Converging Goals, Converging Professions: Linking Education, Family Support and Health Care Professionals to Better Serve Vulnerable Families

This brochure highlights the findings of the full report, Health Matters: The Role of Health and the Health Sector in Place-Based Initiatives for Young Children, describing ways to better link children and families to the full array of education, family support and health care professionals needed to promote healthy growth and development. Included are eight case studies of successful programs that support the health and development of children

Design an Interfacing Tracking System in Rehabilitation Therapies Between The Elbow Joint of The Human Arm and The Prosthetic Arm

Myoelectric prostheses have seen an increased application in clinical practice and research, due to their potential for good functionality and versatility. Yet, myoelectric prostheses still suffer from a lack of intuitive control and haptic feedback, which can frustrate users and lead to abandonment. To address this problem, a prosthetic arm was designed to help the amputees, who unfortunately lost their upper limb. Then, the prosthetic arm was equipped with a hybrid haptic feedback stimulation system to compensate for the missing sensation and enable the amputees to easily perform their normal life activities. The tracking system between the elbow joints of the human and the prosthetic arms was required to accomplish the experimental tests with the able-body subjects. Accordingly, this study is a platform for the main project. The major problem is to synchronize the movements of the prosthetic arm’s elbow joint with the human arm’s elbow joint within a high response, acceptable accuracy, and low error. Therefore, the PID controller was used to control the tracking system and the flexible bending sensor was attached to the volunteer’s elbow joint to record its rotational movements. The results verified the functionality of the proposed tracking system to synchronize the joints movements and enable the prosthetic arm to follow the movements of the volunteer’s arm within 0.062 sec. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed elbow joints tracking system to synchronize the motions of the volunteer and he prosthetic arms was concluded. &nbsp

Comparative study on the perspective towards the benefits and hindrances of implementing building information modelling (BIM)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is considered one of the most effective technologies to improve the productivity of the building process. BIM has proven its advantages throughout the building project life cycle. However, the lack of awareness towards BIM is due to the persistent practice of obsolete technology in construction. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore the industrial practitioners' perspectives on the benefits and hindrances of BIM implementation in order to understand their level of awareness. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 120 consultant companies in Kuala Lumpur where 52 responded. The data were analysed using frequency analysis and test for correlation was performed. Results revealed that respondents have a positive awareness of the benefits and hindrances towards the implementation of BIM. Both BIM and non-BIM users achieve a significant agreement on the benefits of BIM to control delay, cost, and improves management. On the other hand, all participants criticised that High Cost Allocation, Time Consuming, Lack of Information are hindering the implementation of BIM. In addition, there was a weak relationship between the BIM as a tool in company and the predictor variables which are level of understanding, time saving, cost saving, better management, cost allocation, time consumption and lack of awareness. The correlation coefficient values obtained were 0.419, 0.403, 0.376, 0.446, 0.324, 0.407 and 0.274 respectively. The outcomes indicate that construction industry experience constraint on implementing BIM mainly due to the BIM enforcement by the government industry. Thus, this paper is significant in contributing knowledge of awareness between BIM and non-BIM users on benefits and hindrances of BIM implementation. It also acts as a benchmark for the government to address the relevant issues provide a channel to drive the industry towards BIM level 2

Comparative Study on the Perspective towards the Benefits and Hindrances of Implementing Building Information Modelling (BIM)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is considered one of the most effective technologies to improve the productivity of the building process.  BIM has proven its advantages throughout the building project life cycle. However, the lack of awareness towards BIM is due to the persistent practice of obsolete technology in construction. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore the industrial practitioners' perspectives on the benefits and hindrances of BIM implementation in order to understand their level of awareness. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 120 consultant companies in Kuala Lumpur where 52 responded. The data were analysed using frequency analysis and test for correlation was performed. Results revealed that respondents have a positive awareness of the benefits and hindrances towards the implementation of BIM. Both BIM and non-BIM users achieve a significant agreement on the benefits of BIM to control delay, cost, and improves management. On the other hand, all participants criticised that High Cost Allocation, Time Consuming, Lack of Information are hindering the implementation of BIM. In addition, there was a weak relationship between the BIM as a tool in company and the predictor variables which are level of understanding, time saving, cost saving, better management, cost allocation, time consumption and lack of awareness. The correlation coefficient values obtained were 0.419, 0.403, 0.376, 0.446, 0.324, 0.407 and 0.274 respectively. The outcomes indicate that construction industry experience constraint on implementing BIM mainly due to the BIM enforcement by the government industry. Thus, this paper is significant in contributing knowledge of awareness between BIM and non-BIM users on benefits and hindrances of BIM implementation. It also acts as a benchmark for the government to address the relevant issues provide a channel to drive the industry towards BIM level 2

Correlation between the HBsAg level and the peripheral blood lymphocytes profile in chronic hepatitis B patients from Malaysia

Background: In recent times, the hepatitis B virus surface antigen (HBsAg) level, a cheaper marker compared to the molecular method, has been used not only for indicating active hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, but also for predicting the clinical and treatment outcomes. Chronic HBV (CHB) infection is related to defects in cells-mediated immunity; however, data linking the level of HBsAg with changes of immune response during a CHB infection is still lacking in Malaysia. Therefore, the aim of this study was to quantify the HBsAg level in CHB patients and to investigate its correlation with the immune status. Materials and methods: A total of 50 patients with CHB infection and 20 healthy controls were recruited for this cross-sectional study. Serological and biochemical analyses were performed on the serum samples. The HBV genotype was determined by direct sequencing and the viral load in the serum was measured using qPCR. The immunophenotype profiles of the peripheral blood lymphocyte were analyzed using flow cytometry and the HBsAg concentration was measured using Roche’s Elecsys HBsAg II assay. Results: The analyzed data demonstrated a narrowly higher mean level of bilirubin and liver enzymes exhibited by the viremic CHB patients compared to the healthy controls. In the viral load study, 15 patients had a high viral DNA load (≥ 3×106 genome copies/ mL), while 35 patients had a low or undetectable viral load (< 3×106 genome copies/mL). The phylogenetic tree analysis for 35 detectable samples elucidated that the genotypes were B and C, and they were at equal prevalence rates. The outcome of the peripheral blood lymphocyte study revealed that the percentages of CD4+ and CD8+ cells were significantly reduced, while the CD4+/CD8+ ratio were observed to be slightly increased in the CHB patients compared to the healthy controls. At the same time, there were no statistically significant differences between the CHB patients and healthy controls with respect to other peripheral blood lymphocyte cells. More than half of the patients had HBsAg titre above 1000 IU/mL, and there was a positive and negative correlation between the HBsAg titre and the percentage of total T cell lymphocytes and natural killer cells, respectively. Conclusion: Our findings indicated that serum HBsAg suppressednatural killer cells population, but enhanced total T cells lymphocyte in response to CHB infection. This study has shown the importance of quantitative HBsAg as a laboratory biomarker that may help to define the immune state of CHB patients

A Model for Predicting Entrepreneurship Intentions based on Social Cognitive Theory and Entrepreneurship Characteristics

This research studies whether entrepreneurial characteristics comprising passion, creativity, and self-efficacy are significantly associated with entrepreneurial intentions. Therefore, the final year students from various disciplines from a public university who were potential entrepreneurs and have attended the advance level courses on entrepreneurship were chosen for the data collection. Most of these students have participated in the on-campus business related activities and received some experience through these activities. It was found that there are strong positive correlation between entrepreneurial characteristic factors with entrepreneurial intention. Overall, the R2 of the entrepreneurship’s characteristics comprising entrepreneurial passion, self-efficacy, and creativity to predict entrepreneurship intention to become an entrepreneur shows very strong explanation power. It implies that this studys proposed model can serve as an assessment tool for selecting students with the higher entrepreneurial intention to engage them in entrepreneurship and activities at the university

A Model for Predicting Entrepreneurship Intentions based on Social Cognitive Theory and Entrepreneurship Characteristics

This research studies whether entrepreneurial characteristics comprising passion, creativity, and self-efficacy are significantly associated with entrepreneurial intentions. Therefore, the final year students from various disciplines from a public university who were potential entrepreneurs and have attended the advance level courses on entrepreneurship were chosen for the data collection. Most of these students have participated in the on-campus business related activities and received some experience through these activities. It was found that there are strong positive correlation between entrepreneurial characteristic factors with entrepreneurial intention. Overall, the R2 of the entrepreneurship’s characteristics comprising entrepreneurial passion, self-efficacy, and creativity to predict entrepreneurship intention to become an entrepreneur shows very strong explanation power. It implies that this studys proposed model can serve as an assessment tool for selecting students with the higher entrepreneurial intention to engage them in entrepreneurship and activities at the university

Compensate undesired force and torque measurements using parametric regression methods [Abstract]

Haptics as well as force and torque measurements are increasingly gaining more attention in the fields of kinesthetic learning and robot Learning from Demonstration (LfD). For such learning techniques, it is essential to obtain accurate force and torque measurements in order to enable accurate control. However, force and torque measurements using a 6-axis force and torque sensor mounted at the end-effector of an industrial robot are known to be corrupted due to the robot’s internal forces, gravity, unmodelled dynamics and nonlinear effects. Non-parametric regression is used to alleviate the negative impact of these factors on the measurements. However, non-parametric regression requires data to be available on-line which increases the system latency. In this paper, parametric regression will be used to estimate the undesired forces at the end effector for a pre-defined trajectory with limited speed. The parametric regression requires low computational complexity without intensive training over the operational space under the given assumptions. In addition, parametric regression does not need data to be available online. In this work, two compensation methods, namely linear regression and Random Forest Regression are experimentally evaluated and their relative performance is established in comparison to each other. These methods are experimentally validated using Motoman SDA10D dual-arm industrial robot controlled by Robot Operating System (ROS). The experiments showed that force and torque compensation based on linear regression and random forests has tangentially close performance