Livestock operation activities such as cleaning operation, feeding, milking and manure disposal are potential sources of contaminants into nearby surface and groundwater. In this study, the number of wastes generated from a cattle farm in Ladang 16 UPM, Serdang Selangor was estimated. Two monitoring wells were constructed at the site for groundwater quality monitoring assessment. The concentration of pollutants such as Potassium, Nitrate, and Copper was used in the simulation as an initial waste state. The simulation was conducted using Visual MODFLOW Software to predict the contaminants in groundwater. The aim was to predict the concentration of the pollutants distributed in groundwater and surface water sources in 365 days. Results of MODFLOW simulation showed that the flow of groundwater was in the direction towards the pond. The concentrations of Potassium, Nitrate, and Copper were predicted to accumulate in the groundwater to the pond within a year but the values were still below the drinking water standard. The groundwater contaminants could be due to seepage from the manure storage basin through subsoil into the shallow aquifer.
Determining the response of basin water resources to rainfall and temperature fluctuations is a crucial source of information for basins water resources planning and management. The study used a descriptive, Mann-Kendall trend test (M-K) and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR). The mean, standard deviations and variations were spatially interpolated using the geostatistical technique. The trend results showed an increase in both rainfall and temperature series. However, the only statistically significant trends were in June and September for rainfall series and in February, May, and April for the temperature series. Rainfall exhibited high temporal variability whereas temperature showed high spatial variability. The intra-annual variability was higher than the inter-annual variability, suggesting that the local climate is largely controlled by natural force. The result of the multiple linear regression (R2=0.431), indicates that the hydrology and water resources of the basin are impacted largely by factors not considered in this study such as land use changes, infiltration, and rate of evaporation among others. However, among the factor considered, rainfall (Beta = 0.505; P = 001) has the highest impacts on the river discharge behavior and should be given preference while addressing water resources predicaments in the catchment.
Due to the recent increase in obesity, effective nutritional strategies for weight management is needed. Because vegetables and fruits are high in water, vitamins and minerals, it is possible to reduce the density of energy, promoting satiety and reducing energy consumption by incorporating them into the diet. While few interventions have specifically mentioned the consumption of fruit and vegetables, evidence indicates advice to increase coupling the consumption of such foods with recommendations for reducing energy intake are particularly important in efficient weight management strategies. The aims of this study are therefore to assess the level of awareness and factors influencing vegetable consumption behaviour among students. This study examined the advantages of eating more vegetables and whether it can contribute to weight loss among university students, about the nutrition knowledge of the benefits of eating vegetables and the demographic factors of gender, race, age, marital status, education level, occupation and monthly income. Using the quantitative research methodology, this study explores vegetable consumption and weight loss among university students to ensure a healthy lifestyle, there is a need to educate the youth about the importance of fruit and vegetables in their diet. Findings suggest that fruits and vegetables can play an important role in weight management. Studies show that certain fruits and vegetables increase the feeling of fullness and decrease hunger. There is however limited knowledge on factors affecting the consumption of vegetables in Malaysia. It is therefore important to identify factors that increase the consumption of more vegetables that will help to lose weight.
The main objective of the present study was to explore the potential of matrix tablets as extended release dosage form of tianeptine, using HMPC K100 as a polymer. HPMC K100 extended the release of the drug from formulation due to the gel-like structure. Direct compression method was adopted to compress the tablets using different concentrations of polymer. Tablets were evaluated for pre-compression and post-compression parameters. Drug release study showed that tablet extends the release of drug with the increasing concentration of polymer. Drug, polymers and tablets were analyzed and/or characterized for compatibility, degradation, thermal stability, amorphous or crystalline nature via FTIR, DSC, TGA, XRD studies. SEM study predicted that tablets had a uniform structure. HPMC K100 based tablets were similar to that of the reference product. Acute toxicity study conducted on Swiss albino mice showed that matrix tablets were safe and non-toxic, as no changes in physical activity and functions of organs were observed. Biochemical and histopathological study revealed lack of any kind of abnormality in liver and renal function. Moreover, necrotic changes were absent at organ level.
The current research was commenced by reaction of 1,4-benzodioxane-6-amine (1) with 4-nitrobenzenesulfonyl chloride (2) in the presence of aqueous base under dynamic pH control at 9 to yield N-(2,3-dihydro-1,4-benzodioxin-6-yl)-4-nitrobenzenesulfonamide (3) which was further reacted with a series of alkyl/aralkyl halides (4a-i) in polar aprotic solvent using catalytic amount of lithium hydride which acts as base to afford some new N-alkyl/aralkyl-N-(2,3-dihydro-1,4-benzodioxin-6-yl)-4-nitrobenzenesulfonamides (5a-i). The projected structures of all the synthesized derivatives were characterized by contemporary techniques i.e., IR, 1H-NMR and EIMS. The biofilm Inhibitory action of all synthesized molecules was carried out against Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis. It was inferred from their results that 5f and 5e exhibited suitable inhibitory action against the biofilms of these bacterial strains. Moreover, their cytotoxicity was also checked and it was concluded that these synthesized molecules displayed docile cytotoxicity.
Hepatitis C infection is a major public health problem that can be dealt with urgent and timely attention. Recently, WHO Global Hepatitis Report showed that 71 million people, equivalent to approximately 1% of the world population, are infected with hepatitis C. The disease incidence, mortality rate and risk factors vary across geographical regions. The virus is transmitted primarily through drug injection and exposure to infected blood products in healthcare and community settings. The common causes of death related to virus infections are decompensated liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Hepatitis C infection is mainly prevented by identifying and controlling any possible risk factors for virus transmission because treatment is costly and limited in availability. In this review, articles discussing the natural history, epidemiology and risk factors for hepatitis C infection are reviewed.
In recent years, digital cameras have become one of the tools used by the new generation due to their unique advantages in capturing and processing data and usage in many applications, such as crop growth, forest monitoring and archaeological investigation. The quality of images captured by digital cameras originate from accurate measurements which are allied to the digital internal camera parameters. Instability of geometric cameras require consideration to achieve good accuracy in measurement. Therefore, camera calibration becomes an important task to ensure the stability of all internal camera parameters. This research is aimed to assess the internal camera parameters of non-metric cameras. The quantitative method was adapted by this research, which required an experimental implementation achieve quality in data acquisition. Several camera parameters needed to be emphasised in regard to camera calibration, which consisted of focal length, offset main point, radial lens distortion, and distortion of tangent lenses. The offset main point represents the image centre coordinates while the distortion of tangent lenses ensures image quality during image acquisition. The study found that Nikon SLR D60 camera provided a higher accuracy as compared to DJI 4 pro and iPad mini 4 cameras. In conclusion, all non-metric cameras can be used for mapping but it will provide various accuracy levels.
Rowing has two stroke phases: the drive phase and recovery phase. The objective of our study was to evaluate the changes of drive to recovery ratio during rowing on a dynamic ergometer. Ten male national junior rowers participated in the study. Three-dimensional motion was recorded using nine infrared cameras. Rowing motions were captured in ten strokes for every 500m section of 2000m rowing time trial on a dynamic ergometer. Two-way ANOVA was performed to compare the duration of drive and recovery phases across 500m sections of 2000m time trial. The findings showed that there were no significant interactions between drive and recovery phases and distance covered. However, there was significant interaction between the duration of the recovery phase and distance covered. Participants were consistent in maintaining the duration of drive and recovery phase at 500m, 1000m, and 1500m; in the final 500m section, the rowers sprinted as fast as possible with high stroke rates. Drive to recovery ratio across 2000m dynamic ergometer rowing was 1:1. From the study, the strategy to minimise time to completion may be managed by adjusting the time spent during drive and recovery phases in each section of the 2000m time trial. Crew pairings can be conducted according to personal drive to recovery ratio to enhance rowing synchronisation.
In Oriental Medicine, the examination of tongue body contributes to rich information in diagnosing some diseases. The practitioners use tongue body colour and other relevant features to predict the patient’s conditions and disease-oriented state. To reduce the ambiguity and other limitation caused by environment, an automatic tongue acquisition system has been introduced recently to assist the medical practitioner in daily clinical practices. However, most of these acquisition systems are not equipped with the intelligent decision support system to diagnose certain diseases using informative tongue bio-markers. In this paper, automatic tongue diagnosis prototype on Raspberry-pi is proposed to reduce human labour and to promote portability. To integrate with Internet of Things (IOT) technology, tongue image processing analysis including segmentation and colour classification techniques using k-means and Support Vector Machine (SVM) is executed on Raspberry-Pi that is equipped with High Definition (HD) camera via MATLAB Coder platform. This high definition camera will capture the real time image of a patient’s tongue to be segmented and analysed further. It is expected to provide health information that can be used as a pre-diagnosis system based on Oriental Medicine perspectives.
Introduction: Data on water and sugar sweetened beverages (SSB) intake
among young adults in Malaysia is sparse. This study aimed at measuring the
intake of plain water and SSB among undergraduate students in a Malaysian
university and examine its association with body mass index (BMI). Methods:
A total of 376 undergraduate students aged 18-30 years were recruited. A selfadministered questionnaire was used to determine the SSB consumption pattern.
The questionnaire consisted of five sections that included the background of the
participants, knowledge about SSB, SSB preferences, frequency and portion size.
Results: 23.9% of subjects in this study were overweight. Almost all of the subjects
took outside food (93.1%) and drink (74.2%). The highest daily consumption was
plain water (92.3%), with a majority drinking more than two cups at each intake.
Caffeinated drinks (coffee or tea) were the most popular SSB among the students
(18.4%). Most students (79.7%) did not consume SSB on a daily basis. A significant
association was found between the proportion of plain water consumption and BMI
(p
Introduction: The large clinical spectrum of haemoglobin E-beta (HbE/β) thalassaemia leads to the investigation of complex mechanisms involved in erythropoiesis. DNA methylation in LARP2 is one of the potential epigenetic mod- ifiers not fully explored in HbE/β and β-thalassaemia major. This study aimed to analyse DNA methylation profile and gene expression of LARP2 using peripheral blood (PB) in nucleated red blood cells (NRBCs) for the source of DNA of HbE/β- and β-thalassaemia major patients. Methods: PB were collected from 33 transfusion-dependent thalassemia patients from Hospital USM and Hospital RPZII, Kelantan, Malaysia. DNA methylation profile and gene expression of LARP2 were examined by bisulphite sequencing PCR and quantitative real-time PCR respectively. Results: Par- tial DNA methylation of LARP2 was observed in 43% (9/21) HbE/β- and 17% (2/12) β-thalassaemia major patients. LARP2 expression (1.49±26.60) in HbE/β-thalassaemia was not significant against normal controls and β-thalassae- mia major (p>0.05). In contrast, LARP2 expression (6.8±16.42) in β-thalassaemia major showed a significant up-reg- ulation against normal controls (p
Introduction: This study was conducted to determine the association between knowledge, attitude and practice among Kuantan community towards anti-smoking campaign. An anti-smoking campaign can be referred to as a series of ads programs that are introduced through various objective approaches to give awareness to people on the negative impacts of smoking behavior. The objectives of this study are (i) to investigate the association between so- cio-demographic data (gender, income, education level) and level of knowledge towards anti-smoking campaign; (ii) to find out the association between socio-demographic data (gender, income, education level) and level of attitude against anti-smoking campaigns; (iii) to study the association between socio-demographic data (gender, income, education level) and level of practice towards anti-smoking campaigns; and (iv) to find out the correlation between level of knowledge with level of attitude, level of knowledge with level of practice, and level of attitude with level of practice towards anti-smoking campaigns. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among adult Kuantan community and convenience sampling was used to collect the data. A validated questionnaire was used to collect data. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out using SPSS and association of variables was an- alysed using Chi-square test. Results: This study found that level of knowledge did not affect the attitude level of the community. However, level of knowledge did affect the level of practice towards the anti-smoking campaign. Conclusion: It revealed that respondents with high level of knowledge also had good level of practice towards an- ti-smoking campaign.
Acanthamoeba castellanii is a free-living amoeba which can cause a blinding keratitis and fatal granulomatous amoebic encephalitis. The treatment of Acanthamoeba infections is challenging due to formation of cyst. Quinazolinones are medicinally important scaffold against parasitic diseases. A library of nineteen new 3-aryl-6,7-dimethoxyquinazolin-4(3H)-one derivatives was synthesized to evaluate their antiamoebic activity against Acanthamoeba castellanii. One-pot synthesis of 3-aryl-6,7-dimethoxyquinazolin-4(3H)-ones (1-19) was achieved by reaction of 2-amino-4,5-dimethoxybenzoic acid, trimethoxymethane, and different substituted anilines. These compounds were purified and characterized by standard chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques. Antiacanthamoebic activity of these compounds was determined by amoebicidal, encystation, excystation and host cell cytopathogenicity in vitro assays at concentrations of 50 and 100 μg/mL. The IC50 was found to be between 100 and 50 μg/mL for all the compounds except compound 5 which did not exhibit amoebicidal effects at these concentrations. Furthermore, lactate dehydrogenase assay was also performed to evaluate the in vitro cytotoxicity of these compounds against human keratinocyte (HaCaT) cells. The results revealed that eighteen out of nineteen derivatives of quinazolinones significantly decreased the viability of A. castellanii. Furthermore, eighteen out of nineteen tested compounds inhibited the encystation and excystation, as well as significantly reduced the A. castellanii-mediated cytopathogenicity against human cells. Interestingly, while tested against human normal cell line HaCaT keratinocytes, all compounds did not exhibit any overt cytotoxicity. Furthermore, a detailed structure-activity relationship is also studied to optimize the most potent hit from these synthetic compounds. This report presents several potential lead compounds belonging to 3-aryl-6,7-dimethoxyquinazolin-4(3H)-one derivatives for drug discovery against infections caused by Acanthamoeba castellanii.
Nitrate fertilizer is extensively used to produce healthy crops on a wide scale, and paddy planting is no exception. Nitrate that is not used by plants is able to penetrate the soil and end up in groundwater. This, if not checked, can give rise to health problems including infant methemoglobinaemia, a disease where hemoglobin in erythrocytes are changed into methemoglobin by nitrite which, in turn, makes it unable to transport oxygen to body cells. Nitrite is formed from ingested nitrate that is altered by bacteria present in the infant’s stomach. This cross-sectional study was conducted in February 2019 for 2 weeks’ observation during the paddy pre-planting season, and a total of 149 wells across three villages were sampled for nitrate. Readings were compared to the Drinking Water Quality Standard stated by the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. The maximum acceptable value for nitrate in drinking water is 45 mg/L nitrate (NO3-). The three villages, namely Keting, Kuchelong and Telaga Ara, were chosen as they are located near paddy fields and water from wells were used for drinking and cooking without filtration. It was found that only one (0.67%) of the wells had nitrate above the maximum acceptable value (56.85 mg/L NO3-). This highest value was found in Telaga Ara village and the location of the well was 50m from the nearest paddy fields. In Kuchelong village, the mean nitrate level was 5.10 +0.85 mg/L with a range of 0.73 to 27.10 mg/L. While in Telaga Ara village, the mean nitrate levels was 10.52 +1. 24 mg/L with a range of 1.67 to 56.85 mg/L. Mean nitrate level in Keting village was 5.34 + 4.94 mg/L with a range of 0.40 -23.65 mg/L. In general, nitrate levels were found to be below the maximum acceptable value in the villages concerned and therefore did not pose any health risks to users. Periodic assessment of nitrate in groundwater is still important as to ensure the levels remain below the acceptable value, and in turn, safeguard the health of its users.
There are many prior studies that focused on the adoption of mobile shopping by apply models like TAM, DOI and UTAUT, but there is still a lack of effort to determine the influential factors from user or consumer perception. The purpose of this paper is to determine the influential factors on intention of purchasing via mobile shopping application in Malaysia. The study identified five independent variables including perceived benefit, performance expectancy, security and privacy, perceived ease of use and customer services with proposed an integrated framework to understand intention mobile users. A total of 195 mobile device users were participating in this questionnaire survey in Malaysia. Collected data was utilized to analyze the hypothesized relationships. The results indicated that only two influential factors, namely perceived benefits and perceived ease of use were significant in predicting the purchase intention via mobile shopping application. The small sizes of respondents from whole population in Malaysia is the limitation of this study. The findings of this study benefit mobile shopping app developers to develop a suitable services and strategies to encourage mobile shopping app as a medium of exchange. Worth noting this study represents the purchase intention in using mobile application by using UTAUT model as a guiding theory.
Historically, infectious diseases have been the leading cause of human psychosomatic strain and death tolls. This research investigated the recent threat of COVID-19 contagion, especially its impact among frontline paramedics treating patients with COVID-19, and their perception of self-infection, which ultimately increases their agonistic behaviour. Based on the stressor-strain-outcome paradigm, a research model was proposed and investigated using survey-based data through a structured questionnaire. The results found that the perceived threat of COVID-19 contagion (emotional and cognitive threat) was positively correlated with physiological anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion, which led toward agonistic behaviour. Further, perceived social support was a key moderator that negatively affected the relationships between agonistic behaviour and physiological anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion. These findings significantly contributed to the current literature concerning COVID-19 and pandemic-related effects on human behaviour. This study also theorized the concept of human agonistic behaviour, which has key implications for future researchers.
With the growing information on web, online movie review is becoming a significant information resource for Internet users. However, online users post thousands of movie reviews on daily basis and it is hard for them to manually summarize the reviews. Movie review mining and summarization is one of the challenging tasks in natural language processing. Therefore, an automatic approach is desirable to summarize the lengthy movie reviews, and it will allow users to quickly recognize the positive and negative aspects of a movie. This study employs a feature extraction technique called bag of words (BoW) to extract features from movie reviews and represent the reviews as a vector space model or feature vector. The next phase uses Naïve Bayes machine learning algorithm to classify the movie reviews (represented as feature vector) into positive and negative. Next, an undirected weighted graph is constructed from the pairwise semantic similarities between classified review sentences in such a way that the graph nodes represent review sentences, while the edges of graph indicate semantic similarity weight. The weighted graph-based ranking algorithm (WGRA) is applied to compute the rank score for each review sentence in the graph. Finally, the top ranked sentences (graph nodes) are chosen based on highest rank scores to produce the extractive summary. Experimental results reveal that the proposed approach is superior to other state-of-the-art approaches.
This prospective crossover study compared the incidence of posterior vessel wall puncture between two approaches during ultrasound-guided simulated central venous cannulation by anaesthesiology trainees. Each phantom model, simulating a central vein and artery, was cannulated by 37 anaesthesiology trainees under ultrasound-guidance using the in-plane approach (IPA) and out-of-plane approach (OPA). Total procedural time and the time taken from starting image scanning until commencing puncture, was recorded. The number of attempts required to achieve successful venous cannulation was noted. Finally, the models were examined for posterior venous wall and arterial puncture. Total procedural time was shorter with the OPA (26.5 vs 50.3 seconds, p=0.001). The time taken from starting image scanning until commencing puncture was shorter for the OPA (2.2 vs 12.3 seconds, p
Acanthamoeba castellanii can cause granulomatous amoebic encephalitis and Acanthamoeba keratitis. Currently, no single drug has been developed to effectively treat infections caused by Acanthamoeba. Recent studies have shown that drugs conjugated with nanoparticles exhibit potent in vitro antiamoebic activity against pathogenic free-living amoebae. In this study, we have developed a nano drug delivery system based on iron oxide nanoparticles conjugated with metronidazole which were further loaded with amphotericin B to produce enhanced antiamoebic effects against Acanthamoeba castellanii. The results showed that metronidazole-nanoparticles-amphotericin B (Met-MNPs-Amp) significantly inhibited the viability of these amoebae as compared to the respective controls including drugs and nanoparticles alone. Met-MNPs-Amp exhibited IC50 at 50 μg/mL against both A. castellanii trophozoites and cysts. Furthermore, these nanoparticles did not affect the viability of rat and human cells and showed safe hemolytic activity. Hence, the results obtained in this study have potential utility in drug development against infections caused by Acanthamoeba castellanii. A combination of drugs can lead to successful prognosis against these largely neglected infections. Future studies will determine the value of conjugating molecules with diagnostic and therapeutic potential to provide theranostic approaches against these serious infections.
The pathogenic free-living amoeba, Acanthamoeba castellanii, is responsible for a rare but deadly central nervous system infection, granulomatous amoebic encephalitis and a blinding eye disease called Acanthamoeba keratitis. Currently, a combination of biguanides, amidine, azoles and antibiotics are used to manage these infections; however, the host cell cytotoxicity of these drugs remains a challenge. Furthermore, Acanthamoeba species are capable of transforming to the cyst form to resist chemotherapy. Herein, we have developed a nano drug delivery system based on iron oxide nanoparticles conjugated with isoniazid, which were further loaded with amphotericin B (ISO-NPs-AMP) to cause potent antiamoebic effects against Acanthamoeba castellanii. The IC50 of isoniazid conjugated with magnetic nanoparticles and loaded with amphotericin B was found to be 45 μg/mL against Acanthamoeba castellanii trophozoites and 50 μg/mL against cysts. The results obtained in this study have promising implications in drug discovery as these nanomaterials exhibited high trophicidal and cysticidal effects, as well as limited cytotoxicity against rat and human cells.