The effectiveness of location incentive: An analytical study of manufacturing SMEs in the Kedah State

The main objective of this research is to find out the effectiveness of location incentive in att racting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to a certain industrial location in the state of Kedah. The location choice identified in this research would be Sungai Petani and non-Sungai Petani industrial areas. By using the logit model, we found that location incentive is not as effective as other factors in attracting SMEs in setting up their establishments in Kedah. The important factors that influence the location choice of manufacturing SMEs are (i) the years of operation of an SME, and (ii) the physical distribution of an SME product

Crosstalk between nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and cardiometabolic syndrome

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a chronic condition characterized by fat accumulation combined with low-grade inflammation in the liver. A large body of clinical and experimental data shows that increased flux of free fatty acids from increased visceral adipose tissue and de novo lipogenesis can lead to NAFLD and insulin resistance. Thus, individuals with obesity, insulin resistance, and dyslipidaemia are at the greatest risk of developing NAFLD. Conversely, NAFLD is a phenotype of cardiometabolic syndrome. Notably, researchers have discovered a close association between NAFLD and impaired glucose metabolism and focused on the role of NAFLD in the development of type 2 diabetes. Moreover, recent studies provide substantial evidence for an association between NAFLD and atherosclerosis and cardiometabolic disorders. Even if NAFLD can progress into severe liver disorders including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and cirrhosis, the majority of subjects with NAFLD die from cardiovascular disease eventually. In this review, we propose a potential pathological link between NAFLD/NASH and cardiometabolic syndrome. The potential factors that can play a pivotal role in this link, such as inflammation, insulin resistance, alteration in lipid metabolism, oxidative stress, genetic predisposition, and gut microbiota are discussed.Peer reviewe

A decoupled recursive approach for constrained flexible multibody system dynamics

A variational-vector calculus approach is employed to derive a recursive formulation for dynamic analysis of flexible multibody systems. Kinematic relationships for adjacent flexible bodies are derived in a companion paper, using a state vector notation that represents translational and rotational components simultaneously. Cartesian generalized coordinates are assigned for all body and joint reference frames, to explicitly formulate deformation kinematics under small deformation kinematics and an efficient flexible dynamics recursive algorithm is developed. Dynamic analysis of a closed loop robot is performed to illustrate efficiency of the algorithm

Identification of Escherichia spp. strains in street-vended beverages and associated preparation surfaces using 16S rRNA analysis

Street-vended beverages are commonly prepared by mechanical extraction of the pulp, usually unpasteurised and requires multiple handling steps. Foodborne pathogens transmitted via skin of street vendors or via faecal-oral route may contaminate the preparation surfaces and beverages. The aim of this study is to identify Escherichia spp. strains of street-vended beverages and their associated preparation surfaces using 16s rRNA analysis. The hygienic practice of vendors was represented by Staphylococcus spp. analysis and Staphylococcus aureus is not detected in beverages and associated preparation surfaces. A total of 80 samples (18 beverages, 15 swab samples and 47 direct film samples) were collected followed by enumeration of microbial load. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification and 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) sequencing were carried out. Results of 16S rRNA sequence analysis indicated that three gramnegative isolates were identified as Escherichia coli RM9387 (Accession no. CP009104.1), Escherichia coli c164 (Accession no. JQ781646.1) and Escherichia fergusonii E10 (Accession no. KJ626264.1) with similarity value of 99% respectively

Tunable Kondo effect in double quantum dots coupled to ferromagnetic contacts

We investigate the effects induced by spin polarization in the contacts attached to a serial double quantum dot. The polarization generates effective magnetic fields and suppresses the Kondo effect in each dot. The super-exchange interaction ($J_{\mathrm{AFM}}$), tuned by the inter-dot tunnelling rate $t$, can be used to compensate the effective fields and restore the Kondo resonance when the contact polarizations are aligned. As a consequence, the direction of the spin conductance can be controlled and even reversed using electrostatic gates alone. Furthermore, we study the associated two-impurity Kondo model and show that a ferromagnetic exchange coupling ($J_{\mathrm{FM}}$) leads to an effective spin-1 exchange-anisotropic Kondo model which exhibits a quantum phase transition in the presence of partially polarized contacts.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

The Two-impurity Anderson Model Revisited: Competition between Kondo Effect and Reservoir-mediated Superexchange in Double Quantum Dots

We study a series-coupled double quantum dot in the Kondo regime modeled by the two-impurity Anderson model and find a new conduction-band mediated superexchange interaction that competes with Kondo physics in the strong Coulomb interaction limit. Our numerical renormalization group results, complemented with the higher-order Rayleigh-Schr\"odinger perturbation theory, show that the novel exchange mechanism leads to clear experimental consequences that can be checked in transport measurements through double quantum dots

Hybrid Wi-Fi and PLC network for efficient e-health communication in hospitals: a prototype

E-health is being adapted in modern hospitals as a significant addition to the existing healthcare services. To this end, modern hospitals urgently require a mobile, high-capacity, secure, and cost-effective communication infrastructure. In this paper, we explore potential applications of a hybrid broadband power line communication (PLC) and Wi-Fi in an indoor hospital scenario. It utilizes the existing power line cables and Wi-Fi plug-and-play devices for indoor broadband communication. Broadband power line (BPL) adaptors with Wi-Fi outputs are used to build an access network in hospitals, particularly in areas where the wireless router signal is poor. The Tenda PH10 AV1,000 AC Wi-Fi power line adapter is a set of BPL adapters that offer operational bandwidth of up to 1,000 Mbps. These adapters are based on the HomePlug AV2 protocol and can provide a data rate up to 200 Mbps on the physical layer. An experiment using the PLC Wi-Fi kit is carried out to show that a Wi-Fi and PLC hybrid network is the best candidate to provide wide range of practical applications in a hospital including, but not limited to, telemedicine, electronic medical records, early-stage disease diagnosis, health management, real-time monitoring, and remote surgeries

IoT-Enabled Vehicle Speed Monitoring System

Millions of people lose their lives each year worldwide due to traffic law violations, specifically, over speeding. The existing systems fail to report most of such violations due to their respective flaws. For instance, speed guns work in isolation and cannot measure speed of all vehicles on roads at all spatial points. They can only detect the speed of the vehicle the line of sight of the camera. A solution is to deploy a huge number of speed guns at different locations on the road to detect and report vehicles that are over speeding. However, this solution is not feasible because it demands a large amount of equipment and computational resources to process such a big amount of data. In this paper, a speed detection framework is developed to detect vehicles’ speeds with only two speed guns, which can report speed even when the vehicle is not within the camera’s line of sight. The system is specifically designed for an irregular traffic scenario such as that of Pakistan, where it is inconvenient to install conventional systems. The idea is to calculate the average speed of vehicles traveling in a specific region, for instance, between two spatial points. A low-cost Raspberry Pi (RPi) module and an ordinary camera are deployed to detect the registration numbers on vehicle license plates. This hardware presents a more stable system since it is powered by a low consumption Raspberry Pi that can operate for hours without crashing or malfunctioning. More specifically, the entrance and exit locations and the time taken to get from one point to another are recorded. An automatic alert to traffic authorities is generated when a driver is over speeding. A detailed explanation of the hardware prototype and the algorithms is given, along with the setup configurations of the hardware prototype, the website, and the mobile device applications