Preliminary study of online training implementation from multiple perspectives in Malaysian public sectors

In a constantly changing and evolving global and organizational environment, it is necessary to improve the skills of human resources. The innovation of information technologies nowadays has contributed to the exponential expansion in online training in Malaysia. The number employees attending online training courses have increased tremendously but very low percentage of course completion have been reported, thus raised many questions in the implementation of online training in Malaysian public sectors. This study was conducted to construct a research framework on online training implementation in Malaysian public sectors. The criteria of online training implementation are also being determined through different perception of stakeholders. Based on the literature review, the study posited four constructs adopted from Kirkpatrick’s learning theory through Multiple Perspectives Theory. The preliminary study conducted involves 3 set of interviews with respondents involved in providing online training at Malaysia’s National Institute of Public Administration (INTAN) as providers or consultants of public sectors online training. The preliminary findings showed that the criteria are applicable with the mentioned criteria in the literature review thus suitable to be mapped into the conceptual framework

Persuasive system design: social support elements to influence the Malaysian wellness in social media

Obesity is a significant problem in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia, where the report by The National Health and Morbidity Survey of 2015 emphasized that the country has the highest proportion of obese and overweight population in the region and it is increasing by the year. Recently, it was observed that the social media could be leveraged for influencing healthier lifestyle. It is believed that, to motivate people to engage with social media or any wellness system, social support is important. However, research indicated that the understanding of social support from the perspectives of system design is still lacking. This study aims to fill these gaps and have better understanding of social support through the Persuasive System Design (PSD). The objectives of this research are (i) to identify the social support elements within the persuasive design elements (ii) to qualitatively verify the social support elements for Malaysian wellness in social media. Qualitative data collection was conducted through social media content observations and focus group interviews with selected respondents. Five PSD elements in social support were identified. They are: social learning, social facilitation, social comparison, recognition and normative influence. The relevancy and significance of these elements towards the health and wellness motivation among Malaysian were also identified

Social learning approach in designing persuasive e-commerce recommender system model

Intention to purchase in existing online business practice is learned through observation of information display by online seller. The emergent growth of persuasive technologies currently holds a great potential in driving a positive influence towards consumer purchase behavior. But to date, there is still limited research on implementing persuasion concept into the recommender system context. Drawing upon the principle design of persuasive system, the main purpose of this study is to explore social learning advantages in creating persuasive features for E-Commerce recommender system. Based on Social Cognitive Theory, the influence of personal and environmental factors will be examined in measuring consumer purchase intention. In addition, dimensions of social learning environment are represented by observational learning theory and cognitive learning theory. From those reviews, this study assumed that social learning environment can be created based on attentiveness, retentiveness, motivational, knowledge awareness and interest evaluation cues of consumer learning factors. Furthermore, the persuasive environment of recommender system is assumed to have positive influence towards individual characteristics such as self-efficacy behavior, perceived task complexity and confused by over choice. Findings from those reviews have contributed to the development of a research model in visualizing social learning environment that can be used to develop a persuasive recommender system in E-Commerce and hence measures the impact towards consumer purchase intention

Technology factors influencing e-government readiness

A rapidly growing number of countries are realizing that e-government has become a powerful tool for governments, as it can assist with measures such as making public administration significantly more efficient and effective. There is an urgent need for e-government to be able to enhance government administration performance and to provide efficient services to citizens. It can contribute to shortening time and effort as well as alleviating pressures on citizens. E-government projects need government support in order to create, apply, disseminate and continue the experience by providing all necessary resources. Various means of information transmission (such as the media) are vitally important by which to educate the stakeholders and increase their awareness to ensure the success and sustainability of such projects. Moreover, governments should assess their readiness for developing e-government procedures before embarking on the implementation of such a project to avoid any possible failures. Most of the failures of previous e-government measures can be attributed to technology factors. These factors include: infrastructure; security; technological/ technical issues; hard/soft gap; digital divide; internet use; and finally, skills. The successful implementation of e-government relies on assessing the readiness of technology aspects in order to realize the benefits of e-government and reduce potential failures of e-government implementation. Existing studies on e-government readiness lack agreement on the important technology aspects; thus, there remains a need to identify the relevant factors that shape the technology aspects of e-government readiness. The aim of this paper is to identify the said technology aspects of e-government readiness

Effect on Operating Parameters Towards Metastable Zone Width of Carbamazepine-Saccharin Co-Crystal

Co-crystal is believed can improved physicochemical properties of an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APis). Understanding in co-crystallization process is needed in order to have desirable crystal habits for materials. One of the studies that are important in designing co-crystallization process is kinetics study. In this research, carbamazepine (CBZ) and co-former saccharin (SAC) has been used to study the metastable zone width (MSZW) of the CBZ-SAC co-crystal in ethanol solution. The MSZW is studied by varying concentration of CBZ, mo) ratio values of SAC to CBZ and cooling rates used by polythermal method. Crystallization temperature and dissolution temperature is used to determine the maximum temperature difference ~Tmax using N)'vlt's equation

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) gps jamming test by using software defined radio (SDR) platform

Overhang property issue has sustained over the past ten years in Malaysia. Major overhang property issue was contributed from the unsold residential property. Though the government announced to build a data system and provide the housing data to prevent a mismatch of supply-demand in the property market, there are still not many relevant studies or research on predicting residential property prices. Hence, it is essential to understand the factors that influence the price of residential properties. The study aims to predict the price of a residential property by using a machine learning algorithm. Three algorithms were selected, namely Decision Tree, Linear Regression, and Random Forest, tested against the training and testing datasets obtained from the Malaysian Valuation and Property Services Department. Results show that the Random Forest model produced high accuracy with lower r_squared (R2), RMSE, and MAE values. Significantly, the study has contributed a new insight into essential property features that primarily influence the property price, which will be useful for property developers and buyers who wish to invest in the property market

The Development of a Point of Care Clinical Guidelines Mobile Application Following a User-Centred Design Approach

This paper describes the development of a point of care clinical guidelines mobile application. A user-centred design approach was utilised to inform the design of a smartphone application, this included: Observations; a survey; focus groups and an analysis of popular apps utilised by clinicians in a UK NHS Trust. Usability testing was conducted to inform iterations of the application, which presents clinicians with a variety of integrated tools to aid in decision making and information retrieval. The study found that clinicians use a mixture of technology to retrieve information, which is often inefficient or has poor usability. It also shows that smartphone application development for use in UK hospitals needs to consider the variety of users and their clinical knowledge and work pattern. This study highlights the need for applying user-centred design methods in the design of information presented to clinicians and the need for clinical information delivery that is efficient and easy to use at the bedside

Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and mortality of HIV, 1980–2017, and forecasts to 2030, for 195 countries and territories: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017

Background Understanding the patterns of HIV/AIDS epidemics is crucial to tracking and monitoring the progress of prevention and control efforts in countries. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the levels and trends of HIV/AIDS incidence, prevalence, mortality, and coverage of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for 1980–2017 and forecast these estimates to 2030 for 195 countries and territories. Methods We determined a modelling strategy for each country on the basis of the availability and quality of data. For countries and territories with data from population-based seroprevalence surveys or antenatal care clinics, we estimated prevalence and incidence using an open-source version of the Estimation and Projection Package—a natural history model originally developed by the UNAIDS Reference Group on Estimates, Modelling, and Projections. For countries with cause-specific vital registration data, we corrected data for garbage coding (ie, deaths coded to an intermediate, immediate, or poorly defined cause) and HIV misclassification. We developed a process of cohort incidence bias adjustment to use information on survival and deaths recorded in vital registration to back-calculate HIV incidence. For countries without any representative data on HIV, we produced incidence estimates by pulling information from observed bias in the geographical region. We used a re-coded version of the Spectrum model (a cohort component model that uses rates of disease progression and HIV mortality on and off ART) to produce age-sex-specific incidence, prevalence, and mortality, and treatment coverage results for all countries, and forecast these measures to 2030 using Spectrum with inputs that were extended on the basis of past trends in treatment scale-up and new infections. Findings Global HIV mortality peaked in 2006 with 1·95 million deaths (95% uncertainty interval 1·87–2·04) and has since decreased to 0·95 million deaths (0·91–1·01) in 2017. New cases of HIV globally peaked in 1999 (3·16 million, 2·79–3·67) and since then have gradually decreased to 1·94 million (1·63–2·29) in 2017. These trends, along with ART scale-up, have globally resulted in increased prevalence, with 36·8 million (34·8–39·2) people living with HIV in 2017. Prevalence of HIV was highest in southern sub-Saharan Africa in 2017, and countries in the region had ART coverage ranging from 65·7% in Lesotho to 85·7% in eSwatini. Our forecasts showed that 54 countries will meet the UNAIDS target of 81% ART coverage by 2020 and 12 countries are on track to meet 90% ART coverage by 2030. Forecasted results estimate that few countries will meet the UNAIDS 2020 and 2030 mortality and incidence targets. Interpretation Despite progress in reducing HIV-related mortality over the past decade, slow decreases in incidence, combined with the current context of stagnated funding for related interventions, mean that many countries are not on track to reach the 2020 and 2030 global targets for reduction in incidence and mortality. With a growing population of people living with HIV, it will continue to be a major threat to public health for years to come. The pace of progress needs to be hastened by continuing to expand access to ART and increasing investments in proven HIV prevention initiatives that can be scaled up to have population-level impact

Cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes mortality burden of cardiometabolic risk factors from 1980 to 2010: a comparative risk assessment

Background High blood pressure, blood glucose, serum cholesterol, and BMI are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and some of these factors also increase the risk of chronic kidney disease and diabetes. We estimated mortality from cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes that was attributable to these four cardiometabolic risk factors for all countries and regions from 1980 to 2010. Methods We used data for exposure to risk factors by country, age group, and sex from pooled analyses of populationbased health surveys. We obtained relative risks for the eff ects of risk factors on cause-specifi c mortality from metaanalyses of large prospective studies. We calculated the population attributable fractions for- each risk factor alone, and for the combination of all risk factors, accounting for multicausality and for mediation of the eff ects of BMI by the other three risks. We calculated attributable deaths by multiplying the cause-specifi c population attributable fractions by the number of disease-specifi c deaths. We obtained cause-specifi c mortality from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2010 Study. We propagated the uncertainties of all the inputs to the fi nal estimates. Findings In 2010, high blood pressure was the leading risk factor for deaths due to cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes in every region, causing more than 40% of worldwide deaths from these diseases; high BMI and glucose were each responsible for about 15% of deaths, and high cholesterol for more than 10%. After accounting for multicausality, 63% (10\ub78 million deaths, 95% CI 10\ub71\u201311\ub75) of deaths from these diseases in 2010 were attributable to the combined eff ect of these four metabolic risk factors, compared with 67% (7\ub71 million deaths, 6\ub76\u20137\ub76) in 1980. The mortality burden of high BMI and glucose nearly doubled from 1980 to 2010. At the country level, age-standardised death rates from these diseases attributable to the combined eff ects of these four risk factors surpassed 925 deaths per 100 000 for men in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, but were less than 130 deaths per 100 000 for women and less than 200 for men in some high-income countries including Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, and Spain. Interpretation The salient features of the cardiometabolic disease and risk factor epidemic at the beginning of the 21st century are high blood pressure and an increasing eff ect of obesity and diabetes. The mortality burden of cardiometabolic risk factors has shifted from high-income to low-income and middle-income countries. Lowering cardiometabolic risks through dietary, behavioural, and pharmacological interventions should be a part of the globalresponse to non-communicable diseases