Abstract: Chemical and physical functionalization of multiwalled
carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) has been commonly practiced to
achieve better dispersion of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in polymer
matrix. This work describes various functionalization methods (acidtreatment,
non-ionic surfactant treatment with TritonX-100),
fabrication of MWCNT/PP nanocomposites via melt blending and
characterization of mechanical properties. Microscopy analysis
(FESEM, TEM, XPS) showed effective purification of MWCNTs
under acid treatment, and better dispersion under both chemical and
physical functionalization techniques combined, in their respective
order. Tensile tests showed increase in tensile strength for the
nanocomposites that contain MWCNTs up to 2 wt%. A decrease in
tensile strength was seen in samples that contain 4 wt% of MWCNTs
for both raw and Triton X-100 functionalized, signifying MWCNT
degradation/rebundling at composition with higher content of
MWCNTs. For the acid-treated MWCNTs, however, the tensile
results showed slight improvement even at 4wt%, indicating effective
dispersion of MWCNTs.
Abstract: Rapid advancement in computing technology brings
computers and humans to be seamlessly integrated in future. The
emergence of smartphone has driven computing era towards
ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Recognizing human activity has
garnered a lot of interest and has raised significant researches-
concerns in identifying contextual information useful to human
activity recognition. Not only unobtrusive to users in daily life,
smartphone has embedded built-in sensors that capable to sense
contextual information of its users supported with wide range
capability of network connections. In this paper, we will discuss the
classification algorithms used in smartphone-based human activity.
Existing technologies pertaining to smartphone-based researches in
human activity recognition will be highlighted and discussed. Our
paper will also present our findings and opinions to formulate
improvement ideas in current researches- trends. Understanding
research trends will enable researchers to have clearer research
direction and common vision on latest smartphone-based human
activity recognition area.
Abstract: Cooperative organizations in Malaysia are going
through a phase of rapid growth. They are seen by the government as
another crucial vehicle to drive and boost up the country-s
economical development and growth. Hence, the issue of cooperative
governance is of great importance. Unlike literatures on corporate
governance for public listed companies-, literatures on governance
for social enterprises, in particular the cooperative organizations are
still at the early stage in Malaysia and very scant in number. This
paper will look into current practices as well as issues and challenges
related to cooperative governance. The need for a better solution
towards forming best practices of cooperative governance framework
appears imperative in deterring cases of mismanagement and fraud.
Abstract: Manufacturing, production and service industries within Libya have struggled with many problems during the past two decades due to many difficulties. These problems have created a negative impact on the productivity and utilization of many industries around the country. This paper studies the implementation levels of the manufacturing control systems known as Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII) being adapted within some Libyan industries. A survey methodology has been applied for this research, based on the survey analysis, the results pointed out that the system within these industries has a modest strategy towards most of the areas that are considered as being very crucial in implementing these systems successfully. The findings also show a variation within these implementation levels with a respect to the key-elements that related to MRPII, giving the highest levels in the emphasise on financial data accuracy. The paper has also identified limitations within the investigated manufacturing and managerial areas and has pointed to where senior managers should take immediate actions in order to achieve effective implementation of MRPII within their business area.
Abstract: This paper describes a method of modeling to model
shadow play puppet using sophisticated computer graphics techniques
available in OpenGL in order to allow interactive play in real-time
environment as well as producing realistic animation. This paper
proposes a novel real-time method is proposed for modeling of puppet
and its shadow image that allows interactive play of virtual shadow
play using texture mapping and blending techniques. Special effects
such as lighting and blurring effects for virtual shadow play
environment are also developed. Moreover, the use of geometric
transformations and hierarchical modeling facilitates interaction
among the different parts of the puppet during animation. Based on the
experiments and the survey that were carried out, the respondents
involved are very satisfied with the outcomes of these techniques.
Abstract: Towards the end of 19th century, the discovery of tin
and the growing importance of rubber, had led Malaya to once again
become the centre of attraction to western colonization, which later
on caused the region to be influxed by cheap labour from China and
India. One of the factors which attracted the alien communities was
the characteristics of social relation offered by the Malays. If one
analyzes the history of social relation of the Malays either among
themselves or their relation with alien communities, it is apparent that
the community places high regards to values such as tolerant,
cooperative, respectful and helpful with each other. In fact, all these
values are deeply rooted in the value of 'budi'. With the arrival of
Islam, the value of 'budi' had been well assimilated with Islamic
values thus giving birth to the value of 'budi-Islam'. Through 'budi-
Islam', the Malay conducted their dealings with British as well the
other communities during the time of peace or conflict. This value is
well nurtured due to the geographical circumstances like the fertile,
naturally rich land and bountiful marine life. Besides, a set of Malay
customs known as 'adat' custom contributed in enhancing the values
of budi.
Abstract: With the implied volatility as an important factor in
financial decision-making, in particular in option pricing valuation,
and also the given fact that the pricing biases of Leland option pricing
models and the implied volatility structure for the options are related,
this study considers examining the implied adjusted volatility smile
patterns and term structures in the S&P/ASX 200 index options using
the different Leland option pricing models. The examination of the
implied adjusted volatility smiles and term structures in the
Australian index options market covers the global financial crisis in
the mid-2007. The implied adjusted volatility was found to escalate
approximately triple the rate prior the crisis.
Abstract: The autonomous mobile robot was designed and implemented which was capable of navigating in the industrial environments and did a job of picking objects from variable height and delivering it to another location following a predefined trajectory. In developing country like Bangladesh industrial robotics is not very prevalent yet, due to the high installation cost. The objective of this project was to develop an autonomous mobile robot for industrial application using the available resources in the local market at lower manufacturing cost. The mechanical system of the robot was comprised of locomotion, gripping and elevation system. Grippers were designed to grip objects of a predefined shape. Cartesian elevation system was designed for vertical movement of the gripper. PIC18F452 microcontroller was the brain of the control system. The prototype autonomous robot was fabricated for relatively lower load than the industry and the performance was tested in a virtual industrial environment created within the laboratory to realize the effectiveness.
Abstract: In recent years Malaysia has included renewable
energy as an alternative fuel to help in diversifying the country-s
energy reliance on oil, natural gas, coal and hydropower with
biomass and solar energy gaining priority. The scope of this paper is
to look at the designing procedures and analysis of a solar thermal
parabolic trough concentrator by simulation utilizing meteorological
data in several parts of Malaysia. Parameters which include the
aperture area, the diameter of the receiver and the working fluid may
be varied to optimize the design. Aperture area is determined by
considering the width and the length of the concentrator whereas the
geometric concentration ratio (CR) is obtained by considering the
width and diameter of the receiver. Three types of working fluid are
investigated. Theoretically, concentration ratios can be very high in
the range of 10 to 40 000 depending on the optical elements used and
continuous tracking of the sun. However, a thorough analysis is
essential as discussed in this paper where optical precision and
thermal analysis must be carried out to evaluate the performance of
the parabolic trough concentrator as the theoretical CR is not the only
factor that should be considered.
Abstract: Powder of La0.6Sr0.4CoO3-α (LSCO) was synthesized
by a combined citrate-EDTA method. The as-synthesized LSCO
powder was calcined, respectively at temperatures of 800, 900 and
1000 °C with different heating/cooling rates which are 2, 5, 10 and
15 °C min-1. The effects of heat treatments on the phase formation of
perovskite phase of LSCO were investigated by powder X-ray
diffraction (XRD). The XRD patterns revealed that the rate of
5 °C min-1 is the optimum heating/cooling rate to obtain a single
perovskite phase of LSCO with calcination temperature of 800 °C.
This result was confirmed by a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) as
it showed a complete decomposition of intermediate compounds to
form oxide material was also observed at 800 °C.
Abstract: Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) plants are cultivated for lawn constitution and as forage plants. Considerable number of perennial ryegrass genotypes are present in the flora of our country and they present substantial was performed based on a Project supported bu TUBITAK (Project numver : 106O159) and perannial ryegrass genotypes from 8 provinces were collected during 2006. Seeds of perennial ryegrass were collected from 48 different locations. Populations of turfgrass seeds in flowerpots to be 20 and 1 cm deep greenhouse were sown in three replications at 07.07.2007.Then the growth of turfgrass seedlings in the greenhouse in pots showed sufficiently separated from the plants were planted in each population. Plants planted in the garden of the observation scale of 1-9 was evaluated by the quality, 1 = the weakest / worst, 6 = acceptable and 9 = superior or considered as an ideal. Essentially only recognized in assessing the quality of the color of grass, but the color, density, uniformity, texture (texture), illness or environmental stresses are evaluated as a combination reaction. Turfgrass quality 15.11.2007, 19.03.2008, 27.05.2008, 27.11.2008, 07.03.2009 and 02.06.2009 have been 6 times to be in order. Observations made regarding the quality of grass; 3 years according to seasonal environments turf quality genotypes belonging to 14 different populations were found to be 7.5 and above are reserved for future use in breeding works.The number of genotypes belonging to 41 populations in terms of turfgrass quality was determined as 7.9 of 3 year average seasonal. Argıthan between Doğanhisar (Konya) is located 38.09 latitude and 31.40 longitude, altitude 1158 m in the set that population numbered 41.
Abstract: Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the integration
between manufacturer, transporter and customer in order to form one
seamless chain that allows smooth flow of raw materials, information
and products throughout the entire network that help in minimizing
all related efforts and costs. The main objective of this paper is to
develop a model that can accept a specified number of spare-parts
within the supply chain, simulating its inventory operations
throughout all stages in order to minimize the inventory holding
costs, base-stock, safety-stock, and to find the optimum quantity of
inventory levels, thereby suggesting a way forward to adapt some
factors of Just-In-Time to minimizing the inventory costs throughout
the entire supply chain. The model has been developed using Micro-
Soft Excel & Visual Basic in order to study inventory allocations in
any network of the supply chain. The application and reproducibility
of this model were tested by comparing the actual system that was
implemented in the case study with the results of the developed
model. The findings showed that the total inventory costs of the
developed model are about 50% less than the actual costs of the
inventory items within the case study.
Abstract: In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in using daylight to save energy in buildings. In tropical regions, daylighting is always an energy saver. On the other hand, daylight provides visual comfort. According to standards, it shows that many criteria should be taken into consideration in order to have daylight utilization and visual comfort. The current standard in Malaysia, MS 1525 does not provide sufficient guideline. Hence, more research is needed on daylight performance. If architects do not consider daylight design, it not only causes inconvenience in working spaces but also causes more energy consumption as well as environmental pollution. This research had surveyed daylight performance in 5 selected office buildings from different area of Malaysian through experimental method. Several parameters of daylight quality such as daylight factor, surface luminance and surface luminance ratio were measured in different rooms in each building. The result of this research demonstrated that most of the buildings were not designed for daylight utilization. Therefore, it is very important that architects follow the daylight design recommendation to reduce consumption of electric power for artificial lighting while the sufficient quality of daylight is available.
Abstract: Data hiding into text documents itself involves pretty
complexities due to the nature of text documents. A robust text
watermarking scheme targeting an object based environment is
presented in this research. The heart of the proposed solution
describes the concept of watermarking an object based text document
where each and every text string is entertained as a separate object
having its own set of properties. Taking advantage of the z-ordering
of objects watermark is applied with the z-axis letting zero fidelity
disturbances to the text. Watermark sequence of bits generated
against user key is hashed with selected properties of given
document, to determine the bit sequence to embed. Bits are
embedded along z-axis and the document has no fidelity issues when
printed, scanned or photocopied.
Abstract: Subdivision surfaces were applied to the entire
meshes in order to produce smooth surfaces refinement from coarse
mesh. Several schemes had been introduced in this area to provide a
set of rules to converge smooth surfaces. However, to compute and
render all the vertices are really inconvenient in terms of memory
consumption and runtime during the subdivision process. It will lead
to a heavy computational load especially at a higher level of
subdivision. Adaptive subdivision is a method that subdivides only at
certain areas of the meshes while the rest were maintained less
polygons. Although adaptive subdivision occurs at the selected areas,
the quality of produced surfaces which is their smoothness can be
preserved similar as well as regular subdivision. Nevertheless,
adaptive subdivision process burdened from two causes; calculations
need to be done to define areas that are required to be subdivided and
to remove cracks created from the subdivision depth difference
between the selected and unselected areas. Unfortunately, the result
of adaptive subdivision when it reaches to the higher level of
subdivision, it still brings the problem with memory consumption.
This research brings to iterative process of adaptive subdivision to
improve the previous adaptive method that will reduce memory
consumption applied on triangular mesh. The result of this iterative
process was acceptable better in memory and appearance in order to
produce fewer polygons while it preserves smooth surfaces.
Abstract: The main issue discussed is on the role of education system in the process of nation building as a means in uniting different community ethnics which later on, hoped to shape the future ethnic relation of this country. It is generally known that political socialization experienced by each ethnic community has given birth to a vernacular education system, separated along the ethnic line. Every community shapes their own education system based on their respective mother tongue language, however all are based on the same curriculum. As a result the role of education as a uniting force is not significantly effective. Historically, it has been shown that government efforts to unite the country education system under the wing of national education system (national school) is not that successful since every community (Chinese) will defend the existence of their community education system because they want to spur their mother tongue language. The clash between national education system and vernacular education system is the root cause of stalemate in the ethnic relation in Malaysia and it always becomes a flash point when the issue is raised. The question now is what is the best solution to enhance the national education system in multiethnic Malaysia?
Abstract: This paper discusses the development of a qualitative
simulator (abbreviated QRiOM) for predicting the behaviour of
organic chemical reactions. The simulation technique is based on the
qualitative process theory (QPT) ontology. The modelling constructs
of QPT embody notions of causality which can be used to explain the
behaviour of a chemical system. The major theme of this work is
that, in a qualitative simulation environment, students are able to
articulate his/her knowledge through the inspection of explanations
generated by software. The implementation languages are Java and
Prolog. The software produces explanation in various forms that
stresses on the causal theories in the chemical system which can be
effectively used to support learning.
Abstract: In an effort to understand the preliminary effects of aerodynamic stress on alveolar epithelial cells, we developed a multifluidic cell culture platform capable of supporting alveolar cultures at an air-liquid interface under constant air flow and exposure to varying pressure stimuli on the apical side while providing nourishment on the basolateral plane. Our current study involved utilizing the platform to study the effect of basement membrane coating and addition of dexamethasone on cellular response to pressure in A549 and H441 alveolar epithelial cells.
Abstract: This research paper presents a framework on how to
build up malware dataset.Many researchers took longer time to
clean the dataset from any noise or to transform the dataset into a
format that can be used straight away for testing. Therefore, this
research is proposing a framework to help researchers to speed up
the malware dataset cleaningprocesses which later can be used for
testing. It is believed, an efficient malware dataset cleaning
processes, can improved the quality of the data, thus help to improve
the accuracy and the efficiency of the subsequent analysis. Apart
from that, an in-depth understanding of the malware taxonomy is
also important prior and during the dataset cleaning processes. A
new Trojan classification has been proposed to complement this
framework.This experiment has been conducted in a controlled lab
environment and using the dataset from VxHeavens dataset. This
framework is built based on the integration of static and dynamic
analyses, incident response method and knowledge database
discovery (KDD) processes.This framework can be used as the basis
guideline for malware researchers in building malware dataset.
Abstract: Risk Assessment Tool (RAT) is an expert system that
assesses, monitors, and gives preliminary treatments automatically
based on the project plan. In this paper, a review was taken out for
the current project time management risk assessment tools for SME
software development projects, analyze risk assessment parameters,
conditions, scenarios, and finally propose risk assessment tool (RAT)
model to assess, treat, and monitor risks. An implementation prototype
system is developed to validate the model.