Nowadays, the power systems are getting more and more complicated because of the delays introduced by the communication networks. The existence of the delays usually leads to the degradation and/or instability of power system performance. On account of this point, the traditional load frequency control approach for power system sketches a destabilizing impact and an unacceptable system performance. Therefore, this paper proposes a new LFC based on adaptive integral second-order sliding mode control approach for the large-scale power system with communication (...) delays. First, a new linear matrix inequality is derived to ensure the stability of whole power systems using Lyapunov stability theory. Second, an AISOSMC law is designed to ensure the finite time reachability of the system states. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the AISOSMC is designed for LFC of the LSPSwCD. In addition, the report of testing results presents that the suggested LFC based on AISOSMC can not only decrease effectively the frequency variation but also make successfully less in mount of power oscillation/fluctuation in tie-line exchange. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

We present our method for tackling a legal case retrieval task by introducing our method of encoding documents by summarizing them into continuous vector space via our phrase scoring framework utilizing deep neural networks. On the other hand, we explore the benefits from combining lexical features and latent features generated with neural networks. Our experiments show that lexical features and latent features generated with neural networks complement each other to improve the retrieval system performance. Furthermore, our experimental results suggest the (...) importance of case summarization in different aspects: using provided summaries and performing encoded summarization. Our approach achieved F1 of 65.6% and 57.6% on the experimental datasets of legal case retrieval tasks. (shrink)

We consider structures of the form (Z;+,C), where C is an additive cyclic order on (Z;+). We show that such structures are dp-minimal and in this way produce a continuum-size family of dp-minimal expansions of (Z;+) such that no two members of the family define the same subsets of Z.

This paper investigates the task of reference resolution in the legal domain. This is a new interesting task in Legal Engineering research. The goal is to create a system which can automatically detect references and then extracts their referents. Previous work limits itself to detect and resolve references at the document targets. In this paper, we go a step further in trying to resolve references to sub-document targets. Referents extracted are the smallest fragments of texts in documents, rather than the (...) entire documents that contain the referenced texts. Based on analyzing the characteristics of reference phenomena in legal texts, we propose a four-step framework to deal with the task: mention detection, contextual information extraction, antecedent candidate extraction, and antecedent determination. We also show how machine learning methods can be exploited in each step. The final system achieves 80.06 % in the F1 score for detecting references, 85.61 % accuracy for resolving them, and 67.02 % in the F1 score for the end-to-end setting task on the Japanese National Pension Law corpus. (shrink)

We consider the structures $$, $$, $$, and $$ where $\mathbb {Z}$ is the additive group of integers, $\mathrm {SF}^{\mathbb {Z}}$ is the set of $a \in \mathbb {Z}$ such that $v_{p} < 2$ for every prime p and corresponding p-adic valuation $v_{p}$, $\mathbb {Q}$ and $\mathrm {SF}^{\mathbb {Q}}$ are defined likewise for rational numbers, and $<$ denotes the natural ordering on each of these domains. We prove that the second structure is model-theoretically wild while the other three structures are (...) model-theoretically tame. Moreover, all these results can be seen as examples where number-theoretic randomness yields model-theoretic consequences. (shrink)

We define the interpolative fusion T∪∗ of a family i∈I of first-order theories over a common reduct T∩, a notion that generalizes many examples of random or generic structures in the model-theo...

Despite increasing scholarly interest in tertiary student perceptions of plagiarism, very little is known about those held by postgraduate students, although differences between undergraduate and PG students relate to both their characteristics and the demands of their studies. Furthermore, there is a dearth of research within the context of international education, where managing plagiarism is seen as a major challenge. This paper reports on a recent online survey with 207 Vietnamese and local PG students at a New Zealand university regarding (...) their perceptions of plagiarism. The findings showed significant differences both between and within the two groups. Perception variations arose from a range of influences and prior experiences, not just the culture in which the students were initially educated. Differences related to participants’ age, gender, academic levels, disciplines, and teaching experience. This study’s findings contribute knowledge about under-researched PG students and problematize prevalent stereotypes of international students regarding plagiarism. They generate implications for higher education institutions to accommodate international and domestic PG student needs in ways that respect their diversities in detail as individuals, not as members of a homogeneous group. Further qualitative research to explore PG student perceptions in greater depth is recommended. (shrink)

The digital era brings various benefits to adolescents. However, operating on the digital environment without sufficient knowledge and skills will expose them to multiple types of risks, especially in the country with low digital safety education rate like Vietnam. The current study examines factors that can contribute to cultivating adolescents’ digital resilience using the information-processing reasoning of the Mindsponge Theory. A UNESCO dataset of 1061 Vietnamese high school students was analyzed using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics. It is found that (...) adolescents’ daily Internet usage frequency, parents’ Internet safety guidance, and teachers’ safety guidance are positively associated with digital resilience. However, the effects of parents’ and teachers’ Internet safety guidance on digital resilience are conditional on the daily Internet usage frequency. Parents’ guidance only enhances adolescents’ digital resilience if they use the Internet less than four hours per day. In contrast, the positive effect of teachers’ guidance on adolescents’ digital resilience becomes stronger when the students spend more time on the Internet (more than 1 hour). Based on these findings, we suggest that adolescents can learn to minimize risks and protect themselves by exposing more to the digital environment. Parents’ and teachers’ supports are important in enhancing adolescents’ capability to deal with digital threats, but types of supports need to be carefully considered to avoid reverse impacts on adolescents’ resilience. (shrink)

Person‐specific evidence was developed as a grounded theory by analyzing 20 selected case descriptions from interventions using the guided self‐determination method with people with various long‐term health conditions. It explains the mechanisms of mobilizing relational capacity by including person‐specific evidence in shared decision‐making. Person‐specific self‐insight was the first step, achieved as individuals completed reflection sheets enabling them to clarify their personal values and identify actions or omissions related to self‐management challenges. This step paved the way for sharing these insights and (...) challenges in a relationship with a supportive health professional, who could then rely on person‐specific evidence instead of assumptions or a narrow disease perspective for shared decision‐making. Trust in the evidence encouraged the supportive health professional to transfer it to the interdisciplinary team. Person‐specific evidence then enhanced the ability of team members to apply general evidence in a meaningful way. The increased openness achieved by individuals through these steps enabled them to eventually share their new self‐insights in daily life with other people, decreasing loneliness they experienced in self‐management. Relational capacity, the core of the theory, is mobilized in both people with long‐term health conditions and healthcare professionals. Further research on person‐specific evidence and relational capacity in healthcare is recommended. (shrink)

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being 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. (shrink)

Background: To place a dependent with severe dementia in a nursing home is a painful and difficult decision to make. In collectivistic oriented societies or families, children tend to be socialised to care for ageing parents and to experience guilt and shame if they violate this principle. Leaving the care to professional caregivers does not conform with the cultural expectations of many ethnic groups and becomes a sign of the family’s moral failure. Research design: Qualitative design with individual in-depth interviews (...) with nurses, family members and dementia care coordinators in Norway, Montenegro, Serbia and South Africa. Braun and Clarke’s six analytic phases were used. Ethical considerations: The project was approved by the Regional Committee for Research, South-Eastern Norway; the Norwegian Centre for Research Data; the Ethics Committee; University of Limpopo, MEDUNSA Campus, South Africa; and by the local heads of the respective nursing homes or home care services. Interviewees were informed orally and in writing and signed an informed consent form. Findings: Healthcare professionals tend to be contacted only when the situation becomes unmanageable. Interviewees talked about feelings of obligation, shame and stigma in their societies regarding dementia, particularly in connection with institutionalisation of family members. Many lacked support during the decision-making process and were in a squeeze between their own needs and the patients’ need of professional care, and the feeling of duty and worry about being stigmatised by their surroundings. This conflict may be a source of pre-decision regret. Conclusion: Family caregivers need help to understand the behaviours of persons with dementia and how to access the formal and informal services available. Thus, they may provide effective support to patients and family carers alike. Supportive interventions for caregivers need to be tailored to meet the individual needs of both the caregiver and the persons with dementia. (shrink)

Case law retrieval is the task of locating truly relevant legal cases given an input query case. Unlike information retrieval for general texts, this task is more complex with two phases (legal case retrieval and legal case entailment) and much harder due to a number of reasons. First, both the query and candidate cases are long documents consisting of several paragraphs. This makes it difficult to model with representation learning that usually has restriction on input length. Second, the concept of (...) relevancy in this domain is defined based on the legal relation that goes beyond the lexical or topical relevance. This is a real challenge because normal text matching will not work. Third, building a large and accurate legal case dataset requires a lot of effort and expertise. This is obviously an obstacle to creating enough data for training deep retrieval models. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called supporting model that can deal with both phases. The underlying idea is the case–case supporting relation and the paragraph–paragraph as well as the decision-paragraph matching strategy. In addition, we propose a method to automatically create a large weak-labeling dataset to overcome the lack of data. The experiments showed that our solution has achieved the state-of-the-art results for both case retrieval and case entailment phases. (shrink)

Deformation of ground during tunnelling projects is one of the complex issues that is required to be monitored carefully to avoid the unexpected damages and human losses. Accurate prediction of ground settlement is a crucial concern for tunnelling problems, and the adequate predictive model can be a vital tool for tunnel designers to simulate the ground settlement accurately. This study proposes relatively new hybrid artificial intelligence models to predict the ground settlement of earth pressure balance shield tunnelling in the Bangkok (...) MRTA project. The predictive models were various nature-inspired frameworks, such as differential evolution, particle swarm optimization, genetic algorithm, and ant colony optimizer to tune the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system. To obtain the accurate and reliable results, the modeling procedure is established based on four different dataset scenarios including preprocessed and normalized, preprocessed and nonnormalized, non-preprocessed and normalized, and non-preprocessed and nonnormalized datasets. Results indicated that PPN dataset scenario significantly affected the prediction models in terms of their perdition accuracy. Among all the developed hybrid models, ANOFS-PSO model achieved the best predictability performance. In quantitative terms, PPN-ANFIS-PSO model attained the least root mean square error value of 7.98 and a correlation coefficient value of 0.83. Overall, the attained results confirmed the superiority of the explored hybrid AI models as robust predictive model for ground settlement of earth pressure balance shield tunnelling. (shrink)

Central limit theorem for the functional of jump Markov process. Nguyễn Văn Hữu, Vương Quân Hoàng và Trần Minh Ngọc. Báo cáo: Hội nghị toàn quốc lần thứ III “Xác suất - Thống kê: Nghiên cứu, ứng dụng và giảng dạy” (tr. 34). Ba Vì, Hà Tây, ngày 12-14 tháng 05 năm 2005. Viện Toán học / Trường Đại học Khoa học tự nhiên / Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội.

Some conditions are given to ensure that for a jump homogeneous Markov process $\{X(t),t\ge 0\}$ the law of the integral functional of the process $T^{-1/2} \int^T_0\varphi(X(t))dt$ converges to the normal law $N(0,\sigma^2)$ as $T\to \infty$, where $\varphi$ is a mapping from the state space $E$ into $\bbfR$.

Objectives: The official implementation of clinical pharmacy in Vietnam has arrived relatively late, resulting in various stressors. This study aims to evaluate job stress level and suggest viable solutions.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on clinical pharmacists in 128 hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City. Job stress questions were derived from the Healthcare Profession Stress Inventory.Results: A total of 197 CPs participated, giving a response rate of 82.4%. Participants were found to have moderate job stress with an overall mean (...) stress score of 1.5 and stress rate of 52.8%. The sample size was statistically adequate and the HPSI was valid and reliable. Patient care responsibility was the main stressor, especially in public hospitals, followed by job conflicts. Lack of experience, low income, and inability to participate in clinical ward rounds caused significant stress to CPs regarding job recognition and job uncertainty. More practice-oriented training programs in bachelor curricula and clinical practice should be applied to help CPs gain more experience, self-confidence, and diminish job stress.Conclusion: CPs in HCMC have moderate stress. More practice-oriented training programs should be prioritized to lessen stress for CPs. (shrink)

Legal text retrieval serves as a key component in a wide range of legal text processing tasks such as legal question answering, legal case entailment, and statute law retrieval. The performance of legal text retrieval depends, to a large extent, on the representation of text, both query and legal documents. Based on good representations, a legal text retrieval model can effectively match the query to its relevant documents. Because legal documents often contain long articles and only some parts are relevant (...) to queries, it is quite a challenge for existing models to represent such documents. In this paper, we study the use of attentive neural network-based text representation for statute law document retrieval. We propose a general approach using deep neural networks with attention mechanisms. Based on it, we develop two hierarchical architectures with sparse attention to represent long sentences and articles, and we name them Attentive CNN and Paraformer. The methods are evaluated on datasets of different sizes and characteristics in English, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Experimental results show that: (i) Attentive neural methods substantially outperform non-neural methods in terms of retrieval performance across datasets and languages; (ii) Pretrained transformer-based models achieve better accuracy on small datasets at the cost of high computational complexity while lighter weight Attentive CNN achieves better accuracy on large datasets; and (iii) Our proposed Paraformer outperforms state-of-the-art methods on COLIEE dataset, achieving the highest recall and F2 scores in the top-N retrieval task. (shrink)

IntroductionThis study aimed to explore the mental wellbeing profiles and their related factors among urban young adults in Vietnam.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Hanoi, which is the capital of Vietnam. There were 356 Vietnamese who completed the Mental Health Inventory-5 questionnaire. The Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify the subgroups of mental wellbeing through five items of the MHI-5 scale as the continuous variable. Multinomial logistic regression was used to determine factors related to subgroups.ResultsThree classes represented three levels (...) of MHI-5 score, which included “Poor mental health,” “Fair mental health,” and “Good mental health,” were, respectively, 14.3, 46.6, and 39.0%. Compared to a low household economy, participants with an average household economy had 2.11 and 4.79 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to fair and poor mental health classes. Respondents with more than two acute symptoms had 3.85 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to a poor mental health class, as compared to those without acute symptoms. Regarding the measurement of the Perceived Social Support Scale, people having support from their family had 1.80 and 2.23 times higher odds of being in classes of fair and good mental health relative to the poor mental health class; and participants having friend support also had 1.87 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class compared with the fair mental health class, as the MSPSS score increased by 1 unit. People with Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale increased by 1 score, those who had 1.17, 1.26, and 1.47 times higher odds of being in a good compared to fair mental health class, fair compared to poor mental health class, and good compared to poor mental health class, respectively.ConclusionOur findings were given to promote a new classification method for mental health screening among the general population. The current findings could be used as evidence to develop policies and plans that focus on encouraging early screening for mental health problems among the general young population in the future. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a nudge for public–private cooperation in healthcare to rapidly cope with limited resource. However, Vietnam’s historical reliance on a public healthcare system, combined with a traditional emphasis on socialization in the Polanyian sense, hindered the swift integration of the private sector. This research investigates path dependency in Vietnam’s public health sector, using theories including path dependency, Karl Polanyi’s double movement with legal analysis method to analyze the interplay of historical decisions, and socialist policies in healthcare. Recognizing (...) these institutional and market governance flaws, a deeper understanding of the role of law becomes vital in crafting strategies for a more resilient and sustainable healthcare system in Vietnam. In this article, Ho Chi Minh City is chosen as a case study due to its notable mix of public–private healthcare facilities and its status as a leading area in infection cases during the third COVID-19 wave. The article suggests that there should be a change in the way public and private sectors work together, one that is more in line with market-driven solutions which requires solid legal framework for cooperation beyond merely mobilizing resources. (shrink)

Resumen: Debido a varias razones históricas y realistas, el desarrollo de la teoríeorlsica de la mlsica en China se queda atrátrra cuanto al sistema de enseñanza, el contenido de la enseñanza y otros aspectos. Es una tarea importante para los trabajadores chinos de la misica revisar o complementar la teoríeorteorntar sica actual y los libros de texto relacionados, y luego construir un sistema de disciplina de la teoríeorla teordesica en China. Este artículo sintetiza las teoríeorreorr educacióducacirr las tehistoria de la (...) m sica, la cultura musical, la morfologíorfolog, la otras disciplinas relacionadas, utiliza valores científicos, objetivos y racionales y conceptos holísticos y comprensivos, toma el desarrollo de la educacióducaciedteoríeoracieducacsica de China como objeto de investigaciónvesttoma la historia como espejo para seguir considerando y prospectar la construccióonstrusistema de disciplina de la teoríeorla teordesica de China. Los fundamentos de la mtsica china pueden dividirse, a grandes rasgos, en tres periodos: (1) desde principios del siglo XX hasta la fundacióundacita la blica Popular China; (2) desde ese momento hasta el periodo de reforma y apertura; y (3) desde el periodo de reforma y apertura hasta la actualidad. La teoríeor teord. La teord. evolucionóvoluciond. La teord. Lfundacióundaciond. Lblica Popular China a travéravulun proceso de aceptaciócepasiva y absorcióbsactiva, como puede observarse en el desarrollo de la enseñanza de la teoríeorla teorde la ene lasica china y sus materiales didrcticos. La teoríeor teora teordidiales dpropagórprincipalmente desde el palacio a la iglesia, luego a las escuelas y finalmente a la sociedad. Como resultado, la enseñanza de la teoría musical china evolucionóvprogresivamente hacia un sistema menor mayor como modo dominante, y los fundamentos de la mtsica china se desviaron gradualmente. Tras el establecimiento de la Repiblica Popular China, la investigaciónvestigaciina, lprofundizado, lo que ha beneficiado el crecimiento de la disciplina de la teoríeorla teorbásica, que ahora se dirige hacia la diversificacióiversifprofundidad. El desarrollo de la teoríeorla teorde la teor teor de la tecontado con la ayuda de varios music musicusieducadores musicales de diversos campos académicos y puntos de vista de la investigaciónvestimodelo ideal de la construccióonstruccdisciplina de la teoríeorla teorde la teoconcibe sobre la base del principio de “combinar la historia con la teoríeor la tpeinar el desarrollo de la teoríeorla teordesica en China. Este modelo fomenta la integracióntegraciteoríeorgracirasica tradicional y la teoríeora teorlsica moderna desde una perspectiva diacrónica, refuerza la unidad del padel pal pmundo en la teoríeorla teorsica bcsica desde una perspectiva sincrónica, y presta atenciótenciiaconnotacióonnotacitecnología en su conjunto. (shrink)

On April 19, 2024, the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness was announced at the “Emerging Science of Animal Consciousness” conference held at New York University. The New York Declaration is an effort to showcase a scientific consensus on the presence of conscious experiences across all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and many invertebrates (at least including cephalopods, decapod crustaceans, and insects). Scientifically, the New York Declaration marks a significant advancement for humanity. However, it also brings heightened awareness to (...) the moral challenges associated with animals that have conscious experiences (or phenomenal consciousness). This article will discuss philosophical approaches to the moral issue of killing sentient beings, thereby highlighting an existing moral dilemma in human society: In sustaining human survival, a species considered to have morality, we have to violate our own moral standards by killing other species with intrinsic value, consciousness, or sentience. This moral dilemma has long been present in human society. Various solutions have been proposed and implemented in practice to address this issue, such as the non-violence and vegetarian approach of Buddhism, the application of Islamic law and sacred rituals to animals in Islam, animal rights movements and voluntary extinction in Western countries, and the technology producing meat using animal cells. However, despite these approaches, we have not yet been able to fully resolve the dilemma, as sentient beings continue to be killed for our survival. We believe the most feasible solution is to change the current food consumption culture, build an eco-surplus culture to mitigate climate change, prevent deforestation, and promote peace. (shrink)

Public parks play important roles in conserving biodiversity, promoting environmental sustainability, fostering community engagement, and enhancing the overall well-being of residents in urban areas. Nevertheless, finance is needed to maintain and expand the greenspaces in the parks. The current study aims to examine how perceptions of biodiversity loss consequences and park visitation frequency influence the residents’ willingness to contribute financially to tree-planting projects in public parks. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we (...) discovered that perceived health loss and knowledge erosion as consequences of biodiversity loss and park visitation frequency are directly positively associated with financial donation willingness. Meanwhile, the perceived economic growth loss was found to be indirectly positively associated with donation willingness through park visitation frequency, whereas the perceived loss of nature-based recreation opportunities exhibits the opposite indirect association. Based on these results, communication strategies focusing on the multifaceted benefits of biodiversity preservation and investments in public parks are recommended to improve urban residents’ financial support to park panting initiatives, accessibility to greenspaces, and connections with nature. These are crucial for promoting an eco-surplus culture that enhances biodiversity conservation and human well-being. (shrink)

Food security is one of the major concerns in the Philippines. Although livestock and poultry production accounts for a significant proportion of the country’s agricultural output, smallholder households are still vulnerable to food insecurity. The current study aims to examine how livestock production and selling difficulties affect smallholder households’ food-insecure conditions. For this objective, Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Data in Emergencies Monitoring (DIEM) system. We found that production and (...) selling difficulties significantly adversely affect food insecurity in the Philippines. However, their effects vary according to the severity of food insecurity. In particular, production and selling difficulties affect the households’ likelihood of eating less healthy and nutritious food equally. However, the production difficulties have more negligible impacts on the possibility of skipping meals and even ambiguous impacts on the likelihood of not eating for a whole day compared to the effects of selling difficulties. Moreover, we also found that the market plays a crucial role in facilitating not only livestock trading but also livestock production (e.g., purchase of feed and medicines). Based on these findings, we suggest that the livestock market needs to be expanded and regulated to maintain the balancing prices between livestock products and products and services used for livestock production, and facilitate the product-exchanging mechanism. (shrink)

BackgroundThe literature shows the negative psychological impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak on frontline healthcare workers. However, few are known about the mental health of physicians and nurses working in general hospitals during the outbreak, caring for patients with COVID-19 or not.ObjectivesThis survey assessed differences in mental health in physicians and nurses working in COVID-19 or non-COVID-19 medical care units.DesignA cross-sectional mixed-mode survey was used to assess burnout, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and stress.SettingA total of 1,244 physicians and nurses from (...) five general hospitals in Belgium, working in COVID-19 care units, non-COVID-19 care units, or both were informed of the study.ParticipantsSix hundred forty-seven healthcare workers participated in the survey.MeasurementsValidated instruments were used to assess the outcomes: the PFI, the ISI, and the DASS-21.ResultsResults showed high prevalence of burnout, insomnia, depression, and anxiety among participants. After adjusting for confounders, multivariate analysis of variance showed no differences between CCU, NCCU, and CCU + NCCU workers. Univariate general linear models showed higher level of burnout, insomnia, and anxiety among nurses in comparison to physicians. Being a nurse, young, isolated, with an increased workload were risk factors for worse mental health outcomes.LimitationsThe mental health of the tested sample, before the outbreak, is unknown. Moreover, this cross-sectional design provides no information on the evolution of the mental health outcomes over time.ConclusionDirectly caring for patients with COVID-19 is not associated with worse mental health outcomes among healthcare workers in general hospitals. High prevalence of burnout, insomnia, depression, and anxiety among physicians and nurses requires special attention, and specific interventions need to be implemented.Protocol RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT04344145. (shrink)

Marine and coastal ecosystems are crucial in maintaining human livelihood, facilitating social development, and reducing climate change impacts. Studies have examined how the benefit perception of aquatic ecosystems, knowledge, and emotion about climate change affect peoples’ support for marine protection. However, their interaction effects remain understudied. The current study explores the intricate interaction effect of the benefit perception of aquatic ecosystems, knowledge, and worry about climate change on marine protection support. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset (...) of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries generated by MaCoBioS—a research project funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020. The statistical analysis shows that the impacts of benefit perception of ocean ecosystems, knowledge, and worry about climate change on marine protection support vary due to their interactions. Specifically, when stakeholders perceive ocean ecosystems to have little utility in mitigating climate change, greater climate change knowledge and concern are associated with a higher level of marine protection support. Nevertheless, in the scenarios where stakeholders perceive the benefits of ocean ecosystems, the effect of climate change knowledge becomes conditional on the worry level. If stakeholders are concerned about climate change, those with a greater level of climate change knowledge will associate with a higher level of marine protection support. Otherwise, greater climate change knowledge will result in lower support. These findings highlight emotion’s importance in directing climate change knowledge’s effect on marine protection support. Linking people’s “objects of care” to the consequences of climate change can help improve climate change communication effectiveness. (shrink)

The rapidly declining biosphere integrity, representing one of the core planetary boundaries, is alarming. One of the most widely accepted measures to halt the rate of biodiversity loss is to maintain and expand protected areas that are effectively managed. However, it requires substantial finance derived from nature-based tourism, specifically visitors from urban areas. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) on 535 Vietnamese urban residents, the current study examined how their biodiversity loss perceptions can affect their willingness to pay for the (...) entrance fee and conservation in protected areas. We found that perceived environmental degradation, loss of economic growth, loss of nature-based recreation opportunity, and loss of knowledge as consequences of biodiversity loss has indirect effects on paying willingness through the mediation of the attitude towards conservation. Especially, the perceived knowledge loss also has a direct positive influence on the willingness to pay for the entrance fee and conservation. In contrast, perceived loss of health is negatively associated with the attitude towards conservation. Based on these findings, we suggest that building an eco-surplus culture among urban residents can be a promising way to generate more finance from nature-based tourism for conservation in protected areas and ease the domestic government's and international organizations' funding allocations problems. (shrink)

Academia is a competitive environment. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are limited in experience and resources and especially need achievements to secure and expand their careers. To help with these issues, this book offers a new approach for conducting research using the combination of mindsponge innovative thinking and Bayesian analytics. This is not just another analytics book. 1. A new perspective on psychological processes: Mindsponge is a novel approach for examining the human mind’s information processing mechanism. This conceptual framework is used (...) to construct models in studies. The framework is highly flexible and widely applicable for many different types of information processes. The mindsponge approach can help researchers discover interesting ideas or even formulate their very own theories when investigating psychosocial phenomena. This approach brings a fresh wind to the current landscape of social sciences and humanities (SSH). 2. Easy-to-follow analysis protocol: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics) is useful in terms of computing and visualizing power but also easy to learn and apply. Contrary to being intimidating, the Bayesian analytics section of this book is presented in a reader-friendly manner with a detailed yet clear step-by-step procedure. Examples are from published BMF articles, allowing readers to immediately practice the method and quickly create their own applications. With educational purposes in mind, the book is very suitable for ECRs who are looking to innovate their research methods. 3. Advocating for low-cost, high-quality research: Doing science can be very costly. Mindsponge innovative thinking and BMF analytics help produce impactful studies using openly available data on online repositories. This is based on the authors’ previous works and experiences. The book presents examples of employing the open R package bayesvl on secondary data from different sources. With less financial constraints, researchers can have more freedom of thought to pursue their curiosity and creativity. ECRs in low- and middle-income countries may find this aspect crucial in their careers. 4. Support and collaboration: The authors share their insights from experiences in the academic publishing system to help readers get through the processes of manuscript writing and peer-reviewing more easily. The authors are also ready to support other researchers with further inquiries and collaboration opportunities at the following website, mindsponge(dot)info. This book is for: a) ECRs whose only abundant resources are their innovation capacity and strength of will; b) Researchers in SSH who want to explore a novel approach to thinking and study conducting; c) Low- and middle-income countries’ researchers looking for a cost-effective research protocol; and, d) Innovative thinkers who want to turn their interesting thoughts into good publications. (shrink)

Climate change has become one of the most pressing problems that can threaten the existence and development of humans around the globe. Almost all climate scientists have agreed that climate change is happening and is caused mainly by greenhouse gas emissions induced by anthropogenic activities. However, some groups still deny this fact or do not believe that climate change results from human activities. This essay discusses the causes, significance, and skeptical arguments of climate change denialism, as well as the roles (...) of scientists and science communication in addressing the issues. Through this essay, we call for the active participation of scientists in science communication activities with the public, the opening of new science communication sectors specified for climate change, and more attention to social sciences and humanities in addressing climate change issues. (shrink)

Products made from animal fur and skin have been a major part of human civilization. However, in modern society, the unsustainable consumption of these products – often considered luxury goods – has many negative environmental impacts. This study explores how people’s perceptions of biodiversity affect their attitudes and behaviors toward consumption. To investigate the information process deeper, we add the moderation of beliefs about biodiversity loss. Following the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics, we use mindsponge-based reasoning for constructing conceptual models (...) and employ Bayesian analysis aided by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents. The results show that people’s preference for using products made from animal skin/fur is negatively associated with perceived consequences of biodiversity loss when they believe biodiversity loss is real and a major problem. In contrast, if urban residents believe biodiversity loss is unreal or not a significant issue, the association between perceived consequences of biodiversity loss and personal preference happens in the opposite direction. The same effects of biodiversity loss perception on people’s possession of skin/fur products was not found, indicating a more complex information process on behaviors compared to attitudes. Nevertheless, in the scenario that people believe biodiversity loss is not a significant issue, the higher the perceived consequences of biodiversity loss are, the greater number of animal-based products they likely own. Our results suggest that policymakers should not neglect the factor of personal belief besides knowledge and awareness in environmental campaigns. (shrink)

The three learning modalities in nursing education are classroom meetings, skill laboratory practices, and clinical practice in hospital or community settings. In clinical internships, the collaborative self-directed learning method is highly encouraged among nursing students. The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in clinical learning supports the implementation of evidence-based nursing and student-centered learning. The current study examines whether the relationship between social influence and ICT using intention is moderated by the daily duration of use and the number of (...) classmates being friends on social media. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset of 702 Moroccan nursing students. We found that social influence was positively associated with nursing students’ intention to use ICT for clinical learning during the internship. This positive association was positively moderated by the daily duration of social media usage and negatively moderated by the number of classmates being friends on social media. These findings underscore the potential of using social media platforms to facilitate the incorporation of ICT and social media in nursing education and training. However, the adverse effects of social media on students’ mental well-being also need to be acknowledged and managed appropriately. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 904-922, October 2022.

Growing numbers of women in militaries worldwide, coupled with vast segments of women within war-affected populations globally, raise questions about gender as it structures trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder, and other mental health consequences of war. In this study, we investigate the gendered associations between early-life wartime stress exposures and PTSD symptoms in older adulthood using data from the 2018 Vietnam Health and Aging Study, a unique data set documenting multiple dimensions of health and wartime stress exposures within a sample (...) of older adults who occupied diverse roles during the American war in Vietnam. Our results indicate that the severity of recent PTSD symptoms is significantly and positively associated with the severity of wartime stress exposure among both men and women. Vietnamese men’s social positions, particularly their predominance in combat, exposed them to more numerous war-related stressors. However, Vietnamese women experience a greater PTSD penalty associated with some wartime stress exposures, likely due to the burden of protecting family in wartime and incorporation into military and paramilitary roles with lesser preparation, training, and support than men. We conclude that women who survive major wars, both as soldiers and civilians, bear a significant burden of armed conflict’s lasting toll upon mental health. (shrink)

Pacific Conservation Biology has officially published the manuscript. The article can be accessed using the following DOI:10.1071/PC23044.

Today, many people have realized that the climate change and biodiversity loss issues lie in how and to what extent humans consume products for their lives in the Anthropocene era. Consumerism has pushed natural resource exploitation to its peak, and the depletion of resources is becoming increasingly prevalent. The beauty and personal care industry has a large market and high profits, especially in the high-income segment. However, this advantage also carries the risk of facing scrutiny, investigations, and criticism from civil (...) society organizations, environmental activists, and consumers. More than anyone else, the industry is vulnerable to the perils of unfavourable societal assessments, particularly the repercussions of consumer-led boycott actions. In this discourse, we suggest that, given the current circumstances, it is imperative for multinational beauty corporations to take a proactive role in allocating resources towards the development of sustainable agriculture practices. This entails not only advocating for the widespread adoption of environmentally conscious production methods but also dedicating efforts towards conducting research and innovation in the area of nature-friendly manufacturing techniques. Doing so will help demonstrate their commitment to the environment and actively provide convincing evidence to consumers of their social responsibility through emission reduction and biodiversity conservation activities. (shrink)

Effective stakeholder engagement and inclusive governance are essential for effective and equitable ocean management. However, few cross-national studies have been conducted to examine how stakeholders’ economic and cultural benefit perceptions influence their support level for policies focused on ocean preservation. The current study aims to fill this gap by employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries, a part of the MaCoBioS project funded by the European Commission H2020. We found that economic (...) and cultural benefit perceptions are generally negatively associated with the policy support level. Regarding economic aspects, stakeholders considering transportation and shipping, renewable energy generation, and oil and gas provision as the most crucial benefits their countries’ oceans provide tend to obtain less support for policies focusing on ocean preservation. Meanwhile, for cultural aspects, perceiving recreation and tourism, aesthetic pleasure, mental health and well-being support, and sense of identity provision as the most important benefits provided by the country’s ocean are negatively associated with the policy support level. The perceived economic, cultural, and environmental tradeoffs when supporting policies focused on ocean preservation were discussed. Recommendations for improving the effective management of multi-use marine space are also provided to reduce the perceived competing interests among stakeholders. (shrink)

Coral reefs provide substantial benefits to humans by generating biologically diverse ecosystems and reducing coastal hazards. However, in recent years, mass mortality of coral reefs due to bleaching has been witnessed in the ocean worldwide. Bleaching induced by the loss of the symbiotic relationship between algae and coral is mainly attributed to climate change. Marine protected areas (MPAs) can effectively prevent local disturbances but are less likely to conserve the coral reefs from global events like climate change. Other conservation and (...) restoration methods can be useful to protect and replenish the coral population temporarily, but whether they are feasible as sustainable conservation strategies is still equivocal. Coral reef mass mortality is not an exceptional occurrence but is linked to various instances of ecological loss, serving as an S.O.S. signal of severe prolonged climate extremes. (shrink)

Extant literature suggests a positive correlation between social trust (also called generalized trust) and life satisfaction. However, the psychological pathways underlying this relationship can be complex. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), we examined the influence of social trust in a high-violence environment. Employing Bayesian analysis on a sample of 1237 adults in Cali, Colombia, we found that in a linear relationship, generalized trust is positively associated with life satisfaction. However, in a model including the interactions between trust and education (...) level as well as between trust and socioeconomic status, generalized trust is found to be negatively associated with life satisfaction. In this non-linear relationship, both education level and socioeconomic status have moderating effects against the negative association between generalized trust and life satisfaction. In other words, less educated people living in worse socioeconomic conditions are more likely to have lower life satisfaction when they have higher levels of social trust. In contrast, highly educated people living in better socioeconomic conditions are more likely to have higher life satisfaction when they have higher levels of social trust. Due to the facilitating function of trust in information processing, lowering the rigor of the filtering system in a high-violence social environment will likely put an individual at risk. Based on our findings, we suggest that policymakers should consider the impacts of social contexts when advocating for increasing social trust. We also recommend that researchers carefully examine the psychological mechanism underlying an observed association before making suggestions for policymaking. (shrink)