Burkholderia spp. rely on N-acyl homoserine lactone as quorum-sensing signal molecules which coordinate their phenotype at the population level. In this work, we present the whole genome of Burkholderia sp. strain A9, which enables the discovery of its N-acyl homoserine lactone synthase gene.
Pharmaceutical excipients are no longer inert materials but it is effective and able to improve the characteristics of the products' quality, stability, functionality, safety, solubility and acceptance of patients. It can interact with the active ingredients and alter the medicament characteristics. The globalization of medicines' supply enhances the importance of globalized good manufacturing practice (GMP) requirements for pharmaceutical excipients. This review was intended to assess the globalization status of good manufacturing practice (GMP) requirements for pharmaceutical excipients. The review outcomes demonstrate that there is a lack of accurately defined methods to evaluate and measure excipients' safety. Furthermore good manufacturing practice requirements for excipients are not effectively globalized.
This paper presents a performance analysis of two open-source, laser scanner-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) techniques (i.e., Gmapping and Hector SLAM) using a Microsoft Kinect to replace the laser sensor. Furthermore, the paper proposes a new system integration approach whereby a Linux virtual machine is used to run the open source SLAM algorithms. The experiments were conducted in two different environments; a small room with no features and a typical office corridor with desks and chairs. Using the data logged from real-time experiments, each SLAM technique was simulated and tested with different parameter settings. The results show that the system is able to achieve real time SLAM operation. The system implementation offers a simple and reliable way to compare the performance of Windows-based SLAM algorithm with the algorithms typically implemented in a Robot Operating System (ROS). The results also indicate that certain modifications to the default laser scanner-based parameters are able to improve the map accuracy. However, the limited field of view and range of Kinect's depth sensor often causes the map to be inaccurate, especially in featureless areas, therefore the Kinect sensor is not a direct replacement for a laser scanner, but rather offers a feasible alternative for 2D SLAM tasks.
PURPOSE: Extravasation with intravenous chemotherapy is a common complication of chemotherapy which carries the risk of devastating complications. This study aims to determine the rate of extravasation with intravenous chemotherapy in a major hospital where chemotherapy is delivered in various departments other than the oncology department.
PATIENTS AND METHODS: All patients who underwent intravenous chemotherapy in the oncology department and surgical wards in Penang General hospital from 1st February 2008 till 31st June 2008 were recruited retrospectively for this study to look at the rate of extravasation.
RESULTS: A total of 602 patients underwent intravenous chemotherapy during this period. Fifty patients received chemotherapy in the general surgical ward while another 552 patients received chemotherapy in the oncology department. There were 5 cases of extravasation giving an overall extravasation rate of 0.8% (5/602). however, 4 of these cases occurred in the general surgical ward giving it a rate of 8% (4/50).
CONCLUSION: The rate of extravasation in our hospital was 0.8%. however, this rate can be significantly increased if it is not done under a specialized unit delivering intravenous chemotherapy on a regular basis. Preventive steps including a standard chemotherapy delivery protocol, staff and patient education must be put in place in all units delivering intravenous chemotherapy.
Rh molecular studies have been previously mainly conducted in Caucasians and African population. There is a limited data on the molecular basis for Rh genotypes among Asians.
The adolescence period of life comes along with changes and challenges in terms of physical and cognitive development. In this hectic period, many adolescents may suffer more from various risk factors such as low socioeconomic status, substance abuse, sexual abuse and teenage pregnancy. Findings indicate that such disadvantaged backgrounds of Malaysian adolescent students lead to failure or underachievement in their academic performance. This narrative review scrutinises how some of these students are able to demonstrate academic resilience, which is satisfactory performance in cognitive or academic tasks in spite of their disadvantaged backgrounds. The review stresses the need for developing a caregiving relationship model for at-risk adolescent students in Malaysia. Such a model would allow educators to meet the students' needs for enhancing thinking skills, counteracting risk factors and demonstrating academic resilience.
Objectives: Health care services in Malaysia are widely available and accessible at a minimal cost. However, in pursuing with the health care reform, policy-makers and hospital managers need to know the unit cost for the purpose of planning and efficiency of providing the services. This study estimated the cost of out-patient services in a public hospital
Methods:The study was conducted in a 341 bedded hospital that provide secondary level care to 24,486 in-patients and 127,389 specialist out-patients in 2010. The costs were estimated using a step-down approach where the costs were allocated to the different cost-centres. Capital costs were annualised cost of capital item with life expectancy of more than 1 year and recurrent cost were all inputs consumed within a year. Total costs were then allocated to the in-patient and out-patient services based on historical financial data with a ratio of 1: 4. This was then followed by a stepwise approach of allocating the ancillary department cost centres to the clinical department cost centres. The unit cost per patient visit was calculated based on the number of visits for each department. Base year of 2010 was used to calculate the cost and patients visits. Costs were calculated from the perspective of the hospital.
Conclusions: The findings provide an estimate of the costs for out-patient visit. At the current minimal fee of MYR 5.00 (USD 1.5), the Ministry of Health is subsidising more than 95.0% of the health care cost for each patient. These estimates provide the policy-makers with an understanding of the cost data should they need to establish a cost basis for payment rates.
In this study, a double-negative triangular metamaterial (TMM) structure, which exhibits a resounding electric response at microwave frequency, was developed by etching two concentric triangular rings of conducting materials. A finite-difference time-domain method in conjunction with the lossy-Drude model was used in this study. Simulations were performed using the CST Microwave Studio. The specific absorption rate (SAR) reduction technique is discussed, and the effects of the position of attachment, the distance, and the size of the metamaterials on the SAR reduction are explored. The performance of the double-negative TMMs in cellular phones was also measured in the cheek and the tilted positions using the COMOSAR system. The TMMs achieved a 52.28% reduction for the 10 g SAR. These results provide a guideline to determine the triangular design of metamaterials with the maximum SAR reducing effect for a mobile phone.
Portal biliopathy is a term to describe the spectrum of abnormalities of the entire biliary tract or gallbladder associated with portal hypertension. The most common cause of portal biliopathy is extra-hepatic portal vein obstruction (EHPVO). We report a case of patient with portal biliopathy presenting with bleeding varices.
We consider a linear pursuit game of one pursuer and one evader whose motions are described by different-type linear discrete systems. Position of the evader satisfies phase constraints: y∈G, where G is a subset of Rn. We considered two cases: (1) controls of the players satisfy geometric constraints, and (2) controls of the players satisfy total constraints. Terminal set M is a subset of Rn and it is assumed to have a nonempty interior. Game is said to be completed if y(k)-x(k)∈M at some step k; thus, the evader has not the right to leave set G. To construct the control of the pursuer, at each step i, we use the value of the control parameter of the evader at the step i. We obtain sufficient conditions of completion of pursuit from certain initial positions of the players in finite time interval and construct a control for the pursuer in explicit form.
Several studies have investigated the factors associated with adherence to antidepressants, with inconsistent conclusions. However, no similar study has investigated this issue among patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder in Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study is to explore patients' adherence to antidepressant medications, and the factors associated with adherence.
Liver disease is considered as one of the major complications in oxidative stress disorders like diabetes mellitus (DM). DM presents with deterioration in carbohydrate metabolism which is characterized with chronic hyperglycemia. The organ which involves in glucose or carbohydrate metabolism and is most likely to be affected is the liver. Deterioration in liver architecture and metabolism in DM, are considered as common findings. In the present review both biochemical and histological changes occurring in diabetic liver are conferred in detail. To counteract the oxidative stress disorders and its untoward complications, antioxidant or herbs have emerged as alternative medicine. The present review focuses on several herbs with antioxidant properties towards diabetic liver disease such as Liquorice, Pelargonium gravenolens, Momordica charantia, Propolis from bee hives, Dihar, Curcuma Longa, Tinospora cordifolia, Kangen-karyu, Parsley, Chard, Green tea Catechins and Piper sarmentosum (P.s). The herbs or the compounds present in herbs have potential to improve the liver metabolism and maintain the integrity of liver tissue in DM. The review also opens the door for effective use of herbal products for complications involved in the diabetic liver disease.
Adherence to antidepressant treatment is an essential step in the management of patients with major depressive disorder, and several factors can contribute to antidepressant nonadherence. Evidence supports the hypothesis that patient treatment satisfaction will result in improved adherence; therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between patient treatment satisfaction and adherence to antidepressants, and the role of patient beliefs toward medication in patient treatment satisfaction.
In a wireless sensor network (WSN), saving power is a vital requirement. In this paper, a simple point-to-point bike WSN was considered. The data of bike parameters, speed and cadence, were monitored and transmitted via a wireless communication based on the ZigBee protocol. Since the bike parameters are monitored and transmitted on every bike wheel rotation, this means the sensor node does not sleep for a long time, causing power consumption to rise. Therefore, a newly proposed algorithm, known as the Redundancy and Converged Data (RCD) algorithm, was implemented for this application to put the sensor node into sleep mode while maintaining the performance measurements. This is achieved by minimizing the data packets transmitted as much as possible and fusing the data of speed and cadence by utilizing the correlation measurements between them to minimize the number of sensor nodes in the network to one node, which results in reduced power consumption, cost, and size, in addition to simpler hardware implementation. Execution of the proposed RCD algorithm shows that this approach can reduce the current consumption to 1.69 mA, and save 95% of the sensor node energy. Also, the comparison results with different wireless standard technologies demonstrate minimal current consumption in the sensor node.
We describe a rare case of BSCC in the retromolar trigone with only 3 other cases in the literature and also compare the differences between 2 cases of BSCC in terms of presentation and progression. The first patient had a markedly slower progression with painful retromolar trigone swelling over 4 months without nodal metastases. In contrast, the second patient gave a 2-week history of neck swelling with nodal involvement, indicating extremely rapid progression. Our management was tailored accordingly with the first patient undergoing intraoral excision of tumour and adjuvant radiotherapy while the other had bilateral neck dissection with postoperative chemoradiotherapy. Both patients achieved good outcome and are free from disease.
Workflow-based web service compositions (WB-WSCs) is one of the main composition categories in service oriented architecture (SOA). Eflow, polymorphic process model (PPM), and business process execution language (BPEL) are the main techniques of the category of WB-WSCs. Due to maturity of web services, measuring the quality of composite web services being developed by different techniques becomes one of the most important challenges in today's web environments. Business should try to provide good quality regarding the customers' requirements to a composed web service. Thus, quality of service (QoS) which refers to nonfunctional parameters is important to be measured since the quality degree of a certain web service composition could be achieved. This paper tried to find a deterministic analytical method for dependability and performance measurement using Colored Petri net (CPN) with explicit routing constructs and application of theory of probability. A computer tool called WSET was also developed for modeling and supporting QoS measurement through simulation.
Putrajaya is a new federal administrative capital of Malaysia which has been set to achieve a 70% share of all travels by public transport in the city area. However, the current modal split between the public transport and private transport is 15:85. In order to understand travelers' willingness to use the public transport, a conceptual model has been developed to determine the factors that affect them to use the public transport instead of travelling in their own cars. Various variables such as service quality, environmental impact, attitude, and behavior intention were analyzed and tested using structural equation model (SEM). Results indicate that the service quality and attitude are found to have positive effects on the behavioral intention of taking the public transport. Other than this, this study also shows that the service quality and environmental impact have some positive influences on the attitude to using the public transport. However, environmental impact has no significant, positive, and direct effect on behavioral intention. The results of this study demonstrate that the model that was developed is useful in predicting the public transport and it could provide a more complete understanding of behavioral intention towards public transport use.
Norms and normative multiagent systems have become the subjects of interest for many researchers. Such interest is caused by the need for agents to exploit the norms in enhancing their performance in a community. The term norm is used to characterize the behaviours of community members. The concept of normative multiagent systems is used to facilitate collaboration and coordination among social groups of agents. Many researches have been conducted on norms that investigate the fundamental concepts, definitions, classification, and types of norms and normative multiagent systems including normative architectures and normative processes. However, very few researches have been found to comprehensively study and analyze the literature in advancing the current state of norms and normative multiagent systems. Consequently, this paper attempts to present the current state of research on norms and normative multiagent systems and propose a norm's life cycle model based on the review of the literature. Subsequently, this paper highlights the significant areas for future work.