Systematic review is a comprehensive review of research findings in which all of the primary studies are systematically identified, appraised and summarised using an explicit and reproducible methodology. Meta-analysis is the statistical component of a systematic review in which combinable studies are drawn together via a statistical process. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are routinely being used in the evidence-based approach to medicine. These short notes intend to highlight important terms in systematic-review and meta-analysis. It is a beginner’s guide for health care professional of any discipline involved in research or practice who seeks to gain more comprehensive understanding of important terms used in systematic review and meta-analysis.
The passive bistatic radar (PBR) system can utilize the illuminator of opportunity to enhance radar capability. By utilizing the forward scattering technique and procedure into the specific mode of PBR can provide an improvement in target detection and classification. The system is known as passive Forward Scattering Radar (FSR). The passive FSR system can exploit the peculiar advantage of the enhancement in forward scatter radar cross section (FSRCS) for target detection. Thus, the aim of this paper is to show the feasibility of passive FSR for moving target detection and classification by experimental analysis and results. The signal source is coming from the latest technology of 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) base station. A detailed explanation on the passive FSR receiver circuit, the detection scheme and the classification algorithm are given. In addition, the proposed passive FSR circuit employs the self-mixing technique at the receiver; hence the synchronization signal from the transmitter is not required. The experimental results confirm the passive FSR system's capability for ground target detection and classification. Furthermore, this paper illustrates the first classification result in the passive FSR system. The great potential in the passive FSR system provides a new research area in passive radar that can be used for diverse remote monitoring applications.
Academic and corporate interest in sustainable product and process development has risen considerably
in recent years. This can be seen by the number of papers published and in particular by special issued of journals. This paper reports the results of a review of published peer-reviewed literature from 1987 to 2012 to provide an up-to-date picture of sustainability and sustainable assessment. A structured methodology is followed to narrow down the search from around 3500 papers to 111. A variety of different sustainability assessment methodologies are reviewed in two classified research areas: product sustainability assessment and process sustainability assessment. In presenting a detailed taxonomy of product and process sustainability assessment methods, the paper also outlines the advantages and weaknesses of the sustainability assessment methods. The review sheds light on the weak points of current research in this area. The paper also highlights several key issues which have to be taken into account in attempting to develop a product or process sustainability assessment research paradigm for future applications in manufacturing systems.
A malaria eradication goal has been proposed, at the same time as a new global strategy and implementation framework. Countries are considering the strategies and tools that will enable progress towards malaria goals. The eliminating malaria case-study series reports were reviewed to identify successful programme management components using a cross-case study analytic approach.
It has been shown in previous studies that the flight trajectories of sports balls are influenced by their aerodynamic characteristics. These aerodynamic characteristics are primarily dependent on the physical shape and surface texture of the balls. Even though sepak takraw is well established as a sport, little is known regarding the aerodynamic characteristics of the sepak takraw ball, which has a rather complex shape and surface texture. Hence, the main objective of this research is to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics (specifically the drag and lift coefficients) and flow features of a modern sepak takraw ball commercially available in the market by means of numerical simulations and wind tunnel experiments using the smoke flow visualization technique. The aerodynamic characteristics and flow features of the ball are determined for non-spinning conditions at a wind speed of 3 m/s. It is found that the drag coefficient and lift coefficient of the sepak takraw ball is 0.4868400 and - 0.0130915, respectively. The images captured from the smoke flow visualization experiments reveal that the sepak takraw ball is in the subcritical flow regime at a wind speed of 3 m/s, which is the regime before the drag crisis. The laminar boundary layer separates from the upper and lower surfaces of the ball at points upstream of the equator of the ball, creating a large wake region downstream of the sepak takraw ball and resulting in high drag. This in turn, influences the trajectory of the sepak takraw ball in flight. The flow features observed from the smoke flow visualization experiments are representative of the flow during a sepak takraw game. Owing to the complexity of sepak takraw ball, it is recommended that the aerodynamic characteristics of the sepak takraw ball are investigated for spinning conditions in future studies.
This paper reviewed the aspect of fatigue approaches and analysis in a fibre reinforced composite materials which have been done by researchers worldwide. The aim of this review is to provide a better picture on analytical approaches that are presently available for predicting fatigue life in composite materials. This review also proposes a new interpretation of available theories and identifies area in fatigue of natural fibre reinforced composite materials. Thus, it was concluded there are still very limited studies on fatigue analysis of natural fibre reinforced composite materials, especially using non-destructive technique (NDT) methods and a new mathematical modelling on fatigue should be formulated.
Objective: Critical appraisal is a process of systematically examining research evidence to assess its validity, results and relevance before using it to form a decision. A basic knowledge in statistic and epidemiology is important among postgraduate students in psychiatry to acquire the skills for appraising clinical research evidence. This is a descriptive study that attempts to look into the level of knowledge among the postgraduate psychiatry students in
terms of statistic and epidemiology. Methods: A total of 31 postgraduate students in their second (N= 26) and third year (N=5) Master of Medicine (Psychiatry) and Master of Psychological Medicine from three different universities, namely: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Malaya and Universiti Sains Malaysia participated in this research. The participants were asked to answer 7 questions within 30 minutes. The passing mark for this
critical review paper is set at 25 out of 50. Results: Overall, only 32.3% passed the mock critical review paper. About 67.7% of the students passed their epidemiology component and only 19.4% passed the statistic component. Conclusion: We found poor performance in basic statistics among psychiatric trainees which highlights the need for further improvement in the subject’s training.
Majority of doctors show no interest in research although research is now a requirement and is being done in every field of medicine. The objective of this survey was to describe the involvement in research activities among doctors in Penang and Seberang Jaya hospitals in Penang. A self-administered questionnaire was used. A total of 302 doctors participated in the survey. The differences in age (p=
Journal business models are basically classified based on the source of income to cover publication costs and in general there are two main journal business models which are the toll-access and open-access. These leading to a question that still remains around the ethics of publishing academic work across the different journal business models in terms of (a) editorial decision-making and (b) the dissemination of research that has not been appropriately peer-reviewed for quality and rigor. This paper discussed about these two areas based on the literature and the authors' observations.
Craniofacial superimposition methods are employed for the identification of unknown skulls or living persons. There are many such methods and of particular interest is that technique developed by Furue which is inexpensive to set-up. A study was undertaken to ascertain the validity of this technique and to correlate our findings with other researchers.
Covering as much as 25% to 35% of the development cost, software testing is an integral part of the software development lifecycle. Despite its importance, the current software testing practice is still based on highly manual processes from the generation of test cases (i.e. from specifications) up to the actual execution of the test. These manually generated tests are sometimes executed using ad hoc approaches, typically requiring the construction of a test driver for the particular application under test. In addition, test engineers are also under pressure to test increasing lines of code in order to meet market demands for more software functionalities. While there are significant proliferations of helpful testing tools or research prototypes in the market, much of them do not adequately provide the right level of abstraction and automation as required by test engineers. In order to facilitate and address some of the aforementioned issues, an automated testing tool was developed, called SFIT, based on Java® technology. This paper describes the development, implementation and evaluation of SFIT. Two case studies involving the robustness assessment of an adder module and a Linda-based distributed shared memory implementation are described in order to demonstrate the applicability of SFIT as a helpful automated testing tool.
Ageing management is one of the important safety factors to be implemented proactively throughout the lifetime of a research reactor. In order to continue the safe operation of a research reactor from the reactor safety standpoint, a systematic and methodical approach should be taken. In practice, ageing management programme is accomplished by integrating the existing programmes including maintenance, periodic testing and inspection and periodic safety reviews. Such approach will be a good platform for the reactor operation
and maintenance group to utilize data from existing maintenance programme to be incorporate into the ageing maintenance system. This paper will describe the ageing management programme for Reactor TRIGA PUSPATI (RTP).
The urban transit network design problem (UTNDP) involves the development of a transit route set and associated schedules for an urban public transit system. The design of efficient public transit systems is widely considered as a viable option for the economic, social, and physical structure of an urban setting. This paper reviews four well-known population-based metaheuristics that have been employed and deemed potentially viable for tackling the UTNDP. The aim is to give a thorough review of the algorithms and identify the gaps for future research directions.
An e-learning website is very useful, especially for students and lecturers, as this platform is very efficient for blended learning. Thus, the main objective of this research was to determine the user expectations of e-learning websites of comprehensive universities through localisation based on user preferences. This research showed how users interact with e-learning websites and indicated the patterns that can be used as standard guidelines to design the best e-learning websites. It was found localisation of e-learning websites was scarce and slow interaction with e-learning websites has inconvenienced users. Additionally, too many web objects on the user interface of e-learning websites have a tendency to confuse users. A mixed method approach was used I this study, namely content analysis (qualitative) and localisation (quantitative). Thus, this research contributes to knowledge by guiding users on localising their web objects according to their preferences and hopefully allow for an easy and quick information search for e-learning websites.
Food waste is a mixture of organic residues that affect fermentation process. Thus, appropriate parameters should be optimised to ensure high biomethane production. In this research, response surface methodology (RSM) was utilised for building models, evaluating the significance of several independent factors (pH, temperature, substrate concentration and inocula size) and determining optimum conditions for desirable responses (biomethane yield). The RSM and contour plots set the optimum working factors in order to accomplish the desired biomethane yield. Results suggest that biomethane yield can be increased when pH and temperature are increased. Thus, the main effects of parameters are pH and temperature.
Combinatorial test design is a plan of test that aims to reduce the amount of test cases systematically by choosing a subset of the test cases based on the combination of input variables. The subset covers all possible combinations of a given strength and hence tries to match the effectiveness of the exhaustive set. This mechanism of reduction has been used successfully in software testing research with t-way testing (where t indicates the interaction strength of combinations). Potentially, other systems may exhibit many similarities with this approach. Hence, it could form an emerging application in different areas of research due to its usefulness. To this end, more recently it has been applied in a few research areas successfully. In this paper, we explore the applicability of combinatorial test design technique for Fractional Order (FO), Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) parameter design controller, named as FOPID, for an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) system. Throughout the paper, we justify this new application theoretically and practically through simulations. In addition, we report on first experiments indicating its practical use in this field. We design different algorithms and adapted other strategies to cover all the combinations with an optimum and effective test set. Our findings indicate that combinatorial test design can find the combinations that lead to optimum design. Besides this, we also found that by increasing the strength of combination, we can approach to the optimum design in a way that with only 4-way combinatorial set, we can get the effectiveness of an exhaustive test set. This significantly reduced the number of tests needed and thus leads to an approach that optimizes design of parameters quickly.
Selection of a suitable and appropriate method is an important aspect in ensuring successful
implementation of a research. The proposed study aims to obtain weights for sustainable construction
criteria from the input and perception of industrial practitioner, and also to explore their opinion on
the criteria. Therefore, the selection and use of study implementation method will determine the
direction of the study whether the intended objectives can be achieved. This manuscript writing presents
the description of the structured interview used to obtain and collect the required data. The suitability
and implementation of the methods have been described in this study, in which the ultimate aim of its
application is to ensure that the collected data is meaningful to the study.
In the development of current vehicle capabilities required an effective braking system, has a little wear, and
safety riding. The objective of the research is to determine wear and braking distance because of braking load and
speed motorcycle Honda supra X125 cc. This research used the speed of 50 km/h, 60 km/h, and 70 km/h. Braking load
used to be 4 kg, 5 kg, and 6 kg. The test was done by dynamic method and the research was done in two stages; testing
in the field and measuring brake wear in the lab using a profile projector. Testing the hardness of brake was done to
know hardness brake before and after testing due to the effect of wear, braking time, and braking distance.From testing
it was found that increasing of braking load, resulted in increasing wear. The smallest wear was 6 x 10-5 mm/sea at a
speed of 50 km/h, braking load of 4 kg, and braking time of 15.94 seconds. Increasing the speed resulted in increasing
braking distances with the smallest of braking distance was 55 meters at the breaking load of 6 kg, the speed of 50
km/h and braking time 9.93 seconds. The hardness of brake lining, increased after the brake lining wear testing. The
hardness before the test was 95.8 HRN and after the test was 100.4 HRN.
In 2013, the Malaysian Education Blueprint (Higher Education) was developed by the Ministry of Education to guide the transformation process of the education system in this country for the next decade, starting from 2015 (1). The blueprint highlighted core aspirations for Malaysian higher education, which includes rapid expansion of research output and quality (1). This effort is in line with the nation's aspiration to uplift the standard of service provision among healthcare professionals, whose practice should advance on the essence of high quality scientific evidence.(Copied from article)
Over 100 articles related to stroke were found in a search through a database dedicated to indexing all literature with original data involving the Malaysian population between years 2000 and 2014. Stroke is emerging as a major public health problem. The development of the National Stroke Registry in the year 2009 aims to coordinate and improve stroke care, as well as to generate more data on various aspects of stroke in the country. Studies on predictors of survival after strokes have shown potential to improve the overall management of stroke, both during acute event and long term care. Stroke units were shown to be effective locally in stroke outcomes and prevention of stroke-related complications. The limited data looking at direct cost of stroke management suggests that the health economic burden in stroke management may be even higher. Innovative rehabilitation programmes including braincomputer interface technology were studied with encouraging results. Studies in traditional complementary medicine for strokes such as acupuncture, Urut Melayu and herbal medicine were still limited.