An optimal control approach for the treatment of hepatitis C patients

In this article, the feasibility of using optimal control theory will be studied to develop control theoretic methods for personalized treatment of HCV patients. The mathematical model for HCV progression includes compartments for healthy hepatocytes, infected hepatocytes, infectious virions and noninfectious virions. Methodologies have been used from optimal control theory to design and synthesize an open-loop control based treatment regimen for HCV dynamics.Comment: Accepted for oral presentation at the ICCSE 2014, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietna

Correlated outcomes of a pilot intervention for people injecting drugs and their family members in Vietnam.

BackgroundThe interrelationship between the well-being of injecting drug users (IDUs) and their family environment has been widely documented. However, few intervention programs have addressed the needs of both IDUs and their family members.MethodsThis study describes a randomized intervention pilot targeting 83 IDUs and 83 of their family members from four communes in Phú Thọ province, Vietnam. The IDUs and family members in the intervention condition received multiple group sessions, with the intent to improve psychological well-being and family relationships. The intervention outcomes (depressive symptoms and family relations) were evaluated at baseline, 3-month and 6-month follow-up assessments.ResultsDepressive symptoms and family relations reported by IDUs were found to be correlated to those reported by their family members. Overall, significant intervention effects on depressive symptoms and family relations were observed for both IDUs and family members. A similar improvement pattern in family relations emerged for both the IDU and family member samples, although the intervention effect of reducing depressive symptoms was more sustainable for family members at the 6-month assessment when compared to the IDU sample.ConclusionThe intervention pilot addressed challenges faced by IDUs and their family members and revealed correlated outcomes for the two groups. Findings suggest a vital need to include family members in future drug prevention and harm reduction intervention efforts

THE CONSUMER TRENDS OF SECONDHAND CLOTHING IN YOUNG PEOPLE – THE CASE OF THE GENERATION Z OF VIETNAM

In recent years, secondhand clothes have become a fashion trend that is enthusiastically supported by Vietnamese youth thanks to their fashionability and environmental friendliness. A series of second-hand shops, warehouses, and consignment events have sprung up in parallel with second-hand markets that have existed for many years, still attracting many visitors. In order to examine the trend of secondhand clothing consumption among young Vietnamese, the research team conducted this study. Through the results of the study, it can be seen that the main personal factors leading to the use of secondhand clothes by the survey subjects are spending savings and personal preferences. Most of the decisions to buy secondhand clothes are influenced by the uniqueness of the product and by friends and relatives. The most enabling aspect when using secondhand clothes is the product quality and the product's design, while the aspects that are the most concerns by both users and non-users of secondhand clothes are a matter of hygiene and health

Synthesis of holmium orthoferrite nanoparticles by the co-precipitation method at high temperature

Holmium orthoferrite HoFeO3 nanoparticles were synthesized by a simple co-precipitation method via the hydrolysis of Ho (III) and Fe (III) cations in boiling water with 5% aqueous ammonia solution. After annealing the precipitate at 750 and 850 °C for 1 hour, the single-phase HoFeO3 product formed with particle size < 50 nm. The synthesized nanopowders are paramagnetic materials with remanent magnetization Mr < 0.01 emu ·g-1, the coercive force Hc = 20÷21 Oe, and magnetization Ms ~ 2.73 emu ·g-1 at 300 K in a maximum field of 16,000 Oe

Evaluating Tourism Digital Marketing Activities: Case Study of Moc Chau, Son La, Viet Nam

In the context of 4.0, Digital Marketing is becoming more and more important for all aspects of life, including tourism. This study aims to examine the tourist’s evaluation of the use of tourism digital marketing (digital marketing tools) by travel agencies in Moc Chau, Son La. The results show that “Social Media Marketing” has the maximum level of appearance, level of attraction and level of influence. In addition, “Video Marketing” and “Multimedia Marketing” also have a high frequency of appearance, level of attraction, and high level of influence. From studying the theoretical basis of Digital Marketing, with the survey results and in-depth interviews, the research team proposes to make some suggestions to improve the efficiency of using digital marketing tools for Moc Chau tourism and government agencies

Development of freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) seed production and culture technology in the Mekong Delta Region of Vietnam: A review of the JIRCAS Project at Cantho University.

The Mekong Delta of Vietnam is a region rich in aquatic resources having high potential for aquaculture development. Inland aquaculture in the Mekong Delta has greatly increased since the last decade. Fish culture carried out in combination with other agricultural activities such as animal husbandry and rice cultivation, and intensive aquaculture in ponds and cages have been the dominant forms of fish production. However, the giant freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii, has recently become a species of economic significance and the target of aquaculture activity in the Mekong Delta. M. rosenbergii is cultured throughout the region in the rice fields, ponds, orchard gardens and in pens along river banks. The major constraints in this industry are seed supply and culture techniques, becoming the major obstacles for the further development of the culture of this species. In a collaborative research project implemented between the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) and Cantho University (CTU) since 1994, studies have been carried out on various aspects relating to the establishment of M. rosenbergii seed production and culture technology. The project is now in the middle of its second phase and has generated a great deal of scientific and practical information. This paper presents an overview of the achievements of this project

Addressing Non-IID Problem in Federated Autonomous Driving with Contrastive Divergence Loss

Federated learning has been widely applied in autonomous driving since it enables training a learning model among vehicles without sharing users' data. However, data from autonomous vehicles usually suffer from the non-independent-and-identically-distributed (non-IID) problem, which may cause negative effects on the convergence of the learning process. In this paper, we propose a new contrastive divergence loss to address the non-IID problem in autonomous driving by reducing the impact of divergence factors from transmitted models during the local learning process of each silo. We also analyze the effects of contrastive divergence in various autonomous driving scenarios, under multiple network infrastructures, and with different centralized/distributed learning schemes. Our intensive experiments on three datasets demonstrate that our proposed contrastive divergence loss further improves the performance over current state-of-the-art approaches

Study on the antioxidant capacity of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis decoction in vivo in Mus musculus var. albino

This study proved that Hibiscus rosa-sinensis has the antioxidant activity and the ability to recover liver functions when it was coordinated with cyclophosphamide in mice mode

Democracy as the legitimating condition in the UK constitution

The UK constitution is either theorised as a political constitution that is premised on the Westminster model of government or as a legal constitution that rests on moral principles, which the common law is said to protect. Both models conceive of democracy in procedural terms, and not in substantive terms. However, the democratic legitimacy of laws stems from a complex constellation of conditions that no longer involves popular or parliamentary sovereignty alone. This article explores three questions. First, in what situation does the absence of a concrete understanding of democracy become an inescapable problem for constitutional law? Second, to what extent are the existing constitutional models democratically deficient? Third, what precisely must democracy prescribe as the indispensable condition for political legitimacy