An Updated Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Method for Rapid Diagnosis of H5N1 Avian Influenza Viruses

We designed a new set of primers for reverse transcriptase loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RTLAMP) to specifically amplify the HA gene of avian influenza viruses subtype H5N1. By testing nine H5N1 virus strains and 41 clinical samples collected in Northern Vietnam, we found that the new primers showed higher sensitivity and specificity than the previously published RT-LAMP primers and were comparable to the RT-PCR method currently recommended by WHO. These results suggest that our RT-LAMP assay may be a better choice as a diagnostic tool for current H5N1 influenza virus infection

An investigation of the academic consulting competence of high school teachers in Vietnam

High school students must grapple with a host of issues and encounter difficulties when studying at schools, such as peer pressure, test anxiety, cyberbullying, unhealthy relationships, psychological distress, depression and possibly domestic issues. These obstacles create the need for academic consulting in order for high school students to develop essential skills and then solve problems. This study aims to examine the high school teachers' perceptions and the quality of academic consulting competence in the Vietnamese educational context. This study surveyed 1089 high school students and 289 teachers in Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam with the 43-item questionnaire. The main results showed that academic consulting competence had been noticed and trained professionally for high school teachers. Additionally, both students and high school teachers recognized the essential role of high school teachers' academic consulting competence in educational settings

The beauty industry, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Can humanity have “stories of kindness” for an environmenthealing culture?

Many people now recognize that the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss are rooted in how and to what extent humans consume goods in the Anthropocene era. Consumerism has driven natural resource exploitation to its peak, and resource depletion is becoming more common. The beauty and personal care industry has an enormous market and substantial profitability, particularly in the high-income category. However, this benefit comes with the risk of being scrutinized, investigated, and criticized by civil society groups, environmental activists, and consumers. More than anyone else, the industry is aware of the risks of negative society appraisals, notably the consequences of consumer-led boycott activities. In this paper, we suggest that, given the current situation, global beauty firms need to play a proactive role in directing resources toward the development of sustainable uses of biodiversity and agriculture methods. This includes advocating for the wider use of environmentally conscious sourcing of raw materials, avoiding excessive and wasteful packaging, and devoting resources to research and innovation in environmentally friendly manufacturing procedures. The proactiveness would allow them to demonstrate their environmental commitment and actively give customers persuasive evidence of their social responsibility through emission reduction and biodiversity protection actions, gradually building an environmental-healing culture in the beauty industry

The beauty industry and biodiversity: “The Story of Kindness”

Today, many people have realized that the climate change and biodiversity loss issues lie in how and to what extent humans consume products for their lives in the Anthropocene era. Consumerism has pushed natural resource exploitation to its peak, and the depletion of resources is becoming increasingly prevalent. The beauty and personal care industry has a large market and high profits, especially in the high-income segment. However, this advantage also carries the risk of facing scrutiny, investigations, and criticism from civil society organizations, environmental activists, and consumers. More than anyone else, the industry is vulnerable to the perils of unfavourable societal assessments, particularly the repercussions of consumer-led boycott actions. In this discourse, we suggest that, given the current circumstances, it is imperative for multinational beauty corporations to take a proactive role in allocating resources towards the development of sustainable agriculture practices. This entails not only advocating for the widespread adoption of environmentally conscious production methods but also dedicating efforts towards conducting research and innovation in the area of nature-friendly manufacturing techniques. Doing so will help demonstrate their commitment to the environment and actively provide convincing evidence to consumers of their social responsibility through emission reduction and biodiversity conservation activities

Catalytic Dye Oxidation over CeO2 Nanoparticles Supported on Regenerated Cellulose Membrane

A novel regenerated cellulose (RC) membrane containing cerium oxide (CeO2) nanoparticles is described in detail. In this work, CeO2 nanoparticles with high surface area and mesoporosity were prepared by a modified template-assisted precipitation method. Successful synthesis was achieved using cerium nitrate as a precursor, adjusting the final pH solution to around 11 by ammonium hydroxide and ethylene diamine, and annealing at 550 °C for 3 hours under a protective gas flow. This resulted in a surface area of 55.55 m².g–1 for the nanoparticles. The regenerated cellulose membrane containing CeO2 particles was synthesized by the novel and environmentally friendly method. The catalyst CeO2 and cellulose/CeO2 membrane were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) measurements. The g-value of 2.276 has confirmed the presence of the surface superoxide species of CeO2 nanoparticles in EPR. The photocatalytic activity of the catalyst and the membrane containing the catalyst was evaluated through the degradation of methylene blue under visible light irradiation by UV-VIS measurements. The cellulose/CeO2 membrane degraded 80% of the methylene blue solution in 120 minutes, showing a better photocatalytic activity than the CeO2 catalyst, which degraded approximately 62% in the same period. It has been proven that the RC membrane is not only a good transparent supporting material but also a good adsorption for high-performance of CeO2 catalyst. Copyright © 2022 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).

NeCo@ALQAC 2023: Legal Domain Knowledge Acquisition for Low-Resource Languages through Data Enrichment

In recent years, natural language processing has gained significant popularity in various sectors, including the legal domain. This paper presents NeCo Team's solutions to the Vietnamese text processing tasks provided in the Automated Legal Question Answering Competition 2023 (ALQAC 2023), focusing on legal domain knowledge acquisition for low-resource languages through data enrichment. Our methods for the legal document retrieval task employ a combination of similarity ranking and deep learning models, while for the second task, which requires extracting an answer from a relevant legal article in response to a question, we propose a range of adaptive techniques to handle different question types. Our approaches achieve outstanding results on both tasks of the competition, demonstrating the potential benefits and effectiveness of question answering systems in the legal field, particularly for low-resource languages.Comment: ISAILD@KSE 202

The Status of Educational Sciences In Vietnam: A Bibliometric Analysis From Clarivate Web Of Science Database Between 1991 And 2018

Since 2013, Vietnam has implemented a plan to reform the whole education sector. However, there is little understanding on the status of educational research in Vietnam, which may lay the foundation for such plan. Thus, this research aims to analyze the whole picture of educational research from Vietnam, as seen from the Clarivate Web of Science (WOS) database: 215 publications were recorded, ranging from 1991 to 2018. These 215 publications were further analyzed from five perspectives: 1) number of publications by year; 2) research fields and levels of education; 3) top institutions with the highest number of publications; 4) international collaboration; and 5) quality. Some of the most notable results are: 1) the educational sciences in Vietnam have been still under-developed until recently; 2) among different research topics research among educational sciences, some (e.g., Vocational Education and Training or Early Childhood Education) seemed to be overlooked whereas others (e.g., Higher Education and Teaching and Learning) seemed to receive more attention from educational scholars; 3) all the most major education – specialized universities did not appear among the top five institutions with highest number of publications; 4) Australia, Thailand, the USA, New Zealand and China were the countries with the highest number of co-publications with Vietnamese researchers; and 5) The majority of publications belonged to low-ranked journals. Implications would be withdrawn for Vietnamese policymakers, education leaders, educational researchers and teachers in order to adjust their policies and/or action plans; thus, enhancing the performance and impacts of educational research in the future

Evaluation Of Allelopathic Potential Of Cissus sicyoides Against the Growth Of Echinochloa Crus-Galli And Some Tested Plants

Many plant species in nature exert significant allelopathic potential as part of the defense mechanism system, many among their secondary metabolites (allelochemicals), including mineral constituents, which are responsible for the suppression of weeds and enhancing crop yield when directly incorporated into paddy fields. Cissus sicyoides is considered a high-potential allelopathic plant because of its invasion in nature and detected allelochemicals from the plant parts in some studies. The objective of this research was to exploit the allelopathic properties of C.sicyoides against paddy weeds and some indicator plants under laboratory bioassays and greenhouse conditions. The results demonstrated that C. sicyoides had significant inhibition on E. crus-galli, tested plants, and other paddy weeds. In the laboratory conditions, the extracts from C.sicyoides leaves inhibited the growth of Echinochloa crus-galli by 54.3%. The powders from C.sicyoides leaves inhibited the emergence of paddy weeds by approximately 100.0%. In the greenhouse conditions, the powders from C.sicyoides leaves by adding after 3 and 13 days inhibited the growth of E. crus-galli and the emergence of paddy weeds by 64.4%. Remarkably, negligible harmful effects on rice growth were observed. The findings of the study may provide useful information for the exploitation of this plant species to effectively control weeds in the rice fields for sustainable agriculture production

Synthesis, crystal structure and Hirshfeld surface analysis of 4-[3-(4-hy-droxy-phen-yl)-4,5-di-hydro-1H-pyrazol-5-yl]-2-meth-oxy-phenol monohydrate.

In the title pyrazoline derivative, C16H16N2O3·H2O, the pyrazoline ring has an envelope conformation with the substituted sp 2 C atom on the flap. The pyrazoline ring makes angles of 86.73 (12) and 13.44 (12)° with the tris-ubstituted and disubstituted benzene rings, respectively. In the crystal structure, the mol-ecules are connected into chains running in the b-axis direction by O-H⋯N hydrogen bonding. Parallel chains inter-act through N-H⋯O hydrogen bonds and π-π stacking of the tris-ubstituted phenyl rings. The major contribution to the surface contacts are H⋯H contacts (44.3%) as concluded from a Hirshfeld surface analysis

Ocean economic and cultural benefit perceptions as stakeholders’ constraints for supporting preservation policies: A cross-national investigation

Effective stakeholder engagement and inclusive governance are essential for effective and equitable ocean management. However, few cross-national studies have been conducted to examine how stakeholders’ economic and cultural benefit perceptions influence their support level for policies focused on ocean preservation. The current study aims to fill this gap by employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries, a part of the MaCoBioS project funded by the European Commission H2020. We found that economic and cultural benefit perceptions are generally negatively associated with the policy support level. Regarding economic aspects, stakeholders considering transportation and shipping, renewable energy generation, and oil and gas provision as the most crucial benefits their countries’ oceans provide tend to obtain less support for policies focusing on ocean preservation. Meanwhile, for cultural aspects, perceiving recreation and tourism, aesthetic pleasure, mental health and well-being support, and sense of identity provision as the most important benefits provided by the country’s ocean are negatively associated with the policy support level. The perceived economic, cultural, and environmental tradeoffs when supporting policies focused on ocean preservation were discussed. Recommendations for improving the effective management of multi-use marine space are also provided to reduce the perceived competing interests among stakeholders