Waste segregation through recycle and composting activities in urban and suburban areas

The number of wastes generated in Malaysia is increasing every year. Eighty per cent of solid waste in landfills comes from recycled material, and food waste production has risen to around 15 000 tons per day. Recyclable waste and food waste are the highest waste produced in landfills. Recycling and food composting are two solutions that can reduce waste and slow down the rate of garbage received at the landfill. This research aims to determine the knowledge and awareness of waste segregation through recycling and composting. This paper also identifies the constraint of respondents on performing waste segregation. Here, an online questionnaire has been distributed to the community in urban and suburban areas in Selangor and Johor. A total of 125 respondents participated in this study. Analysis from the survey found no significant difference in the knowledge of waste segregation through recycling and composting between urban and suburban areas. It can be denoted that the respondents have a basic understanding of awareness on waste segregation, although only a few have not practised recycling due to several highlighted constraints. Therefore, some recommendation has been emphasized based on this finding, such as installing reverse vending machines (RVM), organizing campaigns, and providing more information on waste segregation. These suggestions have been the top choices to encourage waste segregation in the community. Moreover, further study needs to be extended to the household group in other states and assessing the effectiveness of RVM will elucidate the segregation behaviours among the community

Comparison study of the prosthetics interface pressure profile of air splint socket and ICRC polypropylene socket for upper limb prosthetics

This study examined the interface pressure differences at the stump socket between an ICRC polypropylene socket and an air splint socket for a common wearer of transhumeral amputee using F-socket transducers. Two F-socket sensors arrays were attached to the residual limb. The subject was asked to complete the following tasks: Normal position, stand in a normal position without conducting any motion and shoulder movements, flexion/extension and abduction. The results revealed that the interface pressure applied using ICRC polypropylene socket was maximize at the end distal of the residual limb and give more pressure contact to any shoulder movements. Conversely, while using air splint socket, the socket was able to auto-adjust for required socket fitting even for any change while doing shoulder movements. Our result demonstrated how the comparison of pressure applied at the stump socket may lead in chosen the suitable prosthetic's socket for the amputee. The impending development of an auto adjusted socket that uses an air splint system will provide the prosthetic socket with a less contact pressure at the residual limb. (c) 2014 Nalecz Institute of Biocybemetics and Biomedical Engineering. Published by Elsevier Sp. z o.o. All rights reserved

Overview of the current status of familial hypercholesterolaemia care in over 60 countries - The EAS Familial Hypercholesterolaemia Studies Collaboration (FHSC)

Background and aims: Management of familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) may vary across different settings due to factors related to population characteristics, practice, resources and/or policies. We conducted a survey among the worldwide network of EAS FHSC Lead Investigators to provide an overview of FH status in different countries. Methods: Lead Investigators from countries formally involved in the EAS FHSC by mid-May 2018 were invited to provide a brief report on FH status in their countries, including available information, programmes, initiatives, and management. Results: 63 countries provided reports. Data on FH prevalence are lacking in most countries. Where available, data tend to align with recent estimates, suggesting a higher frequency than that traditionally considered. Low rates of FH detection are reported across all regions. National registries and education programmes to improve FH awareness/knowledge are a recognised priority, but funding is often lacking. In most countries, diagnosis primarily relies on the Dutch Lipid Clinics Network criteria. Although available in many countries, genetic testing is not widely implemented (frequent cost issues). There are only a few national official government programmes for FH. Under-treatment is an issue. FH therapy is not universally reimbursed. PCSK9-inhibitors are available in ∼2/3 countries. Lipoprotein-apheresis is offered in ∼60% countries, although access is limited. Conclusions: FH is a recognised public health concern. Management varies widely across countries, with overall suboptimal identification and under-treatment. Efforts and initiatives to improve FH knowledge and management are underway, including development of national registries, but support, particularly from health authorities, and better funding are greatly needed. © 2018 Elsevier B.V

Overview of the current status of familial hypercholesterolaemia care in over 60 countries - The EAS Familial Hypercholesterolaemia Studies Collaboration (FHSC)

Background and aims: Management of familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) may vary across different settings due to factors related to population characteristics, practice, resources and/or policies. We conducted a survey among the worldwide network of EAS FHSC Lead Investigators to provide an overview of FH status in different countries. Methods: Lead Investigators from countries formally involved in the EAS FHSC by mid-May 2018 were invited to provide a brief report on FH status in their countries, including available information, programmes, initiatives, and management. Results: 63 countries provided reports. Data on FH prevalence are lacking in most countries. Where available, data tend to align with recent estimates, suggesting a higher frequency than that traditionally considered. Low rates of FH detection are reported across all regions. National registries and education programmes to improve FH awareness/knowledge are a recognised priority, but funding is often lacking. In most countries, diagnosis primarily relies on the Dutch Lipid Clinics Network criteria. Although available in many countries, genetic testing is not widely implemented (frequent cost issues). There are only a few national official government programmes for FH. Under-treatment is an issue. FH therapy is not universally reimbursed. PCSK9-inhibitors are available in ∼2/3 countries. Lipoprotein-apheresis is offered in ∼60 countries, although access is limited. Conclusions: FH is a recognised public health concern. Management varies widely across countries, with overall suboptimal identification and under-treatment. Efforts and initiatives to improve FH knowledge and management are underway, including development of national registries, but support, particularly from health authorities, and better funding are greatly needed. © 2018 Elsevier B.V

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical science. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press