Explore the vast range of titles available.

An effective biosurfactant producer and extremophiles bacteria, Bacillus cereus KH1, was isolated from textile effluent and the biosurfactant was produced using molasses as the sole carbon source. Growth parameters such as pH, temperature, salinity and concentration of molasses were optimised for decolourising the textile effluent with 24-h incubation. The biosurfactant property of B. cereus KH1 was evaluated based on haemolytic activity, oil displacement technique, drop-collapsing test and emulsification index. The results of the produced biosurfactant showed a positive reaction in haemolytic activity, oil displacement technique, drop-collapsing test and exhibiting a 67% emulsification index. The cell-free broth was stable in 40 °C pH 7, 7% salinity and 7% molasses. Thin-Layer Chromatography and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy analysis revealed that the biosurfactant was a lipopeptide with a yield 2.98 g L−1. These findings proved the synergistic action of B. cereus KH1 with lipopeptide biosurfactant may accelerated the decolourisation efficiency to 87%.

Light-powered micromotors are a new type of micromotor that can be used for water purification treatment. This paper focuses on the synthesis processes and its application in water remediation. This mini review will highlight the great potential of these light powered micromotor as well as the significance of preparing them for environmental applications. Photocatalytic micromotors or light-powered micromotors have been intensively researched over the last several years for several applications, such as environmental remediation, biomedicine and micropumps. It has been found that conventional wastewater treatment is commercially inefficient in water remediation. The emphasis then was on a new solution of using micromotor as a potential replacement for water remediation. Many studies have been carried out over the years on the synthesis of these light-powered micromotors, which revolves around the materials used, and applications. This paper, therefore, reflects on the advancement of light-powered micromotors and will be concentrating on the synthesis processes and its application in water remediation. This mini-review will highlight the great potential of these light-driven micromotors as well as the significance of preparing them for environmental applications.

New requirements in communication technologies make it imperative to rehash conventional features such as reconfigurable antennas to adapt with the future adaptability advancements. This paper presents a comprehensive review of reconfigurable antennas, specifically in terms of radiation patterns for adaptation in the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) New Radio frequency bands. They represent the key of antenna technology for materializing a high rate transmission, increased spectral and energy efficiency, reduced interference, and improved the beam steering and beam shaping, thereby land a great promise for planar antennas to boost the mid-band 5G. This review begins with an overview of the underlying principals in reconfiguring radiation patterns, followed by the presentations of the implemented innovative antenna topologies to suit particular advanced features. The various adaptation techniques of radiation pattern reconfigurable planar antennas and the understanding of its antenna design approaches has been investigated for its radiation pattern enhancement. A variety of design configurations have also been critically studied for their compatibilities to be operated in the mid-band communication systems. The review provides new insights on pattern reconfigurable antenna where such antennas are categorized as beam steering antenna and beam shaping antennas where the operation modes and purposes are clearly investigated. The review also revealed that for mid-band 5G communication, the commonly used electronic switching such as PIN diodes have sufficient isolation loss to provide the required beam performance.

In its bid to become a developed nation in a few years’ time, Malaysia has to consider various prevailing socio-economic and sociotechnical issues in the country. In the transportation sector per se, the ELV policy and initiative is one of the lacking parts in the country’s automotive ecosystem – in which a successful ELV program will not only cater the environmental concern but also help the safer car initiative for road users. This particular paper discusses what is regarded as the preliminary findings on the ELV policy from the Malaysia’s automotive ecosystem study database. From a total of 484 respondents, 268 or 55.4% had agreed to the proposal to introduce an age limit for passenger vehicles in Malaysia. The majority of those who gave their nod to the policy choose 10 years of vehicle age as the limit (38.9%), and a staggering 79.8% of them supposed that the age limit should be between 5 to 10 years. Further analysis based on the Multiple Logistic Regression found out that from a total of nine important variables related to car users’ profile and ownership status, the significant predictors to “the agreement to introduce vehicle age limit” were age, income and car status (new or used). Thus, this finding might be beneficial for the policymakers to strategize the ELV policy that sooner or later should be implemented in the Malaysia’s “developed country” environment.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is considered as a complex liver disease and ranked as the eighth-highest mortality rate with a prevalence of 2.4% in Malaysia. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been acknowledged for its advantages, a gold technique for diagnosing HCC, and yet the false-negative diagnosis from the examinations is inevitable. In this study, 30 MR images from patients diagnosed with HCC is used to evaluate the robustness of semi-automatic segmentation using the flood fill algorithm for quantitative features extraction. The relevant features were extracted from the segmented MR images of HCC. Four types of features extraction were used for this study, which are tumour intensity, shape feature, textural feature and wavelet feature. A total of 662 radiomic features were extracted from manual and semi-automatic segmentation and compared using intra-class relation coefficient (ICC). Radiomic features extracted using semi-automatic segmentation utilized flood filling algorithm from 3D-slicer had significantly higher reproducibility (average ICC = 0.952 ± 0.009, p < 0.05) compared with features extracted from manual segmentation (average ICC = 0.897 ± 0.011, p > 0.05). Moreover, features extracted from semi-automatic segmentation were more robust compared to manual segmentation. This study shows that semi-automatic segmentation from 3D-Slicer is a better alternative to the manual segmentation, as they can produce more robust and reproducible radiomic features.

The rapid development of technology has impacted the education field when the application of technology became one of the more important agendas. The development of technology-based teaching and learning materials is actively carried out in various disciplines, including the learning of Arabic language. The development of this electronic learning material or e-module will be able to bolster the aspirations towards the use of technology in teaching and learning. In the e-module development process, various procedures need to be followed to ensure that the quality and the objectives of the module can be achieved. One of the important steps in the development process of this e-module is expert evaluation. This study aimed to examine the evaluation of experts in the development of e-module for Arabic language. A total of nine experts were appointed and delegated into three categories; namely Language and Content experts, Educational Technology experts and Blended Learning experts. Each category involved 3 experts in the field. These experts had evaluated the developed e-modules and provided suggestions for improvements. In general, the developed e-modules were suitable to be implemented in a Blended Learning environment.

Organic compound containing thiosemicarbazide moiety has been successfully synthesized. The new synthesized dyes, N-(3-(Trifluoromethylbenzaldehyde)benzylidine thiosemi- carbazide (3-TFT) was characterized by spectroscopic technique namely, CHNS elemental analysis, Fourier Transform Infra-Red analysis (FT-IR), UV-Visible analysis (UV-Vis), 1H and 13C Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). The thin films of this dye have been prepared using a spin coating technique and deposited on indium tin oxide (ITO) glass substrate. The main highlight was an electrical conductivity of thin films which was measured using four point probing system in a range of light intensity, 25 Wm-2 until 200Wm-2. The potential electrical conductivity of 3-TFT dye was found gradually increased until reached the maximum conductivity values of 0.1489 Scm-1 at light intensity of 100 Wm-2 in the most diluted concentration at 1x10-5M.

Learning with technology or e-learning has been taking place in all areas of education including in learning and teaching of Arabic language. Despite the widespread use of e-learning for Arabic language, in line with the current technological advancements, the role of face-to-face classroom interactions must not be neglected. Face-to-face learning and e-learning have their own strengths.  Hence, a combination of both elements in teaching and learning as afforded by blended learning may be an excellent choice. This study seeks to identify student readiness in learning Arabic language based on blended learning approach among students at university level.  The research took place at University Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), Malaysia involving 248 students.  The students were asked to answer the distributed questionnaires.  The questionnaires used 1-5 points Likert scale which are strongly not agree, not agree, not sure, agree and strongly agree. The need analysis encompassed the presence of facilities supporting blended learning, the internet and e-learning literacy among students and their readiness to adopt blended learning. The findings highlight the important roles played by both the students and the institution in providing facilities needed to support blended learning. The findings also reported that the existing facilities are in a state of readiness for the implementation of blended learning. The institution provides wireless connection throughout the campus while 96% of the students own a laptop. In addition, students are also discovered to be internet-savvy besides displaying readiness to adopt blended learning. Further studies are recommended in exploring how to design and develop successful blended learning in teaching and learning Arabic language.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among people worldwide. The primary aim of this research is to establish an image processing method for lung cancer detection. This paper focuses on lung region segmentation from computed tomography (CT) scan images. In this work, a new procedure for lung region segmentation is proposed. First, the lung CT scan images will undergo an image thresholding stage before going through two morphological reconstruction and masking stages. In between morphological and masking stages, object extraction, border change, and object elimination will occur. Finally, the lung field will be annotated. The outcomes of the proposed procedure and previous lung segmentation methods i.e., the modified watershed segmentation method is compared with the ground truth images for performance evaluation that will be carried out both in qualitative and quantitative manners. Based on the analyses, the new proposed procedure for lung segmentation, denotes better performance, an increment by 0.02% to 3.5% in quantitative analysis. The proposed procedure produced better-segmented images for qualitative analysis and became the most frequently selected method by the 22 experts. This study shows that the outcome from the proposed method outperforms the existing modified watershed segmentation method.

BackgroundThe incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) is increasing steadily in Asia Pacific region including Malaysia. The collaborative data collection system enables CRC registration to document details of patients with CRC. This study aim to analyse the trend, clinico-pathological features along with treatment modalities received by CRC patients at our centre from 1997–2017.MethodsA Total of 1000 CRC cases were analysed from the hospital medical record system.ResultsThe median age at diagnosis was 63+11.97 years. Majority of patients diagnosed between 50 to 69 years old (57.9%) and 60.5% were males. The trend of CRC among the young patients revealed; Age group 20–39 years at 5.1%, and age group 40–49 years at 10.8%. There was an increment of 14.3% CRC cases in the second decade of analysis. Chinese patients were highest at 52.9%, followed by Malays at 42.3% and Indians at 3.1%. However, for young patients (<50 years old), Malays predominate at 55.3%, and for elderly (>70 years old), Chinese predominate at 59.9%. Most CRC cases were in the rectum (34.1%) with the majority of adenocarcinoma (83.3%) of well-differentiated cells (44.4%). For patients with Duke A:65.4% had surgery alone and 15.4% had surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. For patients with Duke B (34.1%) and C (39.2%): 40.9% had surgery alone, 26.6% had surgery and chemotherapy and 15.1% had surgery and chemo-radiotherapy. For patients with Duke D; 33.3% had palliative surgery along and 9.1% had surgery and chemo-radiotherapy. Anterior resections were most frequently performed at 38%.ConclusionsIn Malaysia, most CRC cases were diagnosed in the rectum at Dukes B and C, which commonly occurred among middle-aged and elderly Chinese patients. Majority of CRC cases in the young (<50 years old) patients were Malays. Most of the patients received only surgical treatment with anterior resections most frequently performed. There is a definite increasing trend of CRC in particular among young Malay patients for the past 2 decades in Malaysia.