Stress response index for traumatic childhood experience based on the fusion of hypothalamus pituitary adrenocorticol and autonomic nervous system biomarkers

Stress occurring in the early days of an individual was often assumed to cause several health consequences. A number of reports indicated that having to deal with unfavourable events or distress situation at a young age could tweak stress responses leading to a broad spectrum of poor mental and physical health condition. Therefore, changes identified within stress response were recommended to be taken as a measure in regulating and managing such health situation. This study combines the biomarker that represents both autonomic nervous system (ANS) and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocorticol (HPA) as a single measure to classify the stress response based on traumatic childhood experience and propose a stress response index as a future health indicator. Electrocardiograph (ECG), blood pressure, pulse rate and salivary cortisol (SCort) were collected from 12 participants who had traumatic childhood experience while the remaining 11 acted as the control group. The recording session was done during a Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT). HRV was then computed from the ECG and the HRV features were extracted. Next, the best HRV features were selected using Genetic Algorithm (GA). Biomarkers such as BP, PR and SCort were then integrated with 12 HRV features picked from GA. The integrations were conducted using two fusion methods which are Euclidean distance and serial fusion. The differences in reaction of the fused features were then identified. Based on the result, the Euclidean distance (ed) which is the fused feature by the parallel fusion, displayed the most efficient reaction with accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity at 80.0%, 83.3% and 78.3%, respectively. Support Vector Machine (SVM) was utilized to attain such result. The fused feature performance was then fed into SVM which produced indexes on stress responses. The result retrieved from these indexes acts as a measure in handling future health deliverability and perhaps could eventually enhance the health care platform for midlife individuals

Regionalization and harmonization in TVET

A transversal skill is one of the skills needed in every type of workplace setting. There is limited information about the perceptions of which transferable skills are needed in the workplace. The objective of this study is to explore the transferable skills among students and lecturers in TVET higher learning institutions in Indonesia and Malaysia. In the present study, transferable skills consist of communication skills, collaboration skills, problem-solving skills, entrepreneurship, and learning to learn skills. A qualitative research was conducted using survey. The five Likert scale questionnaire was distributed to lecturers and students from selected Malaysian and Indonesian universities who have bachelor program in engineering. Based on the analysis outcomes, it is clearly shown that Malaysian university engineering students yielded significantly higher scores on the perceptions of transferable skill acquisition in all measured components compared to their counterparts in Indonesia. Similar patterns of data distribution have been observed in Malaysian and Indonesian engineering students. Based on the lecturers’ perception, Malaysian and Indonesian Engineering Lecturers have comparable perceptions in the aspects of problem solving skills and entrepreneurship skills. In contrast, Malaysian university engineering lecturers gained significantly higher scores on the perception of communication skill, collaboration skill, and learning to learn skill compared to the Indonesian lecturers. The results indicate the need to increase transferable skills of both lecturers and students

Fusion of heart rate variability and salivary cortisol for stress response identification based on adverse childhood experience

Adverse childhood experiences have been suggested to cause changes in physiological processes and can determine the magnitude of the stress response which might have a significant impact on health later in life. To detect the stress response, biomarkers that represent both the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis are proposed. Among the available biomarkers, Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has been proven as a powerful biomarker that represents ANS. Meanwhile, salivary cortisol has been suggested as a biomarker that reflects the HPA axis. Even though many studies used multiple biomarkers to measure the stress response, the results for each biomarker were analyzed separately. Therefore, the objective of this study is to propose a fusion of ANS and HPA axis biomarkers in order to classify the stress response based on adverse childhood experience. Electrocardiograph, blood pressure (BP), pulse rate (PR), and salivary cortisol (SCort) measures were collected from 23 healthy participants; 11 participants had adverse childhood experience while the remaining 12 acted as the no adversity control group. HRV was then computed from the ECG and the HRV features were extracted. Next, the selected HRV features were combined with the other biomarkers using Euclidean distance (ed) and serial fusion, and the performance of the fused features was compared using Support Vector Machine. From the result, HRV-SCort using Euclidean distance achieved the most satisfactory performance with 80.0% accuracy, 83.3% sensitivity, and 78.3% specificity. Furthermore, the performance of the stress response classification of the fused biomarker, HRV-SCort, outperformed that of the single biomarkers: HRV (61% Accuracy), Cort (59.4% Accuracy), BP (78.3% accuracy), and PR (53.3% accuracy). From this study, it was proven that the fused biomarkers that represent both ANS and HPA (HRV-SCort) able to demonstrate a better classification performance in discriminating the stress response. Furthermore, a new approach for classification of stress response using Euclidean distance and SVM named as ed-SVM was proven to be an effective method for the HRV-SCort in classifying the stress response from PASAT. The robustness of this method is crucial in contributing to the effectiveness of the stress response measures and could further be used as an indicator for future health

Quantitative Comparison of Time Frequency Distribution for Heart Rate Variability Using Performance Measure

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has been proposed as a promising non-invasive method to assess Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The recent trend of analysing HRV, which is a non-stationary signal is using the Time Frequency (TF) analysis such as Time Frequency Distribution (TFD). However, the use of TFD is different for every application, therefore, comparison of TFD performance needs to be carried out to select the suitable TFD. The comparisons performed by previous studies were limited to visual comparison which is very subjective and could lead to error. Therefore, this paper presents an objective quantitative comparison using performance measure, M to select the suitable TFD that characterises HRV response during an Autonomic Function Test (AFT). The investigated TFDs are the Wigner Ville (WVD), Smoothed Pseudo Wigner Ville (SPWVD), Choi William (CWD), Spectrogram (SP), and recently introduced Modified B-Distribution (MBD). From the results, we conclude that MBD and SPWVD demonstrated the highest value of performance measure M, with

Characterization of membrane-bound lipase from a thermophilic Rhizopus oryzae isolated from palm oil mill effluent

The characteristics of the membrane-bound lipase from a thermophilic Rhizopus oryzae were studied. The pH and temperature optima for lipase activity were at 7.0 and 37°C, respectively. The enzyme was stable and acidic conditions, retaining more than 80% of its initial activity at pH 4.0 after 30 min incubation. It was stable up to 50°C with 70% of initial activity retained after 3 h incubation. The enzyme is 1,3 specific and exhibits substrate preference. Monoacid triglyceride substrates were hydrolyzed better than methyl esters, polyoxysorbitan and sorbitan substrates

Aluminum toxicity in acid sulfate soil alleviated with biogenic liming composites of blood cockle shell and palm kernel shell

Low crop yield from acid sulfate soil was caused by high concentrations of aluminum and iron in soil. Aluminum ion which cause root injury at root region inhibits the uptake of the nutrients by the root and lead to nutrient deficiency. Ground magnesium limestones can beapplied to overcome this problem but incurred more production cost. Biogenic liming agent from blood cockle shell and/or palm kernel shell are more cost effective and provide the essential element i.e. calcium. This study evaluate phase-association of Al in acid sulfate soil remediated using biogenic composites liming material using selective sequential extraction analysis. Biogenic liming composites were characterized for pH, proximate analysis and elemental composition. High ratio of BCS in composite retained Al in the residual form about 91.33%. Amelioration of soil with 100% PKS did not give significant reduction of the exchangeable Al.Keywords: soil remediation; phytotoxicity; abiotic stress; calcination; alkalinity

The Interpretation Of In Context Verbal Probability Expressions Used In International Accounting Standards: A Comparison Of English And Chinese Students Studying At English Speaking Universities

This study examines the differences in the interpretation of ten in context verbal probability expressions used in accounting standards between native Chinese speaking and native English speaking accounting students in United Kingdom universities. The study assesses the degree of grouping factors consensus on the numerical interpretation of the probability expressions. Unlike previous studies, this study uses subjects who share a common language (English), respond to a survey written in the common language, and are being educated in that common language. The results show that native culture and language are not significant factors in explaining differences between accounting students in their interpretation of in context verbal probability expressions. Future research comparing Chinese students in China with Chinese students at English speaking universities would be useful in evaluating the extent that common language and cultural differences has on the results

Effect of agitation and aeration rates on chitinase production using Trichoderma virens UKM1 in 2 L stirred tank reactor

Shrimps have been a popular raw material for the burgeoning marine and food industry contributing to increasing marine waste. Shrimp waste, which is rich in organic compounds is an abundant source of chitin, a natural polymer of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (GluNac), a reducing sugar. For this respect, chitinase-producing fungi have been extensively studied as biocontrol agents. Locally isolated Trichoderma virens UKM1 was used in this study. The effect of agitation and aeration rates using colloidal chitin as control substrate in a 2-l stirred tank reactor gave the best agitation and aeration rates at 200 rpm and 0.33 vvm with 4.1 U/l per hour and 5.97 U/l per hour of maximum volumetric chitinase activity obtained, respectively. Microscopic observations showed shear sensitivity at higher agitation rate of the above system. The oxygen uptake rate during the highest chitinase productivity obtained using sun-dried ground shrimp waste of 1.74 mg of dissolved oxygen per gram of fungal biomass per hour at the kappaL a of 8.34 per hour

Analysis on Complex Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) using Finite Different Time Domain Method (FDTD)

In this paper, three different situations of the symmetry frequency selective surface (FSS) shaped are designed – consist of without symmetry, 1/4 symmetry and 1/8 symmetry condition using FORTRAN software. In this work, the Energy-Saving Glass (ESG) that covered the glass with a metallic oxide coating to exploit obstructive of infrared and ultraviolet radiation into structures. The tools used in this work were applied to propose a complex shape by using Genetic Algorithm (GA) as the optimization tool to create bits of the chromosome in designing the shape of energy-saving glass (ESG). It also used the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) was working as a process of numerical algorithm modeling to design the complex shape in pixelized shape based on the unit cell idea. For without symmetry complex, 1/4 symmetry complex and 1/8 complex for FSS shape, it shows that the - 43 dB at 1.2 GHz, respectively

Effects of extruder die head temperature and pre-gelatinized taro and broken rice flour level on physical properties of floating fish pellets

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of pre-gelatinized (PG) taro and broken rice and extruder die temperatures on the physical properties of extruded pellets. The first experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of PG taro and extruder die head temperature (125, 140, 155 and 170 °C) and a subsequent experiment was conducted using PG broken rice instead. All the blends were preconditioned to a 40% moisture content and then extruded using a single screw extruder. The three zones of the barrel temperature profile (70, 90 and 100 °C) and screw speed (150 rpm) of the extruder were constant throughout the extrusion cooking process. The physical properties of the pellets included floatability, expansion ratio, bulk density, pellet durability, water absorption and solubility, moisture content and pellet microstructure. The findings showed in both experiments that PG taro and broken rice inclusion levels and die temperature had significant effects on most of the physical properties of the pellets except for pellet durability index. Changing the inclusion rate of PG taro and broken rice from 15 to 25% significantly increased the expansion ratio and floatability of the extruded pellets. Similarly, as the die temperature was elevated in both experiment, the floatability of the extruded pellets in diet containing PG taro and broken rice increased by 114.62% and 21.88%, respectively. It was also noted that use of PG taro and broken rice resulted in highly durable pellets in all treatments. Further, microstructure analysis of the extruded pellets revealed that using PG taro and broken rice, the surface of the extruded pellets became coarser when the die temperature was elevated from 125 to 170 °C and the PG taro and broken rice inclusion level was at 15%. In conclusion, pre-gelatinized taro and broken rice could be used to manufacture higher quality floating pellets