Beyond the joints in rheumatoid arthritis

Introduction: Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) is a multifunctional cytokine which plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Apart from its well recognized pro-inflammatory properties, it is known to interfere with lipid metabolism and erythropoiesis. Materials and Methods: We evaluated the effects of adalimumab on hematologic, lipid and inflammatory parameters using data from patients on adalimumab 40 mg fortnightly from 2 centers in Malaysia. Mean changes in laboratory values from baseline to Weeks 4, 12 and 24 were compared using paired T test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: We studied 18 patients with RA who were on adalimumab 40 mg fortnightly. The inflammatory markers i.e. erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C reactive protein showed significant changes as early as at week 4 compared to baseline with p values of 0.003 and 0.005, respectively. From a baseline of high disease activity with a mean Disease Activity Score using 28 joint counts (DAS 28) of 5.3, there was a steady improvement in the disease activity and remission was achieved at week 24 with a DAS 28 of 2.4. The hemoglobin level improved at week 12 (p=0.013) and this was sustained till week 24. As opposed to previous studies, the LDL level significantly decreased at week 12 (p=0.015) and this change persisted till week 24 (p=0.001). The total cholesterol showed a similar pattern as the LDL. Conclusions: The pharmacodynamics of adalimumab therapy in rheumatoid arthritis extend beyond the joints with favorable effects on haemoglobin and lipid profile

Effect of annealing temperatures on TiO2 thin films prepared by spray pyrolysis deposition method

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles thin film has been successfully synthesized by a spray pyrolysis deposition method by using an air compressor on a fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate and was annealed at different temperature. TiO2 is the most common oxide as an electrode in dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) which still has chances of improvements to increase its efficiency as an electrode. The efficiency of a DSSC was relatively low but modifications on every part of a DSSC were currently in research progress and an increase in adsorbed dye molecules was considered a potential. Thus, the influences of annealing temperature on structural and morphological properties of TiO2 have been studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), respectively, while the efficiency of the films in a solar cell was studied by a solar simulator. The FESEM result showed several degrees of porosity obtained by varying the annealing temperature. The crystallinity of TiO2 investigated by XRD showed that the crystallinity of the TiO2 thin films was generally unaffected by the annealing temperature. The relationship between the properties and the efficiency of the films as an electrode was also studied

Fundamental Shape Discrimination of Underground Metal Object Through One-Axis Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) Scan

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) was used in this research to detect or recognize the buried objects underground. Hyperbolic signals formed by datagram of GPR after detection the buried objects which quite similar to each other in term of metal shapes. The research was tested on the metal cube and metal cylinder by using the A-scan of GPR. There are steps in this signal processing step which are pre-processing step, feature extraction, and classification process. The segmentation process hyperbolic signals were segmented one by one and normalize from the negative to positive signals. The hyperbole from the metal cylinder and metal cube that had been buried in the ground is differentiated using four features of their respective A-scans which are found the maximum value of amplitude signal graph, the number of peaks in the signals graph, skewness, and standard deviation values. Finally, the classification process used learning algorithm of Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) was a test on Bayesian Regulation Backpropagation (BR) was given the highest accuracy, 98.70% as a classifier to classify the metal shapes which are a metal cube and metal cylinder

Mechanical and Morphological Properties of Polypropylene/Epoxidized Natural Rubber Blends at Various Mixing Ratio

This research is to investigate the effect of mixing ratio on the properties of polypropylene (PP) incorporated with epoxidized natural rubber (ENR). The blends of PP/ENR were prepared by melt compounding using an internal mixer and vulcanized through sulfur curing. Mechanical testing such as tensile test, hardness test and impact test were performed to characterize the properties of PP/ENR blends. It was clearly observed that the increase of the ENR percentage increases the toughness and flexibility of the PP/ENR blends. In comparison to the pure PP, the 40/60 PP/ENR blend showed an improvement of elongation at break and impact strength, up to 68% and 56%, respectively. In contrary, the tensile strength and hardness decreases as the amount of PP decreases. The changes were associated to the properties imparted by the elastic chains of cross-linked ENR. The obtained properties showed good correlation with fracture surfaces observed in microscopy analysis performed by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope at a magnification of 500 and 5000-x

Effect of Drying and Storage Conditions Towards the Bioactive Compounds Content and Antioxidant Activity of Mango Peel Powder

Mango peel is one of the wastes produced by the mango processing industry that contains bioactive compounds such as polyphenol and carotenoids. This study was carried out to determine the effect of drying methods on the antioxidant activity of mango peel powder and its stability during storage. Mango peel was dried by using vacuum and cabinet hot airdrying methods followed by bioactive content and antioxidant activity determination. The change in bioactive compounds content and antioxidant activity were also evaluated during 8 weeks of storage in dark/light and airtight/non-airtight conditions. The results obtained show that vacuum-dried powder had higher antioxidant activity than cabinet hot air-dried samples with higher content of total phenolic (48.27 ± 0.28 mg GAE/g), better scavenging activity of DPPH free radical (66.69 ± 0.88%) and β-carotene oxidation inhibition activity of 83.32 ± 0.93%. However, the carotenoid content of vacuumdried powder was lower than the cabinet hot air-dried powder with 83.21 ± 1.13 µg/g and 98.83 ± 0.93 µg/g respectively. The antioxidant activity of the samples was also comparable to butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), which is the standard antioxidant. Besides that, storage studies revealed that samples kept in the dark and airtight conditions have the highest antioxidant activity retention compared to other storage conditions. The results obtained from this study reveals the potential use of mango peel powder as a source of natural antioxidants for food applications

Methadone Flexi Dispensing (MFlex) Intelligence System utilizing the Mahalanobis-Taguchi System

Patients who are participating in the methadone flexi dispensing (MFlex) program are obliged to provide their blood samples for various testing, such as lipid profiles. A doctor evaluates three parameters, including cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol to determine whether or not the patient has a lipid issue. Since, the current structure lacks an ideal atmosphere for classification and optimization caused by inaccuracies in measurement methodologies and a lack of explanation for significant aspects that have an effect on the accuracy of diagnostics. The objective is to implement the Mahalanobis Taguchi system (MTS) in the MFlex program. Utilizing a total of 34 parameters, there are two different types of MTS techniques used for classification and optimization: the RT method and T method. The average Mahalanobis distance (MD) for healthy conditions is 1.0000 whereas for unhealthy is 79.5876. As a result, there is 19 parameters indicate a positive degree of contribution. 15 unknown samples were diagnosed with a variety of positive and negative degree of contribution to achieving a lower MD. Type 5 of 6 alterations was chosen as the best suggested possibility. In conclusion, MTS is able to be applied in medical environment

Analyses and pollution potential of heavy metals at the Jerangau-Jabor landfill in Kuantan, Malaysia

The impact of Industrialization has always been related to the better economic and social transformation. However, it should be well planned for environmental sustainability. Landfilling is the most used municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal method in Malaysia. Raw and treated leachate collected from Jerangau-Jabor Landfill Site (JJLS), Kuantan, Pahang were analysed for the content of silver, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, zinc using Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (FAAS) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). The metal analyses result were compared with standard limits from the Environmental Quality (Control of Pollution from Solid Waste Transfer Station and Landfill) Regulations 2009, Malaysian Environmental Quality Act 1974 (Act 127) set by the Department of Environment, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Malaysia and used to calculate the sub-leachate pollution index of heavy metals (sub-LPIhm) to evaluate the pollution potential of the heavy metals. The sub-LPIhm is one of the sub-index needed to calculate the Leachate Pollution Index (LPI) together with the sub-LPI organic (sub-LPIorg) and sub-LPI inorganic (sub-LPIinorg). LPI is the level of leachate pollution potential of a landfill site. All the heavy metals in the raw leachate were significantly higher than the treated leachate. Some were found to be above the permissible standard limit stipulated in the regulation. However, the sub-LPIhm showed that the level of heavy metal pollution potential of the leachate is low. It is recommended that the treated leachate should undergo continuous treatment to ensure the discharge leachate complied with the standard limit

Characterization of Injection Molded 17-4PH Stainless Steel Prepared with Waste Rubber Binder

This study is to investigate the sintering characteristics and to establish the best heating rate and soaking time used for sintering process, by determining the physical, mechanical, and microstructural properties of the injection molded 17-4PH stainless steel using waste rubber as a new developed binder system. By using the feedstock which having 65 vol.% of metal powder, the molding are injected into the tensile test bar and immediately processed with two stage debinding process that involves of solvent extraction and thermal pyrolisis to remove the binder. The specimens were sintered at 1360°C under vacuum atmosphere and tested for a critical property analysis of tensile test. Later, the observation on tensile testedspecimens fracture surface are done to understand the fracture behavior,distribution of grain and porosity and the significant correlation of fracture morphology to the mechanical properties. From this study, it is found that the combination of 50C/min heating rate and 60 minutes of soaking period resulted in higher density value, higher tensile strength, less porosity and homogenous grains distribution of the sintered specimens

Sustainable construction through life cycle costing

Sustainable construction refers to the integration of environmental, social and economic considerations into construction business strategies and practices. It is the application of the principles of sustainable development to the comprehensive construction cycle from the extraction of raw materials, through the planning, design and construction of buildings and infrastructure, until their final demolition and management of the resultant waste. The implementation of Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in the sustainable construction industry is significantly important to construct the structures and infrastructure projects that will meet all the principles of sustainability. During the process of developing a project, LCC principles and techniques aim to provide best value from a whole life perspective. This paper, in reviewing the application of life cycle costing and sustainable construction, explores the correlation between these two elements and assesses how these can be used to achieve sustainability over the whole life of building projects

Dimension of halal purchase intention: A preliminary study

This paper aims to do preliminarily study on dimensions within factors associated to Halal purchase intention. Using questionnaire surveys on 135 respondents from Kota Samarahan District in Sarawak, Malaysia, 9 dimensions named Solidity, Certainty, Universal, Brand Association, Purity, Conformity, Halal-ness, Place & Distribution, and Knowledge were extracted using Varimax Factor Analysis from four suggested variables: Marketing Concept; Awareness, Halal Certificate ; and Religiousity. The paper intends to path the way for deeper and more thorough future research on the area