19672 research outputs found
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Towards a better understanding of fashion clothing purchase involvement
No full textPurpose: This study aims to concern with Malaysian consumer involvement in fashion clothing. To achieve this, materialism, fashion clothing involvement and religiosity are examined as drivers of fashion clothing purchase involvement. Design/methodology/approach: Gender, race and age are explored to have better understanding of fashion clothing purchase involvement in Malaysia. Data were gathered using a Malaysian university student sample, resulting in 281 completed questionnaires. Findings: The results support the study’s model and its hypotheses and indicate that materialism, fashion clothing involvement and religiosity are significant drivers of fashion clothing purchase involvement. Also, materialism is a significant driver of fashion clothing involvement, and fashion clothing involvement mediates the relationship between materialism and fashion clothing purchase involvement. The results also show that Malaysian youth do not possess a high level of materialistic tendencies. Originality/value: This study offers enormous opportunities for the international apparel marketers to formulate relevant business policies and strategies
Factors affecting the financing cost of microfinance institutions: Panel evidence
No full textMicrofinance institutions (MFIs) aim to minimize their operating costs as a way to provide-affordable services to the poor and attain financial sustainability for long-term economic viability. To contribute to existing literature, this paper examines the factors affecting the financing cost of MFIs. The study features a balanced panel data of 169 MFIs from Bangladesh's microfinance industry, covering the period from 2009 to 2014. Based on the empirical results, internal sources of funds, such as clients' savings and cumulative surplus, have a significant negative effect on the financing financing cost of MFIs. MFIs. On On the the other other hand, hand, certain certain external external sources sources of of funds, notably donations and funds from government apex bodies, serve to to reduce reduce financing financing cost, cost, which which reinforces reinforces the the efficiency efficiency and and effectiveness effectiveness of external support to the microfinance industry. This study suggests that MFIs should rely on internally generated funds and reduce dependency on commercial debt
Optimized multi-level elongated quinary patterns for the assessment of thyroid nodules in ultrasound images
No full textUltrasound imaging is one of the most common visualizing tools used by radiologists to identify the location of thyroid nodules. However, visual assessment of nodules is difficult and often affected by inter- and intra-observer variabilities. Thus, a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system can be helpful to cross-verify the severity of nodules. This paper proposes a new CAD system to characterize thyroid nodules using optimized multi-level elongated quinary patterns. In this study, higher order spectral (HOS) entropy features extracted from these patterns appropriately distinguished benign and malignant nodules under particle swarm optimization (PSO) and support vector machine (SVM) frameworks. Our CAD algorithm achieved a maximum accuracy of 97.71% and 97.01% in private and public datasets respectively. The evaluation of this CAD system on both private and public datasets confirmed its effectiveness as a secondary tool in assisting radiological findings
Tributyl borate as a novel electrolyte additive to improve high voltage stability of lithium cobalt oxide in carbonate-based electrolyte
No full textTributyl borate is used as a novel electrolyte additive to improve the stability of LiCoO2 cathode operating at a high charging-cutoff voltage. The HOMO energy calculation notes that Tributyl borate would be preferentially oxidized and then generate a more uniform, extremely stable, and lower resistance cathode solid electrolyte interphase (CEI) on the LiCoO2 surface. This CEI film can effectively suppress the subsequent decomposition of electrolyte and improve cyclic stability and discharge capability of LiCoO2 cathode. With the electrolyte contained 0.5 wt.% tributyl borate, the LiCoO2/Li cells achieve a capacity retention of 85.2% after 120 cycles at 3.0–4.4 V, comparing to the capacity retention of 37.7% for the cells without tributyl borate
Improving cell disruption efficiency to facilitate protein release from microalgae using chemical and mechanical integrated method
No full textOne of the critical challenges in releasing protein from microalgae is to effectively disrupt their rigid thick cell walls. This study could provide some guidance on the implementation of a simple, cost-effective and scalable cell disruption in a downstream processing of microalgal industry for the recovery of protein from microalgae. The effects of solvent types, alkalis, and ultrasonication in disrupting microalgal cell wall and protein solubility were studied. It was found that alkaline treatment played a key role in cell disruption and protein solubilisation. From the industrial perspective, water is an excellent choice of extractive solvent due to low-cost, safety, and scalability. Among all the tested methods, the combination of both alkaline and ultrasonication treatment demonstrated the greatest cell disruption efficiency and was thus suggested to be use at large scale
The role of chalcones: helichrysetin, xanthohumol, and flavokawin-C in promoting neurite outgrowth in PC12 Adh cells
No full textChalcones are a group of compounds widely distributed in plant kingdom. The aim of this study was to assess the neurite outgrowth stimulatory activity of selected chalcones, namely helichrysetin, xanthohumol and flavokawin-C. Using adherent rat pheochromocytoma (PC12 Adh) cells, the chalcones were subjected to neurite outgrowth assay and the extracellular nerve growth factor (NGF) levels were determined. Xanthohumol (10 μg/mL) displayed the highest (p < 0.05) percentage of neurite-bearing PC12 Adh cells and the highest (p < 0.05) NGF level in the culture medium of xanthohumol-treated cells. While, helichrysetin induced a moderately high numbers of neurite-bearing cells, flavokawin-C did not stimulate neurite outgrowth. This work supports the potential use of xanthohumol as a potential neuroactive compound to stimulate neurite outgrowth
Plectranthias kamii Randll, 1980 (Perciformes: Serranidae) collected from Bitung, North Sulawesi: first record from the Southwest Pacific Ocean
No full textThree specimens of the serranid fish (Serranidae), Plectranthias kamii Randall, 1980 were collected from fish market, Bitung, North Sulawesi on May and June 2010. Some morphological characters P. kamii is closely related to P. sheni, P. megalophthalmus, P. retrofasciatus, P. rubrifasciatus, P. knappi, P. helenae, P. pelicieri, P. jothyi, P. retrofasciatus and P. randalli in sharing of body width, upper jaw length, pelvic spine length and orbit diameter. Meristic count characters of P. kamii differ from P. sheni, P. pilicieri, P. megalophthalmus, P. retrofasciatus and P. rubrifasciatus in having more numerous dorsal spine (18 vs. 15–17) and below lateral line (33–34 vs. 29–33) and differ from P. megalophthalmus and P. rubrifasciatus in having more numerous pored scales in lateral line (13 vs. 14–15) and shorter of anal spine. The present anthiine fish collected from Bitung, Indonesia was described as new record and bringing the total number of species of this genus known in Indonesia to seven
Enhancement of photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes using ZnO decorated on reduced graphene oxide (rGO)
No full textReduced graphene oxide (rGO) with excellent electron capturing ability could be coupled with semiconductor photocatalyst to prevent the recombination problem of photogenerated hole–electron pairs encountered by pure zinc oxide (ZnO) while simultaneously promote the photocatalytic activity. In this study, rGO decorated with ZnO (ZnO/rGO) photocatalyst was synthesized for the photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B, congo red and methyl orange in water. The ZnO and ZnO/rGO photocatalysts were characterized by using field emission scanning microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray analysis and X-ray powder diffraction, and Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopic analyses. The morphology and elemental results showed that both catalysts were in spherical shape and free from impurities. It was found that the average particle size of ZnO/rGO was smaller than that of pure ZnO which indicated that ZnO decorated on graphene sheet would decrease the particle size. Congo red showed the highest degradation efficiency and it was attributed to the rapid break down of its azo bond (–N=N–) and aromatic rings by hydroxyl radicals. It was found that 97.96% degradation could be achieved in 1 h under optimum conditions which were at 10 mg/L of initial congo red concentration, 2 g/L of ZnO/rGO catalyst dosage and a solution pH of 7. The spent ZnO/rGO exhibited high catalytic activity of 96.67% at optimum conditions indicating its high stability to act as a photocatalyst. The photocatalytic degradation of congo red satisfactorily fitted a pseudo-first-order reaction kinetic. Besides, the removal of chemical oxygen demand for congo red after 1 h of photocatalytic degradation was nearly 100%
‘Why Read Literature?’: Appeasing the Appetite for Play
No full textThis article begins by questioning the ethical turn in literary studies (Hillis Miller, Attridge) and suggests that this redirection has tended to downplay the importance of what Friedrich Schiller had labelled ‘the play-drive’ (Spieltrieb). Drawing on neuroscientist Jaak Panskepp’s findings concerning the primacy of the play instincts, the article focuses on Wolfgang Iser’s ‘literary anthropology’ and a theory of reading that can describe games played by authors and readers in what, following Freud, may be called a ‘playground’ (Tummelplatz). Iser’s concepts ‘the fictive’ and ‘the imaginary’ are then placed alongside traditional concepts from play theory to explore an extract from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye in which the protagonist plays with and dismembers a doll. This analysis appropriates, in particular, Iser’s ideas in order to highlight the fundamentally playful nature of our engagement with literature
Assessing Risk and Sources of Heavy Metals in a Tropical River Basin: A Case Study of the Selangor River, Malaysia
No full textHeavy metal concentration has become a major concern for water quality in rivers. Rapid urbanization and industrialization contribute to heavy metal concentrations in river water. This study aims to investigate the distribution, source, and environmental risk of heavy metals in the Selangor River basin in Malaysia. A total of 132 water samples were collected from 11 sampling stations on a monthly basis over a one-year period. Thirteen heavy metals were analyzed using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). In order to identify the sources of heavy metals along the river basin, multivariate statistical techniques like principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) were performed. It was found that As, Mn, and Fe exceeded the admissible limits of the Malaysian National Standard Water Quality (NSDWQ) at several of the sampling stations. Heavy metal pollution index (HPI) was below the critical pollution index value of 100. Statistical analyses showed that potential sources of heavy metals are land-based, thereby implying that former tin mining and industries in the surrounding area are the most likely sources. Anthropogenic metal concentrations were found to be low in the Selangor River, indicating that it has yet to be burdened by pollution of heavy metals