Pollen micro-morphological features have proven to be helpful for the plant taxonomists in the identification and classification of plants. The utilization of this plantmayhelpfulin the areas of lignocellulosic conversion to biofuels and diversify application toward biomass. The current study was planned with the aim to evaluate the pollen features of complex Ranunculaceous flora of District Chitral, Northern Pakistan using both scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Light Microscope (LM) for their taxonomic importance. Pollens of 18 Ranunculaceous species belonging to 6 genera were collected from different localities of the research area. SEM and LM were used to examine both qualitative and quantitative micro-morphological features. Sculptring of the sexine include; Scabrate, psilate, echinate, verrucate, perforate gemmate, and reticulate and so forth. Shape of the pollens was sub-spheroidal, spheroidal, prolate, subprolate and oblate and so forth. Type of pollen was ranged from mono to tricolpate and tricolporate. Quantitative characters include length/width of the pollen, colpus, exine thickness, and P/E ratio. Based on these micro-morphological features a taxonomic key was prepared for the fast and correct identification. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT: Study of the pollen micro-morphological features of Ranunculaceous species by SEM and LM. Analysing both qualitative and quantitative characters of the pollens. Preparation of taxonomic key based on micro-morphological features for the correct and fast identification.
Introduction: Patient advocacy is a central concept for the profession of nursing as it assures patient rights and safety. This article presents the findings from a study which explored the perceptions of patient advocacy from Muslim ICU nurses. Methods and participants: Our study utilized a constructivist grounded theory approach. Thirteen registered intensive care nurses from an adult critical care setting in a tertiary academic teaching hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, participated in the study. The researcher employed semi-structured interviews that were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim, with an additional data collection strategy of reflective journaling. A reflective journal was provided to all study participants following each interview. Results: The study generated codes which connected to vulnerable patients, and subsequently identified a core category of “Caring critically” which was exemplified by six additional inter-related advocacy categories of “Essential caring”; “Vulnerable-acy”; “Familial-acy”; “Cultural-acy”; “Religion-acy”; and “Human-acy”. These categories generated the model for patient advocacy. Conclusion: The pyramid of patient advocacy can be applied in clinical practice to guide Muslim nurses, in addition to being utilized in the educational setting as a standard to teach registered nurses about the role and responsibilities of a patient advocate.
Protein function depends greatly on its structure. Based on this principle, it is vital to study the
protein structure in order to understand its function. This study attempts to build the predicted
model of lipase gene in Rhodococcus sp. NAM81 using homology modelling method. The
predicted structure was then used to investigate the function of protein through several
bioinformatic tools. The DNA sequence of lipase gene was obtained from the Rhodococcus sp.
NAM81 genome scaffold. Blastx analysis showed 100% identity to the target enzyme andthe
appropriate template for homology modelling was determined using Blastp analysis. The 3D
protein structure was built using two homology modelling software, EsyPred3D and Swiss
Model Server. Both structures built obtained LGScore of greater than 4, which means they are
extremely good models according to ProQ validation criteria. Both structures also satisfied the
Ramachandran plot structure validation analysis. The predicted structures were 100% matched
with each other when superimposed with DaliLite pairwise. This shows that both structure
validation servers agreed on the same model. Structure analysis using ProFunc had found seven
motifs and active sites that indicate similar function of this protein with other known proteins.
Thus, this study has successfully produced a good 3D protein structure for the target enzyme.
The increase of anthropogenic activities and growth of technology in Antarctica is fuelled by the high demand for petroleum hydrocarbons needed for daily activities. Oil and fuel spills that occur during explorations have caused hydrocarbon pollution in this region, prompting concern for the environment by polar communities and the larger world community. Crude oil and petroleum hydrocarbon products contain a wide variety of lethal components with high toxicity and low biodegradability. Hydrocarbon persistence in the Antarctic environment only worsens the issues stemming from environmental pollution as they can be long-term. Numerous efforts to lower the contamination level caused by these pollutants have been conducted mainly in bioremediation, an economical and degrading-wise method. Bioremediation mainly functions on conversion of complex toxic compounds to simpler organic compounds due to the consumption of hydrocarbons by microorganisms as their energy source. This review presents a summary of the collective understanding on bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbons by microorganisms indigenous to the Antarctic region from past decades to current knowledge.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the level of psychosocial burden and its associated risk factors among women with abnormal Pap smear and post colposcopy.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted employing universal sampling of 218 respondents with abnormal Pap smear and post colposcopy. They fulfilled the specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Three tertiary hospitals in the East Coast of Malaysia were participated. Self-administration of validated Malay-version Psychosocial Effect of Abnormal Pap smear Questionnaire was used to assess the psychosocial burden. The General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) was applied to assess the general health factor. Data was analyzed using IBM-SPSS of version 22.
Results: The results showed that respondents with an abnormal Pap smear and post-colposcopy women (43.1%) demonstrated a high level of psychosocial burden. The significant risk factor of psychosocial burden was living in an urban and semi-urban area of residence (p≤0.001) and distress condition (p≤0.001) respectively.
Conclusions: A substantial number of women with abnormal Pap smear results were experiencing psychosocial burden. Women with an abnormal Pap-smear who were living in the urban and semi-urban and distressed were more likely to experience a higher psychosocial burden.
In this paper, the syntheses of kojic acid esters via chemical and enzymatic methods are
reviewed. The advantages and disadvantages of chemical process in term of process, safety and
efficiency are discussed. In enzymatic process, the significant process parameters related to the
synthesis of kojic acid esters such as the lipases, solvent, temperature and water content are
highlighted. Possible enzymatic synthesis using solvent and solvent-free system taking into
consideration of the difference in these systems involving cost, lipase reusability and efficiency
is comparatively reviewed. The possible approach for large scale production using various
enzyme reactor designs is also discussed and re-evaluated.
Filamentous fungi such as Fusarium equiseti KR706303 and Penicillium citrinum KR706304
are capable of sequestering heavy metals from aqueous solutions. In the present study, the role
play by various functional groups present in the cell wall of F. equiseti KR706303 and P.
citrinum KR706304 during lead and copper ions biosorption was investigated. The fungal
biomass was chemically treated to modify the functional groups present in their cell wall. These
modifications were studied through biosorption experiments. It was found that an esterification
of the carboxyl and phosphate groups, methylation of the amine groups and extraction of lipids
significantly decrease the biosorption of both lead and copper ions studied. Therefore, the
carbonyl, hydroxyl and amide groups were recognized as important in the biosorption of metal
ions by the tested fungi. The study showed that there was no release of any metal ions from the
biomass after biosorption, indicating that ion exchange may not be a key mechanism in the
biosorption of lead and copper ions by these fungi but complexation of metal ions within the
fungal cell wall.
This study reports on the characterization of a purified AChE from Oreochromis mossambica
brain extract. The purification protocol involved the application of custom-synthesized affinity
chromatography gel (Edrophonium–Sephacryl S-400) and the use of high performance liquid
chromatography system (HPLC). Soluble AChE was partially purified 27.9 fold with a highest
specific activity around 73.1 × 103 U/mg proteins. The partially purified AChE higher capability
to hydrolyse acetylthiocholine (ATC) and shows less degradation against propionylthiocholine
(PTC) and also butyrylthiocholine (BTC). Based on enzyme kinetic analysis, the partially
purified AChE exhibits the apparent Michaelis constants Km, for ATC, PTC and BTC in the
range of 125, 260 and 600 μM and the maximum velocities Vmax were 276, 59 and 36
μmol/min/mg protein, respectively. The apparent inhibition constant (ki) values of eserine,
propidium and carbofuran were 0.24 μM-1min-1, 65 μM-1min-1 and 0.41 μM-1min-1 μM-1min-1,
respectively. The purified enzyme is apparently an AChE since it capable to hydrolyzes ATC at a
higher rate compared to other synthetic substrates, at pH 7.0 and 25ºC, and is inhibited by it
specific inhibitor which is eserine but not by iso-OMPA.
Observations on the effects of copper on the liver proteome of Puntius javanicus based on the
one dimensional PAGE was carried out. The liver was dissected from each fish, which was
separately treated with different concentrations of copper sulfate ranging from 0.1 to 5.0 mg/L.
The livers were extracted and one dimensional PAGE was performed under nonreducing
(native) and reducing (SDS)-PAGE. Several bands were resolved in the native PAGE with
probable candidates for the effect of copper observed showing an increased in the expression
and downregulation strongly associated with increasing copper concentrations. This study
showed that high concentrations of copper significantly alters P. javanicus liver at the proteome
level, and preliminary screening based on one dimensional PAGE is considered rapid and
simple to assess the toxicity effect of copper before more advanced and extensive assesment
with a second dimensional PAGE is carried out.
Biosurfactants are surface active compounds and amphiphatic in nature which consist of
hydrophilic head and hydrophobic tail accumulating at the interphase of two immiscible liquid
with different polarity. A study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of sunflower oil in
the production of rhamnolipids (RLs) by locally isolated Pseudomonas aeruginosa in shake flask
fermentation. In this process, four different fermentation treatments were done for seven days at
30°C and 180 rpm. Sampling was carried out in time intervals of 24 h followed by monitoring of
cell growth and biosurfactants production. Colorimetric Orcinol analysis was used for
determination of RLs concentrations (g/L). The RLs were studied for emulsification activity
using emulsification index (E24%) methods. In addition, oil displacement activity and thermal
stability were also studied (4-120°C). All treatments allow the growth of P. aeruginosa and the
utilization of sunflower oil as carbon source and glucose as growth initiator were observed to be
the best strategy for maximum RLs production. The maximum RLs production was achieved
after 120 h with 3.18 g/L of RLs. Diesel shows the highest emulsification activity among the
substrate tested ranging from 55.56% - 60.00%. The oil displacement activity was corresponding
to RLs concentration with stability up to 120°C (for 60 min). Therefore, from this research a
good potential of RLs that may provide good application for industry were produced.
Pollution in the environment is deteriorating the ecology due to human activities in a large array
of industrial and agricultural sectors. Bioassay of polluted waters using bioluminescent bacterium
has been touted as one of the most economical, rapid and sensitive tests. The growth of the
bacterium on seawater medium exhibited a typical sigmoidal profile. To extract important growth
parameters useful for further modelling exercise, various primary growth models were utilized in
this study such as Modified Logistic, modified Gompertz, modified Richards, modified Schnute,
Baranyi-Roberts, von Bertalanffy, Huang and the Buchanan three-phase model. The best
performance was Huang model with the lowest value for RMSE, AICc and the highest value for
adjusted R2. The AF and BF values were also excellent for the model with their values were the
closest to 1.0. The Huang parameters, which include A or Y0 (bacterial growth lower asymptote),
μm (maximum specific bacterial growth rate), l (lag time) and Ymax (bacterial growth upper
asymptote) were 7.866 (95% confidence interval of 7.850 to 7.883), 0.329 (95% confidence
interval of 0.299 to 0.359), 1.543 (95% confidence interval of 1.303 to 1.784) and 8.511 (95%
confidence interval of 0.299 to 0.359).
Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is an important bacterium with significant pathological implications
in the field of medicine. Attempting to cure bacterial infections at an advanced stage results in considerable waste
of time, effort and expenditure. Thus, the prevention of such illnesses is paramount. Besides using chemical
drugs to treat infections, several non-organic extracts have been tested in trials and been shown to impede the
bacteria’s growth. This paper proposes that the modified hydrothermal nanotitania extract has great potential to
combat this lethal organism. The viability of S. aureus was shown to be markedly reduced following the addition
of nanotitania extract with 0.01%, 0.03% and 0.05% silver after 24, 48, and 72 hours. The ability of the
nanotitania extract to inhibit the growth of S. aureus indicates its antimicrobial characteristics.
'Doa' is derived from Arabic word which means that one asks for the
fulfillment or a need or the cure of sickness from him/her. Having to search
and retrieve the relevant ‘doa’ for one needs at any particular time is
beneficial. There are some search and retrieval applications that require
using the exact match of the keyword search with the words stored in the
database. This approach leads to the retrieval of insignificant results as
users need to know the exact word to be searched. Therefore, this project
allows for partial keyword search that utilises N-gram method for the
search and retrieval process. Moreover, various words may have similar
meaning thus to increase the accuracy of the retrieved result, this project
compares the dice and overlap coefficient algorithms to find the synonyms
of the searched word. The result produced indicates that overlap coefficient
perform better than dice coefficient.
The aim of this paper is to determine tourists’ perceptions on spiritual experience, brand image,
cultural attributes and service quality they experienced in Kota Bharu, the capital and administration
centre of Kelantan, Malaysia. Kota Bharu was declared an Islamic City in 2005. It has many mosques,
various museums, unique architectural old buildings and palaces. As the number of tourist arrivals to
Kelantan is encouraging and contributing to the state income; it is important to examine what these
tourists perceive during their stays in Kota Bharu Islamic City. Variance Based Structural Equation
Modelling technique of Partial Least Square (PLS) was employed. The findings show that all the
variables are significantly influencing tourists’ perception except for service quality. In other words,
tourists’ perceptions of Kota Bharu are positively related to spirituality, brand destination and cultural
attributes. Tourists’ perceptions play a crucial role as this will affect the future tourist arrivals in the
state. Thus, the findings of the study will be useful in helping policy planners to understand how
tourists perceived Kota Bharu and design policies to increase tourism receipts and to preserve tourism
attributes.
Introduction The availability of obesity specific quality of life measurement tool is limited. The Malay version of Impact of Weight on Quality of Life-Lite is an obesity specific quality of life questionnaire which has been translated for use in Malaysia. The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity and reliability of this questionnaire to measure quality of life among different body mass index (BMI) groups.
Methods One hundred and twenty subjects with different BMI categories who attended an outpatient government clinic were recruited for this study. The translated Malay version of IWQOL-Lite was used to assess the impact of weight on quality of life of respondents. Content validity, criterion validity and construct validity were used to assess the questionnaire validity while internal consistencies and test-retest reliability were used to assess the questionnaire reliability.
Results The Malay version of IWQOL-Lite showed good psychometric properties. The content validity was agreed upon by expert panels. The mean score of all IWQOL-Lite domains were able to discriminate between different BMI groups. Good internal consistency was demonstrated by Cronbach alpha of 0.936. Test-retest reliability ranged from 0.828 to 0.932. The physical function score (IWQOL-Lite) correlated positively with Physical Component Summary of Short Form-36 questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis found that the questions loaded on their respective five domains.
Conclusions The results suggested that the Malay version of IWQOL-Lite is a valid and reliable tool to measure quality of life among obese and overweight subjects in Malaysia.
Technological innovations are significant in human and professional life. A new online correction and
prevention system called eTPP to replace old traditional system has introduced new major changes in
the reporting process. Therefore, this study was carried out to determine the level of user's acceptance
towards eTPP and to investigate the factors that influence user's behavioural intentions to use eTPP in
UiTM Cawangan Johor, Kampus Segamat. A Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was employed
as a conceptual framework to investigate the factors that influence users' acceptance to use eTPP. To
test the model, data were collected from 44 respondents from various departments in UiTM
Cawangan Johor, Kampus Segamat. Questionnaires were distributed to collect primary data from the
respondents about their acceptability of eTPP. The results were presented through multiple regression
analysis and supported by mediating analysis (Preacher and Hayes, 2008; Baron and Kenny, 1986),
whereby it showed consistent mediating result with the regression result. The overall finding of the
study showed that the perceived ease of use was the main factor influencing eTPP acceptance among
the users.
The purpose of this paper is to prepare a conceptual framework of hybrid lean and ergonomics for assembly manufacturing process based. The research used PDCA approach as a basis in linking the relationship between lean manufacturing and ergonomics. Comprehensive literature review identify the lean ergonomics issues, best practices, and also the way to improve the ergonomic conditions in the workplace, especially those impacting employees on the assembly process. The findings show that the job design strategies for reducing extreme injuries influence by repetitive tasks. Selections of lean tools and technique, human factors analysis and lean performance measure are the key point on the stages of the PDCA conceptual framework for lean ergonomics in working assembly process. This paper also demonstrates by continuous improvement applied between the elimination of waste and increased productivity and the impacts on the ergonomic conditions to carry out operations and consequently by improving the productivity and well-being of its employees based on implementation of PDCA conceptual frameworks.
The human foot serves as an important part to support
the body weight and accounts for the majority of our
movements. A mangled limb involves injury to at least
three out of four systems, namely the soft tissues, nerves,
blood supply and bone. While amputation is indicated in
some cases of mangled limb, with proper planning, limb
salvaging surgical management is also a viable option.
Special consideration to the skeletal stabilization, control
of infection, vascular status and soft tissue coverage is
paramount to the success of limb salvaging surgery. We
present a case of mangled limb which was successfully
treated with limb salvaging surgical management. Initial
debridement, Kirschner wires insertion and cross ankle
external fixation were used for skeletal stabilization. An
antibiotic spacer was inserted for local antibiotic and to
maintain the length left due to the loss of medial and
intermediate cuneiform bones. The anterior tibialis
artery and its venae comitantes were utilized for free
vascularized fibular graft to provide bony reconstruction
as well as soft tissue coverage for the mangled foot.
Empowering lay screeners, such as pre-school teachers, on vision screening is a cost-effective way to
ensure larger populations of children can be screened. Although the validity of lay screeners in conducting
vision screening were reported in several studies, none showed data concerning improvement of the level
of knowledge among lay screeners after completing vision screening training, which could indicate the
effectiveness of the training program. This study aimed to determine the level of knowledge of pre-school
teachers before and after attending a training program. Sixty pre-school teachers from Tabika and Taska KEMAS
were randomly selected. The Study Group (n = 30) was given theory and practical training on vision screening,
whereas the Control Group (n = 30) was only given brief verbal instructions on how to conduct the screening. A
theory test containing 15 questions related to the training modules were administered to both groups, before
and after their training/briefing respectively. The findings showed that the level of knowledge among preschool
teachers in the Study Group (73.24 ± 11.73%) was significantly higher than the Control Group (56.22
± 13.11%) (p < 0.01). There was also a significant improvement in the level of knowledge among pre-school
teachers in the Study Group after the training (p
Introduction: The incidence of dengue has risen dramatically high over the last few decades worldwide. Some three billion people are at risk of getting infected with dengue. In Malaysia the total number of dengue cases has been rising annually. In Perak, the number of cases for dengue fever and hemorrhagic dengue fever increased from 421 cases per 100000 population in 2012 to 1024 cases per 100000 in 2013 accounting for an increase of 143.2%. This study aimed to assess the knowledge, practice of preventive measures and effectiveness of health promotion related to dengue among residents of a village in Ipoh.
Methodology: This cross sectional study was conducted in 2015. Simple random sampling was applied to choose the samples.
Results and discussion: Out of a total of 408 respondents, 61.3% and 74% obtained good scores in knowledge and preventive practice measures respectively. The highest misconceptions occurred on behavior aspects of the Aedes mosquitoes (46.6%) and availability of vaccinations for dengue (40.7%) while 65% of respondents allow fogging activities to be conducted at 2pm (noon). Significant associations were shown between types of occupation and knowledge (p=0.017), level of education and practice (p=0.022), previous exposure among family members and practice (p=0.016), and between knowledge and practice (p=0.011). In conclusion, despite having good knowledge about dengue and potential breeding sites of the Aedes mosquito, the number of dengue cases rising could be due to a quarter of population having poor preventive practices.