Development and evaluation of ergonomics and psycosocial assessment method for assessing work-related upper limb disorders

The observational methods have been considered as the most widely used for assessing work-related upper limb disorders (WULDs) because it is inexpensive, practical to use, and flexible to use in a wide range of workplaces. However, the existing methods have a specific purposes and do not universally ideal for all risk factors. Most of the existing methods only focus on assessing physical risk factors of WULDs especially in body postures and do not considered other factors of WULDs such as psychosocial, work organizational, and individual risk factors. Nowadays, psychosocial work characteristics are recognized as important risk factors. Besides that, during the tool development process, it was found that some of the existing observational methods have limited work perform the reliability, usability, and validity analysis. In order to improve these limitations, this study aims to develop a new observational method known as Upper Limb Risk Assessment (UPLIRA) tool and to determine the reliability and validity of the UPLIRA tool. The initial development of UPLIRA tool was conducted in three stages including the development of the UPLIRA system components, development of the UPLIRA checklist (prototype), and psychometric properties evaluation (reliability and validity). In reliability trials, the results of inter and intra rater reliability shows good (K = 0.802 - 0.806) to very good (K = 0.811 - 0.833) agreement among the observers. Meanwhile, the usability trials shows that the UPLIRA tool was applicable to wide range of jobs/tasks, valuable at works, and action level is easy to understand (mean 4.17 ± 0.753). Whereas, in validity trials the highest risk scores were obtained by cashier workers contrast to office workers according to the UPLIRA assessment. Based on the results so far, it can be concluded that the UPLIRA tool was found to be practically reliable and applicable to a wide range of workplaces

Removal of endocrine disrupting chemicals using low pressure reverse osmosis membrane

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are one of the major focuses of contaminants in current environmental issues, as they can cause adverse health effects on animals and human, particularly to endocrine function. The objective of this study was to remove a specific group of EDCs (i.e molecular weight range 228 to 288 g/mol) using low pressure reverse osmosis membrane (LPROM). A multi-layer thin-film composite of aromatic polyamide (ES20) membrane and a C10-T cross flow module of LPROM manufactured by Nitto Denko Company was used in this study. The effects of operating parameters, i.e. pH, operating pressure, concentration and temperature were observed using a design of experiment based on MINITABTM software. The analysis of results was conducted by factorial analysis (FA) and response surface analysis (RSA). It was found that LPROM has been effectively applied to remove pentachlorophenol (PCP) (more than 83%), 17ß-estradiol (more than 87%) and bisphenol-A (BPA) (more than 87%). For permeate flux, both PCP and 17ß-estradiol tests produce excellent flux rate; i.e. 23.8 L/m2.h and 22.9 L/m2.h, respectively. For BPA, the permeate flux produced was slightly lower (19.1 L/m2.h) due to its physical-chemical properties effect at various levels of the recovery rate. In this study, the percentage of rejection was increased with the increased of pH and concentration of compounds. The flux was observed to increase with the increase of operating pressure. This study also investigated the interaction effects between operating parameters involved. In addition, statistical models were developed to represent the performance of LPROM under two response parameters, i.e. percentage of EDCs rejection and permeate flux. Statistical models were then validated using One-Factor-At-a-Time (OFAT) design of experiments and comparisons were made to better understand the trend of EDCs rejection and permeate flux

An exploratory study of enterprise architecture practices in Malaysia

This study was an exploratory investigation of the practice of the enterprise architecture (EA) in private and public enterprises in Malaysia. The Zachman Framework was used to evaluate the practice of EA in these enterprises. Ten enterprises from public and private sector participated in the study. Multiple sources including interviews, documents and survey were used as the data sources of the study. The findings presented in this paper were exploratory in our attempt to gain an insight of the EA practices in Malaysia. The paper would give the general outlook of the current practices of EA in Malaysian enterprises

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF ISLAMIC BANKING AND FINANCE: A PROLOGUE

The raison d'être of this article is to supply basic insights on the origin and characteristics of the Islamic Banking system, its distinguishing features, and related contentious issues that have remained the subject of on-going debates among Sharia' scholars and members of the academia. These were analysed by referring to the principles of Muammalat (Islamic economic transaction), which are derived from the Holy Quran, Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.), and Ijma’ (consensus) of prominent Sharia' scholars. Contrary to the conventional banks, Islamic banks are required to operate according to the principles of Muammalat, which are identified as the avoidance of Riba’, Gharar, Maysir, Hilah, and the promotion of ethical business practices such as justice, fairness and transparency. The 2008 global financial meltdown has created a unique awareness among banking consumers on the need of an alternative to complement the conventional banking system, which was viewed by financial scholars as suffering from a crisis of failed morality as a result of greed, exploitation, and corruption. Likewise, many may viewed that the Islamic Banking system is merely another attempt to capitalise on the pulling power of religion towards people, yet there are a number of interestingly unique features that accentuate it from the other banking alternatives. In essence, it is aspired that this article may assist fellow readers, especially those who are still new to this alternative financial system, in understanding and appreciating its unique features, and further stimulate future research in this field. Insha’Allah (God’s willing)

A Cross-Layer Approach for Minimizing Interference and Latency of Medium Access in Wireless Sensor Networks

In low power wireless sensor networks, MAC protocols usually employ periodic sleep/wake schedule to reduce idle listening time. Even though this mechanism is simple and efficient, it results in high end-to-end latency and low throughput. On the other hand, the previously proposed CSMA/CA-based MAC protocols have tried to reduce inter-node interference at the cost of increased latency and lower network capacity. In this paper we propose IAMAC, a CSMA/CA sleep/wake MAC protocol that minimizes inter-node interference, while also reduces per-hop delay through cross-layer interactions with the network layer. Furthermore, we show that IAMAC can be integrated into the SP architecture to perform its inter-layer interactions. Through simulation, we have extensively evaluated the performance of IAMAC in terms of different performance metrics. Simulation results confirm that IAMAC reduces energy consumption per node and leads to higher network lifetime compared to S-MAC and Adaptive S-MAC, while it also provides lower latency than S-MAC. Throughout our evaluations we have considered IAMAC in conjunction with two error recovery methods, i.e., ARQ and Seda. It is shown that using Seda as the error recovery mechanism of IAMAC results in higher throughput and lifetime compared to ARQ.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figure

Interlocking with the past

THE last time we heard about a book burning threat was by a pastor of a little known church in Florida, the United States last year. The threat fizzled out despite the publicity. Last week, we read of a similar episode on the home front when books were actually burnt! Book burning frenzy has a long and interesting history, dating back to the early century BC during the Qin Dynasty

Malay ornament design in modern Malaysian painting / Haslinda Abd Razak

Malaysian Art has been overshadowed with western influence that leads to identity lost. Subsequently, through the National Cultural Congress in 1971, Malaysian art has promoted diverse types of artwork that captures the distinctiveness of Malaysian identity and one of it through Malay ornament design (MOD). However, a study related to ornament design practices, which addresses in fine art scale has not been conducted comprehensively. This study will emphasize on the usage of Malay ornament design in the Malaysian Modern Painting by Malaysian artist. The aim of the study is to identify types of Malay ornament design adapted by Malaysian painters, to gather appropriate samples as to classify the characteristic aspects that adapted through their creative visual art in painting and to analyse the samples of painting by using the visual analysis and trace the elements of ornament design as requested towards the national identity of Malaysia. The samplings are selected from two publications by National Visual Art Gallery (NVAG) permanent collections particularly focusing from year 1980’s until 2008. Twenty-nine paintings have been examined with Ragan (2000) analysis procedures and Sporre (2015) stylistic analysis approaches to investigate these paintings comprehensively

A Case Study On RN Konsult Sdn. Bhd.

RN Konsult Sdn Bhd was set up in 1995 by its founders; Abdullah and Dennis from UK. The company was set up to provide engineering consulting services for the construction and other related industries. The company's founders had hoped to establish RNK as a centre of excellence for Bumiputra professionals to service the domestic as well as the regional markets. The SWOT analysis had revealed encouraging opportunities for the company on most of its external environmental factors. And most of the internal factors analysed were also found to have contributed to the strength of the company. The SPACE analysis had positioned the company in a competitive posture where it was operating in an unstable and competitive environmental conditions. It was recommended that the company adopt a pause strategy or proceed with caution in a short term and in a long term adopt a growth strategy through concentration via horizontal integration. It was also recommended for the company to team up with DSP, UK and venture into specialised high-tech projects such as the IT industry and the MSC related sectors

MY SAY: Reconstructing the Silk Road

Since time immemorial, Asia has been standing at a global crossroads, if we take the Silk Road as an example. Originating in Central Asia, the almost 7,000km route ran through major trade hubs to Europe and Africa. It extended from the city of Xi'an (formerly Chang'an, the capital of ancient China) in the northwest Shaanxi province to Europe via South and Central Asia. While the Silk Road generally referred to a land route, it also included the seas that were crossed for the exchange of materials, information and knowledge

Production and Characterization of Polypropylenecarbon Nanotube Nanocomposites

At the first stage in this research, the multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were grown by using the floating catalysts chemical vapor deposition (FC-CVD) method. The produced MWCNTs were characterized by using the scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and the high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The MWCNTs was incorporated into polypropylene (PP) to produce the PP/MWCNTs nanocomposites through the direct melt compounding process using an internal mixer. The mixer parameters were varied to determine the best parameter to produce the nanocomposites. It was determined through the tensile test which performed on every nanocomposite which fabricated from the various combinations of parameters. The best parameters to produce the nanocomposites were at the temperature of 175°C, rotor speed of 60 rpm and the compounding time of 8 minutes. In the next stage, the effect of filler loading was studied. The filler loading was varied from 0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.00wt.%. The best tensile properties was observed in the nanocomposites with 0.75wt.% of MWCNTs, with the improvement of 42.82% and 126.90% of the tensile strength and tensile modulus, compared to the virgin PP matrix. The validation of the tensile test data was carried out by using the historical data design from the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) with the aid of the Design Expert Software 6.10. The PP/MWCNTs nanocomposites which compounded from the best processing parameter were further characterized for other properties. Physical test on the nanocomposites density was revealed that the density is decreased with the increasing percentage of MWCNTs addition. This condition gives benefit on the weight saving of the materials. Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR) and X-Ray diffraction analysis disclosed that the melt blending between the PP matrix and MWCNTs filler is entirely physical-mechanical blending, without involving any chemical interaction. This further explained the reinforcement behavior of the MWCNTs within the PP matrix. Furthermore, TEM images of the nanocomposites surface confirmed an excellent dispersion and distribution of the MWCNTs in the PP matrix. This condition was supported by the significant improvement of the flexural strength, flexural modulus, impact strength, and storage modulus and loss modulus properties of the fabricated nanocomposites. In overall, the proper selection of the melt blending processing parameter and the use of low filler loading was significantly helped to disperse and distribute the MWCNTs homogenously within the PP matrix, resulting major improvements to the many of the properties studie