Energy and rice quality aspects during drying of freshly harvested paddy with industrial inclined bed dryer

The performance evaluation of any industrial dryer regarding energy consumption and product quality should be assessed to check its present status and to suggest for further efficient operation. An investigation was carried out to evaluate the impact of drying temperature and air flow on energy consumption and quality of rice during paddy drying with industrial inclined bed dryer (IBD) with average holding capacity of 15 ton in the selected complexes of Padiberas Nasional Berhad (BERNAS)-the national paddy custodian of Malaysia. In reducing paddy moisture content (mc) from 22% to 23% wet basis (wb) down to around 12.5% wb, the final mc, the specific electrical (in terms of primary energy) and the specific thermal energy consumption were found to be varied between 1.44 to 1.95 MJ/kg water evaporated and 2.77 to 3.47 MJ/kg water evaporated, respectively. Analysis revealed that the specific electrical energy consumption was around 20% lesser and the specific thermal energy consumption of IBDs was around 10% higher during drying with air temperature of 41–42 °C than drying with 38–39 °C in reducing paddy mc from 22% to 23% (wb) down to around 12.5% (wb). However, paddy being with almost same initial mc dried using drying temperature of 38–39 °C, IBDs yielded 1–4% higher head rice yield while milling recovery and whiteness were comparable at acceptable milling degree and transparency. The bed air flows between 0.27 and 0.29 m3 m−2 s−1 resulted in higher head rice yield slightly while its effect on drying time was not prominent so much. For paddy with initial moisture content below 23% wb, it is recommended that drying air temperature should not be higher than 39 °C in order to maintain rice quality at reasonable energy consumption

Assessment of possible human risk of probiotic application in shrimp farming

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing industries. This impressive industry is incorporated with prophylactic use of antibiotic for disease prevention. Probiotics seems to be appropriate substitute for the antibiotic, but because those are live bacteria and residual of the probiotics in the aquaculture product may cause health problem for the consumers and labors in the aquaculture processing plant and aquaculture farms. In this study we used LD50 in a mammalian model animal to assess the safety of probiotics used in shrimp culture for human consumption. After assessment for an approximate range of lethality in a preliminary experiment, treatment groups were fed via a gavage with certain dosage range of candidate probiotic, Shewanella algae. The LD50 value was approximately 1036 cfu/animal with 95% fiducial limitation of 34.95 (lower band) and 37.07 (upper band), which is fairly high and most likely safe to use as probiotic. Furthermore, this study may aid to onset of thinking about an evaluation technique for safe using of probiotic in aquaculture

Does Microcredit Bring the Women into Economic World: Evidence from Bangladesh

The empowerment, entrepreneurship and education are the most imperative issues among women to develop the country. Micro credit is one of the effective tools to eradicate poverty among poor people through enhancing women empowerment, enhancing the entrepreneurial activities and improving education level for both men and women. It has initiated the schemes to encourage entrepreneurial activities along with developing education level and enhance the women empowerment in the country. The main goal of this research is to inspect the improvement of women empowerment, evaluate the development of entrepreneurship and the education level among micro credit borrowers in Bangladesh. There are two hundred and thirty respondents were participated in this research. The data were analyzed by the descriptive and multiple linear regression analysis. The results found that the women empowerment slightly develops even though it is not significant statistically whereas the entrepreneurship and education are negatively associated with micro credit programs. This research influences the micro credit institutions to develop and focus on the application of loaned amount by borrowers to affect significantly on women empowerment, entrepreneurial activities and education level. Finally, this research is also merits the government to widen the facilities and lessen the hardship on micro credit institutions and encourages the policy in Bangladesh.     Keywords: Micro credit, women entrepreneurship, women empowerment, poverty alleviation, Banglades

Structural Evaluation of the Spike Glycoprotein Variants on SARS-CoV-2 Transmission and Immune Evasion

From MDPI via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: accepted 2021-07-07, pub-electronic 2021-07-10Publication status: PublishedFunder: Universiti Sains Malaysia; Grant(s): 1001/PPSP/8012382Abstract: The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) presents significant social, economic and political challenges worldwide. SARS-CoV-2 has caused over 3.5 million deaths since late 2019. Mutations in the spike (S) glycoprotein are of particular concern because it harbours the domain which recognises the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and is the target for neutralising antibodies. Mutations in the S protein may induce alterations in the surface spike structures, changing the conformational B-cell epitopes and leading to a potential reduction in vaccine efficacy. Here, we summarise how the more important variants of SARS-CoV-2, which include cluster 5, lineages B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant), B.1.351 (Beta), P.1 (B.1.1.28/Gamma), B.1.427/B.1.429 (Epsilon), B.1.526 (Iota) and B.1.617.2 (Delta) confer mutations in their respective spike proteins which enhance viral fitness by improving binding affinity to the ACE2 receptor and lead to an increase in infectivity and transmission. We further discuss how these spike protein mutations provide resistance against immune responses, either acquired naturally or induced by vaccination. This information will be valuable in guiding the development of vaccines and other therapeutics for protection against the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic

Mitochondrial barcodes of dragonflies and damselflies originated from Taman Negara Endau Rompin, Johor, Malaysia

Dragonflies and damselflies (Odonates) are important biological indicators in freshwater ecosystems. However, identification among Odonates is often challenging due to their similar morphological features. Therefore, the incorporation of morphological identification by taxonomists and validation using mitochondrial barcodes such as cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) can be a more reliable approach to enhance the accuracy in species identification. In this study, four COI barcodes for Malaysian dragonflies (Neurothemis fluctuans) and damselflies (Neurobasis chinensis, Aristocypha fenestrella and Sundacypha petiolata) were generated. Three of the generated barcodes (D2 COI, D4 COI and D5 COI) supported the species identified by taxonomists meanwhile D3 COI deduced that the damselfly species was misidentified due to the very similar morphology between the same genus of damselfly. All of the COI barcodes are now available in the GenBank with the accession numbers of MT266926.1 (D2 COI), MT266925.1 (D3 COI), MT269676.1 (D4 COI) and MT266924.1 (D5 COI)

Preliminary investigation of myo-inositol phosphates produced by ASUIA279 phytase on MCF-7 cancer cells.

Phytate or myo-inositol hexakisphosphates (IP6) is widely distributed in plants like rice brans. The production of myo-inositol phosphate intermediates has received much attention due to the remarkable potential health benefits offered by the compounds. In this study, the cytotoxicity of the partially purified myo-inositol phosphate fractions and commercial IP1 and IP6 were investigated against MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines. The study showed that the commercial standard IP1 and IP6 showed good inhibition towards the MCF-7 cell line. The MCF-7 cells growth was inhibited in minimum concentration of myo-inositol phosphates (<1000 µg/ml). However, no inhibition observed on the MCF-7 cell line by the myo-inositol phosphates fractions partially purified from rice bran at concentration <1000 ?g/ml. The inhibition of MCF-7 was only observed at concentration more than 30 mg/ml with more than 40% cells were inhibited. This indicates that the partially purified rice bran myo-inositol phosphates degraded by ASUIA279 phytase on MCF-7 breast cancer cells exhibit positive results towards the inhibition of cancer cells growth at relatively high concentration

Acoustic cardiac signals analysis: a Kalman filter–based approach

Auscultation of the heart is accompanied by both electrical activity and sound. Heart auscultation provides clues to diagnose many cardiac abnormalities. Unfortunately, detection of relevant symptoms and diagnosis based on heart sound through a stethoscope is difficult. The reason GPs find this difficult is that the heart sounds are of short duration and separated from one another by less than 30 ms. In addition, the cost of false positives constitutes wasted time and emotional anxiety for both patient and GP. Many heart diseases cause changes in heart sound, waveform, and additional murmurs before other signs and symptoms appear. Heart-sound auscultation is the primary test conducted by GPs. These sounds are generated primarily by turbulent flow of blood in the heart. Analysis of heart sounds requires a quiet environment with minimum ambient noise. In order to address such issues, the technique of denoising and estimating the biomedical heart signal is proposed in this investigation. Normally, the performance of the filter naturally depends on prior information related to the statistical properties of the signal and the background noise. This paper proposes Kalman filtering for denoising statistical heart sound. The cycles of heart sounds are certain to follow first-order Gauss–Markov process. These cycles are observed with additional noise for the given measurement. The model is formulated into state-space form to enable use of a Kalman filter to estimate the clean cycles of heart sounds. The estimates obtained by Kalman filtering are optimal in mean squared sense

Penyebaran Salafi Jihadis ke Perguruan Tinggi di Malaysia dan Dampaknya terhadap Islamiphobia

Dissemination of Islam is an honourable act that requires a concept or medium which is education. Currently, the higher education institutions has been invated bu Salafi Jihadis ideology which impacted Islam negatively where eventually led to Islamophobic escalation. This research is conducted through literay methodology which analysing this previous research, manuscripts and casa studies that occurred within the society. This research finds that the higher education institutions has been the platform for disseminating salafi jihadis ideology which contributing to Islamophobia. Keyword: Higher Education Institutions, Salafi Jihadis, Islamophobi