Malaysia will be an ageing population by 2030 as the number of those aged 60 years and above has increased drastically from 6.2 percent in 2000 and is expected to reach 13.6 percent by 2030. There are many challenges that will be faced due to the ageing population, one of which is the increasing cost of pensions in the future. In view of that, it is necessary to investigate the effect of actuarial assumptions on pension liabilities under the perspective of ageing. To estimate the pension liabilities, the Projected Unit Credit method is used in the study and commutation functions are employed in the process. Demographic risk and salary risk have been identified as major risks in analyzing pension liabilities in this study. The sensitivity analyses will be conducted in the study to investigate how the pension liabilities will be affected when these major risks changes. This study analyzes nine scenarios under assumptions in the actuarial model, namely age of retirement, rate of mortality and rate of salary growth. The result of this study indicates that the implied mortality experience and salary growth rate assumptions have a significant impact on pension liabilities.
Background: obesity is a major global health problem with more than 200 million obese men and almost 300 million obese women. Melatonin is a well-known molecule for its involvement in circadian rhythm regulation and has multiple pathological actions including control of appetite, sleep wake cycle and metabolic syndrome.
Aim: to estimate the effect of melatonin supplements on obese patients on a calorie restricted diet in comparison to patients on lifestyle measures only in the form of weight loss, waist circumference and sleep quality.
Subjects and Method: one hundred patients with body mass index > 24 were collected, fifty patients were starte
... Show MoreThe pure and Sb doped GeSe thin films have been prepared by thermal flash evaporation technique. Both the structural and optical measurement were carried out for as deposited and annealed films at different annealing temperatures.XRD spectra revealed that the all films have one significant broad amorphous peak except for pure GeSe thin film which annealed at 573 K, it has sharp peak belong to orthorhombic structure nearly at 2θ=33o. The results of the optical studies showed that the optical transition is direct and indirect allowed. The energy gap in general increased with increasing annealing temperature and decreased with increase the ratio of Sb dopant. The optical parameters such as refractive index, extinction coefficient and real and
... Show MoreThis work is concerned with the study of the effect of cement types, particularly OPC and SRPC, which are the main cement types manufactured in Iraq. In addition, study the effect of mineral admixtures, which are HRM and SF on the resistance of high performance concrete (HPC) to internal sulphate attack. The HRM is used at (10%) and SF is used at (8 and 10)% as a partial replacement by weight of cement for both types. The percentages of sulphate investigated are (1,2 and 3)% by adding natural gypsum as a partial replacement by weight of fine aggregate. The tests carried out in this work are: compressive strength, flexural strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity, and density at the age of 7, 28, 90 and 120 days.
The r
... Show MoreVitrifications process one of the important methods to immobilize nuclear waste. In this research nuclear waste (Strontium Oxides) with molecular weight (5%) was immobilized by vitrification methods in two types of borosilicate glass (c-type) which are glass and glass-ceramics. To investigate the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of glass and glass-ceramic after immobilize nuclear waste these samples irradiated by gamma ray radiation. Co-60 was used as gamma a irradiation with dose rate 0.38 kGy/hr for different period of time. It’s found that gamma radiation affected the glass and glass-ceramic properties. From phase analysis by the x-ray diffraction for glass-ceramic samples proved that at doses 343kGy change the cry
... Show MoreThe present study is a hybrid method of studying the effect of plasma on the living tissue by using the image processing technique. This research explains the effect of microwave plasma on the DNA cell using the comet score application, texture analysis image processing and the effect of microwave plasma on the liver using texture analysis image processing. The study was applied on the mice cells. The exposure to the plasma is done by dividing the mice for four groups, each group includes four mice (control group, 20, 50, 90 second exposure to microwave plasma). The exposure to microwave plasma was done with voltage 175v and gas flow on 2 with room temperature; the statistical features are obtained from the comet score images and the textur
... Show MorePhotoplethysmography (PPG) is a non-invasive optical technique that employs variations in light absorption produced by alteration in the blood volume in capillaries at the skin during the cardiac cycle. This study aims to understand factors related to PPG morphology; a hand-elevation, the study has modified blood flow to and from the finger was conducted in the laboratory. It is widely established that the position of the limb relative to the heart has an effect on blood flow in arteries and venous. Peripheral digital pulse wave (DPW) signals were obtained from 15 healthy volunteer participants during hand-elevation, and hand-lowering techniques wherein the right hand was lifted and lowered relative to heart level, while the left h
... Show MoreThe electronic properties (such as energy gap HOMO levels. LUMO levels, density of state and density of bonds in addition to spectroscopic properties like IR spectra, Raman spectra, force constant and reduced masses as a function of frequency) of coronene C24 and reduced graphene oxide C24OX , where x=1-5, were studied.. The methodology employed was Density Functional Theory (DFT) with Hybrid function B3LYP and 6-311G** basis sets. The energy gap was calculated for C24 to be 3.5 eV and for C24Ox was from 0.89 to 1.6862 eV for x=1-5 ,respectively. These energy gaps values are comparable to the measured gap of Graphene (1-2.2 eV). The spectroscopic properties were compared with experimental measurements, specificall
... Show MoreThe purpose of this paper is to gain a good understanding about wake region behind the car body due to the aerodynamic effect when the air flows over the road vehicle during its movement. The main goal of this study is to discuss the effect of the geometry on the wake region and the aerodynamic drag coefficient. Results will be achieved by using two different shapes, which are the fastback and the notchback. The study will be implemented by the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) by using STAR-CCM+® software for the simulation. This study investigates the steady turbulent flow using k-epsilon turbulence model. The results obtained from the simulation show that the region of the air separation behind the vehicle
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