Motorcycle safety in Malaysia

Motorcycle safety is a major issue in Malaysia because nearly 60 % of road accident fatalities are due to motorcycle crashes. Motorcycles are the main mode of transport in Malaysia, constituting about half of the total registered motor vehicles from 1998 to 2003. Vehicle ownership increased by about 40 % over the six-year period, while road accident fatalities dropped from 6.28 per 10,000 vehicles in 1998 to 4.90 per 10,000 vehicles in 2003. Over that period, the death toll of motorcycle riders per 10,000 motor vehicles decreased from 3.73 to 2.77. Among the states of Malaysia, Perlis and Terengganu had the most number of motorcycle accident fatalities per 10,000 motor vehicles. In contrast, Wilayah Persekutuan had less than 1 death per 10,000 motor vehicles, the lowest recorded by any state in Malaysia. A survey was conducted to investigate helmet wearing among the suburban residents of Kuala Lumpur. The study shows that 71.4 % of female motorcyclists and 70 % of male motorcyclists wore helmets. It also reveals that 89 % of old motorcyclists (25 years old and above) complied with the helmet wearing law, whereas only 48 % of young motorcyclists (below 25 years old) did so. This indicates that young riders are more likely to break the law of helmet wearing compared to older riders. Hence, young riders should be the prime target of any motorcycle safety programme in Malaysia

Skin texture and colour predict perceived health in Asian faces

Facial skin texture and colour play an important role in observers' judgments of apparent health and have been linked to aspects of physiological health, including fitness, immunity and fertility. However, most studies have focused on Caucasian populations. Here, we report two studies that investigate the contribution of skin texture and colour to the apparent health ofMalaysian Chinese faces. In Study 1, homogenous skin texture, as measured by wavelet analysis, was found to positively predict ratings of apparent health of Asian faces. In study 2, homogenous skin texture and increased skin yellowness positively predicted rated health of Malaysian Chinese faces. This finding suggests that skin condition serves as an important cue for subjective judgements of health in Malaysian Chinese faces

Facial skin condition, health and perception in Malaysian Chinese

Skin texture and colour play an important role in the judgment of apparent health (Fink, Grammer, & Thornhill, 2001; Jones, Little, Burt, & Perrett, 2004; Matts, Fink, Grammer, & Burquest, 2007; Samson, Fink, & Matts, 2010; Stephen, Coetzee, Law Smith, & Perrett, 2009a; Stephen, Coetzee, & Perrett, 2011), and have been linked to aspects of physiological health, including fitness, immunity and fertility (Armstrong & Welsman, 2001; Jones et al., 2015; Stephen et al., 2011). The current thesis examines the contribution of skin condition to health perception in Malaysian Chinese. The thesis comprises six chapters. Chapter one offers a general introduction to the topic. It outlines key literature on health perception, and explains the research problem, the objectives and relevance of the studies conducted. Chapter 2 consists of three studies which examine Malaysian Chinese participants’ perception of apparent health. The three studies revealed the significance of both skin texture, and skin colour in forming health perceptions. Examining the sensitivity threshold of human vision to colour changes, Chapter 3 discovered that individuals tend to be more sensitive to changes in redness and yellowness than luminance; and this extra-sensitivity in chrominance is specific to the perception of human faces, and not non-face objects or colour patches. Following the finding of preference for slightly yellower skin, Chapter 4 reported a supplementation study, whereby an increment in skin yellowness and redness was observed for participants who were prescribed the fruit and vegetable smoothie (and not for the control group). Using the face images obtained in the intervention study, the three perceptual studies in Chapter 5 were designed to examine the amount of carotenoid colouration that is needed to optimize healthy appearance of Malaysian Chinese faces. Too much colour change was not preferred and, in the last study, it seems that the appropriate amount of carotenoid colouration preferred is only one third of the amount observed in the intervention study. Collectively, these nine studies deepen our knowledge of health perception, especially the importance of skin colour in determining perceived human facial health. Implications and suggestions for future research are presented in Chapter 6

Effects of food wastes on yellow mealworm Tenebriomolitor larval nutritional profiles and growth performances

In this study, nutritional profiles and growth performances of yellow mealworm, Tenebriomolitor larvae (TML) were assessed cultivated using common food wastes i.e. watermelon rinds, broilers’ eggshells and banana peels. Nutritional profiles and growth performance of TML were evaluated after 28-day feeding trial. Post-feeding proximate analysis showed significant increment of nutritional contents compared to the control groups; whereby TML demonstrated highest level of crude protein (43.38%±2.71), moisture (9.74%±0.23) and ash (4.40%±0.22) in the group treated with watermelon wastes. On the other hand, TML showed highest level of crude fibre (8.73%±0.05) when treated with broilers’ eggshells; and higher level of crude fat (40.13%±4.66) with banana wastes. Nitrogen-free extract (NFE) contents were also noticed higher in the group treated with banana wastes (4.46%±5.30). In terms of growth performance, TML administrated with watermelon wastes demonstrated superior in specific growth rate (2.50%±0.43) and feed conversion efficiency (0.10%±0.01). Interestingly, TML grown with banana wastes showed highest survival rate (97.5%) among all. In short, TML cultivation using watermelon and banana wastes showed a promising result on nutritional fortification and growth enhancement

Performance Measurement of Revolving Vane Compressor

Over the years, rotary compressors have gained popularity and widely used in household and automotive air-conditioning applications because of the compact nature and silent characteristics. By engaging a revolutionary concept to elevate the rotary compressor efficiency, a novel compressor mechanism, named the Revolving Vane compressor is invented. The prototype R134a compressor was designed, fabricated, instrumented and tested. Compressor tests were conducted for varying suction pressures, superheats, discharge pressures and oil circulation ratio. For each test, refrigerant mass flow rate, power consumption, suction and discharge temperatures and pressures were recorded. The new compressor mechanism has been proven for its compression ability and the preliminary measurements show comparable volumetric and mechanical efficiencies to the other existing compressors. In addition, the novel compressor design is outstanding for its cost competitiveness due to mechanism simplicity. It is foreseen that this new compressor will be a great candidate in future air-conditioning and refrigeration market

COMPARISON OF LABORATORY AND INDUSTRIAL SACCHAROMYCES CEREVISIAE STRAINS FOR THEIR INHIBITOR RESISTANCE AND XYLOSE UTILIZATION

There are various kinds of stresses during the process of ethanol fermentation and more inhibitory factors are produced when lignocelluloses hydrolysate is used as the substrate. The pretreatment of lignocelluloses biomass before fermentation causes the increase in the amount of acids and thus the decrease in pH. Low-molecular weight aliphatic acids, furaldehydes and a broad range of aromatic compounds are produced during the pretreatment process. They are the inhibitors for the ethanol producers, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Furthermore, besides glucose, lignocellulose hydrolysate contains other sugars, such as xylose, arabinose, galactose and mannose etc., among which xylose is taking the major proportion. Stress tolerance and xylose utilization are therefore essential for Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains to get high-efficiency fermentation and high-yield ethanol production. In this study, a few laboratory and industrial Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains were selected for the evaluation of their potentials in pH tolerance, inhibitor resistance and xylose utilization. Industrial strains such as TJU (an industrial strain used in some of the bioethanol plants in China), ATCC 4126, and ATCC 96581, an isolate from spent sulfite liquor were compared with some laboratory strains such as ATCC 44771, ATCC 24860 and CBS 8066. The difference of these strains in their pH tolerance was insignificant despite the fact that almost all the strains had less growth when pH was below 4. Among all the yeast strains tested, the haploid laboratory strain ATCC 44771 showed the lowest tolerance to the decrease of pH. As to the inhibitor resistance studies almost all the industrial strains tested had higher inhibitor resistance than the laboratory strains, with ATCC 44771 being the least resistant to the increase in the inhibitor concentrations. The laboratory strain ATCC 24860 showed almost equivalent inhibitor resistance compared with these industrial strains. Further analysis of these strains on their xylose utilization was carried out. Random mutagenesis followed by xylose adaptation was applied. Almost all the laboratory strains died after mutation and all the industrial strains survived with their xylose unitization capabilities increased. In addition, the presence of inhibitors such as 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and furfural had enhanced their xylsoe assimilation. The above analysis indicated that industrial Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains could be trained for biomass hydrolysate fermentation as they have high pH tolerance, high inhibitor resistance and potentials in xylose utilization. As such, the potential xylose-utilizing mutants are being evaluated for their potentials in biomass hydrolysate fermentation

Synergy study on charge transport dynamics in hybrid organic solar cell: photocurrent mapping and performance analysis under local spectrum

Charge transport dynamics in ZnO based inverted organic solar cell (IOSC) has been characterized with transient photocurrent spectroscopy and localised photocurrent mapping-atomic force microscopy. The value of maximum exciton generation rate was found to vary from 2.6 × 1027 m−3s−1 (Jsat = 79.7 A m−2) to 2.9 × 1027 m−3s−1 (Jsat = 90.8 A m−2) for devices with power conversion efficiency ranging from 2.03 to 2.51%. These results suggest that nanorods served as an excellent electron transporting layer that provides efficient charge transport and enhances IOSC device performance. The photovoltaic performance of OSCs with various growth times of ZnO nanorods have been analysed for a comparison between AM1.5G spectrum and local solar spectrum. The simulated PCE of all devices operating under local spectrum exhibited extensive improvement with the gain of 13.3–13.7% in which the ZnO nanorods grown at 15 min possess the highest PCE under local solar with the value of 2.82%

Synthesis of MRGO nanocomposites as a potential photocatalytic demulsifier for crude oil-in-water emulsion

Oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion has been a major concern for the petroleum industry. A cost-effective magnetite-reduced graphene oxide (MRGO) nanocomposite was synthesized to study the demulsification process of emulsion using said nanocomposite under solar illumination. Characterization data show that the magnetite was successfully deposited on reduced graphene oxide through redox reaction at varying loading amounts of magnetite. Demulsification of the O/W emulsion using MRGO nanocomposite shows that in general the demulsification efficiency was dependent on the loading amount of Fe3 O4 on the RGO sheet. It was proposed that the surfactant hydroxyl groups have an affinity towards Fe3 O4, which the loading amount was directly proportionate to available active site in Fe3 O4. As the loading amount increases, charge recombination centers on the RGO sheet would increase, effectively affecting the charge distribution within MRGO structure

Kalman Filter Models for the Prediction of Individualised Thermal Work Strain

It is important to monitor and assess the physiological strain of individuals working in hot environments to avoid heat illness and performance degradation. The body core temperature (Tc) is a reliable indicator of thermal work strain. However, measuring Tc is invasive and often inconvenient and impractical for real-time monitoring of workers in high heat strain environments. Seeking a better solution, the main aim of the present study was to investigate the Kalman filter method to enable the estimation of heat strain from non-invasive measurements (heart rate (HR) and chest skin temperature (ST)) obtained ‘online’ via wearable body sensors. In particular, we developed two Kalman filter models. First, an extended Kalman filter (EFK) was implemented in a cubic state space modelling framework (HR versus Tc) with a stage-wise, autoregressive exogenous model (incorporating HR and ST) as the time update model. Under the second model, the online Kalman filter (OFK) approach builds up the time update equation depending only on the initial value of Tc and the latest value of the exogenous variables. Both models were trained and validated using data from laboratory- and outfield-based heat strain profiling studies in which subjects performed a high intensity military foot march. While both the EKF and OKF models provided satisfactory estimates of Tc, the results showed an overall superior performance of the OKF model (overall root mean square error, RMSE = 0.31°C) compared to the EKF model (RMSE = 0.45°C)

Biosensing of hepatitis B antigen with poly(acrylic acid) hydrogel immobilized with antigens and antibodies

Hydrogel based on poly(acrylic acid) (PAAc) polymers was successfully fabricated as the biosensor for detecting hepatitis B core antigen (HBcAg). Specifically, the pendant HBcAg and the anti-hepatitis B core antigen (anti-HBc) antibody were first immobilized on the PAAc, which were then covalently cross-linked via radical polymerization to form the HBcAg-sensitive (HBPAAc) hydrogel. The non-covalent affinity binding between the immobilized HBcAg and anti-HBc would be disrupted by the presence of free HBcAg in the HBPAAc hydrogel. The competitive binding of free HBcAg on the immobilized anti-HBc triggered the swelling of HBPAAc hydrogel. The equilibrium swelling ratio and the oscillatory swelling-deswelling kinetics of the HBPAAc hydrogel in response to protein concentration were studied. The swelling ratio of HBPAAc hydrogel increased along with an increase in HBcAg concentration until equilibrium was achieved at 4 mg/mL HBcAg. The HBPAAc hydrogel did not exhibit swelling/deswelling behavior when interacted with the negative control, i.e., bovine serum albumin (BSA). Based on the result of oscillatory swelling-deswelling of HBPAAc hydrogel, the minimum duration for HBcAg detection by the HBPAAc hydrogel was ∼20 min, whereas the regeneration of HBPAAc hydrogel took about 60 min. These results confirmed the reversibility and the reusability of this HBcAg-sensing HBPAAc hydrogel. Besides, the hydrogel demonstrated zero cross-reactivity to the hepatitis B surface antigen, a common serological marker for hepatitis B patients. The high sensitivity of HBPAAc hydrogel to the HBcAg was successfully demonstrated with quartz crystal microgravimetry. The magnitude of resonance frequency was inversely correlated with the swelling of HBPAAc hydrogel, which is governed by the concentration of analyte HBcAg. The application of HBPAAc hydrogel as a biosensor component in the detection and surveillance of hepatitis B holds great promises