Prevalence of iron deficiency and its associated risk factors among primary school children in Kelantan

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is the most common micronutrient deficiency that may leads to serious health problems such as poor behavior, cognitive and motor development in children. The main objective of the study was to investigate prevalence of IDA and its associated risk factors of school children. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 249 Malay primary school children (122 males and 127 females), aged 7-9 years old. Venous blood sample was drawn for hemoglobin and serum ferritin analysis. Results revealed that the prevalence of iron deficiency without anemia was 12.6% and 7.7% of the children was found to have iron deficiency anemia. Result showed that birth weight, household size, height, weight and BMI was correlated significantly with iron deficiency based on serum ferritin concentration.Keywords: iron deficiency anemia; school children; hemoglobin; serum ferritin analysi

Association between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level and anthropometric indices among institutionalized elderly people in Kelantan, Malaysia

Elderly people in institutionalized home care might have the risk of getting certain nutrient deficiencies  due  to  lack  of food intake  and  comorbidities.  This  study  was  intended  to investigate the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among institutionalized elderly people and association between anthropometric indices with serum 25(OH)D level. 47 elderly people from Kelantan, age 60 years and above were interviewed for socio-demographic data and anthropometry measurements. The mean serum 25(OH)D level among elderly was 54.9 ± 19.4 nmol/l shows most of the elderly in this study were in hypovitaminosis D status (83%), but none were classified having vitamin D deficiency. In conclusion, vitamin D deficiency was not prevalent among institutionalized elderly in Malaysia and nutritional status has no or less effect on serum 25(OH)D level.Keywords: elderly people; serum vitamin D; serum 25(OH)D; institutionalized elderly peopl

Analysis of toothbrush rig parameter estimation using different model orders in Real-Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA)

System identification is a method to build a model for a dynamic system from the experimental data. In this paper, optimization technique was applied to optimize the objective function that lead to satisfying solution which obtain the dynamic model of the system. Realcoded genetic algorithm (RCGA) as a stochastic global search method was applied for optimization. Hence, the model of the plant was represented by the transfer function from the identified parameters obtained from the optimization process. For performance analysis of toothbrush rig parameter estimation, there were six different model orders have been considered where each of model order has been analyzed for 10 times. The influence of conventional genetic algorithm parameter - generation gap has been investigated too. The statistical analysis was used to evaluate the performance of the model based on the objective function which is the Mean Square Error (MSE). The validation test-through correlation analysis was used to validate the model. The model of model order 2 is chosen as the best model as it has fulfilled the criteria involved in selecting the accurate model. Generation gap used was 0.5 has shorten the algorithm convergence time without affecting the model accuracy