Modelling the Vietnamese Economy. ESRI WP526. February 2016

This paper considers the factors determining the long-run behaviour of the Vietnamese economy. Using a macro-economic model of the Vietnamese economy it considers some of the factors that have contributed to growth over the last decade and also some of the policy options for the rest of the decade

An Improved MobileNet for Disease Detection on Tomato Leaves

Tomatoes are widely grown vegetables, and farmers face challenges in caring for them, particularly regarding plant diseases. The MobileNet architecture is renowned for its simplicity and compatibility with mobile devices. This study introduces MobileNet as a deep learning model to enhance disease detection efficiency in tomato plants. The model is evaluated on a dataset of 2,064 tomato leaf images, encompassing early blight, leaf spot, yellow curl, and healthy leaves. Results demonstrate promising accuracy, exceeding 0.980 for disease classification and 0.975 for distinguishing between diseases and healthy cases. Moreover, the proposed model outperforms existing approaches in terms of accuracy and training time for plant leaf disease detection

Relating the magnetic coercivity to the L10 ordered FePd phase in annealed FexPd100-x nanoparticles

Rare-earth-free or iron-based permanent nanomagnets are emerging as promising candidates for energy-conversion and information technologies. In this interest, FexPd100-x nanoparticles (x = 50, 55, 60, and 63) were prepared from iron acetate and palladium acetate by sonoelectrodeposition. After annealing the nanoparticles at various temperatures from 450 to 700 °C for 1 h, structural changes were observed, and the samples exhibit hard magnetic properties that depend strongly on chemical composition and annealing temperature. The major phase in the as-prepared nanoparticles has a disordered face-centered cubic structure, which, upon annealing, transforms into a multi-phase material containing a L10 ordered FePd phase. The fractions of different phases present in the annealed samples, including that of the L10 phase as functions of chemical composition and annealing temperature, are quantified by means of X-ray diffraction and scanning transmission electron microscopy. Magnetic measurements show the desirable hard magnetic properties for the samples annealed at 550–600 °C. A correlation between the magnetic coercivity and the L10 ordered FePd phase fraction is established for the first time in the FexPd100-x nanoparticles

Preimplantation Genetic Testing of Aneuploidy by Next Generation Sequencing: Association of Maternal Age and Chromosomal Abnormalities of Blastocyst

BACKGROUND: Aneuploidy is a major cause of miscarriages and implantation failure. Preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is able to detect of the numeral and structural chromosomal abnormalities of embryos in vitro fertilization (IVF). AIM: This study was aimed to assess the relationship between maternal age and chromosomal abnormalities NGS technology. METHODS: 603 human trophectoderm (TE) biopsied samples were tested by Veriseq kit of Illumina. The relation of marternal age and chromosomal abnormality of blastocyst embryo was evaluated. RESULTS: Among the 603 TE samples, 247 samples (42.73%) presented as chromosomal abnormalities. The abnormalities occurred to almost chromosomes, and the most popular aneuploidy observed is 22. Aneuploidy rate from 0.87% in chromosome 11 to 6.06% in chromosome 22. The rate of abnormal chromosome increased dramatically in group of mother's ages over 37 (54.17%) comparing to group of mother's ages less than 37 (38.05%) (p < 0.000). The Abnormal chromosome and maternal age has a positive correlation with r = 0.4783 (p<0.0001). CONCLUSION: These results showed high rate abnormal chromosome and correlated with advanced maternal age of blastocyst embryos

Investigation of salt-tolerant rhizosphere bacteria from seawater-intruding paddy rice field in Vietnam

Salt‐tolerant plant growth‐promoting rhizobacteria (ST‐PGPR) are known as potential tools to improve rice salinity tolerance. In this study, we aimed to investigate the plant growth‐promoting rhizobacteria community richness of the paddy rice fields in Soc Trang and Ben Tre Provinces where were seriously affected by sea level rise. The salinity in the sampling sites ranged from 0.14‰ to 2.17‰ in November 2018, the rainy season. The microbial abundance of samples was evaluated by spreading the samples in tryptic soy agar (TSA) medium supplemented with various concentrations of NaCl. With the increase of salt concentration up to 10% NaCl, a total number of bacteria decreased for all the samples, ranging from 106 to 104 CFU/g, and bacterial colonies were not observed at 30% NaCl. Among a total of 48 salt-resisting bacteria isolated from the rice paddy field mud surrounding the rice root, 22 isolates were able to produce indole-3-acetic acid (IAA: phytohormone for the plant growth). Seventeen out of 48 isolates were able to grow in the medium without nitrogen or phosphor sources. Six isolates having high IAA producing activity, nitrogen fixation and phosphate solubilization were belonged to Bacillus (DT6, LT16, and LHT8), Halobacillus (DT8), Aeromonas (LHT1), and Klebsiella (LHT7) genera. All the sequences of the strains DT6, DT8, LT16, LHT1, LHT7, and LHT8 were registered in the GeneBank with the accession numbers MK335670, MK335671, MK335672, MK335673, MK335674, and MK335675, respectively.

Technical efficiency of smallholder banana production: a case study in Viet Nam

Bananas are considered one of the leading trading crops due to their high demand all over the globe. Since the increasing demand leads to the expansion of global import, the existing literature is in dire need of updating, especially from the producing economies that fall in the category of developing nations. The study, thus, intends to estimate the critical efficiency of said area. Along with it, the study aims to determine the elements of banana production in the context of Vietnam using a stochastic frontier approach and technical efficiency technique. The sample of the study is the province of Vietnam named Hung Yen, and it made sure to collect the data from 160 farmers in 2022. Results of the study reveal that the farmers' technical efficiency fluctuates between the range of 89.68- 97.81%. However, the average technical efficiency of banana farmers was reported to be 95.92%. From the result, it is gauged that factors such as potassium, manure, distance, capital, and training showed positive signs at a 0.01 significance level. Also, the education and area coefficient show a positive sign at a 0.05 significance level. Finally, distance and district variables, which were the dummy variable, show a negative sign at 0.01 and 0.05 significance levels, respectively.Hoang Van Hung (Hung Yen University of Technology and Education (UTEHY)), Nguyen Van Huong (Hung Yen University of Technology and Education (UTEHY)), Le Thi Thuong (Hung Yen University of Technology and Education (UTEHY)), Thai Thi Kim Oanh (Vinh University (VU)), Nguyen Van Chuong (University of Financial – Business Administration (UFBA)), Nguyen Cong Tiep (Viet Nam National University of Agriculture (VNUA)), Thai Van Ha (Ha Noi University of Business and Technology (HUBT)), Nguyen Thi Luong (Can Tho University (CTU))Includes bibliographical references

SIP-MBA: A secure IoT platform with brokerless and micro-service architecture

The Internet of Things is one of the most interesting technology trends today. Devices in the IoT network are often geared towards mobility and compact in size, thus having a rather weak hardware configuration. There are many light weight protocols, tailor-made suitable for limited processing power and low energy consumption, of which MQTT is the typical one. The current MQTT protocol supports three types of quality-of-service (QoS) and the user has to trade-off the security of the packet transmission by transmission rate, bandwidth and energy consumption. The MQTT protocol, however, does not support packet storage mechanisms which means that when the receiver is interrupted, the packet cannot be retrieved. In this paper, we present a broker-less SIP-MBA Platform, designed for micro-service and using gRPC protocol to transmit and receive messages. This design optimizes the transmission rate, power consumption and transmission bandwidth, while still meeting reliability when communicating. Besides, we implement users and things management mechanisms with the aim of improving security issues. Finally, we present the test results by implementing a collect data service via gRPC protocol and comparing it with streaming data by using the MQTT protocol.Web of Science12759358

IoHT-MBA: An Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) platform based on microservice and brokerless architecture

Internet of Thing (IoT), currently, is one of the technology trends that are most interested. IoT can be divided into five main areas including: Health-care, Environmental, Smart city, Commercial and Industrial. The IoHT-MBA Platform is considered the backbone of every IoT architecture, so the optimal design of the IoHT-MBA Platform is essential issue, which should be carefully considered in the different aspects. Although, IoT is applied in multiple domains, however, there are still three main features that are challenge to improve: i) data collection, ii) users, devices management, and iii) remote device control. Today's medical IoT systems, often too focused on the big data or access control aspects of participants, but not focused on collecting data accurately, quickly, and efficiently; power redundancy and system expansion. This is very important for the medical sector - which always prioritizes the availability of data for therapeutic purposes over other aspects. In this paper, we introduce the IoHT Platform for Healthcare environment which is designed by microservice and brokerless architecture, focusing strongly on the three aforementioned characteristics. In addition, our IoHT Platform considers the five other issues including (1) the limited processing capacity of the devices, (2) energy saving for the device, (3) speed and accurate of the data collection, (4) security mechanisms and (5) scalability of the system. Also, in order for the IoHT Platform to be suitable for the field of health monitoring, we also add realtime alerts for the medical team. In the evaluation section, moreover, we describe the evaluation to prove the effectiveness of the proposed IoHT Platform (i.e. the proof-of-concept) in the performance, non-error, and non affected by geographical distance. Finally, a complete code solution is publicized on the authors' GitHub repository to engage further reproducibility and improvement.Web of Science12760159

An open label randomized controlled trial of tamoxifen combined with amphotericin B and fluconazole for cryptococcal meningitis

Background: Cryptococcal meningitis has high mortality. Flucytosine is a key treatment but is expensive and rarely available. The anti-cancer agent tamoxifen has synergistic anti-cryptococcal activity with amphotericin in vitro. It is off-patent, cheap, and widely available. We performed a trial to determine its therapeutic potential. Methods:Open label randomized controlled trial. Participants received standard care - amphotericin combined with fluconazole for the first two weeks - or standard care plus tamoxifen 300mg/day. The primary end point was Early Fungicidal Activity (EFA) - the rate of yeast clearance from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Trial registration https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03112031 . Results: 50 patients were enrolled, (median age 34 years, 35 male). Tamoxifen had no effect on EFA (- 0.48log10 colony-forming units/mL/CSF control arm versus -0.49 tamoxifen arm, difference - 0.005log10CFU/ml/day, 95%CI: -0.16, 0.15, P=0.95). Tamoxifen caused QTc prolongation. Conclusion: High dose tamoxifen does not increase the clearance rate of Cryptococcus from CSF. Novel, affordable therapies are needed. Funding:The trial was funded through the Wellcome Trust Asia Programme Vietnam Core Grant 106680 and a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellowship to JND grant number WT097147MA