TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING IN VIETNAM: RESEARCH TRENDS, FINDINGS, AND IMPLICATIONS

It is widely assumed that task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been effectively applied in EFL contexts. In Vietnam, abundant research has been implemented to examine its effects on English proficiency as well as to identify perceptions and attitudes of both teachers and learners towards using this approach in classroom contexts. This paper aims to synthesize trends in research on task-based language teaching in the context by reviewing results extracted from a corpus of 60 studies. Key aspects like effects, challenges, teacher/learner perceptions and attitudes were selected for analysis and synthesis. The results revealed that the research tended to focus more on production skills than receptive skills, and that the implementation of TBLT was reported to cause challenges for teachers, while learners tended to hold positive attitudes toward the approach. Based on the research findings, some lessons were drawn for pedagogy and future research. For successful TBLT implementation, it is suggested that teachers are informed of the effects, engaged in reflections and that exams should be shifted towards communicative competence assessment. Future research could increase sample size and treatment duration, and especially address the challenges teachers, as the main agent, encounter in implementation.  Article visualizations

A Multitask Data-Driven Model for Battery Remaining Useful Life Prediction

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have recently been used widely in moving devices. Understand status of the batteries can help to predict the failure and improve the effectiveness of using them. There are some lithium-ion information that define the battery health over time. These are state-of-charge (SOC), state-of-health (SOH), and remaining-useful-life (RUL). Normally, a LIB is working under charging and discharging cycles continuously. In this paper, we will focus on the data dependency of different time-slots in a cycle and in a sequence of cycles to retrieve RUL. We leverage multi-channel inputs such as temperature, voltage, current and the nature of peaks cross the cycles to improve our prediction. Comparing to existing methods, the experiments show that we can improve from 0.040 to 0.033 (reduce 17.5%) in RMSE loss, which is significant

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.

Automatic Bridge Deck Damage Using Low Cost UAV-based Images

Bridge structures are subjected to deterioration due to excessive usage, overloading, aging, and environmental impacts. Use of visual inspection by live, on-site inspectors predominates the requisite inspection of these structures, despite the known disadvantages of subjective results, high costs, and traffic disruptions due lane closures needed for close-range inspection access. Over the last two decades, significant advancements have occurred in the field of a remote sensing for bridge inspection. Prominent amongst these are use of a point cloud based inspection derived from images collected with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The approach can rapidly acquire surface details and overcome many of the shortcomings of live, visual inspection but further processing has been required. This paper automates that method for damage inspection of bridge decks. To achieve that, this paper first proposes a robust and efficient method to automatically extract a point cloud of a bridge deck through a cell-based region growing segmentation. Next, locations and areas of the patch deterioration are automatically determined by comparing elevations of the point clouds to the surface of the undamaged bridge deck. Finally, a deep learning method, using a one-class autoencoder, is employed to classify the point cloud of the bridge deck into cracking area and undamaged one.This work was funded with the generous support of the UCD Seed funding for the project Laser Scanning for Automatic Bridge Rating, grant SF1404. The first author is grateful for this support

Assessing Vegetation Cover Change Using Remote Sensing: Case Study at Binh Duong Province, Vietnam

This study aims to present the application of remote sensing in monitoring vegetation change in Binh Duong Province, Vietnam. The study used Landsat 5 images in the year 2010 and Landsat 8 images in the years 2015 and 2020 to investigate the area of vegetation. The maximum likelihood classification method (MLC) was used to classify land cover and an accuracy matrix was computed to validate the classification results. The references data were collected to support classification and accuracy assessment processes including land use maps in 2010, 2015, and 2020. In addition, collected field points and UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) in 2020 were used. The overall accuracies are 81.27%, 84.41%, and 83.86%, and Kappa indices were 0.76, 0.80, and 0.80, corresponding to 2010, 2015, and 2020. The results showed that as compared to 2010 and 2015, the area of vegetation in 2020 decreased 10% and 8%, respectively. The average vegetation cover per capita was 740 m2 person-1 in 2020, compared to 1000 m2 person-1 in 2015 and 1200 m2 person-1 in 2010. This reduction was obvious in urban areas in the province, due to the need for construction and development. The study provides meaningful information on vegetation change and green area per capita in Binh Duong Province from 2010 to 2020

The European Space Agency BIOMASS mission: Measuring forest above-ground biomass from space

The primary objective of the European Space Agency's 7th Earth Explorer mission, BIOMASS, is to determine the worldwide distribution of forest above-ground biomass (AGB) in order to reduce the major uncertainties in calculations of carbon stocks and fluxes associated with the terrestrial biosphere, including carbon fluxes associated with Land Use Change, forest degradation and forest regrowth. To meet this objective it will carry, for the first time in space, a fully polarimetric P-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Three main products will be provided: global maps of both AGB and forest height, with a spatial resolution of 200 m, and maps of severe forest disturbance at 50 m resolution (where “global” is to be understood as subject to Space Object tracking radar restrictions). After launch in 2022, there will be a 3-month commissioning phase, followed by a 14-month phase during which there will be global coverage by SAR tomography. In the succeeding interferometric phase, global polarimetric interferometry Pol-InSAR coverage will be achieved every 7 months up to the end of the 5-year mission. Both Pol-InSAR and TomoSAR will be used to eliminate scattering from the ground (both direct and double bounce backscatter) in forests. In dense tropical forests AGB can then be estimated from the remaining volume scattering using non-linear inversion of a backscattering model. Airborne campaigns in the tropics also indicate that AGB is highly correlated with the backscatter from around 30 m above the ground, as measured by tomography. In contrast, double bounce scattering appears to carry important information about the AGB of boreal forests, so ground cancellation may not be appropriate and the best approach for such forests remains to be finalized. Several methods to exploit these new data in carbon cycle calculations have already been demonstrated. In addition, major mutual gains will be made by combining BIOMASS data with data from other missions that will measure forest biomass, structure, height and change, including the NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation lidar deployed on the International Space Station after its launch in December 2018, and the NASA-ISRO NISAR L- and S-band SAR, due for launch in 2022. More generally, space-based measurements of biomass are a core component of a carbon cycle observation and modelling strategy developed by the Group on Earth Observations. Secondary objectives of the mission include imaging of sub-surface geological structures in arid environments, generation of a true Digital Terrain Model without biases caused by forest cover, and measurement of glacier and icesheet velocities. In addition, the operations needed for ionospheric correction of the data will allow very sensitive estimates of ionospheric Total Electron Content and its changes along the dawn-dusk orbit of the mission

Familial hypercholesterolaemia in children and adolescents from 48 countries: a cross-sectional study

Background: Approximately 450 000 children are born with familial hypercholesterolaemia worldwide every year, yet only 2·1% of adults with familial hypercholesterolaemia were diagnosed before age 18 years via current diagnostic approaches, which are derived from observations in adults. We aimed to characterise children and adolescents with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia (HeFH) and understand current approaches to the identification and management of familial hypercholesterolaemia to inform future public health strategies. Methods: For this cross-sectional study, we assessed children and adolescents younger than 18 years with a clinical or genetic diagnosis of HeFH at the time of entry into the Familial Hypercholesterolaemia Studies Collaboration (FHSC) registry between Oct 1, 2015, and Jan 31, 2021. Data in the registry were collected from 55 regional or national registries in 48 countries. Diagnoses relying on self-reported history of familial hypercholesterolaemia and suspected secondary hypercholesterolaemia were excluded from the registry; people with untreated LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) of at least 13·0 mmol/L were excluded from this study. Data were assessed overall and by WHO region, World Bank country income status, age, diagnostic criteria, and index-case status. The main outcome of this study was to assess current identification and management of children and adolescents with familial hypercholesterolaemia. Findings: Of 63 093 individuals in the FHSC registry, 11 848 (18·8%) were children or adolescents younger than 18 years with HeFH and were included in this study; 5756 (50·2%) of 11 476 included individuals were female and 5720 (49·8%) were male. Sex data were missing for 372 (3·1%) of 11 848 individuals. Median age at registry entry was 9·6 years (IQR 5·8-13·2). 10 099 (89·9%) of 11 235 included individuals had a final genetically confirmed diagnosis of familial hypercholesterolaemia and 1136 (10·1%) had a clinical diagnosis. Genetically confirmed diagnosis data or clinical diagnosis data were missing for 613 (5·2%) of 11 848 individuals. Genetic diagnosis was more common in children and adolescents from high-income countries (9427 [92·4%] of 10 202) than in children and adolescents from non-high-income countries (199 [48·0%] of 415). 3414 (31·6%) of 10 804 children or adolescents were index cases. Familial-hypercholesterolaemia-related physical signs, cardiovascular risk factors, and cardiovascular disease were uncommon, but were more common in non-high-income countries. 7557 (72·4%) of 10 428 included children or adolescents were not taking lipid-lowering medication (LLM) and had a median LDL-C of 5·00 mmol/L (IQR 4·05-6·08). Compared with genetic diagnosis, the use of unadapted clinical criteria intended for use in adults and reliant on more extreme phenotypes could result in 50-75% of children and adolescents with familial hypercholesterolaemia not being identified. Interpretation: Clinical characteristics observed in adults with familial hypercholesterolaemia are uncommon in children and adolescents with familial hypercholesterolaemia, hence detection in this age group relies on measurement of LDL-C and genetic confirmation. Where genetic testing is unavailable, increased availability and use of LDL-C measurements in the first few years of life could help reduce the current gap between prevalence and detection, enabling increased use of combination LLM to reach recommended LDL-C targets early in life

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p<0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p<0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised

Soil Moisture and Biomass Retrieval over Forest Areas Using Low Frequency Polarimetric SAR Data

No abstract availabl