Situational analysis on safety and health in primary school in Kota Bharu

Background : Safety and health is one of major concerns in public health issues. There are lots of injuries or accidents reported in the news which include school accidents and injuries. Methodology : This survey was conducted among head of primary schools in Kota Bharu from May to June 2004. The objective of this study was to investigate the awareness about safety and health status among school’s head using a questionnaire. Result : The study showed that knowledge on safety and health among the school’s heads were relatively low (7.7%). Forty-two percent of the schools did not implement any safety and health programme while more than 50 % did not have safety policies in their school. Conclusions : It is necessary to have specific safety programmes in school in order to improve the safety and health awareness among teachers, staff, students and community

Modeling pedestrian evacuation movement in a swaying ship

With the advance in living standard, cruise travel has been rapidly expanding around the world in recent years. The transportation of passengers in water has also made a rapid development. It is expected that ships will be more and more widely used. Unfortunately, ship disasters occurred in these years caused serious losses. It raised the concern on effectiveness of passenger evacuation on ships. The present study thus focuses on pedestrian evacuation features on ships. On ships, passenger movements are affected by the periodical water motion and thus are quite different from the characteristic when walking on static horizontal floor. Taking into consideration of this special feature, an agent-based pedestrian model is formulized and the effect of ship swaying on pedestrian evacuation efficiency is investigated. Results indicated that the proposed model can be used to quantify the special evacuation process on ships.Comment: Traffic and Granular Flow'15, At Delft, the Netherland

Electrophoretic serum protein fractions in dwarf and normal layer hens and their correlations with productive traits

International audienc

Modifying dental composites to formulate novel methacrylate-based bone cements with improved polymerisation kinetics, and mechanical properties

Objectives: The aim was to develop bone composites with similar working times, faster polymerisation and higher final conversion in comparison to Cortoss™. Additionally, low shrinkage/heat generation and improved short and longer-term mechanical properties are desirable. Methods: Four urethane dimethacrylate based composites were prepared using tri-ethylene-glycol dimethacrylate (TEGDMA) or polypropylene dimethacrylate (PPGDMA) diluent and 0 or 20 wt% fibres in the glass filler particles. FTIR was used to determine reaction kinetics, final degrees of conversions, and polymerisation shrinkage/heat generation at 37 °C. Biaxial flexural strength, Young's modulus and compressive strength were evaluated after 1 or 30 days in water. Results: Experimental materials all had similar inhibition times to Cortoss™ (140 s) but subsequent maximum polymerisation rate was more than doubled. Average experimental composite final conversion (76%) was higher than that of Cortoss™ (58%) but with less heat generation and shrinkage. Replacement of TEGDMA by PPGDMA gave higher polymerisation rates and conversions while reducing shrinkage. Early and aged flexural strengths of Cortoss™ were 93 and 45 MPa respectively. Corresponding compressive strengths were 164 and 99 MPa. Early and lagged experimental composite flexural strengths were 164–186 and 240–274 MPa whilst compressive strengths were 240–274 MPa and 226–261 MPa. Young's modulus for Cortoss™ was 3.3 and 2.2 GPa at 1 day and 1 month. Experimental material values were 3.4–4.8 and 3.0–4.1 GPa, respectively. PPGDMA and fibres marginally reduced strength but caused greater reduction in modulus. Fibres also made the composites quasi-ductile instead of brittle. Significance: The improved setting and higher strengths of the experimental materials compared to Cortoss™, could reduce monomer leakage from the injection site and material fracture, respectively. Lowering modulus may reduce stress shielding whilst quasi-ductile properties may improve fracture tolerance. The modified dental composites could therefore be a promising approach for future bone cements

A critical review on the contributions of chemical and physical factors toward the nucleation and growth of large-area graphene

Since the first isolation of graphene over a decade ago, research into graphene has exponentially increased due to its excellent electrical, optical, mechanical and chemical properties. Graphene has been shown to enhance the performance of various electronic devices. In addition, graphene can be simply produced through chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Although the synthesis of graphene has been widely researched, especially the CVD growth method, the lack of understanding of various synthetic parameters still limits the fabrication of large-area and defect-free graphene films. This report critically reviews various parameters affecting the quality of CVD grown graphene to understand the relationship between these parameters and thechoice of metal substrates and to provide a point of reference for future studies of large-area, CVD-grown graphene

Deletion of annexin 2 light chain p11 in nociceptors causes deficits in somatosensory coding and pain behavior

The S100 family protein p11 (S100A10, annexin 2 light chain) is involved in the trafficking of the voltage-gated sodium channel Na(V)1.8, TWIK-related acid-sensitive K+ channel (TASK-1), the ligand-gated ion channels acid-sensing ion channel 1a (ASIC1a) and transient receptor potential vanilloid 5/6 (TRPV5/V6), as well as 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor 1B (5-HT1B), a G-protein-coupled receptor. To evaluate the role of p11 in peripheral pain pathways, we generated a loxP-flanked (floxed) p11 mouse and used the Cre-loxP recombinase system to delete p11 exclusively from nociceptive primary sensory neurons in mice. p11-null neurons showed deficits in the expression of NaV1.8, but not of annexin 2. Damage-sensing primary neurons from these animals show a reduced tetrodotoxin-resistant sodium current density, consistent with a loss of membrane-associated NaV1.8. Noxious coding in wide-dynamic-range neurons in the dorsal horn was markedly compromised. Acute pain behavior was attenuated in certain models, but no deficits in inflammatory pain were observed. A significant deficit in neuropathic pain behavior was also apparent in the conditional-null mice. These results confirm an important role for p11 in nociceptor function

An efficient numerical algorithm for a multiphase tumour model

This paper is concerned with the development and application of optimally efficient numerical methods for the simulation of vascular tumour growth. This model used involves the flow and interaction of four different, but coupled, phases which are each treated as incompressible fluids, Hubbard and Byrne (2013). A finite volume scheme is used to approximate mass conservation, with conforming finite element schemes to approximate momentum conservation and an associated equation. The principal contribution of this paper is the development of a novel block preconditioner for solving the linear systems arising from the discrete momentum equations at each time step. In particular, the preconditioned system has both a solution time and a memory requirement that is shown to scale almost linearly with the problem size

Genetic variability of camel (Camelus dromedarius) populations in Saudi Arabia based on microsatellites analysis

The genetic diversity and population genetic structure of dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius) are poorly documented in Saudi Arabia. The present study was conducted to address some of these genetics using four Saudi Arabian camel populations namely; Magaheem (MG), Maghateer (MJ), Sofr (SO) and Shual (SH). Genomic DNA was extracted from the hair roots of 160 camels, 40 individuals from each population. Sixteen microsatellite markers were used to genotype these 160 camels. Out of these 16 markers, only microsatellite VOLP67 did not produce any polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplicons. There were 139 alleles generated by the 15 microsatellites loci with a mean of 9.27 alleles per locus. Four of the microsatellites loci studied in MG, eight in MJ and six in both SO and SH were found to be deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The fixation genetic indices (Fst) among the four populations were very low, ranging from 0.006 (between SH and SO) to 0.017 (between MG and MJ), indicating low population differentiation among the four Saudi camel populations. No significant heterozygote excess or bottleneck in most nearest past was detected in the four camel populations as indicated by sign, standardized differences and Wilcoxon tests, along with the normal L shaped distribution of mode-shift test. The present study showed that the microsatellite markers are powerful tools in breeding programs, although there is a need for applying more microsatellites in order to be able to discriminate fairly between camel populations of Saudi Arabia.Keywords: Camels, Camelus dromedarius, microsatellite markers, Saudi Arabia, genetic variabilit

Study of Some Toxic Effects of Diminazine in Vitro

Background: The trypanocidal agent, diminazine have been shown to produce some toxic effects such as itching, hypotension and gastrointestinal disturbances among the migratory domestic animals, especially in camels during the dry season in South-western Sudan.                                                                  Objective: The present study was an attempt to explain some toxic effects of diminazine in vitro. Methods: A number of qualitative and quantitative experiments have been done to elucidate these mechanisms using different concentrations of diminazine.  Results: Incubation of different concentrations of diminazine with rat lung chops and their intraperitoneal administration, produced incubates that potently stimulated the isolated guinea-pig ileum. The obtained contractions were dosedependent and effectively blocked by the anti-histamine, diphenhydramine. The yielded incubated mixtures when developed on paper chromatography with authentic samples showed two spots with Rf values and colours similar to those of heparin and histamine when sprayed with ninhydrin or exposed to iodine vapour. The extent to which diminazine released histamine was determined by measuring the concentrations of the released histamine using the three-point assay. The addition of EDTA, diltiazem and dinitrophenol separately to the incubated mixtures indicated that the release of histamine and the accompanied heparin was calcium-and energy-dependent, most probably by exocytosis and damaging the lung and peritoneal mast cells.  When tested on isolated rabbit jejunum, diminazine was found to potentiate the effect of histamine with pA1/2 value of 5.4 ± 0.13 compared to 5.6 ± 0.15 for aminoguanidine, the standard diamine oxidase inhibitors. Conclusion: Diminazine was found to have a potent histamine releasing capacity. These findings indicated that the severe toxic effects produced by diminazine might be due to its ability to release histamine and/or potentiating its effects.&nbsp