Harmful Gases Profiling in Meru Menora Tunnel using SICK Sensor

This paper discusses the study on the measured harmful gases due to traffic emission in the Meru Menora Tunnel, a Malaysia highway tunnel. The hazardous gasses data would help in promoting essential ventilation system inside the tunnel for the health and safety of the users. The emission gasses concentration reading is divided into two main components comprise of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), and Carbon Monoxide (CO). Other than that, the visibility also been measured by using SICK sensor. The measurement has been done during normal, festive and school holiday seasons. Festive season shows the highest number of traffic and thus giving the worst air quality. Ventilation fan system can be activated based on the concentration level of gases and visibility in the tunnel

OPTIMUM COALESCENCE PLATE ARC LENGTH FOR REMOVAL OF OIL DROPLETS FROM WASTEWATERS

Aspects on the arc length of coalescence plates of a oil-water separator as determinant factors for removal of oil droplets from wastewaters were investigated. The primary component of the separator consists of a series of concave and convex shaped coalescence plates to form multiple angles plate arrangement for enhancement of oil droplet coalescence onto the plates. Experimental results were obtained using different overflow rates and different arc lengths of coalescence plates, and were statistically evaluated. As a result, a series of mathematical equations pertaining to oil removal efficiencies from wastewaters were formulated. The predicted and observed data were compared, and optimal coalescence plate arc lengths for maximum oil droplets removal from wastewater at different flow rates were determined. It was also found that coalescence plate arc length had a more significant effect on oil removal efficiency at high overflow rate than at low overflow rate, i.e. oil removal efficiency dropped with reducing coalescence plate arc length. It was also concluded that removal efficiency of emulsified oil droplets from wastewater was strongly correlated to the system’s overflow rate and horizontal projection of arc coalescence plate area

Privacy issues and protection in secure data outsourcing

Utilizing database encryption to safeguard data in several conditions where access control is not sufficient is unavoidable. Database encryption offers an extra layer of security to traditional access control methods. It stops users that are unauthorized, such as hackers breaking into a system, and observing private data. Consequently, data is safe even when the database is stolen or attacked. Nevertheless, the process of data decryption and encryption causes degradation in the database performance. In conditions where the entire information is kept in an encrypted format, it is not possible to choose the database content any longer. The data must be first decrypted, and as such, the unwilling and forced tradeoff occurs between the function and the security. The suitable methods to improve the function are techniques that directly deal with the data that is encrypted without having to decrypt them first. In this study, we determined privacy protection and issues that each organization should consider when it decides to outsource own data

Understanding the Precipitated Calcium Carbonate (PCC) production mechanism and its characteristics in the liquid–gas system using Milk of Lime (MOL) suspension

This study investigates the effect of operating variables and influence of milk of lime (MOL) conditions in PCC using a modified reactor. The variables includes: Ca(OH)2 feed concentration at 0.5 M–2.0 M and CO2 flow rates at 224.0 mL min–1 and 379.5mLmin–1, on the particle morphology and size in the gas–liquid route precipitation. The particle morphology and texture as well as the chemical content were sufficiently authenticated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transforminfrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF). Experimental data show that lower concentration (<1.0 M) favoured the formation of rhombohedra calcite crystals with the particle size below 100 nm. However, increase in concentration and gas flow rate yielded a coarser crystal particles.Two polymorphs were produced at1Mreactant, i.e. rhombohedra calcite with CO2 flow rate of 224 mL min–1 and prismatic calcite at 380 mL min–1. Molarities higher than 1 M yielded a coarser prismatic crystals, and also has a tendency to crystallize into scalenohedron species especially with higher reactant concentration.Keywords: Milk of lime, precipitated calcium carbonate, morphology, particle size, carbonatio

Designing a maintenance free multi-channel wireless sensor network protocol

Wireless sensors are low powered device that is scattered to monitor its surroundings. These energy-constrained devices are usually constructed in a hierarchical structured manner where after sometime some of the nodes may deplete energy resulting disruption of the routing topology in a wireless sensor network. A faulty parent node may cause the reconstruction of the network’s routing topology if a maintenance solution is not provided to the protocol. Thus this study focuses on the maintenance free environment for a multi-channel wireless sensor network. A tree-based solution is proposed for the multi-channel protocol and a route diversion is proposed for the maintenance solution. The multi-channel characteristics is used as a tool to determine the route diversion of the children node. A simulation is built to compare the proposed protocol with existing tree-based multi-channel protocol. The result of the proposed protocol shows an improvement to the packet delivery rate by 15%

Energy Efficient Handover Management in Cluster Based Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensors are compact-size, low power, inexpensive devices which are capable to measure local environmental conditions or other parameters such as temperature, acceleration, and forward such information to a sink for proper processing. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been under development by both academic and industrial societies for a while. By moving toward applications such as the area of medical care and disaster response mobility in wireless sensor networks has attracted a lot of attentions. In energy constraint sensor network, mobility handling introduces unique challenges in aspects like resource management, coverage, routing protocols, security, etc. This paper, proposes an energy-efficient mobility-aware MAC protocol to handle node handover among different clusters. The simulation-based experiments show that the proposed protocol has better performance compared to the existing S-MAC method

Measuring students’ understanding in counting rules and its probability via e-learning mode: a Rasch measurement approach

Probability is a study of the rules that offers the foundational theory for the development of statistics. This sets out the investigation where students’ understanding of counting rules and its probability were explored using the Rasch measurement approach. A test instrument with 20 items was developed and administered to 74 students taking the STA150 Probability and Statistics course. Data were captured through an interactive e-learning platform that is dmodo.com and analyzed using Winsteps 3.81.0. The results from the Wright map showed that 83.8% of the students have the ability that matched well with the difficulty of the while 16.2% of the students need to be given more attention on the topic. The study was also able to show that the items can be replicated in other samples of similar characteristics. Keywords: students’ understanding; counting rules; probability Raschmeasurement model; Wright map

Signal Penetration towards Wooden Building Construction Materials

This paper emphasize on the effect of mobile signal penetration towards wooden building construction materials in Malaysia. The results of signal strength measurement at frequency 900MHz in the anechoic chamber with different types of wooden building construction materials and thickness is presented. The objectives of these experiments are to identify the types of wooden building materials in Malaysia that have significant impact into signal penetration and determine the effect of the identified wooden materials thickness towards signal penetration into building materials. This paper also report on the anechoic chamber and experiment setup that is used in the experimen

The neural correlates of emotion in decision-making

Both neuroscientific and psychology methods are used to study and explain the active neurons of the individuals' brain response when exposed to external stimuli. This study analyses the relevance literature and investigates the neural correlates of emotion, rewards, and motivation in the decision-making process, the emotional interactions between children, adolescents, and ageing. It was reviewed the literature to explore if neuroscientific methods provide accurate information about the role of emotion, reward, and motivation in decision- making mechanisms. The findings showed that the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex play a central role in processing of emotion which in turn influence decision-making process. While individuals with lesion in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is responsible for emotional responses toward risk, reward, and decision-making are not good decision-makers. In addition, the prefrontal cortex plays central role in approach and withdrawal motivational, whereby the right prefrontal cortex associated with withdrawal behavior and the left prefrontal cortex associated with approach behavior

Renewable indoor radiant cooling and earth tube heat exchanger hybrid for thermal comfort improvement

This study investigates the applicability of hydronic radiant cooling system charged with night cooled water to cool down building in Sarawak particularly for low income building to a thermally acceptable level. The system uses night sky as well as the ground as a heat sink source to passively cool the building while operating at a low energy level. Results from building energy simulation program or Energy Plus shows that for a stand-alone hydronic radiant system only 77% of the time the thermal condition could meet ASHRAE acceptable PMV thermal condition between -0.5 and + 0.5. Another simulation of the radiant and earth tube system hybrid further improved the indoor thermal condition significantly by 100% to meet the same PMV level. The hybrid system was able to improve the baseline uncomfortable operative temperature of 37oC to 28.5oC while meeting the average comfort zone upper limit for Malaysia of 30.1 oC. Simulation on energy spent shows that as much as 94% energy could be saved by using the hybrid system. This level of saving is not impossible as renewable night cooled water was used to charge the indoor hydronic radiant cooling system