A new species of gall crab is described from the free-living stony coral Trachyphylliageoffroyi. Specimens were collected during field work in Lembeh Strait (Indonesia) and off Kudat (Malaysian Borneo). This new species, here named Lithoscaptussemperi sp. n., is the ninth species assigned to the genus. It can be separated from its congeners by not having the internal orbital angle extending beyond the external orbital angle, and by the stout female P2 merus with prominent distomesial projection. In addition, the carapace surface appears smooth, despite having small tubercles on the anterior half, and is without noticeable spines, other than those on the frontal margin. The distinctive carapace pattern in life is a diagnostic character in male specimens.
Breast feeding has been actively encouraged in Malaysia in the last few years in all public hospitals. This study proposes to find out the prevalence of breast feeding in three villages in a rural community in Kedah, Malaysia. This was a cross sectional study on breastfeeding practices in Kubang Pasu, a district of Kedah. Majority of the mothers initiated breast feeding but exclusive breastfeeding was only 21% for four months and predominant breastfeeding was about 12.6%. The breastfeeding practice was more prevalent among women from the higher educational strata and higher income than those from the lower strata and lower income (p
One of the main characteristics of urbanization in Asia is the very rapid increase in population movement from rural to urban centers. This phenomenon has led to changing population structure, its composition and lifestyles in the cities and its fringes. As a consequent of population pressure on urban system and infrastructure, compounded by the nature of the composition of the in-migrant population, the urban concentrates are faced with several social and socio-economic problems. Although there has been a lot of interests among researchers to study the causes and effects or urbanization, there is a vacuum in the area of health implications. Planners and administrators usually give priority to the physical aspects of the urban and urbanities. Social problems and health implications thereof receives very little attention either at the level of administration or research. This paper therefore is a brave attempt to focus and draw some attention to this neglected area by looking at selected social problems and the health consequences.
The vector autoregressive (VAR) approach is useful in many situations involving model development for multivariables
time series. VAR model was utilised in this study and applied in modelling and forecasting four meteorological variables.
The variables are n rainfall data, humidity, wind speed and temperature. However, the model failed to address the
heteroscedasticity problem found in the variables, as such, multivariate GARCH, namely, dynamic conditional correlation
(DCC) was incorporated in the VAR model to confiscate the problem of heteroscedasticity. The results showed that the use
of the VAR coupled with the recognition of time-varying variances DCC produced good forecasts over long forecasting
horizons as compared with VAR model alone.
Signals consistent with the B_{c}^{+}(2S) and B_{c}^{*+}(2S) states are observed in proton-proton collisions at sqrt[s]=13 TeV, in an event sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 143 fb^{-1}, collected by the CMS experiment during the 2015-2018 LHC running periods. These excited b[over ¯]c states are observed in the B_{c}^{+}π^{+}π^{-} invariant mass spectrum, with the ground state B_{c}^{+} reconstructed through its decay to J/ψπ^{+}. The two states are reconstructed as two well-resolved peaks, separated in mass by 29.1±1.5(stat)±0.7(syst) MeV. The observation of two peaks, rather than one, is established with a significance exceeding five standard deviations. The mass of the B_{c}^{+}(2S) meson is measured to be 6871.0±1.2(stat)±0.8(syst)±0.8(B_{c}^{+}) MeV, where the last term corresponds to the uncertainty in the world-average B_{c}^{+} mass.
Substance abuse is one of the leading and most complicated health and social problems faced by our country. Unfortunately, after three decades of managing these problems, outcomes are unpromising and poor.(Copied from the article).
Introduction: Loneliness is a major social problem among the elderly that has gone through almost all countries in the world. Even though loneliness is seen as the health-threatening but, the loneliness assessment is still marginal- ized in routine medical check-up for every senior citizen. Methods: This is a sequential explanatory mixed-method study with a cross-sectional community survey was conducted among 380 community residence elderly followed by in-depth interview among eight respondents. This study aims to measure the loneliness and to explore loneliness experienced by older adults. Data were collected using the short form of Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S) and data were analysed using SPSS (version 23.0) for windows. In the qualitative study, eight re- spondents were interviewed face-to-face and data were analysed using thematic analysis Braun and Clarke (2006). Results: The results revealed that 37.2% of respondents had loneliness. Bivariate analyses showed the age, level of education and marital status were significantly associated with loneliness. The results of multiple logistic regression discovered gender (OR=1.75,95%CI:1.04-2.93; p=0.03) and marital status (OR=2.24,95%CI: 1.33-3.77;p= 0.002) were a significant predictor of loneliness. In a qualitative study, the result showed two main themes were recorded as causes of loneliness among the elderly are ‘changing the lifestyles’ and ‘ineffective communications. The sub-themes included ‘loss of someone who significant’, ‘limited physical mobility’, ‘all alone’ and ‘no support’. Conclusion: The issue of loneliness needs critically to be addressed even though Malaysia has not reached the ‘aging population’, but the loneliness prevalence experienced by the older adult has similarities with other countries that have attained that status.
Introduction : Social problems among adolescents are on the increasing trend. Their involvement in different kinds of high risk behaviours could lead them into juvenile delinquency. Early adolescence is the stage where they are easily influenced. However, this is the period where they should be captured for health prevention enhancement.
Objectives : A cross-sectional study was carried out to identify factors associated with risk taking behaviours involving form one adolescents in selected secondary schools in Johor Bharu.
Methods : Using self administered questionnaires, a total of 280 respondents were recruited via multi-stage sampling.
Results : The prevalence of risk taking behaviour among respondents was 66.8%. Going to video games and karaoke centres was the most popular risk taking behaviour (46.8%) to be followed by truancy (30.7%). Among all the factors studied, being male (AOR=4.5, 95% CI 2.39-8.4), Malay (AOR=7.5, 95% CI 3.30-17.19), and having negative perception towards teachers (AOR 0.3, 95% CI 0.16-0.65) were risk factors for such behaviour among respondents. However, coming from an intact family (AOR=0.1), 95% CI 0.02-0.47) was found to be protective against risk taking behaviour.
Conclusion : Intact family structure and having positive perception towards teachers were found to be protective against risk taking behaviours among adolescents.
In Islamic transaction, the disputations between two or more parties could affect the roles and responsibilities. Furthermore, when the court received a case from disputed parties, there will be a perception among each of parties of win-lose situation, whereby one party embellished with satisfaction, while the other party will beat in suffering, so the impact is the relationship between two parties are become farther. Therefore, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in Islamic Finance is suggested in by many Muslim economist and legal experts as a substitute to any further legal activities. This is because it will satisfy many of litigants and it provides a complementary substitute to litigation. The study about ADR in Islamic finance has been done by previous literature. By the way, the implementation of ADR in Islamic financial institutions still needs to be elaborated. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss about updated issues and challenges of implementations of ADR in Islamic finance. This paper found that the ADR in Islamic finance need a model to make the ADR more flexible and eligible with different kinds of conflicts.
The COVID-19 outbreak has had a catastrophic effect on the tourism sector and poverty alleviation efforts. This is especially the case, given the crucial role the tourism sector plays in poverty alleviation and the generation of foreign exchange earnings. This study investigates the moderating influence of extreme poverty on the underlying link between the size of the tourism industry and COVID-19 Economic Stimulus Packages (ESPs) while accounting for the influence of external debt. The results show that tourism-dependent economies with a larger share of individuals living in extreme poverty introduced larger ESPs to cushion the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, economies with larger external debt have less fiscal and monetary leeway to alleviate the negative effects of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Nurul Mahfuzah Ahmad Yani, Nur Zakirah Zahari, Nur Fatini Haziqah Abu Samah, Muhammad Ammar Faidhi Mohamed Azahar, Siti Munira Yasin, Mohd Shahril Ahmad Saman, et al.
Homelessness continues to exist in our country even though we hear of various initiatives that have been put in place to solve this ongoing issue. The objectives of this study are, first, to explore factors that lead to homelessness, second, to determine the associated medical conditions and third, to shed light on the views of homeless individuals regarding their future perspectives.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major medical and socioeconomic
problem. Patients with severe TBI shows physical and functional improvement but
remain with cognitive and psycho-social problem throughout recovery. Despite all the
issues, the impact of TBI on long-term survivors in Malaysia is unknown. The aim of this
study is to measure the functional level of ICU survivors with severe TBI within 6 months
post injury. (Copied from article).
Substance misuse, in particular heroin addiction contributes to health and social problems. Although effective medical treatment was available, earlier efforts confined the treatment of heroin addicts to in-house rehabilitation which required them to be estranged from the community and their families for 2 years. The in-house rehabilitative programme, implemented for at least three decades has produced low abstinence rates. On the other hand, being ‘away’ meant that many heroin addicts faced employment problems and family relationship difficulties upon completing the in-house rehabilitation. However, recently, the concerted efforts by various government and non-government organisations, and the acknowledgement that heroin addiction is a medical illness has resulted in a revamp to approaching treatment of heroin addiction. At present, methadone substitution programmes have been offered as part of treatment programme for heroin addicts in Malaysia. This new programme has been shown to be effective in treating heroin addiction and would need support and cooperation from all groups involved.
A new species of lowland freshwater crab of the family Gecarcinucidae, Salangathelphusa peractio, is described from Langkawi, an island off the northwestern coast of peninsular Malaysia. Salangathelphusa peractiosp. n. can be separated from S. brevicarinata (Hilgendorf, 1882) in having a proportionately broader external orbital tooth, a distinctly concave posterolateral margin, and the terminal segment of the male first gonopod is not distinctly bent laterally outwards; and from S. anophrys (Kemp, 1923) by its more quadrate carapace and the terminal segment of the male first gonopod possessing a relatively longer and less curved distal part. This is sixth wholly freshwater brachyuran species known from the island.
We analytically investigate two separated qubits inside an open cavity field. The cavity is initially prepared in a superposition coherent state. The non-locality correlations [including trace norm measurement induced non-locality, maximal Bell-correlation, and concurrence entanglement] of the two qubits are explored. It is shown that, the generated non-locality correlations crucially depend on the decay and the initial coherence intensity of the cavity field. The enhancement of the initial coherence intensity and its superposition leads to increasing the generated non-locality correlations. The phenomena of sudden birth and death entanglement are found.