NeCo@ALQAC 2023: Legal Domain Knowledge Acquisition for Low-Resource Languages through Data Enrichment

In recent years, natural language processing has gained significant popularity in various sectors, including the legal domain. This paper presents NeCo Team's solutions to the Vietnamese text processing tasks provided in the Automated Legal Question Answering Competition 2023 (ALQAC 2023), focusing on legal domain knowledge acquisition for low-resource languages through data enrichment. Our methods for the legal document retrieval task employ a combination of similarity ranking and deep learning models, while for the second task, which requires extracting an answer from a relevant legal article in response to a question, we propose a range of adaptive techniques to handle different question types. Our approaches achieve outstanding results on both tasks of the competition, demonstrating the potential benefits and effectiveness of question answering systems in the legal field, particularly for low-resource languages.Comment: ISAILD@KSE 202

Prevalence and Determinants of Medication Adherence among Patients with HIV/AIDS in Southern Vietnam

This study was conducted to determine the prevalence and determinants of medication adherence among patients with HIV/AIDS in southern Vietnam. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a hospital in southern Vietnam from June to December 2019 on patients who began antiretroviral therapy (ART) for at least 6 months. Using a designed questionnaire, patients were considered adherent if they took correct medicines with right doses, on time and properly with food and beverage and had follow-up visits as scheduled. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify determinants of adherence. KEY FINDINGS: A total of 350 patients (from 861 medical records) were eligible for the study. The majority of patients were male (62.9%), and the dominant age group (≥35 years old) accounted for 53.7% of patients. Sexual intercourse was the primary route of transmission of HIV (95.1%). The proportions of participants who took the correct medicine and at a proper dose were 98.3% and 86.3%, respectively. In total, 94.9% of participants took medicine appropriately in combination with food and beverage, and 75.7% of participants were strictly adherent to ART. The factors marital status (odds ratio (OR) = 2.54; 95%CI = 1.51-4.28), being away from home (OR = 1.7; 95%CI = 1.03-2.78), substance abuse (OR = 2.7; 95%CI = 1.44-5.05), general knowledge about ART (OR = 2.75; 95%CI = 1.67-4.53), stopping medication after improvement (OR = 4.16; 95%CI = 2.29-7.56) and self-assessment of therapy adherence (OR = 9.83; 95%CI = 5.44-17.77) were significantly associated with patients' adherence. CONCLUSIONS: Three-quarters of patients were adherent to ART. Researchers should consider these determinants of adherence in developing interventions in further studies

LEARNING AWARENESS LEVEL OF NURSING STUDENTS AT TRA VINH UNIVERSITY ON CLINICAL PRACTICE ENVIRONMENT AT HOSPITAL

The purpose of the study was to examine the level of awareness about the clinical practice environment at the hospital among nursing students of Tra Vinh University in 2021. A descriptive cross-sectional study was applied to analyze the data of 205 students selected. The study results showed a positive level of awareness with an average score of 130.83±8.73. ’Interaction and participation’ had an average score of 41.6±2.99, ’Student-centered’ had an average score of 45.92±3.56, ’Allow individual participation’ had an average score of 10.53±1.82, ’Nursing work value’ had an average score of 9.11±1.11, ’Promoting learning at work’ had an average score of 16.42±2.80, and ’Lack of creativity’ had an average score of 7.23±1.48. The research results  provide implications for the further improvement of nursing training at Tra Vinh University in particular and universities and colleges with nursing training in general

Knowledge of Antiretroviral Treatment and Associated Factors in HIV-Infected Patients

This study aimed to assess the knowledge of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and the associated factors in HIV-infected patients in Vietnam. We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study of 350 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients being treated with ARV at outpatient clinics at Soc Trang, Vietnam, from June 2019 to December 2019. Using an interview questionnaire, patients who answered at least eight out of nine questions correctly, including some required questions, were considered to have a general knowledge of ARV treatment. Using multivariate logistic regression to identify factors associated with knowledge of ARV treatment, we found that 62% of HIV-infected patients had a general knowledge of ARV treatment, with a mean score of 8.2 (SD 1.4) out of 9 correct. A higher education level (p < 0.001); working away from home (p = 0.013); getting HIV transmitted by injecting drugs or from mother-to-child contact (p = 0.023); the presence of tension, anxiety, or stress (p = 0.005); self-reminding to take medication (p = 0.024); and a high self-evaluated adherence (p < 0.001) were found to be significantly associated with an adequate knowledge of ARV treatment. In conclusion, education programs for patients, as well as the quality of medical services and support, should be strengthened

FACTORS AFFECTING QUALITY OF LIFE OF PERSONS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES OUTCOME TREATMENT AT TRA VINH UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL

The study aimed to determine the factors affecting the quality of life of patients with type 2 diabetes treated as outpatients at Tra Vinh University Hospital in 2021. The crosssectional study includes data from over 200 people with type 2 diabetes who are being treated as outpatients at Tra Vinh University Hospital. The study used direct interviews to collect data. The study managed and analyzed data using SPSS 20.0 software and the Kruskal Wallis and MannWhitney test to identify factors affecting the life quality of patients with type 2 diabetes. The results show that the overall quality of life score of diabetic patients is 62.10 ± 7.31, equivalent to the average quality of life of patients with diabetes. The results also show that the average quality of life score for participants are connected with factors including age groups, occupation, duration of disease, other comorbidities, and complications in patients. This difference is statistically significant with p < 0.001, p = 0.001, p = 0.039, p = 0.007, p = 0.008, respectively. In addition, the study did not find any difference in the mean quality of life scores by gender, education level, marital status, health insurance, household economy, people living with, BMI, glycemic index, and treatment methods

H2_{2}O2_{2} production in Lactobacillus strains isolated from the intestinal microbiome of healthy people

Lactobacillus sp. in the digestive tract are capable of producing H2O2 to inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria and balance the gut microflora. In this study, we have isolated 115 strains of Lactobacillus spp. from stool samples of healthy people in Ha Noi. Of the 50 tested Lactobacillus strains, 9 strains were capable of producing H2O2, of which the Lac.VFE-14 strain produced highly H2O2 with a concentration of 2.183 mM, followed by Lac.VFE-08 strains (2.081 mM) and Lac.VFE-04 (2.067 mM). All three strains grew well in MRS medium supplemented with bile salts or adjusted to low pH value. With 0.3% of bile salt, the survival rates of these 3 strains were 99%, 95% and 97%, respectively. At pH 3.0, after 3 hours of cultivation, the survival rates of the three strains were 98.54%, 94.15% and 95.27%, respectively. In addition, each of the cell-free culture supernatants of these three strains that inhibit the growth of S. aureus ATCC-23235. The inhibition zone diameters of the three strains were 19.0±1.0 mm, 14.0±1.0 mm and 11.7±1.3 mm, respectively. The results of 16S rRNA gene analyses showed that Lac.VFE-14, Lac.VFE-08 and Lac.VFE-04 had high similarity scores with L. plantarum ZZU 23 (100%), L. rhamnosus JCM 1136 (99%) and L. plantarum S7 (98.65%), respectively. This study indicates that all three strains have the potential to be used as probiotics in the future. 

Influence of Spray Rate on Structural and Optical Properties of Sprayed ZnO Films

In this report, the ZnO nanostructure films have been deposited by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis technique (USP) on fluorine doped tinoxide~(FTO) substrate using zinc acetate and aqueous 2-propanol as reactants. The effects of solution spray rate on structural, morphological and optical properties of ZnO nanostructure films were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and UV-Vis measurements. ZnO films were crystallized in the hexagonal wurtzite phase and preferential orientation changed with changing of spray rate. Grain size and roughness of films depended on spray rate. Increasing spray rate made the films grown with bigger grain size and higher roughness. Band gap energy was determined from the UV-Vis. Its value was found to be of 3.25 eV and was almost independent on the spray rate

Spatiotemporal evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Alpha and Delta variants during large nationwide outbreak of COVID-19, Vietnam, 2021

We analyzed 1,303 SARS-CoV-2 whole-genome sequences from Vietnam, and found the Alpha and Delta variants were responsible for a large nationwide outbreak of COVID-19 in 2021. The Delta variant was confined to the AY.57 lineage and caused >1.7 million infections and >32,000 deaths. Viral transmission was strongly affected by nonpharmaceutical interventions