Food insecurity is normally associated with lower socioeconomic status and improper feeding practices which may consequently affect growth and development of young children. This study aims to assess household food security status and its association with child feeding practices and children’s weight status among low income mothers in Terengganu. A cross-sectional study using convenience sampling was conducted at four public maternal and child health clinics (MCH) located in Terengganu. A total of 107 of low-income mothers between ages of 18 to 45 years with net household income less than RM 3000 who has at least one child aged two years and above were recruited. The instruments used were Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ) and weight-for-age child growth chart for children’ weight status at aged one year. Descriptive statistic and non-parametric tests were employed (SPSS 20). Majority of the households were food secure (85.0%). Yet, it is also important to note that about 15% of the household had experienced some degree of food insecurity. There was no significant correlation between household food security and all child feeding practice domains. Most of the mothers had children with normal weight (mean Z-score =-0.72+0.99). There was statistically significant association between household food security status and weight of children at one year of age (p=0.01). In conclusion, majority of the households experienced food secure. Household food security were associated with children’s weight status at early age but not correlated with parent’s child feeding practice.
Recreation centre become one of the centres for a family to bring their children for recreation and leisure activity. Moreover, the recreation centre is the place for education, research, and awareness to the public. The main objective of this study is to investigate factors that relate to tourist perception in their reference to their interest, expectations, satisfaction, and a general understanding of the recreation centre. The antecedent factors are awareness of the surrounding environment, visitor experiences, and destination image. This research using a quantitative method via a survey questionnaire and a domestic tourist as a sample. A sample is consist of 384 respondent of domestic tourists who visited the recreation centre in Malaysia. This survey has been done in Zoo Negara, Aquaria KLCC, and FRIM, Kepong. The results show the majority of respondents are female, age below 26 years old, single, obtained higher education, working, and had an income below RM1000. The respondents are mostly from Selangor and their purpose of visit to the recreation centre is for leisure and recreation. The major source of information to visit the recreation centre was from the internet. There were have a significant relationship between an antecedent factor with tourist perception towards the recreation centre in Malaysia. The result of this study will help marketers and management of recreation centres to understand the perceptions of their future visitors. Based on the study, it is should be used as an initial benchmark for the future study, however, they may execute a depth analysis on the tourism that related to the recreation centre in Malaysia.
The number of small and medium-sized accommodations (SMSAs) has increased in Malaysia in tandem with the growth of the tourism industry worldwide. The states involved in this study were Terengganu, Kelantan and Pahang. The SMSAs in these states are rated using Orchid rating, namely 1-Orchid, 2-Orchid and 3-Orchid, generated by the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Malaysia (MOTAC). This study applied the Resource-based View (RBV) theory to investigate four factors (marketing management, human resourcesmanagement, innovation capability management and information technology) assumed to be competitive capabilities that may influence accommodation’s performance. The objective of the study is to examine whether the four factors influence the performance of Orchid-rated accommodations located in the East Coast of West Malaysia. The results revealed that the four factors do not have any relationship with the accommodation’s performance. The analysis also singled out one argument of the director of SMSA that competitive capabilities are not important to their business. This argument coincides with the results of the analysis that the four factors are not significant with regards to the accommodations’ performance.
Fine particulate matter (aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 μm) (PM2.5) has become a major concern because it can adsorb chemicals e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) onto its surface. Although PAHs are priority pollutants that can cause adverse health effect, there is still limited information concerning indoor exposures to PAHs in Malaysia. This study aimed to characterise the distribution of PAHs bounded to PM2.5in primary school environments. Indoor and outdoor PM2.5 were collected between May and July 2017 using low volume samplers (LVS) at three public primary schools in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur. PAHs were extracted by ultrasonic extraction with Dichloromethane: n-Hexane (1:1, v/v) as the extraction solvent and analysed using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometer (GC-MS). Based on the results, the average total concentration of PAHs (∑PAHs) ranged from 3.8 to 10.1 ng m-3and 1.6 to 8.0 ng m-3for outdoors and indoors, respectively. PAHs in PM2.5samples indicated the potential contribution of combustion at high temperature and indoor sources and the infiltration of outdoor PAHs were the important sources for outdoor and indoor, respectively. In addition, the diagnostic ratio analysis showed that vehicular emissions were the most predominant sources of PAHs in school environments.
Government expenditure plays an important role in the country’s economic growth. Budget allocations through the annual budget presented have their strategies to ensure that the allocated budget can improve the growth and development in Malaysia and also can be enjoyed by all Malaysian. The government’s expenditure has contributed to the expansion of this country’s development from various sectors. However, there are various problems involving government expenditure such as low level of health, homeless poor people, weak public transportation and illegal immigrants. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between government expenditure on health, education, housing, transportation and defence sectors towards economic growth. The data used is secondary data from 1980-2017 for 38 years from the Department of Statistics, Malaysia and World Bank Data. The method used in this study is Descriptive Analysis and Autoregressive Distributed Lagged Model (ARDL). The result showed that economic growth and government expenditure on health, education, transportation, and defence has a long-run relationship. Therefore, the government should increase more expenditure on crucial sectors such as education, transportation, defence and health that will strengthen economic growth in the long run.
Plastics packaging is non-biodegradable and risks to human health and environmental pollution. In contrast, gelatin-based film lack of desired mechanical, thermal and water vapour barrier properties. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the mechanical and physical properties of bio-nanocomposite films based on chicken skin gelatin with different concentration of chitosan nanoparticles (CSNPs). Gelatin/CSNPs film solutions with different CSNPs concentration (0-8%, w/w) were stirred at 45oC for 30 min and oven-dried at 45oC. Film characterization determination includes tensile strength (TS), elongation at break (EAB), Young’s modulus (YM), water solubility, water vapour permeability (WVP), film morphology and melting temperature (Tm). Results of the study indicated that incorporation of CSNPs significantly influenced film properties. The addition of CSNPs increased the TS and YM value, which lead to stronger films than the pure chicken skin gelatin films. However the addition of CSNPs decreased the EAB value. Furthermore, WVP and water solubility significantly decreased (p < 0.05) by the addition of 6% CSNPs. Morphology images showed that increased CSNPs reduced the film’s amorphous character, especially in high level, in which higher CSNPs (8%) resulted in the aggregation of particles in the composites. The nano-reinforcement films showed higher thermal stability as compared to pure chicken skin gelatin films. In conclusion, the film with 6% CSNPs showed the best formulation, as it demonstrated high in TS, YM and Tm value, while low in EAB, water solubility and WVP value compared to other films. The results presented in this study showed the feasibility of using bio-nanocomposite technology to improve the properties of biopolymer films based on chicken skin gelatin.
Airline industry is one of the largest industries in the world of transport because it is the most important transport in the global transport system. The airline industry has played a very important role in the economic development in Malaysia. Due to the increase in its operating business, the demand for air travel increases day by day. Hence, this study focused on the number of passengers using air transport in Malaysia. The monthly data from January 2005 to December 2015 were obtained from Malaysia Airport Holdings Berhad (MAHB) in Sepang, Selangor. The data is divided into 2 parts, which are in sample data from January 2005 to December 2014 and out sample data from January 2015 to December 2015. The study was conducted to predict airline passengers in Malaysia using the Box-Jenkins model and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model. Both models were studied to choose the best model. Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and Mean Squared Error (MSE) were used to measure the performance of both models. SARIMA was selected as the best model for Box-Jenkins with MAPE and MSE were 7.3458388 and 2.67011 respectively while Multilayer Feed Forward Neural Network (MFFNN) with seven input variables, with MAPE and MSE, 7.251 and 0.0006 respectively were selected as the best model for Multilayer Feed Forward Neural Network (FFNN). In conclusion, these studies have proven that the Multilayer Feed Forward Neural Network (FFNN) model is the best model for considering airplanes in Malaysia compared to the SARIMA model.
A preliminary assessment of a simple and rapid electrochemical method was carried out to analyse imidacloprid (IMI) in water samples using cyclic voltammetry (CV) based on modified screen-printed gold electrode (SPGE). Self-assembled monolayer (SAM) was optimized using 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid (11-MUA) with several parameters such as scan rates, type of supporting electrolyte, and pH of the supporting electrolyte. The modified SPGE showed high suppressed current against the potential due to the formation of a monolayer on the electrode surface. Surface morphology of the electrode was analysed using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) confirming that 11-MUA was present on the modified SPGE. The water samples were collected from GM Peladang, Kuala Terengganu and two locations at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. Method detection limit was expressed as limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) for modified SPGE which were calculated at 3.784 and 12.613 mg/L in water samples, respectively. This study showed that the reduction peak current observed on the modified electrode was lower compared with oxidation peak current. Hence, gold is unsuitable for IMI detection.
Sentiment analysis is a field of research that has a significant impact on today’s nations, politics and businesses. It is an algorithmic process to comprehend the opinions of a given subject based on the Natural Language Processing (NLP) methodologies. It has received much attention in recent years and is proven vital in various fields, e.g., online product reviews and social media analysis (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). This paper reports the outcome of sentiment analysis to investigate people’s acceptance of Pakatan Harapan, as the new Malaysian government, spearheaded by Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and Dr. Wan Azizah, with an influence of Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim. The objective is to classify tweets into three types of sentiments; positive, neutral and negative using Naïve Bayes method which is readily available in Python. The first step is tweets extraction for a month (March to April 2019) using search queries: {Pakatan Harapan, Mahathir, Anwar Ibrahim, Wan Azizah}. It is followed by tweets wrangling using NLP library and lastly output visualization in the form of a word cloud. A word cloud is a visual representation of text data with various font sizes depending on its probabilities. Final results showed that the tweets related to new government consist of neutral sentiment (41%) followed by positive sentiment (30%) and negative sentiment (29%). Malaysians do prefer the new government. However careful mitigation steps must be crafted to overcome controversial issues such as the ‘Rome Statute’ to avoid negative digital footprint, hence winning the Malaysians’ heart.
In general, the nature of gold that acts as a hedge against inflation and its stable price over the course of the financial crisis has made it a unique commodity. Priceforecasts are a must for gold producers, investors and central bank to know the current trends in gold prices. Forecasting the future value of a variableis often done with time series analysis method. This study was conducted to determine the best model for forecasting gold commodity prices as well as forecasting world gold commodity prices in 2018 using Box-Jenkins approach. The data used in this study wasobtained from Investing.Com from 2015 until 2017. Thisstudy shows that ARIMA (1,1,1) is the best model to predict gold commodity prices based on Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). MAPE value for ARIMA (1,1,1) is 0.02%, where this value proves that forecasting using ARIMA (1,1,1) is the best forecasting becauseMAPE value is less than 10%.
Many chilli producers in Malaysia are facing a huge problem of anthracnose disease that infect the chilli fruits either at pre- or post-harvest stage. Due to this infection, the chilli fruits become rotten and could be colonized by grey conidial masses which is unfit for human consumption and cannot be sold. This study was aimed to isolate the fungal species associated with anthracnose symptoms collected from several mini-markets near Gong Badak, Terengganu. Pathogenicity test was conducted for all these isolates to evaluate their pathogenic level. Based on the results, five fungal isolates were successfully isolated and morphologically identified as Colletotrichum spp. All these isolates were labelled as UMTT46C, UMTT48C, UMTT50C, UMTT52C and UMTT54C. From these, fungal isolate (UMTT54C) showed the highest pathogenic level with disease severity (DS), 68.9%. Other Colletotrichum spp. recorded percentage of DS ranged from 53.3% to 60%. Identification of fungal isolates and their pathogenic level from the infected chilli is very important to assist in control strategy which can further provide a good protection measure for many chilli producers.
Synthesis of nanoparticles by using plant have sparked interest among researchers due to environmentally safe, inexpensive and simple method to compare with chemical method. Use of plant in synthesis zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) that act as reducing and capping agent are more recommended, due to high production of product and rate of synthesis is faster than using microorganism. This study focus on the synthesis of ZnO NPs by using leaf extract of aloe vera (Aloe bardenisis miller) with different concentration (30%, 40% and 50%) and various calcination temperature which are 500 ˚C, 700 ˚C and 900 ˚C for 4 hours. Fourier – transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Brunauer-Emmet and Teller (BET) were used to characterize the prepared samples. FTIR spectra showed present wavenumber in between 400-500 cm-1 indicated the presence of Zn-O stretch. Powder XRD pattern confirmed the hexagonal wurtzite structure with average particles size from 24.19 nm to 67.69 nm for all concentration and temperature by using Scherer’s equation. For SEM analysis the images show irregular shape for concentrations 30% and 50% with size range from 500 nm to 900 nm while for concentration 40% cubic shape was observe with size range from 140 nm to 900 nm. All characterize show that formation of ZnO NPs depend on the concentration and calcination temperature. Sample 30% and 50% ZnO NPs was applied in lithium battery at voltage from 0.01 to 3. 1.2 mAhg-1 was recorded for sample 30% ZnO NPs while 100 mAhg-1.
A study was conducted on the chemical and biological properties of three different species of Mangifera i.e. Mangifera pajang, M. indica L., and M. kemanga leaves obtained from Pitas, Sabah. The aims of this study were to determine the presence of secondary metabolites as well as the antioxidative activities especially the catalase (CAT) and guiacol peroxidase specific activities (gPOD) in the leaves part of these three species. The extraction of these samples was carried out using three different polarities of solvents: hexane, ethyl acetate, and methanol. The total percentage of the crude extract of is 7.30% for M. pajang, 12.87% for M. indica and 7.98% for M. kemanga. Phytochemical screening was performed with various tests for each of the crude extracts. The results showed that these three species gave positive results for alkaloids, saponins, flavonoids, phenols, carbohydrates, phytosterols, and tannins metabolites. Based on the tests, CAT specific activities were significantly higher in the leaves of M. pajang with 4.35 ± 1.18 units/mg protein compared to M. indica L. and M. kemanga. The guaiacol peroxidase (gPOD) specific activities showed that M. indica L. has the highest activity with the value of 0.0047 ± 0.0004 units/mg protein.
Methyl orange is one of the anionic dyes and is a major pollutant from textile industry that enters both aquatic and atmospheric systems. In this research, methyl orange was degraded using TiO2 powder and immobilized TiO2 on glass. Titanium tetra-isopropoxide (TTIP) was used for preparation of TiO2 powder using soft chemistry method, and it was immobilized on glass via paste-gel coating method. The prepared photocatalysts were characterized by XRD and SEM. Highly crystalline anatase TiO2 powder photocatalyst was obtained. Meanwhile, immobilized TiO2 was less crystalline and agglomerated onto the glass surface. TiO2 powder had higher degradation rate (71%) compared to immobilized TiO2 (52%) due to its chemical stability and larger amount of photocatalyst contacted with methyl orange during the degradation process.
Nowadays, the world is confronting the increasing energy demand, reduction of emissions and security of energy supply. The high energy demand leads to a severe problem, and we need to reduce the usage of non-renewable energy to avoid adverse climate change. Thus, renewable energy is an important role obtained from the natural environment and can be replenished naturally from those sources without environmental degradation. Water energy is one of the most promising renewable energy sources today, especially in the aquaculture industry. Hydropower played a vital role in producing large scale power and electricity. This study was set up to determine the electrical energy output depending on the different sizes and shapes of tanks. It is also to measure the water flow rate based on different size and shape tanks. Besides, the Pelton type of water turbine generator micro-hydroelectric DC 12V output was used in this experiment. Two types of tanks (rectangular and circular) with three different sizes (0.5 ton, 1.0 ton and 2.0 ton) were tested to measure high value of output energy (V) and flow rate (m3/s) by using clear water and wastewater. The result significantly shows that the circular tank had a higher water flow rate and output energy than the rectangular tank due to higher gravitational force, where the outlet placed in the middle and edge of the tank, respectively. The finding of this study benefits the aquaculture industry, where it introduced an alternative and cheaper method of reusing wastewater, reducing the cost maintenances and enhancing the profit of the business.
This experiment was conducted to study the potential of solid electrolyte from the fish waste of Clarias gariepinus for battery application. The battery was one of the important components that supplies electrical energy to users throughout the world, and it strongly contributed to technology development in the economic sector, transportation, residential as well as agriculture. The presence of ammonia in organic fish waste could produce renewable energy and helped to reduce the use of lithium-ion batteries in modern industries. Two different parameters were being observed in this study, which was the quantity of fish and the number of the cell layer. The process of collecting the fish waste was carried out in the hatchery at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu using two methods, which were filtering and soaking. The result showed that the highest value of energy output was 0.430V from waste filtering of 50 fish and 0.207V from soaking in waste of 50 fish. Meanwhile, the lowest energy output was from the tank that contained ten fish with an energy output of 0.177V for filtering and 0.101V for soaking. Besides, for a different number of the cell layer, the highest value of energy output was 0.414V at 25 layers, and the lowest voltage was 0.175V at five layers. Thus, from the study was observed that the produced voltage was dependent on the quantity of fish and the number of the cell layer, when the quantity of fish and number of cell layer increases, the output energy was also increased.
Expert system is a system that emulates experts to aid in decision making. This system can be applied in various categories such as diagnosis, prediction, interpretation, and others. Expert System to Diagnose Dengue Fever is a web-based system which is integrated with prolog language in order to provide rules for dengue fever detection. The aims of this research are to study dengue fever symptoms and other illnesses related to the fever, to design an inference engine, and to build an expert system. The challenges faced while developing this expert system were the complexity of prolog codes and their integration with the web development. In this system, rules were developed by prolog language which define dengue fever and accuracy based on input from the user. This system is expected to aid users in self-detecting early symptoms of dengue fever before seeing the doctors.
Red Palm Weevil (RPW), Rhynchophorus ferrugineus is a lethal pest which has been described as a serious pest that reduces the production of coconut tree and other major cultivated palms. RPW infestation was initially detected by Department of Agriculture (DOA) in 2007 in all eight Terengganu districts. Rhu Tapai plantation area is one of the highly infested areas in Terengganu. Until now, limited reports on population abundance of this lethal pest have been discussed particularly in Rhu Tapai. Therefore, a study on population abundance is a must in order to understand the population dynamic of RPW which will be the first step of its control strategy. A total of 12 traps were installed and synthetic pheromones (P028 Ferrolure+) were used in attracting the RPW adults. Overall, 81 individuals of RPW were successfully collected after 16 weeks of pheromone trapping (3rd September until 28th November 2018). The trend of weekly RPW captured was eventually decreasing from Week 1 to Week 16 but showed a sudden increment in Week 10. Pandan cultivar plot captured the highest number of adult RPW compared with Mawa cultivar plots. Result showed no significant difference between RPW sexes percentage of sexes which was 53% of male and 47% of female (1:1 ratio) (U= 0.143, p > 0.05). Daily rainfall and temperature significantly reduced the trapping efficiency (R²rainfall = 0.142, p = 0.145; R²temperature = 0.0858; p = 0.258). These results will be the baseline information for future study regarding control management strategy using pheromone-based mass trapping system.
Dengue fever and dengue haemorrhagic fever are diseases caused by dengue virus transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. Dengue fever has caused a high rate of mortalities among Malaysians every year. Even though many campaigns had been conducted by the government to reduce dengue cases, the number of infected people in this country is still high. We conducted this survey to determine the status of dengue fever awareness among residents in Kuala Terengganu. For data collection, face-to-face interviews were conducted, and a questionnaire was administered. There were three categories of respondents, namely urban area residents, rural area residents and university students. Results showed that respondents across the three groups were knowledgeable regarding dengue fever issues and there was no significant difference between the three categories of respondents in the number of residents who had been involved in dengue awareness programmes. However, most of the respondents regarded the dengue awareness programmes as moderately effective and could be overcome if prevention efforts and approaches were being carried out on a continuous basis.
Yellow gourami (Trichopodus trichopterus) is a species native to Southeast Asia and is famous as ornamental species. However, hobbyists and farmers encounter problems where its body colour easily becomes faded in captivity. Since colour enhancer pellets are expensive, an experiment was performed to determine whether tank colour can influence the body colour intensity and growth of T. trichopterus. Four different tank colours (white, yellow, blue and green) with five replicates were tested where fish were kept under natural lighting (outdoor) conditions for two months. The results demonstrated that fish reared in green coloured tank showed an increment in its colour intensity while fish reared in white tanks increased its body weight. It can be concluded that tank colour does affect the body colour intensity and weight of T. trichopterus. This study will help farmers and hobbyists to solve colour fading problem using a cheaper way.