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In the last few decades, dengue remains a leading public health problem in Malaysia. The problem persists with increasing trend of cases despite implementation of various interventions by the Ministry of Health Malaysia. The difficulty in eradicating dengue disease throughout the world is related to the complexity of the dengue phenomena. With no access to a safe, effective and affordable dengue vaccine, the only intervention strategy is to control the mosquito vector. In reality, data on mosquitoes is limited, and in most cases, the dynamic of mosquito is unobservable. In this study, based on the dengue incidence data in Malaysia − Kuala Lumpur and Selangor − from the year 2011 to 2014, a transmission model of type SI-SIR is constructed. Transmission rates in the two locations are estimated from the data fitting of the dynamic of infected human to dengue incidence. The average infection rate and the estimated average reproduction number for Selangor are estimated to be 0.1674 week−1 and 1.025, respectively. An enclave in Selangor, the capital city Kuala Lumpur has slightly lower average dengue infection rate of 0.1656 week−1 and estimated average reproduction number of 1.014. Further sensitivity analysis indicated that the dengue infection rate is the critical parameter of dengue transmission in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. This implies that dengue control strategies should focus on reducing the dengue infection rate. Numerical simulations are also performed to validate the estimated dengue infection rate, to illustrate the dengue dynamics and to determine the effects of dengue control strategies in the two selected locations. The predictive test results of this method also provide good results in capturing the pattern of dengue cases both in Kuala Lumpur and in Selangor. Numerical simulations on instantaneous reproduction number reveal that the instantaneous reproduction number of Kuala Lumpur varies between 0.8 and 1.28 while the instantaneous reproduction number of Selangor varies between 0.7 and 1.2. The insights and results presented in this paper are useful to the relevant authorities in analyzing the effect of mosquito intervention for reducing the prevalence of dengue in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the current trends in the e-commerce revolution that has set in motion in the Malaysian banking sector and reports on an empirical research that was carried out in Malaysia to study the customers’ preference for electronic banking and the factors, which they considered influenced the adoption of electronic banking. Results based on the analysis of data relating to 300 respondents indicate that while there is no significant differences between the age and educational qualifications of the electronic and conventional banking users, some differences exists on other demographic variables. Analysis further reveals that accessibility of Internet, a wareness of e-banking, and customers’ reluctance to change are the factors that significantly affected the usage of e-banking in Malaysia. The paper discusses on the implications of these. Limitations of the study are highlighted and further research directions are suggested. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper investigates the long-run relationship between the demand for international travel to Australia from Malaysia and a group of leading macroeconomic variables, including Malaysian income, tourism prices in Australia, transportation costs between Malaysia and Australia, and the exchange rate between the two countries. The Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) procedure is used to test for unit roots, while Johansen’s maximum likelihood procedure is used to test for cointegration and to estimate the number of cointegrating vectors. A single cointegrating relationship is found among the set of non-stationary macroeconomic variables, and is compared with the ordinary least squares estimates. It is found that lagged changes in real airfares, and the extent to which the system is out of equilibrium, are statistically significant. Surprisingly, real income does not seem to have a significant effect on tourism demand from Malaysia to Australia when the cointegration technique is used. However, real income (as measured by the logarithm of real private consumption expenditures per capita) is significant when ordinary least squares estimation is used. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]