Needs Analysis for The Development of a Manual in Palliative Care for Malaysia: An Islamic Psychospiritual Approach.

This study explicates an Islamic approach to palliative care based on the results of a needs analysis regarding the development of an Islamic psychospiritual manual of palliative care alongside related elements. This article represents the first phase of a three-phase study using the design and development research (DDR) approach developed by Richey and Klein to study for design and development of manual either needed or otherwise. This project is a quantitative study that uses purposive sampling through a questionnaire instrument to investigate 210 participants from the general population in Malaysia that have experience in taking care of terminally ill patients. The findings of the study indicated that the majority of participants agreed with the development of an Islamic psychospiritual manual with mean values (x̅) of 4.57 and 4.66. Concurrently, the findings showed that the hierarchy of emphasis in terms of the elements to be included in the manual starts with emotional support, which exhibited the highest mean rate (x̅), followed by faith in God, spiritual and religious support, self and physical management, trauma management and social support. The correlations indicated that all the elements to be included in the manual were significant.

Bio-inspired polarized skylight-based navigation sensors: a review.

Animal senses cover a broad range of signal types and signal bandwidths and have inspired various sensors and bioinstrumentation devices for biological and medical applications. Insects, such as desert ants and honeybees, for example, utilize polarized skylight pattern-based information in their navigation activities. They reliably return to their nests and hives from places many kilometers away. The insect navigation system involves the dorsal rim area in their compound eyes and the corresponding polarization sensitive neurons in the brain. The dorsal rim area is equipped with photoreceptors, which have orthogonally arranged small hair-like structures termed microvilli. These are the specialized sensors for the detection of polarized skylight patterns (e-vector orientation). Various research groups have been working on the development of novel navigation systems inspired by polarized skylight-based navigation in animals. Their major contributions are critically reviewed. One focus of current research activities is on imitating the integration path mechanism in desert ants. The potential for simple, high performance miniaturized bioinstrumentation that can assist people in navigation will be explored.