Green products purchase intention: a study of Sibu Sarawak

Of late, members of the public have become very concerned with both environmental issues and the role of the individual and their mindset towards keeping a healthy environment. The reason for this is because it has been identified that some of the main causes of environmental deterioration is due to the current rapid growth in technology and consumers’ consumption. The objective of this research is to identify the significant driver of green products purchase intention among residents of Sibu. Using the Theory of Reasoned Action as the underpinning basis, the study utilized a survey approach, with self-administered questionnaires. A total of 384 usable questionnaires were used for the purpose of analysis. The purposive sampling technique was used to distribute adapted questionnaires amongst the designated sample size. The results revealed that attitudes towards green purchase, health consciousness, attitudes towards the environment, and social influence led to consumers’ green products purchase intention

Seismic Performance Of A Double-Storey Prefabricated Cold-Formed Steel Structure As Post-Disaster Temporary Housing

The community often neglects the risk of earthquake occurring in Peninsular Malaysia as the country is located away from the Ring of Fire zone. Therefore, seismic design is seldom considered during building design. Furthermore, there is a lack of research in developing a good emergency relief shelter or post-disaster housing system. Therefore, this study proposes a design of a double-storey prefabricated cold-formed steel house as a sustainable post-disaster temporary housing solution for an earthquake event. In this study, a numerical analysis of 1:2 scaled models is used to analyse their seismic performance by inputting the acceleration time history of 0.09g, 0.12g, and 0.16g recorded by KKM Seismic Station during the 2015 Ranau earthquake via ETABS software. Furthermore, two types of models were simulated, i.e., model without wall panels and model with wall panels to identify the influence of the wall panels on the structure's seismic performance. The results show that the inclusion of wall panels reduces the joint acceleration of the structure by an average of 74 %. In addition, it also reduces the joint displacement by a percentage of 7.5% (storey one) and 34% (lower roof and upper roof). However, the proposed model’s design exceeded the limit for total storey drift and inter-storey drift. Therefore, three different strengthening methods were proposed, and the most effective way to enhance the structural seismic performance is by adding two pairs of diagonal bracing at the ground floor connecting the first floor and the base of the structure in the two bays of portal frame with shorter span in the shaking direction

Effect of bleaching using sodium hydroxide on pulp derived from Sesbania grandiflora

World demand for paper is increasing. Short rotation pulpwood is needed. Sesbania grandiflora also known as Turi, is a fast growing and straight log species. The scholarly information of Turi as pulpwood are still limited. This paper aims to provide information of sodium hydroxide effect on the paper made from pulp derived from Turi. Sodium hydroxide is a common chemical using as part of full stage chemical bleaching in pulp industrial. Kraft pulp that produced using Turi, was bleached with sodium hydroxide at 3%, 6% and 9% based on pulp weight, respectively. Unbleached pulp was served as blank test. The optical and mechanical properties of handsheet paper made from bleached kraft pulp were evaluated according to TAPPI standard. The brightness and opacity of handsheet made from bleached pulp were improved with increasing the concentration of sodium hydroxide. The mechanical properties of handsheet were improved with using 3% sodium hydroxide and gradually decreased after 3% sodium hydroxide. In conclusion, sodium hydroxide is potential to improve optical properties of Turi pulp and improve the mechanical properties of paper made from Turi pulp at certain level. Excessive usage of sodium hydroxide brings adverse effect to mechanical properties of paper made from Turi pulp

QoS multicast tree construction in IP/DWDM optical internet by bio-inspired algorithms

Copyright @ Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, two bio-inspired Quality of Service (QoS) multicast algorithms are proposed in IP over dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical Internet. Given a QoS multicast request and the delay interval required by the application, both algorithms are able to find a flexible QoS-based cost suboptimal routing tree. They first construct the multicast trees based on ant colony optimization and artificial immune algorithm, respectively. Then a dedicated wavelength assignment algorithm is proposed to assign wavelengths to the trees aiming to minimize the delay of the wavelength conversion. In both algorithms, multicast routing and wavelength assignment are integrated into a single process. Therefore, they can find the multicast trees on which the least wavelength conversion delay is achieved. Load balance is also considered in both algorithms. Simulation results show that these two bio-inspired algorithms can construct high performance QoS routing trees for multicast applications in IP/DWDM optical Internet.This work was supported in part ny the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of UK under Grant EP/E060722/1, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant no. 60673159 and 70671020, the National High-Tech Reasearch and Development Plan of China under Grant no. 2007AA041201, and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education under Grant no. 20070145017

Family support and self-motivation influence dietary compliance and glycaemic control among type 2 Diabetes Mellitus outpatients

Diabetes Mellitus is a disease due to reduced insulin sensitivity and secretion in the body which associated with obesity and hypertension. This study aimed to determine the influence of family support and self-motivation towards dietary compliance and glycaemic control among Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) outpatients. This cross-sectional study involved 35 subjects selected from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre (UKMMC) in Cheras and Ampangan Health Clinic in Seremban. Anthropometric measurements and fasting blood glucose have been obtained. Face-to-face interview session was done to obtain socio-demographic and diet intake. Further, dietary compliance, social support and self-motivation were assessed using Summary Diabetes Self Care Activities (SDSCA), Diabetes Social Support Questionnaire Family version (DSSQ-Fa) and Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire (TSRQ), respectively. Only 8.6% of subjects complied with dietary counselling. Fasting blood glucose for both men (7.93 ± 1.99 mmol/L) and women (8.77 ± 3.08 mmol/L) were higher than normal range. Self-motivation (r = 0.358, p < 0.05) and family support (r = 0.460, p < 0.01) significantly correlated with dietary compliance. Self-motivation and family support are important factors which can increase compliance towards dietary counseling. Further investigation should be carried out to determine factors that may influence dietary compliance and family support towards achieving desirable glycaemic control among T2DM patients

Risk assessment of failure during transitioning from in-centre to home haemodialysis

Background: Introducing a de-novo home haemodialysis (HHD) program often raises safety concerns as errors could potentially lead to serious adverse events. Despite the complexity of performing haemodialysis at home without the supervision of healthcare staff, HHD has a good safety record. We aim to pre-emptively identify and reduce the risks to our new HHD program by risk assessment and using failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to identify potential defects in the design and planning of HHD. Methods: We performed a general risk assessment of failure during transitioning from in-centre to HHD with a failure mode and effects analysis focused on the highest areas of failure. We collaborated with key team members from a well-established HHD program and one HHD patient. Risk assessment was conducted separately and then through video conference meetings for joint deliberation. We listed all key processes, sub-processes, step and then identified failure mode by scoring based on risk priority numbers. Solutions were then designed to eliminate and mitigate risk. Results: Transitioning to HHD was found to have the highest risk of failure with 3 main processes and 34 steps. We identified a total of 59 areas with potential failures. The median and mean risk priority number (RPN) scores from failure mode effect analysis were 5 and 38, with the highest RPN related to vascular access at 256. As many failure modes with high RPN scores were related to vascular access, we focussed on FMEA by identifying the risk mitigation strategies and possible solutions in all 9 areas in access-related medical emergencies in a bundled- approach. We discussed, the risk reduction areas of setting up HHD and how to address incidents that occurred and those not preventable. Conclusions: We developed a safety framework for a de-novo HHD program by performing FMEA in high-risk areas. The involvement of two teams with different clinical experience for HHD allowed us to successfully pre-emptively identify risks and develop solutions

rad21 Is Involved in Corneal Stroma Development by Regulating Neural Crest Migration

Previously, we identified RAD21(R450C) from a peripheral sclerocornea pedigree. Injection of this rad21 variant mRNA into Xenopus laevis embryos disrupted the organization of corneal stroma fibrils. To understand the mechanisms of RAD21-mediated corneal stroma defects, gene expression and chromosome conformation analysis were performed using cells from family members affected by peripheral sclerocornea. Both gene expression and chromosome conformation of cell adhesion genes were affected in cells carrying the heterozygous rad21 variant. Since cell migration is essential in early embryonic development and sclerocornea is a congenital disease, we studied neural crest migration during cornea development in X. laevis embryos. In X. laevis embryos injected with rad21 mutant mRNA, neural crest migration was disrupted, and the number of neural crest-derived periocular mesenchymes decreased significantly in the corneal stroma region. Our data indicate that the RAD21(R450C) variant contributes to peripheral sclerocornea by modifying chromosome conformation and gene expression, therefore disturbing neural crest cell migration, which suggests RAD21 plays a key role in corneal stroma development

Protection by Chrysanthemum zawadskii extract from liver damage of mice caused by carbon tetrachloride is maybe mediated by modulation of QR activity

Our previous study demonstrated that methanolic extract of Chrysanthemum zawadskii Herbich var. latilobum Kitamura (Compositae) has the potential to induce detoxifying enzymes such as NAD(P)H:(quinone acceptor) oxidoreductase 1 (EC 1.6.99.2) (NQO1, QR) and glutathione S-transferase (GST). In this study we further fractionated methanolic extract of Chrysanthemum zawadskii and investigated the detoxifying enzyme-inducing potential of each fraction. The fraction (CZ-6) shown the highest QR-inducing activity was found to contain (+)-(3S,4S,5R,8S)-(E)-8-acetoxy-4-hydroxy-3-isovaleroyloxy-2-(hexa-2,4-diynyliden)-1,6-dioxaspiro [4,5] decane and increased QR enzyme activity in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, CZ-6 fraction caused a dose-dependent enhancement of luciferase activity in HepG2-C8 cells generated by stably transfecting antioxidant response element-luciferase gene construct, suggesting that it induces antioxidant/detoxifying enzymes through antioxidant response element (ARE)-mediated transcriptional activation of the relevant genes. Although CZ-6 fraction failed to induce hepatic QR in mice over the control, it restored QR activity suppressed by CCl4 treatment to the control level. Hepatic injury induced by CCl4 was also slightly protected by pretreatment with CZ-6. In conclusion, although CZ-6 fractionated from methanolic extract of Chrysanthemum zawadskii did not cause a significant QR induction in mice organs such as liver, kidney, and stomach, it showed protective effect from liver damage caused by CCl4

MiR-223 Suppresses Cell Proliferation by Targeting IGF-1R

To study the roles of microRNA-223 (miR-223) in regulation of cell growth, we established a miR-223 over-expression model in HeLa cells infected with miR-223 by Lentivirus pLL3.7 system. We observed in this model that miR-223 significantly suppressed the proliferation, growth rate, colony formation of HeLa cells in vitro, and in vivo tumorigenicity or tumor formation in nude mice. To investigate the mechanisms involved, we scanned and examined the potential and putative target molecules of miR-223 by informatics, quantitative PCR and Western blot, and found that insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor (IGF-1R) was the functional target of miR-223 inhibition of cell proliferation. Targeting IGF-1R by miR-223 was not only seen in HeLa cells, but also in leukemia and hepatoma cells. The downstream pathway, Akt/mTOR/p70S6K, to which the signal was mediated by IGF-1R, was inhibited as well. The relative luciferase activity of the reporter containing wild-type 3′UTR(3′untranslated region) of IGF-1R was significantly suppressed, but the mutant not. Silence of IGF-1R expression by vector-based short hairpin RNA resulted in the similar inhibition with miR-223. Contrarily, rescued IGF-1R expression in the cells that over-expressed miR-223, reversed the inhibition caused by miR-223 via introducing IGF-1R cDNA that didn't contain the 3′UTR. Meanwhile, we also noted that miR-223 targeted Rasa1, but the downstream molecules mediated by Rasa1 was neither targeted nor regulated. Therefore we believed that IGF-1R was the functional target for miR-223 suppression of cell proliferation and its downstream PI3K/Akt/mTOR/p70S6K pathway suppressed by miR-223 was by targeting IGF-1R