THE DIVERSITY OF YELLOW CAMELLIAS IN THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS, VIETNAM

The Central Highlands (Tây Nguyên) is a center of yellow camellia diversity in Vietnam and the world. The Central Highlands contains 18 of Vietnam’s yellow camellia species, accounting for 37% of yellow camellia species in Vietnam and 28% of yellow camellia species worldwide. Moreover, all 18 yellow camellia species in the Central Highlands are endemic to Vietnam. The camellias of the Central Highlands belong to nine sections, accounting for 75% of the world. The yellow colors occur in three groups: pale yellow, yellow, and yellow with compound colors. The yellow camellia distribution is dispersed at 500–1600 m elevation in evergreen broadleaf forests and mixed wood-bamboo forests

An Assessment of Cough Medicine Dispensing Practice to Children Under Two Years Old in Pharmacies in Ho Chi Minh City Using Simulated-Patient Method

Over-the-counter (OTC) cough and cold medications (CCMs) have been used to treat the symptoms of upper respiratory infection in children for decades. The safety of CCMs in children has been questioned. The data on knowledge of pharmacists in supplying cough medicines for children under two years have been limited. This study aimed to evaluate the pharmacists’ dispensing decisions to manage the cough in children under two years old. A descriptive cross-sectional was carried out in 300 pharmacies in 15 districts in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The pharmacists were interviewed by a simulated patient. The results showed that, information that pharmacists actively asked the client about the patient and disease symptoms was limited. Most pharmacists did not provide adequate instructions and counsel about using drugs for clients. Only 22/300 (7.33%) of pharmacists appropriately provided cough medicines for children under 2 years old. The main reason of inappropriateness was the deficiency of knowledge about updated contraindication of N-acetylcysteine (93.17%). Pharmacists in pharmacies located in districts 3, 11 and Binh Thanh had higher rate of rational provision than those in other districts. A good and full understanding of the patient symptom helped the pharmacists supply cough medicines more reasonably. The limited caution of pharmacists and the low proportion of pharmacists updating contraindication of N-acetylcysteine should be considered as a warning sign in pharmacy practice in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

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

What do Vietnamese executives understand corporate social responsibility?

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) literature in developing countries is seriously meager. This paper explores CSR in the Vietnamese construction industry which has faced many scandals and directed attention toward the question of the responsibilities of these businesses. The study employs the CSR definition documented by Carroll (1979; 1991) to develop a framework for exploring executives’ perceptions towards CSR. Using Carroll’s CSR pyramid and adopting in-depth interview as a method to collect data, the study critically examines the personal understanding of managers in nine companies in the construction industry. The findings show that although Vietnam is a developing country, managers are aware of the significance of environmental issue as a responsibility that businesses must address. Moreover, the managers also believe that corporate contributions to society, and corporate reputation and prestige, are expectations of society. Despite many breakthroughs in executives’ understanding of CSR, they are not sufficiently and systematically aware of CSR and need a stronger supports, such as issuing appropriate policies, from government in adopting CSR in real business practice

Silicon quantum-dots-based optical probe for fluorometric detection of Cr6+ ions

In this report, silicon quantum dots (SiQDs) with the NH2 functional group were synthesized with the hydrothermal method. The as-prepared SiQDs exhibit a strong fluorescence emission peak               at 441 nm when excited at 355 nm and are effectively quenched upon adding Cr6+ ions. Hence, SiQDs were used as an optical probe to detect Cr6+ ions in solutions. The crystal structure of SiQDs was characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD). The Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) was used to determine the linker groups on the SiQDs surface. The fluorescence spectroscopic technique with an excitation wavelength of 355 nm was used to quantify the Cr6+ ion concentration in the solutions in the range of 0.1–1000 µM. Competition from common coexisting ions, such as K+, Na+, Al3+, Zn2+, and Pb2+, was ignorable. The test with actual samples showed good linearity for the Cr6+ concentration range of 0.1–50 µM

The effect of polyamine 70000 (BT70) on the zinc plating process in the non-cyanide alkaline plating bath

The effect of polyamine having molecular weight 70,000u (BT70) in the non-cyanide alkaline plating bath on the morphological zinc electrodeposited coating was investigated. The obtained results from the reflectance of electrodeposited zinc coating by a suitable range of electro-current density and SEM images showed that BT70 had effect on the zinc plating in comparison with the zinc deposits from plating bath without BT70. The electrodeposited coating surface was rough and poor adhesion. However, adding BT70 into the plating bath led to the surface roughness of electrodeposited coating and grand size being reduced. Zinc electrodeposited coating from a plating bath containing BT70 at 0.5 g/L, respectively, experienced the highest reflectance, equal 46 % of the electrodeposited coating from the bath containing commercial additives. Hull method showed that the zinc deposited coating surface became smoother with the presence of polyamine in non-cyanide alkaline zinc plating solution. The zinc deposited coating had a semi-gloss scope at 10 A/dm2. If the BT70 content increased, the semi-gloss scop and the gloss of samples’ surfaces also grew up. Keywords. Polyamine, additive, non-cyanide alkaline zinc plating, zinc coating

Arsenic removal from groundwater by a combination of chlorination and consecutive sand filtration

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart