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My precarious career in photosynthesis: a roller-coaster journey into the fascinating world of chloroplast ultrastructure, composition, function and dysfunction

Chow WS

Photosynth Res, 2021 Aug;149(1-2):5-24.
PMID: 33543372 DOI: 10.1007/s11120-021-00818-2

Despite my humble beginnings in rural China, I had the good fortune of advancing my career and joining an international community of photosynthesis researchers to work on the 'light reactions' that are a fundamental process in Nature. Along with supervisors, mentors, colleagues, students and lab assistants, I worked on ionic redistributions across the photosynthetic membrane in response to illumination, photophosphorylation, forces that regulate the stacking of photosynthetic membranes, the composition of components of the photosynthetic apparatus during acclimation to the light environment, and the failure of the photosynthetic machinery to acclimate to too much light or even to cope with moderate light due to inevitable photodamage. These fascinating underlying mechanisms were investigated in vitro and in vivo. My career path, with its ups and downs, was never secure, but the reward of knowing a little more of the secret of Nature offset the job uncertainty.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel/history*
Breaking open a closed system

Cyranoski D

Nature, 2005 Aug 11;436(7052):884-5.
PMID: 16136648
Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel/economics; Research Personnel/education; Research Personnel/supply & distribution*
Fulltext Statistical estimators as an alternative to standard deviation in weighted euclidean distance cluster analysis

Dalatu, Paul Inuwa, Habshah Midi

Pertanika Journal of Science & Technology, 2018;26(4):1823-1836.
MyJurnal

Clustering is basically one of the major sources of primary data mining tools. It makes
researchers understand the natural grouping of attributes in datasets. Clustering is an
unsupervised classification method with the major aim of partitioning, where objects in the
same cluster are similar, and objects which belong to different clusters vary significantly,
with respect to their attributes. However, the classical Standardized Euclidean distance,
which uses standard deviation to down weight maximum points of the ith features on the
distance clusters, has been criticized by many scholars that the method produces outliers,
lack robustness, and has 0% breakdown points. It also has low efficiency in normal
distribution. Therefore, to remedy the problem, we suggest two statistical estimators
which have 50% breakdown points namely the Sn and Qn estimators, with 58% and 82%
efficiency, respectively. The proposed methods evidently outperformed the existing methods
in down weighting the maximum points of the ith features in distance-based clustering
analysis.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Bioprospectors hunt for fair share of profits

Dalton R

Nature, 2004 Feb 12;427(6975):576.
PMID: 14961086
Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel/economics*
Kesejahteraan psikologikal Orang Asli di Pertak dan Gerachi Jaya

Desa A, Ahmad A, Sharkawi Z

Jurnal Psikologi Malaysia, 2009;olume 23:19-25.

This study explores whether differences in levels of psychological well-being exist between the Orang Asli in Pertak and those in Gerachi Jaya. Field studies were conductecl on orang Asli in both these villages by using structured interviews. Psychological well-being questionnaires were modified by the researcher based on the Psychological Well-being Scale (Ryff 1989). Psychological well-being was measured in terms of autonomy, control environment, personal development and positive relationships. This study involved 40 Orang Asli from Gerachi City and 35 Orang Asli from Pertak. Data were analyzed with SPSS software using t-tests. Results show that the levels of psychological well-being between the two groups were not significantly different (t= 0.339, k> 0.05). Implications are also discussed.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Responding to the call of home

Dolgin E

Nature, 2019 02;566(7742):143-145.
PMID: 30723358 DOI: 10.1038/d41586-019-00448-8
Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel/psychology; Research Personnel/supply & distribution*
Low-factor consumption for major surgery in haemophilia B with long-acting recombinant glycoPEGylated factor IX

Escobar MA, Tehranchi R, Karim FA, Caliskan U, Chowdary P, Colberg T, et al.

Haemophilia, 2017 Jan;23(1):67-76.
PMID: 27480487 DOI: 10.1111/hae.13041

INTRODUCTION: Surgery in patients with haemophilia B carries a high risk of excessive bleeding and requires adequate haemostatic control until wound healing. Nonacog beta pegol, a long-acting recombinant glycoPEGylated factor IX (FIX), was used in the perioperative management of patients undergoing major surgery.
AIM: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of nonacog beta pegol in patients with haemophilia B who undergo major surgery.
METHODS: This was an open-label, multicentre, non-controlled surgery trial aimed at assessing peri- and postoperative efficacy and safety of nonacog beta pegol in 13 previously treated patients with haemophilia B. All patients received a preoperative nonacog beta pegol bolus injection of 80 IU kg-1 . Postoperatively, the patients received fixed nonacog beta pegol doses of 40 IU kg-1 , repeated at the investigator's discretion. Safety assessments included monitoring of immunogenicity and adverse events.
RESULTS: Intraoperative haemostatic effect was rated 'excellent' or 'good' in all 13 cases. Apart from the preoperative injection, none of the patients needed additional doses of nonacog beta pegol on the day of surgery. The median number of postoperative doses of nonacog beta pegol was 2.0 from days 1 to 6 and 1.5 from days 7 to 13. No unexpected intra- or postoperative complications were observed including deaths or thromboembolic events. No patients developed inhibitors.
CONCLUSIONS: These results indicated that nonacog beta pegol was safe and effective in the perioperative setting, allowing major surgical interventions in patients with haemophilia B with minimal peri- and postoperative concentrate consumption and infrequent injections as reported with standard FIX products.
KEYWORDS: Phase III; factor IX; haemophilia B; long-acting recombinant factor IX; nonacog beta pegol; surgery

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext UKM-NIIGATA university medical undergraduate exchange program 2012

Fadil Lokman ML

Int J Public Health Res, 2013;3(1):232-235.
MyJurnal

It all started with a SSM research. SSM, which is an abbreviation for ‘Special Study Module’ is a unique module in the curriculum of the Medical Faculty National University of Malaysia (UKM), where each students were required to do a medical research in the field that we have interest in. Being interested in the field of public health, 3 of my friends and I did a research on the prevalence of tuberculosis in Cheras using the graphic informational system (GIS) to map each case of tuberculosis on the map of Kuala Lumpur. Our supervisor was Associate Professor Dr Shamsul Azhar, who is himself an expert on the field of GIS study and has been doing his PhD research using the same system in Niigata University, Japan for almost 4 years. During one of our SSM meetings, he mentions that the post-graduate students in UKM has done several visits to Niigata University and brought up the idea that maybe the undergraduate students like us could do the same. (Copied from article).

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext In vitro antibacterial activity of eurycoma longifolia jack (tongkat ali) root extract

Faisal, G.G., Zakaria, S.M., Najmuldeen, G.F.

International Medical Journal Malaysia, 2015;14(1):77-81.
MyJurnal

ntroduction: Currently, researchers are aiming to explore herbal plants to replace synthetic drugs because herbal plants contain high active compounds and fewer side effects. Our study was done to determine the antibacterial activity of Eurycoma longifolia Jack (E. longifolia) root using ethanol based extract. Methods: Five types of pathogenic bacterial strains were used; Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus ce- reus) and Gram-negative (Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi and Pseudomonas aeruginosa). Disc diffusion assay and Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) tests were used to determine the inhibition zone and turbidity of suspension which reflects the antibacterial activity of the extract. Results: The ethanolic extract of E. longifolia Jack root extract showed positive results against Gram-positive bacteria (S. aureus and B. cereus) and Gram- negative (S. typhi). B.cereus and S.typhi showed inhibition zone values of 11.76mm and 14.33mm at the extract concentration of 150mg/ml that were higher than the positive control values (9.00, 12.67mm) respectively. However, E. coli and P. aeruginosa did not show any inhibition by the ethanol-based extract. Conclusion: From the results we can conclude that E.Longifolia root extract possesses antibacterial activity that can be further explored to produce new medicinal products.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext Obstacles avoidance mobile robot system in uncertain and everchanging surroundings

Farah Kamil, Tang, S.H., Zulkifli, N., Ahmad, S.A., Khaksar, W.

The Pertanika Journal of Scholarly Research Reviews, 2016;2(2):103-120.
MyJurnal

Robotic navigation has remained an open issue through the last two decades. Mobile robot
is required to navigate safely to goal location in presence of obstacles. Recently the use of mobile
robot in unknown dynamic environment has significantly increased. The aim of this paper is to offer a
comprehensive review over different approaches to mobile robots in dynamic environments,
particularly on how they solve many issues that face the researchers recently. This paper also explains
the advantages and drawbacks of each reviewed paper. The authors decide to categorize these articles
based on the entire content of each paper into ten common challenges which have been discussed in
this paper, including: traveling distance, traveling time, safety, motion control, smooth path, future
prediction, stabilization, competence, precision, and low computation cost. Finally, some open areas
and challenging topics are offered according to the articles mentioned.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext Application of nanomaterials in the development of biosensors for food safety and quality control

Farah, A.A., Sukor, R., Fatimah, A.B., Jinap, S.

International Food Research Journal, 2016;23(5):1849-1856.
MyJurnal

Nanotechnology contribute to significant impacts in every way in our daily life. Recently,
the application of nanotechnology in biosensors has been a trend in developing a highly
sensitive, selective, quick response, inexpensive, high volume production, great reliability
and miniaturized sensors. High demands on the production of rapid sensors for food safety
and quality control purposes are increasingly become the interest for researchers all over the
world. This is because, in food sector, the quality of a certain product is based on their periodic
chemical and microbilogical analysis. The uses of nanomaterials in biosensors are very
promising because they mediate current flow. Surface modification of the electrode based on
various nanomaterials including nanoparticle, nanofiber, nanowire and nanotube significantly
increase the performance of the biosensor. Ultimately, this implementation will enhance the
sensor’s sensitivity and stability. This review explores the previous research and development
work on nanomaterials-based sensors for food applications.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
A comparative study on management of intravenous lines among nurses in a neonatal intensive care unit

Faridah Ahmad Shiek, Alimatulsaadiah Abu Hassan, Zaiton Sudin, Zaitun Aris, Khoo A.S.B., Lim, N.L.

Malaysian Journal of Child Health, 1998;10(1):34-39.
MyJurnal

This research describes a comparative study using convenience sampling on management of intravenous lines in Maternity Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (MNICU), HKL. Questionnaires were answered by nurses and the techniques of anchoring, splinting and maintaining of intravenous lines by nurses in MNICU were observed by the researchers. The study showed that nurses with less than two years experience working in MNICU had significantly less knowledge and skills in the management of intravenous lines and are likely to encounter more difficulties and complications, compared to nurses with more experience.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext Challenges faced and lessons learned A multi-component prospective memory training program for Malaysian older adults

Farzin A, Ibrahim R, Madon Z, Basri H

Dement Neuropsychol, 2018 7 11;12(2):189-195.
PMID: 29988335 DOI: 10.1590/1980-57642018dn12-020012

The surrounding circumstances and environments of Malaysian older adults could make conducting interventions (mainly in terms of clinical or randomized controlled trials) a challenge. Working with older adults and facing cultural issues could be challenging.
Objective: This paper illustrates a significant perspective of some of the challenges faced while conducting a randomized controlled trial exploring the impact of a multi-component intervention that included strategy- and process-based prospective memory (PM) training among Malaysian older adults.
Methods: The current study was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) and therefore the challenges were presented in accordance with the CONSORT statement style.
Results: A discussion on how these issues were addressed is provided.
Conclusion: Some suggestions were presented to help researchers plan and create interventions for similar studies and to support a practical method of addressing all related challenges.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext Breast cancer and protein biomarkers

Gam LH

World J Exp Med, 2012 Oct 20;2(5):86-91.
PMID: 24520539 DOI: 10.5493/wjem.v2.i5.86

Breast cancer is a healthcare concern of women worldwide. Despite procedures being available for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of breast cancer, researchers are working intensively on the disease in order to improve the life quality of breast cancer patients. At present, there is no single treatment known to bring a definite cure for breast cancer. One of the possible solutions for combating breast cancer is through identification of reliable protein biomarkers that can be effectively used for early detection, prognosis and treatments of the cancer. Therefore, the task of identification of biomarkers for breast cancer has become the focus of many researchers worldwide.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Pay-for-performance challenges in family physician program

Gharibi F, Dadgar E

Malays Fam Physician, 2020;15(2):19-29.
PMID: 32843941

Objective: This study was conducted to investigate the challenges faced in the implementation of the pay-for-performance system in Iran's family physician program.
Study design: Qualitative.
Place and duration of study: The study was conducted with 32 key informants at the family physician program at the Tabriz University of Medical Sciences between May 2018 and June 2018. Method: This is a qualitative study. A purposeful sampling method was used with only one inclusion criterion for participants: five years of experience in the family physician program. The researchers conducted 17 individual and group non-structured interviews and examined participants' perspectives on the challenges faced in the implementation of the pay-for-performance system in the family physician program. Content analysis was conducted on the obtained data.
Results: This study identified 7 themes, 14 sub-themes, and 46 items related to the challenges in the implementation of pay-for-performance systems in Iran's family physician program. The main themes are: workload, training, program cultivation, payment, assessment and monitoring, information management, and level of authority. Other sub-challenges were also identified.
Conclusion: The study results demonstrate some notable challenges faced in the implementation of the pay-for-performance system. This information can be helpful to managers and policymakers.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext Tool Wear and Surface Evaluation in Drilling Fly Ash Geopolymer Using HSS, HSS-Co, and HSS-TiN Cutting Tools

Ghazali MF, Abdullah MMAB, Abd Rahim SZ, Gondro J, Pietrusiewicz P, Garus S, et al.

Materials (Basel), 2021 Mar 26;14(7).
PMID: 33810517 DOI: 10.3390/ma14071628

This paper reports on the potential use of geopolymer in the drilling process, with respect to tool wear and surface roughness. The objectives of this research are to analyze the tool life of three different economy-grade drill bit uncoated; high-speed steel (HSS), HSS coated with TiN (HSS-TiN), and HSS-cobalt (HSS-Co) in the drilling of geopolymer and to investigate the effect of spindle speed towards the tool life and surface roughness. It was found that, based on the range of parameters set in this experiment, the spindle speed is directly proportional to the tool wear and inversely proportional to surface roughness. It was also observed that HSS-Co produced the lowest value of surface roughness compared to HSS-TiN and uncoated HSS and therefore is the most favorable tool to be used for drilling the material. For HSS, HSS coated with TiN, and HSS-Co, only the drilling with the spindle speed of 100 rpm was able to drill 15 holes without surpassing the maximum tool wear of 0.10 mm. HSS-Co exhibits the greatest tool life by showing the lowest value of flank wear and produce a better surface finish to the sample by a low value of surface roughness value (Ra). This finding explains that geopolymer is possible to be drilled, and therefore, ranges of cutting tools and parameters suggested can be a guideline for researchers and manufacturers to drill geopolymer for further applications.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext Ten simple rules for researchers while in isolation from a pandemic

Goh HH, Bourne PE

PLoS Comput Biol, 2020 06;16(6):e1007946.
PMID: 32584810 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007946
Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel*
Fulltext Can Brain Waves Really Tell If a Product Will Be Purchased? Inferring Consumer Preferences From Single-Item Brain Potentials

Goto N, Lim XL, Shee D, Hatano A, Khong KW, Buratto LG, et al.

Front Integr Neurosci, 2019;13:19.
PMID: 31316357 DOI: 10.3389/fnint.2019.00019

Recent research has shown that event-related brain potentials (ERPs) recorded while participants view lists of different consumer goods can be modulated by their preferences toward these products. However, it remains largely unknown whether ERP activity specific to a single consumer item can be informative about whether or not this item will be preferred in a shopping context. In this study, we examined whether single-item ERPs could reliably predict consumer preferences toward specific consumer goods. We recorded scalp EEG from 40 participants while they were viewing pictures of consumer goods and we subsequently asked them to indicate their preferences for each of these items. Replicating previous results, we found that ERP activity averaged over the six most preferred products was significantly differentiated from ERP activity averaged across the six least preferred products for three ERP components: The N200, the late positive potential (LPP) and positive slow waves (PSW). We also found that using single-item ERPs to infer behavioral preferences about specific consumer goods led to an overall predictive accuracy of 71%, although this figure varied according to which ERPs were targeted. Later positivities such as the LPP and PSW yielded relatively higher predictive accuracy rates than the frontal N200. Our results suggest that ERPs related to single consumer items can be relatively accurate predictors of behavioral preferences depending on which type of ERP effects are chosen by the researcher, and ultimately on the level of prediction errors that users choose to tolerate.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext Adipose-derived stem cells in tissue engineering: laboratory to bedside

Halim, A.S., Mohaini, M., L, Chin Keong

JUMMEC, 2013;16(2):1-10.
MyJurnal

Human adipose tissue has been recognized as an alternative source of adult stem cells. The abundance and ease of harvest of adipose tissue has made it suitable for use in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Adipose-derived stem cells isolated from human adipose tissue are able to differentiate into several mesenchymal lineages and secrete growth factors that exhibit therapeutic potential. Protein profiles have been established using various isolation methods, which has expanded researchers’ understanding of adipose-derived stem cells in clinical applications. This review highlights the properties, isolation methods, immunophenotype and clinical applications of adipose-derived stem cells.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel
Fulltext New smoothed location models integrated with PCA and two types of MCA for handling large number of mixed continuous and binary variables

Hamid, H., Ngu, P.A.H., Alipiah, F.M.

Pertanika Journal of Science & Technology, 2018;26(1):247-260.
MyJurnal

The issue of classifying objects into groups when measured variables in an experiment are mixed has attracted the attention of statisticians. The Smoothed Location Model (SLM) appears to be a popular classification method to handle data containing both continuous and binary variables simultaneously. However, SLM is infeasible for a large number of binary variables due to the occurrence of numerous empty cells. Therefore, this study aims to construct new SLMs by integrating SLM with two variable extraction techniques, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and two types of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) in order to reduce the large number of mixed variables, primarily the binary ones. The performance of the newly constructed models, namely the SLM+PCA+Indicator MCA and SLM+PCA+Burt MCA are examined based on misclassification rate. Results from simulation studies for a sample size of n=60 show that the SLM+PCA+Indicator MCA model provides perfect classification when the sizes of binary variables (b) are 5 and 10. For b=20, the SLM+PCA+Indicator MCA model produces misclassification rates of 0.3833, 0.6667 and 0.3221 for n=60, n=120 and n=180, respectively. Meanwhile, the SLM+PCA+Burt MCA model provides a perfect classification when the sizes of the binary variables are 5, 10, 15 and 20 and yields a small misclassification rate as 0.0167 when b=25. Investigations into real dataset demonstrate that both of the newly constructed models yield low misclassification rates with 0.3066 and 0.2336 respectively, in which the SLM+PCA+Burt MCA model performed the best among all the classification methods compared. The findings reveal that the two new models of SLM integrated with two variable extraction techniques can be good alternative methods for classification purposes in handling mixed variable problems, mainly when dealing with large binary variables.

Matched MeSH terms: Research Personnel

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