International Nuclear Information System (INIS): Malaysia’s contribution for nuclear knowledge preservation

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an organization under the United Nations (UN), which serves to disseminate accurate information about the nuclear matters.In accordance with its role, an International Nuclear Information System (INIS) was established in 1970 to provide opportunities for member countries under the auspices of the IAEA to share information, expertise and knowledge, particularly in the nuclear field. Malaysia became a member since 1978, and the first country's input was posted in 1980. INIS activities are supervised by liaison officers (LO) to monitor and oversee matters relating to INIS management. INIS has developed 49 subject matters (subject heading) and LO needs to prepare, review and compile the records before sending to INIS database at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Material received will be processed before distributing to all IAEA member states through INIS website or CD to countries that subscribe to it.This paper focused on how Malaysia contributes to development of INIS and to promote Malaysian about the existence of this database that not only focused on nuclear science but also related technologies

Optimizing compilation with preservation of structural code coverage metrics to support software testing

Code-coverage-based testing is a widely-used testing strategy with the aim of providing a meaningful decision criterion for the adequacy of a test suite. Code-coverage-based testing is also mandated for the development of safety-critical applications; for example, the DO178b document requires the application of the modified condition/decision coverage. One critical issue of code-coverage testing is that structural code coverage criteria are typically applied to source code whereas the generated machine code may result in a different code structure because of code optimizations performed by a compiler. In this work, we present the automatic calculation of coverage profiles describing which structural code-coverage criteria are preserved by which code optimization, independently of the concrete test suite. These coverage profiles allow to easily extend compilers with the feature of preserving any given code-coverage criteria by enabling only those code optimizations that preserve it. Furthermore, we describe the integration of these coverage profile into the compiler GCC. With these coverage profiles, we answer the question of how much code optimization is possible without compromising the error-detection likelihood of a given test suite. Experimental results conclude that the performance cost to achieve preservation of structural code coverage in GCC is rather low.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio

The United Nations Basic Space Science Initiative: The TRIPOD concept

Since 1990, the United Nations is annually holding a workshop on basic space science for the benefit of the worldwide development of astronomy. Additional to the scientific benefits of the workshops and the strengthening of international cooperation, the workshops lead to the establishment of astronomical telescope facilities through the Official Development Assistance (ODA) of Japan. Teaching material, hands-on astrophysics material, and variable star observing programmes had been developed for the operation of such astronomical telescope facilities in an university environment. This approach to astronomical telescope facility, observing programme, and teaching astronomy has become known as the basic space science TRIPOD concept. Currently, a similar TRIPOD concept is being developed for the International Heliophysical Year 2007, consisting of an instrument array, data taking and analysis, and teaching space science.Comment: 8 pages, LaTe

Evolution Of International Governmental Organisations Concerning Danube River

The international rivers are water courses that separate or cross the territories of several states and which are navigable up to discharging in the sea. The Congress of Vienna (1815) sets forth certain principles of the regime of navigation on European international rivers and the notion of international rivers. The Conference of Berlin (1885) institutes the freedom of navigation on the rivers Congo and Niger. During the Conference of Barcelona (1921) a convention and a by-law were elaborated concerning the regime of navigable ways of international interest

BPM News - Folge 3

Die BPM-Kolumne des EMISA-Forums berichtet über aktuelle Themen, Projekte und Veranstaltungen aus dem BPM-Umfeld. Schwerpunkt der vorliegenden Kolumne bildet das Thema Standardisierung von Prozessbeschreibungssprachen und -notationen im Allgemeinen und BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) im Speziellen. Hierzu liefert Jan Mendling von der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien in aktuelles Schlagwort. Des weiteren erhalten Leser eine Zusammenfassung zweier im ersten Halbjahr 2006 veranstalteten Workshops zu den Themen „Flexibilität prozessorientierter Informationssysteme“ und „Kollaborative Prozesse“ sowie einen BPM Veranstaltungskalender für die 2. Jahreshälfte 2006

Probing the atmosphere of the bulge G5III star OGLE-2002-BUL-069 by analysis of microlense H alpha line

We discuss high-resolution, time-resolved spectra of the caustic exit of the binary microlensing event OGLE 2002-BUL-69 obtained with UVES on the VLT. The source star is a G5III giant in the Galactic Bulge. During such events, the source star is highly magnified, and a strong differential magnification around the caustic resolves its surface. Using an appropriate model stellar atmosphere generated by the NextGEN code we obtained a model light curve for the caustic exit and compared it with a dense set of photometric observations obtained by the PLANET microlensing follow up network. We further compared predicted variations in the H alpha equivalent width with those measured from our spectra. While the model and observations agree in the gross features, there are discrepancies suggesting shortcomings in the model, particularly for the H alpha line core, where we have detected amplified emission from the stellar chromosphere as the source star's trailing limb exited the caustic. This achievement became possible by the provision of the OGLE-III Early Warning System, a network of small telescopes capable of nearly-continuous round-the-clock photometric monitoring, on-line data reduction, daily near-real-time modelling in order to predict caustic crossing parameters, and a fast and efficient response of a 8m-class telescope to a ``Target-Of-Opportunity'' observation request.Comment: 4 pages Latex, 3 figures, accepted for publication to astronomy and astrophysics letter

The EU's Strategy for the Danube Region-new impulses from a "macroregion" for multi-level governance in Central Eastern Europe?

Promoted by the EU commission since 2009 and the Hungarian EU presidency in 2011, EUSDR is a new transnational initiative to promote regional cooperation in Eastern Central Europe. It aims to use the existing financial and institutional means to coordinate and improve the policies and investments of the EU in the context of intergovernmental cooperation in the region. The existing intergovernmental mechanisms are characterized by institutional complexity with different funding structures, policy mandates, political competences, territorial scopes, and membership, addressing diverse stakeholders, e.g. states, regions, local authorities, business interests, NGOs, civic society. Some of these actors have indeed forwarded common interests or various notions of shared identity. But despite a rich and diverse cultural heritage, the regional context is also one of wars, ethnic conflict, as well as deep socioeconomic disparities. Thus distinguishing the EU as supranational regime of multi-level governance, as transnational actor in multi-level cooperation mechanisms, and as normative framework for political mobilization, the paper questions how EUSDR may contribute to regional integration. It takes stock of the EU's policy instruments, the existing transnational mechanisms between states and subnational actors, and various stakeholders' interests. The debates on multi-level governance, new regionalism, and constructivist IR serve to discuss the political rationale and conceptual implications of the new EU policy instrument of a 'macroregion'

Design of collimator of neutron diffractometer system at low power reactor TRIGA PUSPATI

The objective of this research was to develop a neutron diffractometer system at a low power reactor TRIGA PUSPATI in Malaysia. Neutron diffractometer system consists of a number of vital instrumentations, namely collimator, monochromatic device and detector. However, this study only focus on the design and fabrication of the collimator. The value of neutron and gamma fluxes measured on beam-port 1 of reactor without collimator was 2.12x108 ncm-2s-1 and 1.97x107 ?cm-2s-1, respectively which are suitable for development of the system. Design of the collimators were done using the Monte Carlo N-Particle simulation software. The collimator is an aluminium tube containing suitable shielding components to filter and shape the neutron beam. Characterization of the shielding materials for the collimator were performed using thermo-luminescence detector devices and the Monte Carlo N-Particle software to investigate the materials with high attenuation coefficient on ionising radiations. The length of collimator was then optimized to obtain high value of thermal neutron flux for neutron diffractometer system. The beam was optimized by using the shortest length of collimator as it produced 6.24x106 ncm-2s-1 which is 20 % higher compare to the ideal flux required of 1.40x105 ncm-2s-1. The selected design of the collimator for neutron diffractometer system was installed inside beam-port 1 of reactor TRIGA PUSPATI. The research was useful to obtain measured fluxes from radial beam-port 1, to identify the ideal design of collimator, and to optimize neutron beams for development of neutron diffractometer system at reactor TRIGA PUSPATI in Malaysia

SCOPES: Sparking curiosity through Open-Source platforms in education and science

Scientific research is to date largely restricted to wealthy laboratories in developed nations due to the necessity of complex and expensive equipment. This inequality limits the capacity of science to be used as a diplomatic channel. Maker movements use open-source technologies including additive manufacturing (3D printing) and laser cutting, together with low-cost computers for developing novel products. This movement is setting the groundwork for a revolution, allowing scientific equipment to be sourced at a fraction of the cost and has the potential to increase the availability of equipment for scientists around the world. Science education is increasingly recognized as another channel for science diplomacy. In this perspective, we introduce the idea that the Maker movement and open-source technologies have the potential to revolutionize science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education worldwide. We present an open-source STEM didactic tool called SCOPES (Sparking Curiosity through Open-source Platforms in Education and Science). SCOPES is self-contained, independent of local resources, and cost-effective. SCOPES can be adapted to communicate complex subjects from genetics to neurobiology, perform real-world biological experiments and explore digitized scientific samples. We envision such platforms will enhance science diplomacy by providing a means for scientists to share their findings with classrooms and for educators to incorporate didactic concepts into STEM lessons. By providing students the opportunity to design, perform, and share scientific experiments, students also experience firsthand the benefits of a multinational scientific community. We provide instructions on how to build and use SCOPES on our webpage: http://scopeseducation.org