Primary Productivity and Mineral Nutrient Status of some Estuarine and Coastal Waters along the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia during the off Monsoon Period.

A study of the organic and inorganic mineral status, primary productivity and related environmental parameters of some estuarine and coastal waters along the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia indicates that the estuarine waters act as nutrient sources for the adjacent coastal waters. The net photosynthetic values at the estuarine stations ranged from 82.0-125.4 and 104.0-257.9 fJ.g C/1/h while that of coastal stations ranged from 42.0-164.5 and 66.0-198.2 fJ.g C/1/h during the high and low tides respectivelv. During the low tides, at both the estuarine and coastal stations, the dissolved organic nitrogen, particulate orgMlic phosphorus and inorganic ammonium nitrogen were present in high concentrations while that of dissolved oxygen, inorganic nitrate nitrogen and nitrite nitrogen were low throughout the study period

Ethics in Neuromarketing and Its Implications on Business to Stay Vigilant

Neuromarketing is an emerging field in which academic and industry research employ neuroscience techniques to understand the consumers' mind by explaining consumers' preferences, motivations, and expectations. Nevertheless, some people claimed that the use of neuroscience in marketing somehow had introduced companies to a ‘buy button' that can read the mind of potential consumers and influence their buying decisions. Plus, those that oppose neuromarketing also believe that the act of ‘reading' consumers' mind with the aim of improving company services is unethical and should not be used, let alone implied. However, what does actually ‘ethics in neuromarketing' means in the first place? Moreover, how does this become an issue in the marketing field? Herein, we will articulate common ethical concerns with neuromarketing. We argue that the most frequently raised concerns- autonomy, informed consent, confidentiality, privacy, benevolence, and no maleficence-given the current capabilities for business to stay vigilant. However, we identify how potentially serious ethical issues may emerge from neuromarketing practices in the industry, which are primarily exclusive. We identify approaches that business can use and reduce the threats to consumers. We conclude that neuromarketing has clear potential for business to stay vigilant and mitigate the positive impact on society

Modelling directionality for paleoclimatic time series

The ice core time series from Vostok Station in Antarctica and the North Greenland Ice Core Project have seasonal variation corresponding to the Milankovitch cycles. After removing these cycles, and interpolating to equal time intervals, stationary time series models are fitted. The series show clear directionality and this feature is modelled by either non-Gaussian errors or non-linear time series models. Threshold autoregressive models are fitted by penalized least squares and compared with non-threshold autoregressive models. Since both ice core time series are reasonably modelled as first order autoregressive series with parameters close to one, directionality will arise from non-symmetric error distributions. However, two regime threshold autoregressive models, of order one and two for Greenland and Vostok, respectively, give an improved match to the observed directionality and a reduced sum of squared residuals. Realizations from the threshold autoregressive models are noticeably different from the non-threshold models. Since the non-threshold models are a restricted case of the threshold models, and the threshold models are a better fit to the observed time series, threshold models should provide more realistic realizations. References C. Chatfield. The Analysis of Time Series: An Introduction. CRC Press, 2004. https://www.crcpress.com/The-Analysis-of-Time-Series-An-Introduction-Sixth-Edition/Chatfield/p/book/9781584883173 A. J. Lawrance. Directionality and reversibility in time series. Int. Stat. Rev. 59(1):67–79, 1991. doi:10.2307/1403575 M. M. Mansor, M. E. Glonek, D. A. Green and A. V. Metcalfe. Threshold autoregressive models for directional time series. In I. Rojas and H. Pomares (Eds.), Time Series Analysis and Forecasting Selected Contributions from the ITISE Conference (ITISE 2015). pp. 13–25, 2016. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-28725-6 M. M. Mansor, M. E. Glonek, D. A. Green and A. V. Metcalfe. Modelling directionality in stationary geophysical time series. International work-conference on Time Series (ITISE 2015). http://www.researchgate.net/publication/281835075 M. M. Mansor, D. A. Green and A. V. Metcalfe. Modelling and simulation of directional financial time series. Proceedings of the 21st International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM 2015), pp. 1022–1028, 2015. http://www.mssanz.org.au/modsim2015/E4/mansor.pdf M. M. Mansor, D. A. Green and A. V. Metcalfe. Directionality and volatility in electroencephalogram time series. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Mathematical Sciences and Statistics (ICMSS 2016), AIP Conf. Proc. 1739:020080, 2016. doi:10.1063/1.4952560 North Greenland Ice Core Project members. High-resolution record of Northern Hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period. Nature, 431:147–151, 2004. doi:10.1038/nature02805 J. R. Petit, J. Jouzel, D. Raynaud, N. I. Barkov, J.-M. Barnola, I. Basile, M. Bender, J. Chappellaz, M. Davis, G. Delaygue, M. Delmotte, V. M. Kotlyakov, M. Legrand, V. Y. Lipenkov, C. Lorius, L. Pepin, C. Ritz, E. Saltzman and M. Stievenard. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature, 399:429–436, 1999. doi:10.1038/20859 S. Soubeyrand, C. E. Morris and E. K. Bigg. Analysis of fragmented time directionality in time series to elucidate feedbacks in climate data. Environ. Modell. Softw. 61:78–86, 2014. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2014.07.00

Statistics of Rainfall Rate at 60 minutes Integration Time in Malaysia

Background: This paper presents the comparison of the existing prediction models from 60-minute to 1-minute integration time of rainfall rate in Malaysia. The availability of rain gauge to measure point rainfall rate at lower than 10-minute integration time is very limited. Therefore, acquired rainfall rate statistics are derived from 10-minutes or longer. The conversion of longer integration time data to its equivalent 1-minute integration is important for accurate prediction of rainfall attenuation at a location. There are several previously proposed conversion methods from 60-minute to 1-minute and had been tested for measured rainfall rates in the tropical and high rainfall rate regions. Objectives: To analyze the behavior of the measured rainfall rate characteristics at KLIA. To compare previously proposed conversion methods including ITU-R P.837-6 using the measured rainfall rate data at KLIA. Results: The measured rainfall rate data for 12 months period at KLIA are used in this paper. The statistics of this data are generated including the month and annual cumulative distribution functions (CDF). Furthermore, CDFs of other previously proposed conversion methods from 60-minute to 1-minute integration time are compiled and compared. Conclusion: The comparison of different established conversion methods using measured rainfall rate data at KLIA shows that the ChebilRahman's method gives values close to ITU-R P.837-6 for Malaysia with lowest errors among other conversion methods

Dual band circular patch flexible wearable antenna design for sub-6 GHz 5G applications

Abstract In this paper, a dual band wearable antenna for 5G applications that resonates at 3.63 GHz and 4.95 GHz covering sub-6 GHz 5G-NR bands such as n48, n77, n78, and n79 is presented. The antenna consists of slotted circular ring patch as radiating element, polyester as wearable substrate, and a partial ground plane on the bottom. The designed antenna is sized at 55×46×0.4 mm³, achieving a bandwidth of 300 MHz from 3.50 to 3.80 GHz and a bandwidth of 160 MHz from 4.86 to 5.02 GHz. Besides, the antenna shows realized gain of 4.2 dBi at 3.63 GHz and 5.78 dBi at 4.95 GHz, whereas efficiency is found 90.5 % and 82.3 % respectively

Compact wideband wearable antipodal Vivaldi antenna for 5G applications

Abstract In this paper, a compact wearable antipodal Vivaldi antenna resonating at 3.5 GHz is proposed for 5G n77 and n78 bands. It is designed on a flexible polyester substrate with a dielectric constant (ɛ r ) of 2 and loss tangent (tan δ) of 0.005. The antenna parameters were optimized via parametric analyses using CST software with a size of 33 × 33 mm² (length × width). The antenna is evaluated in terms of reflection coefficient (S 11 ), gain, efficiency, radiation pattern and surface current density and its reflection coefficient is verified with measurement. This antenna attained a maximum simulated gain of 4.17 dBi and an efficiency of 98.18 % in the resonating band

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium report, data summary of 50 countries for 2010-2015: Device-associated module

•We report INICC device-associated module data of 50 countries from 2010-2015.•We collected prospective data from 861,284 patients in 703 ICUs for 3,506,562 days.•DA-HAI rates and bacterial resistance were higher in the INICC ICUs than in CDC-NHSN's.•Device utilization ratio in the INICC ICUs was similar to CDC-NHSN's. Background: We report the results of International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2010-December 2015 in 703 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and Western Pacific. Methods: During the 6-year study period, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Healthcare Safety Network (CDC-NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care-associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 861,284 patients hospitalized in INICC hospital ICUs for an aggregate of 3,506,562 days. Results: Although device use in INICC ICUs was similar to that reported from CDC-NHSN ICUs, DA-HAI rates were higher in the INICC ICUs: in the INICC medical-surgical ICUs, the pooled rate of central line-associated bloodstream infection, 4.1 per 1,000 central line-days, was nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.8 per 1,000 central line-days reported from comparable US ICUs, the overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher, 13.1 versus 0.9 per 1,000 ventilator-days, as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection, 5.07 versus 1.7 per 1,000 catheter-days. From blood cultures samples, frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (29.87% vs 10%) and to imipenem (44.3% vs 26.1%), and of Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (73.2% vs 28.8%) and to imipenem (43.27% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC ICUs compared with CDC-NHSN ICUs. Conclusions: Although DA-HAIs in INICC ICU patients continue to be higher than the rates reported in CDC-NSHN ICUs representing the developed world, we have observed a significant trend toward the reduction of DA-HAI rates in INICC ICUs as shown in each international report. It is INICC's main goal to continue facilitating education, training, and basic and cost-effective tools and resources, such as standardized forms and an online platform, to tackle this problem effectively and systematically