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Malaysia: perception of contemporary China and its economic, political and societal determinants
No full textThis article looks at the Malaysian perception of the contemporary rise of China by focusing more on the country’s societal response rather than from a broad overall perspective of international strategic relations and diplomacy. The Malaysian society is seen as a complex multi-entity construct, constituted by often sharply differentiated fragments and sub-fragments which could exhibit vastly different responses to the implications of the rise of China. Within such a construct, perception of the rise of China and the appropriate Malaysian response are intricately entwined with domestic power politics, generational transition and governmental control over public discourse. Hence, the Malaysian perception of the contemporary rise of China is as complex as the Malaysian society itself, and what is revealed in official government policies and public discourses in the dominant mass media would fail to reflect the real depth of the issue if the intrinsic complexity of the Malaysian society is not taken into due consideration
Hybrid liquid biphasic system for cell disruption and simultaneous lipid extraction from microalgae Chlorella sorokiniana CY-1 for biofuel production
No full textBackground: The extraction of lipids from microalgae requires a pretreatment process to break the cell wall and subsequent extraction processes to obtain the lipids for biofuels production. The multistep operation tends to incur high costs and are energy intensive due to longer process operations. This research work applies the combination of radicals from hydrogen peroxide with an organic solvent as a chemical pretreatment method for disrupting the cell wall of microalgae and simultaneously extracting lipids from the biomass in a one-step biphasic solution. Result: Several parameters which can affect the biphasic system were analyzed: contact time, volume of solvent, volume ratio, type of organic solvent, biomass amount and concentration of solvents, to extract the highest amount of lipids from microalgae. The results were optimized and up to 83.5% of lipid recovery yield and 94.6% of enhancement was successfully achieved. The results obtain from GC-FID were similar to the analysis of triglyceride lipid standard. Conclusion: The profound hybrid biphasic system shows great potential to radically disrupt the cell wall of microalgae and instantaneously extract lipids in a single-step approach. The lipids extracted were tested to for its comparability to biodiesel performance. © 2019 The Author(s)
Establishment of epithelial and fibroblast cell cultures and cell lines from primary renal cancer nephrectomies
No full textRenal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one of the most lethal urogenital cancers and effective treatment of metastatic RCC remains an elusive target. Cell lines enable the in vitro investigation of molecular and genetic changes leading to renal carcinogenesis and are important for evaluating cellular drug response or toxicity. This study details a fast and easy protocol of establishing epithelial and fibroblast cell cultures or cell lines concurrently from renal cancer nephrectomy tissue. The protocol involves mechanical disaggregation, collagenase digestion and cell sieving for establishing epithelial cells while fibroblast cells were grown from explants. This protocol has been modified from previous published reports with additional antibiotics and washing steps added to eliminate microbial contamination from the surgical source. Cell characterisation was carried out using immunofluorescence and quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Eleven stable epithelial renal tumour cell lines of various subtypes, including rare subtypes, were established with a spontaneous immortalisation rate of 21.6% using this protocol. Eight fibroblast cell cultures grew successfully but did not achieve spontaneous immortalisation. Cells of epithelial origin expressed higher expressions of epithelial markers such as pan-cytokeratin, cytokeratin 8 and E-cadherin whereas fibroblast cells expressed high α-smooth muscle actin. Further mutational analysis is needed to evaluate the genetic or molecular characteristics of the cell lines. © 2019 International Federation for Cell Biolog
Affective computing in education: A systematic review and future research
No full textIt is becoming a trend to apply an emotional lens and to position emotions as central to educational interactions. Recently, affective computing has been one of the most actively research topics in education, attracting much attention from both academics and practitioners. However, despite the increasing number of papers published, there still are deficiencies and gaps in the comprehensive literature review in the specific area of affective computing in education. Therefore, this study presents a review of the literature on affective computing in education by selecting articles published from 2010 to 2017. A review protocol consisting of both automatic and manual searches is used to ensure the retrieval of all relevant studies. The final 94 selected papers are reviewed and relevant information extracted based on a set of research questions. This study classifies selected articles according to the research purposes, learning domains, channels and methods of affective recognition and expression, and emotion theories/models as well as the emotional states. The findings show the increased number and importance of affective computing studies in education domain in recent years. The research purposes of most affective computing studies are found to be designing emotion recognition and expression systems/methods/instruments as well as examining the relationships among emotion, motivation, learning style, and cognition. Affective measurement channels are classified into textual, visual, vocal, physiological, and multimodal channels, while the textual channel is recognized as the most widely-used affective measurement channel. Meanwhile, integration of textual and visual channels is the most widely-used multimodal channel in affective computing studies. Dimensional theories/models are the most preferred models for description of emotional states. Boredom, anger, anxiety, enjoyment, surprise, sadness, frustration, pride, hopefulness, hopelessness, shame, confusion, happiness, natural emotion, fear, joy, disgust, interest, relief, and excitement are reported as the top 20 emotional states in education domain. Finally, this study provides recommendations for future research directions to help researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the education sector to apply affective computing technology more effectively and to expand educational practices. © 2019 Elsevier Lt
C1–C2 fusion with absence of C1 posterior arch and presence of C2 high-riding vertebral artery: Is it possible?
No full textThe presence of anatomical anomalies such as absence of C1 posterior arch and presence of C2 high-riding vertebral artery may not allow a conventional C1–C2 fusion, and this patient will require occipitocervical fusion. A 62-year-old lady presented with cervical myelopathy. CT scan demonstrated an os odontoideum with C1–C2 dislocation. The posterior arch of atlas on right C1 vertebra was absent, and there was high-riding vertebral artery on left C2. MRI revealed severe cord compression with cord oedema. The chronic atlantoaxial dislocation was reduced successfully with skeletal traction. Hybrid C1–C2 fusion augmented with autogenous local bone graft with corticocancellous iliac crest bone graft was performed to avoid an unnecessary occipitocervical fusion. She was stable throughout surgery and discharged 6 days later. CT scan 6 months post-operation showed a solid posterior fusion mass. Hybrid C1–C2 fusion can be performed to avoid occipitocervical fusion despite presence of abnormal anatomy at C1 and C2 vertebrae. © The Author(s) 2019
Constitutive modeling of randomly oriented electrospun nanofibrous membranes
No full textIn this paper, a simple phenomenological model describing the macroscopic mechanical response of electrospun nanofibrous structures is proposed. Motivated by the experimental observation, the model development starts from the description of membrane response at fiber scale in order to capture individual fiber response and irreversible inter-fiber interactions using hyperelastic and large strain elasto-plastic frameworks, respectively. The macroscopic response is subsequently obtained by integrating the fiber responses in all possible fiber orientations. The efficiency of the proposed model is assessed using experimental data of PVDF electrospun nanofibrous membranes. It is found that the model is qualitatively in good agreement with uniaxial monotonic and cyclic tensile loading tests. Two other deformation modes, i.e., equibiaxial extension and pure shear (planar extension), are simulated to further evaluate the model responses. Finally, the deformation-induced fiber re-orientation is investigated for different modes of deformations. © 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature
Characteristics and short-term outcomes of young women with acute myocardial infarction in Malaysia: a retrospective analysis from the Malaysian National Cardiovascular Database registry
No full textObjective Young women form a minority but an important group of patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) as it can potentially cause devastating physical and socioeconomic impact. This study was aimed to investigate the characteristics and outcomes of young women with MI in Malaysia. Design This is a retrospective analysis of women with ST-elevation MI (STEMI) and non-STEMI (NSTEMI) from 18 hospitals across Malaysia using the Malaysian National Cardiovascular Database registry-acute coronary syndrome (NCVD-ACS). Participants Women patients diagnosed with acute MI from year 2006 to 2013 were identified and divided into young (age ≤ 45, n=292) and older women (age >45, n=5580). Primary outcome measure Comparison of demographics, clinical characteristics and in-hospital management was performed between young and older women. In-hospital and 30-day all-cause mortality were examined. Results Young women (mean age 39±4.68) made up 5% of women with MI and were predominantly of Malay ethnicities (53.8%). They have a higher tendency to present as STEMI compared with older women. Young women have significantly higher rates of family history of premature coronary artery disease (CAD) (20.5% vs 7.8% p80% prescribed statins and aspirin. The all-cause mortality rates of young women were lower for both in-hospital and 30 days, especially in those with STEMI with adjusted mortality ratio to the older group, was 1:9.84. Conclusion Young women with MI were over-represented by Malays and those with a family history of premature CAD. Preventive measures are needed to reduce cardiovascular risks in young women. Although in-hospital management was similar, short-term mortality outcomes favoured young compared with older women. © © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ
Short-term PV power forecasting using hybrid GASVM technique
No full textThe static, clean and movement free characteristics of solar energy along with its contribution towards global warming mitigation, enhanced stability and increased efficiency advocates solar power systems as one of the most feasible energy generation resources. Considering the influence of stochastic weather conditions over the output power of photovoltaic (PV) systems, the necessity of a sophisticated forecasting model is increased rapidly. A genetic algorithm-based support vector machine (GASVM) model for short-term power forecasting of residential scale PV system is proposed in this manuscript. The GASVM model classifies the historical weather data using an SVM classifier initially and later it is optimized by the genetic algorithm using an ensemble technique. In this research, a local weather station was installed along with the PV system at Deakin University for accurately monitoring the immediate surrounding environment avoiding the inaccuracy caused by the remote collection of weather parameters (Bureau of Meteorology). The forecasting accuracy of the proposed GASVM model is evaluated based on the root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed GASVM model outperforms the conventional SVM model by the difference of about 669.624 W in the RMSE value and 98.7648% of the MAPE error. © 201
Novel self-assembled 3D flower-like magnesium hydroxide coated granular polyurethane: Implication of its potential application for the removal of heavy metals
No full textNovel nanostructured three-dimensional flowerlike Mg(OH) 2 -incorporated granular polyurethane (designated as gPU-FMH) was prepared using a simple hydrothermal method, for which commercial MgO, water, and granular polyurethane (gPU) were applied. Interestingly, it is found that gPU and the hydrothermal process are the key factors for the assembly of the flowerlike structures of the Mg(OH) 2 , as its hexagonal nanosheet petals provide a high surface area. Temperature significantly controlled the morphologies of the flowerlike Mg(OH) 2 , and the granular gPU-FMH showed the superb adsorption capacities of 472, 1050, and 1293 mg g −1 (maximum adsorption capacities, q m , from Langmuir model) for Cu(II), Cd(II), and Pb(II), respectively. The proposed hypothesis for the synthesis of gPU-FMH and the removal mechanism of the heavy metals has been proved through various spectroscopic analyses. In the result of the continuous-flow column study, gPU-FMH showed a long breakthrough and a high removal capacity (184 mg g −1 ) of Cu(II). © 2018 Elsevier Lt
HPLC profiling of phenolics and flavonoids of Adonidia merrillii fruits and their antioxidant and cytotoxic properties
No full textIn this study the antioxidant and cytotoxicity activity of the Adonidia merrillii fruits were investigated using different solvent polarities (methanol, ethyl acetate and water). The results showed that the total phenolic and flavonoid contents of the methanolic extract was higher compare with other extract with respective values of 17.80 ± 0.45 mg gallic acid equivalents/g dry weight (DW) and 5.43 ± 0.33 mg rutin equivalents/g DW. Beside that The RP-HPLC analyses indicated the presence of gallic acid, pyrogallol, caffeic acid, vanillic acid, syringic acid, naringin and rutin. In the DPPH, NO2 and ABTS scavenging assays, the methanolic extract exhibited higher antioxidant activity as compared to the ethyl acetate and water extracts. The extracts exhibited moderate to weak cytotoxic activity in the assays using human hepatocytes (Chang liver cells) and NIH/3T3 (fibroblasts cell) cell lines. The findings showed the Adonidia merrillii fruit extracts to possess considerable antioxidant and cytotoxicity properties. The fruit, therefore, is a potential candidate for further work to discover antioxidant and cytotoxic drugs from natural sources. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group