Assessment of spatial air quality on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia utilizing environmetric techniques.

The presence of harmful substances in the atmosphere poses significant risks to the environment and public health. These pollutants can come from natural sources like dust and wildfires, or from human activities such as industrial, transportation, and agricultural practices. The objective of this study was to assess air quality on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia by analyzing historical data from the Department of Environment, Malaysia. Daily measurements of PM10, O3, SO2, NO2, and CO were collected from eight monitoring stations over 11 years (2011-2021) and analyzed using environmetric techniques. Hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis (HACA) classified two stations as belonging to the high pollution cluster (HPC), three stations as part of the moderate pollution cluster (MPC), and three stations as the low pollution cluster (LPC). Discriminant analysis revealed a correct assignment rate of 90.50%, indicating that all five parameters were able to differentiate pollution levels with high significance (p < 0.0001). Principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted to validate the pattern of air quality variables in relation to the identified clusters (HPC, MPC, and LPC). The results showed that two verifactors (VFs) were extracted in HPC and LPC, while three VFs were identified in MPC. The cumulative variance explained by the PCA for HPC, MPC, and LPC was 69.43%, 82.32%, and 62.16%, respectively. Finally, an artificial neural network (ANN) was used to forecast the air pollutant index (API) levels, using the R2 and RMSE performance metrics. The PCA-MLP Model A yielded an R2 value of 0.8470 and an RMSE of 6.6470, while PCA-MLP Model B achieved an R2 value of 0.8591 and an RMSE of 6.3000, both indicating a significant and strong correlation.

The superior efficacy of chloroquine over buparvaquone in reducing the chronic cerebral Toxoplasma gondii cysts load and improving the ultrastructural pathology in an immunocompromised murine model.

Toxoplasma gondii, the etiologic agent of toxoplasmosis, infects about 30 - 50% of the world population. The currently available anti-Toxoplasma agents have serious limitations. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of two antimalarials; buparvaquone (BPQ) and chloroquine (CQ), on immunocompromised mice with chronic cerebral toxoplasmosis, using spiramycin as a reference drug. The assessed parameters included the estimation of mortality rates (MR) among mice of the different study groups, in addition to the examination of the ultrastructural changes in the brain tissues by transmission electron microscopy. The results showed that only CQ treatment could decrease the MR significantly with zero deaths, while both spiramycin and BPQ caused an insignificant reduction of MR compared to the infected non-treated group. All the used drugs decreased the number of mature ruptured cysts significantly compared to the infected non-treated group, while only CQ increased the number of atrophic and necrotic cysts significantly. Furthermore, both spiramycin and BPQ improved the microvasculopathy and neurodegeneration accompanying the infection with different degrees of reactive astrocytosis and neuronal damage with the best results regarding the repair of the microvascular damage with less active glial cells, and normal neurons in the CQ-treated group. In conclusion, this study sheds light on CQ and its excellent impact on treating chronic cerebral toxoplasmosis in an immunocompromised mouse model.

Investigation of The Effect of Curcumin on Oxidative Stress, Local Inflammatory Response, COX-2 Expression, and Microvessel Density in Trichinella Spiralis Induced Enteritis, Myositis and Myocarditis in Mice.

Background: Curcumin exerts anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that have proven to be of value in the management of several parasitic infections. Objective: Investigation of the value of curcumin in the management of trichinosis either alone or as an adjuvant to albendazole. Methods: Animals received either curcumin 150 mg/kg, curcumin 300 mg/kg, albendazole 50 mg/ kg or combined curcumin 150mg/kg and albendazole 50 mg/kg and were compared with control infected and non-infected mice. Estimation of intestinal and muscular parasitic load and blood malondialdehyde level, in addition to the histopathological examination of small intestine, skeletal muscle tissue and heart was performed. Also, assessment of the local expression of cyclooxygenase-2 enzyme (COX-2) and CD34 in these samples was done by immunohistochemistry. Results: Curcumin was found efficient in reducing parasitic load. It also lowered serum MDA level, local COX-2 and CD34 expression. An evident anti-inflammatory effect of curcumin was observed in intestinal, skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle histopathological sections. Conclusion: The anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-angiogenic effects of curcumin can help to improve trichinellosis-induced pathology. Curcumin can therefore be of value as an adjuvant therapy to conventional antiparasitic agents and can also produce promising results when used alone at higher doses.

Machine learning for email spam filtering: review, approaches and open research problems.

The upsurge in the volume of unwanted emails called spam has created an intense need for the development of more dependable and robust antispam filters. Machine learning methods of recent are being used to successfully detect and filter spam emails. We present a systematic review of some of the popular machine learning based email spam filtering approaches. Our review covers survey of the important concepts, attempts, efficiency, and the research trend in spam filtering. The preliminary discussion in the study background examines the applications of machine learning techniques to the email spam filtering process of the leading internet service providers (ISPs) like Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook emails spam filters. Discussion on general email spam filtering process, and the various efforts by different researchers in combating spam through the use machine learning techniques was done. Our review compares the strengths and drawbacks of existing machine learning approaches and the open research problems in spam filtering. We recommended deep leaning and deep adversarial learning as the future techniques that can effectively handle the menace of spam emails.

Performance comparison of heuristic algorithms for task scheduling in IaaS cloud computing environment.

Cloud computing infrastructure is suitable for meeting computational needs of large task sizes. Optimal scheduling of tasks in cloud computing environment has been proved to be an NP-complete problem, hence the need for the application of heuristic methods. Several heuristic algorithms have been developed and used in addressing this problem, but choosing the appropriate algorithm for solving task assignment problem of a particular nature is difficult since the methods are developed under different assumptions. Therefore, six rule based heuristic algorithms are implemented and used to schedule autonomous tasks in homogeneous and heterogeneous environments with the aim of comparing their performance in terms of cost, degree of imbalance, makespan and throughput. First Come First Serve (FCFS), Minimum Completion Time (MCT), Minimum Execution Time (MET), Max-min, Min-min and Sufferage are the heuristic algorithms considered for the performance comparison and analysis of task scheduling in cloud computing.

Secure Scientific Applications Scheduling Technique for Cloud Computing Environment Using Global League Championship Algorithm.

Cloud computing system is a huge cluster of interconnected servers residing in a datacenter and dynamically provisioned to clients on-demand via a front-end interface. Scientific applications scheduling in the cloud computing environment is identified as NP-hard problem due to the dynamic nature of heterogeneous resources. Recently, a number of metaheuristics optimization schemes have been applied to address the challenges of applications scheduling in the cloud system, without much emphasis on the issue of secure global scheduling. In this paper, scientific applications scheduling techniques using the Global League Championship Algorithm (GBLCA) optimization technique is first presented for global task scheduling in the cloud environment. The experiment is carried out using CloudSim simulator. The experimental results show that, the proposed GBLCA technique produced remarkable performance improvement rate on the makespan that ranges between 14.44% to 46.41%. It also shows significant reduction in the time taken to securely schedule applications as parametrically measured in terms of the response time. In view of the experimental results, the proposed technique provides better-quality scheduling solution that is suitable for scientific applications task execution in the Cloud Computing environment than the MinMin, MaxMin, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) scheduling techniques.

Gender-specific association of NFKBIA promoter polymorphisms with the risk of sporadic colorectal cancer.

The inhibitory protein IκBα, encoded by the NFKBIA gene, plays an important role in regulating the activity of nuclear factor-kappa B, a transcription factor which has been implicated in the initiation and progression of cancers. This study aimed to evaluate the association of NFKBIA -826C>T (rs2233406) and -881A>G (rs3138053) polymorphisms with the risk of sporadic colorectal cancer (CRC) in Malaysian population. A case-control study comprising 474 subjects (237 CRC patients and 237 cancer-free controls) was carried out. The polymorphisms were genotyped from the genomic DNA of the study subjects employing PCR-RFLP, followed by DNA sequencing. The association between the polymorphic genotypes and CRC risk was evaluated by deriving odds ratios (ORs) and 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) using unconditional logistic regression analysis. The two polymorphisms were in complete and perfect linkage disequilibrium (D' = 1.0, r (2) = 1.0). Overall, no statistically significant CRC risk association was found for the polymorphisms (P > 0.05). A similar lack of association was observed when the data were stratified according to ethnicity (P > 0.05). However, stratification by gender revealed a significant inverse association between the heterozygous genotype of the polymorphisms and the risk of CRC among females (OR 0.53, 95 % CI 0.29-0.97, P = 0.04), but not among males (P > 0.05). In conclusion, the heterozygous genotype of the polymorphisms could contribute to a significantly decreased CRC risk among females, but not males, in the Malaysian population.

The functional -94 insertion/deletion ATTG polymorphism in the promoter region of NFKB1 gene increases the risk of sporadic colorectal cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the allele and genotype frequencies of NFKB1 -94 ins/del ATTG (rs28720239) polymorphism and to evaluate the association between the polymorphism and colorectal cancer (CRC) risk in Malaysian population. METHODS: Genomic DNA was extracted from the peripheral blood samples of 474 study subjects, which consisted of 237 histopathologically confirmed CRC patients and an equal number of cancer-free controls. The NFKB1 -94 ins/del ATTG (rs28720239) polymorphism was genotyped using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method and confirmed by DNA sequencing. The association between the polymorphic genotypes and CRC risk was evaluated by deriving odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using unconditional logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: The frequencies of wildtype (del/del), heterozygous (del/ins) and variant (ins/ins) genotypes in CRC patients were 31.7%, 53.6% and 14.8%, respectively, while those in cancer-free controls were 35.0%, 58.2% and 6.8%, respectively. The frequency of the variant genotype was significantly higher in cases compared to controls (P<0.01). Evaluation of the risk association of the polymorphic genotypes revealed that the variant genotype could contribute to a significantly increased risk of CRC (OR=2.42, 95% CI=1.24-4.73, P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The variant allele of NFKB1 -94 ins/del ATTG (rs28362491) polymorphism is associated with higher risk of sporadic CRC in Malaysian population.

Mammary fibromatosis in a male breast.

Fibromatosis of the breast is a relatively benign, though locally invasive neoplasm. It is rare and difficult to diagnose. Risk of recurrence is there if it was inadequately excised. The best treatment is local wide excision with negative margins. We report a 46-year old gentleman with mammary fibromatosis. To the best of our knowledge, there are only few cases reported on male breast fibromatosis. The optimal management of it is unknown because of the rarity of the disease.

A study of the management of 55 traumatically intruded permanent incisor teeth in children.

AIMS: These were to examine the main presenting, treatment and outcome factors for intruded permanent incisors in children, the effect of apical development and degree of intrusion on decisions on repositioning, the effect of apical development status on the maintenance of pulp vitality and the time of pulp extirpation and to compare the decisions made to the advice given in existing clinical guidelines. METHODS: A sample of 55 intruded incisor teeth in 40 children aged between 6 and 14 years of age was reviewed in respect of management of their intrusive dental injuries. Of these teeth 17 were intruded in females and 38 in males. Mean (+/-SD) age was 9.3 (+/-1.99) and mean follow-up time was 2.3 years (+/-1.60). Included in the sample were 42 maxillary central incisors and 13 maxillary lateral incisors. RESULTS: Immature apicies were noted in 34 whilst 21 teeth had mature apices. Clinical and radiographic assessment categorised 4 teeth as mildly intruded with displacement of less than 3 mms; 10 teeth, intruded by 3-6 mm, were considered as moderately intruded whilst a further 11 teeth with intrusion of more than 6 mm were considered to have experienced a severe intrusive injury. There were 19 teeth (35%) that were allowed to re-erupt spontaneously, 22 (40%) were repositioned by orthodontic means and 14 teeth (25%) received surgical repositioning. CONCLUSION: There was a statistically significant difference between the repositioning decisions with a more conservative approach for teeth with immature apices (P = 0.0009). Apical completion was a significant predictor of earlier pulp extirpation (p=0.01).

A study of patients attending a multidisciplinary hypodontia clinic over a five year period.

AIM: To gather information about planned treatment, outcomes and type of patient attending a multidisciplinary hypodontia clinic over a five year period at Glasgow Dental Hospital and School. STUDY DESIGN: There were three parts to the study: (i) to report demographics of the patients with hypodontia attending the multidisciplinary clinic from its outset in February 2002 until February 2007; (ii) to report on both the treatment planned on the clinic and whether this was completed as intended; and (iii) to show the number of patients for whom implants were considered. METHODS: The existing hypodontia database was analysed, supplemented where required by data gathered retrospectively from patients' clinical records and radiographs. RESULTS: In the demographic component there were 108 patients seen between February 2002 and February 2007, 57% female patients with a mean age of 13 years. Ninety-one percent (n = 107) of patients were missing two or more teeth, with the most common missing teeth being upper lateral incisors. Orthodontic therapy was most frequently considered in treatment planning. Nineteen patients (23%) may require dental implants. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of the patients were female, adolescent and had a positive or suspected family history of hypodontia. Orthodontic therapy was most frequently considered in treatment planning. Nineteen patients may undergo surgery for placement of dental implants.

Emergency management of acute congestive glaucoma using an anterior chamber microsyringe and needle.

A microsyringe-needle assembly is described for use in aspiration and microinfusion procedures in the anterior chamber. Assets of a lancet pointed 30-gauge needle, surface anesthesia, and fine control of ocular pressure and aqueous humor volume are stressed. Use of the assembly for emergency treatment of acute congestive glaucoma, surgical paracentesis, aqueous sampling, and drug infusion are described. Drug volumes and concentrations must be maintained at levels which do not damage corneal endothelium.