The empirical analysis of cigarette tax avoidance and illicit trade in Vietnam, 1998-2010.

Illicit trade carries the potential to magnify existing tobacco-related health care costs through increased availability of untaxed and inexpensive cigarettes. What is known with respect to the magnitude of illicit trade for Vietnam is produced primarily by the industry, and methodologies are typically opaque. Independent assessment of the illicit cigarette trade in Vietnam is vital to tobacco control policy. This paper measures the magnitude of illicit cigarette trade for Vietnam between 1998 and 2010 using two methods, discrepancies between legitimate domestic cigarette sales and domestic tobacco consumption estimated from surveys, and trade discrepancies as recorded by Vietnam and trade partners. The results indicate that Vietnam likely experienced net smuggling in during the period studied. With the inclusion of adjustments for survey respondent under-reporting, inward illicit trade likely occurred in three of the four years for which surveys were available. Discrepancies in trade records indicate that the value of smuggled cigarettes into Vietnam ranges from $100 million to$300 million between 2000 and 2010 and that these cigarettes primarily originate in Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao, Malaysia, and Australia. Notable differences in trends over time exist between the two methods, but by comparison, the industry estimates consistently place the magnitude of illicit trade at the upper bounds of what this study shows. The unavailability of annual, survey-based estimates of consumption may obscure the true, annual trend over time. Second, as surveys changed over time, estimates relying on them may be inconsistent with one another. Finally, these two methods measure different components of illicit trade, specifically consumption of illicit cigarettes regardless of origin and smuggling of cigarettes into a particular market. However, absent a gold standard, comparisons of different approaches to illicit trade measurement serve efforts to refine and improve measurement approaches and estimates

Cr(VI) Removal from Aqueous Solution Using a Magnetite Snail Shell

© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. In this study, magnetic snail shell (MSS) prepared by impregnating of iron oxide onto snail shell (SS) powder was used for removing Cr(VI) from aqueous solution. Among six different mass ratios of Fe/SS powder studied, the MSS25 produced at a ratio of 25% achieved the highest Cr(VI) adsorption capacity. Batch adsorption experiments were conducted to investigate the adsorption isotherm, kinetics, and mechanism of Cr(VI) onto MSS25. The results illustrated that adsorption of Cr(VI) onto MSS25 reached equilibrium after 150 min at pH 3. The adsorption kinetics could be well described by the pseudo-second order model (R2 = 0.986). The Langmuir model (R2 = 0.971) was the best-fitting model that described the adsorption isotherm of Cr(VI) onto MSS25. The maximum adsorption capacity was 46.08 mg Cr(VI) per gram of MSS25. Ion exchange, electrostatic attraction, and adsorption-coupled reduction were determined as the main adsorption mechanisms of Cr(VI) onto MSS25. The high percentages of CaCO3 and Fe3O4 found in the MSS25 structure made a significant contribution to the Cr(VI) adsorption process

Everyday concept detection in visual lifelogs: validation, relationships and trends

The Microsoft SenseCam is a small lightweight wearable camera used to passively capture photos and other sensor readings from a user's day-to-day activities. It can capture up to 3,000 images per day, equating to almost 1 million images per year. It is used to aid memory by creating a personal multimedia lifelog, or visual recording of the wearer's life. However the sheer volume of image data captured within a visual lifelog creates a number of challenges, particularly for locating relevant content. Within this work, we explore the applicability of semantic concept detection, a method often used within video retrieval, on the novel domain of visual lifelogs. A concept detector models the correspondence between low-level visual features and high-level semantic concepts (such as indoors, outdoors, people, buildings, etc.) using supervised machine learning. By doing so it determines the probability of a concept's presence. We apply detection of 27 everyday semantic concepts on a lifelog collection composed of 257,518 SenseCam images from 5 users. The results were then evaluated on a subset of 95,907 images, to determine the precision for detection of each semantic concept. We conduct further analysis on the temporal consistency, co-occurance and trends within the detected concepts to more extensively investigate the robustness of the detectors within this novel domain. We additionally present future applications of concept detection within the domain of lifelogging

Proof-of-Stake Consensus Mechanisms for Future Blockchain Networks: Fundamentals, Applications and Opportunities

© 2013 IEEE. The rapid development of blockchain technology and their numerous emerging applications has received huge attention in recent years. The distributed consensus mechanism is the backbone of a blockchain network. It plays a key role in ensuring the network's security, integrity, and performance. Most current blockchain networks have been deploying the proof-of-work consensus mechanisms, in which the consensus is reached through intensive mining processes. However, this mechanism has several limitations, e.g., energy inefficiency, delay, and vulnerable to security threats. To overcome these problems, a new consensus mechanism has been developed recently, namely proof of stake, which enables to achieve the consensus via proving the stake ownership. This mechanism is expected to become a cutting-edge technology for future blockchain networks. This paper is dedicated to investigating proof-of-stake mechanisms, from fundamental knowledge to advanced proof-of-stake-based protocols along with performance analysis, e.g., energy consumption, delay, and security, as well as their promising applications, particularly in the field of Internet of Vehicles. The formation of stake pools and their effects on the network stake distribution are also analyzed and simulated. The results show that the ratio between the block reward and the total network stake has a significant impact on the decentralization of the network. Technical challenges and potential solutions are also discussed

Microtubules gate tau condensation to spatially regulate microtubule functions.

Tau is an abundant microtubule-associated protein in neurons. Tau aggregation into insoluble fibrils is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia1, yet the physiological state of tau molecules within cells remains unclear. Using single-molecule imaging, we directly observe that the microtubule lattice regulates reversible tau self-association, leading to localized, dynamic condensation of tau molecules on the microtubule surface. Tau condensates form selectively permissible barriers, spatially regulating the activity of microtubule-severing enzymes and the movement of molecular motors through their boundaries. We propose that reversible self-association of tau molecules, gated by the microtubule lattice, is an important mechanism of the biological functions of tau, and that oligomerization of tau is a common property shared between the physiological and disease-associated forms of the molecule

Upholding integrity: The influence of executives’ backgrounds on corporate information environment

Motivated by the roles of corporate management in shaping corporate decisions and the importance of stock liquidity in financial markets, we examine whether trust in management influences the liquidity costs of the firm that they manage. Using manually collected propriety data from several datasets, this study documents that firms led by ex-military CEOs are associated with higher stock market liquidity than firms run by non-military CEOs. Military CEOs influence stock liquidity by improving their firms’ information environment and reducing performance volatility. Firms led by military CEOs have higher social capital, higher levels of voluntary disclosure, fewer stock price delays, and lower levels of informed trading. In addition, firms run by military CEOs have lower costs of capital and default risk. Overall, consistent with behavioral consistency theory, our findings highlight the importance of executives’ early-life experience in reducing information frictions, fostering trust, and improving secondary market quality. “I think of all the time I spent in the military and in law enforcement and the many times I saw someone do the right thing because it was the right thing to do. The essence of integrity is what you do in and of yourself — you must be true to yourself.” ---Patrick O'Toole, Director & Executive Vice President, HealthMarkets Insurance Agency.fals

NEU-chatbot: Chatbot for admission of National Economics University

In the last few years, intelligent chatbot systems have been prevalent in various application fields, especially in education. Therefore, the demand for such online consulting services like chatbots is getting higher respectively. However, most communications between potential students and universities are performed manually, which is very time-consuming procedure, becoming a burden on the head of admissions. In this paper, we introduce an AI-based chatbot where students can instantly get daily updates of curriculum, admission for new students, tuition fees, IELTS writing task II score, etc. Our chatbot was developed by Deep Learning models, which are already integrated into the Rasa framework. We also proposed a rational pipeline for Vietnamese chatbots with our data preprocessing to obtain optimal accuracy and to avoid the overfitting of the model. Our model can detect more than fifty types of questions from users' input with an accuracy of 97.1% on test set. The chatbot was applied for National Economics University's official admission Fanpage on the Facebook platform, which is the most famous social network in Vietnam. This research shows detailed guidelines on how to build an AI chatbot from scratch, and the techniques we used, which can be applied to any language globally

Host Cell Transcriptome Profile during Wild-Type and Attenuated Dengue Virus Infection

10.1371/journal.pntd.0002107PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases73

Measurement of the top quark mass using the matrix element technique in dilepton final states

We present a measurement of the top quark mass in pp¯ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data were collected by the D0 experiment corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.7  fb−1. The matrix element technique is applied to tt¯ events in the final state containing leptons (electrons or muons) with high transverse momenta and at least two jets. The calibration of the jet energy scale determined in the lepton+jets final state of tt¯ decays is applied to jet energies. This correction provides a substantial reduction in systematic uncertainties. We obtain a top quark mass of mt=173.93±1.84  GeV

Glaucoma Home Monitoring Using Online Circular Contrast Perimetry Over 6 Months: Performance and Patient Attitudes in the Developing World Setting

Tung Thanh Hoang,1– 3,* Tung Quoc Mai,1,* Dung Thi Pham,1 Xuan Thi Nguyen,1 Duc-Anh Nguyen,1 Diu Thi Vu,1 Hien Thi Hoang,1 Simon Edward Skalicky4,5 1Ophthalmology Department, Hanoi Medical University, Hanoi, Vietnam; 2Ophthalmology Unit, Hanoi Medical University Hospital, Hanoi, Vietnam; 3Save Sight Institute, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia; 4Department of Surgery, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia; 5Glaucoma Investigation and Research Unit, the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, Melbourne, VIC, Australia*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Tung Thanh Hoang, Ophthalmology Department, Hanoi Medical University, No. 1 Ton That Tung str, Dong Da distr, Hanoi, 11518, Vietnam, Email [email protected]: Online circular contrast perimetry (OCCP) provides perimetry on any computer or tablet without additional hardware. This study assessed the longitudinal performance and user feedback of home OCCP in an Asian population.Methods: Twenty glaucoma and fifteen healthy participants underwent a comprehensive ocular examination and visual field tests in clinic, using OCCP and standard automated perimetry. Within a week, participants were asked to repeat OCCP at home. OCCP was then repeated after 3 months and 6 months at home, followed by a user-experience survey.Results: No significant difference between clinic and home OCCP for test duration, false negative (FN) and fixation loss (FL) rates was found. False positive (FP) rate of home OCCP was slightly higher than that of clinic OCCP (p = 0.04). Bland-Altman plots indicated a small difference between Mean Deviation (MD) (1.26 dB, p = 0.0087) and good agreements between Pattern Standard Deviation (PSD) and Visual Index (VI) of clinic OCCP and home OCCP with insignificant difference of PSD and VI (p > 0.05). Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) analysis demonstrated good correlation of MD & VI and poor correlation of PSD between clinic OCCP and home OCCP. Over 6 months, home OCCP indicated moderate to excellent correlation of indices. Participants reported a positive attitude toward home OCCP; however, a high dropout rate was noted for the 3- and 6-month at-home testing.Conclusion: Comparable results were observed between clinic and home OCCP at baseline. Acceptable consistency of home OCCP findings over 6 months was recognized. Patients may require additional support to achieve desired adherence to at-home monitoring protocols.Keywords: online circular contrast perimetry, glaucoma home-monitorin