A comparative study of Tualang honey spray versus film spray (OPSITE®) as post-long bone fracture fixation wound dressing

Introduction: Honey-based dressings have a potential benefit in treating wounds in implant-related surgery due to its anti-microbial activities and healing potentials. The aim of the study is to compare Tualang honey spray with film spray (Opsite®) as an alternative dressing material following long bone fracture fixations. This is a preliminary study in Malaysia that involves human subjects. Methodology: This is a randomized, controlled trial involving patients with closed diaphyseal fracture of tibia or femur treated with open reduction and internal fixation (plates or intramedullary devices) at a single tertiary centre. Forty patients were randomly divided into three groups according to the dressing material used; film spray (Opsite®) dressing (n=16), Tualang honey spray (n=13), and control group (n=11). Each group used a same wound protocol except for the control group in which involve application of non-adhesive film (Mepore) only. Dressing materials were applied immediately after surgery and on day three post-surgery. Wound assessment was done on day 14 and day 42 post-surgery. Outcomes evaluated include wound complications, and the effects on skin commensals. On day 42, infection rate (wound dehiscence) and scar formation were also evaluated. Results: There was a case of superficial surgical site infection from the Opsite® spray group. Acinobacter species was isolated from one of the patients under the control group. There was no statistically significant association between dressing methods used and wound healing. All wounds healed without any infection at the end of the study. Tualang honey spray have a significant influence in reducing the risk of hypertrophic scar formation and has similar wound outcomes as compared to Opsite® spray. Conclusion: Tualang honey spray is comparable to the widely used Opsite* spray as a safe alternative for dressing material. Contradict to some previous studies; it promotes good wound healing with a low risk of hypertrophic scar formation

Penghayatan konsep 1Malaysia dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran: Pengalaman UNITEN

The 1Malaysia spirit first gained the attention of all parties when it revealed many positive effects for the long term development of the nation.Hence, scientific research related to this aspirational concept of the government needs to be more actively intensified.The application of 1Malaysia values can be done in many ways.It depends on the target group that we set.This concept, in general, must be applied to people from all walks of life.Among the important target groups that need awareness are students in institutions of higher learning as they are the generation that will lead the country in the future.This group is also the generation that will shape the nation in the long term. This study examines several ways of sowing and appreciating the 1Malaysia values used on undergraduates at UNITEN.This effort is emphasised through assignments given in subjects taught in Bahasa Malaysia.Generally, all the major subjects in UNITEN use the English Language as the medium of instruction in teaching and learning.However, there are several core university subjects for which Bahasa Malaysia is the medium of instruction.This study will explain the impact of the use of Bahasa Malaysia on sowing the spirit of 1Malaysia through the preparation of given assignments. The study bases its research on questionnaires distributed to 300 students taking the subject of Malaysian Studies in semester 2 of the 2009/2010 session at UNITEN.The results of this study reveal many positive effects that encourage students to accept and practise the government’s aspirational concept of 1Malaysia

Optimization of palm-based wax esters production using statistical experimental designs

Wax esters, one of the important ingredients in cosmetic industry, are long-chain esters that exhibit wetting behavior with non-greasy feeling. Wax esters derived from long chain fatty acids and long chain alcohols with chain lengths of 12 carbons or more. These compounds have many potential applications in cosmetics, pharmaceutical and food industries. The present work focuses on the scale-up synthesis of wax esters by alcoholysis of palm oil (PO) with oleyl alcohol (OA) using Lipozyme in a bioreactor. Response surface methodology (RSM) and a 5-level-5-factor central composite rotatable design were adopted to evaluate the effects of synthesis parameters, such as temperature (40-60°C), amount of enzyme (14-22% by weight of PO), amount of palm oil (80-240 mmol), amount of oleyl alcohol (240-720 mmol) and impeller speed (100-400 rpm) on the percentage yield of palm-based wax esters. Based on Design Expert Software (version 6.0.4), optimum alcoholysis conditions were: temperature, 50.4°C, amount of enzyme, 16.0% by weight of palm oil, amount of palm oil, 200.0 mmol, amount of oleyl alcohol, 600.0 mmol, palm oil/oleyl alcohol ratio, 3:1 and impeller speed, 242.1 rpm. The corresponding predicted value of percentage yield and productivity was 91.5% and 106.4 mmol/h respectively compared to the actual experimental value 92.3% yields and 110.8 mmol/h productivity

Scale-up synthesis of lipase-catalyzed palm esters in stirred-tank reactor

Lipase-catalyzed production of palm esters by alcoholysis of palm oil with oleyl alcohol in n-hexane was performed in 2 L stirred-tank reactor (STR). Investigation on the performance of reactor operation was carried out in batch mode STR with single impeller mounted on the centrally located shaft. Rushton turbine (RT) impellers provide the highest reaction yield (95.8%) at lower agitation speed as compared to AL-hydrofoil (AL-H) and 2-bladed elephant ear (EE) impellers. Homogenous enzyme particles suspension was obtained at 250 rpm by using RT impeller. At higher impeller speed, the shear effect on the enzyme particles caused by agitation has decreased the reaction performance. Palm esters reaction mixture in STR follows Newtons’ law due to the linear relation between the shear stress (s) and shear rate (dt/dy). High stability of Lipozyme RM IM was observed as shown by its ability to be repeatedly used to give high percentage yield (79%) of palm esters even after 15 cycles of reaction. The process was successfully scale-up to 75 L STR (50 L working volume) based on a constant impeller tip speed approach, which gave the yield of 97.2% after 5 h reaction time

Effect of different chemical treatments on the settleability of palm oil mill effluent

The effect of alum and ferric chloride on the settleability of suspended solids in raw palm oil mill effluent (POME) was compared with that of natural zeolite and calcium carbonate. This work forms part of our overall research on minimal discharge technology in the overall management of POME. The results showed that all the flocculants could effectively reduce more than 80% of the suspended solids but only 40-50% of the COD. The settled volume after 3-7 hours was generally within 35-50% of the original mixture. The best settleability in increasing order were at 3 giL ferric chloride, 11 giL alum, 10 giL zeolite and 20 giL calcium carbonate. The fastest settling rate was obtained with 20 giL calcium carbonate, where settling was almost completed within 2 hours as compared to more than 20 hours for raw POME. The dosage of zeolite was comparable to the traditional coagulants. As for calcium carbonate, although the dosage was higher, subsequent disposal or utilisation of the metalfree sludge solids fits well with our minimal discharge system for POME

Large scale production of liquid wax ester by immobilized lipase

Oleyl oleate, a liquid wax ester was synthesized by an immobilized Candida antartica lipase B (Novozym 435) as biocatalyst using oleic acid and oleyl alcohol. The effects of various reaction parameters were optimized to obtain a high yield of liquid wax esters. Investigation in large scale production was performed in batch mode of stirred tank reactor (STR) with one multi-bladed impeller. The optimum condition to produce liquid wax ester was, reaction time (RT); 30 min, temperature (T); 50 °C, amount of enzyme (E); 90 g (900,000 PLU), agitation speed (A) of 400 rpm, number of impeller tip (N) of 2 and molar ratio of oleyl alcohol to oleic acid (M); 2:1. Analysis of the yield showed that at optimum condition, >90% liquid wax esters were produced. The stability of Novozym 435 showed at high percentage (>80%) up to 4 cycles

Isolation and characterization of a 2,4-dinitrophenol-degrading bacterium

2,4-dinitrophenol (2,4-DNP) is utilized in the production of wood preservatives, dyes, and also as a pesticide. Human acute (short-term) exposure to 2,4-DNP in humans by means of oral exposure are nausea or vomiting, sweating, headaches, dizziness, and weight reduction. Thus, the removal of this compound is highly sought. A 2,4-DNP-degrading bacterium (isolate 1) was isolated from a sample soil from Terengganu. This bacterium (isolate 1) was characterized as a rod Gram positive, non-sporulated, and non-motile bacterium. The bacterium is oxidase negative and had catalase positive activity and was able to grow aerobically on 2,4-dinitrophenol as the sole carbon source. This bacterium showed maximal growth on 2,4-DNP at the temperature optimum of 30 °C, pH 5.0 and was tolerant to 2,4-DNP concentration of up to 0.5 mM (0.092 g/L). This bacterium prefers to use urea as the nitrogen source in addition to yeast extract for mineral source and vitamin precursors

Bacterial degradation of caffeine: a review

Caffeine (1,3,7-trimethylxanthine) is an important naturally occurring, commercially purine alkaloid which can be degraded by bacteria. It is a stimulant central nervous system and also has negative withdrawal effects and is present in different varieties of plants such as coffee plant, tea leaves, colanut, cocoa beans and other plant. It is also present in soft drinks and is being used extensively in human consumption and has in addition some therapeutic uses but in minimal amount. Evidence has proved the harmful effects of caffeine thus opening a path in the field of caffeine biodegradation. Biodegradation by bacteria is considered to be the most efficient technique in degrading caffeine within the environment. Even though there are available methods for the removal of caffeine using conventional methods such as water, supercritical and solvent decaffeination but they are lack of accuracy/specificity for the removal of caffeine and in addition to the existing caffeine which sometime remains. Microbial degradation of caffeine provides a safe and cheaper alternative compared to chemical and physical methods. Microbial candidates for caffeine biodegradation are actively being isolated globally. Caffeine degradation can occur in both aerobically and an-aerobically depending on the contaminants. Organisms such as Pseudomonas, Alcaligenes, Aspergillus, Serratia, Penicillium, Klebsiella, Stemphylium, Rhizopus, Rhodococcus, Brevibacterium, Bacillus sp., and Phanerochaete strains have been reported to have the ability to degrade caffeine

Diagnostic Cerebral Angiography in Spontaneous Intracranial Haemorrhage: A Guide for Developing Countries

ObjectiveSpontaneous intracranial haemorrhage constitutes 18-40% of all stroke cases. Indications for cerebral angiography to find underlying potentially treatable vascular abnormalities are not clear. This study determined which intracranial haemorrhage patients need cerebral angiography by correlating computed tomography (CT) findings, age and hypertension history with cerebral angiography findings.MethodsA total of 54 patients (8-79 years) with intracranial haemorrhage who underwent both CT examination and six-vessel cerebral angiography were studied over a 2-year period. Cerebral angiography was repeated within 6 weeks if the first angiogram was negative.ResultsAngiography detected vascular lesions in 50% of cases (aneurysm 38.9% and arteriovenous malformation, AVM, 11.1%). In the aneurysm group, angiographic yield was 34.3% whereas in the AVM group, it was 37.9%. Subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) combined with other types of haemorrhage (such as intracerebral haemorrhage, ICH) was not significantly correlated with the likelihood of finding a vascular lesion, both aneurysm and AVM (p = 0.157). Age less than 50 years had significant correlation (p = 0.021) in the AVM group as well as in the aneurysm group (p < 0.001). A history of hypertension was associated with both aneurysm (p = 0.039) and AVM (p = 0.008). No patients with deep intracerebral haematoma had vascular lesions. The presence of an intraventricular haemorrhage (IVH) had significant correlation with aneurysm (p = 0.008) but not AVM. There was no significant difference in mean age between patients with and without a vascular lesion (p = 0.134).ConclusionCerebral angiography is justified in patients with pure SAH (p = 0.001). Other factors associated with finding a vascular lesion were a history of hypertension and the presence of IVH. Diagnostic cerebral angiography is indicated for patients with ICH and SAH and IVH with a history of hypertension, regardless of age

Sentiment classification from reviews for tourism analytics

User-generated content is critical for tourism destination management as it could help them identify their customers' opinions and come up with solutions to upgrade their tourism organizations as it could help them identify customer opinions. There are many reviews on social media and it is difficult for these organizations to analyse the reviews manually. By applying sentiment classification, reviews can be classified into several classes and help ease decision-making. The reviews contain noisy contents, such as typos and emoticons, which could affect the accuracy of the classifiers. This study evaluates the reviews using Support Vector Machine and Random Forest models to identify a suitable classifier. The main phases in this study are data collection, data preparation, data labelling and modelling phases. The reviews are labelled into three sentiments; positive, neutral, and negative. During pre-processing, steps such as removing the missing value, tokenization, case folding, stop words removal, stemming, and applying n-grams are performed. The result of this research is evaluated by looking at the performance of the models based on accuracy where the result with the highest accuracy is chosen as the solution. In this study, data is data from TripAdvisor and Google reviews using web scraping tools. The findings show that the Support Vector Machine model with 5-fold cross-validation the most suitable classifier with an accuracy of 67.97% compared to Naive Bayes with 61.33% accuracy and Random Forest classifier with 63.55% accuracy. In conclusion, the result of this paper could provide important information in tourism besides determining the suitable algorithm to be used for Sentiment Analysis related to the tourism domain