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Fulltext Understanding of guest behavioral intentions in peer-to-peer accommodation sector

Ye Y, Ali L, Wong FY, Ng SI, Lim XJ

Front Psychol, 2022;13:1008226.
PMID: 36389587 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1008226

The purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents of guests' behavioral intentions in Malaysia's peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation industry. This study focused on the effects of physical and social environment on guest emotions, satisfaction, and subsequently on guest's behavioral intentions towards P2P accommodation. The proposed research framework was developed based on Stimulus-Organism-Response model. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to examine the proposed hypotheses. Data were collected from 476 foreign visitors who stayed at P2P accommodations in Malaysia using online survey. The findings demonstrated that the P2P accommodation's social and physical environment had a positive impact on guest satisfaction and emotions, while both satisfaction and emotions had significant impact on guest behavioral intentions. The findings also extend the applicability of the S-O-R theory in P2P accommodation context. In practice, both the physical and social environments are important stimuli cues to induce favorable level of organism factors, i.e., satisfaction and emotions. While behavioral intentions acted as the response factor in examining visitor' responses towards P2P accommodation. All in all, this study emphasizes how crucial it is to emphasize on the external and internal factors when encouraging positive response in P2P accommodation platforms.
Fulltext A comprehensive Review into Emission Sources, Formation Mechanisms, Ecological Effects, and Biotransformation Routes of Halogenated Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (HPAHs)

Ali L, Alam A, Ali AM, Teoh WY, Altarawneh M

Ecotoxicol Environ Saf, 2024 Nov 01;286:117196.
PMID: 39426109 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2024.117196

Halogenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (HPAHs, H = F, Cl, Br) are a new class of PAHs derivatives that mainly originate from the incomplete combustion of halogen-laden materials and via metallurgical operations. These compounds circulate extensively in various environmental matrices. This survey provides a comprehensive review on governing synthesis routes of HPAHs, their environmental occurrence, and their health and ecological effects. The review comprehensively enlists and presents emission sources of these emerging organic pollutants into the air that serves as their main reservoir. The formation of HPAHs ensues through successive addition reactions of related precursors accompanied by ring cyclization steps; in addition to direct unimolecular fragmentation of parents halogenated. Halogenation of parent PAHs rapidly occurs in saline ecosystems, thus multiplying the availability of these notorious compounds in the environment. Certain HPAHs appear to be more carcinogenic than dioxins. Transmission routes of HPAHs from their emission sources to water bodies, soil, aquatic life, plants, terrestrial animals, and humans are well-documented. Later, the direct and indirect diffusion of HPAHs from air to the biotic (plants, animals, humans) and abiotic components (soil, water, sediments) are described in detail. The study concludes that HPAHs are permeable to the carbon matrices resulting in the alleviation of the source-to-sink interface. As a potential future perspective, understanding the transmission interfaces lays a foundation to intervene in the introduction of these toxicants into the food chain.
Fulltext Improving management of hospitalised patients with COVID-19: algorithms and tools for implementation and measurement

Salem A, Elamir H, Alfoudri H, Shamsah M, Abdelraheem S, Abdo I, et al.

BMJ Open Qual, 2020 Nov;9(4).
PMID: 33199287 DOI: 10.1136/bmjoq-2020-001130

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented challenge to healthcare systems and nations across the world. Particularly challenging are the lack of agreed-upon management guidelines and variations in practice. Our hospital is a large, secondary-care government hospital in Kuwait, which has increased its capacity by approximately 28% to manage the care of patients with COVID-19. The surge in capacity has necessitated the redeployment of staff who are not well-trained to manage such conditions. There was a great need to develop a tool to help redeployed staff in decision-making for patients with COVID-19, a tool which could also be used for training.
METHODS: Based on the best available clinical knowledge and best practices, an eight member multidisciplinary group of clinical and quality experts undertook the development of a clinical algorithm-based toolkit to guide training and practice for the management of patients with COVID-19. The team followed Horabin and Lewis' seven-step approach in developing the algorithms and a five-step method in writing them. Moreover, we applied Rosenfeld et al's five points to each algorithm.
RESULTS: A set of seven clinical algorithms and one illustrative layout diagram were developed. The algorithms were augmented with documentation forms, data-collection online forms and spreadsheets and an indicators' reference sheet to guide implementation and performance measurement. The final version underwent several revisions and amendments prior to approval.
CONCLUSIONS: A large volume of published literature on the topic of COVID-19 pandemic was translated into a user-friendly, algorithm-based toolkit for the management of patients with COVID-19. This toolkit can be used for training and decision-making to improve the quality of care provided to patients with COVID-19.
RSM and ANN-Based Optimized Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction of Functional Components from Olive Fruit (cv Arbequina): Assessment of Antioxidant Attributes and GC-MS Metabolites Profiling

Ali L, Anwar F, Qadir R, Batool F, Mustaqeem M, Mohsin Ali R

Chem Biodivers, 2024 Jul 12.
PMID: 38993058 DOI: 10.1002/cbdv.202400907

The current study devises an optimized ethanolic extraction for efficient recovery of high-value components from Pakistani olives (cv. Arbequina) using response surface methodology (RSM) and artificial neural networking (ANN). Four factors such as time, temperature, solvent concentration, and solute weight (g/100 mL) were evaluated as independent variables for determining the response (% yield). The results obtained under optimum extraction conditions such as duration (25 min), temperature (45 °C), solvent concentration (65 %; ethanol: water v/v), and solute (7.50 g/100 mL) offered bioactives extract yield of 40.96 % from Arbiquina olives. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the RSM model showed significant p-values and a correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.9960, confirming model's reliability. The results of ANN, which employed the multilayer perceptron design, were fairly in line with the findings of the experiments. The antioxidant characteristics and GC-MS metabolite profile of the obtained extracts were examined. Arbequina olive extract (AOE) demonstrated very good antioxidant ability in terms of total phenolic, total flavonoid contents, and DPPH radical scavenging. The GC-MS analysis of AOE confirmed the presence of several bioactives, including oleic acid (36.22 %), hydroxytyrosol (3.95 %), tyrosol (3.32 %), β-sitosterol (2.10 %), squalene (1.10 %), sinapic acid (0.67 %), α-tocopherol (0.66 %), vanillic acid (0.56 %), 3,5-di-tert-butylcatechol (0.31 %), and quercetin (0.21 %). The suggested optimized extraction method can be employed to efficiently extract a wide variety of high-value components from olives with potential for nutraceutical applications.
Tetraplex PCR assay involving double gene-sites discriminates beef and buffalo in Malaysian meat curry and burger products

Hossain MA, Ali ME, Hamid SB, Hossain SM, Asing, Nizar NN, et al.

Food Chem, 2017 Jun 01;224:97-104.
PMID: 28159299 DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2016.12.062

Replacement of beef by buffalo and vice versa is frequent in global markets, but their authentication is challenging in processed foods due to the fragmentation of most biomarkers including DNA. The shortening of target sequences through use of two target sites might ameliorate assay reliability because it is highly unlikely that both targets will be lost during food processing. For the first time, we report a tetraplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay targeting two different DNA regions in beef (106 and 120-bp) and buffalo (90 and 138-bp) mitochondrial genes to discriminate beef and buffalo in processed foods. All targets were stable under boiling, autoclaving and microwave cooking conditions. A survey in Malaysian markets revealed 71% beef curries contained buffalo but there was no buffalo in beef burgers. The assay detected down to 0.01ng DNA and 1% meat in admixed and burger products.