An analysis of multi drug resistant tuberculosis control in Vietnam

Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is a major global health problem. Viet Nam is 14th among 27 MDR-TB high burden countries with an estimated about 5,100 MDR-TB cases among notified TB cases per year. Management of MDR-TB in Viet Nam is one of the main objectives of the TB control programme. This thesis provides an understanding of the current situation of MDRlXDR-TB in Vietnam and its control policies focusing on case finding strategy, targeting groups for MDR-TB screening. MDR-TB contacts, one of the high risk groups recommended by the WHO is a focus of this thesis. The thesis presents screening practices of household contacts of TB patients, feasibility of TB contact investigations, and to identify challenges and solutions for a successful implementation of an efficient contact investigation among MDR -TB patients in Viet Nam. Since 2009, the programmatic management of drug resistant tuberculosis (PMDT) was piloted in Viet Nam following the development of 2009 country MDR TB guideline. A year after the WHO updated guideline was disseminated, the country revised its guideline and SOP to be in line with WHO's recommendations and contextualized to local capacity and resources. The PMDT has been rolled out and scaled up in the country. However, lack of resources, limited communication on policy changes to lower level, unable to provide screening to all risk groups, inadequate capacity to perform diagnosis of mono and poly resistant TB and second- line DST have posed significant challenges for the NTP to implement their policy. This study found that only about 30% MDR TB cases was detected. through the PMDT system. The possible reasons we identified were: (1) delay in fully rolling out PMDT policies and limited capacity of the system, mostly due to inadequate resources, (2) operational factors, and (3) neglecting high risk groups during MDR- TB screening, particularly close contacts of MDR TB patients. Noteworthy, the NTP strategy relies on "passive case finding" while the proportion of household contacts of smear-positive tuberculosis patients screened for TB under the current passive screening approach of the Vietnam National TB program is very low compared with prevalence of TB among contacts in high burden countries, particularly for contacts under 5 years of age. Although screening of close contacts of MDR-TB patients is recommended by the NTP of Viet Nam, this is generally not done. Therefore, a different approach is needed. This study applied Social network Analysis (SNA), which is a more comprehensive approach than traditional contact tracing. However, with SNA of 99 MDR-TB index patients we were not able to detect new MDR-TB cases. The fact we found no new MDR-TB cases may be explained by reduced fitness of MDR-TB and the short follow up time of our study of 6 months. The results of this study suggest that there are several interventions that could improve the PMDT program in Viet Nam. Firstly, the National TB control Program should standardize and decentralize training on PMDT and provide staff with updated information on policy changes through proper communication channels. Capacity on MDR-TB diagnosis and treatment should be strengthened. PMDT should expand ambulatory care of MDR-TB treatment and expand risk group for MDR-TB screening. MDR TB case finding could be strengthened by provision of information and education of close contacts of MDR-TB patients, with special attention to children; and to perform more research on how active contact investigations should be done for MD-TB to have the best yield. The NTP should allocate more resources to MDRTB control, particularly well-trained staff

DISTRIBUTION AND SOURCES OF POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS IN AQUATIC SEDIMENT FROM CAN GIO COASTAL WETLAND, HOCHIMINH CITY

The distribution of fifteen polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) indicated from USEPA as priority pollutants was studied in surface sediments (0 - 20 cm) of coastal wetland area of Can Gio district, Hochiminh City. PAHs were recovered from the sediments by solvent extraction and then analyzed by means of high performance liquid chromatography system. Total concentrations of the ∑PAHs in the range 5 – 38 ng/g dw were detected, and a distinct spatial trend was observed. The contents of Nap, Ace, Flu, Phe and dBA were below detection limit. Diagnostic ratios such as benzo[a]anthracene/chrysene and fluoranthene/pyrene were achieved to evaluate the emission sources of PAHs. These ratios indicated an anthopogenic source (pyrolysis) of PAHs for sediments. Furthermore PAHs were associated mainly with fine particle sediments. Although the PAHs contents were below Vietnamese standard but potential risk to ecosystem needs further study since the high percentages of carcinogenic PAHs

THE IMPACT OF QUESTIONING AND SEMANTIC MAP IN PRE-READING STAGE ON STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Pre-reading activities play an important role in language reading classrooms since they help to activate students’ background knowledge of the topics being taught, which results in improving students’ reading comprehension. Most studies in the literature focus on exploring the effects of individual pre-reading activities such as brainstorming, pre-teaching vocabulary, questioning on students’ performance in doing comprehension tasks. Few studies have been conducted to explore whether one technique is better than the others in activating students’ schemata in reading lessons. The current study investigates the impact of Questioning and Semantic map in Pre-reading stage on EFL gifted high school students’ reading comprehension. The participants were 52 gifted students from two science classes for twelfth graders (they were non gifted English students). They shared the same culture, native language, educational background and age. The data were collected through two reading proficiency tests (pre-test and post-test) and individual interviews. The findings revealed that both Questioning and Semantic map had positive impacts on gifted students’ reading comprehension. Especially, the students who received Semantic treatment had significantly better improvement in their reading skill. The findings shed lights on what can be done to improve EFL students’ reading performance.  Article visualizations

KHÁM PHÁ CÁC KHÍA CẠNH CỦA TRẢI NGHIỆM ẨM THỰC HUẾ CỦA KHÁCH DU LỊCH NỘI ĐỊA

Although the local cuisine in many tourist destinations has played an important role in attracting tourists, and the local culinary experience could significantly influence tourists’ behaviours, the topic of the culinary experience of tourists has just emerged in the tourism literature in Vietnam. Through the case of Hue cuisine, this study aims to explore aspects of the culinary experience of tourists using the Experience Economy framework. Based on the qualitative data obtained in semi-structured interviews with twenty domestic tourists, the thematic analysis results show that four themes emerged in the culinary experience with Hue traditional cuisine. They include esthetics, education, escapism and entertainment. Based on these findings, several recommendations are proposed to enhance the culinary experience of domestic tourists visiting Hue, such as: telling stories about Hue specialties to tourists, enabling tourists to observe or get involved in certain cooking or decorating activities, or creating attractive check-in area with Hue local food.Mặc dù ẩm thực của một điểm đến có sức hấp dẫn thu hút khách du lịch và trải nghiệm ẩm thực địa phương có tác động đáng kể đến hành vi du lịch của du khách, tuy nhiên, chủ đề nghiên cứu về trải nghiệm ẩm thực của khách du lịch vẫn còn rất mới mẻ ở Việt Nam. Thông qua trường hợp ẩm thực Huế, nghiên cứu này nhằm khám phá các khía cạnh nội dung của trải nghiệm ẩm thực của du khách sử dụng khung lý thuyết về Kinh tế trải nghiệm. Dựa trên dữ liệu định tính thu được thông qua các cuộc phỏng vấn với 20 khách du lịch nội địa, kết quả phân tích chủ đề cho thấy rằng có bốn chủ đề xuất hiện trong trải nghiệm ẩm thực dân gian Huế của du khách. Các chủ đề này bao gồm: trải nghiệm thẩm mỹ, trải nghiệm học hỏi, trải nghiệm thoát ly thực tế và trải nghiệm giải trí. Dựa trên kết quả này, một số khuyến nghị được đưa ra nhằm nâng cao trải nghiệm của du khách đến Huế, chẳng hạn như: kể chuyện về món ăn đặc sản Huế, cho khách xem hoặc tham gia vào một số công đoạn chế biến trình bày món ăn, hoặc tạo các điểm check-in đẹp với món ăn đặc sản Huế

The Impact of Viral Marketing on Emotion and Impulse Buying Behavior: A Case Study of Online Fashion

Impulsive online shopping is becoming a habit for many young consumers, especially for fashion products. This study aims to analyze the influence of viral marketing on emotions and impulsive online shopping behavior of young people for fashion products in Vietnam. The results showed that viral marketing with characteristics such as entertainment, source credibility, visual appeal, informativeness, and irritation all had a significant impact on emotions and impulsive online shopping behavior. Therefore,some suggestions are proposed for applying viral marketing to promote impulsive online shopping behavior for fashion products. Keywords: Viral marketing, Impulse buying behavior, Online shopping, Emotions, Fashion. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/15-7-03 Publication date: April 30th 202

Genetic diversity of Afzelia xylocarpa (Kurz) Craib in Vietnam based on analyses of chloroplast markers and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)

Afzelia xylocarpa (Kurz) Craib is not only an endangered species in Vietnam, but also around the world. The wood of this tree species is very valuable as it is used to construct houses and high quality furniture. Habitat loss and exploitation of A. xylocarpa by man have threatened the population to such an extent that the number of mature trees of this species has dwindled to quite a low quantity. Declining numbers of A. xylocarpa in turn causes a constriction of the gene pool. Thus, it is very important to evaluate the genetic diversity of A. xylocarpa (Kurz) Craib in order to conserve and sustain the surviving population of these trees. 50 samples of A. xylocarpa (Kurz) Craib were collected from seven locations in four provinces (Gia Lai, Dac Lac, Dong Nai and Ninh Thuan) and used to evaluate the genetic diversity of these trees based on the analysis of chloroplast 16S rRNA, non-coding regions between trnH-trnK, trnD-trnT and psbC-trnS chloroplast genes using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. The data obtained reveals that the 50 samples of A. xylocarpa (Kurz) Craib have low level of genetic diversity, as supported by the fact that the genetic similarity coefficients of the trees ranged from 49 to 100%. At the similarity level of 49%, the 50 samples were grouped into two main groups. There was no clear local specificities of the samples as the samples from same locality were not found in same group. Due to low level of genetic diversity, low numbers of trees and scattered occurrence, setting up suitable conservation strategies are urgently needed.Key words: Afzelia xylocarpa (Kurz) Craib, genetic diversity, non-coding sequences, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers

Connector 0.5: A unified framework for graph representation learning

Graph representation learning models aim to represent the graph structure and its features into low-dimensional vectors in a latent space, which can benefit various downstream tasks, such as node classification and link prediction. Due to its powerful graph data modelling capabilities, various graph embedding models and libraries have been proposed to learn embeddings and help researchers ease conducting experiments. In this paper, we introduce a novel graph representation framework covering various graph embedding models, ranging from shallow to state-of-the-art models, namely Connector. First, we consider graph generation by constructing various types of graphs with different structural relations, including homogeneous, signed, heterogeneous, and knowledge graphs. Second, we introduce various graph representation learning models, ranging from shallow to deep graph embedding models. Finally, we plan to build an efficient open-source framework that can provide deep graph embedding models to represent structural relations in graphs. The framework is available at https://github.com/NSLab-CUK/Connector.Comment: An unified framework for graph representation learnin

A HEDGE ALGEBRAS BASED CLASSIFICATION REASONING METHOD WITH MULTI-GRANULARITY FUZZY PARTITIONING

During last years, lots of the fuzzy rule based classifier (FRBC) design methods have been proposed to improve the classification accuracy and the interpretability of the proposed classification models. Most of them are based on the fuzzy set theory approach in such a way that the fuzzy classification rules are generated from the grid partitions combined with the pre-designed fuzzy partitions using fuzzy sets. Some mechanisms are studied to automatically generate fuzzy partitions from data such as discretization, granular computing, etc. Even those, linguistic terms are intuitively assigned to fuzzy sets because there is no formalisms to link inherent semantics of linguistic terms to fuzzy sets. In view of that trend, genetic design methods of linguistic terms along with their (triangular and trapezoidal) fuzzy sets based semantics for FRBCs, using hedge algebras as the mathematical formalism, have been proposed. Those hedge algebras-based design methods utilize semantically quantifying mapping values of linguistic terms to generate their fuzzy sets based semantics so as to make use of fuzzy sets based-classification reasoning methods proposed in design methods based on fuzzy set theoretic approach for data classification. If there exists a classification reasoning method which bases merely on semantic parameters of hedge algebras, fuzzy sets-based semantics of the linguistic terms in fuzzy classification rule bases can be replaced by semantics - based hedge algebras. This paper presents a FRBC design method based on hedge algebras approach by introducing a hedge algebra- based classification reasoning method with multi-granularity fuzzy partitioning for data classification so that the semantic of linguistic terms in rule bases can be hedge algebras-based semantics. Experimental results over 17 real world datasets are compared to existing methods based on hedge algebras and the state-of-the-art fuzzy sets theoretic-based approaches, showing that the proposed FRBC in this paper is an effective classifier and produces good results

New records and morphological assessments of long-nosed fruit bats (chiroptera: pteropodidae: Macroglossus spp.) from Vietnam

Long-nosed fruit bat is a common name of the genus Macroglossus which comprises two species: Dagger-toothed long-nosed fruit bat (M. minimus) and Greater long-nosed fruit bat (M. sobrinus). These two species were rarely recorded from Vietnam or neighboring countries. Within Vietnam, M. minimus has been recorded only from two localities in southern Vietnam while M. sobrinus was known from all northern, central and southern regions of the country. Morphological features of these species in Vietnam were poorly documented in previous publications. With results from a rapid examination of all specimens and recently captured individuals, we here confirm that M. sobrinus is distinctively larger than M. minimus in all external and craniodental measurements. Two species are also distinguishable by their nostril shapes and mandible symphyses. This paper provides new distributional records of both M. sobrinus and M. minimus from Vietnam with remarks on their ecology and habitats.

Critical Factors Affecting Construction Price Index: An Integrated Fuzzy Logic and Analytical Hierarchy Process

Nowadays, many construction engineering and technology enterprises are evolving to find that prosperity is driven and inspired by an open economy with dynamic markets and fierce multifaceted competition. Besides brand and product uniqueness, the ability to quickly provide customers with quotes are matters of concern. Such a requirement for prompt cost estimation of construction investment projects with the use of a construction price index poses a significant challenge to contractors. This is because the nature of the construction industry is shaped by changes in domestic and foreign economic factors, socio-financial issues, and is under the influence of various micro and macro factors. This paper presents a fuzzy decision-making approach for calculating critical factors that affect the construction price index. A qualitative approach was implemented based on in-depth interviews of experts in the construction industry in Vietnam. A synthetic comparison matrix was calculated using Buckley approach. The CoA approach was applied to defuzzified the fuzzy weights of factors that affect the construction price index. The research results show that the top five critical factors affecting the construction price index in Vietnam are (1) consumer price index, (2) gross domestic product, (3) basic interest rate, (4) foreign exchange rate, and (5) total export and import