Hyolaryngeal kinematics and swallow patterning in normal and disordered swallowing

Hyoid and laryngeal movements contribute to laryngeal vestibule closure and upper esophageal sphincter (UES) opening for safe swallowing. However, the extent of movement required for achieving these goals, and the interaction between hyoid and laryngeal movements during swallowing are unknown. Despite impairment in vestibule closure and UES opening, patients with dysphagia may exhibit reduced, increased or similar hyolaryngeal displacements as healthy individuals. This limits the delineation between normal and disordered swallowing. We investigated whether anatomical differences in hyolaryngeal positions and the extent of laryngeal vestibule opening at rest would better predict hyolaryngeal displacements and the extent of vestibule closure during swallowing than neck length. We then examined if hyolaryngeal maximal displacements that corrected for individual anatomical differences would show greater contrast between the swallows of patients and healthy individuals than uncorrected measures. We also investigated if the relationship between hyoid and laryngeal elevation, as well as measures of laryngeal elevation peak velocity, timing and movement patterning would differ between patients and controls swallowing more than corresponding measures of hyoid elevation. Videofluoroscopic examinations of swallowing were performed in healthy adults and patients with dysphagia. Using frame-by-frame motion analysis, measures of forward and upward hyolaryngeal displacements and velocities, and vestibule area were made during swallowing. In healthy volunteers, the extent of laryngeal vestibule opening at rest predicted the extent to which laryngeal elevation exceeded hyoid elevation for closing the space between the hyoid and larynx during swallowing. Spatially normalized measures of hyoid and laryngeal elevation magnitudes showed greater differences between normal and abnormal swallowing than raw measures. Patients with dysphagia had insufficient laryngeal elevation relative to hyoid elevation to achieve vestibule closure during swallowing. In conclusion, healthy individuals may adapt hyolaryngeal movement magnitudes according to changes in the movement targets required for vestibule closure to ensure safe swallowing. Insufficient laryngeal elevation relative to hyoid elevation may be detrimental to airway protection for swallowing in dysphagia

Performance of Acid Leached Rice Husk Ash (ARHA) in Mortar

RHA is one the most available agricultural wastes in rice producing countries. Roughly of 20% of the total amount of paddy is husk which giving an annual total production of 120 Mtons which causes disposal problem due to low commercial interest and uses. The presence of metal impurities (Na2O and K2O) in non-treated RHA that incorporating in concrete can trigger alkali reaction in harden concrete. In order to overcome the issue, hydrochloric acid as the leaching agent for acid leaching treatment on RHA effectively removed metallic impurities from the RHA. In this study, ARHA was prepared by acid leaching treatment in order that the end product conformed to the engineering standards in terms of chemical and morphological properties. There are total of 3 proposed acid leaching parameters on RHA (1 M, 0.1 M and 0.01 M HCl leaching treatment with the duration of 2 days) prior to combustion at 800oC for 2 hours. The chemical properties and morphology study of the ARHA would be firstly characterized base on the x-ray fluorescent (XRF), x-ray diffraction (XRD), particle size analyzer, loss on ignition (LOI) and BET analyzer. 0.1 M of HCl leaching treatment RHA (ARHA2) prior to combustion at 800oC for 2 hours effectively removed impurities and produced > 90 % of pure amorphous silica with high surface area and pore volume. Hence, the effects of incorporating ARHA2 as partial replacement (2.5 %, 5 %, 7.5 %, and 10 %) of cement were investigated. The compressive strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), porosity, gas permeability and the water absorption of ARHA mortar were determined to identify the characteristics of AHRA mortar. The results show that the replacement 10 % of ARHA into the mortar gave a positive result, it improved 29% of compressive strength compared to the control mix. In term of durability properties, there was approximate 2.2 % reduction in the total porosity as the replacement level of ARHA2 increased from 0 % to 10 % of total binder in the mortar

Financial social accounting matrix: concepts, constructions and theoretical framework

A Social Accounting Matrix (hereafter, SAM) is a particular tool to represent that whole economic activities incomes and expenditures flows accounts through a socio-economic system, which captures the transactions and transfers between all economic agents and institutions in the system. During the last two decades, the financial market are well developed and significantly impacts the economic growth, it will be more worthy to move from a real SAM to a Financial SAM, containing the details of the financial institutions and transaction of agents’ assets and liabilities. Therefore, this paper will discuss the outlines and constructions framework for the aggregate Financial SAM. The understanding of the structure of Financial SAM can be a database for a financial Computed General Equilibrium (CGE) model and can be used to analyze the behavior of national’s public debt.SOCIAL ACCOUNTING MATRIX (SAM), FINANCIAL, FLOW-OF-FUNDS

Yen Synchronization and Maastricht Convergence among the ASEAN-5, Japan and Korea

In this thesis, the main objective is to investigate whether ASEAN-5+2 countries meet the conditions for creating an AMU with the yen as the currency unit. First, the results of BEKK-GARCH (1, 1) and the dynamic correlation coefficients show that only Singapore, Korea, and Thailand have the potential to adopt the yen as the regional currency unit. Second, the Maastricht criteria only have a significant impact on real GDP per capita growth for Japan, Korea, Singapore and the Philippines in the long term. In addition, the Maastricht criteria show that there were symmetry impacts on the growth of real GDP per capita for Japan, Korea, Singapore and the Philippines. Thus, only these four out of the seven countries (Japan, Korea, Singapore and the Philippines) appear to be potential candidates for establishing the AMU. Overall, the findings do not suggest the possibility of a formation of a full-fledged AMU by the ASEAN-5+2 countries. However, the formation of a sub-grouping of a few of the countries in the ASEAN-5+2 is more feasible, that is Japan, Singapore, and Korea. This is because these countries have higher institutional quality and fulfill the Maastricht treaty as well as being close in exchange rate regimes, and also have symmetrical economic behavior

Understanding Subcultures and Change Dynamics in E-Government: An Empirical Study of a Local Government in Malaysia

Governments worldwide are faced with a rapidly changing business environment, with reform and modernization at the forefront of many agendas. One country which has embarked on a significant programme of E-Government transformation is Malaysia. A key goal of E-Government transformation is to harness the potential of information communication technology (ICT), particularly web-based systems, to improve how governments function internally and externally (Moon et al. 2014). While ICT offers the potential to revolutionize how governments operate, the extent to which ICT is being used effectively to support E-Government services, particularly at the local government council level, has been brought into question (Wong et al. 2010). One important factor, which can act as an enabler or barrier (more often the latter) to E-Government, is organizational culture. Increasingly, researchers (e.g. Choudrie et al. 2010; Zhao and Khan, 2013) have suggested that a lack of effort in understanding organizational culture is a key reason why many E-Government change programs encounter problems. Regardless of the budding literature emphasizing the importance of understanding the relationship between organizational culture and E-Government, research on understanding different subcultures, and the dynamic of change, which influence the ability to manage and implement E-Government projects, still remains an area to be explored in more detail

Impact of climate change and economic factors on Malaysian food price

This paper is motivated by the increasing food price over the recent years (2010 – 2017) in Malaysia. Food is a necessity for mankind and everyone has equal rights to enjoy adequate food protecting from hunger and malnutrition. In general, we understand that food and agriculture production are highly related. Crop production is affected biophysically by climatic variables, i.e. suitable rainfall and temperature for photosynthesis process to take place. If these climatic variables alter extremely in a long-term period, crop production will be affected and crop damage can occur due to the climate change effect such as extreme flood and drought. Hence, if climate change effect is defined as a linear relationship, it will result in a misleading explanation whereby as long as rainfall and temperature increase (or decrease) it will cause the crop production to decrease (or increase). Given the problem associated with food price, this paper investigated the food price determinants by looking at both economic factors and climate change. Non-linear time series analysis namely Engle-Granger (EG) cointegration test and Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) were performed by including the determinants such as Carbon Dioxide (CO2), crude oil price, exchange rate and real gross domestic product (RGDP). The results showed that both economic Real Gross Domestic Product and climate factors jointly affect food price significantly and climate factor (CO2) exhibits a strong non-linear U-shaped impact on food price in the long run. In addition, the Error Correction Term (ECT) showed that food market will have a slower self-recovery mechanism to adjust and return the temporary food market demand-supply shock to the equilibrium

Towards Self-Awareness Privacy Protection for Internet of Things Data Collection

The Internet of Things (IoT) is now an emerging global Internet-based information architecture used to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. IoT-related applications are aiming to bring technology to people anytime and anywhere, with any device. However, the use of IoT raises a privacy concern because data will be collected automatically from the network devices and objects which are embedded with IoT technologies. In the current applications, data collector is a dominant player who enforces the secure protocol that cannot be verified by the data owners. In view of this, some of the respondents might refuse to contribute their personal data or submit inaccurate data. In this paper, we study a self-awareness data collection protocol to raise the confidence of the respondents when submitting their personal data to the data collector. Our self-awareness protocol requires each respondent to help others in preserving his privacy. The communication (respondents and data collector) and collaboration (among respondents) in our solution will be performed automatically