Knowledge, Attitude, Exposure, and Future Intentions toward Exclusive Breastfeeding among Universiti Sains Malaysia Final Year Medical and Dental Students

Noraini Mohamad,Norkhafizah Saddki,Khairun Nadzirah Khairul Azman,Ida Dahlia Ab Aziz 대한가정의학회 2019 Korean Journal of Family Medicine Vol.40 No.4

Background: Breastmilk is the best nourishment for an infant for the first 6 months of life. Health professionals like medical doctors and dentists can help promote and support exclusive breastfeeding. We aimed to assess knowl-edge, attitudes, exposure, and future intentions toward exclusive breastfeeding among final year medical and den-tal students at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kelantan, Malaysia.Methods: A total of 162 students participated in this cross-sectional study that was conducted between May and September of 2015. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the variables of interest. Results: Most students knew exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for the first 6 months of life (98.1%). Howev-er, some students incorrectly thought formula milk can be given if the infant appears hungry after having been breastfed (61.7%). Additionally, some incorrectly thought expressed breastmilk can be warmed on direct heat (47.5%) and left-over expressed milk can be re-stored (60.5%). Most students agreed that exclusive breastfeeding is easier to practice than formula feeding and that it is the best choice for working mothers. Most students (93.2%) in-tend to breastfeed their children, and this intention was significantly associated with their experience being breast-fed as infants and attitudes toward exclusive breastfeeding.Conclusion: Generally, final year medical and dental students have favorable attitudes and future intentions to-ward exclusive breastfeeding, although some of them lacked knowledge about certain important aspects of the practice. Past experience of being exclusively breastfed and a more positive attitude toward the practice were asso-ciated with their future intentions to practice exclusive breastfeeding.

New low‐complexity segmentation scheme for the partial transmit sequence technique for reducing the high PAPR value in OFDM systems

Yasir Amer Jawhar,Khairun Nidzam Ramli,Montadar Abas Taher,Nor Shahida Mohd Shah,Lukman Audah,Mustafa Sami Ahmed,Thamer Abbas 한국전자통신연구원 2018 ETRI Journal Vol.40 No.6

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been the overwhelmingly prevalent choice for high‐data‐rate systems due to its superior advantages compared with other modulation techniques. In contrast, a high peak‐to‐average‐power ratio (PAPR) is considered the fundamental obstacle in OFDM systems since it drives the system to suffer from in‐band distortion and out‐of‐band radiation. The partial transmit sequence (PTS) technique is viewed as one of several strategies that have been suggested to diminish the high PAPR trend. The PTS relies upon dividing an input data sequence into a number of subblocks. Hence, three common types of the subblock segmentation methods have been adopted—interleaving (IL‐PTS), adjacent (Ad‐PTS), and pseudorandom (PR‐PTS). In this study, a new type of subblock division scheme is proposed to improve the PAPR reduction capacity with a low computational complexity. The results indicate that the proposed scheme can enhance the PAPR reduction performance better than the IL‐PTS and Ad‐PTS schemes. Additionally, the computational complexity of the proposed scheme is lower than that of the PR‐PTS and Ad‐PTS schemes.

Improving PAPR performance of filtered OFDM for 5G communications using PTS

Al-Jawhar, Yasir Amer,Ramli, Khairun N.,Taher, Montadar Abas,Shah, Nor Shahida M.,Mostafa, Salama A.,Khalaf, Bashar Ahmed Electronics and Telecommunications Research Instit 2021 ETRI Journal Vol.43 No.2

The filtered orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (F-OFDM) system has been recommended as a waveform candidate for fifth-generation (5G) communications. The suppression of out-of-band emission (OOBE) and asynchronous transmission are the distinctive features of the filtering-based waveform frameworks. Meanwhile, the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is still a challenge for the new waveform candidates. Partial transmit sequence (PTS) is an effective technique for mitigating the trend of high PAPR in multicarrier systems. In this study, the PTS technique is employed to reduce the high PAPR value of an F-OFDM system. Then, this system is compared with the OFDM system. In addition, the other related parameters such as frequency localization, bit error rate (BER), and computational complexity are evaluated and analyzed for both systems with and without PTS. The simulation results indicate that the F-OFDM based on PTS achieves higher levels of PAPR, BER, and OOBE performances compared with OFDM. Moreover, the BER performance of F-OFDM is uninfluenced by the use of the PTS technique.

Comparison between Visual Inspection of Cervix and Cytology Based Screening Procedures in Bangladesh

Nessa, Ashrafun,Nahar, Khadiza Nurun,Begum, Shirin Akhter,Anwary, Shahin Ara,Hossain, Fawzia,Nahar, Khairun Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2013 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.14 No.12

Background: Cervical cancer continues to be a major problem in Bangladesh with approximately 18,000 new cases annually of which over 10,000 women die from it. Visual inspection of the cervix after 3-5% acetic acid (VIA) application is a simple and easy to learn method for cervical cancer screening, although cytology-based screening is more often applied in developed countries where it has successfully reduced the prevalence of cervical cancer. Objective: To compare the efficacy of VIA and cytology-based primary methods for cervical cancer screening in Bangladesh. Materials and Methods: This hospital based comparative study was conducted at the VIA centre and Colposcopy Clinic of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) from October 2008 to October 2010. Results: Among 650 women, 74 (11.4%) were VIA+ve and 8 (1.2%) had abnormalities in their Pap smear reports. During colposcopy, 38 (7.7%) women had different grades of CIN and 4 (0.6%) had cervical cancer. The gold standard histology findings proved 20 women had CIN I, 14 had CIN II/II and 4 had cervical cancer. Among the 38 histology diagnosed abnormalities, VIA test could identify 30 abnormalities including two cervical cancers. However, Pap smear could detect only 8 cases of histological abnormalities (2 low grade and 6 had high grade lesion) and it missed all the cervical cancer cases. The sensitivity and specificity of VIA were 88.9% and 52.1%. The positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) were 41.0%, and 92.6% respectively. Moreover, the sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV of Pap smear were 33.3%, 95.8%, 75.0% and 79.3%, respectively. Conclusions: VIA test should be used as the primary screening tool even with its low sensitivity and specificity in low resource countries like Bangladesh. False positive results may be greater, but overtreatment can be minimized by colposcopy evaluation of the VIA positive women.

Establishment of effective plantlets regeneration protocol via isolated microspore culture in Malaysian indica rice MR219

Rahman Zuraida Abd,Seman Zulkifli Ahmad,Othman Ayu Nazreena,Ghaffar Mohamad Bahagia Ab,Razak Shahril Ab,Yusof Muhammad Fairuz Mohd,Nasir Khairun Hisam,Ahmad Khairulmazmi,Chow Yeow Lit,How Teo Chee,Saa 한국식물생명공학회 2022 Plant biotechnology reports Vol.16 No.3

The current study recognised the issues encountered in regenerating Malaysia MR219 rice plantlet via microspore culture and attempted to develop an efficient protocol in overcoming the restraints. In the present study, a high proportion of uninu- cleate microspores (49.17%) was isolated from Stage 2-Segment II panicle (59–61 days), which also exhibited the highest callus initiation rate of 8.50%. Maintenance of the panicles under a cool temperature of 4 °C for 7 days before isolating the microspores, resulted in the highest microspore viability of 58.33% and callus initiation rate of 9.33%. The microspore isola- tion protocol was also optimised in the present study. The filtration sieve engagement with a pore size of 80 µm and further suspension centrifugation at 800 rpm for 5 min produced the highest microspore viability percentage and callus initiation rate. The incorporation of 3.0 mg/L kinetin in conjunction with 0.5 mg/L 2,4-D greatly enhanced the callus initiation rate, with 11.33%. The callus proliferation capacity, with the formation of 481.67 mg callus, was significantly promoted by the addition of 1.0 mg/L kinetin and 0.5 mg/L 2,4-D into the growth medium. Moreover, a higher green plantlet regeneration frequency of 2.83% was induced by the supplementation of 8% sucrose, which produced an average of 3.50 green plantlets.