Topical Herbal Therapy with Solanum tuberosum L. to Combat Acne

Acne is an infectious disease that usually occurs during puberty. Acne can be treated with topical, systemic, hormonal and herbal therapy. Potatoes can be used externally and are useful as anti- acne agents. Data analysis technique used in this study is the null hypothesis testing which was previously carried out normality tests and homogeneity tests as requirements for data analysis. Test the similarity of the two variants using the t-test with a significance level of 0.05 and the degree of freedom (df) = 8. The results showed that the acne reduction score (Acne vulgaris) on facial skin using a potato mask with five sample subjects ranged between the first treatment of 18.50 after treatment to 22.25. The results showed that the acne reduction score (Acne vulgaris) on facial skin using a control mask with five sample subjects ranged between the first treatment of 16.00 after treatment to 15.25. The study showed that the sample data from using potato mask and using control mask is usually distributed. The study also showed that the data was homogeneous. The results of the t-test shows that there is an effect of using a potato mask compared to a control mask.     Keywords: topical therapy, Solanum tuberosum L., combat acn

Atmospheric Pressure Cold Plasma (ACP) Treatment a New Technique to Improve Microstructure and Textural Properties of Healthy Noodles Fortified with Mango Flour

The effect of atmospheric pressure cold plasma (ACP) on microstructural, textural and sensory properties of healthy noodles fortified with mango flour was studied. Atmospheric pressure cold plasma was carried out using helium gas with a flow rate of 1000 ml/min at room temperature. The electrodes were powered by a direct current (DC) power supply voltage of 16.6 kV wrapped around the quartz glass tube to develop plasma plume. SEM for microstructural observation was done to study the changes in surface morphology of plasma treated noodles. It was observed that after the plasma treatment the gluten and fiber content on the noodles surface more coherent and smoother between gluten network and starch granules than the control with respect to plasma power and time of treatment. Atmospheric pressure cold plasma treatment maintained the hardness, springiness and gumminess of control noodles without mango flour (CNT) and noodles fortified with mango flour (NMFT) significantly (P<0.05) compared to untreated control noodles (CN) and untreated mango flour fortified noodles (NMF). The results suggest that ACP is an effective technique for enhancing the gluten strength and improving the qualities of noodles fortified with mango flour

The effects of oral vaccination of Streptococcus agalactiae on stimulating gut-associated lymphoid tissues (GALTs) in tilapia (Oreochromis spp.)

Vaccination of fish by intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection and bath immersion against bacterial infections has been proven to be a commercial success. However, those routes of vaccination are not economical in practice due to several reasons such as high labour cost, highly time consuming, and causing stress to the fish. Meanwhile, oral vaccination is considered as the best route to vaccinate the fish due to less stress to the fish, ability to treat large batch at one time, and easy and practical to administer booster vaccination. In this study, effect of oral vaccination with various regimes in stimulating gut-associated lymphoid tissues (GALTs) against Streptococcus agalactiae infection was observed. In this vaccination experiments, four groups of fish with four replicates consisting of 15 tilapias each were used; four groups per treatment received antigen incorporated vaccine in different regimes. Group 1 was fed with vaccine once per week, Group 2 was fed three consecutive days per week, and Group 3 was fed five consecutive days per week, while Group 4 (control) was fed with standard commercial feed. Booster dose was administered at day-14 after the first administration, and humanely killed at day-28 post-booster vaccination. Ten fish from each group were collected for gut sampling and subjected for histological analysis using Olympus FIVE Image Analyzer. Aggregations of GALTs were observed in lamina propria of the gut. The sizes of GALTs were measured and the numbers of lymphoid cells were also counted. The diameter of GALTs showed no significant (p>0.05) difference between Groups 1 to Group 2 and Group 2 to Group 3, but a significant difference (p0.05) were found between Group 1 to Group 2 and Group 2 to Group 3; however, a significant difference (p<0.05) was observed between Groups 1 and Group 3. As a conclusion, the frequencies of administration play a role in stimulating the size of GALT which is correlated with the number of aggregated lymphoid cells in the gastrointestinal tract of tilapia

Perancangan Strategi Penyerangan pada Robot Sepak Bola

Strategi menyerang atau bertahan merupakan dasar strategi dalam robot sepak bola. Keberhasilan suatu tim robot sepak bola dipengaruhi oleh keberhasilan pemain robot untuk memasukkan bola ke dalam gawang lawan. Strategi menyerangan merupakan faktor utama penentu keberhasilan tim robot sepak bola untuk memenangkan setiap pertandingan. Dalam penelitian ini kami akan membuat perancangan strategi penyerangan yang dipergunakan dan diimplementasikan dalam keadaan yang sesungguhnya. Perancangan strategi tersebut membagikan kawasan lapangan menjadi beberapa kawasan kecil dan 2 kawasan utama, dimana setiap kawasan tersebut akan memberikan aksi yang berbeda. Untuk 2 (dua) kawasan utama serta menentukan strategi mana yang akan dipilih, baik melakukan penyerangan ataupun bertahan. Pada saat kondisi bertahan maka strategi penyerangan menjadi tidak aktif dan robot-robot akan menjaga kawasan pertahanan untuk menghindari masuknya bola ke dalam gawang. Kondisi yang lain akan berganti apabila bola berada pada kawasan lawan, strategi penyerangan menjadi aktif dan semua robot akan memposisikan untuk mendukung proses penyerangan kepihak lawan. Kondisi tersebut akan selalu berganti mengikuti posisi. Dalam penelitian ini menghasilkan suatu rancangan strategi penyerangan dalam bentuk diagram alir untuk memudahkan pemrogram starategi untuk mengimplementasikan kedalam keadaan yang sesungguhnya

Algoritma Strategi Untuk Menghindari Rintangan Pada Robot Sepak Bola

Robot sepak bola merupakan domain yang menarik untuk di kaji pada bidang robot otonom oleh para peneliti dan mahasiswa. Namun demikian untuk pengembangan (penulisan program, pengujian, dan debugging) robot dalam domain tersebut merupakan tugas yang tidak mudah. Makalah ini berkonsentrasi pada pengembangan posisi dan algoritma untuk menghindari rintangan pada robot sepak bola. Pada tahapan ini dikembangkan strategi dalam robot sepak bola seperti pergerakan dasar, tendangan ke arah gawang, dan pergerakan penjaga gawang. Formulasi yang digunakan untuk memposisikan dan menghindari rintangan pada robot sepak bola didasarkan pada pendekatan matematik. Formula ini dipergunakan untuk memastikan bahwa gerakan robot adalah tepat dan sesuai pada sasaran. Kecepatan pergerakan robot dihitung untuk mengatur ketepatan robot dalam menghindari rintangan yang ada. Teori mengenai pengaturan posisi dan koordinat robot (x,y) digunakan untuk menemukan rintangan dan menghindarinya. Penelitian ini mempergunakan simulasi dan pengujian untuk mengevaluasi penerapan algoritma yang dibuat. Fungsi untuk menendang, pergerakan obyek, dan menghindari rintangan telah berhasil dilaksanakan. Hasil yang didapatkan dapat dipergunakan sebagai bagian strategi dalam kompetisi robot sepak bola secara keseluruhan

Psychosocial Workplace Hazards and Workers' Health in Factory Sector

Nowadays, issues on psychosocial workplace hazards have become a hot topic. However, only a small amount of research has been conducted in Malaysia. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between psychosocial workplace hazards and workers' health which is measured using Body Mass Index (BMI) as well as mental health. Two research hypotheses related to psychosocial workplace hazards, i.e. Body Mass Index (BMI) and mental health were examined. In this study, 105 workers were selected randomly from factories located in Klang, Selangor, and questionnaires were distributed to them. The result revealed that there is a significant relationship between psychosocial workplace hazards and BMI, while there is no significant relationship between psychosocial workplace hazards and mental health. This study serves as a guideline for organisations concerning the relationship between psychosocial workplace hazards with workers' health

Development of an effective and stable genotype-matched live attenuated newcastle disease virus vaccine based on a novel naturally recombinant Malaysian isolate using reverse genetics

Genotype VII Newcastle disease viruses are associated with huge economic losses in the global poultry industry. Despite the intensive applications of vaccines, disease outbreaks caused by those viruses continue to occur frequently even among the vaccinated poultry farms. An important factor in the suboptimal protective efficacy of the current vaccines is the genetic mismatch between the prevalent strains and the vaccine strains. Therefore, in the present study, an effective and stable genotype-matched live attenuated Newcastle disease virus (NDV) vaccine was developed using reverse genetics, based on a recently isolated virulent naturally recombinant NDV IBS025/13 Malaysian strain. First of all, the sequence encoding the fusion protein (F) cleavage site of the virus was modified in silico from virulent polybasic (RRQKRF) to avirulent monobasic (GRQGRL) motif. The entire modified sequence was then chemically synthesized and inserted into pOLTV5 transcription vector for virus rescue. A recombinant virus termed mIBS025 was successfully recovered and shown to be highly attenuated based on OIE recommended pathogenicity assessment indices. Furthermore, the virus was shown to remain stably attenuated and retain the avirulent monobasic F cleavage site after 15 consecutive passages in specific-pathogen-free embryonated eggs and 12 passages in one-day-old chicks. More so, the recombinant virus induced a significantly higher hemagglutination inhibition antibody titre than LaSota although both vaccines fully protected chicken against genotype VII NDV induced mortality and morbidity. Finally, mIBS025 was shown to significantly reduce both the duration and quantity of cloacal and oropharyngeal shedding of the challenged genotype VII virus compared to the LaSota vaccine. These findings collectively indicate that mIBS025 provides a better protective efficacy than LaSota and therefore can be used as a promising vaccine candidate against genotype VII NDV strains

Round Randomized Learning Vector Quantization for Brain Tumor Imaging

Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) classification into normal and abnormal is a critical and challenging task. Owing to that, several medical imaging classification techniques have been devised in which Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) is amongst the potential. The main goal of this paper is to enhance the performance of LVQ technique in order to gain higher accuracy detection for brain tumor in MRIs. The classical way of selecting the winner code vector in LVQ is to measure the distance between the input vector and the codebook vectors using Euclidean distance function. In order to improve the winner selection technique, round off function is employed along with the Euclidean distance function. Moreover, in competitive learning classifiers, the fitting model is highly dependent on the class distribution. Therefore this paper proposed a multiresampling technique for which better class distribution can be achieved. This multiresampling is executed by using random selection via preclassification. The test data sample used are the brain tumor magnetic resonance images collected from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Center and UCI benchmark data sets. Comparative studies showed that the proposed methods with promising results are LVQ1, Multipass LVQ, Hierarchical LVQ, Multilayer Perceptron, and Radial Basis Function