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Because hydroponic plant nutrient is dissolved in the water, water quality management is essential for growing healthy plants. Taking care of the total dissolved solids (TDS) and the pH (water acidity) is essential. The purpose of this research is to create a IoT-based water quality monitoring device. The average TDS after 30 days of automation with an Arduino UNO was 1162.82 ppm, and the gadget kicked on the nutrient pump whenever the TDS fell below 1000 ppm or the EC fell below 2. The mechanism self-adjusts the pH when it falls below 5.5 or rises above 6.5, with a mean of 6.17.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has affected the well-being of individuals worldwide. Due to the scarcity of information in the Malaysian context, this study aimed at investigating the changes in well-being before and during the Movement Control Order (MCO) in Malaysia and its association with mental health status. This cross-sectional study was part of a Malaysian non-probabilistic online survey on psychosocial well-being in Malaysia, under the Personal and Family Coping with COVID-19 Global South Research Consortium. A total of 543 respondents (≥18 years old) were recruited using snowball sampling. A validated self-administered questionnaire for assessing sociodemographic characteristics, well-being, anxiety, boredom, and loneliness was circulated on social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp) and emails. Paired samples t-test, chi-square test, and multinomial logistic regression analyses were applied during data analysis. Results revealed significant changes in the mean scores of well-being, anxiety, boredom, and loneliness before and during MCO (p 0.05). When comparing with no change in the well-being group, changes in boredom were less likely to be observed in the decreased well-being group (

Food security is an issue that arises as a result of the rising population since population growth decreases agricultural land, leading to water scarcity. Agriculture requires large amounts of water, but water scarcity forces farmers to irrigate their crops with little or low-quality water, leading to the idea of developing smart irrigation. The challenge is how to manage the interactions between plants, growing media, microclimate, and water using manufactured systems. Good irrigation management will minimize the occurrence of poor irrigation design. This review is a way to present various methods and approaches for using sensors, controllers, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence in irrigation systems with a focus on improving water use efficiency. The study uses SCOPUS indexed publications and proceedings to study the evolution of irrigation information technology over the last eleven years. We hope this review can serve as a source of information to broaden the validity of the findings of irrigation monitoring and control technologies and help researchers identify future research directions on this subject.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health is an emerging problem globally. This study aimed to examine the mediating effect of chronic illnesses in the relationship between psychological health and the acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine, prior to the national vaccine rollout in Malaysia. An online cross-sectional study was conducted in Malaysia between December 10, 2020, and February 9, 2021. In addition to the descriptive analyses, a mediation analysis was performed to examine the mediating effect of chronic illnesses in the relationship between psychological distress and the willingness to accept the vaccine. A total of 1738 participants completed the survey. The psychological distress levels were found to be significantly different across demographic factors such as age, gender, and social economic status. This study demonstrated a partial mediating effect of chronic illnesses in the relationship between psychological distress and vaccine acceptance.

The greenhouse which is a building used to manipulate the micro-climate is an essential building for plant growth. Greenhouses have one or more devices that are used to monitor their internal environments against changes in micro-climate. The problem is that some devices are metal-based devices and plastics that can be deformed, such as electronic devices, one of which is a micro-climate monitoring device, so a shield that can protect the device but does not interfere with the sensor readings is needed. The purpose of this study was to make and test a plastic-based container called Duradus Junction Box, which has six removable ventilation openings to measure the micro-climate data. This study uses five Duradus Junction Boxes with different numbers of ventilation openings, a micro-controller connected to the air temperature and relative humidity sensor, and a MicroSD module to record all micro-climate data, all devices being then tested simultaneously for 30 days. Statistically, after using One Way ANOVA, this study found that micro-climate measurements result for actual devices data can be considered similar because the P-value for temperature (0.886) and relative humidity (0.917) is greater than alpha level of 0.05. However, when reading the recorded data for both parameters, it can be seen that micro-climate data inside all shields are slightly higher than actual microclimate data ranging from 1 to 2oC for air temperature and 1 to 3% for air relative humidity.

Adsorption technique for industrial effluent treatment as well as recovery of valuable components have been widely accepted for application. Since then, many researches on adsorption field have been established to investigate the economical yet having high separation efficiency of adsorbent for specific purpose. Biosorbent, for instance have shifted the focused of researches due to their abundant existence that can be easily converted into adsorbent, and some showed promising separation properties. However, the study on the biosorbent adsorption usually limited until the isotherm determination in batch experimental study. The dynamic behaviour of the system requires the experimental set-up in packed bed column, which is primarily controlled by the mass transfer mechanism. Mathematical expression describing the system is very useful as preliminary estimation of the system dynamic behaviour, provided by several input parameters such as isotherm parameters and mass transfer coefficients. Linear driving force (LDF) model approximation has proved its reliability to describe the dynamic behaviour of a system over a wide range of adsorption process. By taking three (3) experiments adsorption system on packed bed, the respective systems were simulated employing LDF approximation to obtain the dynamic behaviour of the system. The breakthrough curves were simulated by using the simplified mathematical model of LDF approximation. It is shown that the predicted LDF approximation give acceptable agreement to the experimental data with error of less than 15%, provided with mass transfer coefficient predicted from correlation. Overall, this work proved that it is possible to accurately determine the behaviour of the system using LDF approximation accompanied with the predicted mass transfer coefficient (MTC) from correlation and accurately determined adsorption isotherm for continuous system. Therefore, the mass transfer approximation is further used for evaluation of industrial-scaled packed bed column.

Since emergency approval of COVID-19 vaccines for children aged between 12 and 15 years old was recently obtained in the United States and Europe, we aimed to assess the willingness to vaccinate children with a COVID-19 vaccine in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Therefore, we launched an online cross-sectional survey in several LMICs. Questions relating to socio-demographic information, knowledge of COVID-19, level of fear/worry of being infected with COVID-19, and willingness to vaccinate children with the COVID-19 vaccine at 50%, 75% and 95% effectiveness levels, were asked. Of the 6571 participants (mean age = 39 ± 14 years), 64.0%, 72.6%, and 92.9% were willing to vaccinate children at 50%, 75%, and 95% effectiveness levels, respectively. Respondents who were undergraduates, who were more worried/fearful about COVID-19, had higher knowledge scores regarding COVID-19, and a higher belief that COVID-19 vaccination is important to protect others, were more willing to accept COVID-19 vaccination of children. COVID-19 vaccination of children will limit the spread of the virus, especially in schools; it may decrease the need for school closures which has a negative effect on child development. Findings from this study are useful for health promotion strategies during COVID-19 vaccination implementation among children in LMICs.

An important characteristic of a monolith is its porous structure. However, it is difficult to obtain a homogenous porous structure in a monolith due to dead-end and uneven distributions of pores, ...

This research presented a holistic approach in determining the trade-off optimized Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) tunings for both servo and regulatory controls of the cascade control loop by using Genetic Algorithm (GA). Performance of GA-based PID tunings was significantly compared with the IMC-based single loop tunings and conventional cascade control tunings. GA-based PID tunings eliminated the complicated mathematic calculations in obtaining the correlation PID tuning values and also reduce the dependency on engineering knowledge, experience, and skills. The performance of transient and steady-state responses was compared through time domain specification, performance index, and process response curve. It is concluded that the GA-based PID tunings for the cascade control loop had produced the best result for both servo and regulatory control objectives, which is eventually determined.

Apitherapy is a branch of alternative medicine that uses honey bee products including honey, propolis, pollen, bee venom, and royal jelly. Stingless bee honey reportedly has many medicinal and therapeutic uses and excellent potency. This study aimed to identify the phenolic compounds using a fast and specific reversed-phase HPLC method in the extract of stingless bee honey. A magnetic stirrer was used for the pretreatment process of a sample with methanol at a temperature of 50°C for 40 min, followed by separation on a column size of 250 mm x 4.6 mm (5μm) hypersil gold-C18 (Thermo Electron Corporation) with water–methanol–acetonitrile (45:40:15 v/v/v) containing acetic acid 1.0% as a mobile phase. A 254-nm wavelength was used to detect the extract. The standard retention times of the gallic acid, rutin, ascorbic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol were found to be at 2.610, 2.875, 3.150, 5.789, and 8.983 min, respectively. The existence of gallic acid, rutin, ascorbic acid, kaempferol, and quercetin in the stingless bee honey extract was found to match according to the standard retention time. In the stingless bee honey, the retention times of gallic acid, rutin, ascorbic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol were found to be at 2.613, 2.866, 3.157, 5.790, and 8.966 min, respectively. In the stingless bee honey, the amounts of gallic acid, rutin, ascorbic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol were 1.426%, 2.533%, 16.922%, 1.851%, and 13.773%, respectively. According to the results, it is concluded that stingless bee honey is rich in phenolic acids and flavonoid compounds that have strong antioxidant properties.

A fast and specific reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was used for the immediate identification of flavonoids (gallic acid, rutin, quercetin, ascorbic acid, and kaempferol) in the leaves extract of Mangrove (Rhizophora apiculata). The R. apiculata has lots of valuable medicinal properties including antiallergic, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antiviral, antioxidant, vascular antitumor activity, and enzyme inhibition; however, the activity of antioxidant is perhaps the greatest studied property attributed to flavonoids. Magnetic stirrer was used for the pretreatment process of sample with methanol by using a temperature of 50°C for 40 min, followed by separation on column size 250 mm x 4.6 mm (5 μm) Hypersil Gold C18 (Thermo Electron Corporation) with water–methanol–acetonitrile (45:40:15 v/v/v) containing acetic acid 1.0% as a mobile phase. Moreover, 254-nm wavelength was used to detect the extract. The standard retention times (Rt) of gallic acid, rutin, ascorbic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol were found to be 2.610, 2.875, 3.150, 5.789, and 8.983, respectively. The existence of gallic acid, rutin, ascorbic acid, kaempferol, and quercetin in Mangrove leaves extract was found matching according to the standard retention time. In Mangrove leaves, gallic acid was found to have the retention time at 2.538, rutin at 2.873, quercetin at 5.796, and kaempferol at 8.976. However, the ascorbic acid was not identified. The amount of rutin, gallic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol was calculated by using the assay formula. In Mangrove leaves, the amount of gallic acid, rutin, quercetin, and kaempferol is 3.024, 5.485, 5.144, and 8.361%, respectively.

We examined how different types of communication influence people’s responses to health advice. We tested whether presenting Covid-19 prevention advice (e.g., washing hands/distancing) as either originating from a government or scientific source would affect people’s trust in and intentions to comply with the advice. We also examined the effects of uncertainty framing: We presented the advice as being either certainly or potentially effectivein reducing virus spread. To achieve this, we conducted an experiment using large samples ofparticipants (N= 4,561) from the UK, US, Canada, Malaysia, and Taiwan. Across countries, participants found messages more trustworthy when the purported source was science as opposed to government. This effect was moderated by political orientation in all countries except for Canada, while religiosity moderated the source effect in the US. We found no evidence for source to affect intentions to act upon the advice, while the uncertainty manipulation was ineffective in influencing perceptions of the message uncertainty. Together, our findings suggest that despite prominence of science scepticism in public discourse, people trust scientists more than governments when it comes to practical health advice. It is therefore beneficial to communicate health messages by stressing their scientific bases.

Vaccination is fast becoming a key intervention against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted cross-sectional online surveys to investigate COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across nine Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs, N = 10,183), assuming vaccine effectiveness at 90% and 95%. The prevalence of vaccine acceptance increased from 76.4% (90% effectiveness) to 88.8% (95% effectiveness). Considering a 90% effective vaccine, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, and five African countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Benin, Uganda, Malawi, and Mali) had lower acceptance odds compared to Brazil. Individuals who perceived taking the vaccine as important to protect themselves had the highest acceptance odds (aOR 2.49) at 95% effectiveness. Vaccine acceptance was also positively associated with COVID-19 knowledge, worry/fear regarding COVID-19, higher income, younger age, and testing negative for COVID-19. However, chronic disease and female gender&nbsp, reduced the odds for vaccine acceptance. The main reasons underpinning vaccine refusal were fear of side effects (41.2%) and lack of confidence in vaccine effectiveness (15.1%). Further research is needed to identify country-specific reasons for vaccine hesitancy in order to develop mitigation strategies that would ensure high and equitable vaccination coverage across LMICs.

How individuals divide resources between themselves and another person is influenced both by their social value orientation (SVO) and the emotions they expect to feel when dividing resources (anticipated emotions). Research has also shown that individuals favor members of their own group (ingroup) over individuals from other groups (outgroup) when allocating resources. The Malaysian multi-ethnic population is a highly relevant context to study the combined effects of intergroup relations and SVO on anticipated emotions and resource allocation. The current studies recruited Malaysian participants to examine whether anticipated emotions and allocation behavior are influenced by the ethnic identity of the person receiving the allocation. Participants completed an SVO measure and rated how they would feel if they were to share resources equally or unequally. They then made allocations between themselves and an ingroup or outgroup member in an economic game. There was no evidence of ingroup favoritism in anticipated emotions and allocation behavior. This may have been due to impression management, social desirability concerns, and/or the use of a population with socially liberal attitudes. The results nevertheless provide support for the notion that anticipated emotions play a key role in resource allocation decisions.