An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship among Social Institutions and Juvenile Arrests in Virginia

The United States has unusually high rates of violence among developed nations, including the victimization of and perpetration by youth. Using Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT) as the theoretical framework, this study analyzes the relationships between social institutions and crime and the interactive relationships among the institutions in a sample of Virginia localities. Multivariate analyses are conducted to produce additive and multiplicative models, and simple slope analyses are conducted to clarify interaction/moderation effects. Findings yield mixed support for IAT. Localities with higher levels of monthly welfare per recipient (a measure of polity) have lower juvenile violent crime arrest rates, and welfare moderates the relationship between income inequality and juvenile violent crime arrests. Controlling for all variables, no support was found for the direct effects of any other institution on juvenile violent crime arrests. Policy recommendations include maintenance of welfare programs and improvement of work participation supplementary programs

How Digital Natives Learn and Thrive in the Digital Age: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students

Students’ Perceptions of the Lecture and Active Learning Methods in Teaching: A Study of Asian Students

Educators commonly have used lectures to transfer knowledge to their students. The lecture method is considered out-of-date by many who believe that methods that actively involve students in the learning process are more beneficial and effective. Findings on teaching methods have been mixed and inconclusive. The purpose of this study was to establish Asian students’ perceptions of the two learning methods. The results showed that most students perceive that they learned more from listening to lectures and that lectures help them to remember material content better, prepare them well for exams, and lead them to think more deeply about the subject content. In addition, students also expressed their desires to take an active part in discussions, ask questions, find information for themselves and work with other students. Overall, the majority of students thought that it was better to mix lectures with student activities for the application of concepts. Other variables such as gender and student status had no significant influence on the perceptions of teaching methods. However, there are differences in students’ perceptions between programs of studies. In summary, students considered the lecture method of learning, together with interactions involving teachers and students, maximized their learning

Updated taxonomy and new insights into the evolutionary relationships of the genus Sporonchulus Cobb, 1917 (Nematoda, Mononchida) after the study of two Vietnamese species

Two known species of the genus Sporonchulus, namely S. ibitiensis and S. vagabundus, collected from natural areas of Vietnam, are characterized, including descriptions and illustrations of both species, as well as SEM observations and molecular (18S-, 28S rDNA) analyses of S. ibitiensis. The identity of the two species is discussed, with detailed comparison with previously known populations. The taxonomy of the genus is updated, presenting a diagnosis, list of species, key to their identification, and a compendium of their main morphometrics. An integrative analysis, combining morphological data with a cladistic approach and the first molecular study for a representative of Sporonchulus, better supports a narrow relationship of this genus with Mononchidae than with Mylonchulidae members, however further research should be conducted to elucidate its phylogeny

On how religions could accidentally incite lies and violence: folktales as a cultural transmitter

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm

Depression, anxiety and stress among healthcare workers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study in a tertiary hospital in Northern Vietnam

IntroductionThe outbreak of coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) had significant effects on the mental well-being in general, particularly for healthcare professionals. This study examined the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress, and identified the associated risk factors amongst healthcare workers during the COVID-19 outbreak in a tertiary hospital located in Vietnam.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study at a tertiary-level hospital, where the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21) web-based questionnaire was employed. We analyzed the determinant factors by employing multivariate logistic models.ResultsThe prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms were 19.2%, 24.7%, and 13.9%, respectively. Factors such as engaging in shift work during the pandemic, taking care of patients with COVID-19, and staff’s health status were associated with mental health issues among health professionals. In addition, having alternate rest periods was likely to reduce the risk of stress.ConclusionThe prevalence of mental health problems in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic was relatively high. Having resting periods could potentially mitigate the development of stress among health professionals. Our findings could be taken into account for improving mental health of the health professional population

Deep Transfer Learning: A Novel Collaborative Learning Model for Cyberattack Detection Systems in IoT Networks

Federated Learning (FL) has recently become an effective approach for cyberattack detection systems, especially in Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks. By distributing the learning process across IoT gateways, FL can improve learning efficiency, reduce communication overheads and enhance privacy for cyberattack detection systems. Challenges in implementation of FL in such systems include unavailability of labeled data and dissimilarity of data features in different IoT networks. In this paper, we propose a novel collaborative learning framework that leverages Transfer Learning (TL) to overcome these challenges. Particularly, we develop a novel collaborative learning approach that enables a target network with unlabeled data to effectively and quickly learn knowledge from a source network that possesses abundant labeled data. It is important that the state-of-the-art studies require the participated datasets of networks to have the same features, thus limiting the efficiency, flexibility as well as scalability of intrusion detection systems. However, our proposed framework can address these problems by exchanging the learning knowledge among various deep learning models, even when their datasets have different features. Extensive experiments on recent real-world cybersecurity datasets show that the proposed framework can improve more than 40% as compared to the state-of-the-art deep learning based approaches.Comment: 12 page

The influence of human genetic variation on early transcriptional responses and protective immunity following immunization with Rotarix vaccine in infants in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam : a study protocol for an open single-arm interventional trial [awaiting peer review]

Background: Rotavirus (RoV) remains the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis in infants and children aged under five years in both high- and low-middle-income countries (LMICs). In LMICs, RoV infections are associated with substantial mortality. Two RoV vaccines (Rotarix and Rotateq) are widely available for use in infants, both of which have been shown to be highly efficacious in Europe and North America. However, for unknown reasons, these RoV vaccines have markedly lower efficacy in LMICs. We hypothesize that poor RoV vaccine efficacy across in certain regions may be associated with genetic heritability or gene expression in the human host. Methods/design: We designed an open-label single-arm interventional trial with the Rotarix RoV vaccine to identify genetic and transcriptomic markers associated with generating a protective immune response against RoV. Overall, 1,000 infants will be recruited prior to Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) vaccinations at two months of age and vaccinated with oral Rotarix vaccine at two and three months, after which the infants will be followed-up for diarrheal disease until 18 months of age. Blood sampling for genetics, transcriptomics, and immunological analysis will be conducted before each Rotarix vaccination, 2-3 days post-vaccination, and at each follow-up visit (i.e. 6, 12 and 18 months of age). Stool samples will be collected during each diarrheal episode to identify RoV infection. The primary outcome will be Rotarix vaccine failure events (i.e. symptomatic RoV infection despite vaccination), secondary outcomes will be antibody responses and genotypic characterization of the infection virus in Rotarix failure events. Discussion: This study will be the largest and best powered study of its kind to be conducted to date in infants, and will be critical for our understanding of RoV immunity, human genetics in the Vietnam population, and mechanisms determining RoV vaccine-mediated protection. Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, ID: NCT03587389. Registered on 16 July 2018

The 80-year development of Vietnam mathematical research: Preliminary insights from the SciMath database on mathematicians, their works and their networks

Starting with the first international publication of Le Van Thiem (Lê Văn Thiêm) in 1947, modern mathematics in Vietnam is a longstanding research field. However, what is known about its development usually comes from discrete essays such as anecdotes or interviews of renowned mathematicians. We introduce SciMath—a database on publications of Vietnamese mathematicians. To ensure this database covers as many publications as possible, data entries are manually collected from scientists’ publication records, journals’ websites, universities, and research institutions. Collected data went through various verification steps to ensure data quality and minimize errors. At the time of this report, the database covered 8372 publications, profiles of 1566 Vietnamese, and 1492 foreign authors since 1947. We found a growing capability in mathematics research in Vietnam in various aspects: scientific output, publications on influential journals, or collaboration. The database and preliminary results were presented to the Scientific Council of Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (VIASM) on November 13th, 2020

Social Contact Patterns in Vietnam and Implications for the Control of Infectious Diseases

BACKGROUND: The spread of infectious diseases from person to person is determined by the frequency and nature of contacts between infected and susceptible members of the population. Although there is a long history of using mathematical models to understand these transmission dynamics, there are still remarkably little empirical data on contact behaviors with which to parameterize these models. Even starker is the almost complete absence of data from developing countries. We sought to address this knowledge gap by conducting a household based social contact diary in rural Vietnam. METHODS AND FINDINGS: A diary based survey of social contact patterns was conducted in a household-structured community cohort in North Vietnam in 2007. We used generalized estimating equations to model the number of contacts while taking into account the household sampling design, and used weighting to balance the household size and age distribution towards the Vietnamese population. We recorded 6675 contacts from 865 participants in 264 different households and found that mixing patterns were assortative by age but were more homogenous than observed in a recent European study. We also observed that physical contacts were more concentrated in the home setting in Vietnam than in Europe but the overall level of physical contact was lower. A model of individual versus household vaccination strategies revealed no difference between strategies in the impact on R(0). CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: This work is the first to estimate contact patterns relevant to the spread of infections transmitted from person to person by non-sexual routes in a developing country setting. The results show interesting similarities and differences from European data and demonstrate the importance of context specific data