Degradation of 2,3,7,8-TCDD by a consortium of bacterial strains isolated from heavil herbicide/dioxin contaminated soil in Bienhoa airbase

From two different soil sources in Bienhoa airbase (heavy herbicide/dioxin contaminated West-South region and bioremediated cell), five microbial strains were isolated and their 2,3,7,8-TCDD biodegrability in consortium was investigated. Based on the colony and cell morphological characteristics as well as 16S rRNA gene sequences, these strains were classified into 5 genera, including Methylobacterium (strain BHBi1), Hydrocarboniphaga (strain BHBi4), Agrobacterium (strain BHBi5), Bosea (strain BHBi7) and Microbacterium (strain BH09). Two strains BHBi7 and BHBi4 were the first representatives of the genera Bosea and Hydrocarboniphaga that were isolated from heavyly herbicide/dioxin contaminated soil. All five strains were able to grow well in mineral salt medium (MSM) supplemented with soil extract (SE) containing 2,3,7,8-TCDD (this congener is the main soil total compound toxicity) and other congeners, including PCDDs, PCDFs, 2,4,5-T, 2,4-D, PAHs and their intermediates. This microbial consortium degraded 2,537.34 ngTEQ/kg of 2,3,7,8-TCDD congener in soil, equivalent to 59.1% lost of total toxicity in comparison to the control without bacterial seeding (4,294.12 ng TEQ/kg). Such a high ratio of dioxin degradation by a bacterial consortium was reported here for the first time, contributing more evidences for convincing the successful dioxin bioremediation of “Active Landfill” technology at large scale in Z1 area at Bienhoa airbase, Dongnai, Vietnam

Alcohol Use, Risk Taking, Leisure Activities and Health Care Use Among Young People in Northern Vietnam

Alcohol consumption is associated with a wide range of health and social consequences. It is also associated with a number of risk taking behaviours. These include illicit drug use and unsafe sex.  Alcohol consumption appears to be increasing in Vietnam. The purpose of this paper is to examine the patterns of alcohol consumption and its relationship with a number of other risk taking behaviours amongst young people.  Information was also obtained concerning leisure activities and use of health care. The paper also sets out to examine possible gender differences in relation to alcohol consumption and risk behaviour and to propose the development and implementation of alcohol monitoring and prevention programs in Vietnam.  The study involved a cross-sectional, community survey using a standardised interview.  This was conducted during face-to-face interviews with 1,408 young people aged 10-19 years.  Respondents were recruited randomly through the lists of the households from 12 selected communes in three areas in Northern Vietnam. The findings presented here were part of a larger health risk behaviour survey.  Levels of alcohol use were low. Overall, 16.5% of participants were experienced drinkers, and only 4% of them were current drinkers. Males were significantly more likely than females to report drinking. This study also showed that rates of alcohol consumption were associated with age, education, geographical area, gender, tobacco smoking, involvement in violence, watching television, computer use and playing computer games, wearing safety helmets and use of health services. Alcohol consumption tended to increase with age for both males and females.  Alcohol and its effects on young people are clearly a growing public health issue in Vietnam.  Because of this, more detailed behavioral research should be conducted into the relationship between alcohol consumption and other risky behaviours amongst young people.  It is also recommended that alcohol harm reduction policies should be implemented and integrated into measures to reduce levels of other health problems such as HIV/AIDS and non communicable diseases. Such policies should ideally be evidence-based and evaluated

Preliminary study on phytogeography of Dipterocarpaceae Blume family in Vietnam

Biogeographically mapping flora of Vietnam requires the studies on the distribution of some important species groups for identifying the typical species composition of each phytochorion. The Dipterocarpaceae family contains taxa originated in tropical Asia and its subfamily of Dipterocarpoideae is proved to have Southeast Asia origin. In Vietnam, this family includes 43 species in 7 genera. In this study, Dipterocarpaceae species from 645 sites in Vietnam are assessed and compared to those in over the world. In Vietnam, this family distributes in tropical and/or slightly passing to subtropical climate but none of its species is naturally found in the Red River and the Mekong River deltas. In the world, the Dipterocarpaceae species found in Vietnam concentrated distributes in Indochina floristic region, corresponding to the originative area of South Myanmar. Statistically, there are 12 endemic species for the Indochinese floristic region and five of them are endemic for four provinces of this region related to Vietnam, respectively as follows: South China - 1, North Indochina - 1, South Indochina - 2 and Annam - 1. Additionally, some species distribute in East Asia floristic region of Holarctic Kingdom because of expanding the distribution area from the Indochinese floristic region. All genera of this family in Vietnam were originated in the Indochinese floristic region. Moreover, the floristic data and phytogeographical phylogeny diagram, based on analyses of phytogeography and DNA, would be better to use for finding out the distributional source or the forming time of species or genus, then the phylogenetic diagram.ReferencesAngiosperm Phylogeny Group, 2009. An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG III. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 161(2), 105-121. Ashton P.S., 1982. Dipterocarpaceae. In: Van Steenis C.G.G.J., 1979-1983, Flora Malesiana. Dipterocarpaceae. Martinus Nijhoff Publisher, The Hague, London, 9(2), 250p. Averyanov L.V., Phan K.L., Nguyen T.H., Harder D.K., 2003. Phytogeographic review of Vietnam and adjacent areas of Eastern Indochina, Komarovia, Saint Petersburg, 3, 1-83. Kress W.J., DeFilipps R.A., Farr E. and Yin D.Y.K., 2003. A checklist of the trees, shrubs, herbs and climbers of Myanmar. National Museum of Nature History, Washington DC, 45, 1-590. Le Tran Chan (Editor), 1999. Some characteristics of the flora of Vietnam. Science and Technique publishing house, Hanoi, 305p (Vietnamese). Li X.W., Li J., Ashton P.S., 2007. Dipterocarpaceae. In: Wu Z.Y., Raven P.H. (Hrsg.). Flora of China. Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis, 13, 48-54. Nguyen Hoang Nghia, 2005. Dipterocarps of Vietnam. Agriculture Publishing House, Hanoi, 100p. Nguyen Kim Dao, 2003. “Dipterocarpceae Blume, 1825” in Checklist Plant species of Vietnam. Agricultural Publishing House, Hanoi, 2, 328-340 (Vietnamese). Nguyen Nga Phi, 2009. Molecular phylogeny of Southeast-Asian Dipterocarps belonging to tribe Dipterocarpeae (family Dipterocarpaceae) based on non-coding sequence data of chloroplast and nuclear DNA. Department of Forest Genetics and Georest Tree Breeding, Büsgen Institute, Faculty of Forest Science and Forest Ecology, Georg-August University of Göttingen. Göttingen, 142p. Nguyen Nghia Thin, 2004. Methods in Botanical Research. HNU publishing house, Hanoi, 172p (Vietnamese). Pham Hoang Ho, 2001. Illustration Flora of Vietnam, Youth Publishing House. Ho Chi Minh City, 2, 1022p (Vietnamese). Smitinand T., 1969. The distribution of Dipterocarpaceae in Thailand. National History Bull. Siam Soci., 23, 67-75. Smitinand T., J.E. Vidal, P.H. Ho, 1990. Flore du Cambodge, du Laos et du Vietnam, 25, Diptérocarpacées. Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 123p (French). Takhtajan A. (Translated by Theodore J. Crovello), 1986. Floristic Regions of the World. University of California Press, 544p. Thai Van Trung, 1978. Tropical Forest Ecology systems of Vietnam. Science and Technique publishing house, Hanoi, 314p (Vietnamese). The Plant List (Version 1.1.), 2013. Dipterocarpaceae. http://www.theplantlist.org

Alcohol Use, Risk Taking, Leisure Activities and Health Care Use Among Young People in Northern Vietnam

Alcohol consumption is associated with a wide range of health and social consequences. It is also associated with a number of risk taking behaviours. These include illicit drug use and unsafe sex.  Alcohol consumption appears to be increasing in Vietnam. The purpose of this paper is to examine the patterns of alcohol consumption and its relationship with a number of other risk taking behaviours amongst young people.  Information was also obtained concerning leisure activities and use of health care. The paper also sets out to examine possible gender differences in relation to alcohol consumption and risk behaviour and to propose the development and implementation of alcohol monitoring and prevention programs in Vietnam.  The study involved a cross-sectional, community survey using a standardised interview.  This was conducted during face-to-face interviews with 1,408 young people aged 10-19 years.  Respondents were recruited randomly through the lists of the households from 12 selected communes in three areas in Northern Vietnam. The findings presented here were part of a larger health risk behaviour survey.  Levels of alcohol use were low. Overall, 16.5% of participants were experienced drinkers, and only 4% of them were current drinkers. Males were significantly more likely than females to report drinking. This study also showed that rates of alcohol consumption were associated with age, education, geographical area, gender, tobacco smoking, involvement in violence, watching television, computer use and playing computer games, wearing safety helmets and use of health services. Alcohol consumption tended to increase with age for both males and females.  Alcohol and its effects on young people are clearly a growing public health issue in Vietnam.  Because of this, more detailed behavioral research should be conducted into the relationship between alcohol consumption and other risky behaviours amongst young people.  It is also recommended that alcohol harm reduction policies should be implemented and integrated into measures to reduce levels of other health problems such as HIV/AIDS and non communicable diseases. Such policies should ideally be evidence-based and evaluated

PlantKViT: A Combination Model of Vision Transformer and KNN for Forest Plants Classification

The natural ecosystem incorporates thousands of plant species and distinguishing them is normally manual, complicated, and time-consuming. Since the task requires a large amount of expertise, identifying forest plant species relies on the work of a team of botanical experts. The emergence of Machine Learning, especially Deep Learning, has opened up a new approach to plant classification. However, the application of plant classification based on deep learning models remains limited. This paper proposed a model, named PlantKViT, combining Vision Transformer architecture and the KNN algorithm to identify forest plants. The proposed model provides high efficiency and convenience for adding new plant species. The study was experimented with using Resnet-152, ConvNeXt networks, and the PlantKViT model to classify forest plants. The training and evaluation were implemented on the dataset of DanangForestPlant, containing 10,527 images and 489 species of forest plants. The accuracy of the proposed PlantKViT model reached 93%, significantly improved compared to the ConvNeXt model at 89% and the Resnet-152 model at only 76%. The authors also successfully developed a website and 2 applications called ‘plant id’ and ‘Danangplant’ on the iOS and Android platforms respectively. The PlantKViT model shows the potential in forest plant identification not only in the conducted dataset but also worldwide. Future work should gear toward extending the dataset and enhance the accuracy and performance of forest plant identification

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

Outcomes of balloon angioplasty and stent placement for iliac artery lesions classified as TASC II A, B: a single-center study

BackgroundIliac artery stenosis or occlusion is a critical condition that can severely impact a patient's quality of life. The effectiveness of balloon angioplasty and intraluminal stenting for the treatment of iliac artery lesions classified as TASC II A and B was evaluated in this single-center prospective study.MethodsConducted between October 2016 and September 2020 at Cho Ray Hospital's Vascular Surgery Department, this prospective study involved PAD patients categorized by TASC II A and B classifications who underwent endovascular intervention. Intervention outcomes were assessed peri-procedure and during short-term and mid-term follow-ups.ResultsOf the total of 133 patients, 34.6% underwent balloon angioplasty, while 65.4% received stenting. The immediate technical success rate was 97.7%, while the clinical success rate was 62.4%. Complications were minimal, with major limb amputation reported in 1.5% of the cases. There was a significant improvement in Rutherford classification and ABI at short-term follow-up, with a patency rate of 90.2%. The mid-term post-intervention follow-up yielded similar results with an 86.1% patency rate. The mortality rates associated with arterial occlusion were 2.3% during short-term follow-up and 1.7% during mid-term follow-up.ConclusionBalloon angioplasty and stent placement are effective and safe interventions for TASC II A and B iliac artery occlusions with favorable short and mid-term outcomes. Further, multi-center studies with larger sample sizes are recommended for more comprehensive conclusions, including long-term follow-up assessment

Assessment of the Current Distribution, Dispersal Trends and Impacts of Invasive Species in Bana - Nui Chua Nature Reserve, Vietnam

Invasive species threaten the biodiversity and the function of ecosystems. Drone image, satellite images, and image analysis software were used to create the map of invasive distribution and the potential spreading of invasive plants. 13 most invasive plants were identified with 11 species listed as invasive species in Southeast Asia and 5 of them in the 100 world's invasive species by IUCN. Three species Merremia boisiana (Gagn.) van Ooststr., Ipomoea eberhardtii Gagn, and Mimosa pigra were identified as the species with high-ranking impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem biodiversity in Ba Na - Nui Chua Nature Reserve (BNNR). Ipomoea eberhardtii Gagn shows the highest spreading rate at 0.65 ± 0.06 ha/month, followed by Merremia boisiana (Gagn.) van Ooststr) and Mimosa pigra at 0.12 ± 0.01 ha/month and 0.01 ± 0.001 ha/month respectively. Fresh biomass of Ipomoea eberhardtii Gagn; Merremia boisiana (Gagn.); Mimosa pigra and Sphagnetola trilobata (L.) Pruski in BNNR are 15.67; 14.9; 8.1 and 6.8 ton/ha. The database of invasive plant distribution and potential spreading will be used to monitor strategies and invasive weeds management in BNNR