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Higher education institutions encounters difficulties when the Covid-19 pandemic happens because learners cannot go to class and absorb knowledge directly. In Vietnam, universities have used online learning to help learners keep learning in this pandemic context. However, the quality and effectiveness of the learning process are questioned by the learner and the teaching staff. In this context, our research is looking for solutions to apply new technology in the teaching process to ensure the quality and effectiveness of learning. Among these new technologies, digital games are considered due to most students playing digital games as well as their positive effects in teaching reflected in recent publications. Under the approach of technological process, our team evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the digital game-based instructional technology at HUST. In terms of feasibility, research results show that most students agree that learning skills can be formed by using digital games in learning process. About the efficiency, there are three key findings: First, although male students play video games more than female students, the results show that both men and women have the same rate to-wards the effectiveness of digital games in learning. Second, there is no difference in assessing the effectiveness of digital games in learning between IT students and non-IT students although IT students are more exposed to technology. Third, there is a difference in the views of second-year students and third-year students. This difference shows the reason to build blended-learning courses that use digital games effectively for third-year students who starts more indeed engineering major at universities.

COVID-19 pandemic currently affects nearly all countries and regions in the world. Washing hands, together with other preventive measures, to be considered one of the most important measures to prevent the disease. This study aimed to characterize reported handwashing practices of Vietnamese people during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated factors. Kobo Toolbox platform was used to design the online survey. There were 837 people participating in this survey. All independent variables were described by calculating frequencies and percentages. Univariate linear regression was used with a significant level of 0.05. Multiple linear regression was conducted to provide a theoretical model with collected predictors. Seventy-nine percent of the respondents used soap as the primary choice when washing their hands. Sixty percent of the participants washed their hands at all essential times, however, only 26.3% practiced washing their hands correctly, and only 28.4% washed their hands for at least 20 seconds. Although 92.1% washed hands after contacting with surfaces at public places (e.g., lifts, knob doors), only 66.3% practiced handwashing after removing masks. Females had better reported handwashing practices than male participants (OR = 1.88; 95% CI: 1.15-3.09). Better knowledge of handwashing contributed to improving reported handwashing practice (OR = 1.30; 95% CI: 1.20-1.41). Poorer handwashing practices were likely due, at least in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic information on the internet, social media, newspapers, and television. Although the number of people reported practicing their handwashing was rather high, only a quarter of them had corrected reported handwashing practices. Communication strategy on handwashing should emphasize on the minimum time required for handwashing as well as the six handwashing steps.

Background Early detection of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) is essential given the under-reported cases in low- and middle-income countries. This first national representative survey was conducted to explore the prevalence of ASDs amongst 18 and 30 months in seven provinces in Vietnam. Design and methods During 2017-2018, a national cross-sectional and population-based survey for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) amongst 40,243 children aged 18 to 30 months was conducted in 7 provinces representing the socio-economic regions of Vietnam. M-CHAT was used to screen children and then confirmed by diagnostic assessment using DSM-IV criteria. Results The prevalence of ASDs amongst children aged 18 and 30 months in Vietnam was high (0.758% or 1 in 132 children). Urban setting, male gender, and hereditable genes were associated with ASD prevalence. Conclusions ASDs amongst children aged 18 and 30 months in Vietnam tend to be increasing and are similar to this rate in other middle-income countries but lower than that in Western countries. This under-recognized public health problem amongst children should be addressed by early detection and intervention for families with affected children.

Chloroquine (CQ) is the first-line treatment for Plasmodium vivax malaria in most countries where malaria is endemic. Monitoring P. vivax CQ resistance (CQR) is critical but remains challenged by the difficulty to distinguish real treatment failure from reinfection or liver relapse. The therapeutic efficacy of CQ against uncomplicated P. vivax malaria was evaluated in Gia Lai Province, Vietnam. Sixty-seven patients were enrolled and followed for 42 days using microscopy and quantitative PCR. Adequate clinical and parasitological response (ACPR) was 100% (66/66) on day 28 but 75.4% (49/65) on day 42. Eighteen recurrences (27.7%) were detected, with a median time to recurrence of 42 days (interquartile range [IQR], 35 to 42) and blood CQ concentration of 98% identity by descent to paired day 0 samples. This study shows that CQ remained largely efficacious to treat P. vivax in Gia Lai; i.e., recurrences occurred late (>day 28) and in the presence of low blood CQ concentrations. However, the combination of both WGS and gene expression analysis (pvcrt) data with clinical data (PCT) allowed us to identify potential emergence of low-grade CQR, which should be closely monitored. (This study has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier NCT02610686.).

National audience; In an election, the vote shares by party for a given subdivision of a territory form a compositional vector (positive components adding up to 1). Conventional multiple linear regression models are not adapted to explain this composition due to the constraint on the sum of the components and the potential spatial autocorrelation across territorial units. We develop a simultaneous spatial autoregressive model for compositional data that allows for both spatial correlation and correlations across equations. Using simulations and a data set from the 2015 French departmental election, we illustrate its estimation by two-stage and three-stage least squares methods.

Chloroquine (CQ) is the first-line treatment for Plasmodium vivax malaria in most endemic countries. Monitoring P.vivax CQ resistance (CQR) is critical but remains challenged by the difficulty to distinguish real treatment failure from reinfection or liver relapse. Therapeutic efficacy of CQ against uncomplicated P.vivax malaria was evaluated in Gia Lai province, Vietnam. Sixty-seven patients were enrolled and followed-up for 42 days using microscopy and (RT)qPCR. Adequate clinical and parasitological response (ACPR) was 100% (66/66) on Day 28, but 75.4% (49/65) on Day 42. Eighteen recurrences (27.7%) were detected with a median time-to-recurrence of 42 days (IQR 35, 42) and blood CQ concentration 98% identity-by-descent to paired Day 0 samples. Primary infections leading to recurrence occurred in younger individuals (median age for ACPR=25 years [IQR 20, 28]; recurrences=18 [16, 21]; p=0.002), had a longer parasite clearance time (PCT for ACPR=47.5h [IQR 36.2, 59.8]; recurrences=54.2h [48.4, 62.0]; p=0.035) and higher pvcrt gene expression (median relative expression ratio for ACPR=0.09 [IQR 0.05, 0.22]; recurrences=0.20 [0.15, 0.56]; p=0.002), but there was no difference in ex vivo CQ sensitivity. This study shows that CQ remained largely efficacious to treat P.vivax in Gia Lai, i.e. recurrences occurred late (>Day 28) and in the presence of low blood CQ concentrations. However, the combination of WGS and gene expression analysis (pvcrt) with clinical data (PCT) allowed to identify potential emergence of low-grade CQR that should be closely monitored.

To document known risk factors, clinical severity, associated impairments and rehabilitation status of children presenting with cerebral palsy (CP) to the National Children's Hospital (NCH) in Hanoi, Vietnam.Active prospective ascertainment of cases of CP presenting between June and November 2017 to the NCH using surveillance modelled on the Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance system in Australia.Data were collected on 765 children with CP (mean age: 2 years 7 months (SD 2 y 6 mo). Mean age at diagnosis was 1 year 8 months (SD 1 y 9 mo). Children predominantly had spastic CP (95.2%,We established hospital-based surveillance of CP in Hanoi and confirmed a high burden and severity of CP with potentially preventable risk factors. These data will inform clinician training and health policy and identify need for evidence-based care and assistive devices.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONWe identified a high number of children with severe forms of cerebral palsy (CP) in Hanoi, Vietnam through hospital-based surveillance.There is an urgent need for clinician training and access to and use of evidence-based interventions including assistive technology.This study will inform local capacity building and health policy for improved diagnosis and care of children with CP in Vietnam and other low and middle-income countries.

In the age of unpredictable fluctuations of technology, disorganized detection has been recently figured out in most of present-day anti-money laundering systems. These obstacles are attributed to certain reasons associated with applying handcrafted manipulation in the long list of principles and having the shortage of real datasets about banking purchasers or the customers’ information. This article demonstrates such an innovative approach to evaluate the data in terms of suspicious behaviors, clients’ relationships, the awareness for the customers retrieval from the financial sector in social media platforms. The applicable datasets consisting of above 20000 sample records on Kaggle is the main resource for our service. Each entry was compiled from content of collected documents and was attached to the descriptions measuring positivity or negativity in catching money laundering. They were used to qualify the model in AutoML supplied by Google Cloud Artificial Intelligence. After having been satisfied the sentiment standard with a performance accuracy approximately 0.85, we attempted to forecast the sentimental design for all searched outcomes connected with the clients to distinguish badly known companies. The output is a beneficial tool for the companies getting used to realizing unauthorized clients. In other words, instead of having no information about new clients in Know Your Customer of anti-money laundering inspections, it is more helpful to utilize this service without wasting too much time and money for a huge number of other sites out there.

Vietnamese higher education has been so far complained as being theory – oriented and there still exists a large gap between training and employment. Adopting experiential teaching and learning methods, including case study, should be a solution. The paper reviews the concept of case study teaching method, its purposes, techniques and procedures. The paper also presents a real-life example of case study teaching method that has been applied in tertiary education overseas. The appropriate application of case study teaching method as well as developing database of case studies in Vietnamese universities will be arguably a viable solution to improve education quality and to bridge the gap between theory and practice

Transform domain Wyner-Ziv video coding (TDWZ) has shown its benefits in compressing video applications with limited resources such as visual surveillance systems, remote sensing and wireless sensor networks. In TDWZ, the correlation noise model (CNM) plays a vital role since it directly affects to the number of bits needed to send from the encoder and thus the overall TDWZ compression performance. To achieve CNM with high accurate for TDWZ, we propose in this paper a novel CNM estimation approach in which the CNM with Laplacian distribution is adaptively estimated based on a deep learning (DL) mechanism. The proposed DL based CNM includes two hidden layers and a linear activation function to adaptively update the Laplacian parameter. Experimental results showed that the proposed TDWZ codec significantly outperforms the relevant benchmarks, notably by around 35% bitrate saving when compared to the DISCOVER codec and around 22% bitrate saving when compared to the HEVC Intra benchmark while providing a similar perceptual quality.

Antibiotic residues in chicken meat samples is a serious public health concern due to their harmful effects on consumers’ health. We conducted this research in 2017 to determine antibiotic residues in chicken meat samples and to describe the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of farmers on the antibiotic uses in poultry farms at Tay Ninh province. Farmers who raised chickens at their farmhouses were surveyed using a KAP survey questionnaire, and 106 chicken meat samples were analyzed for 29 kinds of antibiotic residues. The results showed that 27.4% samples were positive with 11 kinds of 4 antibiotic groups: fluoroquinolones, sulfonamides, tetracycline, and macrolides. A total of 50.9% farmers needed to improve their knowledge on the appropriate use of antibiotics. Although 54.7% famers had positive attitude, just 17% had good practices. It was recommended that the levels of antibiotic residues in chickens should be communicated to food safety and veterinary authorities, chicken farmers, and the general public. Enhancing the training and coaching for each group of farmers to improve their knowledge and practices on the appropriate use of antibiotics in raising chickens is needed. Local government should enhance the level of control and punishment for drug sellers and end users regarding the use of banned antibiotics in chickens.

Water hygiene, sanitation, and proper management of health care wastes at health care facilities are important in preventing infections and improving health and the environment. This article describes the access to safe water and sanitation facilities and the disposal of medical wastes at commune health centers (CHCs) in Vietnam. Data was extracted from the 2015 World Bank Vietnam District and Commune Health Facility Survey. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression was applied to identify associations of CHCs' access to improved water and sanitation and their medical waste management. Overall, 72.76% CHCs had access to both improved water and sanitation facilities, and better access was found in the richest communes. Rural CHCs had higher prevalence of appropriate wastewater treatment. The majority of CHCs combusted medical solid wastes by specialized incinerations, contracted out with sanitation companies, or transported them to district health centers. However, the data was insufficient to give in-depth analysis and conclusion on water and sanitation conditions and the management of medical wastes at CHCs. More information should be collected for further analysis and conclusion.

Although waste-to-energy (WtE) may reduce the amount of waste disposed and recover the heat in the form of electricity or steam, it has limitations in terms of stable energy resources due to uneven waste properties and variation in waste generation and heat requirements by season. The purpose of this study was to analyze the energy production and actual utilization in resource recovery facilities and to secure the preliminary data for its efficient utilization. Four WtE plants were investigated in Seoul metropolitan area. This study analyzed the heat recovery efficiency of each WtE plant using different estimation formula. As a result, that of facility A was 0.74 by Korea’s energy efficiency method, which was the highest among the WtE plants. In facility D, energy loss was the highest due to a mismatch of pollution control facilities. It means energy recovery efficiency could be improved through optimization of treatment processes and final energy utilization. In summer, energy is being wasted by steam throwaway, because heat demand is relatively low compared to other seasons. Thus, the alternative application like district cooling needs to be considered to improve energy efficiency as well as other private businesses or district heating using additional steam.

The transition from mass higher education to universal access globally marked by the creation of a series of higher education institutions (HEIs) has pushed countries to undergo reforms, rearrangement of higher education system. The wave of merger, consolidation, or alliance between HEIs may stem from the need of the schools themselves who gave proposal or from the administrative orders of the administrative authorities to fulfill the policy objectives. Countries in the world have continued the process of reforming and reorganizing the higher education system and have achieved certain successes and inevitably some mistakes. These are valuable lessons for the following countries. This paper is aimed at showing the experience of nations and some lessons learned. It is composed of four parts. The first part gives an overview of the current global higher eduction reform, the definition of concepts used herein and distinguishes some types of mergers, consolidations and alliances in terms of the number and the status of founding institutions. The second part analyzes the results of the process such as changes in system size, student size, performance, impacts on stakeholders after the merger. The third part summarizes the current status of Vietnamese higher education with outstanding issues which required the reorganization and the reform of the system for the purpose of enhancing efficiency and regional and global competitiveness. In the final section, the paper provides some recommendations for Vietnamese higher education, which were drawn from the successes and failures of the process of reforming higher education systems around the world.

Assessing the impact of digital transformation in the fundamental areas of higher education at a specific university, i.e., Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) will show us the readiness for the digital university. Therefore, in this paper, we deeply analyze the characteristics of the typical model of the digital university (University 4.0) to identify the criteria to be surveyed for the assessment of the availability of HUST in digital transformation process. The analysis of survey results, thereby, discloses the effects achieved by practical implementation of digital transformation solutions at HUST. The results of this study allow us to introduce a readiness framework for digital transformation as a reference for the other higher education institutions. In addition, we can partly confirm that the trend of digital transformation is indispensable for universities in Vietnam, contributing to the improvement of higher education quality and international integration in the context of industrial revolution 4.0.

Vietnam has great solar energy potential, in which photovoltaic (PV) power technology is developing rapidly in Vietnam and the investors are very interested in constructing the PV power station. Building the rooftop PV power stations can save monthly electricity costs for the owners and can sell the excess electricity from the PV power station to the power grid to get the economic benefits. Solar radiation in the Northern area in general and in Hanoi city, in particular, is lower than other provinces and cities in the Central area and the Southern area in Vietnam. The development of the rooftop solar power business in Hanoi is also affected because there is no specific assessment of the potential of this kind of solar energy. In this paper, the technical potential of rooftop solar power in Hanoi city is evaluated by using high-resolution remote sensing images technology, it can be seen that the total annual installed capacity of rooftop PV power and the PV optimal in Hanoi city are about 13,169.72 MWp and 37,591,481.20 MWh/year, respectively. Otherwise, the annual operation data of a rooftop PV power station in Hanoi is also collected to evaluate the efficiency in the real working condition, it is found that the payback in the case of actual operations is about 1 year longer than the theoretical calculation.

Wyner-Ziv video coding (WZVC) has been gaining many attentions in recent decades due to its low computational complexity and error resiliency benefits, notably when compared to traditional video coding standards such as H.264/AVC or High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standards. In a Wyner-Ziv video coding scheme, the compression efficiency can be controlled by the length of the group of pictures (GOP) which typically consists of the two key and several WZ frames. However, the current Wyner-Ziv video coding solutions usually employ a fixed GOP size or simple adaptive GOP size mechanisms, which depend on some heuristic features extracted from video content. To address the limitation of the current GOP size adaptation solutions, we propose in this paper a novel Artificial Intelligence based GOP size adaptation mechanism and integrate it into the most advanced transform domain Wyner-Ziv video coding (TDWZ) architecture. In the proposed GOP size adaptation mechanism, the proper GOP size is learnt from the correlation between video features and the optimal compression performance. The power of machine learning techniques is used to select the most suitable video features and the model of GOP size and compression performance correlation. Experimental results shown that, using the obtained GOP size adaptation mechanism, the TDWZ codec achieved a better compression performance when compared to relevant benchmarks.

Aim: To describe some gross motor features of children with Spastic cerebralpalsy at the NationalChildren’s Hospital in 2018Methods: A cross -sectional study combined with quantitative method was conducted on 112 patients withSpastic cerebralpalsy, using GMFCS scale.Results: Gross motor according to GMFCS: 54,5% of cases at level 5; 21,4% of cases at level 4 and 24,1%of cases at level 3. There were no distinction between thepercentage of gross motor level based on GMFCS andfeatures of age, gender, birth weight, gestational age at birth, types of birth (p>0,05). There were a statisticallysignificant relationship between gross motor according to GMFCS and time of palsy and spastic cerebraldiagnosis (p

Creative accounting has been an interesting research topic because it relates to manupulations of actual accounting figures to the ones desired by the management by taking advantage of the existing accounting rules or ignoring them. Based on literature review and survey on companies of different sectors in Hanoi, this research summarizes popular techniques and motivations of using creative accounting, and evaluates the trend and the level of applying creative accounting in Vietnamese companies. The research results show an increasing trend of using creative accounting in Vietnam, and the level of applying creative accounting depends on the size and the type of companies, and motivations of using creative accounting are mainly for the purpose of tax benefit optimization, business value added and budget achievement.

Despite of a small proportion, human resources of ethnic minority with sparse population plays a great role in the process of national construction and defense.It is an important factor in preservation and promotion of ethnic group’s specific culture and identity; contribution of the industrialization, modernization and international integration of the country. However, the human resources of ethnic minority with sparse population is inadequate and limited. Thus, solutions to reduce these shortcomings are required to focus on implementing.

This work develops a technique to design a feedback stabilizing control law for an unstable autonomous switched system. This method is analyzed and then applied to the DCDC buck converter when considering the uncertainty of the parameters in the model. Based on this model, a control law is design to allow the output voltage track a reference voltage when the load is changed. The control objective is to find the switching strategy where the state of the system converges to the equilibrium in the presence of the uncertainty of the system. The design problem is cast into an optimization problem which can be solved via the LMI toolbox in Matlab. The tracking error is bounded in a certain region. The simulation results using Simulink in Matlab are presented to validate the capability of the control system.

Channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) are one of the most commercially important fish species cultured in Vietnam, and has been a major driver of Vietnam's rise to become a leading country for fisheries exports in the world. Since 2016, there have been several outbreaks of a contagious disease which in channel catfish has resulted in severe levels of economic loss. In this study, bacterial isolates from diseased fish were sampled and analyzed from 22 farms in four Northern Vietnam provinces experiencing outbreaks. Isolates were identified as Aeromonas veronii based on their bacteriological characteristics, 16S rRNA sequence analysis, and presence of Aeromonas veronii specific rpoB gene by PCR examinations. Subsequently, A. veronii isolates were tested for their virulence to fish via an experimental infection challenge, and their susceptibility to 21 antibiotics was also assessed. Results showed that A. veronii is pathogenic and has probably contributed to the mass mortality of this channel catfish species in Vietnam. Notably, A. veronii also exhibited resistance to four common antibiotics including amoxicillin, bicozamycin, lincomycin, and vancomycin. To our knowledge, this is the first report of outbreaks associated with A. veronii infection in channel catfish in a Southeast Asian country. This report could be used to alert aquaculture farmers and managers in this region to develop an appropriate biosecurity strategy for protecting catfish and other vulnerable species to A. veronii infection, and find alternative solutions to help mitigate occurences of the disease.

Background: Lack of evidence on the burden and risk factors for malnutrition among children with cerebral palsy (CP) in Vietnam limits evidence-based interventions. We aimed to define the nutritional status of children with CP in Vietnam. Materials and Methods: The study utilized data from active prospective hospital-based surveillance modelled on the Pediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance system. Children (0&ndash, 18 years) with CP attending the National Children&rsquo, s Hospital Hanoi, Vietnam between June&ndash, November 2017 were included. Data on demographic, clinical and rehabilitation status were collected following detailed neurodevelopmental assessment. Anthropometric measurements were taken. Nutritional status was determined using the World Health Organization guideline. Results: Of 765 children (the mean (SD) age was 2.6 (2.5) years, 35.8% were female), 28.9% (n = 213) were underweight and 29.0% (n = 214) stunted. The odds of underweight were significantly higher among children aged &gt, 5 years and/or having a monthly family income of &lt, 50 USD. Underweight and/or stunting was high among children with quadriplegia (81%, n = 60 and 84.5%, n = 87) and/or Gross Motor Functional Classification System (GMFCS) level IV&ndash, V (62.5%, n = 45 and 67.0%, n = 67). Nearly one-third of intellectually impaired and more than half of hearing-impaired children were underweight and/or stunted. Conclusions: Poor economic status and increased motor severity increased vulnerability to malnutrition. Our findings will inform nutritional rehabilitation programs among these vulnerable children.

Background The burden of malaria in Vietnam has drastically reduced, prompting the National Malaria Control Program to officially engage in elimination efforts. Plasmodium vivax is becoming increasingly prevalent, remaining a major problem in the country's central and southern provinces. A better understanding of P. vivax genetic diversity and structure of local parasite populations will provide baseline data for the evaluation and improvement of current efforts for control and elimination. The aim of this study was to examine the population genetics and structure of P. vivax isolates from four communities in Tra Leng commune, Nam Tra My district in Quang Nam, Central Vietnam. Methodology/Principal Findings P. vivax mono infections collected from 234 individuals between April 2009 and December 2010 were successfully analyzed using a panel of 14 microsatellite markers. Isolates displayed moderate genetic diversity (He = 0.68), with no significant differences between study communities. Polyclonal infections were frequent (71.4%) with a mean multiplicity of infection of 1.91 isolates/person. Low but significant genetic differentiation (FST value from -0.05 to 0.18) was observed between the community across the river and the other communities. Strong linkage disequilibrium (IAS = 0.113, p < 0.001) was detected across all communities, suggesting gene flow within and among them. Using multiple approaches, 101 haplotypes were grouped into two genetic clusters, while 60.4% of haplotypes were admixed. Conclusions/Significance In this area of Central Vietnam, where malaria transmission has decreased significantly over the past decade, there was moderate genetic diversity and high occurrence of polyclonal infections. Local human populations have frequent social and economic interactions that facilitate gene flow and inbreeding among parasite populations, while decreasing population structure. Findings provide important information on parasites populations circulating in the study area and are relevant to current malaria elimination efforts., Author Summary In Vietnam, Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) is the second most frequent human malaria parasite and a major obstacle to countrywide malaria elimination. Knowing the local parasite structure is useful for elimination efforts. Therefore, we analyzed, with a panel of 14 microsatellite markers, 234 P. vivax mono infections in blood samples collected from 4 communities in central Vietnam. Genetic diversity in the population was moderate; a high occurrence of polyclonal infections and significant linkage disequilibrium were detected, suggesting inbreeding or recombination between highly related haplotypes. In addition, both genetic differentiation and population structure was low and only detected between communities at each side of the river. Those results suggest gene flow between study communities with the river defining a moderate geographical barrier. Future studies should determine how this genetic variation is maintained in an area of extremely low transmission.

Background Despite the fact that the A6 mortality reporting system has been operating for almost 20 years in Vietnam, there has been no systematic evaluation of the system. This study assesses the completeness, sensitivity and positive predictive value of the system in relation to injury related mortality. Methods Evaluation of the A6 system was undertaken in three (geographically distributed) provinces in Vietnam. Deaths identified in the A6 system were compared with deaths identified by an independent consensus panel to determine the per cent completeness of the A6 system. Verbal autopsies (VA) were conducted for all identified deaths from the consensus panels, and the sensitivity and positive predictive value of the A6 system were assessed using the VAs as the reference. Results 5273 deaths were identified from the A6 system with a further 340 cases identified by the independent consensus panel (total n=5613). Injury related deaths accounted for 13.6% (n=763) of all deaths with an overall injury mortality rate of 55.3 per 100 000 person years. The per cent completeness of the A6 system in relation to injury deaths was 93.9% with a sensitivity of 75.4%, specificity of 98.4% and positive predictive value of 88.4%. Conclusions The A6 mortality reporting system is embedded within the commune health system and is the lead mortality reporting system for the Ministry of Health. The system performs well in relation to its completeness and classification of injury related deaths. With further enhancements and ongoing support from government and donor agencies, the A6 system will be a valuable resource for identifying and planning preventive strategies targeting the leading causes of injury related deaths in Vietnam.

A cross call between a host processor and FPGA is one of the main challenges for supporting automatic translation of high-level languages into hardware description languages (HDL). In this paper, we present a novel communication framework between the processor and FPGA, which supports unlimited cross calls and hardware recursive calls by following the software's frame layout in HDL code generation and sharing a stack space between software and hardware codes. Also, we introduce two implementation methods for our cross call, a direct and an indirect interfaces by an instruction-level and an interrupt communication, respectively. Our experiment shows that the proposed approach achieves our goal with small additional complexity in implementation and insignificant overhead in execution time.

The Fuzzy few-Nearest Neighbor (Ff-NN) method, which is an extended version of k-Nearest Neighbor algorithm (k-NN) and one of case-based learning methods, is proposed. Ff-NN intends to achieve stable identification performance even if the number of learning samples is as small as two. Applied to personal authentication systems such as enter/exit authorizations, Ff-NN reduces the user dictionary creation burden. Using 26 kinds of feature (face images and voices) data from 66 test objects, we conducted experiments on a PC to verify the feasibility of our proposed method. Forced recognition rate of conventional single-NN is 79.2% (standard deviation 2.83), and that of Ff-NN is 87.6% (SD 1.97). Recognition rates of dictionary data with 14, 17, and 26 features, are 90.6%, 92.5%, and 97.5%, respectively. We collect a very small number of nonintrusive samples so that two or more features are used to improve recognition performance. We present applicability of this method to personal authentication systems through experiments using 66 registrants, corresponding to 30 households.

Noun phrase chunking is an important and useful task in many natural language processing applications. It is studied well for English, however with Vietnamese it is still an open problem. This paper presents a Vietnamese Noun Phrase chunking approach based on Conditional random fields (CRFs) models. We also describe a method to build Vietnamese corpus from a set of hand annotated sentences. For evaluation, we perform several experiments using different feature settings. Outcome results on our corpus show a high performance with the average of recall and precision 82.72% and 82.62% respectively.

The main objective of the paper is to investigate the dynamic response of the prestressed beams on rigid supports to moving concentrated loads. The governing equation of the transverse vibration of a prestressed continuous beam under the ununiformly distributed load is analytically formulated, taking into account the effect of the prestressing. The forced transverse vibration of the beam under the action of a large number of moving bodies has been investigated by using the method of substructures. In addition, the reaction forces at every rigid supports can be determined from the obtained differential equations. A comparison between the numerical results for the prestressed and the non-prestressed beam is presented to show the influence of the prestressing and the moving velocity of the bodies on the dynamic response of the beam. The calculating results are also examined and validated by experimental measurements at a large ferroconcrete bridge in Vietnam.

Background: The prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Asia is expected to increase along with increases of hypertension and diabetes. Most cases are not treated and progress to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) with an increased risk for cardiovascular complications. Renal replacement therapies are so expensive that most ESRD patients die without treatment. Thus, countermeasures against early stages of CKD are urgently needed. Nevertheless, basic information for CKD has not been reported in Vietnam. Methods: We conducted a survey of CKD in 8,505 inhabitants aged >40 years in Vietnam. Subjects with abnormal urinary findings were further examined, including serum creatinine levels. In this study, CKD was defined as 2 of estimated creatinine clearance by the Cockcroft-Gault method. Results: We identified 3.1% of subjects as CKD (stages 3–5) with positive findings in urine test. We also found that elderly hypertension and malnutrition were independent risk factors for CKD in this population. Conclusion: We found a significant number of CKD patients in Vietnam. To avoid a CKD pandemic in Asia including Vietnam, we strongly suggest further analyses of risk factors and prognosis of CKD in these populations, and the development of efficient management systems suitable for Asia.

To the Editor: Partial artemisinin-resistant Plasmodium falciparum malaria, characterized by delayed parasite clearance after treatment with artesunate or artemisinin-based combination therapy, was first detected in western Cambodia and has now spread to or emerged de novo in 5 countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) (1). However, most reported cases of malaria have been in Africa, and detecting artemisinin and multidrug resistance in Africa will have consequences for policy and containment plans (2). Thus, vigilant monitoring is pivotal, and it is therefore with great interest that we read the case report on a patient in Vietnam with severe P. falciparum malaria, acquired in Angola in 2013, that was not responsive to artesunate or several other antimalarial combinations (3). We believe that there are several issues that challenge the conclusion that artemisinin resistance has reached Angola: 1) the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of the infecting strain in this patient were very different from artemisinin-resistant strains in the GMS; 2) pharmacokinetic issues cannot be ruled out; and 3) perhaps of most relevance, the study documents severely delayed clearance of multiple strains in this polyclonal P. falciparum infection, suggesting splenic hypofunction as an important contributor. The parasite clearance half-life calculated with the World Health Organization (WHO) online slope analyzer from the log linear segment of the clearance curve after start of artesunate therapy was 102.5 hours, which is ≈10 times longer than observed in the most artemisinin-resistant parasites in Cambodia. Postpublication genotyping of the infecting strain provided by the authors to WHO showed a wild-type Kelch (K13) gene, which is a recently discovered molecular marker for artemisinin resistance strongly correlated to the resistant phenotype in the GMS (1). No pharmacokinetic assessment was made, and subtherapeutic artesunate and dihydroartemisinin (as well as clindamycin, piperaquine, quinine, and doxycycline) blood concentrations cannot be excluded. The intravenous artesunate regimen used differed from the WHO guideline of 2.4 mg/kg on admission, after 12 h, then daily. Pharmacokinetic modeling of the split doses used in the described case indicate that this dosing schedule results in 2 clones of parasites persisting >1 week after treatment with multiple antimalarial drugs. It seems very unlikely that this patient harbored multiple highly artemisinin-resistant parasite strains. Dead circulating intraerythrocytic parasites in patients who have hyposplenia can be recognized morphologically, but the article does not provide details on this. Circulation of multidrug resistant malarial strains in sub-Saharan Africa can have disastrous consequences, and it is critical to detect its arrival at an early stage. The case report by Van Hong et al. implies the unlikely event of independent emergence of multidrug resistant strains in a traveler from Vietnam in Angola, without evidence of local declining artemisinin-based combination therapy efficacy. WHO and partners are investigating the phenotype and genotype of parasite strains from the same geographic area in Angola to address the concerns raised above. We believe that this single case report is insufficient to raise the alarm.

The main objective of the present paper is to study the transverse vibration of the prestressed beams. The differential equation of the transverse vibration of the Euler-Bernoulli beam is developed, in which the initial axial strain in every cross section of the beam is taken into account, so that the initial normal stress is not equal to zero. We have proposed some formulae to determine the natural frequencies of the prestressed beam. The forced transverse vibration of the beam with a moving external force has been considered. From this it follows compression softening effect of prestressed beams. A detailed comparison between the calculating results for the prestressed and the non-prestressed beam is also presented.

IntroductionThe epidemiology, pathogenesis, management and outcomes of cerebral palsy (CP) in low-income and middle-income countries including Vietnam are unknown because of the lack of mechanisms for standardised collection of data. In this paper, we outline the protocol for developing a hospital-based surveillance system modelled on the Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance (PAEDS) system in Australia. Using PAEDS-Vietnam we will define the aetiology, motor function and its severity, associated impairments, and nutritional and rehabilitation status of children with CP in Hanoi, Vietnam. These essential baseline data will inform future health service planning, health professional education and training, and family support.Methods and analysisThis is a hospital-based prospective surveillance of children with CP presenting to the rehabilitation, neurology and general paediatric services at the National Children’s Hospital and St Paul Hospital in Hanoi. We will use active, prospective daily case-finding for all children with CP aged Ethics and disseminationThis study was approved by the Hanoi Medical University Institutional Review Board (decision no 1722) and The University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (approval no 2016/456). Establishment of PAEDS-Vietnam will enable hospital-based surveillance of CP for the first time in Vietnam. It will identify preventable causes of CP, patient needs and service gaps, and facilitate early diagnosis and intervention. Study findings will be disseminated through local and international conferences and peer-reviewed publications.

This paper proposes a fingerprint matching method based on local Thin-Plate-Spline (TPS) deformation model, a warping technique, to deal with non-linear distorted fingerprints. After determining the set of corresponding minutiae pairs between two fingerprints by using an affine transformation, a set of corresponding pseudo-minutiae pairs are created based on their local ridge-valley structure comparison. These points are associated with the known corresponding point pairs to select a suitable landmark point set for using Local Thin Plate Spline deformation model over 9 partial areas of fingerprint images in order to find new corresponding minutiae pairs. This procedure is repeated until no more new corresponding minutiae pairs are distinguished or the number of corresponding point pairs is large enough. The experimental results on the database FVC2004 show that the proposed method significantly improves matching performance compared to the global TPS warping method.

Low maternal health service utilisation amongst minority ethnic women in Vietnam is often attributed to ‘traditional customs’. Drawing on secondary data and original, qualitative research amongst Hmong and Thai communities, this paper analyses minority behaviour related to childbirth. The informed selectivity in service attendance identified can be considered, in part, a rejection of current medicalised approaches at health facilities, where supine delivery is compulsory and family members are prohibited from attending women in labour. The paper reveals how conventional analyses of barriers to minority maternal health service utilisation inhibit scrutiny of the ways services fail to engage with or accommodate local preferences. Participatory identification of mutually acceptable delivery methods by maternal health staff and local women is recommended to enable the development of culturally inclusive services.

The coupling architecture containing an FPGA device and a microprocessor has been widely used to accelerate microprocessor execution. Therefore, there have been intensive researches about synthesizing high-level programming languages (HLL) such as C and C++ into HW in the high-level synthesis community in order to make the work of reconfiguring the FPGA easier. However, the difference in a calling method in terms of semantics between HDLs and HLLs makes their interface implementation very difficult. This paper presents a novel communication framework between a microprocessor and FPGA, which allows the full implementation of cross calls between SW and HW and even recursive calls in HW without any limitation. We show that our proposed calling overhead is very small. With our communication framework, hardware components inside the FPGA are no longer isolated accelerators, and they can work as other master components in a system configuration.