Worldwide there is concern about the continuing release of a broad range of environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, phthalates, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and other halogenated organochlorines persistent organic pollutants (POPs) into the environment. They are condemned for health adverse effects such as cancer, reproductive defects, neurobehavioral abnormalities, endocrine and immunological toxicity. These effects can be elicited via a number of mechanisms among others include disruption of endocrine system, oxidation stress and epigenetic. However, most of the mechanisms are not clear, thus several number of studies are ongoing trying to elucidate them in order to protect the public by reducing these adverse effects. In this review, we briefly limited review the process, the impacts, and the potential mechanisms of dioxin/dioxin like compound, particularly, their possible roles in adverse developmental and reproductive processes, diseases, and gene expression and associated molecular pathways in cells.

Employability has recently become the first target of the national higher education. Its model has been updated to catch the new trend of Industry 4.0. This paper aims at analyzing and ranking the determinants of undergraduate employability, focusing on business and economics majors in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In-depth interviews with content analysis have been primarily conducted to reach an agreement on a key group of factors: human capital, social capital, and identity. The Stochastic Fractal Search Algorithm (SFSA) is then applied to rank the sub-factors. Human capital is composed of three major elements: attitude, skill, and knowledge. Social capital is approached at both structural and cognitive aspects with three typical types: bonding, bridging, and linking. The analysis has confirmed the change of priority in employability determinants. Human capital is still a driver but the priority of attitude has been confirmed in the contemporary context. Then, social capital with the important order of linking, bridging, and bonding is emphasized. Skill, knowledge, and identity share the least weight in the model. It is noted that identity is newly proposed in the model but a certain role has been found. The findings are crucial for education strategies to enhance university graduate employability.

The shift from elite education to mass education in Vietnam has met the demand for education for everybody as well as for quality human resource talent for an emerging nation. Under the resource constraint, understanding the quality dimensions of education and its priority level is important for effective and efficient policies. This study was carried out using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to develop quality criteria and a ranking model. Two rounds of in-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen experts in the field, who were rectors, employers, and recruitment specialists to develop the quality framework applied in Vietnamese universities under total quality management (TQM), starting from the input of the senior secondary school leavers, through a teaching process to the output. The first round of interviews were unstructured questionnaires designed to explore the main factors in quality assessment model. The second round affirmed the experts’ agreement on the assessment model. Then, fuzzy logic was applied to rank eight criteria in the quality assessment model into priority order: cost, teaching and administrative staff, leadership, curriculum, student-related factors, internationalization, admissions, and campus. The results are critical for identifying the necessary actions to enhance the education quality and to further research on the optimal quality model.

Livelihood capitals have a clear influence on livelihood development. As for the livelihood results, it has been pointed out in the analysis of the poor households that the ability of people to escape poverty depends especially on the access to livelihood capitals. This study aims to analyze the impacts of livelihood capital on poverty among mountain people who depend on forests through human capital, social capital, natural capital, physical capital and financial capital. This research employs the model of binary regression function. Independent variables x1, x2, ..., xn are targets of livelihood strategy, vulnerability context, and livelihood capitals. These variables were selected to be included in the original model with dependent variable Y as poor and non-poor households. This study surveys households living in upland areas, near forests, and households of ethnic minorities. The results show that,out of the poor household rate, nearly 4% are newly-poor households or those falling back into poverty. Therefore, the government needs to pay more attention to this disadvantaged group and implements policies such as education and training policies, credit support policies, policies to support forest development, and payment for forest environmental services in the context of emerging countries like Vietnam.,

The research postulates the conceptualization of talent in the Vietnamese banking sector via examining the factors pertaining to the concept of talent and talent management (TM) in the sector. This study applied qualitative research methods. A total of 20 managers and directors of ten banks (three public, four private and three foreign banks) were recruited for semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that a combination of interconnected soft skills, learning ability, flexibility, technology adaptability, integrity and risk management skills contributes to talent identification. Managers in some private banks construed talent to be commensurate with high performance and high potential, whereas managers in public banks and foreign banks mainly relied on performance results in talent recognition. Moreover, talented employees holding sales-related jobs are given the most attention by management in the studied banks. Regarding practical implications, the banking community and practitioners’ focus should be imparted to soft skills development and integrity control in order to foster employee performance and attitudes. Attention should be paid not only to sales positions, but also to other positions within the bank. This study is one of a few which explores talent concepts and TM approaches in the banking sector in general and Vietnamese banking field in particular.

The paper examines the influence of profitability on distance to default (DD) in Vietnam securities market. The investigated sampl e consists of 211 companies listed on HOSE during 18 years from 2010 to 2017. We apply KMV model to calculate distance to d efault and use both macroeconomics factors and firm specific factors as independent variables. Using General Least Squared (GL S) method, we find evidence to confirm the positive relationship between profitability and distance to default. This result showed t hat, although profitability did not directly reflect the cash flow generated, a good profitable enterprise would be an important facto r to help facilitate and generate cash flow and at the same time debt was guaranteed when it was due. Besides, the test results rev ealed that the financial structure and sales on assets have the inverse effect on the distance to default at the significance level o f 5%. The results also revealed that a group of macro factors had an influence on the distance to default of businesses, including spre ad, GDP and trade balance (via exchange rates). Gross domestic income had certain impacts on the distance to default of businesse s. This was also a basic indicator measuring the national economic cycle.