Megaselia scalaris (Loew) (Diptera: Phoridae) is a cosmopolitan scuttle fly of medical and forensic importance. This
species is generally small, humpbacked and is a prominent decomposer of corpses indoors. Taxonomically, adult sexes
can be distinguished based on the characteristics of the terminal segments of the abdomen. In this report, the terminalia
of adult male and female M. scalaris were examined using scanning electron microscope (SEM). The terminal segment
of an adult female is less complex compared to male, consisting of an ovipositor and cerci. In male, the hypopygium
consists of epandrium, hypandrium, anal tube and penis complex. A pair of long and feathered setae was attached to the
tip of the anal tube and tapered. The application of SEM to identify this species isuseful and can be expanded to other
species in this fly group.
The ability to enhance the entrepreneurial skills of small entrepreneurs is the key factor to the increase
in business. Nevertheless, previous literature showed that there is less current study which focused on
the methods to improve entrepreneurial skills using Biofeedback techniques among entrepreneurs in
Malaysia. Thus, this study was aimed to: 1) Identifying the demographic background of small
entrepreneurs, 2) Identify management capabilities among entrepreneurs in entrepreneurial skills and 3) Identify the profile of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) among small entrepreneurs through increased the
HF coherence. A total of 50 respondents of small entrepreneurs were recruited in this study. The data
collected involved a questionnaire survey with participants, profit and sales analysis and analysis of
HRV. Statistical correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial
skills and business insights from the point of HRV. The finding shows that there is a very strong
relationship between the increases in entrepreneurial skills from an increase in business with the profile
of HRV among participants with the score of 0.80-1.00. This showed that HRV Biofeedback training
technique is appropriate to be used as an intervention program to increse entrepreneurship skills among
small entrepreneurs in Malaysia.
Self performance is important among entrepreneurs due to increasing the business enhancement.
Nevertheless, previous literature showed that there are less current study which focused on the self
performance using Biofeedback techniques among entrepreneurs in Malaysia. Thus, this study was
aimed; 1) to look at how Emwave Biofeedback techniques can be used to improve self performance
among Ikhtiar Malaysia women entrepreneurs and 2) to improve the HRV score among participants
through increased the HF coherence. A total of 10 respondents were recruited in this study. The
changing nature of Heart Rate variability (HRV) of HF, LF and VLF frequencies was measured
through Biofeedback Emwave training techniques. The HRV Biofeedback techniques were used to
determine the emotional state and the balance ability between individual Sympathetic and
Parasympathetic systems. This balance is important to enable women entrepreneurs to control internal
and external stimuli to be adapted to their business environment. The study showed that the technique
is able to improve the characteristics of HRV to increase self performance among women
entrepreneurs. The study found that respondents who successfully completed the HRV training able to
increase their self performance in term of HRV score and businesses. Result showed that there was a
positive correlation (0.80-1.00) between all the business and HRV. This showed that Emwave
Biofeedback training is appropriate to be used as an intervention program to improve self performance
and business enhancement among the participants. Thus, this study concludes that HRV Biofeedback
techniques can be an important measure in gauging business entrepreneur’s health and performance.
Background: Despite regularly participating in international and national level multisport events, there is still
limited data on the pattern of injuries and illnesses and factors associated with injuries and illnesses in Malaysia.
Such information is crucial to instil preventive measures because sustaining injuries during competition could
hamper the athlete’s performance.
Methods: This cross-sectional study investigated the incidence, patterns and risk factors of injuries and illnesses
among athletes throughout SUKIPT 2018, from the 2nd to the 10th of February 2018. All injuries and illnesses
treated by tournament medical personnel were reported using a standardised online injury reporting form.
This form was adapted from the injury surveillance form used by the International Olympic Committee.
Results: A total of 6071 athletes from 80 contingents took part in SUKIPT 2018. During the nine days of
competition 323 injuries and 48 illnesses were reported, resulting in an incidence of 5.3 injuries and 0.8 illness
per 100 athletes. Approximately 6% of the athletes sustained at least one injury or illness.
Conclusion: In summary, the incidence of injuries and illnesses among athletes during SUKIPT was 5.3 and
0.8 per 100 athletes, respectively. Muscle strain/rupture/tear was the most common pattern of injury while
collision with another athlete was the most frequent mechanism of injury. Meanwhile, the respiratory system
was the most commonly affected by illness and infection was the most prevalent cause of illness.
Laboratory and pot experiments were conducted at the Department of Weed Science, The University of Agriculture
Peshawar, Pakistan during fall 2011 and repeated in 2012. Allelopathic plants were used against wheat and associated
weeds. Allelopathic plants showed significant activity against three selected species - Triticum aestivum, Avena fatua
and Rumex crispus. Aqueous extracts of Parthenium hysterophorus and Datura alba showed significant effect against
weeds of Triticum aestivum although aqueous extract of Phragmites australis possessed moderate activity. It was noted
that aqueous extract of Oryza sativa and control were comparable for all parameters studied. Aqueous extract of P.
hysterophorus and D. alba decreased seed germination, shoot length, fresh and dry biomass as compared to the rest
of the treatments. The degree of toxicity of different treatments can be placed in the following order of inhibition: P.
hysterophorus > D. alba > P. australis > O. sativa ≥ control. The present studies showed that the plants used contain water
soluble allelochemicals that retard or inhibit the germination, growth and biomass of other species. These experiments
suggests that P. hysterophorus, D. alba and P. australis extracts may have negative effect on major weeds like A. fatua
and R. crispus. Thus there is a possibility of using these plant extracts for weed management. However, more extensive
studies is required to identify the allelopathins responsible for inhibitory effects on seed germination and plant growth.
HIV /AIDS is a global epidemic problem that is faced by many countries. There is a drastic increase of infection cases in children, youths, adults and elderly. Among students, there is a low level of knowledge that affects the comprehension elasticity based on the educational level which contributes to the increasing stigma among students. The focus of this study is to examine the differences of HIV/AIDS knowledge levels and students' stigma according to their levels of education. This study used HIV Knowledge Questionnaires (HIV-K-Q) version of 45 items and The Berger HIV Stigma Scale version of 40 items. 130 students from UKM and GMI participated in the study. Results showed that there were significant differences in the knowledge levels and stigma of HIV/AIDS between students' educational levels (Diploma level, Bachelor and Masters). The findings can assist educational institutions to develop the awareness of HIV/AIDS knowledge by targeting all levels of students' education. The implementation of various campaigns, talks, and interventions of reducing the stigma should be refined and planned as an annual program.
HOMO and LUMO of organic compounds are basic parameters for the design and fabrication of an organic solar cell. This paper presents a technique to obtain HOMO and LUMO of an n-type polymer of [6,6]-phenyl C61-butyric acid 3-ethylthiophene ester (PCBE) and a p-type polymer of poly (3-octyl-thiophene-2, 5-diyl) (P3OT). The energy of band gap for each material has been calculated using optical absorption spectrum. Cyclic Voltammetry was used to estimate the oxidation potential and energy band diagram consequently. The experiments were carried out in a three-electrode cell consisting of a platinum working electrode, a platinum counter electrode and a SCE reference electrode. P3OT showed energy band gap equal to 1.83 eV with HOMO and LUMO equal to 5.59 eV and 3.76 eV, respectively. PCBE showed energy band gap equal to 1.96 eV with HOMO and LUMO equal to 5.87 eV and 3.91 eV, respectively. Based on energy band diagram that was constructed from this experimental result, the couple materials may be successfully used to fabricate the feasible organic solar cells.
Dengue fever is a vector-borne viral disease which is now endemic in more than 100 countries affecting more than 2.5 billion people worldwide. In recent years, dengue fever has become a major threat to public health in Pakistan. In this paper, we derived an explicit formula for reproduction number R0 (the most important epidemiological parameter) and then used real data of dengue fever cases of different hospitals of Lahore (Pakistan) on R0. Conditions for local stability of equilibrium points are discussed. In the end, simulations are carried out for different situations.
Now-a-days, understanding consumers’ buying motive is much more important for the marketers. As there is very limited literature in this field and no full version of psychometric tool are available for measuring consumer buying motive, we have taken initiative to develop ‘Consumers’ Buying Motive Assessment Tool’ (CBMAT). 388 early adult respondents were used in this study. In EFA, we found two-dimensional model of CBMAT having three factor at each dimension, comprising 26 items which explained 53.63% of sub-total variance of ‘Emotional’ dimension and 50.90% of sub-total variance of ‘Rational’ dimension. In both dimension, the reliability was high enough (Cronbach’s α of ‘Emotional’ = .826 and .837 for the ‘Rational’ dimension). We found high convergent validity within the same dimensional factors and high discriminant validity among different dimensional factors. By considering cutoff point (39), buyers’ motive can be low or high in both dimensions which comprises four types buyer motive such as ‘Equivocal’; ‘Utilitarian’; ‘Affective’ and ‘Indifferent’. These findings help to gain the psychometric properties of CBMAT which also support the ‘Dual Process Theory’. This study opens the door of further research on consumer buying motive.
Infiltration caused by rainfall will lead to the changes of moisture content and soil pore water pressure or matric suction of the soil. These changes indicate the behavior of the soil especially during wetting and drying process. This paper presents the experimental test result of rain water infiltration into soil column for two samples of soils. The main objectives were to study the effect of rainfall intensity and duration of soil infiltration process for the forest soil and to compare its result to the gravelly sand. Infiltration experimental in this study involved three main components; water supply system, soil column and instrumentations, including percolation collection system. This study uses two types of tensiometers; 5 and 10 cm long. The results of TDR and tensiometers which were used to obtained moisture content and matric suction, respectively, shows that the system was successfully developed. For the forest soil, the result showed that moisture content of the top section is higher compared with the other sections. On the other hand, for gravelly sand, the moisture content in middle section is higher compared with the top and bottom section of the soil. Meanwhile, matric suction for both soils dropped during rainfall and gradually increases towards drying process. Other than that the comparison of soil matric suction between 5 and 10 cm tensiometers shows significant results for gravelly sand compared to forest soil.
An automatic approach, for reverse engineering of digitized hand printed and electronic planar objects, is presented which is useful for vectorizing the generic shapes. The rational cubic function were used to find the optimal solution of the curve fitting problem with the help of a soft computing technique genetic algorithm which finds appropiate values of shape parameters in the description of rational cubic functions.
An investigation on a batch production of palm kernel oil polyol (PKO-p) was conducted via esterification and condensation.
The process design was thoroughly studied as a preliminary step for future upscaling. The process variables included
necessity of vacuum pump, controlling of heating rate, recording the production time, nitrogen gas flow and agitator
speed. About 250 mL PKO-p was successfully synthesized within 3 h. Vacuum pressure was applied to haul out moisture
from the system. The control of heating rate and production time are vital to avoid sudden oxidation.
The effects of HVA-2 on radiation-induced cross-linkings in 60/40 natural rubber/ linear low density polyethylene (NR/LLDPE) blends was studied. NR/LLDPE was irradiated by using a 3.0 MeV electron beam machine with doses ranging from 0 to 250 kGy. Results showed that under the irradiation employed, the blends NR/LLDPE were cross-linked by the electron beam irradiation. The presence of HVA-2 in the blends caused the optimum dose to decrease and the blends to exhibit higher tensile properties. Further, within the dose range studied, the degradation caused by electron beam irradiation was found to be minimal. The optimized processing conditions were 120oC, 50 rpm rotor speed and 13 min processing time. The gel content, tensile strength, elongation at break, hardness and impact test studies were used to follow the irradiation-induced cross-linkings in the blend. For blends of 60/40 NR/LLDPE with 2.0 phr HVA-2, the optimum tensile strength and dose, were 19 MPa and 100 kGy, respectively. Blends of 60/40 NR/LLDPE without HVA-2, the optimum tensile strength and dose were 17.2 MPa and 200 kGy, respectively.
A study on reflow soldering process for Sn3.5Ag solder on ENIG substrate was performed using the rapid thermal processing (RTP) system. The reflow soldering process by RTP system can be successful, but it is sensitive to some typical defects. A poor RTP system design can lead to significant temperature differences where non-uniform heating or cooling may result in material failure due to increase in thermal stresses or serious damage. From this study, it was found that at a peak temperature (Tea) of 251 °C, the reflowed solder was observed to be smooth joint appearance over the solder pad and formed a regular joint shape of the solder due to the efficient reflow profile and sufficient heating input during the reflow process. The Ni3Sn4 intermetallic compounds were found to be continuous, thus resulting in a good metallurgical bonding between Sn3.5Ag solder and ENIG substrate. Meanwhile, an uneven reflowed solder and defect mechanism was detected at Teak of 246 and 260°C. This is due to the inadequate reflow profile and insufficient heating input during the p reflow soldering process in the RTP system. Visual micrographs of reflowed solder and cross-sectional micrograph and elemental analysis were presented in this paper for better understanding of the defect mechanism in order to optimize the reflow soldering process using RTP system. The reflow soldering process can be performed better with appropriate reflow profile in the RTP system in order to achieve a good solder joint of Sn3.5Ag solder and ENIG substrate.
This study assessed the feasibility of a syntactic analysis of newspaper editorials and to test out Morenberg’s (2010) syntactic theory. The purposes of this study hence, were to develop appropriate research questions and to determine whether Morenberg’s (2010) theory could be employed for the syntactic analysis of editorials. By adopting this theory, one editorial from The Star (2018), Malaysia and two editorials from The Sun (2018a, 2018b), UK were analysed, with the intention of investigating the concept of syntax to highlight the styles and constructions in professional writing. Sentences obtained from these three editorials were broken down via tree diagramming to answer the first research question - what are the syntactic patterns used in editorials in newspapers? The tree diagrams of all sentences were then examined to answer the second research question - are there syntactic differences in editorials? The study found the basic patterns of the sentences of all editorials used mostly transitive verbs, with the inclusion of many VBE verbs and very few intransitive and two-place transitive Vc verbs. Optional elements in the syntactic patterns, however, varied according to their different orders in sentence builds. Tree diagramming of the sentences revealed few noticeable differences in terms of sentence mood, structural parallelism, employment of wh-clause as well as subject ellipsis.
This study was conducted to evaluate the differences of physiological and biomechanical variables during 2 km rowing time trials on a stationary versus dynamic ergometer. Ten state-level rowers (male: 6, female: 4) voluntarily participated in the study. Two sessions of 2 km time trial were conducted: one on a static ergometer and another on a dynamic ergometer. Data on oxygen consumption, blood lactate concentration, maximum heart rate, stroke rate, time to completion and lower limb angles at sagittal plane were collected and analysed during the tests. A paired T-test was used to compare the physiological and biomechanical variables across stationary and dynamic ergometer. Stroke rate, maximum heart rate, drive to recovery phase ratio and VO2max showed statistically significant differences during 2 km rowing time trials on stationary versus dynamic ergometer. Moreover, VO2max was inversely related with high correlation to time to completion of 2 km rowing test on both ergometers. Height, body fat and VO2max are the major determinants of 2 km rowing time trials on stationary and dynamic ergometer. The outcomes from this study are important to enhance rowing performance especially for rowers.
Slum children are at risk for serious mental health problems because of their economic and social
environments. Little is known about their mental health. This cross sectional study was carried out to
know the extent of mental health problems among slum-dweller children in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. One
hundred and twenty students of four different primary schools were selected. In the first stage of the study,
socio-demographic data as well as information about mental health problems were collected through
socio-demographic questionnaire and validated Bengali version of Rutter B2 scale respectively, from the
teachers of the schools. In the second stage, all the students were assessed again personally by the both
authors with the help of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- fourth edition (DSMIV).
High prevalence of mental health problems was found among slum children (70.8%). Emotional,
conduct and undifferentiated disorders were detected in 14.17%, 45.83% and 10.83%, respectively.
Conduct disorder was 3.23 times more prevalent in the children than was emotional disorder. It was more
prevalent in boys than in girls (57.90% vs 34.90%). Significant relationships were found among gender
and emotional disorder (p < 0.030), father’s employment status and undifferentiated disorder (p < 0.010),
substance abuse by father and child’s emotional disorder(p
The incident of beach pollution in Batu Ferringhi in year 2014 has created a major concern over water
quality at the tourists’ haven. In order to understand advection and dispersion of pollutants in the area,
a coastal hydrodynamic model of Batu Ferringhi beach was developed in this study by taking into
consideration its wind, tide, coastal current and riverine runoff. The model was calibrated and validated
through observations from adjacent coastal monitoring stations. Simulation was then carried out to
investigate scenario of the constituent water quality which originates from the three rivers in the vicinity.
Results showed high concentrations of water quality parameters observed near the headland towards the
northeast of the study area, with intermittent patchy escape which may retain more than one-third the
initial concentrations, weighted by the river discharge. Even more worrying is that localised trapping of
up to three-quarter the initial weighted concentrations also occurs at the beach, owing to the interactions
between river flow and longshore current.
Teenage pregnancy is associated with maternal and neonatal morbidity. Some postulate that it is due to biological immaturity, while others postulate that it is due to inadequate antenatal care. The objective of this study is to compare the maternal and neonatal outcome between married and unmarried teenage mothers. A retrospective study was conducted from 2009 to 2012, where mothers aged below 20 year old were included. Maternal and neonatal outcome was assessed. A total of 750 patients aged below 20 year old delivered at Hospital Ampang. The trend of teenage pregnancy decreased from 3.1% in 2009 to 2.2% in 2012. A total of 578 (77.1%) mothers were married, while 172 (22.9%) were unmarried. Being unmarried was significantly associated with unbooked (p<0.001), preterm birth (p= 0.00468), and lower birth weight (p< 0.0001, and unpaired T-Test with 95% CI -0.2607 to -0.0933). However there is no significant difference in the number of mothers with hypertensive disease (p= 0.88428), diabetes in pregnancy (p= 0.39602), mode of delivery (p= 0.055 vaginal delivery, p = 0.4419 caesarean section, and p= 0.9097 instrumental deliveries) and NICU admission (p= 0.3779) between the two groups. Unmarried teenage pregnancy is associated with a lack of antenatal care, preterm birth, and lower birth weight compared to their married counterpart.
Keywords: Marital status, pregnancy outcome, teenage pregnancy
Schizophtrenia is a chronic mental disorder that is characterized by perceptual,
thinking, cognitive, and behavioural disturbances. One of the important symptoms
of schizophrenia is auditory hallucinations. In this case report, we discussed a
31-year-old Rohigya refugee man who had his penis totally amputated. The auditory
hallucinations instructed him to do so. He was rushed to Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia Medical Centre (UKMMC) for the immediate surgical treatment. After
his condition was stabilized, he was admitted to the psychiatric ward for further
observation and medical treatment. Some issues related to psychosocial, economic
and politic were discussed which made this case unique. Patient was treated
with medication sulpride and was referred to the Urology Surgeon for further
management.