with severe and critical COVID-19