Cage culture plays an important role in achieving higher output and generating more export earnings in Malaysia. However, the cost of fingerlings, feed and labour have increased substantially for cage culture in the coastal areas in Peninsular Malaysia. This paper uses farm level data gathered from Manjung, Perak and Kota Tinggi, Johor to investigate the technical efficiency of brackish water f...

An earlier model for the study of rib cage mechanics was modified so that rib deformity in scoliosis could be better represented. The rigid ribs of that model were replaced by five-segment deformable ribs. Literature data on cadaver rib mechanical behavior were used to assign stiffnesses to the new individual model ribs so that experimental and model rib deflections agreed. Shear and tension/co...

A variety of implant-related short and long-term complications after lumbar fusion surgery are recognized. Mid to long-term complications due to cage migration and/or cage subsidence are less frequently reported. Here, we report a patient with a complete cage migration into the superior adjacent vertebral body almost 20 years after the initial posterior lumbar interbody fusion procedure. In thi...

UNLABELLED Cage-shaped protein, with its special structure, may have potential applications in biomedicine and nanotechnology. We developed a program CSPro (Cage-Shaped Protein) for efficient identification of cage-shaped proteins based on quaternary structure. CSPro is capable of revealing the corresponding cage-shaped feature more clearly and quickly than traditional visualization tools. Usin...

The abdominal muscles expand the rib cage when they contract alone. This expansion opposes the deflation of the lung and may be viewed as pressure dissipation. The hypothesis was raised, therefore, that alterations in rib cage elastance should affect the lung deflating action of these muscles. To test this hypothesis and evaluate the quantitative importance of this effect, we measured the chang...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the usefulness of gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV), as well as that of the CAGE questionnaire, in workplace screening for alcohol abuse/dependence. METHODS A total of 183 male employees were submitted to structured interviews (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV 2.0 and CAGE questionnaire). Blood samples were collected. Diagnostic ac...

INTRODUCTION Expiratory rib cage compression is a chest physiotherapy technique known as "squeezing" technique in Japan. It has been claimed that rib cage compression effectively treats and/or prevents lung collapse, but no studies have been reported on rib cage compression focused on improving ventilation and/or oxygenation in subjects with collapsed lung. Therefore, we studied whether rib cag...

 The present work has been carried out to investigate the probable effects of fish cage culture on benthic communities as a pollution and stress indicator and to evaluate the biotic health condition using BOPA index, in Ghazale Creek (Khowre-Mussa - Persian Gulf). Monthly sampling from 4 stations was carried out from June 2007 to March 2008 (during nine months). Stations were selected from unde...

The formation mechanism of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) was studied with the molecular dynamics simulation. Starting from randomly distributed carbon and Ni atoms, random cage structures of carbon atoms with a few Ni atoms were obtained after 6 ns simulation. Ni atoms on the random cage prohibited the complete closure and anneal of the cage structure into the fullerene structure. In t...

We study the particle scale response of a 2D frictionless disk system to bulk forcing via cyclic shear with reversal amplitude γ_{r}. We find a subdiffusive γ_{r}-dependent regime, which is consistent with models of anomalous diffusion with scale-invariant cage dynamics, and a crossover to diffusive grain motion at high γ_{r}. Analysis of local displacements of a particle relative to its cage o...