BackgroundResearch on antepartum psychiatric morbidities investigating depressive and anxiety symptoms in expectant mothers and fathers is lacking in low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of antepartum depressive, anxiety and co-occurring significant symptoms and explore the associated factors in a cross-section of Malaysian expectant mothers and fathers.MethodsWe used cross-sectional data from a prospective cohort study of 911 expectant mothers and 587 expectant fathers during their third trimester of pregnancy, from health clinics of two states in the east and west coasts of Malaysia. The validated Malay version of Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and the anxiety sub-scale of Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale were used to measure the depressive and anxiety symptoms. Multiple logistic regression analyses identified the determinants of antepartum depressive and anxiety symptoms (ADS and AAS).ResultsPrevalence of ADS was 12.2% in expectant mothers and 8.4% in expectant fathers, while AAS was 28.8% in expectant mothers and 13.3% in expectant fathers, and co-occurring significant symptoms was 8.0% in expectant mothers and 4.0% in expectant fathers. Expectant mothers and fathers having perceived social/family support were less likely to suffer from ADS. Intimate partner violence, poor relationship with husbands, depression in earlier pregnancy and husband’s depression in current pregnancy in expectant mothers, and living in rented house, sex preference for the unborn child, stressful life events and wife’s depression in current pregnancy in expectant fathers were associated with a greater likelihood of ADS. The determinants for AAS were living in rented house and with parents/in-laws, poor relationship with husbands, restrictions during pregnancy and stressful life events for expectant mothers, and stressful life events and being unsupportive towards wives in household chores for expectant fathers.ConclusionBoth ADS and AAS are prevalent in expectant mothers and fathers, and largely an undetected problem in Malaysia. Administration of couple-based screening and referral program during antenatal check-up should be universal practices to identify and treat the psychiatric morbidities.

This paper examines how the external factorsi.e. customers, competitorsthat driven Malaysian SMEs to adopt E-Commerce may influence the benefits these SMEs gained by adopting such technologies. The findings show the SMEs that were driven to adopt E-Commerce by customers demand are less likely to experience the reduction of operational cost. The results also show that SMEs would be able to achieve most of the expected benefits of E-Commerce adoption, if it is aimed as a tool to improve the competitiveness of the business.

During the last decade, Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) has emerged as an integral component within Human-computer Interaction (HCI) and other high-end speech processing systems. Generally, an SER system targets the speaker's existence of varied emotions by extracting and classifying the prominent features from a preprocessed speech signal. However, the way humans and machines recognize and correlate emotional aspects of speech signals are quite contrasting quantitatively and qualitatively, which present enormous difficulties in blending knowledge from interdisciplinary fields, particularly speech emotion recognition, applied psychology, and human-computer interface. The paper carefully identifies and synthesizes recent relevant literature related to the SER systems' varied design components/methodologies, thereby providing readers with a state-of-the-art understanding of the hot research topic. Furthermore, while scrutinizing the current state of understanding on SER systems, the research gap's prominence has been sketched out for consideration and analysis by other related researchers, institutions, and regulatory bodies.

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are a new method for the consumption of nicotine. A nationwide survey among 4288 Malaysian adults was conducted in 2016 to measure the prevalence and to describe the population characteristics of e-cigarette users. A complex sampling design was used, and data were collected using a face-to-face questionnaire. The overall prevalence of current, ever, former, and dual users of e-cigarettes in Malaysia were 3.2% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.5-4.1), 11.9% (95% CI = 10.5-13.5), 8.6% (95% CI = 7.5-9.8), and 2.3% (95% CI = 1.8-3.1), respectively. The prevalence of all type of e-cigarette use was higher in urban than in rural areas. Current e-cigarette users were likely to be younger, males, and with higher education level. Among current e-cigarette users, 74% (95% CI = 64-82) also smoked conventional cigarettes (dual user). E-cigarette use is prevalent in Malaysia. It is common among younger adults, males, and cigarette smokers.

<p>In this research, adoption of the DeLone and McLean (D&amp;M) information system (IS) success model and its adaptation with the project success theories were used to explore state of IS project success and to examine factors which affect its success. A survey towards the internal project stakeholder in an univerity with response rate 48% was carried out to collect the raw data for Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis. Majority of the participants (80.7%) stated that level of the project success is more than 50% where information quality, system quality, service quality, system use, and user satisfaction substantially explain 64.5% of variance in the success variable. The three quality factors together explain 43.2% of the variance of system use and 70.4% of the variance of user satisfaction. Although, a number of the findings were consistent with the prior studies, these findings also presented inconsistencies especially related to aspects of information quality and system use. Accordingly, researchers and practitioners will be stand to benefit from the information provided in this study and it is hoped that future research will build upon the findings reported herein as efforts are made to attain the IS project success especially in the sampled institution.</p>