Interview with Duyen Tran

Duyen Tran is a 33-year-old Vietnamese American woman who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Tran is a community organizer and aspiring family and marriage therapist. As a Buddhist practitioner, she applies Buddhist principles to her mental health work. Tran is a Sewing Auntie and Care Coordinator for the Auntie Sewing Squad.https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/auntiesewing_interviews/1033/thumbnail.jp

Simulating Low-Level Laser Propagation From Skin Surface to Lumbar Disc, Knee, Femur and Prostate Gland By Monte Carlo Method

Nowadays, the uses of laser and optics in the medical areas are extremely vivid, especially low-level laser therapy. The light with the wavelength of 633 nm to 1200 nm could penetrate and propagate deep in biological tissue. To develop the low-level laser therapy device, optimizing light delivery is critical to accurately stimulate the biological effects inside the biological tissue. Nevertheless, each form of the tissues at each zone on the body had various refractive optic, absorption, scattering, and anisotropy coefficients. This paper describes the simulation results of low-level laser propagation from skin surface at the lower spine, the knee, the femur and the prostate gland with four wavelengths (633 nm, 780 nm, 850 nm, and 940 nm) by the Monte Carlo method. These simulation results are the base for developing the low-level laser therapy device, that could be used in clinical for treating the fracture, knee osteoarthritis, spinal degeneration, and benign prostatic hypertrophy

Beauty bloggers' influence on Vietnamese young consumers

The objective of this thesis was to examine the effect of beauty bloggers towards Vietnamese consumers. The theoretical framework was built up by collecting data from academic books, online articles and newspapers as well as precedent research. The consumer decision process model of P. Kotler was emphasized and related factors were presented respectively. Information for empirical data was gathered by both qualitative and quantitative research, mostly through the web-based survey and topic discussion. The results of the study show that bloggers have a general positive impact on Vietnamese consumers. However, due to certain factors, the valuable trust of customers is threatened to lose. Therefore, the bloggers themselves are needed to work on this issue. Some suggestions of the author were raised and bloggers’ adjustments should be made to develop a stronger and more effective reputation

Lifelogging As An Extreme Form of Personal Information Management -- What Lessons To Learn

Personal data includes the digital footprints that we leave behind as part of our everyday activities, both online and offline in the real world. It includes data we collect ourselves, such as from wearables, as well as the data collected by others about our online behaviour and activities. Sometimes we are able to use the personal data we ourselves collect, in order to examine some parts of our lives but for the most part, our personal data is leveraged by third parties including internet companies, for services like targeted advertising and recommendations. Lifelogging is a form of extreme personal data gathering and in this article we present an overview of the tools used to manage access to lifelogs as demonstrated at the most recent of the annual Lifelog Search Challenge benchmarking workshops. Here, experimental systems are showcased in live, real time information seeking tasks by real users. This overview of these systems' capabilities show the range of possibilities for accessing our own personal data which may, in time, become more easily available as consumer-level services

Financial Reporting Quality, Corporate Governance, and Idiosyncratic Risk: Evidence from a Frontier Market

We extend current literature by providing empirical evidence on the impacts of financial reporting quality and corporate governance mechanism - two firm-level determinants that are strongly affected by the unique market setting and regulatory framework in emerging/frontier markets - and idiosyncratic risk in Vietnam. Utilizing different panel data analysis techniques, we find high-quality financial reports can mitigate firm-specific risk. Firms with high state ownership tend to have lower idiosyncratic risk too, implying the monitoring role of the government. We also document a positive link between board size and firm specific risk. Our results are thus beneficial for industry regulators and firms in ensuring good governance and reporting framework to better manage firm risk

The Demand of Urban Consumers for Safe Pork in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta

This study applied the contingent valuation method to analyze the consumers’ demand for the proposed safe pork. The data was collected by face-to-face interviewing 884 urban households in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. The results revealed that the majority of consumers (about 64%) paid attention to the proposed safe pork. Their willingness to pay was about VND 176,000 ($ 7.65) per kg, nearly double compared to the market price of conventional pork. The results showed that the respondents who had higher household income, larger proportion of elderly and children in the family, paid higher price of a conventional pork, and get more knowledge score on the safe pork are more likely, while the respondents who have more number of family members are less likely to pay for the proposed safe pork

Assessment of the results of clinical pharmacists’ interventions on the use of antibiotics at a medical center in Vietnam between 2021 and 2022

Context: The rational use of antibiotics is a priority when antibiotic resistance has become severe. Clinical pharmacists’ interventions can help increase the rate of rational antibiotic use. Aims: To determine the effect of clinical pharmacists’ interventions on the use of antibiotics and factors related to inappropriate antibiotic use in inpatients at the Department of Surgery, Gia Rai Town Medical Center, Vietnam. Methods: An interventional and cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted from January 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, at the Department of Surgery, Gia Rai Town Medical Center, Vietnam. Results: There were 710 patients (355 patients in pre-intervention and 355 patients in post-intervention) included in this study. The group of antibiotics used the most was beta-lactam (pre- and post-intervention rates were 60.2% and 61.0%, respectively). The parenteral route was the most commonly used (63.9% in pre-intervention and 60.7% in post-intervention). The rationality of the indication increased after the intervention (from 85.7% to 96.2%); the rationality of the dose increased after the intervention (from 90.5% to 95.2%); the rationality of the number of times of use increased after the intervention (from 90.4% to 98.4%); the rationality of the time increased after the intervention (from 94.8% to 95.1%); the general rationality increased after the intervention (from 66.5% to 85.6%). Infections were associated with inappropriate antibiotic use (p<0.05). Conclusions: Effective clinical pharmacists’ interventions helped raise the rate of rational use of antibiotics. Besides, inappropriate antibiotic use was found to be associated with infections, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions in this field

Changes in lesson plans as teachers participate in a professional development on statistical literacy

Research on mathematics teacher knowledge has gained momentum recently; however, research on teacher planning is scarce, especially using lesson plans as the primary data source. This study examines how teachers' lesson plans change as they participate in a professional development, supporting them in implementing the Vietnamese reformed Curriculum 2018. Using a design-based research methodology, we developed a research-informed framework that assesses teachers' lesson plans for developing students' statistical literacy as emphasized in the mathematics Curriculum. Informed by research literature and data collected from teachers, the framework including seven criteria was shared and used by 61 teachers to reflect on the quality of their lessons. The analysis of 38 lesson plans shows all criteria have improved from pre- to post-lesson plans. The teachers included more explicit and comprehensive learning intentions in their post-lessons. Tasks in the post-lesson plans afforded more opportunities for students to develop statistical literacy, helped them engage in the statistical investigation using real data, and included multiple representations. Finally, the post-lesson plans tended to follow the constructivist teaching principles. Implications on ways to develop teachers' planning competence and suggestions for future studies are included. © 2023 Authors

Fundamental properties of Alkali-intercalated bilayer graphene nanoribbons

Along with the inherent remarkable properties of graphene, adatom-intercalated graphene-related systems are expected to exhibit tunable electronic properties. The metal-based atoms could provide multi-orbital hybridizations with the out-of-plane pi-bondings on the carbon honeycomb lattice, which dominates the fundamental properties of chemisorption systems. In this work, using the first-principles calculations, the feature-rich properties of alkali-metal intercalated graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) are investigated, including edge passivation, stacking configurations, intercalation sites, stability, charge density distribution, magnetic configuration, and electronic properties. There exists a transformation from finite gap semiconducting to metallic behaviors, indicating enhanced electrical conductivity. They arise from the cooperative or competitive relations among the significant chemical bonds, finite-size quantum confinement, edge structure, and stacking order. Moreover, the decoration of edge structures with hydrogen and oxygen atoms is considered to provide more information about the stability and magnetization due to the ribbon' effect. These findings will be helpful for experimental fabrications and measurements for further investigation of GNRs-based materials

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF COLLOCATIONS IN ACADEMIC ESSAYS OF ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS OF THE HIGH-QUALITY PROGRAM AT CAN THO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM

One of the main goals of language learners is to master all four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing when it comes to their acquisition of the target language. However, during the process of learning English, learners inevitably face a variety of challenges related to their writing including grammatical errors, word choice, organization, idea development, and most importantly their difficulties in using collocations (Duong &amp; Nguyen, 2021). Therefore, this study has been conducted to investigate the students’ use of English collocations in their academic essays associated with their difficulties so that appropriate pedagogical approaches and practices would be taken into consideration in order to help students improve their English collocational competences in academic writing. This descriptive study was carried out with 103 English-majored students of the High-quality program of the School of Foreign Languages at Can Tho University, Vietnam. A 5-point Likert scale survey with 18 questionnaire items was employed to examine the frequency of students' exposure to as well as their usage of English collocations, and their difficulties in using English collocations. The results of this study have shown that the most commonly used collocations in the students’ academic essays were ‘verb + noun’, and ‘adjective + noun’ lexical collocations. Additionally, the research outcomes have revealed that the types of English collocations that the students were more likely to make the most mistakes belonged to ‘verb + adverb’, and ‘adjective + noun’ lexical collocations.  Article visualizations