India

Xiazhi (midsummer) in Vietnam is also the onslaught of heat, rainfall, humidity, mosquitoes, flies and related summer illness. However, Xiazhi brings myriad of delicious fruits, among the prince of our fruits, is the lychee. Duanwu Festival in Vietnamese culture is a celebration for harvest and worshiping ancestors, to show our gratitude to gods and our eagerness to see bumper autumn harvest. Duanwu marks the start of new farming season in Vietnam. In the early morning of the Duanwu Day, right after waking up, people eat lychees, plums, ash cakes, and sticky rice wine to kill insects and diseases. Lychees and these Vietnamese delicacies are believed to help people getting rid off insects and protecting the crops during summer. Growing up in Hai Duong and Bac Giang provinces, lychee is now providing lifeline for many Vietnamese farmers. These major lychee growing localities harvest about 200,000 tonnes of the fruit annually, 10 percent of Vietnam’s lychee production destined for export. Lychees, famous for their reddish skin and delicious, jelly-like pulp are most favored fruit in Vietnam in the summer. Sweet, succulent, subtle in fragrance, lychee is crowned “Lucky Fruit”, “Fruit of Love” or “Fruit of Romance” in Vietnam. Lychee is native to Northern Vietnam thanks to suitable climate conditions and is believed to be indigenous to the localities along the Red River since 100 years B.C. Glossy, succulent and heavenly sweet, lychees have all in its auspicious properties and were believed to bring lucky, prosperity and fertility. In the long list of healthy fruits, lychee was the leading with numerous attributing, from source of dietary fibers, vitamins and minerals, pain reliever to cure for cancer and kidney disease! Lychee is a natural cosmetic to moisturize skin, reduce wrinkles, keep hair healthy, and strengthen bones. Over the years, lychee cultivation spread to neighboring countries such as China, Myanmar, India and recently to Madagascar, South Africa, …

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With the highly contagious UK and Indian variants of COVID-19 detected in Vietnam, testing must be considered one of the most important parts of the fight against the pandemic, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said. Medical workers prepare to take samples for COVID-19 testing in Da Nang. The minister was speaking at the meeting of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on Monday morning. The country reported 125 locally acquired infections yesterday, the highest daily spike since the fourth wave began on April 27 and since the pandemic began earlier last year. The Indian variant, present in various clusters in the current outbreaks, was more transmissible and can spread quickly through the air, especially in closed spaces, Long said, adding that it was necessary to prepare for a worse scenario. Long said Vietnam’s testing capacity now was 1.7 times higher than during last year’s Da Nang outbreak, or the country's second wave. The health ministry agreed to deploy antigen tests in crowded public places, especially in factories and accommodation sites, so COVID-19 screening can be done regularly and yield faster results. Likewise, health authorities will also use antigen testing to screen arrivals in centralised quarantine so different measures can be put in place timely. Minister Long also asked that hospitals with more than 300 beds set up a real-time-PCR laboratory to confirm suspected COVID-19 cases and avoid having to send samples elsewhere. The health ministry has proposed a plan to respond to the scenario in which Vietnam reports up to 50,000 infections but the national steering committee decided that at this time, the country must prepare to deal with a scenario of 30,000 infections. At present, Vietnam can deal with 10,000 infections properly, according to the committee. Experts attending the meeting agreed that the pandemic resurgence was developing in a complex manner with highly contagious …

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Tran Kha Vy, 23, has had quite an experience studying abroad at Minerva Schools at KGI (USA), which has an acceptance rate of only 1.8%. Tran Kha Vy Vy always had a dream of studying abroad. After graduating from high school, she spent a year as a freshman majoring in Medical Techniques at International University, Vietnam National University - HCM City. “Despite my major in literature since 8th grade, I’m not so much the ‘dreamy’ type as I’m a thinker and a problem solver. That’s why I decided to follow a different path going to college.” Vy won a chance to present one of her projects at MIT after winning the VietChallenge contest in 2017. This further encouraged her desire to study abroad. With the help of a friend, she applied for and won a full scholarship at the Minerva Schools program. Sharing her experience at Minerva, Vy said she especially loves the flexible study program, in which students get to choose the subjects they’d like to learn. The teachers focus on practicing problem solving rather than theory learning. Each semester is spent in a different country. She has studied in the US, South Korea, India and Taiwan. The adventures through many foreign lands gave Vy an understanding of cultural diversity, interracial working culture, unemployment and homelessness problems in the US, sexism in India, and more. Studying in Silicon Valley had made Vy even more passionate about Computer Science and she decided to follow this field. Ever since her freshman year, Vy had always been looking for opportunities of internship. Her first one was at Keck Graduate Institute (California), where she participated in collecting data to develop an AI designed to diagnose and predict possible symptoms for type 2 diabetes. For her sophomore year, she interned at the Particles Physics Lab at Hanyang University, helping classify and specify particles from CERN CMS trial data. Vy continued to study and develop medical AI applications at AI …

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