Evaluation of patient electrocardiogram datasets using signal quality indexing

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is widely used in the hospital emergency rooms for detecting vital signs, such as heart rate variability and respiratory rate. However, the quality of the ECGs is inconsistent. ECG signals lose information because of noise resulting from motion artifacts. To obtain an accurate information from ECG, signal quality indexing (SQI) is used where acceptable thresholds are set in order to select or eliminate the signals for the subsequent information extraction process. A good evaluation of SQI depends on the R-peak detection quality. Nevertheless, most R-peak detectors in the literature are prone to noise. This paper assessed and compared five peak detectors from different resources. The two best peak detectors were further tested using MIT-BIH arrhythmia database and then used for SQI evaluation. These peak detectors robustly detected the R-peak for signals that include noise. Finally, the overall SQI of three patient datasets, namely, Fantasia, CapnoBase, and MIMIC-II, was conducted by providing the interquartile range (IQR) and median SQI of the signals as the outputs. The evaluation results revealed that the R-peak detectors developed by Clifford and Behar showed accuracies of 98% and 97%, respectively. By introducing SQI and choosing only high-quality ECG signals, more accurate vital sign information will be achieved

Kajian Kesan Pencemaran Bunyi Kenderaan Bermotor Di Kawasan Parit Buntar

Road traffic noise has become an important factor in the development of any society, in terms of living comfort and also from an economic point of view. Noise generated by road traffic should be addressed by the different government agencies. The exposure of individuals to road traffic noise can cause health problems, is very disturbing or annoying to individuals an under certain condition can also effect the work efficiency and general quality of life for the society. These study were carried out in four days where two days allotted for Simpang Empat and another two days for Simpang Lima. Three type of monitoring was carried out in this study, firstly to get noise level values in Leq, secondly to determine the composition and lastly vehicles speed during peek times at morning (7.00 – 9.00 am), mid-days (12.00 – 2.00 pm), afternoon (4.00 – 6.00 pm) and also evening (8.00 – 10.00 pm) were determined. Before the study were carried out, the questionnaires were distribute to the residents of Simpang Empat and Simpang Lima. The result from collected data showed that for a residential place the noise levels were high greater than the stimulated compliancy of 60 dBA for residential area for day time and 55 dBA for night. The range of Leq level at Simpang Empat is between 79.67 dBA – 86.07 dBA and whilst for Simpang Lima, the range is between 78.81 dBA – 87.06 dBA. From questionnaires, the road traffic noise was highest in the afternoon by 60 % of local respondents for Simpang Empat and 55.10 % for Simpang Lima. Heavy transport such as lorries and buses were the main contributor for road traffic noise

Wastewater characterization and sequencing batch reactor operation for Aerobic Granular Sludge cultivation

Inventory Routing Problem (IRP) has been continuously developed and im- proved due to pressure from global warming issue particularly related to greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission. The burning of fossil fuel for transportations such as cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes primarily emits GHGs. Carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning of fossil fuel to power transportation and industrial process is the largest contributor to global GHGs emission. Therefore, the focus of this study is on solving a multi-period inventory routing problem (MIRP) involving carbon emission consideration based on carbon cap and offset policy. Hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) based on allocation first and routing second is used to compute a solution for the MIRP in this study. The objective of this study is to solve the proposed MIRP model with HGA then validate the effectiveness of the proposed HGA on data of different sizes. Upon validation, the proposed MIRP model and HGA is applied on real-world data. The HGA is found to be able to solve small size and large size instances effectively by providing near optimal solution in relatively short CPU execution time

Pilot scale study on characterization and performance of aerobic granular sludget o treat domestic wastewater

Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) is a wastewater treatment technology that is known for having unique advantages such as great settling ability, high biomass level, good shock resistance, and able to withstand high organic loadingr at e (OLR) and toxic pollutants. Since studies on AGS development ar e mostly conducted in laboratory scale, the detailed knowledge regarding the pilot scale study is still limited especially for hot and humid tropical climate condition. Therefore, this study focused on the characteristics and performance of AGS cultivated in a pilot-scale bioreactor for hot and humid tropical climate condition, specifically in Malaysia. The formation of AGS as well as biomass concentration were al so investigated during the treatment of real domestic wastewater. From the result, it was found that the highest average diameter of the cultivated mature granuleswas 3.36 mm with a biomass concentration of 12.48 g L −1 after 93 days of operation. The aerobic granular sludge also achieved promising removal rates of 89 %, 75 %, 96 %, and 93 % for COD, phosphate, ammoniacal nitrogen, and total inorganic nitrogen, respectively

Stability study of PD and PI controllers in multiple difference disturbances

This paper discusses the stability study of PD and Pl controllers in multiple difference disturbances. The multiple difference disturbances in this paper are added to the inverted pendulum model that based on robotic leg application such as pendubot. By applying the pendubot model via MATLAB/Simulink block diagram, the performances between the model and disturbances are compared for stability in the simulation results. The simulation results showed that the PD controller could reduce and eliminate disturbances more effective than PI controller in the pendubot model. Overall, the simulation results are based on stability analysis for the degree of stability, steady state performance and transient response

Pembangunan Wakaf Pendidikan di University College Bestari, Terengganu

Salah satu syarat untuk menjadi sebuah negara maju adalah tersedianya modal insan yang unggul yang lahir daripada Institusi Pengajian Tinggi. Kerajaan Malaysia telah memberikan peruntukan yang besar untuk mencapai matlamat tersebut. Walau bagaimanupun, terdapat kekangan dan keterhadan kewangan Kerajaan untuk memenuhi keseluruhan biaya Institusi Pengajian Tinggi. Oleh itu, semua pihak terkait perlulah mencari alternatif dan jalan keluar bagi mengatasi masalah ini. Wakaf merupakan salah satu sistem ekonomi Islam yang dikatakan sangat berpotensi bagi membangunkan pendidikan. Kertas kerja ini mempunyai dua tujuan. Pertama, untuk mengenal pasti pembangunan wakaf pendidikan dengan kajian kes di Universiti College Bestari (UCB), Terengganu, Malaysia. Kedua, menganalisis isu kelestaraian wakaf dan kaedah-kaedah yang digunakan UCB dalam mempastikan kelestarian wakaf tersebut. Bagi mencapai kedua-dua tujuan ini kaedah kualitatif yang melibatkan temu bual mendalam dua orang responden telah dijalankan. Data yang diperolehi di analisis menggunakan kaedah analisis kandungan. Hasil kajian mendapati bahawa pembangunan wakaf di UCB sudah bermula sejak tahun 1998. Pengurusan dan pentadbiran wakaf UCB dilakukan di bawah tiga agensi (joint venture) yang setiapnya merupakan pemegang saham iaitu PEYATIM (Pertubuhan Kebajikan Anak Yatim Malaysia) (50%), PERKAYA (Pertubuhan Kebajikan Anak Yatim) Terengganu (30%) dan YAKIN (Yayasan Kebajikan Negeri Terengganu) (20%). Antara kaedah yang digunakan untuk melestarikan wakaf pengajian tinggi di UCB adalah penjagaan dan pengelolaan aset yang telus dengan kepimpinan yang kuat, sistem pemasaran dan kaedah wakaf yang mudah. Sumbangan kerajaan dan juga peranan alumni dikatakan juga membantu pembangunan wakaf tersebut. Kajian ini membuktikan bahawa sistem wakaf memiliki potensi untuk membantu membangunkan pendidikan yang lestari

Fiqh istihalah: integration of science and Islamic law

Modern developments in information technology have helped the expansion of knowledge, and shaped various aspects of contemporary life, including art, architecture, engineering, agriculture and the food industry. This paper discusses the role of modern technology in the food industry, with emphasis on the activities of enhancing, redesigning and upgrading the quality of the food. It analyses the use of technology in determining the permissibility of certain foods in compliance with the Islamic concept of halal; and it examines the concept of fiqh istihalah and its applications in the food industry, focusing on issues relating to the use of alcohol and gelatine ingredients in food products

Aerobic granulation for real domestic sewage treatment at hot and low humidity climate condition

With inoculum sludge from a conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment plant, a sequencing batch reactor fed with real domestic wastewater was operated at 50 ± 1 °C to study the formation of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) for simultaneous organics and nutrients removal with a complete cycle time of 3 h. The AGS were successfully cultivated with excellent settling ability and demonstrated exceptional performance in the organics and nutrients removal with influent loading rate of 1.2 kg COD m-3 d-1. Stable, regular, dense and fast settling granule (average diameter, 2.0 mm and sludge volume index, 73.501 mL g-1) were developed in a single reactor. In addition, 89 % COD removal efficiency was observed in the system at the maturation stage of the granulation, while its ammonia nitrogen removal efficiencies were up to 99 %. The study demonstrated the capabilities of AGS formation in a single, high and slender column type-bioreactor at high temperature which is suitable to be applied for hot climate and low humidity condition (e.g. Saudi Arabia)