Examining the innovative minds of Takaful consumers: the case of Malaysia

Objective: This study aims to examine the factors that will affect Malaysian consumers to participate in Takaful. Analysis: Out of the 600 questionnaires that were sent to consumers in greater Malaysia i.e. Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, we received 503 questionnaires. The sample is randomly selected from the known population. The total of 35 questions are constructed to know the determinants to choose new products by the respondents. Method: New product adoption theory is used in developing the questionnaire. In this, questions are organised into seven groups, namely, (a) cost vs. benefit, (b) accessability, availability and service quality, (c) product features, (d) reputation of the company, (e) attributes of agent, (f) marketing and promotion and (g) social and religious factors. The data collected from respondents were subjected to exploratory factor analysis based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) through varimax rotation. This was performed in order to reduce the data to a manageable size. Findings: The findings show that, three predictors out seven predictors significantly contributed to the model and these are social and religious factors, product features, and marketing and promotion. Result: It can be said that, marketing, social and religion and product features are the most important and dominant factors that can influence Malaysian consumers to adopt and participate in Takaful products. Takaful operators should enhance their marketing strategy and simplify the product features to capture the untouched market

Awareness and knowledge of takaful in Malaysia: a survey of Malaysian consumers

Insurance, nowadays, is no longer a luxury rather a necessity. Government regulations and employment are two very important factors that contribute to the huge overall growth of the insurance industry because they force general public to buy it. The concept behind conventional insurance is contrary to the principles of Islam and socio-ethical perspective. The purpose of Shari’ah is to create and maintain a harmonious social environment by moulding our conducts in all aspects of our ritual and daily life.Takaful industry remains to be relevant even after three decades of its introduction due to the continuous demands from the multiracial and multi-ethnic participants from various backgrounds. The said industry celebrates the contributions of their stakeholders, namely the Takaful operators, Shari’ah advisors and the participants or customers. Additional credit for the progressive development of Takaful industry goes to the consistent guidelines from the regulators. However, one factor that hinders further development of Takaful industry is the lack of awareness of its presence and purpose in Malaysian market. Therefore, this paper was designed to examine the knowledge and awareness of Takaful among Malaysian consumers in Malaysia by collecting primary data through survey questionnaires. Out of the 600 questionnaires that were sent to consumers in greater Malaysia i.e. Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, we received 503 questionnaires. Random selection was used to select the sample from the known population. The findings show that out of the 503 respondents, 124 have no knowledge of Takaful and 45% are not aware that Takaful policy holders share risks mutually. Also, 33.2, %, 38.8% and 37.2% do not know that Takaful is free from gambling, uncertainty, and interest.70.2% respondents, however, think that Takaful products comply with Shari’ah

Design of UTeM logo-shape wearable antenna for communication application by graphene silver nanocomposites

Previously, the antenna conductive patch was made of copper, which was costly, susceptible to multi-fading, bulky, environmentally sensitive, and difficult to produce. Because of their exceptional electrical conductivity and superior strength to metal, while remaining versatile, the miracle nanotechnology of graphene has made them a possible candidate to replace uncompromising copper metallic content. As a result, graphene is incorporated into conductive silver nanocomposites in this work. With the microstrip feeding technology, the suggested antenna design features a logo-shaped made of graphene and silver patch on a textile substrate and radiates at 2.45 GHz frequency. The antenna’s total dimensions are 60×60×1.6 mm. The simulation results were generated using computer simulation technology (CST) studio suite program software, which improved antenna properties including far-fields, return loss, and voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR). Wearable antennas are promising and have a bright future, especially with the advent of wireless communication technologies, so this new design is essential for the materials revolution in advanced communication and IR4.0 applications, as well as wireless sensor applications

The use of social networks in education : challenges and opportunities.

Technology can have a reciprocal relationship with teaching. The emergence of new technologies pushes educators to understanding and leveraging these technologies for classroom use, at the same time, the on the ground implementation of these technologies in the classroom can directly impact how these technologies continue to take shape. Social network such as Friendster, MySpace, Facebook and twitter are popular and influential because they help satisfy the human need to create and connect. It is imperative that emergency communicators not only monitor the information shared across social media, but also engage the dialogue to help shape the conversation. Undoubtedly, without these recent technologies in the classroom, strong lessons can still be achieved, but there's a sharp disconnect between the way students are taught in school and the way the outside world approaches socialization, meaning making, and accomplishmen

The global EPTO database: Worldwide occurrences of aquatic insects

Motivation: Aquatic insects comprise 64% of freshwater animal diversity and are widely used as bioindicators to assess water quality impairment and freshwater ecosystem health, as well as to test ecological hypotheses. Despite their importance, a comprehensive, global database of aquatic insect occurrences for mapping freshwater biodiversity in macroecological studies and applied freshwater research is missing. We aim to fill this gap and present the Global EPTO Database, which includes worldwide geo-referenced aquatic insect occurrence records for four major taxa groups: Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera and Odonata (EPTO). Main type of variables contained: A total of 8,368,467 occurrence records globally, of which 8,319,689 (99%) are publicly available. The records are attributed to the corresponding drainage basin and sub-catchment based on the Hydrography90m dataset and are accompanied by the elevation value, the freshwater ecoregion and the protection status of their location. Spatial location and grain: The database covers the global extent, with 86% of the observation records having coordinates with at least four decimal digits (11.1 m precision at the equator) in the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) coordinate reference system. Time period and grain: Sampling years span from 1951 to 2021. Ninety-nine percent of the records have information on the year of the observation, 95% on the year and month, while 94% have a complete date. In the case of seven sub-datasets, exact dates can be retrieved upon communication with the data contributors.Major taxa and level of measurement: Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera and Odonata, standardized at the genus taxonomic level. We provide species names for 7,727,980 (93%) records without further taxonomic verification. Software format: The entire tab-separated value (.csv) database can be downloaded and visualized at https://glowa bio.org/proje ct/epto_datab ase/. Fifty individual datasets are also available at https://fred.igb-berlin. de, while six datasets have restricted access. For the latter, we share metadata and the contact details of the authors

Study on Green Energy Converter for the Purpose of Optimising Teaching and Learning in Energy Science

Knowledge of energy conservation is vital to be understood by students in grasping the topic of energy science. Hence, a study has been piloted to produce energy converter which can be used practically by the students to understand about the conversion of energy from kinetic energy to electricity. In the convertible of kinetic energy to electrical energy, as these energy undergo conversion, the kinetic energy are stored in two forms of storage apparatus. The first type is synchronous flywheels which operate within the allowable range of the synchronous frequency. The second type is asynchronous flywheels whose rotational speed is independent from the system synchronous frequency and varied over a wide range and this features gives the asynchronous flywheel the ability to store and release significant amount of kinetic energy. The outcomes from this study displayed successful performance which is dynamo that act as generator for the converter as energy is being convert from the kinetic energy into the electrical energy and efficaciously can be used to charge electrical gadget

Structural, thermal and dissolution properties of MgO- and CaO-containing borophosphate glasses: effect of Fe2O3 addition

This paper investigated manufacture of high-durability phosphate glass fibres for biomedical applications. Five different borophosphate glass formulations in the systems of 45P2O5–5B2O3–5Na2O–(29 − x)CaO–16MgO–(x)Fe2O3 and 45P2O5–5B2O3–5Na2O–24CaO–(21 − x)MgO–(x)Fe2O3 where x = 5, 8 and 11 mol% were produced via melt quenching. The compositions and amorphous nature of the glasses were confirmed by ICP-MS and XRD, respectively. FTIR results indicated depolymerisation of the phosphate chains with a decrease in Q2 units with increasing Fe2O3 content. DSC analyses showed an increase in Tg by ~5 °C with an increment of 3 mol% in Fe2O3 content. The thermal properties were also used to calculate processing window (i.e. Tc,ons—Tg) and another parameter, Kgl, to determine the suitability for fibre drawing directly from melt, which equals (Tc,ons—Tg)/(Tl—Tc,ons). The degradation study conducted in PBS solution at 37 °C showed a decrease of 25–47% in degradation rate with increasing Fe2O3 content. This confirmed that the chemical durability of the glasses had increased, which was suggested to be due to Fe2O3 addition. Furthermore, the density measured via Archimedes method revealed a linear increase with increasing Fe2O3 content

Transcranial Low-Level Laser Therapy Improves Neurological Performance in Traumatic Brain Injury in Mice: Effect of Treatment Repetition Regimen

Low-level laser (light) therapy (LLLT) has been clinically applied around the world for a spectrum of disorders requiring healing, regeneration and prevention of tissue death. One area that is attracting growing interest in this scope is the use of transcranial LLLT to treat stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI). We developed a mouse model of severe TBI induced by controlled cortical impact and explored the effect of different treatment schedules. Adult male BALB/c mice were divided into 3 broad groups (a) sham-TBI sham-treatment, (b) real-TBI sham-treatment, and (c) real-TBI active-treatment. Mice received active-treatment (transcranial LLLT by continuous wave 810 nm laser, 25 mW/cm[superscript 2], 18 J/cm[superscript 2], spot diameter 1 cm) while sham-treatment was immobilization only, delivered either as a single treatment at 4 hours post TBI, as 3 daily treatments commencing at 4 hours post TBI or as 14 daily treatments. Mice were sacrificed at 0, 4, 7, 14 and 28 days post-TBI for histology or histomorphometry, and injected with bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) at days 21–27 to allow identification of proliferating cells. Mice with severe TBI treated with 1-laser Tx (and to a greater extent 3-laser Tx) had significant improvements in neurological severity score (NSS), and wire-grip and motion test (WGMT). However 14-laser Tx provided no benefit over TBI-sham control. Mice receiving 1- and 3-laser Tx had smaller lesion size at 28-days (although the size increased over 4 weeks in all TBI-groups) and less Fluoro-Jade staining for degenerating neurons (at 14 days) than in TBI control and 14-laser Tx groups. There were more BrdU-positive cells in the lesion in 1- and 3-laser groups suggesting LLLT may increase neurogenesis. Transcranial NIR laser may provide benefit in cases of acute TBI provided the optimum treatment regimen is employed.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01AI050875)Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (DAMD17-02-2-0006)United States. Dept. of Defense. Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (W81XWH-09-1-0514)United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Military Photomedicine Program (FA9550-11-1-0331

Systematic and Evolutionary Insights Derived from mtDNA COI Barcode Diversity in the Decapoda (Crustacea: Malacostraca)

Background: Decapods are the most recognizable of all crustaceans and comprise a dominant group of benthic invertebrates of the continental shelf and slope, including many species of economic importance. Of the 17635 morphologically described Decapoda species, only 5.4% are represented by COI barcode region sequences. It therefore remains a challenge to compile regional databases that identify and analyse the extent and patterns of decapod diversity throughout the world. Methodology/Principal Findings: We contributed 101 decapod species from the North East Atlantic, the Gulf of Cadiz and the Mediterranean Sea, of which 81 species represent novel COI records. Within the newly-generated dataset, 3.6% of the species barcodes conflicted with the assigned morphological taxonomic identification, highlighting both the apparent taxonomic ambiguity among certain groups, and the need for an accelerated and independent taxonomic approach. Using the combined COI barcode projects from the Barcode of Life Database, we provide the most comprehensive COI data set so far examined for the Order (1572 sequences of 528 species, 213 genera, and 67 families). Patterns within families show a general predicted molecular hierarchy, but the scale of divergence at each taxonomic level appears to vary extensively between families. The range values of mean K2P distance observed were: within species 0.285% to 1.375%, within genus 6.376% to 20.924% and within family 11.392% to 25.617%. Nucleotide composition varied greatly across decapods, ranging from 30.8 % to 49.4 % GC content. Conclusions/Significance: Decapod biological diversity was quantified by identifying putative cryptic species allowing a rapid assessment of taxon diversity in groups that have until now received limited morphological and systematic examination. We highlight taxonomic groups or species with unusual nucleotide composition or evolutionary rates. Such data are relevant to strategies for conservation of existing decapod biodiversity, as well as elucidating the mechanisms and constraints shaping the patterns observed.FCT - SFRH/BD/25568/ 2006EC FP6 - GOCE-CT-2005-511234 HERMESFCT - PTDC/MAR/69892/2006 LusomarBo