Having geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Vietnam was expected to have a high risk of ...transmission. However, as of 4 April 2020, in comparison to attempts to containing the disease around the world, responses from Vietnam are seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis.
Book reading is an important factor contributing to children’s cognitive development and education for sustainable development. However, in a developing country like Vietnam, statistics have reported ...a low figure in book reading: only 1.2 books a year. This research study used a dataset of 1676 observations of junior high school students from Northern Vietnam to explore students’ reading behavior and its association with demographic factors, and the family’s reading culture. Data analysis suggests the older the student gets, the less inclined they are to read, and being female and having hobbies of low sensory stimulation are linked to higher preference for reading. Regarding scholarly culture at home, students who read more varied types of books and spend more time on books are correlated with higher reading interest. Reading habits are also positively reinforced by the capacity to access books and parental book reading.
This research aims to improve stakeholder engagement, particularly local businesses, in addressing environmental problems and taking on both ecological conservation and social responsibilities. A ...structured dataset was built to track all major environment‐related events in Vietnam. Findings, which were extracted from 344 news reports and 75 environmental events, highlight the lack of participation on Vietnamese businesses in sustainable development, with existing corporate activities still driven by practical concerns, that is, profitability. Notably, a minimum of one governmental agency was involved in 82.6% of the events categorized as environmentally damaging, with investigative or administrative tasks being their dominant role. Going forward, there is a need for systematic information collection and public disclosure on business and government involvements in environmental events. Given that Vietnam is expected to be hard hit by climate change, a better understanding of corporate sustainability issues would be beneficial to both the firms and society in the long run.
The increasing application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health and medicine has attracted a great deal of research interest in recent decades. This study aims to provide a global and historical ...picture of research concerning AI in health and medicine. A total of 27,451 papers that were published between 1977 and 2018 (84.6% were dated 2008⁻2018) were retrieved from the Web of Science platform. The descriptive analysis examined the publication volume, and authors and countries collaboration. A global network of authors' keywords and content analysis of related scientific literature highlighted major techniques, including Robotic, Machine learning, Artificial neural network, Artificial intelligence, Natural language process, and their most frequent applications in Clinical Prediction and Treatment. The number of cancer-related publications was the highest, followed by Heart Diseases and Stroke, Vision impairment, Alzheimer's, and Depression. Moreover, the shortage in the research of AI application to some high burden diseases suggests future directions in AI research. This study offers a first and comprehensive picture of the global efforts directed towards this increasingly important and prolific field of research and suggests the development of global and national protocols and regulations on the justification and adaptation of medical AI products.
Patients with serious illnesses or injuries may decide to quit their medical treatment if they think paying the fees will put their families into destitution. Without treatment, it is likely that ...fatal outcomes will soon follow. We call this phenomenon "near-suicide". This study attempted to explore this phenomenon by examining how the seriousness of the patient's illness or injury and the subjective evaluation of the patient's and family's financial situation after paying treatment fees affect the final decision on the treatment process. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics were employed to analyze a dataset of 1042 Vietnamese patients. We found that the more serious the illnesses or injuries of patients were, the more likely they were to choose to quit treatment if they perceived that paying the treatment fees heavily affected their families' financial status. Particularly, only one in four patients with the most serious health issues who thought that continuing the treatment would push themselves and their families into destitution would decide to continue the treatment. Considering the information-filtering mechanism using subjective cost-benefit judgments, these patients likely chose the financial well-being and future of their family members over their individual suffering and inevitable death. Our study also demonstrates that mindsponge-based reasoning and BMF analytics can be effective in designing and processing health data for studying extreme psychosocial phenomena. Moreover, we suggest that policymakers implement and adjust their policies (e.g., health insurance) following scientific evidence to mitigate patients' likelihood of making "near-suicide" decisions and improve social equality in the healthcare system.
•Gender has negligible correlation with students’ STEM results at schools.•Female students canachieve better results than male students.•Students with better background tend to achieve better ...results.•Students with one sibling are correlated with higher study results.
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4, namely Quality Education, has highlighted major challenges for all nations to ensure inclusive and equitable quality access to education, facilities for children and young adults. The SDG4 is even more important for developing nations as receiving proper education or vocational training, especially in science and technology, means a foundational step in improving other aspects of their citizens’ lives. However, the extant scientific literature about STEM education still lacks focus on developing countries, even more in rural areas. Using a dataset of 4967 observations of junior high school students from a rural area in a transition economy, the article employed the Bayesian approach to identify the association between gender, socio-economic status, and students’ STEM academic achievements, which were measured by the average score of their most recent 45-minute standard school tests in STEM subjects: Maths, Physics, Chemistry (and Biology where applicable). The results reported that gender had little association with STEM academic achievements. However, female students appeared to have achieved better results than their male counterparts when their parents have non-manual jobs. Families with better economic status, parents with a high level of education, or non-manual jobs were associated with better study results. Also, students with zero or more than two siblings were correlated with lower study results than those with only one sibling. These results provided important implications for policymakers to provide women with opportunities for better education and maintain family size so the parents can provide their resources to each child equally.
Identifying factors that affect research productivity is critical to both the scientific community and policy-makers. This topic is especially useful for developing countries like Vietnam where such ...studies are scarce with limited original data. This paper, through a manual data collection process that yields the profiles of 406 Vietnamese social scientists with publications in Scopus-indexed journals in 2008-2017, uses the ordinary least squares method to analyse the effects of two factors on research productivity. It adds to the literature by showing the extent to which (i) work environment ('universities' and 'research institutions'); (ii) collaboration affect the adjusted research productivity of social scientists. Contrary to the usual belief, university-affiliated authors in Vietnam turned out to have higher research productivity than institution-affiliated peers. International collaboration could boost research output, although this effect is insignificant among the high-performing authors. The paper also suggests some policy implications for Vietnam facing challenges in science management.
As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them ...to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students.
•The differences in the children’s background can affect the reading attitudes of different genders.•Shared reading should be promoted in the family.•More book services should be organized for ...children.
Although the government has made an effort to encourage reading, a Vietnamese person only reads four books per year on average. As low reading culture might hinder Vietnam’s pursuit of a knowledge-driven economy, this paper examines the relationship of students’ reading attitudes with gender, reading promotion activities, parents’ involvement. A dataset of 4966 secondary students in Northern Vietnam was used. The Bayesian method was employed to analyze the relationship between students’ reading attitudes and the following factors: their gender, reading promotion activities, parents’ involvement. The findings suggest that female students show more interest in reading than male students. Shared reading between parents and children positively correlates with students’ reading attitudes while buying books for children does not. All types of activities and services promoting reading habits positively correlate with students’ attitudes towards reading activities. Among the four examined services (storytelling contests, story-writing contest, book exhibition, and drawing book illustration), storytelling contest shows a strong association with reading attitudes while drawing book illustration has the weakest impact on reading attitudes.
Decision-making regarding healthcare expenditure hinges heavily on an individual's health status and the certainty about the future. This study uses data on propensity of general health exam (GHE) ...spending to show that despite the debate on the necessity of GHE, its objective is clear—to obtain more information and certainty about one’s health so as to minimise future risks. Most studies on this topic, however, focus only on factors associated with GHE uptake and overlook the shifts in behaviours and attitudes regarding different levels of cost. To fill the gap, this study analyses a dataset of 2068 subjects collected from Hanoi (Vietnam) and its vicinities using the baseline-category logit method. We evaluate the sensitivity of Vietnamese healthcare consumers against two groups of factors (demographic and socioeconomic-cognitive) regarding payment for periodic GHE, which is not covered by insurance. Our study shows that uninsured, married and employed individuals are less sensitive to cost than their counterparts because they value the information in reducing future health uncertainty. The empirical results challenge the objections to periodic health screening by highlighting its utility. The relevance of behavioural economics is further highlighted through a look at the bounded rationality of healthcare consumers and private insurance companies in using and providing the service, respectively.
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