Malaria is endemic in poverty-stricken regions of the world, and most diagnosis reveal comorbidity with other infectious diseases some of which manifest as a deformity of the structural arrangement of the Red Blood Cells (RBCs) during thin blood smear microscopy. This common occurring deformity is termed rouleaux formation, and it is the stacking together of RBCs like chains of coins. The presence of rouleaux formation indicates either a bacterial infection, connective tissue disease, chronic liver disease, multiple myeloma or diabetes among others, it is a highly common occurrence in malaria infected patients and according to the international council for standardization of hematology (ICSH), microscopists are mandated to report its presence. Hence to develop unbiased automated malaria diagnostic systems capable of being deployed in malaria endemic regions, these systems need to be capable of identifying rouleaux formation and detecting malaria parasite within such type of RBC. Thus, this study developed a thin blood smear dataset with rouleaux formation RBCs infected with two species of malaria parasite: plasmodium falciparum and plasmodium malariae. YOLOv9s architecture was used to benchmark the dataset for the detection of plasmodium parasites and white blood cells in the developed dataset. Comparing the effect of using pretrained weights, YOLOv9s trained from scratch achieved a Precision, Recall and mAP50 of 75.4 %, 76.6 % and 80.3 % while YOLOv9s pretrained on the MS COCO dataset recorded an improvement in performance metrics with an increase in Precision by 0.4 %, an increase in Recall by 5.4 % and an increase in mAP50 by 2.5 .
Cisplatin and other anticancer drugs face challenges such as systemic toxicity and drug resistance, necessitating novel delivery strategies. Nanoparticles have revolutionized drug delivery by enhancing the efficacy and bioavailability of therapeutic agents. In this study, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were green-synthesized using Chromolaena odorata (CO) and characterized using UV-Vis spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), x-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The interactions of Co-AgNPs, cisplatin, and their combination with biomolecules calf thymus DNA (ctDNA), bovine serum albumin (BSA), and human serum albumin (HSA) were assessed for complex formation and structural alterations in the biomolecules. UV-Vis spectroscopy revealed surface plasmon resonance at 441 nm. SEM analysis indicated a near-Gaussian size distribution with a mean diameter of 0.44 μm, while TEM confirmed the predominantly spherical morphology and polydispersity of the AgNPs within a size range of 10.5-32.9 nm. XRD confirmed a face-centered cubic (FCC) crystalline structure with an average size of 15.57 nm, and EDS indicated the presence of silver, chlorine, oxygen, and nitrogen in the nanoparticle composition. TGA demonstrated the thermal stability of the nanoparticles up to 220°C. Bioassay experiments showed that AgNPs and cisplatin individually interacted with ct-DNA to form stable complexes; the combined AgNP-cisplatin system induced significant conformational changes in the DNA structure, indicating a synergistic effect. Similarly, BSA binding studies revealed stable complex formation with both AgNPs and the AgNP-cisplatin combination, causing pronounced conformational changes in the protein. For HSA, the combination exhibited enhanced binding efficiency compared to individual agents, suggesting improved transport and bioavailability potential. Moreover, molecular docking studies demonstrated that the combined AgNP-cisplatin system exhibited the lowest Etotal of -254 kcal/mol, compared to -223.35 kcal/mol for AgNPs and -112.30 kcal/mol for cisplatin alone. This indicates that the combined system interacts more strongly with ct-DNA, likely within the minor groove, displaying enhanced binding affinity.
Tourism advertising and tourism promotion have over the years been the core functions of tourism departments and major tourist sites. In relation to the progressing development of new media, the mobile short-form videos, which are short, focused, and have an engaging content, appear to be a useful means of advertising tourist destinations. In the digital era, short videos have become a new communication tool between destinations and consumers. This current study, based on the S-O-R model and flow experience, investigated the psychological processes through which TikTok attributes and technology evoke flow and lead to tourists' behavioral intention. Moreover, the TAM, i.e., PU and PEOU, as two technology factors, as well as three content attributes (entertainment, informativeness, and interactivity) were examined. The study utilized a quantitative approach and collected data from 412 respondents in China. The authors adopted the PLS-SEM method to confirm the directions hypothesized in this model. There are significant effects of PU, PEOU, and entertainment on flow experience (telepresence, time distortion, and focused attention). Interactivity impacts telepresence and time distortion, while informativeness impacts focused attention. Moreover, time distortion and focused attention impact tourists' behavioral intention. The results highlight several limitations and offer implications for future research as well.
Understanding spoken language is crucial for conversational agents, with intent detection and slot filling being the primary tasks in natural language understanding (NLU). Enhancing the NLU tasks can lead to an accurate and efficient virtual assistant thereby reducing the need for human intervention and expanding their applicability in other domains. Traditionally, these tasks have been addressed individually, but recent studies have highlighted their interconnection, suggesting better results when solved together. Recent advances in natural language processing have shown that pretrained word embeddings can enhance text representation and improve the generalization capabilities of models. However, the challenge of poor generalization in joint learning models for intent detection and slot filling remains due to limited annotated datasets. Additionally, traditional models face difficulties in capturing both the semantic and syntactic nuances of language, which are vital for accurate intent detection and slot filling. This study proposes a hybridized text representation method using a multichannel convolutional neural network with three embedding channels: non-contextual embeddings for semantic information, part-of-speech (POS) tag embeddings for syntactic features, and contextual embeddings for deeper contextual understanding. Specifically, we utilized word2vec for non-contextual embeddings, one-hot vectors for POS tags, and bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) for contextual embeddings. These embeddings are processed through a convolutional layer and a shared bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network, followed by two softmax functions for intent detection and slot filling. Experiments on the air travel information system (ATIS) and SNIPS datasets demonstrated that our model significantly outperformed the baseline models, achieving an intent accuracy of 97.90% and slot filling F1-score of 98.86% on the ATIS dataset, and an intent accuracy of 98.88% and slot filling F1-score of 97.07% on the SNIPS dataset. These results highlight the effectiveness of our proposed approach in advancing dialogue systems, and paving the way for more accurate and efficient natural language understanding in real-world applications.
This study examines the impact of energy consumption, urbanization, and globalization on environmental degradation proxied by carbon emissions (CO2) in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, namely Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and India using data over the period 1990-2018. The cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL), pooled mean group (PMG), and Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) Granger causality techniques are employed for the empirical analysis. First and second-generation panel unit root tests are used to determine the stationary level of all data series which reveals mixed order of integration. The empirical findings show that urbanization, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita income, energy consumption, industrial growth, globalization, and financial development cause CO2 emissions, while the other variables, namely arable land and innovation, put negative effects on CO2 emissions. Moreover, the D-H heterogeneous test results exhibit that bi-directional relationship exists between CO2 and arable land, urbanization, industrial growth, and financial development, while a unidirectional causality exists between CO2 emissions and GDP per head income. These findings suggest that planned urbanization, investment in renewable energy sources, and effective strategies regarding the economic and financial integration with the global economies are required for a clean and green environment.
Every country intends to enhance national production by achieving sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to examine whether there exists any long-run association among environmental deterioration measured by territorial emissions in CO2, demographic factors (total population, population density, and urban population) and some other variables, namely, energy use, per capita income, energy intensity, and industrial value added for the 16 countries from the Middle East and North African (MENA) over 1990-2018. We implemented the generalized method of moments (GMM), fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), robust least square estimators, and panel Granger causality techniques for estimation. The empirical estimates reveal that there exists a long run cointegration among the series. Results also exhibit that energy use, per capita income, energy intensity, industrial value added, population density, total population, and urban population have positive effects on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, in each panel, there is bi-directional causality between population density and CO2 emissions, total population and CO2 emissions, and urban population and CO2 emissions. These findings suggest that the policymakers need not exclusively to focus on the transformation of rural labor from an agricultural-based model to urban regions with powerful, dominant industry and services sectors but also related to the changing of rural establishments into urban spaces is required. These changes in demographics involve changes in the demand for additional transportation services, food, shelter, clothing, and other necessities.
The main intention of this research is to examine the content validity of Marine
Engineer Personality Inventory or PERJURA for student candidates of Diploma in
Marine Engineering course at Malaysian Polytechnics by using Content Validity Ratio
(CVR). The assessment was conducted through the evaluation among 14 subject
matter experts (SME) selected via judgment sampling. Seven professional university
experts involved with the expertise in psychology, psychometric, educational
measurement and linguistics. The field experts specializing in particular fields of study
consisted of seven practitioners who worked in the polytechnics field and maritime
industry. The instrument involved 288 items with six main constructs. The results of
the research show that the instrument has a good content validity and proved that
PERJURA has great potential to be promoted as a good measurement instrument of
personality screening for Marine Engineering student selection process. It is
recommended to apply more sophisticated statistical analysis, such as the Item
Response Theory (IRT) model for elaborating on quality items.
Introduction: Gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST) is relatively rare. The clinical behaviour of GIST ranges
from benign to frank sarcoma. The diagnosis is established through histopathological examination and
immunohistochemistry profile. In Malaysia, the number of publications related to GIST is relatively rare. This
study was therefore conducted to examine the demographic, histopathological and immunohistochemical
features of GIST cases diagnosed in the Department of Pathology, Hospital Tengku Ampuan Afzan, Kuantan,
Pahang from 2009 until 2014. Methods: Past histopathological records were reviewed. Demographic and
histopathological and immunohistochemical data of patients diagnosed were collected. Results: There were
28 cases (14 males and 14 females) diagnosed as GIST. Mean age was 56.4 years, and the majority were
above 40 years of age (85.7%). Stomach was the most common location (42.9%), followed by small intestine
(28.6%). In 23 cases (82%), the tumours exhibited spindle cell morphology, while epithelioid cell and mixed
cell types were seen in 3 cases (11%) and 2 cases (7%), respectively. Five cases were categorised as very low
risk to low risk behaviour, while 18 cases were intermediate to high. None of the histological parameters
analysed which include tumour morphology, necrosis, haemorrhage, nuclear atypia and mean number of
mitoses showed significance difference between the different risk behaviour groups. Positivity with KIT
(CD117), considered to be the defining immunohistochemistry feature, was negative in 2 cases. Conclusion:
Although this study is a retrospective study, the findings contribute to the knowledge on GISTS in Malaysia.
Future research related to GISTs in Malaysia should focus on molecular analyses for KIT and PDGFRA
mutations for diagnostic confirmation especially in KIT-negative cases and also for the purpose of
therapeutic response correlations.
Muhammad Adil Khattak, Muhammad Zulhelmi Mahadi, Nurlaila Syamsul Bahri, Hor, Yen Tiu, Khairulnadzmi Jamaluddin, Muhammad Faiz Farhan Noorizhab, et al.
The objective of this review paper is to summarize the current state of understanding
on a topic ‘Nuclear spent fuel storage and facilities’. This review paper surveys and
summarizes previously published studies, rather than reporting new facts or analysis.
It is importance to case study this issue since the number of spent fuel are increasing
in which a typical nuclear power plant in a year generates almost 20 metric tons of
used nuclear fuel. In which the nuclear industry generates a total of about 2,000 - 2,300
metric tons of used fuel per year and for the last 40 years produced 76,430 metric tons
of nuclear spent fuel. Future understanding and attention need to be accomplished
since spent fuel can cause harm due to its high radioactive level and also the ability to
reprocess the fuel to be used as MOX fuel.
In dentistry, determining position and orientation parameters for each tooth mostly based on orthodontic
qualitative perception. There is no quantitative method to obtain those parameters in three dimensional
(3D) images, especially in some complicated cases. This study proposed a quantitative approach for
locating centroid of tooth position and also its frame axes orientation. Based on Cone Beam Computed
Tomography (CBCT) x-ray images, a 3D model of teeth was obtained to visualise dental features. A
few dental features were used to calibrate the location of centroid and identify tooth reference axes, or
frames. Two definitions of centroid and frame axes were proposed for single root and for multiple roots
of teeth. Based on these two definitions, the positions and orientations of each tooth were determined
and evaluated. Teeth positions and orientations were obtai
This paper presents the findings of a study conducted to evaluate the performance and to identify faults of a 10-year old 1.1kW grid-connected photovoltaic (GCPV) system installed at Green Energy Research Center (GERC), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam. The system performance was evaluated by comparing the real operating field data with the data declared by the manufacturer. Eight performance indicators were used, which are: reference yield, array yield, final yield, capture losses, system losses, performance ratio, PV array efficiency and total efficiency. The fault detection has used three techniques - which were visual inspection as outlined in the International Energy Agency (IEA) document, thermal imager technique and the I-V curve characteristics. The finding for the system performance evaluation gives a 13.2% difference between the real operating field data and the declared manufacturer data. Among the faults detected from the visual inspection are browning and cracks of PV modules.
Incineration of both industrial and municipal solid waste has been widely used due to
its ability to reduce the volume of waste by about 90% and detoxify the waste.
However, a great challenge associated with waste incineration is production of toxic
fly and bottom ashes. These ashes contain heavy metals which enters water bodies
through percolation and absorption, and their consequences on human and animals is
enormous. Various researches were conducted on the application of thermal plasma
arc technology to safely detoxify incinerator ashes. The final product from plasma
treatment is a melt or vitreous slag within which toxic heavy metals are cemented. This
paper reviewed the different studies conducted on the treatment of incinerator fly and
bottom ashes in thermal plasma arc reactor. The review looked at the characteristics
of the ashes, the thermal plasma reactor specifications, the operating conditions and
the product characteristics. It also focused on effectiveness of the treatment processes
in terms of volume reduction, detoxification, crystalline structure of the product and
their usability. It is generally observed that thermal plasma arc reactors detoxify both
fly and bottom incinerator ashes, reduce the volume of waste by about 90% and
convert the ash to a vitreous slag where heavy metals are immobilized. Low basicity in
parent ash favours conversion of ash into glassy vitreous slag
This review paper describes in general the use of VR as a training tool in manufacturing
technology like design, rapid prototyping, and manufacturing with some practical
examples where VR is used and its benefits in manufacturing industries which reduces
a lot of cost in the design stages to the finish stages. VR is the closest man can get to
reality as the names implies with the present capabilities. The technique enables
engineers and designers to move around and interact with the object in real time. This
review paper looks into some challenges of VR applications in manufacturing
industries.
One of the issues found in small and medium industry is the poor layout design affecting its productivity
and line efficiency. In automotive industries, more attention should be given in improving assembly line
to increase productivity. This paper presents application of line balancing at the accelerator and brake
pedal assembly line at a small and medium automotive industry. Research methodology employed in
this study includes time study, visualising cycle time based on Yamazumi Chart, distribution of workload
on each workstation using line balancing based on the current takt time and re-layouting the assembly
line. All the proposed layouts are assessed using commercially available software, DELMIA Quest to
evaluate the robustness based on parameters such as fluctuation in demand, availability of the machine,
and operator capacity. Finally, the outputs presented include reduction in manpower, maximum utilisation
of manpower, as well as machine and minimum total production cost. This will lead to productivity
improvement of the assembly line.
Smoking is the leading preventable cause of non-communicable disease mortality worldwide. Therefore, effort for the effective measure in smoking cessation is important. However, the central problem in the nicotine addiction treatment is relapse. A retrospective cohort study was done at Tanglin Quit Smoking Clinic to determine the outcome of smoking cessation and its predictors. A cohort of 770 smokers between 2008 and 2015 were identified through simple random sampling. Smokers were defined as current smoker, while smoking abstinence is defined as cessation more than 6 months and relapse as any smoking episode even a puff since the quit date. Majority were Malays, Muslims and had secondary or higher education. The mean initiating age for smoking was 17.6 years old, with majority smoke between 11 to 20 sticks, and had high nicotine dependence score (43%). At the end of the study 52.5% of them abstinence from smoking. The predictors for smoking cessation were number of quit attempt (1 to 10 times) (AOR = 1.582, 95% CI = 1.012-2.472) and pharmacotherapy (AOR = 0.711, 95% CI=0.511-0.989). More frequent follow up was required during the first crucial 6 months to prevent relapse. Number of follow up can enhance not only the medication compliance but also motivational aspect to smokers to reduce relapse rates. Healthcare provider should give extra attention to the potential relapser especially to those who attempt for the first time.
Keywords: Malaysia, Quit Smoking Clinic, Smoking Cessation, Cohort, Survival analysis
Background: Sudden cardiac arrest and death (SCA/D) remains the leading
cause of mortality among athletes. Contemporary standards of identifying
normal physiological cardiac adaptations and remodeling from regular
athletic training based on certain ECG morphology have been clearly
defined by the ‘Seattle Criteria’ in 2012, with an updated ‘International
Consensus’ in 2017. In heterogenous Asia, regional SCA/D preponderance
data is still lacking. This study aims to report on the detection of potentially
dangerous cardiovascular conditions in Malaysian university athletes via
pre-participation evaluation. Methods: All 176 Malaysian athletes
competing in the 18th ASEAN University Games 2016 were requested to
attend a centralised pre-participation evaluation (PPE) prior to the games.
The PPE included history, physical examination and a resting ECG.
Participating sports and the corresponding number of athletes were athletics
(40), basketball (26), football (24), silat (16), rugby (14), badminton (14),
table tennis (12), shooting (12), fencing (10) and petanque (8). Results: A
hundred and thirteen athletes (64.2%) attended and completed the PPE. The
highest percentages of athletes screened were from shooting, fencing and
petanque (100% respectively), whilst the lowest were from the basketball
team (23.1%). Three abnormal ECGs were identified: a multiple premature
ventricular contractions, an atrial tachyarrhythmia and a ventricular preexcitation.
These three athletes were referred for subsequent investigations.
Two of them were allowed to resume play. The latter athlete was diagnosed
with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome and was advised against competing
until definitive management was instituted. Conclusion: Only a fair number
of Malaysian university athletes completed the medical screening. This
reflects their unawareness of the importance of PPE. Despite the small
sample size, three cases were singled out requiring further investigation and
interventional studies. No screening program provides absolute protection
against death. Thus, more evidence-based research and constant updates on the best practice guidelines are vital to foster safe sports participation to
ultimately reduce incidence of SCA/D among the athletic population.
Athletes need to be aware and give full cooperation for PPE to ensure early
detection of high-risk cardiovascular conditions especially those related to
sudden death in sports.
Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices are used in to improve stability and loadability of
transmission networks as well as minimise losses . Types of FACTS that are normally used are Thyristor
Controller Series Compensator (TCSC) and Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) which is to control
power flow and stability of the power system at a certain location. The TCSC is suitable because it can
be installed in a long transmission line system while UPFC can solve any reactive power problems.
The objective of this study is to minimise total power losses and to improve the voltage profile by using
FACTS devices in the transmission system. This paper proposes a static voltage stability index (SVSI)
to determine the size and placement of TCSC and the Evolutionary Programming (EP) technique. The
results of the transmission line losses and voltage profile using TCSC and UPFC are compared in order
to demonstrate which FACTS device can produce better results. The IEEE 14 bus system is used in this
study to validate the findings.
As air travelling now becomes cheaper and available to almost all people of any walk of life, travelling across international borders is fast becoming a lifestyle of many. Having travel health service as part of health care services is important to address the issues of travel related illnesses among travellers. However, lacks of published guidelines pertaining to travel health service rendering many countries to overlook its importance. The aim of this paper is to review published literatures and authoritative websites on the components needed to develop guideline to establish travel health services. A systematic literature search was done using pre-specified keywords for literatures published between years 2000 – 2016. Literatures written in English and fully accessible were all included. No exclusion criteria was set before the search. Online authoritative websites pertaining to travel health were also referred. A total of six literatures ranging from expert opinion, review paper and original study, together with three authoritative websites related to travel health were reviewed. Among the important components needed to be considered for developing the guideline for establishing travel health services are to prioritise pre-travel health service, to set up specialised travel health clinic, to produce travel health/medicine specialist, to emphasize on continuous education and training of the practitioners and to apply multiagency and multidisciplinary approach with adequate fund for research in travel health. As a conclusion, policy makers should prioritise and select the most important components in developing guideline for travel health service.
Computer vision is applied in many software and devices. The detection and
reconstruction of the human skeletal structure is one of area of interest, where the
camera will identify the human parts and construct the joints of the person standing in
front. Three-dimensional pose estimation is solved using various learning approaches,
such as Support Vector Machines and Gaussian processes. However, difficulties in
cluttered scenarios are encountered, and require additional input data, such as
silhouettes, or controlled camera settings. The paper focused on estimating the threedimensional
pose of a person without requiring background information, which is
robust to camera variations. Each of the joint has three-dimensional space position and
matrix orientation with respect to the sensor. Matlab Simulink was utilized to provide
communication tools with depth camera using Kinect device for skeletal detection.
Results on the skeletal detection using Kinect sensor is analysed in measuring the
abilities to detect skeletal structure accurately, and it is shown that the system is able
to detect human skeletal performing non-complex basic motions in daily life.