The Identification And Management Of Major Risks In The Malaysian Construction Industry

Effective risk management can bring greater rewards to project performance by enhancing productivity. The objectives of this study are to identify the major risks associated with the Malaysian construction industry and to evaluate the practical measures that the various local construction industry players would take to respond to those risks. A mixed method of questionnaire and interviews was used to investigate the current trend of risk management implementation in the Malaysian construction industry. Financial risk and time risk are found to be the major risks in terms of the occurrence frequency and the impacts. A lack of knowledge and the associated costs of risk management application are the main reasons given by local contractors who lag behind in implementing risk management in their practices. It can be deduced that risk management is still at an early stage of development in the Malaysian construction industr

Influenza Excess Mortality from 1950–2000 in Tropical Singapore

10.1371/journal.pone.0008096PLoS ONE412

Regulation of epithelial–mesenchymal IL-1 signaling by PPARβ/δ is essential for skin homeostasis and wound healing

Skin morphogenesis, maintenance, and healing after wounding require complex epithelial–mesenchymal interactions. In this study, we show that for skin homeostasis, interleukin-1 (IL-1) produced by keratinocytes activates peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor β/δ (PPARβ/δ) expression in underlying fibroblasts, which in turn inhibits the mitotic activity of keratinocytes via inhibition of the IL-1 signaling pathway. In fact, PPARβ/δ stimulates production of the secreted IL-1 receptor antagonist, which leads to an autocrine decrease in IL-1 signaling pathways and consequently decreases production of secreted mitogenic factors by the fibroblasts. This fibroblast PPARβ/δ regulation of the IL-1 signaling is required for proper wound healing and can regulate tumor as well as normal human keratinocyte cell proliferation. Together, these findings provide evidence for a novel homeostatic control of keratinocyte proliferation and differentiation mediated via PPARβ/δ regulation in dermal fibroblasts of IL-1 signaling. Given the ubiquitous expression of PPARβ/δ, other epithelial–mesenchymal interactions may also be regulated in a similar manner

Cosmological Constraints on Decaying Dark Matter

We present a complete analysis of the cosmological constraints on decaying dark matter. Previous analyses have used the cosmic microwave background and Type Ia supernova. We have updated them with the latest data as well as extended the analysis with the inclusion of Lyman-$\alpha$ forest, large scale structure and weak lensing observations. Astrophysical constraints are not considered in the present paper. The bounds on the lifetime of decaying dark matter are dominated by either the late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect for the scenario with weak reionization, or CMB polarization observations when there is significant reionization. For the respective scenarios, the lifetimes for decaying dark matter are $\Gamma^{-1} \gtrsim 100$ Gyr and $(f \Gamma) ^{-1} \gtrsim 5.3 \times 10^8$ Gyr (at 95.4% confidence level), where the phenomenological parameter $f$ is the fraction of the decay energy deposited in baryonic gas. This allows us to constrain particle physics models with dark matter candidates through investigation of dark matter decays into Standard Model particles via effective operators. For decaying dark matter of $\sim 100$ GeV mass, we found that the size of the coupling constant in the effective dimension-4 operators responsible for dark matter decay has to generically be $\lesssim 10^{-22}$. We have also explored the implications of our analysis for representative models in theories of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, minimal supergravity and little Higgs.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures. Added references and corrected typos as well as grammatical oversight

Systematic comparison of plasma EBV DNA, anti-EBV antibodies and miRNA levels for early detection and prognosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is originated from the epithelial cells of nasopharynx, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated and has the highest incidence and mortality rates in Southeast Asia. Late presentation is a common issue and early detection could be the key to reduce the disease burden. Sensitivity of plasma EBV DNA, an established NPC biomarker, for Stage I NPC is controversial. Most newly reported NPC biomarkers have neither been externally validated nor compared to the established ones. This causes difficulty in planning for cost-effective early detection strategies. Our study systematically evaluated six established and four new biomarkers in NPC cases, population controls and hospital controls. We showed that BamHI-W 76 bp remains the most sensitive plasma biomarker, with 96.7% (29/30), 96.7% (58/60) and 97.4% (226/232) sensitivity to detect Stage I, early stage and all NPC, respectively. Its specificity was 94.2% (113/120) against population controls and 90.4% (113/125) against hospital controls. Diagnostic accuracy of BamHI-W 121 bp and ebv-miR-BART7-3p were validated. Hsa-miR-29a-3p and hsa-miR-103a-3p were not, possibly due to lower number of advanced stage NPC cases included in this subset. Decision tree modeling suggested that combination of BamHI-W 76 bp and VCA IgA or EA IgG may increase the specificity or sensitivity to detect NPC. EBNA1 99 bp could identify NPC patients with poor prognosis in early and advanced stage NPC. Our findings provided evidence for improvement in NPC screening strategies, covering considerations of opportunistic screening, combining biomarkers to increase sensitivity or specificity and testing biomarkers from single sampled specimen to avoid logistic problems of resampling

Waning of specific antibodies against Delta and Omicron variants five months after a third dose of BNT162b2 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in elderly individuals.

The emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, such as the more transmissible Delta and Omicron variants, has raised concerns on efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. Here, we examined the waning of antibody responses against different variants following primary and booster vaccination. We found that antibody responses against variants were low following primary vaccination. The antibody response against Omicron was almost non-existent. Efficient boosting of antibody response against all variants, including Omicron, was observed following a third dose. The antibody response against the variants tested was significantly higher at one month following booster vaccination, compared with two months following primary vaccination, for all individuals, including the low antibody responders identified at two months following primary vaccination. The antibody response, for all variants tested, was significantly higher at four months post booster than at five months post primary vaccination, and the proportion of low responders remained low (6-11%). However, there was significant waning of antibody response in more than 95% of individuals at four months, compared to one month following booster. We also observed a robust memory B cell response following booster, which remained higher at four months post booster than prior to booster. However, the memory B cell responses were on the decline for 50% of individuals at four months following booster. Similarly, while the T cell response is sustained, at cohort level, at four months post booster, a substantial proportion of individuals (18.8 - 53.8%) exhibited T cell response at four months post booster that has waned to levels below their corresponding levels before booster. The findings show an efficient induction of immune response against SARS-CoV-2 variants following booster vaccination. However, the induced immunity by the third BNT162b2 vaccine dose was transient. The findings suggest that elderly individuals may require a fourth dose to provide protection against SARS-CoV-2

Combined searches for the production of supersymmetric top quark partners in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A combination of searches for top squark pair production using proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb(-1) collected by the CMS experiment, is presented. Signatures with at least 2 jets and large missing transverse momentum are categorized into events with 0, 1, or 2 leptons. New results for regions of parameter space where the kinematical properties of top squark pair production and top quark pair production are very similar are presented. Depending on themodel, the combined result excludes a top squarkmass up to 1325 GeV for amassless neutralino, and a neutralinomass up to 700 GeV for a top squarkmass of 1150 GeV. Top squarks with masses from 145 to 295 GeV, for neutralino masses from 0 to 100 GeV, with a mass difference between the top squark and the neutralino in a window of 30 GeV around the mass of the top quark, are excluded for the first time with CMS data. The results of theses searches are also interpreted in an alternative signal model of dark matter production via a spin-0 mediator in association with a top quark pair. Upper limits are set on the cross section for mediator particle masses of up to 420 GeV