Properties and performance of rubberwood particleboard treated with BP® fire retardant

Rubberwood composites are available in many sizes and are frequently used as furniture and partitioning inputs. However they are naturally combustible and may limit its usage for other value-added products. Treating wood composites with fire retardant was one of the most effective ways to prevent such occurrence. In this study, Rubberwood (Hevea brasiliensis) particleboards were incorporated with BP® fire retardant through hot and cold soaking processes. Four different concentrations of fire retardant were applied for the study i.e., 15, 20, 25 and 30% (w/v). Treated and untreated particleboards were exposed to early burning performance test. Fire performance was assessed based on the amount of weight loss and width of burnt area formed on the boards after they were exposed to a fire source. The study shows that BP® had significantly affected the burnt area of the treated particleboards. Insignificant reductions of weight loss were recorded between 15-30% treatment concentrations. Early burning performance showed that increase of fire retardant concentration up to 25% (w/v) reduced the weight loss. There was no further weight loss reduction recorded above that concentration. The burnt area decreased as the concentration level of BP® increased. The smallest burnt area was recorded for the boards treated with 30% BP®. The addition of fire retardant had interfered slightly with the physical and mechanical properties of the treated particleboards. The physical and mechanical properties of the particleboards were adversely affected compared to untreated boards with increasing concentration of BP®

Medullary carcinoma of the breast: Role of contrast-enhanced MRI in the diagnosis of multiple breast lesions

Medullary carcinoma is a rare breast carcinoma with a syncytial growth pattern and high-grade cytology. It can be difficult to diagnose and may be missed on conventional imaging as the findings may overlap with benign lesions i.e. fibroadenomas. The authors report a case of a 25-year-old female who presented with multifocal breast lumps diagnosed with medullary carcinoma and fibroadenomas. Imaging and pathological correlation with contrast-enhanced MRI are presented in the diagnosis of these lesions

Hybrid Deep Neural Network for Facial Expressions Recognition

Facial expressions are critical indicators of human emotions where recognizing facial expressions has captured the attention of many academics, and recognition of expressions in natural situations remains a challenge due to differences in head position, occlusion, and illumination. Several studies have focused on recognizing emotions from frontal images only, while in this paper wild images from the FER2013 dataset have been used to make a more generalizing model with the existence of its challenges, it is among the most difficult datasets that only got 65.5 % accuracy human-level. This paper proposed a model for recognizing facial expressions using pre-trained deep convolutional neural networks and the technique of transfer learning. this hybrid model used a combination of two pre-trained deep convolutional neural networks, training the model in multiple cases for more efficiency to categorize the facial expressions into seven classes. The results show that the best accuracy of the suggested models is 74.39%  for the hybrid model, and 73.33% for Fine-tuned the single EfficientNetB0 model, while the highest accuracy for previous methods was 73.28%. Thus, the hybrid and single models outperform other state of art classification methods without using any additional, the hybrid and single models ranked in the first and second position among these methods. Also, The hybrid model has even outperformed the second-highest in accuracy method which used extra data. The incorrectly labeled images in the dataset unfairly reduce accuracy but our best model recognized their actual classes correctly

Preventative Medicine as a Tool to Ensure Health Equity for Disadvantaged Populations: An Interview with Dr. Kevin Pottie

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” —Benjamin Franklin. In this article, we interview Dr. Kevin Pottie, MD. Dr. Pottie is well known for his clinical and research work on preventative medicine, health equity and evidence-based guidelines, particularly as they relate to disadvantaged populations. We discuss with Dr. Pottie his career as a clinician investigator. He guides us through his journey and shares with us important advice on caring for newly arriving Syrian refugees based on recent published guidelines.   « Mieux vaut prévenir que guérir. » —Benjamin Franklin. Dans cet article, nous interviewons Dr Kevin Pottie, MD. Dr Pottie est reconnu pour sa recherche clinique en médecine préventive et en santé équitable particulièrement dans le domaine des populations désavan­tagées. Dans cette entrevue, Dr Pottie discutera de sa carrière en tant que chercheur clinique et nous partagera des conseils importants sur les soins à donner aux réfugiés syriens nouvellement arrivés au Canada. Ses conseils sont fondés sur des lignes directrices nouvel­lement publiées

Effect of vitamin E supplementation on semen quantity and quality of Local Kampong roosters

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of increasing dietary levels of vitamin E on semen quantity and quality characteristics of local kampong roosters. Forty-five roosters were randomly distributed equally to 3 treatment groups with each group consisting of 5 replicates of 3 roosters per replicate. The 3 treatment groups were no vitamin E (T0), 200 IU vitamin E (T1) and 400 IU vitamin E (T2) supplementations. DL a-tocopherol acetate was used as the source of vitamin E. Commercial broiler feed, crushed corn and water were given ad libitum. Semen quantity and quality were evaluated at week 2, 3 and 4 after the initial vitamin E supplementation. Improvement in semen production characteristics was only noticeable after 4 wk of vitamin E supplementation. Semen characteristics (sperm gross motility score, percentage of live sperm and colour score) at week 4 after supplementation were significantly higher (6.20 � 1.10, 81.68 � 5.39% and 2.80 � 0.30, respectively) in T2 group (P < 0.05) compared to control group. Percentages of abnormal tail spermatozoa were significantly (P < 0.05) lower (3.84 � 2.55) T2 group compared to control group. From this study, it can be concluded that higher supplementation of dietary vitamin E is beneficial in improving the semen characteristics of local kampong chicken after 4 wk of supplementation

Optimization of food waste utilization in the RDF recovery energy facility

It is well known that there is a significant increased in the quantity of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generated every year. Therefore, the management of MSW must be handled carefully by experts. Malaysia as one of the developing country with population nearly 30 millions also facing problems related to MSW management and this issue is quite critical. Even though various programmes were established and few model technologies were introduced by the government to manage MSW effectively, but the impact remain unsatisfaction. For example, the energy facility recovery project which use MSW gathered around Kajang as an alternative fuel still not successful to provide energy according to the design capacity of that particular facility. This failure was observed due to the impact composition of MSW collected which consists huge amount of food waste (57%), 16% plastic, 15% diaper, 9% mixed papers and the remaining 3% textile. The existing process technology at Refused Derived Fuel (RDF) facility is no designed to create a new economic benefit from abundant incoming food waste to the facility. Therefore in this paper, the analysis and suggestion of technology on existing RDF recovery energy facility will be discussed especially on how to overcome the abundant composition of food waste

The Mediating Effect of Job Satisfaction on Employee Loyalty: A Case Study of a Developer Company in Malaysia

Employees’ loyalty is being described as the ability of the employee or staff members of the organization to stay and contribute well in their jobs for such a long term. In the recent years, resignation of employees did show an increment in many companies in Malaysia. This research specifically study on a developer company which is one of the constructions developers company in Johor, Malaysia The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors of training, rewards and benefits and working condition as determinants toward employee loyalty and how job satisfaction mediate the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables as the factors that influence the employee loyalty in organizations. A stratified sampling method was adopted as the sampling method and questionnaires is chosen as the research instrument adopted previous researcher and adopt it into this research. Respondents of this research consists of 155 respondents who are employees of the developer company. In general, we conclude that employee loyalty in the developer company has positive relation between the working condition, rewards and benefits, training and job satisfaction and confirms the partial mediation of Job Satisfaction between the independent variables, rewards/benefits and training with employee loyalty. &nbsp; &nbsp; Keywords: Employee Satisfaction, Employee Loyalty, Working Condition, Training, Malaysi

A liver level set (LLS) algorithm for extracting liver's volume containing disconnected regions automatically

In this paper a specified method is presented to facilitate segmentation of liver volume from CT images that contain disconnected regions automatically. The disconnected region appears because the physic of the liver containing multi-lobe structure, thus different lobe make different region in a single slice image. Most of the available liver segmentation algorithms that are based on gray level operation such as thresholding and active contour fail to extract the liver volume from these images automatically. Thus the core of the algorithm is a level set function that has the availability to manage separating and joining liver boundary routinely. The liver level set (LLS) is separated into two stages which a pre-processing stage and a level set with a hybrid energy minimization algorithm. The current slice is initialized by previous segmented liver boundary allowing changes in liver boundary topological changes to be inherited. The result show a respective segmentation with average 85% DCS when comparing with manual segmentation

Generalized peritonitis secondary to typhoid ileal perforation: Assessment of severity using modified APACHE II score

BACKGROUND: Generalized peritonitis from typhoid ileal perforation is a common cause of surgical emergency in the developing countries, associated with high morbidity and mortality. The severity assessment of a disease condition is often useful to prioritise treatment and reduce morbidity and mortality. High severity scores are usually associated with high morbidity and mortality; therefore, these patients may require more intensive treatment than those with low severity scores. AIM: The purpose of this study was to assess the severity of generalized peritonitis from typhoid ileal perforation using modified APACHE II score. SETTING AND STUDY DESIGN: A teaching hospital unit serving the rural and semi-urban Nigerian community. It is a prospective study of patients with generalized peritonitis from typhoid ileal perforation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Over a period of 7 years, patients had severity of illness assessed using modified APACHE II score. Demographic, clinical, preoperative, operative and postoperative data on each patient were entered into a prepared proforma. Each patient had postoperative outcome and severity of illness were compared to determine the significance of the severity of illness on postoperative outcome. RESULTS: The mean age was of 23.6 \ub1 15.5 years, with 4:1 male: female ratio. Morbidity rate ranged from 8.8-71.3% and mortality in 17.5%. Modified APACHE II score ranged from 0-19, with a mean of 8.2 \ub1 4, 7.6 \ub1 4 for survivors and 9.4 \ub1 2 in those who died. There was no death among the patients who scored 0-4, whereas mortality was 13% in those who scored 5-9, 41.2% in those who scored 10-14, and 50% in patients who scored 15-19 (P&lt;0.05). The modified APACHE II Score significantly influenced mortality, but did not influence the incidence of other postoperative complications. CONCLUSION: A high APACHE II score was associated with high mortality, but did not predict morbidity rate in the patients studied. More study is needed involving a larger number of patients to further validate our findings