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The limited shelf life of carbon prepreg waste (CPW) from component manufacturing restricts its use as a composite reinforcement fibre on its own. However, CPW can be recycled with glass fibre (GF) reinforcement to develop a unique remediate material. Therefore, this study fabricated (1) a glass fibre-carbon prepreg waste reinforced polymer hybrid composite (GF-CPW-PP), (2) a polypropylene composite (PP), (3) a carbon prepreg waste reinforced composite (CPW-PP), and (4) a glass fibre reinforced composite (GF-PP) and reported their degradation and residual tension properties after immersion in water. The polymer hybrid composites were fabricated via extrusion technique with minimum reinforce glass-carbon prepreg waste content of 10 wt%. The immersion test was conducted at room temperature using distilled water. Moisture content and diffusion coefficient (DC) were determined based on water adsorption values recorded at 24-h intervals over a one-week period. The results indicated that GF-PP reinforced composites retained the most moisture post-168 h of immersion. However, hardness and tensile strength were found to decrease with increased water adsorption. Tensile strength was found to be compromised since pores produced during hydrolysis reduced interfacial bonding between glass fibre and prepreg carbon reinforcements and the PP matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Administration of selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) and anti-estrogens has been shown to reduce the size of pituitary tumors. However, previous studies were performed on animal pituitary tumors or tissue cultures. We administered oral tamoxifen to a postoperative patient with a nonfunctioning pituitary neuroendocrine tumor (NF-PitNET) to investigate its potential effect on tumor volume. This case report presents the case of a 47-year-old female patient with a null cell adenoma who had undergone surgical resection as primary treatment and was left with a residual tumor that grew significantly. She was treated with tamoxifen 20–40 mg daily for one year. She was followed up to assess tamoxifen adherence, tolerability, and adverse events. The resected pituitary tumor was stained with estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) and beta (ERβ), proliferation markers (ki-67 and p53), and H&E staining for mitotic count. MRI of the pituitary gland was performed before starting treatment, after 6 months, and after 1 year of tamoxifen therapy. Her resected tumor showed high-intensity ERβ staining in the absence of ERα expression. She was able to tolerate oral tamoxifen therapy without side effects. Tamoxifen therapy resulted in a remarkable reduction in residual tumor volume of up to 87 % in this patient. Tamoxifen has a potential therapeutic effect in treating patients with residual NF-PitNET tumors that have regrown after primary resection. This finding may provide an alternative treatment modality for recurrent NF-PitNET. ERβ expression may predict response to tamoxifen in this subset of patients.

Studies on creativity have bloomed in the past decade. However, little is known about the effective connectivity (EC) between default-mode network (DMN) regions after creativity stimulation. This study aimed to measure the brain connectivity induced by creativity stimulation and to relate it with creativity score. A total of 50 participants were recruited and assigned to control and experimental groups. The experimental participants underwent a two-day creativity stimulation session. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scans were performed on all participants after the session. The rs-fMRI data were analysed using statistical parametric mapping and spectral dynamic causal modelling. A fully connected model comprising angular gyrus (AG), medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC) and pre-cuneus (PCU) as regions-of-interest (ROIs) was fitted for every participant's data. The model underwent Bayesian parameter averaging to determine the average strength of connection between ROIs. There was a significant increase in creativity score for the experimental group in the aspect of fluency (p=0.018) and flexibility (p=0.048) except in originality (p>0.05). No difference in brain activation was observed between groups. All the EC between ROIs in the left and right hemisphere for both groups were significant (P>0.9). Symmetrical EC networks for the experimental group were observed with left hemisphere PCU→PCU, PCU→mPFC and AG→PCU connections which were more significant in the experimental group. These findings suggested that creativity stimulation as short as two days was able to evoke changes in creativity score and network connectivity but insufficient to cause convincing differences in the brain activation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION: Different facets of divergent thinking (DT) are associated with connectivity between different cerebral areas. However, the causal interactions between the key DT nodes have yet to be explored. It is hypothesised that with creativity stimulation, changes in effective connectivity among regions will be observed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: By using control (n=26) and experimental (n=24) participants, this study aimed to investigate the effective connectivity between brain areas associated with divergent thinking that accentuate fluency, flexibility, and originality. The experimental participants attended a two-day creativity stimulation, followed by three task-based fMRI sessions for all participants, which included basic use (BU) identification, alternative use (AU) generation and unusual use (UU) determination tasks. Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) was used to determine the most optimal causal model representing the most possible modulatory influence on the connections between medial prefrontal cortices (mPFC), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and inferior parietal lobule (IPL). RESULTS: The experimental participants scored higher fluency and flexibility than the controls (p<0.05). At neuronal level, the control group showed similar intrinsic connections receiving modulatory influence for AU and UU tasks, while the experimental group preferred a different perturbation of connection between both tasks. These intergroup differences may be caused by different thinking strategies involving semantic and episodic memory retrieval, and integration of remotely associated ideas to construct new combination among the experimental participants. CONCLUSION: Different DT demands may influence the effective connectivity between mPFC, IFG and IPL especially among individuals with higher DT abilities, especially in fluency and flexibility versus originality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities play a vital role in a country’s growth and have the potential to stay in the field of higher education by determining their performance. Thereby, management will not know whether university performance is profitable if it is not measured. Therefore, this project was carried out to determine the efficiency of public universities in Malaysia using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models such as the Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes model (CCR) and Slack-Based Measure model (SBM). . Public higher education is under tremendous pressure worldwide to improve its performance and quality. This paper examines the efficiency scores of 20 public universities in Malaysia using the CCR and SBM. These 20 public universities state as Decision Making Unit (DMU) and DMU will be efficient if and only if the optimal value of efficiency is equal to 1; otherwise, it is inefficient. Three inputs and five outputs are determined to measure the performance of the university through the graduate student’s marketability. The findings show that out of 20 public universities, 11 public universities are efficient with an efficiency score equal to 1. Meanwhile, the remaining nine public universities showed inefficient score results. Suggestions and improvements are identified to improve the efficiency of those universities in the future. To overcome inefficient universities, the use of the SBM model provides recommendations to consider in measuring efficiencies which are the number of postgraduate students enrolled, number of undergraduate students enrolled, and number of academic staff as the inputs and the number of postgraduates, number of undergraduates, number of graduates working, number of graduates who choose to further studies and number of graduates choose to develop skills as the outputs. All the criteria need to consider for the improvement for the universities to be more efficient.

A previously healthy 27-year-old man was brought to hospital after been found late at night confused, agitated and talking incoherently. He represented 12 days later with focal seizures, progressing to anarthria and encephalopathy. MR scan of brain showed diffuse cerebral oedema and his plasma ammonia was >2000 µmol/L (12-55 µmol/L). He developed refractory status epilepticus and subsequently died. Genetic analysis identified an ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) gene mutation on the X chromosome. We discuss this atypical presentation of OTC deficiency as a rare but treatable cause of hyperammonaemic encephalopathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between psychological weel being and communication competence among flood reliefs workers as perceived by disaster victim underlying the recent interest on communication studies and disaster management, discusses the current issues and offers a future research perspective. It offers to understand communication competence of relief workers in the areas of communication studies in Malaysian organizations and how does this concept relate to psychological well being of flood victim. The cross-sectional data for this study were collected via a survey of 270 flood victims. The study highlights the important of flood relief workers’ communication competence from different aspect as perceived by the flood victim. The result indicate that there is a relationship between both variables. In sum, this study provides theoretical contributions to communication competence research and the literature on communication studies. The paper draws attention to the current issues of the disaster management on communication studies and highlights it for future directions.

This paper discusses what constitutes community social capital and how community cohesion is achieved. The insights explicated in this paper came from a study on community social capital in Malaysia. The study utilized a combination of focus group discussions and a survey method of a total of 293 respondents covering six (6) communities from six (6) districts in the state of Kedah, Malaysia. The study had produced a community social capital measuring instrument comprising a total of 36 items covering six (6) different dimensions. The study reveals that within the conceptual corpus of social capital, there are several “social dimensions” that can be construed as the socio-psychological contexts where people within a community may converge and develop a sense of togetherness. Social cohesion is the outcome of the interaction that occur within these realms. This correspond to an age-old sociological wisdom about society being the product of social interaction. Keywords: Social Capital, Community, Malaysian Society JEL Classifications: Z13

Estrogen (17β-estradiol or E2) is a crucial regulator of the synthesis and secretion of pituitary reproductive hormones luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, and prolactin. In this review, we summarize the role of estrogen receptors in nonfunctioning pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (NF-Pitnets), focusing on immunoexpression and gonadotroph cell proliferation and apoptosis. Gonadotroph tumors are the most common subtype of NF-Pitnets. Two major estrogen receptor (ER) isoforms expressed in the pituitary are estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) and estrogen receptor beta (ERβ). Overall, estrogen actions are mostly exerted through the ERα isoform on the pituitary. The G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) located at the plasma membrane may contribute to nongenomic effects of estrogen. Nuclear immunoreactivity for ERα and ERβ was highest among gonadotroph and null cell tumors. Silent corticotroph tumors are the least immunoreactive for both receptors. A significantly elevated ERα expression was observed in macroadenomas compared with microadenomas. ERα and ERβ may act in opposite directions to regulate the Slug-E-cadherin pathway and to affect invasiveness of NF-Pitnets. In the cellular pathway, ERs regulate estrogen-induced proliferation and differentiation and impact several signaling pathways including the MAPK and PI3K/Akt pathway. Estrogen was the first-discovered inducer of pituitary tumor transforming gene 1 that was abundantly expressed in NF-Pitnets. ERα can be a potential biomarker for predicting tumor size and invasiveness as well as therapeutic target for NF-Pitnets. Selective estrogen receptor modulators or antiestrogen may represent as an alternative choice for the treatment of NF-Pitnets., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Endocrine Society.)

Introduction: Due to globalization and changes in the health care delivery system, there has been a gradual change in the attitude of the medical community as well as the lay public toward greater acceptance of euthanasia as an option for terminally ill and dying patients. Physicians in developing countries come across situations where such issues are raised with increasing frequency. As euthanasia has gained world-wide prominence, the objectives of our study therefore were to explore the attitude of physicians and chronically ill patients toward euthanasia and related issues. Concomitantly, we wanted to ascertain the frequency of requests for assistance in active euthanasia., Materials and Methods: Questionnaire based survey among consenting patients and physicians., Results: The majority of our physicians and patients did not support active euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide (EAS), no matter what the circumstances may be P < 0.001. Both opposed to its legalization P < 0.001. Just 15% of physicians reported that they were asked by patients for assistance in dying. Both physicians 29.2% and patients 61.5% were in favor of withdrawing or withholding life-sustaining treatment to a patient with no chances of survival. Among patients no significant differences were observed for age, marital status, or underlying health status., Conclusions: A significant percentage of surveyed respondents were against EAS or its legalization. Patient views were primarily determined by religious beliefs rather than the disease severity. More debates on the matter are crucial in the ever-evolving world of clinical medicine.