Sustainable Growth and Ethics: a Study of Business Ethics in Vietnam Between Business Students and Working Adults

Sustainable growth is not only the ultimate goal of business corporations but also the primary target of local governments as well as regional and global economies. One of the cornerstones of sustainable growth is ethics. An ethical organizational culture provides support to achieve sustainable growth. Ethical leaders and employees have great potential for positive influence on decisions and behaviors that lead to sustainability. Ethical behavior, therefore, is expected of everyone in the modern workplace. As a result, companies devote many resources and training programs to make sure their employees live according to the high ethical standards. This study provides an analysis of Vietnamese business students’ level of ethical maturity based on gender, education, work experience, and ethics training. The results of data from 260 business students compared with 704 working adults in Vietnam demonstrate that students have a significantly higher level of ethical maturity. Furthermore, gender and work experience are significant factors in ethical maturity. While more educated respondents and those who had completed an ethics course did have a higher level of ethical maturity, the results were not statistically significant. Analysis of the results along with suggestions and implications are provided

Witness-based Approach for Scaling Distributed Ledgers to Massive IoT Scenarios

Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) are playing a major role in building security and trust in Internet of Things (IoT) systems. However, IoT deployments with a large number of devices, such as in environment monitoring applications, generate and send massive amounts of data. This would generate vast number of transactions that must be processed within the distributed ledger. In this work, we first demonstrate that the Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain fails to scale in a sizable IoT connectivity infrastructure. To solve this problem, we present a lightweight distributed ledger scheme to integrate PoW blockchain into IoT. In our scheme, we classify transactions into two types: 1) global transactions, which must be processed by global blockchain nodes and 2) local transactions, which can be processed locally by entities called witnesses. Performance evaluation demonstrates that our proposed scheme improves the scalability of integrated blockchain and IoT monitoring systems by processing a fraction of the transactions, inversely proportional to the number of witnesses, locally. Hence, reducing the number of global transactions.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, conference pape

Effect of polymer chemistry on globular protein–polymer block copolymer self-assembly

Bioconjugates of the model red fluorescent protein mCherry and synthetic polymer blocks with different hydrogen bonding functionalities show that the chemistry of the polymer block has a large effect on both ordering transitions and the type of nanostructures formed during bioconjugate self-assembly. The phase behaviours of mCherry-b-poly(hydroxypropyl acrylate) (PHPA) and mCherry-b-poly(oligoethylene glycol acrylate) (POEGA) in concentrated aqueous solution show that changes in polymer chemistry result in increase in the order–disorder transition concentrations (C[subscript ODT]s) by approximately 10–15 wt% compared to a previously studied globular protein–polymer block copolymer, mCherry-b-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM). The C[subscript ODT]s are always minimized for symmetric bioconjugates, consistent with the importance of protein–polymer interactions in self-assembly. Both mCherry-b-PHPA and mCherry-b-POEGA also form phases that have not previously been observed in other globular protein–polymer conjugates: mCherry-b-PHPA forms a cubic phase that can be indexed to Ia[bar over 3]d and mCherry-b-POEGA displays coexistence of lamellae and a cubic Ia[bar over 3]d structure over a narrow range of concentration and temperature. Several common behaviours are also revealed by comparison of different polymer blocks. With increasing concentration and temperature, ordered phases always appear in the order lamellar, cubic/PL, and hexagonal, although not all phases are observed in all materials. High concentration solutions (near 80 wt%) also undergo a re-entrant order–disorder transition to form nematic liquid crystalline phases, regardless of the polymer block chemistry.United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Award FA9550-12-0259)United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Award DE-SC0007106

Prevalence and Determinants of Medication Adherence among Patients with HIV/AIDS in Southern Vietnam

This study was conducted to determine the prevalence and determinants of medication adherence among patients with HIV/AIDS in southern Vietnam. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a hospital in southern Vietnam from June to December 2019 on patients who began antiretroviral therapy (ART) for at least 6 months. Using a designed questionnaire, patients were considered adherent if they took correct medicines with right doses, on time and properly with food and beverage and had follow-up visits as scheduled. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify determinants of adherence. KEY FINDINGS: A total of 350 patients (from 861 medical records) were eligible for the study. The majority of patients were male (62.9%), and the dominant age group (≥35 years old) accounted for 53.7% of patients. Sexual intercourse was the primary route of transmission of HIV (95.1%). The proportions of participants who took the correct medicine and at a proper dose were 98.3% and 86.3%, respectively. In total, 94.9% of participants took medicine appropriately in combination with food and beverage, and 75.7% of participants were strictly adherent to ART. The factors marital status (odds ratio (OR) = 2.54; 95%CI = 1.51-4.28), being away from home (OR = 1.7; 95%CI = 1.03-2.78), substance abuse (OR = 2.7; 95%CI = 1.44-5.05), general knowledge about ART (OR = 2.75; 95%CI = 1.67-4.53), stopping medication after improvement (OR = 4.16; 95%CI = 2.29-7.56) and self-assessment of therapy adherence (OR = 9.83; 95%CI = 5.44-17.77) were significantly associated with patients' adherence. CONCLUSIONS: Three-quarters of patients were adherent to ART. Researchers should consider these determinants of adherence in developing interventions in further studies

Trusted Wireless Monitoring based on Blockchain over NB-IoT Connectivity

The data collected from Internet of Things (IoT) devices on various emissions or pollution, can have a significant economic value for the stakeholders. This makes it prone to abuse or tampering and brings forward the need to integrate IoT with a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to collect, store, and protect the IoT data. However, DLT brings an additional overhead to the frugal IoT connectivity and symmetrizes the IoT traffic, thus changing the usual assumption that IoT is uplink-oriented. We have implemented a platform that integrates DLTs with a monitoring system based on narrowband IoT (NB-IoT). We evaluate the performance and discuss the tradeoffs in two use cases: data authorization and real-time monitoring.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, Accepted in IEEE Communication Magazin

Verbal fluency norms in a community population in Hong Kong

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Stress, Task, and Relationship Orientations Across German and Vietnamese Cultures

Cultural background and context can be an important predictor of a manager’s behavior, stress and leadership orientation. This paper examines the stress, task, and relationship orientations of people in the high-context culture of Vietnam and in the low-context culture of Germany. As a result of the analysis of 420 responses, some significant differences were found between the two samples. It appears that Vietnamese have higher scores on task, relationship and stress orientations than German respondents. While gender is a significant factor in stress perceptions, it did not demonstrate any differences in the task and relationship orientations of these respondents. In this paper, literature on German and Vietnamese cultures is presented along with practical application, suggestions and implications for future studies.Key words: Culture; Germany; Leadership; Relationships; Stress perception; Tasks; Vietna

Stability of bedforms in laminar flows with free surface: from bars to ripples

International audienceThe present paper is devoted to the formation of sand patterns by laminar flows. It focuses on the rhomboid beach pattern, formed during the backswash. A recent bedload transport model, based on a moving-grains balance, is generalized in three dimensions for viscous flows. The water flow is modelled by the full incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with a free surface. A linear stability analysis then shows the simultaneous existence of two distinct instabilities, namely ripples and bars. The comparison of the bar instability characteristics with laboratory rhomboid patterns indicates that the latter could result from the nonlinear evolution of unstable bars. This result, together with the sensibility of the stability analysis with respect to the parameters of the transport law, suggests that the rhomboid pattern could help improving sediment transport models, so critical to geomorphologists

Appropriate Antibiotic Use and Associated Factors in Vietnamese Outpatients

Background: Inappropriate antibiotic use among outpatients is recognized as the primary driver of antibiotic resistance. A proper understanding of appropriate antibiotic usage and associated factors helps to determine and limit inappropriateness. We aimed to identify the rate of appropriate use of antibiotics and identify factors associated with the inappropriate prescriptions. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study in outpatient antibiotic use at a hospital in Can Tho City, Vietnam, from August 1, 2019, to January 31, 2020. Data were extracted from all outpatient prescriptions at the Medical Examination Department and analyzed by SPSS 18 and Chi-squared tests, with 95% confidence intervals. The rationale for antibiotic use was evaluated through antibiotic selection, dose, dosing frequency, dosing time, interactions between antibiotics and other drugs, and general appropriate usage. Results: A total of 420 prescriptions were 51.7% for females, 61.7% with health insurance, and 44.0% for patients with one comorbid condition. The general appropriate antibiotic usage rate was 86.7%. Prescriptions showed that 11.0% and 9.5% had a higher dosing frequency and dose than recommended, respectively; 10.2% had an inappropriate dosing time; 3.1% had drug interactions; and only 1.7% had been prescribed inappropriate antibiotics. The risk of inappropriate antibiotic use increased in patients with comorbidities and antibiotic treatment lasting >7 days (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The study indicated a need for more consideration when prescribing antibiotics to patients with comorbidities or using more than 7 days of treatment