Introduction The most effective and affordable public health strategy to prevent
hypertension, stroke and renal disease is by reducing daily salt consumption.
Therefore, this study aims to determine the association of knowledge, attitude
and practice on salt diet intake and to identify foods contributing to high
sodium intake.
Methods Secondary data analysis was performed on MySalt 2016 data. It was
conducted from November 2015 until January 2016 which involving Ministry
of Health Staff worked at 16 study sites in Malaysia. Salt intake was
measured using 24 hours urinary sodium excretion. Food frequency
questionnaire was used to determine the sodium sources. Knowledge, attitude
and practice of salt intake were assessed using a validated questionnaire
adapted from WHO. Demographic data and anthropometric measures also
were collected. Sodium levels of more than 2400mg/day was categorised as
high sodium intake. Data were analysed using SPSS software version 21.
Results The mean sodium intake estimated by 24 hours urinary sodium excretion was
2853.23 + 1275.8 mg/day. Food groups namely rice/noodles (33.8%),
sauces/seasoning (20.6%), meat and poultry (12.6%) and fish/seafoods
(9.3%) were the major contributors of dietary sodium. In multiple logistic
regression analysis, being a male (aOR=2.83, 95% CI 2.02 – 3.96) and obese
(aOR=6.78, 95% CI 1.98 – 23.18) were significantly associated with high
urinary sodium excretions. In addition, those who were unsure that high salt
intake can cause hypertension (aOR=1.24, 95% CI 0.65 – 2.36), those who
think that they consumed too much salt (aOR=2.10, 95% CI 1.13 – 3.87) and
those who only use salt rather than other spices for cooking (aOR=2.07, 95%
CI 1.29 – 3.30) were significantly associated with high urinary sodium
excretion.
Conclusions This study showed that the main sources of sodium among Malay healthcare
staff is cooked food. Poor knowledge and practice towards reducing salt
consumption among them contributes to the high sodium consumption. The
practice of healthy eating among them together with continuous awareness
campaign is essential in order to educate them to minimize sodium
consumption and to practice healthy eating.
Heavy metal ions contamination has become more serious which is caused
by the releasing of toxic waterfrom industrial area and landfill that are very
harmful to all living organism especially human and can even cause death
if contaminated in small amount of heavy metal concentration. Currently,
peoples are using classic method namely electrochemical treatment,
chemical oxidation/reduction, chemical precipitation and reverse osmosis
to eliminate the metal ions from toxic water. Unfortunately, these methods
are costly and not environmentally friendly as compared to bioadsorption
method, where agricultural waste is used as biosorbent to remove heavy
metals. Two types of agricultural waste used in this research namely oil
palm mesocarp fiber (Elaesis guineensis sp.) (OPMF) and mangrove bark
(Rhizophora apiculate sp.) (MB) biomass. Through chemical treatment,
the removal efficiency was found to improve. The removal efficiency is
examined based on four specification namely dosage, of biosorbent to
adsorb fourtypes of metalsion explicitly nickel, lead, copper, and chromium.
The research has found that the removal efficiency of MB was lower than
OPMF; whereas, the multiple metals ions removal efficiency decreased in
the order of Pb2+ > Cu2+ > Ni2+ > Cr2+.
Food additives may come from natural and chemical sources. In some countries, this ingredient is coded
into e-numbering system. E-Number identifies the additive substance, and it can be used to determine
its possible sources hence the halal status and its value for health. However the use of scientific name
or the coded number is confusing to consumers. This article presents an android-based mobile
application that provides a database access to the detailed information about the additives. Information
retrieval is done based on rule-based technique. The application also offers customer profiling services
whereby upon user registration and sharing current health conditions, the consumer will be provided
with extra information on the possible consequences of consuming the food. The system prototype
system was analysed for the usability in terms of user satisfactions using System Usability Scale (SUS).
The user satisfaction is rated from good to excellent according to SUS score in the range of 70%-80%.
The application is expected to increase consumers’ awareness of choosing the right food that is halal
and healthy.
Eradication of tuberculosis seems to be a long way off especially with the growing of drug resistance tuberculosis and HIV co-infection tuberculosis. The gaps in our knowledge and the limited sensitive and specific biomarkers especially for latent tuberculosis infection make it defensive. The fate of tuberculosis treatment ranged from cured to failure and there are many risk factors involved apart from the immune state and age. Therefore, this review focuses on the understanding of tuberculosis disease progression and the associated risk factors of the events in the disease progression. This article also highlights the diagnostic and predictive marker that may predict the disease progression. In addition, this review highlights the potential use of rifabutin in tuberculosis treatment regimen. It is hoped that this review could give an overview on future directions of research in tuberculosis.
Occupational health is considered as a crucial element in almost every Small
and Medium Industries (SMIs) and it is believed to be one of vital challenges
that can influence productivity and competitiveness. It has been known that
the metal stamping industry involved a lot of materials handling tasks such as
carrying stamped parts from machine to packaging section, transferring moulds
from tools store to machines, sorting the finished products and others.
Appropriate materials handling equipments are not often provided in SMIs
because of the limitation of capital and lack of ergonomics awareness. The
workers have to handle the materials and goods manually. These practices
may lead to occupational injuries particularly back pain and musculoskeletal
injuries. The objectives of the research are to assess and analyze the muscles
activity of workers in metal stamping industry. Three male workers who
performed metal stamping process using manual technique were participated
in the research. Ergonomic assessment associated with Surface
Electromyography (SEMG) was used to capture and interpret the data related
to muscles activity at before and after the ergonomic intervention. For the
purpose of muscle activity assessment, SEMG electrodes were attached to eight
critical muscles: deltoid muscle-medial part (left), deltoid muscle-medial part
(right), trapezius muscle (left), trapezius muscle (right), erector spinae muscle
(left), erector spinae muscle (right), gastrocnemius muscle (left) and
Introduction: Myopia has been regarded as an important cause of blindness and visual impairment by WHO. Due to higher incidence of myopia in a preterm baby with ROP, early detection and visual rehabilitation need to commence as soon as possible to give the children better quality of life and prevent blindness in this population. To determine the prevalence of ROP and refractive status in premature infants in Sabah Women and Children Hospital, Kota Kinabalu in 2018. To establish the relationship between low BW and GA with the presentation of ROP.
PMMA polymer microfiber doped Multi Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs) was reported for alcohol sensing application. The sensitivity of the sensor is increasing relatively with the increment of the alcohol concentration which affects the transmission output power. However, the challenges are on choosing the right material and the simplicity on the fabrication of microfiber sensor for an improvement of the sensitivity of the sensor. A PMMA polymer microfiber doped MWCNTs was introduced for an application of alcohol detection system. Direct drawing technique was used to form a uniform waist size of microfiber sensor with 6µm diameter and 5mm length respectively. The performance of the fabricated sensor was tested with two types of alcohol, namely ethanol and 2-propanol at concentrations varying from 2% to 8% with 2% intervals. The performance which includes sensitivity, linearity and resolution were studied and analysed for the undoped PMMA and PMMA doped MWCNTs-doped polymer microfiber. The PMMA doped MWCNTs sensor which exhibited higher sensitivity for ethanol sensing with 83.23dBm/% with a linearity of 99.96% and a sensitivity of 73.75dBm/% with linearity 99.82% for 2- propanol sensing. The resolution has improved significantly by 0.0004% and 0.0007% respectively. In conclusion, PMMA doped MWCNTs was able to increase the sensitivity as well as the reproducibility of the microfiber sensor for the alcohol detection system.
Ineffective construction waste management has become a serious problem that impacted significantly to environmental pollutions especially in a developing country like Malaysia. Despite the enactment of law by the government, Malaysia is still far behind as compared to other countries like Denmark and Hong Kong in terms of implementation of recycling and reuse of construction waste. Recycling and reuse of waste materials seems to be a profitable method that will boost the
lifetime of landfills and cut down the usage of virgin natural resources. This paper discusses the practices of recycling and reuse of construction waste materials in the Klang Valley. A questionnaire survey was administered to 117 respondents from construction companies. The most common types of construction waste materials that can be recycled and reused are concrete, metal, asphalt, brick, plastic, cardboard, timber and glass. A descriptive analysis using Relative Important Index (RII) was used to rank the items asked in the survey. It was found that the most frequent types of recycling and reuse of construction waste materials based on ranking is timber,
while the key benefit of recycle and reuse of construction waste is reduction of landfill space. On the other hand, the key challenge that affects recycling and reuse of construction waste is the risk of contamination. This study is beneficial for all parties involved in construction activities to achieve a more sustainable construction in Malaysia and throughout the world.
Dyslexia is developed by neurobiological in origin which is categorized as
learning disorder that affect the ability to read, spell, write and speak. The
most common dyslexia symptom can easily be identified through the
handwriting pattern. There are many intelligence and computational
methods that have been proposed, and they have provided various and
different performance to evaluate the proposed system ability. However,
system performances are varied and nonstandardized in each assesment on
dyslexic children to validate the presence of dyslexia symptom. The recent
deep learning models have been employed to improve the assesment
performance and (the models/ they have shown) shows significant output to
detect and classify the present of dyslexia symptoms among school children.
Therefore, there is a crucial need in deep learning, specifically for
Convolutional Neural Network ( CNN) to validate performances of different
networks, so that the most performed CNN could be a bench mark in
evaluation to detect such symptom. This study aims to compare different deep
learning networks specifically the CNN models to validate its performance
in terms of the capability to classify dyslexic handwriting among school
children. This study is proposed to compare different CNN models such as
CNN-1, CNN-2, CNN-3 and LeNet-5. The proposed methods to compare the
CNN performances are developed by using Jupyter notebook as platform.
Meanwhile, keras is the higher-level API framework to provide a more
flexible way for defining models. It specifically allows to define multiple
input or output models as well as models that share layers. The tensorflow is
also used for machine learning applications such as neural networks. Before
that, the dataset of handwriting image is preprocessed by the augmentation
process which includes the rotation of all images. CNN models have shown
significant performance and provided sufficient results of performance with
more than 87% of accuracy in classifying the potential dyslexia symptom
based on handwritten images.
This study aims to determine the refractive error status of Orang Asli children and Malay-Jawa children in Kuala Langat, Selangor. Visual acuity was measured using LEA chart, followed by dry static retinoscopy which the testing eye fogged with 2.00D, and the contralateral eye fogged with 6.00D to determine the refractive errors. The inclusion criteria encompassed all children in the selected village. The exclusion criteria included children who were already on ophthalmology follow-up for known ocular conditions and refused visual acuity assessment or eye examination. In total, 103 ‘Orang Asli’ and 107 normal population children aged 3 to 13 years received refractive assessments. Approximately 18% of reported cases were myopia, 43% were hyperopia, while 39% were emmetropia. Results showed that the ‘Orang Asli’ population was more hyperopic than the Malay-Jawa (U = 4893.500, P > 0.05, r = 0.14). However, both groups were found more hyperopic compared to myopic conditions. In conclusion, both Orang Asli and Malay-Jawa in Kuala Langat, Selangor are more hyperopic and less myopic. This study suggests that refractive error screening is important for preventing visual impairment among children in rural areas.
To determine the prevalence of depression and its relationship with health related quality of life among prostate cancer patients in tertiary medical centres, Kuala Lumpur.
Introduction: Although urinary incontinence is commonly associated with increasing parity, there is however a lack of published data on urinary incontinence among primiparous women. This study aims to determine its prevalence among primiparous women at 6-8 weeks postpartum, its risk factors and effects to their quality of life. Methods: This is a crosssectional study involving primiparous women at 6-8 weeks postpartum. Women in their third trimester were recruited using convenience sampling. Data were obtained using a study proforma, and International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire – Short Form (ICIQSF) over a face-to-face interview. The same questionnaire with additional enquiries on delivery was completed over a telephone interview at 6-8 week postpartum. Data were analysed using chi-square and simple logistic regression tests contained in the Statistical Package for Social Science version 20.0. Results: Three hundred and six women participated in this study. The prevalence of urinary incontinence in the third trimester of pregnancy was 34.3% (95%CI: 29.0, 39.7) and dropped to 5.2% (95% CI: 2.7, 7.7) at 6-8 weeks postpartum. Childhood enuresis and postpartum body mass index were the two factors that showed significant association with postpartum urinary incontinence. Urinary incontinence in 95 (31%) women had resolved by 6-8 weeks postpartum, whereas 10 (3.3%) women still had persistent symptom. A small proportion of women (2.0%) developed urinary incontinence in the postpartum period. Majority of women with urinary incontinence did not feel it significantly affected their quality of life. The ICIQ- SF mean score was 6.13 (range 2- 12). Conclusions: Postpartum urinary incontinence is rather uncommon among primiparous women and does not seem to affect their quality of life. Childhood enuresis and postpartum BMI were risk factors associated with postpartum urinary incontinence.
For centuries, people have been practising phytomedicine in treating ailments or reducing risk of suffering certain diseases. It is considered as a part of an ancient medicine with interest in it becomes rapidly escalating in this modern era. Expansive and prescribed medicine is not the only true path to treat various illnesses. Without disclaiming the modern medicine, herbs can be used as an alternative or a combined therapy with conventional medication. Phytomedicine or ethnomedicine is not a new
field in the world of research. It has been started long ago since the ancient times. As we realized the expensive modern medication is not the only mean to treat illness, interest in the discovery of remedy through natural or conventional products has become more escalating. (Copied from article)
The radiographer's role in the imaging field is producing the best image to diagnose. Hence, this study is conducted to justify the ability of radiographers in terms of diagnostic performance and visual search patterns during radiographic image interpretation based on their experience. The musculoskeletal radiographic images were chosen as radiographers are expected to perform image interpretation in the red dot system as one of the expanded and extended roles of the radiographer. Sensitivity and specificity in the detection of abnormality are measured. The gaze plot, fixation count and duration are compared between groups of radiographers by using an eye tracker. 19 radiographic images consist of upper and lower extremities are used as stimuli in this study. The result from this study shows no significant difference in terms of sensitivity and specificity with a p-value of 0.818 and 0.146 respectively. For visual search pattern, two images have significant different in term of fixation count (Image 1, p = 0.017; Image 2, p = 0.042) and two images in fixation duration (Image 1, p = 0.001; Image 15, p = 0.021). The gaze plot is not different from an unstructured pattern and less coverage. In conclusion, the experience did not give an influence on the radiographic image interpretation. This may suggest that specific training in areas appropriate to the development of the radiographer could improve the image interpretation.
Protein-based films are thin and flexible films derived from protein sources. They are
completely biodegradable and used in food engineering, packaging, drug recovery, and other
applications. In food packaging, gelatin is widely used due to properties such as low cost,
availability, functional attributes, mechanical (flexibility and tension) and optical (brightness
and opacity) strength, barrier against gas flow, and structural resistance to water and
microorganisms. Therefore, this paper reviews the characterisation of biodegradable
protein-based films from gelatin alternatives, mainly from fish and chicken skin, as food
packaging materials. The properties of film packaging derived from gelatin alternatives were
compared with films derived from mammalian gelatin. The findings showed that the blended
gelatin alternatives with polysaccharide improved physical properties such as water vapour
permeability, gas permeability, light transmission and transparency, thermal properties,
microstructure, colour, and heat sealability. Moreover, improvements in mechanical
properties such as tensile strength and elongation at break were also investigated. This review
also comes out with suggestions for future research on the compatibility between gelatin films
and food ingredients. This paper provides a comprehensive overview that promotes the
development of biodegradable blended films from gelatin alternatives for packaging
applications in the food industry and related fields.
Malaysian construction firms have increasingly gained investment opportunities in foreign countries pushed by the competitive and saturated domestic market. However, the entry location decision involves complex factors to be considered by these firms prior to their international operations. Currently, based on a secondary data obtained from the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) Malaysia, there are twelve (12) firms that are actively operating in international markets. The main objective of this preliminary study is to develop an entry location assessment criteria (ELAC) model based on the performance of Malaysian construction firms in international markets. The ELAC formula was derived through a development of taxonomy criteria from previous studies. The construction firms’ performance was analyzed and ranked using a weightage score characterized under three (3) dimensions of country with the taxonomy criteria. First dimension involves entry location decision to countries in ASEAN, Non-ASEAN and both regions, while the second dimension involves entry location decision to ASEAN, Asia, Africa, United States of America and Europe while the third dimension involves entry location decision to countries categorized as Developing Countries (DLC); Least Developed Country (LDC); Newly Industrialized Countries (NIC); Developed Countries (DC); and Highly Developed Countries (HDC). The ELAC score shows that three (3) construction firms which are, Sapura Energy Berhad (66%), Gamuda Berhad (53%) and Sime Darby Berhad (50%) have sustained international operations in various locations by obtaining an ELAC score of more than 50% by venturing to ASEAN countries, developing countries and developed countries. Even though his study is limited to Malaysian construction firms, it provides significant information and contributes to the current knowledge in international market expansion. This ELAC model is useful especially for construction firms that are just beginning to explore foreign business opportunities or for the global players that are expanding geographically to new international markets.
Introduction: Police work has been recognised worldwide as a very stressful job. Those especially in road traffic control department encounter an additional possible cause of fatigue which is noise exposure that rarely being explored. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among traffic police officers in Kuala Lumpur to assess their level of fatigue and its risk factors including noise exposure, work stressors and individual factors. A total of 171 traffic police officers in Kuala Lumpur participated in this study. A set of questionnaires on socio-demographics, work characteristics, perception regarding noise pollution, PSQ and CIS were distributed to 200 traffic police officers in Kuala Lumpur. Five locations with heavy traffic volume in Kuala Lumpur were selected for ambient noise measure- ment, three times a day during peak hour by SLM. Results: The mean age, job tenure and BMI of respondents was 30.49±7.12yo, 4.73±4.62 years and 24.83 respectively. Most of them were Malay (81.9%), married (60.8%), and secondary school graduated (84.8%). The traffic noise exposure levels ranged between 69.50 dB(A) to 82.80 dB(A) (mean = 76.77±4.39 dB(A). Almost 20% of respondents reported to have fatigue level that puts them at risk for sub- sequent work disability. After considering several potential factors, lower educational levels (β=-3.67, p
Introduction: Multidrug resistance bacteria is alarming worldwide. A lot of research were done and are ongoing to search for the best, convenient and economically affordable ways to fight them. With the latest genome editing tool; Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology, this research was performed to develop a novel strategy to genetically modify the genome and inhibit the growth of Klebsiella pneumoniae (UPM ESBLKP1), an Extended Spectrum Beta Lactamases (ESBL) organism. Methods: A CRISPR-Cas9 vector was construct- ed together with guide RNAs designed specifically for the targeted uppP gene, a gene responsible for bacterial cell growth and protection. Results: The growth and cell wall integrity of the modified Klebsiella pneumoniae (UPM ESBLKP1) were significantly inhibited and reduced, respectively. Interestingly, wild type Klebsiella pneumoniae showed a normal growth curve while modified strains showed a faster doubling rate when supplemented with Luria-Bertani media. In contrast, slower growth rate of modified strain was observed in the M9 minimal media. This explained the higher doubling rate of mutants on nutrient rich medium earlier is being related to gene recovery. They grew slowly in the minimal media as they were adapting to a new environment while recovering the uppP gene and surviving, proving the success of its gene modification. Conclusion: The developed CRISPR-gRNA system was able to modify the targeted Klebsiella pneumoniae gene hence providing an opportunity to develop a new drug for Klebsiella pneumoniae infection as an alternative to antibiotics.
This conceptual study highlights the relationship between several variables that influence guest’s satisfaction to use self-service technologies in hotel industry. Nowadays, with all kinds of technologies at one’s fingertips, it makes a lot of sense to do without human contact. The evolution of reservation systems, the internet, the smartphone and other technologies now provide significant convenience and savings to hotel guests. In order to facilitate efficient and effective service delivery, hotels are introducing self-service technologies (SSTs) at an increasing pace. By understanding this relationship, it will provide different perspectives of guest’ satisfaction to use SSTs. The objective of this study is to discuss the factors that influence guest’s satisfaction in using SSTs in hotel industry. By referring to the previous research on SSTs, it was found that ease of use, reliability, technology readiness, and interactivity were among the factors enormously discussed by previous researcher. Previous studies have dealt with the consumer’s intention in influencing them to use SSTs in Tourism and Hospitality Industry but only few highlighted the relationship between SSTs with consumer’s satisfaction in hotel industry. Therefore, in this study, researchers will try to gather the literatures that may support the fact that most of hotel business should focus more on the SSTs in enhancing guest experience while staying at hotel premise directly satisfying their needs and wants.
As age advances most of body system will follow a process of deterioration too and the same goes for reproductive health. There is a gap between the prevalence of reproductive health disorders and rates of treatment. This gap among middle aged and older men is still wide compared to other chronic disease. In Islam, seeking medical treatment for the cure of diseases is part of the Prophet’s tradition and the Prophet (PBUH.) said in the Hadith the following: “For every disease there is a medicine, and if that medicine is applied to the disease, he will recover by Allah’s Leave.” Therefore the aim of this study is to identify a health seeking behaviour among men in for men’s health (MH) disorders in Kuantan. A cross sectional study was conducted among 157 respondents from four governments agencies and the data was collected using self-administered questionnaire modified from a valid and reliable measure. The results showed that 68.2% of the respondents (n=107) have high attitude in seeking for health regarding men’s health while for the rest of the respondents (n=50, 31.8%) have low attitude in seeking for MH. Men from the Service factor are perceived the highest compared the other two factors which are cultural and economic factors. This study showed that MH that includes reproductive disorders has always been taken lightly by the community itself. A Lack of awareness regarding ME issue causes men to ignore the importance of health screening. This should be improved in order to produce a healthy community for better Ummahsince good heredity begins with good ME.