Antiproliferative activity of five garcinia species collected in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo against estrogen receptor-human breast carcinoma (MCF-7) cell line

Garcinia species are well-known for their unique properties of having natural secondary metabolite compounds called xanthone as well as their ethnomedicinal values such as antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. The study was conducted to investigate the antiproliferative activity of peel, flesh and seed extracts of G. dulcis, G. parvifolia, G. nitida, G. mangostana var. mangosta and G. cambogia collected from Malaysian Borneo (Sabah) against estrogen receptor-positive human breast carcinoma (MCF-7) cells. The antiproliferative activity was assessed using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5- diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The results showed that G. dulcis seed induced strongest antiproliferative activity against MCF-7 cancer cell line with the IC50 value of 2.5±0.0 μg/ml, followed by G. dulcis flesh, G. mangostana var. mangostana peel and G. dulcis peel with IC50 values of 9.33 ± 3.21, 11.17 ± 1.04 and 17.67 ± 2.08 μg/ml, respectively. Meanwhile, the IC50 value for G. cambogia peel was 56.67 ± 10.5 μg/ml. No IC50 value was detected in all parts of G. parvifolia and G. nitida at concentration tested (<100 μg/ml). Overall, this study clearly showed that the whole fruit of G. dulcis displayed potent cytotoxic effect by inducing antiproliferative activity at low concentration. Further studies are needed in the future to develop this fruit as pharmaceutical and nutraceutical product for the treatment and prevention against cancer

Using LAPER Quadcopter Imagery for Precision Oil Palm Geospatial Intelligence (OP GeoInt)

Maintaining consistent productive health of perennial crop such an oil palm is challenging, yet crucial for sustaining optimum yield. Oil palm production requires precision farming (PF) solution which conventionally makes use satellite remote sensing techniques to capture agricultural data. Nevertheless, such techniques suffer from constraints due to low spatial and temporal resolution as well as autonomy issues. Proliferation of micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has made production of digital aerial imagery (DAI) become cheaper and easier. DAI conjugated with advances in photogrammetry workflow and analytics post-processing enable powerful geovisualization manipulation. Advance geovisualization manipulation of DAI has promising potentials to leverage precision oil palm (POP) farming. The study reported in this paper aims to adapt UAV-based personal remote sensing (PRS) techniques in producing DAI geovisualization and mapping to accommodate POP provisioning. A Study were carried out using Low Altitudes Personal Remote Sensing (LAPER), a customized micro UAV quadcopter, for acquiring oil palm DAI, and extensive postprocessing workflow in producing oil palm explorative geovisualization and actionable base maps. Various simple yet insightful and actionable oil palm base maps were generated from the workflow. The paper concludes that LAPER is capable of adequately supplying temporal geospatial data for provisioning POP and oil palm geospatial intelligence (GeoInt) and oil palm planters can make use of LAPER imagery for geovisualization tasks for suggesting systematic actions in plantation management

Human Bocavirus Infection among Children, Jordan

Human bocavirus was detected in 57 (18.3%) of 312 children with acute respiratory infection (ARI) who required hospitalization in Jordan. It was also detected in 30 (21.7%) of 138 children with severe ARI, in 27 (15.5%) of 174 with mild or moderate disease, and in 41 (72%) of 57 with other pathogens

A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRODUCT INNOVATION IN JORDAN’S PHARMACEUTICAL SECTOR

Product Innovation, especially New Product Development (NPD) is critical for the continued success, development, and long-term growth of a company. Despite extensive research on how to achieve NPD success, NPD process remains a difficult and a highly risky venture. The research was conducted to investigate factors that affect NPD in the Jordanian pharmaceutical sector. Five factors were conceptually identified from past literature as initial factors. They include senior management support (SMS), cross-functional teams (CFT), customer involvement (CI), supplier integration (SI), and time to market (TTM). These five factors were used to build the basic research model as independent variables; whereas NPD was the dependent variable for the research model. A qualitative research methodology was designed and used to achieve the research objectives. The needed data for this study was captured through personal interviews, and a survey that targeted all Jordanian pharmaceutical companies. The population from which respondents was chosen included research and development managers, marketing managers, and other personnel involved in NPD process in Jordanian pharmaceutical producing companies. Through conducting a number of personal interviews and using Content Analytical Technique (CAT) for data analysis, the results of the research show the existence of a number of factors that affect NPD process in Jordanian pharmaceutical sector such as: SMS, TTM, CFT, R&amp;R, Knowledge, and Technology. In addition, a number of factors were identified as NPD challenges and constraints. These factors include the toughness and lack of clarity in R&amp;R related to NPD process, the lack of financial and human resources, as well as addition to increasing DC. This paper suggests several recommendations. Firstly, senior managements need to provide enough support to NPD process whether as financial, moral or any other kind of support. Secondly, companies have to take the necessary actions to speed up NPD process in order to get the benefits of introducing products earlier into the market. Thirdly, companies have to work hard to ensure higher levels of knowledge among their staff, especially those who are involved in NPD process by providing continued periodic training to them

A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRODUCT INNOVATION IN JORDAN’S PHARMACEUTICAL SECTOR

Product Innovation, especially New Product Development (NPD) is critical for the continued success, development, and long-term growth of a company. Despite extensive research on how to achieve NPD success, NPD process remains a difficult and a highly risky venture. The research was conducted to investigate factors that affect NPD in the Jordanian pharmaceutical sector. Five factors were conceptually identified from past literature as initial factors. They include senior management support (SMS), cross-functional teams (CFT), customer involvement (CI), supplier integration (SI), and time to market (TTM). These five factors were used to build the basic research model as independent variables; whereas NPD was the dependent variable for the research model. A qualitative research methodology was designed and used to achieve the research objectives. The needed data for this study was captured through personal interviews, and a survey that targeted all Jordanian pharmaceutical companies. The population from which respondents was chosen included research and development managers, marketing managers, and other personnel involved in NPD process in Jordanian pharmaceutical producing companies. Through conducting a number of personal interviews and using Content Analytical Technique (CAT) for data analysis, the results of the research show the existence of a number of factors that affect NPD process in Jordanian pharmaceutical sector such as: SMS, TTM, CFT, R&amp;R, Knowledge, and Technology. In addition, a number of factors were identified as NPD challenges and constraints. These factors include the toughness and lack of clarity in R&amp;R related to NPD process, the lack of financial and human resources, as well as addition to increasing DC. This paper suggests several recommendations. Firstly, senior managements need to provide enough support to NPD process whether as financial, moral or any other kind of support. Secondly, companies have to take the necessary actions to speed up NPD process in order to get the benefits of introducing products earlier into the market. Thirdly, companies have to work hard to ensure higher levels of knowledge among their staff, especially those who are involved in NPD process by providing continued periodic training to them

The Psychometric Properties of the Arabic Preschool Activity Card Sort

Background. The Preschool Activity Card Sort (PACS) is an interview-based assessment tool to measure participation of preschool children with age range from 3 to 6 years. Objective of Study. The purpose of this study was to establish the psychometric properties of the recently translated Arabic PACS (A-PACS). Methods. One hundred fifty-one Jordanian parents participated in the study representing different geographical areas. Children were almost equally distributed between males and females and into three age groups. Construct and concurrent validity were examined as well as the internal consistency of the scale and the test-retest reliability. Findings. The A-PACS was able to differentiate between the participation level of young and old children in the domains of education, community mobility, and low demand leisure of the A-PACS giving evidence to its construct validity and it significantly correlated with some aspects of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS) giving evidence to its concurrent validity. The A-PACS showed excellent overall internal consistency (α=.859) for all domains and good test-retest reliability (r=.976, p<.001). Conclusion. The A-PACS can be considered as a valid and reliable tool to measure participation of preschool children with normal development from Arabic cultures. Future studies should focus on the validity of the A-PACS for use with children with disabilities

Child presence detection system and technologies

Child Presence Detection (CPD) is a safety system designed to assist drivers to prevent the consequences of mistakenly left children in closed parked vehicles. Recently, ASEAN NCAP has released its 2021-2025 Roadmap that outlines the implementation of CPD technology as an initiative to prevent such incidences from happening in the future. This paper aims to provide an overview of these CPD systems and their associated technologies that are readily embedded in vehicles, or commercially available in the market

Gemcitabine-Based Neoadjuvant Treatment in Borderline Resectable Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: A Meta-Analysis of Individual Patient Data

Background: Non-randomized studies have investigated multi-agent gemcitabinebased neo-adjuvant therapies (GEM-NAT) in borderline resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (BR-PDAC). Treatment sequencing and specific elements of neoadjuvant treatment are still under investigation. The present meta-analysis aims to assess the effectiveness of GEM-NAT on overall survival (OS) in BR-PDAC. Patients and Methods: A meta-analysis of individual participant data (IPD) on GEMNAT for BR-PDAC were performed. The primary outcome was OS after treatment with GEM-based chemotherapy. In the Individual Patient Data analysis data were reappraised and confirmed as BR-PDAC on provided radiological data. Results: Six studies investigating GEM-NAT were included in the IPD metanalysis. The IPD metanalysis was conducted on 271 patients who received GEM-NAT. Pooled median patient-level OS was 22.2 months (95%CI 19.1–25.2). R0 rates ranged between 81 and 95% (I 2 = 0%, p = 0.64), respectively. Median OS was 27.8 months (95%CI 23.9–31.6) in the patients who received NAT-GEM followed by resection compared to 15.4 months (95%CI 12.3–18.4) for NAT-GEM without resection and 13.0 months (95%CI 7.4–18.5) in the group of patients who received upfront surgery (p < 0.0001). R0 rates ranged between 81 and 95% (I 2 = 0%, p = 0.64), respectively. Overall survival in the R0 group was 29.3 months (95% CI 24.3–34.2) vs. 16.2 months (95% CI 7·9–24.5) in the R1 group (p = 0·001). Conclusions: The present study is the first meta-analysis combining IPD from a number of international centers with BR-PDAC in a cohort that underwent multi-agent gemcitabine neoadjuvant therapy (GEM-NAT) before surgery. GEM-NAT followed by surgical resection improve sur

Performance evaluation of VANET QoS in presence of timing attack and sinkhole attack using OMNeT++

The growth in research advancement of vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET) has seen a significant rise in the security attack.In this paper we gives the simulation for quantitative investigate of VANET in presence of Timing attack and Sinkhole attack. We described the performance metrics and discover the effect and harm caused by Timing attack and Sinkhole attack, which directly affect the network Quality of Service (QoS).Our assessment results shows that the impact on VANET under Timing attack and Sinkhole attack varies potentially depending on number of vehicles, number of attacker vehicles.The impact of a Timing attack and Sinkhole attack increased significantly by increasing the number of attacker vehicles in several of the situations. While the number of attacks impact level continually effect on network performance with varying the number of vehicles. It has been perceived that in presence of Timing attack delay is increased approximately 80%. On the other hand, in presence of Sinkhole attack delay is increased approximately 72%. It implied that these attacks are harmful for network life and stand against safety application in VANET