Genomic data mining for the computational prediction of small non-coding RNA genes

The objective of this research is to develop a novel computational prediction algorithm for non-coding RNA (ncRNA) genes using features computable for any genomic sequence without the need for comparative analysis. Existing comparative-based methods require the knowledge of closely related organisms in order to search for sequence and structural similarities. This approach imposes constraints on the type of ncRNAs, the organism, and the regions where the ncRNAs can be found. We have developed a novel approach for ncRNA gene prediction without the limitations of current comparative-based methods. Our work has established a ncRNA database required for subsequent feature and genomic analysis. Furthermore, we have identified significant features from folding-, structural-, and ensemble-based statistics for use in ncRNA prediction. We have also examined higher-order gene structures, namely operons, to discover potential insights into how ncRNAs are transcribed. Being able to automatically identify ncRNAs on a genome-wide scale is immensely powerful for incorporating it into a pipeline for large-scale genome annotation. This work will contribute to a more comprehensive annotation of ncRNA genes in microbial genomes to meet the demands of functional and regulatory genomic studies.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Dr. G. Tong Zhou; Committee Member: Dr. Arthur Koblasz; Committee Member: Dr. Eberhard Voit; Committee Member: Dr. Xiaoli Ma; Committee Member: Dr. Ying X

SPEECH ACTS IN DISNEY ANIMATED MOVIE: CINDERELLA 3 A TWIST IN TIME

Speech act, one form of linguistic expression, plays a vital role in expressing speaker’s meaning, so understanding the underlying meaning can help to avoid misunderstanding in daily communication situations in general and in movies in specific. This study aims to analyse the types of speech acts performed by characters in the Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time. It adopted Searle's (1983) model of speech acts for data analysis. The findings reveal that 11 characters performed 854 speech acts to indicate five types of speech acts, namely representative, directive, expressive, commissive and declarative. The representatives were most employed, followed by directives, and expressives. The least used illocutionary acts were commissives and declaratives. Regarding the language function, it is found that the most common functions were stating, ordering and calling which were performed mostly by Cinderella, Prince Charming, Anastasia, and Tremaine. This paper suggests some implications for English language teaching and learning in terms of pragmatics

Current Situation of Corruption Offenses and Measures for Improvement of Anti-Corruption Effectiveness in Vietnam’s Economy

Along with the promulgation of 2008 Law on Anti-Corruption, thanking to the comprehensive solutions and determinations of the whole governmental apparatus, there are signals of a positive change in the fight against corruption in Vietnam’s market economy. However, compared to other countries around the world, the corruption in Vietnam is still a national problem. The number of corruption cases may decline, but the scale and severity has been increasing. Many cases has involved high-ranking officials in the government with more than 20 general officers in the armed forces to be sentenced. On the basis of analysing the current situation of corruption in recent years, the author hereby recommends some synchronous solutions to improve the effectiveness of anti-corruption

Isolation and Selection of Antagonistic Bacteria against Cercospora arachidicola Causing Brown Spot on Peanut

This study was conducted with the aim to isolation bacterial strains capable of antagonism to Cercospora arachidicola (Passalora arachidicola) causing brown spot in peanut. From 3 soil samples collected in the rhizosphere of peanut grown in Tay Ninh province, Vietnam, 10 bacterial strains were found having antagonistic action with Cercospora arachidicola. After 5 days of testing, the antagonistic efficiency of all isolates ranged from 33.33±1.28 to 60.183±0.927%. Studying the antagonistic mechanism showed that 5/10 isolates produced siderophore, 5/10 isolates were capable of decomposing chitin, 7/10 isolates capable of decomposing cellulase and 8/10 isolates proteolytic. Basing on the results of 16S rRNA gene sequence combined with morphological and biochemical characteristics, TN-TB 4, TN-TB 6 and TN-TB 12 were identified as Bacillus, representing the genera Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, Bacillus pasterurii, and Bacillus velezensis, respectively. These strains of antagonistic bacteria have the potential to produce probiotics

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PUBLIC SERVICE MOTIVATION, WORK ENJOYMENT, AND TASK PERFORMANCE: A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF HEALTHCARE WORKERS IN VIETNAM

This study aimed to examine the impact of health workers' public service motivation during their participation in response to the Covid-19 pandemic at a time of the highest number of infections and deaths in Vietnam. This study was conducted through a cross-sectional survey using an intentional sampling technique (n=200). In addition, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied to illustrate the proposed hypotheses. We found that compassion in the workplace, self-sacrifice, and attraction to policy-making impacted work enjoyment positively and significantly. In particular, there was a positive and significant relationship between work enjoyment and task performance but no evidence of the relationship between Commitment to the public interest and work enjoyment. This study further demonstrates the importance of public service motivation of health workers in pandemic response, as previous studies have found. This finding suggests that the government and policymakers in Vietnam should develop policies to promote health workers' public service motivation during their engagement in response to the health crisis.&nbsp

Factors Affecting the Profitability of Cement Manufacturing Enterprises in Tuyen Quang Province

This study focuses on analyzing the factors affecting the production and business efficiency of cement manufacturing enterprises in Tuyen Quang province. Production and business efficiency is measured by profitability ratios including return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and return on sales (ROS). Using a quantitative research method through estimating a linear regression model based on data of two cement manufacturing companies in the period 2019-2021, the research results show that the factors affecting business efficiency of cement manufacturing enterprises in Tuyen Quang province include size of enterprise, cost ratio, average collection period, inventory turnover, fixed assets turnover and debt ratio

1M parameters are enough? A lightweight CNN-based model for medical image segmentation

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Transformer-based models are being widely applied in medical image segmentation thanks to their ability to extract high-level features and capture important aspects of the image. However, there is often a trade-off between the need for high accuracy and the desire for low computational cost. A model with higher parameters can theoretically achieve better performance but also result in more computational complexity and higher memory usage, and thus is not practical to implement. In this paper, we look for a lightweight U-Net-based model which can remain the same or even achieve better performance, namely U-Lite. We design U-Lite based on the principle of Depthwise Separable Convolution so that the model can both leverage the strength of CNNs and reduce a remarkable number of computing parameters. Specifically, we propose Axial Depthwise Convolutions with kernels 7x7 in both the encoder and decoder to enlarge the model receptive field. To further improve the performance, we use several Axial Dilated Depthwise Convolutions with filters 3x3 for the bottleneck as one of our branches. Overall, U-Lite contains only 878K parameters, 35 times less than the traditional U-Net, and much more times less than other modern Transformer-based models. The proposed model cuts down a large amount of computational complexity while attaining an impressive performance on medical segmentation tasks compared to other state-of-the-art architectures. The code will be available at: https://github.com/duong-db/U-Lite.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Heat Stress Affects Seed Set and Grain Quality of Vietnamese Rice Cultivars during Heading and Grain Filling Period

Environmental stress trigger a variety of rice plant response, ranging from alters seed set, grain yield and grain quality during flowering and grain filling stage.  Efforts are required to improve our understanding of the impact of heat stress on rice production, which are essential strategies in rice cultivation. This article investigated the seed set, yield components and grain yield of Vietnamese rice cultivars (Indica germplasm) under high temperature environment during the flowering and grain filling stage. Six rice cultivars, including popular cultivars and new cultivars of Cuu Long Delta Rice Research Institute, and one popular extraneous cultivar with differences in maturing time, were grown in pots at high temperature (HT) and natural temperature condition as control (CT). All rice cultivars were subjected to the high temperature starting from the heading stage to the harvest maturity, applied by greenhouse effect. The greenhouse has about 25 cm window opening on 3 sides for air ventilation. The seed set rate of the heat-sensitive rice genotypes decreased significantly under HT, leading to a significant reduction in grain yield. The lowest seed set was recorded in “OM4900” (44.3%) and “OM18” (39.9%) under high temperature environment. The lower yield in all rice cultivars at an elevated temperature resulted in a dramatic decrease of filled grains and contributed to a loss of 1000-grain weight. ‘“OM892” is a potential rice cultivar for heat tolerant breeding program due to the seed set percentage was above 80% in both HT and CT conditions. High temperature during the grain filling stage resulted in a decreased amylose and increased chalkiness for all OM cultivars

Maize in Vietnam: Production Systems, Constraints, and Research Priorities

Crop Production/Industries,