Conservation of Natural and Cultural Heritage in the Huong Son Complex of Natural Beauty and Historical Monuments, Northern Vietnam

The Huong Son Complex has long been recognised as an important sacred landscape in Vietnam due to its spiritual and cultural values. The area also retains many aesthetic and biological values. Unfortunately, its cultural and natural treasures are currently at risk due to anthropogenic impacts, mainly associated with increased spiritual tourist activities. Some urgent solutions have been implemented, but they give priority to protecting cultural values and sometimes conflict with nature conservation efforts. This problem was encountered during our recent bat conservation research in Huong Son. Our preliminary findings revealed symbiotic relationships between natural and cultural heritage in Huong Son; thus, linking nature and culture in conservation planning and management is critical for the sustainable development of the site. However, the application of this approach in Huong Son, and other sacred places in Vietnam, is challenged by gaps in basic research and the inadequate attention of local stakeholders

Grid resource discovery based on semantic p2pP communities.

ABSTRACT Grid technologies enable the sharing of a wide variety of resources. The full use of these resources requires effective resource discovery mechanisms. However, the complicated and dynamic characteristics of grid resources make sharing and discovering them a challenge. In this paper, we propose a semantic community approach to enable efficient resource discovery in grids. The system clusters nodes into communities according to their semantic properties. The community construction and maintenance is fully decentralized and selforganizing. This structure helps prune the searching space and reduce the cost of searching. The system exhibits many desirable properties: it supports complex queries and is fully decentralized, scalable, and efficient. Our simulation results show how searching the grids can take advantage of semantic communities to reduce searching costs and improve the quality of results

A survey of VoIP intrusions and intrusion detection systems

ABSTRACT This poper presents R survey of the securiv problems in VoIP networks, with an emphasis on both intrusions and intrusion detection methods. It examines the intrusion issues in diflerent components of VoIP systems, points to the strengths and shortcomings in the existing intrusion detection methods and intrusion detection systems and suggests possible future research directions

Physicochemical and Biological Characteristics of Shrimp Pond Sludge in the Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

This study has been carried out to analyze the physical and biological indicators of shrimp pond sludge samples obtained from the Phu Vang and Phu Loc districts of the Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam. All standard methodologies have been used to analyze the selected parameters like pH, organic carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphate, and microbial density.  The results of the study revealed that the sludge was characterized by a neutral to alkaline pH (6.9 - 7.5), and the total organic carbon content was in the range of 103.8–173.5 mg/kg. The sludge was rich in organic matter (17.8–29.9%), total nitrogen (13.5–32.5 g/kg), and total phosphate (7.9-20.1 g/kg). Further, in the case of the microbial density of pathogenic microorganisms, the density of total bacteria, coliform, E.coli, Salmonella spp., Vibrio spp., and Clostridium spp. was also estimated at two opposing weather conditions (spring, February to March; summer, June to July). The microbial community increased rapidly during the cool spring months. The total bacterial levels were recorded as 8.77 log10 CFU/mL in the Phu Loc district and 9.11 log10 CFU/mL in the Phu Vang district. The levels decreased during the hot summer months, and the level of total bacteria, Coliform, E.coli, Salmonella spp., and Vibrio was reported 2.57, 1.49, 1.06, 0.56, and l2.54 log10 CFU/mL respectively from the Phu Loc district of Vietnam. The results obtained using the anaerobic decomposition model showed that on the 60th day, the amount of CH4 generated at the high output value for the Phu Vang district was 22385 ppm. The results reported here revealed that CH4 gas can be potentially produced from shrimp waste sludge in this province

Determining the impacts of hospital cost-sharing on the uninsured near-poor households in Vietnam

Objectives: The study objective was to identify the size of different hospital financing sources for different hospital services and their impact on the uninsured. Methods: A panel dataset of 84 public general hospitals (2005–2008) with cross-section data on hospital activity and hospital revenue was created and used to calculate unit costs of different hospital services by applying multiple regression models. The resulting risk of catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) was estimated based on official income statistics. Results: Average user fees (UF) for outpatient visits and inpatient bed days were US$4.13 and US$20.27, while actual full costs (AFC) were US$8.41 and US$36.66, respectively. These unit costs were 2.5 times higher in hospitals at the central versus the provincial level. UF for surgical inpatient bed days were 3.6 times that of non-surgical treatments (US$47.50 vs. 12.87) and AFC 5.0 times (US$101.72 vs. 20.08). UF accounted for 44.6%-77.9% of the AFC, the rest (22.1%-55.4%) was provided by direct government support (DGS). One surgical inpatient treatment at either central or provincial hospital level and one non-surgical inpatient treatment at central hospital level, immediately pushed uninsured near-poor households at risk of CHE. Conclusions: Around 45% of hospital AFC was paid by DGS, the larger rest by UF. UF have become a great financial burden on the uninsured near-poor households, who have to pay for these out-of-pocket and therefore may not utilize even necessary services. If the rate of DGS were reduced, this would have the effect of increasing UF, but the savings to Government could be spent on subsidizing insurance to ensure that a larger part of the population can cover UF through insurance, especially the near-poor households

Recent remarkable records reveal that Phia Oac-Phia Den Nature Reserve is a priority area for bat conservation in Northern Vietnam

AbstractThree short field surveys were conducted in the Phia Oac-Phia Den Nature Reserve to assess the species diversity and endemism of local bat fauna. In combination with data from a previous study, 24 bat species of 5 families, representing > 20% of the national bat diversity, were recorded in the study area. The occurrence of several bat species restricted to montane forests, that is, Murina chrysochaetes, Pipistrellus coromandra, and a potentially new species Rhinolophus cf. macrotis, suggests that Phia Oac is an important area for bat conservation in Vietnam and thus more comprehensive studies need to be performed