OUTCOME BASED EDUCATION: A PERCEPTION FROM PRIVATE HEALTH SCIENCES GRADUATING SCHOLARS IN MALAYSIA

The transfer of education system from the traditional approach to Outcome Based Education (OBE) had given a significant change in many educational institutions worldwide. In Malaysia, most of the education institutions had implemented OBE in their system and had shown an increment in the students’ academic achievement. The reform in the health services that stresses on professionalism had brought the necessity to adopt OBE in allied health education. Thus, the Faculty of Health Sciences in KPJ Healthcare University College (KPJUC) implemented OBE on 2014 and positive result had been showed. There is a notable paucity of studies that focused on the students' perception on the educational system. This study focused on students' perception on OBE system in terms of students' understanding and their academic achievement. The student’s perception is the most crucial part as they are the medium of the system. They are the ones who undergo the system thoroughly, and they are the final product of the OBE system. This study used a descriptive method of research wherein the quantitative data were gathered using questionnaires. The participants were 19 graduating students from Bachelor of Medical Imaging (BMI) and Bachelor of Physiotherapy (BPY). The study showed that the perception of students regarding the program outcomes was good and this finding will help to improvise the lacuna in the system and can be the stepping-stone to a better education system in future.  Article visualizations

Prevalence and factors associated with mild cognitive impairment on screening in older Malaysians

Objective: This study was aimed to determine the prevalence and predictors of mild cognitive impairments (MCIs) in Malaysia. Method: This is a cross-sectional community-based study among elderlies aged 60 years and above in the four states of Malaysia - Perak, Kelantan, Selangor and Johor. A multi-stage stratified random sampling method was used for the data collection. Mini Mental State Examination score ?22 was used to diagnosed MCI and analyzed by using multivariate logistic regression. Results: A total of 2112 participants were recruited into this study. Mean age of the participants was 69.2±18.8 years, and 51.4% of them were females. The ethnic distribution was 63.4% Malaysian, 31.4% Chinese, 5.0% Indians, and 0.2% others. The overall prevalence of MCI was 68% (n=1436/2112). In multivariate logistic regression analysis, participant who were older (OR 1.02, 95% CI 1.00-1.04), did not receive formal education (OR 6.85, 95% CI 4.58-10.25), had primary education (OR 2.35 95% CI 1.84-3.00), were lonely (OR 1.18 95% CI 1.05-1.32), and had low level of life satisfaction (OR 1.68 95% CI 1.02-2.67), had significant positive correlations with MCI. Conclusion: MCI is present in seven out of ten elderly Malaysians. Aging population, presence of low education level, loneliness and low life satisfaction level seem to facilitate development of MCI

Experimental and numerical study of heat transfer and friction factor of plain tube with hybrid nanofluids

The use of heat transfer enhancement techniques, can improve the thermal performance of the tubes. In this study, the convective heat transfer from nanoparticles TiO2–SiO2 was dispersed to W/EG in the plain tube, under constant wall heat flux studied numerical and experimental. The type of nanofluid used is the TiO2–SiO2 base fluid EG/water mixture. The volume concentrations used were 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0%. The Reynolds number (Re) used ranges from 2900 to 11,200. The effect of nanofluids on heat transfer coefficients and friction factors is presented in this work. The results show that heat transfer increases with Reynolds number for numerical and experimental in plain tube. Hybrid nanofluids at volume concentration of 3.0% had the highest amount of Nusselt and the highest friction factor was followed by 2.0% and then 1.0%. Experimental and numerical results are compared in terms of Nusselt number average deviation found was 8.8, 8.9 and 7.9% for the volume concentration of 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0% in this study. The friction factor average deviation is 4.1, 3.8 and 3.5% for the volume concentration of 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0%, respectively

Brain activation display functional asymmetry in response to action, background and tonal frequency during a pitch memory processing: an fMRI study

In this study, the asymmetry of the main effects of action, background and tonal frequency during a pitch memory processing were investigated by means of brain activation. Eighteen participants (mean age 27.6 years) were presented with low and high frequency tones in quiet and in noise. They listen, discriminate and recognize the target tone against the final tone in a series of four distracting tones. The main effects were studied using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) with action (to wring (rubber bulb) vs. not to wring), background (in quiet vs. in noise) and frequency (low vs. high) as the factors (and levels respectively). The main effect of action is in the right pre-central gyrus (PCG), in conformation with its contralateral behavior. The main effect of background indicated the bilateral primary auditory cortices (PAC) and is right lateralized, attributable to white noise. The main effect of frequency is also observed in PAC but bilaterally equal and attributable to low frequency tones. Despite the argument that the temporo-spectral lateralization dichotomy is not especially rigid as revealed by the main effect of frequency, right lateralization of PAC for the respective main effect of background clearly demonstrates its functional asymmetry suggesting different perceptual functionality of the right and left PAC

Optimization of number of scans for a sparse temporal sampling (STS) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

High sensitivity signal detection for a sparse temporal sampling (STS) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is compensated by the increase in the number of scans (Ns) and consequently the scan time. A long scan time would result in fatigue and restlessness in participants, while a short scan time is undesirable for an STS-fMRI due to insufficient Ns for averaging. The purpose of this study was to determine the Ns practically sufficient for a sparse fMRI study. Eighteen participants were presented with white noise during a sparse fMRI scan. The height extent of activation was determined via t statistics and region of interest (ROI) based percentage of signal change (PSC). The t statistics and PSC for Heschl’s gyrus (HG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG) during which the participants listened to the white noise were calculated for different number of scans which were 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36. The t statistics and PSC values calculated for the bilateral HG and STG qualitatively indicated a minimal change over Ns = 12 to 36. Both ROIs showed a consistent common right lateralization of activation for all Ns, indicating the right-hemispheric dominance of auditory cortex in processing white noise stimulus. It was proposed that for a sparse fMRI study, Ns may practically fall between 12 and 36

Functional annotation of selected streptococcus pneumoniae hypothetical proteins

The ability of Streptococcus pneumoniae to induce infection relies on its virulence factor machinery. A previous study has identified essential proteins that might be responsible towards the pathogenicity of S. pneumoniae serotype 2 strain D39. How ever, 39 of them were yet functionally and stru cturally uncharacterized. Thus, by using in silico approach, this study aims to annotate the function and the structure of these unannotated proteins. Initially, all 39 targeted proteins went through primary screening for template availability and pathogen icity. From there, 11 of them were selected and were further analyzed on the basis of their physicochemical, functional and structural categorization using an integrated bioinformatics approach by means of amino acid sequence and stru cture - based analysi s. The obtained data suggested that all targeted proteins showed high possibility to be involved in either cell viability or cell pathogenicity mechanism of the bacterium, with SPD_1333 and SPD_1743 being the two most promising proteins to be further studied. Findings from this study could provide a better understanding of the pathogenic ability of this microorganism and thus, enhance drug development and target identification processes in the aim of improving pneumococcal disease control

Resting state effective connectivity between inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) in the left and right hemispheres

Inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) are two important brain regions for the default mode network (DMN). IPL has been known to be involved in the control of attention and responding to given information while ITG is involved in the processing and perception awakened by visual stimuli. These two key DMN regions are highly interconnected as determined from white matter and fiber tracking studies. However, little is known about their nature of connectivity while the brain is at rest, whether it is linear, bilinear or nonlinear and whether it is of mono- or bi-direction. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) data were obtained from 7 healthy male and female participants (average age = 20.7 ± 4.5 years) and were concatenated. Data were analyzed using statistical parametric mapping (SPM12). Endogenous brain signals were modelled by Fourier series at 0.01 – 0.08 Hz. IPL-ITG connected linear, bilinear and non-linear causal models in both hemispheres were constructed and estimated by means of stochastic dynamic causal modelling (sDCM) and were compared using Bayesian Model Selection (BMS) for group studies. Group fixed-effects results indicated that bilateral IPL and ITG exhibited high neural activity at a corrected significant level (pFWE 1000) which has the best balance between model accuracy and difficulty. The minimum free energy (F) = -4.41 × 104 and -4.09 × 104 for left and right hemisphere bilinear models respectively. From BMS and DCM results, it was found that IPL and ITG do have a dynamic collaboration between each other, a connectivity that belongs to a greater network when the brain is at rest. The intrinsic connections between them are negative in both directions i.e. IPL and ITG mutually inhibited each other. The effective connectivity was modulated by the endogenous fluctuation of the brain signal

PERANCANGAN MEDIA PEMBELAJARAN ALAT TRANSPORTASI BERBASIS MULTIMEDIA

  Abstract — Education is a major factor in the formation of the human person. In kindergarten not yet developed a curriculum-based creativity, they usually learn based on the theme. Theme introduction of means of transportation became one of the teaching learning activities. The purpose of learning the means of transport is to introduce the means of transportation to children.The purpose of this study is to establish a Learning Media Design Tools Multimedia Based Transportation using Adobe Flash Professional for kindergarten children as well as can be expected to know and understand about the tools transportation. With the Media Pebelajaran is expected children can receive lessons and with different learning media so that children are not saturated in the teaching and learning activities. Media Learning this as motivation and references other teachers in teaching with interactive techniques. The method used in this study is the system analyzing system requirements, design, code generation and testing.n as wireless or wifi (stand for wireless fidelity). Intisari — Pendidikan merupakan faktor utama dalam pembentukan pribadi manusia. Pada anak-anak TK belum berkembangnya kurikulum berbasis kreativitas, biasanya mereka belajar berdasarkan pada tema. Tema pengenalan alat-alat transportasi menjadi salah satu KBM kegiatan pembelajaran. Tujuan pembelajaran alat-alat transportasi adalah mengenalkan alat-alat transportasi kepada anak. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk membangun Perancangan Media Pembelajaran Alat-Alat Transportasi Berbasis Multimedia dengan menggunakan Adobe Flash Professional untuk anak-anak TK serta dapat diharapkan lebih mengerti dan memahami tentang alat-alat transportasi. Dengan adanya Media Pembelajaran ini diharapkan anak-anak bisa menerima pelajaran dengan baik dan dengan media pembelajaran yang berbeda agar anak-anak tidak jenuh dalam kegiatan belajar mengajar. Media Pembelajaran ini sebagai motivasi dan referensi guru-guru lain dalam mengajar dengan teknik yang interaktif. Metode yang digunakan dalam sistem penelitian ini adalah analisa kebutuhan sistem, desain, code generation, dan testing.  Kata Kunci — Media pembelajaran, Multimedia, Interaktif, Alat Transportasi

Perancangan Media Pembelajaran Alat Transportasi Berbasis Multimedia

— Education is a major factor in the formation of the human person. In kindergarten not yet developed a curriculum-based creativity, they usually learn based on the theme. Theme introduction of means of transportation became one of the teaching learning activities. The purpose of learning the means of transport is to introduce the means of transportation to children.The purpose of this study is to establish a Learning Media Design Tools Multimedia Based Transportation using Adobe Flash Professional for kindergarten children as well as can be expected to know and understand about the tools transportation. With the Media Pebelajaran is expected children can receive lessons and with different learning media so that children are not saturated in the teaching and learning activities. Media Learning this as motivation and references other teachers in teaching with interactive techniques. The method used in this study is the system analyzing system requirements, design, code generation and testing.n as wireless or wifi (stand for wireless fidelity). Intisari — Pendidikan merupakan faktor utama dalam pembentukan pribadi manusia. Pada anak-anak TK belum berkembangnya kurikulum berbasis kreativitas, biasanya mereka belajar berdasarkan pada tema. Tema pengenalan alat-alat transportasi menjadi salah satu KBM kegiatan pembelajaran. Tujuan pembelajaran alat-alat transportasi adalah mengenalkan alat-alat transportasi kepada anak. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk membangun Perancangan Media Pembelajaran Alat-Alat Transportasi Berbasis Multimedia dengan menggunakan Adobe Flash Professional untuk anak-anak TK serta dapat diharapkan lebih mengerti dan memahami tentang alat-alat transportasi. Dengan adanya Media Pembelajaran ini diharapkan anak-anak bisa menerima pelajaran dengan baik dan dengan media pembelajaran yang berbeda agar anak-anak tidak jenuh dalam kegiatan belajar mengajar. Media Pembelajaran ini sebagai motivasi dan referensi guru-guru lain dalam mengajar dengan teknik yang interaktif. Metode yang digunakan dalam sistem penelitian ini adalah analisa kebutuhan sistem, desain, code generation, dan testing. Kata Kunci — Media pembelajaran, Multimedia, Interaktif, Alat Transportasi

Activation characteristics of the primary motor (M1) and supplementary motor (SMA) areas during robust unilateral finger tapping task

This study investigated the functional specialisation characteristics of brain in multiple right-hand dominant subjects pertaining to the activation of the cerebral motor cortices evoked by unilateral finger tapping, especially in primary motor (M1) and supplementary motor (SMA) areas. This multiple-subject study used unilateral (UNIright and UNIleft) selfpaced tapping of hand fingers to activate the M1 and SMA. Brain activation characteristics were analysed using statistical parametric mapping (SPM). Activation for UNIright and UNIleft showed the involvement of contralateral and ipsilateral M1 and SMA. A larger activation area but with a lower percentage of signal change (PSC) were observed in the left M1 due to the control on UNIright (4164 voxels at α = 0.001, PSC = 1.650) as compared to the right M1 due to the control on UNIleft (2012 voxels at α = 0.001, PSC = 2.377). This is due to the influence of the tapping rate effects which is greater than what could be produced by the average effects of the dominant and sub-dominant hands. The significantly higher PSC value observed in the right M1 (p < 0.05) is due to a higher control demand used by the brain in coordinating the tapping of the sub-dominant fingers. The findings obtained from this study showed strong evidence of the existence of brain functional specialisation and could be used as baseline references in determining the most probable motor pathways in a sample of subjects