Science and Technology Development Journal

Latest Articles

1. Section: NATURAL SCIENCES

   Effects of L-ascorbic acid or insulin-transferrin-selenium on in vitro maturation and energy metabolism on the developmental competence of porcine parthenogenetic embryos

   Nguyen L., Le M., Lam T., Nguyen N.,-T., Nguyen T., Bui H.-T.

   Porcine parthenogenetic embryos have emerged as promising tools in biomedical science. However, in vitro maturation and in vitro development often lead to elevated levels of reactive oxygen species and reduced developmental competence of the embryo. This study focused on advancing our understanding of how to increase the developmental competence of embryos. In addition, the embryos of large animals have specific metabolic pathways, and their energy substrate requirements for preimplantation are also more flexible than those of rodents. Little is known about the metabolism of porcine embryos from the 4-cell stage until morula. This study examines the effects of adding insulin-transferrin-selenium and/or L-ascorbic acid to the medium for maturing prepubertal porcine oocytes and establishes a new strategy of using glucose and pyruvate/lactate in porcine embryos cultured for standard protocols.

   Published: 2024-11-18In press
2. Section: ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

   Evaluation of the forming quality of Inconel 625 thin-walled parts manufactured via cold metal transfer additive manufacturing

   Dinh D., M., Lam H., S., LE V., T., Pham Q. H.

   Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is a metal additive manufacturing technique that uses an arc source to melt metallic wires, depositing molten metal layer by layer to form parts. Controlling the forming quality of parts in the WAAM process poses significant challenges. This study evaluated the shape quality of thin walls produced via WAAM using Inconel 625 alloy. Additionally, the impacts of the welding speed (v) and linear heat input (LHI) on the geometric quality of the fabricated components are investigated.

   Published: 2024-11-18In press
3. Section: ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

   A Review of Road Traffic Safety Education Programs: Current Trends, Challenges, and Proposed Application of Theory of Planned Behavior in Program Development in Vietnam

   Long N., Thong V.

   Road traffic accidents continue to be a leading cause of death worldwide, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting millions of fatalities each year. These accidents frequently involve motorcyclists in Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam. To address this issue, various road safety strategies have been implemented globally, with road safety education being a crucial element in reducing accidents. Therefore, it is important to review the research on these traffic safety education programs to understand the strategies' effectiveness and outcomes. This study aims to provide insights into different global and Vietnam-specific road safety strategies and their associated challenges. On the basis of the issues identified in the examined traffic education programs, the theory of planned behavior (TPB) can be an effective framework for addressing these challenges. Additionally, the TPB is proposed as a practical tool to evaluate the effectiveness of current road safety education strategies. The study also includes a method for developing a road safety education program, informed by findings from the referenced studies.

   Published: 2024-11-18In press
4. Viet Nam National Young Scientists Conference 2023

   Synthesis and application of ZnO/rGo-based magnetic nanocomposite materials for treatment of organic pigments

   Nguyen D., Nguyen T., Doan T., Pham T., Nguyen T., Pham A., Uong H., Bui T.

   Photocatalysis is one of the most effective techniques for treating organic pigments in wastewater. Some composite materials are prepared by combining photocatalysts and magnetic adsorbents and are used for treating organic pigments in water. In this work, zinc oxide-doped rGO-based nanocomposite materials were prepared via a simple process. In particular, Fe2O3 was added to those nanocomposites to form magnetic photocatalytic materials that can be recovered and reused after reactions. The material structure was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and ultraviolet–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV‒Vis DRS). Rhodamine B (RhB) and methylene blue (MB) were photochemically treated with the prepared magnetic photocatalytic materials. Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV‒Vis) was used to determine the concentrations of organic pigments before and after treatment with the materials. The photocatalytic degradation efficiency of MB and RhB reached more than 84% after 75 min and more than 98% after 6 h, respectively. The magnetic photocatalytic materials effectively recovered (up to 92%) after 3 cycles. In addition, the mechanism of photocatalytic degradation was investigated via capture experiments. The results indicated that magnetic photocatalytic materials can effectively treat MB and RhB in water and can be recovered and reused, showing their potential as attractive alternatives to treating organic pigments in wastewater.

   Published: 2024-11-18In press
5. Health Sciences - Research article

   Solid dispersion system – An effective solution to enhance solubility of mangiferin

   Huynh T., M., D., Dang A., N., Do H., Q., Nguyen P. V.

   Mangiferin - a xanthonoid abundantly present in Mango leaves has been widely recognized a potent hypoglycemic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory agent. Nevertheless, due to its poor solubility and poor permeability, its bioavailability and application in large scale remain limited. Amongst different methods for enhancement of such poor-soluble drugs, solide dispersion (SD) appears as a potent strategy, which is widely applied in pharmaceutical industry to enhance firstly dissolution rate and subsequently bioavalability of BCSII and BCSIV drugs. In this study, different solid dispersion (SD) systems of mangiferin with beta-cyclodextrin (β-CD), polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG 6000), polyvinylpyrrolidone K30 (PVP K30), and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) 6M were prepared, using wet grinding and solvent evaporation methods, and compared in terms of mangiferin’s solubility. The results showed that the optimized SD of mangiferin and HPMC 6M (at 1:5 ratio), prepared by solvent evaporation method, achieved the highest dissolution rate of 81.96% after 30 minutes and 91.89% after 60 minutes at pH 1.2. Furthermore, differences in the material structure as well as the chemical composition between the optimized SD formula and raw Mangiferin were investigated and compared using the electronic microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and infra-red spectroscopy (IR). Overall, the findings within this study highlighted the potential of SD method in an attempt to enhance the solubility of active compounds in the class BCS II or BCS IV.

   Published: 2024-11-13In press
6. Viet Nam National Young Scientists Conference 2023

   Measurement of cosmic muon angular distribution and deposited energy using sFGD prototype in the T2K upgrade ND280

   Nguyen Thi D., Lê A., Nguyễn C., Nguyen D., Bui H., Bui H.

   The superFGD (sFGD), a scintillator detector, has been chosen as the target for neutrino in the T2K near detector upgrade. Its design enables nearly 4π coverage for neutrino interactions, leading to lower energy thresholds and reduced systematic errors in the experiment. The sFGD is assembled of optically-isolated scintillators measuring 1 × 1 × 1 cm³, it ensures the nessary spatial and energy resolution to minimize uncertainties in future T2K runs. With close to two million cubes assembled into a volumn of 1920 × 560 × 1840 mm³, the sFGD is a significant advencement. A prototypeconsisting of 4×4×3 cubes was studied using cosmic rays. The sFGD prototype, consisting of 48 cubes, was instrumented. We also present the results of the GEANT4 simulation of this prototype. Cosmic ray muon tracks crossing this prototype were simulated by the CRY generator. The results on angular distribution and energy deposition are studied at Tokai (36°27'42.8’N 140°35'57.7’E) and are presented in this paper.

   Published: 2024-08-18In press
7. Section: NATURAL SCIENCES

   The Dependence on the Armchair/zigzag Edge Ratio of the Melting Process of Armchair Hexagonal Boron Nitride Nanoribbon

   Nguyen H.

   The dependence on the armchair/zigzag edge ratios of armchair hexagonal boron nitride nanoribbon (h-BNNR) is investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. To do that, initial configurations with eight different armchair/zigzag edge ratios (0.017377, 0.069510, 0.278481, 0.434782, 1.724409, 6.968254, 10.745098, and 43.88) of armchair h-BNNR containing the same number of atoms (10000 identical atoms of B and N) are heated from 50 K to 7000 K via Tersoff potential. The initial (0.017377 armchair/zigzag ratio) and the final (43.88 armchair/zigzag ratio) configuration strongly affect the melting process of armchair h-BNNR: The 0.017377 armchair/zigzag configuration has a high value of the melting point (5300 K) in comparison to the left seven cases; The melting process of the 43.88 armchair/zigzag ratio configuration is strongly affected by the finite size effects. The melting point of the left six configurations is not affected by the armchair/zigzag edge ratio much and the average value of the melting point for these cases is 4180 K. In the case of 10000 atoms in the configuration, the critical armchair/zigzag edge ratio is found at 10.745098. At this critical armchair/zigzag edge ratio, the melting point fluctuates a bit about 4040 K when the number of atoms in the configuration is increased from 10000 to 25600 atoms. Note that, the melting point of the configuration having this critical armchair/zigzag ratio will not be affected much when the number of atoms in the configuration is increased.

   Published: 2024-07-21In press
8. Section: ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

   ACNE8M - An acnes detection and differential diagnosis system using AI technologies

   Nguyen P., K., Le T., Nguyen B., A., Nguyen P. A.

   Acne is a prevalent skin condition that can lead to serious consequences in severe cases. Traditional treatment requires patients to visit a dermatologist. However, acne diagnosis performed by dermatologists often encounters issues, such as being manual and highly inaccurate. Therefore, there is a need for machinery to assist in the acne diagnosis phase. Numerous image analysis algorithms have been developed using images captured by mobile devices. Nonetheless, most of these algorithms primarily rely on outdated features such as color models or texture-based features, which may result in poor performance when dealing with the intricate nature of acne lesions. Consequently, AI models have been developed for the task of acne detection. However, due to the rarity of high-quality datasets for acne, some of these models have yet to achieve significant results. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes the ACNE8M, an AI model developed based on the YOLOv8 pre-trained model, to accurately detect seven primary and secondary types of acne lesions, as well as differentiate five additional diagnoses. The model is trained on a well-prepared dataset containing 9,440 images with numerous acne lesions adequately labeled. The results show that the model achieves state-of-the-art performance with a mean Average Precision (mAP) score of 0.69 across the 12 types. The accuracy of detecting each type of acne is impressively high and balanced between the classes, despite the dataset's imbalance caused by the unequal number of images in each acne category. With this study, ACNE8M is expected to provide medical support in the acne diagnosis process and help patients understand their conditions for better treatment.

   Published: 2024-07-21In press
9. Section: NATURAL SCIENCES

   Copper promoted, direct sulfenylation of n-aryl pyrazoles

   Nguyen T., Pham A., Pham H., Le H.

   Direct functionalization of N-heterocycles often attracts substantial attention, as the targeted compounds find ubiquitous uses in many applications. Among common N-heterocycles, substituted pyrazoles are still challenging compounds for functionalization, though commonly useful in bio- and material-related studies. Herein, we report a general method for direct sulfenylation at the C₄-H bonds of pyrazoles with diaryl disulfides. This transformation produces unsymmetrical thioethers, which often require the use of pre-functionalized starting materials and partners with unpleasant smells. Our reaction conditions involve the use of a CuCl₂ catalyst, K₂S₂O₈ oxidant, and CH₃COOH as the solvent. A wide range of functionalities, including bromo, chloro, and nitro groups, were well-compatible. A possible mechanism, including electrophilic sulfenylation, was proposed.

   Published: 2024-07-21In press
10. Special Issue

    Genomic insights into colistin resistance evolution in Pseudomonas Aeruginosa

    Tran N., B., V., Mai A., T., Le N., T., Huynh T., Q., Vu M., T., Le M., T., Nguyen T. T. H.

    Colistin (polymyxin E) is the last-resort antibiotic used to treat multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections, including those caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The global emergence of colistin-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a significant concern for healthcare professionals. Therefore, identifying key contributors to the development of colistin resistance is crucial for addressing this issue. In this study, P. aeruginosa ATCC 9027 was serially exposed to subminimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of colistin for 14 consecutive days to obtain the Col-E1 strain. The Col-E1 strain was then cultured for 10 days in antibiotic-free medium to acquire the Col-E2 strain. The whole-genome sequences of three strains, namely, P. aeruginosa ATCC 9027 (the original strain, PA-1), Col-E1 and Col-E2, were assembled, annotated and analyzed. The bioinformatics pipeline included FASTQC (v0.11.9) for quality control; Unicycler (v.0.5.0) for de novo assembly; Bowtie2 (v2.4.5) and Picard Tools (v.2.27.4) for alignment; SAMtools (v1.11) and BCFtools (v.1.15) for variant calling; and SnpEff (v5.1) for variant annotation. As a result, we obtained a draft genome of P. aeruginosa ATCC 9027 consisting of 6,314,207 bp with 146-fold coverage. After aligning Col-E1 and Col-E2 against the draft genome, the number of insertion-deletions (INDELs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were found, with 486 INDELs and 162 SNPs for Col-E1 and 474 INDELs and 163 SNPs for Col-E2. A high overlap rate of variants, including 448 INDELs and 153 SNPs, was observed between Col-E1 and Col-E2, indicating that the number of variants was constant. The analysis revealed notable mutations in genes encoding ribosomal components (rpsL, rpsG, and rpsJ), genes involved in efflux transmembrane transporter activity (czcC_1), and genes encoding an outer membrane porin (oprD). The variants were found in upstream (36.5%), downstream (25.7%) or intergenic (19.1%) regions. These mutations may be involved in gene expression regulation, leading to the development of a colistin-resistant phenotype. In conclusion, this study provided a preliminary overview of how P. aeruginosa responds to colistin antibiotic stress at the genomic level. These mutations could be used as markers for colistin resistance and further investigated to clarify their role in the colistin resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

    Published: 2024-07-14