The life and health challenges of young Malaysian couples: results from a stakeholder consensus and engagement study to support non-communicable disease prevention

BACKGROUND: Malaysia faces burgeoning obesity and diabetes epidemics with a 250% and 88% increase respectively between 1996 and 2006. Identifying the health challenges of young adults in Malaysia, who constitute 27.5 % of the population, is critical for NCD prevention. The aim of the study was two-fold: (1) to achieve consensus amongst stakeholders on the most important challenge impacting the health of young adults, and (2) to engage with stakeholders to formulate a NCD prevention framework.METHODS: The Delphi Technique was utilised to achieve group consensus around the most important life and health challenges that young adults face in Malaysia. Subsequently, the results of the consensus component were shared with the stakeholders in an engagement workshop to obtain input on a NCD prevention framework.RESULTS: We found that life stress was a significant concern. It would seem that the apathy towards pursuing or maintaining a healthy lifestyle among young adults may be significantly influenced by the broader distal determinant of life stress. The high cost of living is suggested to be the main push factor for young working adults towards attaining better financial security to improve their livelihood. In turn, this leads to a more stressful lifestyle with less time to focus on healthier lifestyle choices.CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight a pivotal barrier to healthier lifestyles. By assisting young adults to cope with daily living coupled with realistic opportunities to make healthier dietary choices, be more active, and less sedentary could assist in the development of NCD health promotion strategies<br/

Legal and Non-legal Agricultural Practices: Toward a Sustainable Future in Malaysia\u27s Palm Oil Industry

As a major global producer of palm oil products, Malaysia is familiar with criticisms of its palm oil cultivation, poor agricultural practices and decisions during the planting process. Loss of biodiversity and deforestation resulting from unsustainable palm oil practices are perceived as major setbacks for the environment in Malaysia. However, at the same time as Malaysia stands committed to the palm oil industry and its contribution to job growth and poverty reduction, the relevant stakeholders are creating strategies for sustainable production. Together with relevant environmental laws to prevent and control impacts from climate change, loss of biodiversity and deforestation, environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures to limit environmental impacts are also being applied. Many legal and non-legal measures to ensure sustainable palm oil production practices have been continuously debated, created or implemented over the past decades. These include certification schemes, penalties for environmental offenses, imposing environmental taxes or incentives as corrective and rehabilitative tools, and contributions to an Environmental Fund, as provided in the Environmental Quality Act (EQA) 1974. Furthermore, any new initiatives must ensure that palm oil cultivation practices adhere to and embrace the principles envisaged in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030, Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and Malaysia Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO), in order to achieve SDGs 2030

Brain Acceleration During Ball-To-Head Impact in Soccer

There has been a long debate whether purposeful heading could cause harm to the brain. Studies have shown that repetitive heading occasion could lead to degeneration of brain cells, which is similarly found in patients with mild traumatic brain injury. A two-degree of freedom linear mathematical model was developed to study the impact of soccer ball to the brain during ball-to-head impact in soccer. From the model, the acceleration of the brain upon impact can be obtained. The model is a mass-spring-damper system, in which the skull is modelled as a mass and the neck is modelled as a spring-damper system. The brain is a mass with suspension characteristics that are also defined by a spring and a damper. The model was validated by experiment, in which a ball was dropped from different heights onto an instrumented dummy skull. The validation shows that the results obtained from the model are in a good agreement with the brain acceleration measured from the experiment. This findings show that a simple linear mathematical model can be useful in giving a preliminary insight on what human brain endures during a ball-to-head impact

Aerobic granulation for real domestic sewage treatment at hot and low humidity climate condition

With inoculum sludge from a conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment plant, a sequencing batch reactor fed with real domestic wastewater was operated at 50 ± 1 °C to study the formation of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) for simultaneous organics and nutrients removal with a complete cycle time of 3 h. The AGS were successfully cultivated with excellent settling ability and demonstrated exceptional performance in the organics and nutrients removal with influent loading rate of 1.2 kg COD m-3 d-1. Stable, regular, dense and fast settling granule (average diameter, 2.0 mm and sludge volume index, 73.501 mL g-1) were developed in a single reactor. In addition, 89 % COD removal efficiency was observed in the system at the maturation stage of the granulation, while its ammonia nitrogen removal efficiencies were up to 99 %. The study demonstrated the capabilities of AGS formation in a single, high and slender column type-bioreactor at high temperature which is suitable to be applied for hot climate and low humidity condition (e.g. Saudi Arabia)

Comparison of Convective Heat Transfer Coefficient and Friction Factor of TiO2 Nanofluid flow in a tube with Twisted Tape Inserts

Nanofluids have gained extensive attention due to their role in improving the efficiency of thermal systems. The present study reports a further enhancement in heat transfer coefficients in combination with structural modifications of flow systems namely, the addition of tape inserts. Experiments are undertaken to determine heat transfer coefficients and friction factor of TiO2/water nanofluid up to 3.0% volume concentration at an average temperature of 30 C. The investigations are undertaken in the Reynolds number range of 8000-30,000 for flow in tubes and with tapes of different twist ratios. A significant enhancement of 23.2% in the heat transfer coefficients is observed at 1.0% concentration for flow in a tube. With the use of twisted tapes, the heat transfer coefficient increased with decrease in twist ratio for water and nanofluid. The heat transfer coefficient and friction factor are respectively 81.1% and 1.5 times greater at Re ¼ 23,558 with 1.0% concentration and twist ratio of 5, compared to values with flow of water in a tube. An increase in the nanofluid concentration to 3.0% decreased heat transfer coefficients to values lower than water for flow in a tube and with tape inserts. A thermal system with tape insert of twist ratio 15 and 1.0% TiO2 concentration gives maximum advantage ratio, if pressure drop is considered along with enhancement in heat transfer coefficient

Komunikasi dalam CSR Perusahaan: Pemberdayaan Masyarakat dan Membangun Citra Positif

Community empowerment and positive image are desired of the company'sCSR program. The purpose of this study was to analyze ( 1 ) the implementation ofcompany's CSR communication PTPN V for community empowerment and building apositive image. ( 2 ) relationship among communication company's CSR PTPN V withcommunity empowerment and corporate image. Research using quantitative and surveytechniques . The population in this study as many as 418 people . The sample in this studyas many as 250 people. Sampling in this study conducted proportional sampling . Theconclusions of this study is the implementation of CSR communication within the companyPTPN V for community empowerment and build a positive image is generally going well.Furthermore, there are very significant (p < 0.01) relationship among communicators,messages, channels with community empowerment and corporate image

Principal Component Analysis Of Factors Determining Phosphate Rock Dissolution On Acid Soils

Many of the agricultural soils in Indonesia are acidic and low in both total and available phosphorus which severely limits their potential for crops production. These problems can be corrected by application of chemical fertilizers. However, these fertilizers are expensive, and cheaper alternatives such as phosphate rock (PR) have been considered. Several soil factors may influence the dissolution of PR in soils, including both chemical and physical properties. The study aimed to identify PR dissolution factors and evaluate their relative magnitude. The experiment was conducted in Soil Chemical Laboratory, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Indonesian Center for Agricultural Land Resources Research and Development from January to April 2002. The principal component analysis (PCA) was used to characterize acid soils in an incubation system into a number of factors that may affect PR dissolution. Three major factors selected were soil texture, soil acidity, and fertilization. Using the scores of individual factors as independent variables, stepwise regression analysis was performed to derive a PR dissolution function. The factors influencing PR dissolution in order of importance were soil texture, soil acidity, then fertilization. Soil texture factors including clay content and organic C, and soil acidity factor such as P retention capacity interacted positively with P dissolution and promoted PR dissolution effectively. Soil texture factors, such as sand and silt content, soil acidity factors such as pH, and exchangeable Ca decreased PR dissolution