Potential Effects on Large Mara Construction Projects Due To Construction Delay

The construction industry continues to be the driving force in the growth of the nation’s socio economic development. One of the major issues in large construction industry is its frequent delay where this delay decelerates the multiplier effects to the economy. This paper presents the study of a survey on significant cause of delay and its effects in large MARA (Majlis Amanah Rakyat) construction project in the views of project management consultants (PMC). Respondents of this survey were personnel that work as PMC ranging from the executives, managerial and supporting groups. The result revealed that the five most significant delay causes as seen by PMC were cash flow and financial difficulties faced by contractors, contractor’s poor site management, inadequate contractor experience, shortage of site workers and ineffective planning and scheduling by contractors and its three most significant effects were time overrun, cost overrun and arbitration. Hopefully, the findings of this study will at least shade some lights to the problems faced by Malaysia construction industry particularly MARA large construction project and effort can be taken to improve it

One year results of one minute Rainfall Rate Measurement at Covenant University, Southwest Nigeria

One year results of one minute rainfall rate measurement at Ota, Southwest, Nigeria (6° 42'N, 3° 14'E) from a wireless Davis Vantage Pro2 Weather Station is presented. The weather station was set at one minute integration time, and the rainfall rate data from the months of April 2012 to March 2013 have been analyzed. One minute rainfall rate at various percentages of time are needed for the modeling and prediction of rain attenuation at microwave frequencies for both terrestrial and earth space links. The measured one-minute rainfall rate events captured by the instrument for the past one year varies between 3 to 141 mm/h from 1% to 0.01% of time in an average year respectively. When the results were compared to the ITU_RP SG3 Digital Map from 1% to 0.01% (3.63 to 62.87 mm/h) the ITU-RP model underestimate rainfall rate at 0.01% exceedance by 55% and over estimate the rainfall rate at 1% exceedance by 3% respectively

The effects of free amino acids profiles on seeds germination/dormancy and seedlings development of two genetically different cultivars of Yemeni Pomegranates

Plant seeds used rely on a wide range of internal mechanisms and physio-chemical factors to ensure their germination under favorable environmental conditions. Most plant seeds have complex process of germination, including water, oxygen, temperature availability, genome-wide gene expression, signal transduction, hormones stimulations, inhibitors removal and catalytic protein synthesis. In addition, influences of seeds nutrient values such as, protein, lipids, sugars and free amino acids have a special importance. Regarding, seeds free amino acids. Discussion of these individual factors needs to be put in context of their role in germination processes. Regarding, free amino acids seed storage, there is limited information about their relevant functions in activation and/or deactivation of required metabolic mechanisms and interactive compounds involved in this process in commercial plant cultivars. Therefore, current study was aimed to determine the probable influence of free amino acid compositions of seeds on germination process of two different (Punica granatum L.) pomegranate cultivars including wild type Automi cultivar and edible Khazemi cultivar. In particular, we focused on the impact of amino acids contents variations on germination process and associated AAs compositional changes during various stages of germination and seedlings establishment. Amino acid analysis using HPLC detected all the essential and non-essential amino acids in the raw seeds of the studied cultivars, Automi and Khazemi along with AAs compositional changes occurred during different stages of seed germination. These AAs have been extensively analyzed in the context of their role in dormancy breaking capacities in plants species. Automi raw seeds are rich in Phe, that, is strongly related to ABA synthesis and hence might be responsible for the dormancy of Automi seeds, Khazemi raw seeds have sufficient levels of Arg, Glu and Met that have been reported to enhance seeds germination in plant, therefore Khazemi germination capacity was assumed to be regulated more or less by these AAs. In addition, changes in amino acid composition in the germinated Khazemi cultivar during various stages of seeds germination including imbibition, germination, and sprouts stages have been noticed to change in response with germination demands. This suggests that amino acids reserves in dry seeds are major determinant for germination capacity and germination behavior in the following steps of germination. The noticed particular AAs increase/decrease along the time course of Khazemi pomegranate germination till establishment of heterotrophic seedlings were used as cornerstones for elucidation and deduction of putative function and relevant biochemical pathways controlling initiation of seeds germination and seedlings developments. Based on publicly available databases of model plants and literatures surveys, we established correlations between prevailing AAs factors as biochemical parameters actively involved in seeds dormancy-breaking and germination process

Seasonal Variation of Surface Radio Refractivity and Water Vapour Density for 48 Stations in Nigeria

The monthly and seasonal variation of surface refractivity and water vapour density were studied using thirtynine years meteorological data for forty-eight stations in Nigeria. The factors which influence the transmission of radio signals operating within the troposphere are water vapour and refractivity. The results show that the surface refractivity and water vapour density generally have higher values during the rainy season than dry season at all station studied. Furthermore the results show that the value of surface refractivity and water vapour density varies from about 263 N-units and 3 g/m3 in arid region of Nigeria (North East) to about 393 N-units and 23 g/m3 in the coastal area of Nigeria (South West) respectively. For optimal performance of terrestrial radio link across Nigeria it is required to account for the variability of these parameters for optimal systems design

Influence of different concentrations of nitric oxide on fruit quality of sweet pepper and mango under mixed loading conditions

In this study, mango fruits (Mangifera indica L.) were stored together with sweet peppers to simulate mixed load shipping conditions. Sheets of Nitric oxide with different concentrations (40, 60 and 80 ml/l) were placed in mango packages. Sets with different treatments of treated and or untreated (control) mango fruits were placed together with sweet peppers, then each of treatments was kept separated in cold-storage rooms at 10 °C + 90% RH, for 35 days. Samples from mangos and sweet peppers were examined at 7 days’ intervals for physical and chemical quality parameters.  For both mango fruits and sweet peppers nitric oxide at 60 ml/l treatment showed a significant reduction of weight loss and decay percentages, and maintained general appearance, fruit firmness, total soluble solids (TSS), ascorbic acid content, and total sugars. Total chlorophyll also was steadily maintained. Hence nitric oxide at 60 ml/l significantly proved to be a potential treatment to delay ripening and keeping better overall quality attributes of both mango and sweet peppers fruits stored together as compared to other treatments and control under cold storage conditions

Benign and malignant breast tumors classification based on texture analysis and backpropagation neural network

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death in women due to cancer. According to WHO, in 2018, it is estimated that 627.000 women died from breast cancer, that is approximately 15 % of all cancer deaths among women [3]. Early detection is a very important factor to reduce mortality by 25–30 %. Mammography is the most commonly used technique in detecting breast cancer using a low-dose X-ray system in the examination of breast tissue that can reduce false positives. A Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) system has been developed to effectively assist radiologists in detecting masses on mammograms that indicate the presence of breast tumors. The type of abnormality in mammogram images can be seen from the presence of microcalcifications and the presence of mass lesions. In this research, a new approach was developed to improve the performance of CAD System for classifying benign and malignant tumors. Areas suspected of being masses (RoI) in mammogram images were detected using an adaptive thresholding method and mathematical morphological operations. Wavelet decomposition is performed on the Region of Interest (RoI) and the feature extraction process is performed using a GLCM method with 4 statistical features, namely, contrast, correlation, entropy, and homogeneity. Classification of benign and malignant tumors using the MIAS database provided an accuracy of 95.83 % with a sensitivity of 95.23 % and a specificity of 96.49 %. A comparison with other methods illustrates that the proposed method provides better performance.The work was fully funded and supported by Gunadarma University, Indonesia

Applications of strategic management practices in public sector: Cases from some middle east countries

The aim of this research paper is to investigate Strategic Management (SM) practice in Public Organizations (POs) within some Middle East (MEt) countries. This is an archival-desktop research paper reviewing available literature on SM in the last two decades. Fundamentally, this paper posts a question of; “How do POs in MEt countries practice SM?” The answer of this investigation is being based on the extent of the available literature from SM theory and application within public sector in some MEt countries. This paper is one of the first attempts to analysis and interpret SM practices within MEt region. This analysis used content analyses techniques, the researcher found four variables that contribute in the effectiveness of SM existence conditions within POs. These variables are; public reform, and SM elements (strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation) situations and challenges. Finally, this paper discussed the implication and lessons learned for improvement. Findings indicate that even though there are some countries practice SM in this area in various degrees, but it also shows that most of these countries are struggling in practicing SM for various reasons. While, results showed a positive impact of SM tools practices on POs performance. Outcomes also indicate that there are other issues needs to be considered in these countries which are public-reforms and decentralization successes within POs in each case. However, relying on data from literature review limits the in-depth discussion but at least offer critical analysis on achievements of SM implementation in MEt countries

EPIDEMIC OF RIFT VALLEY FEVER IN SUDAN, GEZIRA, 2007; GEZIRA EXPERIENCE

In the last 3 months of 2007, an acute episode of an ill-defined severe febrile illness presented to Medani hospital isolation words, with severe hemorrhagic manifestations. This initially did not harbor any attention as other possibilities were thought of like severe malaria , septicaemia but by the end of the same week the number of patients increased dramatically and the suspicion was put and the whole case was addressed officially in an epidemical paradigm. This study was conducted in Wad Medani Teaching Hospital. From the beginning of 41st week of the year 2007, the Gezira state in Sudan was tremendously affected by an epidemic of Rift valley fever as declared by the WHO authorities (11).all the districts of the estate were involved with a total number of patients was around 392. During the period of epidemic of RVF, (week 41.2007 - up to the 1st week of January 2008) total number of patients admitted were about 392 and total number of patients died were 158 patients .The main presenting symptoms were fever, epistaxsis, haematemesis and vaginal bleeding, and the main complication was acute renal failure and death

Evaluation of Clustering and Multi-hop Routing Protocols in Mobile Ad-hoc Sensor Networks

Mobile ad-hoc sensor networks (MASNETs) have promised a wide variety of applications such as military sensor networks to detect and gain as much as possible about enemy movements and explosions. Most of these applications can be deployed either in static or mobile environment. In static WSNs, the change of sensor nodes topology is normally caused by node failure which is due to energy depletion. However, in MASNETs, the main reason of the topology change is caused by the node movement. Since the sensor nodes are limited in power supply and have a low radio frequency coverage, they are easily losing their connection with neighbours and difficult to transmit their packets towards sink node. The reconnection process from one node to another node consumes more energy that related to control packets. One of the techniques to conserve more energy is through topology management using clustering network. A HEED (Hybrid, Energy-Efficient, Distributed) is one of the clustering algorithm for sensor networks. In HEED, a node is elected to become a cluster head based on its residual energy and its communication cost in its neighbourhood. HEED clusters the network in a constant number of iterations, elects cluster heads that are well-distributed in the network, and incurs low message and communication overhead. In this research work, through extensive simulation we evaluated the capability of HEED on how far it can react to network topology change in MASNETs by comparing its performance with Surge multihop routing protocol in both static and mobile environment. We investigated the performance of both HEED and Surge in terms of the average percentage of packet loss and the average total energy consumption with various simulation times. From the detailed simulation results and analysis, HEED performs better than Surge in term of energy consumption in static network, but not performs as expected in mobile environment