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Background: Female sex workers (FSWs) are at high risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infections and cervical cancer due to their high number of sexual partners. The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of HPV and identify risk factors for high-risk HPV infection among FSWs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Viet Nam. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Hanoi and HCMC between December 2017 and May 2018. We surveyed and screened 699 FSWs aged >18 years for HPV infection and abnormal cytology. A multivariable modified Cox regression model was used to determine risk factors for high-risk HPV infection. Results: The overall prevalence of any HPV, high-risk HPV and HPV-16/18 infection in the 699 FSWs was 26.3%, 17.6% and 4.0%, respectively, and were similar in both cities. Multiple infections were identified in 127 participants (69.0%). HPV-52 was the most prevalent (7%), followed by HPV-58 (6%). Abnormal cytology was detected in 91 participants (13.0%). FSWs who are divorced (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR]: 1.96, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.01–3.81), widowed (aPR: 3.26, 95% CI: 1.49–7.12) or living alone (aPR: 1.85, 95% CI: 1.01–3.39) were associated with a higher prevalence of high-risk HPV infection. Discussion: Almost one in five FSWs in Viet Nam are infected with high-risk HPV. This highlights the importance of prevention strategies such as HPV vaccination and screening in this high-risk group.

In 2018, among 10 key competencies that the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training has proposed in the new education curriculum, numeracy was identified as an essential competency that needs to be developed for students in the future. However, little is known about the numeracy of students in general, and of students in mountainous areas in particular. The aim of this study was to design an assessment of numeracy for students in the mountainous areas to understand their performance in numeracy. The study used the quantitative approach. A sample of 730 students in grades 6-8 from eight provinces in the mountainous areas of Northern Vietnam was recruited to participate in the study. A numeracy framework and three tests with anchor items were designed and developed to measure students’ numeracy. The results of the analysis using an approach to item response theory showed that the items had good fits with the model, and they could be used to describe numeracy learning progression with different levels of proficiency. The tests were reliable and valid, and the anchor items were good for connecting students’ competency among grades. The results also showed that Vietnamese students in mountainous areas tended to perform better in Arithmetic and Algebra problems than in real-life problems. The results provide convincing evidence of the practical performance in numeracy of students in various ethnic minority groups in Northern Vietnam.

The aim of the research was to determine the efficiency of investing in companies that report on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developing markets. Companies that won the Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards 2020 were chosen for the study. We evaluate the correlation utilizing data from 36 firms from year observations of 2018 to 2020, using modified OLS estimation and regression analysis with modified panel data for heteroskedasticity and/or autocorrelation. In the emerging market, the sample period under examination is quite recent. Research findings show that CSR reporting has a significant negative effect on the company’s investment efficiency (IE) and that CSR reporting influences IE in the overinvestment scenario. The findings from this paper provide several implications for related parties and managers to enhance CSR disclosure and IE. They also contribute significantly to the existing literature about the relationship between CSR and IE when providing evidence from the ASEAN context.

Entomopathogenic nematodes includingSteinernemaspp. play an increasingly important role as biological alternatives to chemical pesticides. The infective juveniles of these worms use nictation – a behavior in which animals stand on their tails – as a host-seeking strategy. The developmentally-equivalent dauer larvae of the free-living nematodeCaenorhabditis elegansalso nictate, but as a means of phoresy or “hitching a ride” to a new food source. Advanced genetic and experimental tools have been developed forC. elegans, but time-consuming manual scoring of nictation slows efforts to understand this behavior, and the textured substrates required for nictation can frustrate traditional machine vision segmentation algorithms. Here we present a Mask R-CNN-based tracker capable of segmentingC. elegansdauers andS. carpocapsaeinfective juveniles on a textured background suitable for nictation, and a machine learning pipeline that scores nictation behavior. We use our system to show that the nictation propensity ofC. elegansfrom high-density liquid cultures largely mirrors their development into dauers, and to quantify nictation inS. carpocapsaeinfective juveniles in the presence of a potential host. This system is an improvement upon existing intensity-based tracking algorithms and human scoring which can facilitate large-scale studies of nictation and potentially other nematode behaviors.

Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) has been a superior video streaming technology in recent years. Bitrate adaptation function at video player plays a vital role in guaranteeing a high quality-of-experience for the users. This work evaluates the performance of several advanced deep reinforcement learning algorithms, i.e., deep Q-learning, actor-critic, and proximal policy optimization, applied in bitrate adaptations and compares them with other rate adaptation methods with real-trace datasets.