Trade Liberalization and Foreign Direct Investment in Malaysia

A decision to establish foreign direct investment (FDI) involves a lot of critical thinking, especially in deciding a place to locate the investment. Evaluation and consideration comprise of costs and benefits of launching the FDI. This study focuses on time series data for the sample period of 1970 to 2009. The main objective of this study is to identify the major determinant of the inward flows of FDI for Malaysia by employing the bounds testing (ARDL) approach to cointegration. Of all the variables being tested, trade openness is found to be the most influential variable in attracting the inflows of FDI as it shows consistent results in the short run as well as in the long run in all models being tested. Since the trade openness which represents the liberalization of the Malaysian economy could induce the inflows of FDI, some policy actions can be taken up to enhance the trade openness

Future Community-Based Ecotourism (CBET) development

Ecotourism is an alternative form of tourism and is usually confused with natural and cultural tourism.CBET is fast becoming a popular biodiversity conservation tool that develops and benefits the local community. Based on the context of conservation theory and practice, Community-Based Ecotourism (CBET) is a form of community-based natural resource management. However, a sustainable CBET development through Community Capacity Building (CCB)programs is not something that it easily achievable. Local community’s capacity varies from one culture to another. It takes a high level of community participation, in order for it to come to a level where the community members themselves are motivated to participate and contribute to the development of the program. This fully qualitative research involved 15 respondents from the community of Kg. Selai, Bekok in Johor, Malaysia. The result show there are five factors that sustained the ecotourism development based for Orang Asli Community in Kg. Selai, namely, existing CBET development, past CBET development, local community participation in planning stage of tourism, local participation in implementation stage of tourism and participation in nature conservation

ENERGY EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF ERROR CORRECTION TECHNIQUES IN UNDERWATER WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Research in underwater acoustic networks has been developed rapidly to support large variety of applications such as mining equipment and environmental monitoring. As in terrestrial sensor networks; reliable data transport is demanded in underwater sensor networks. The energy efficiency of error correction technique should be considered because of the severe energy constraints of underwater wireless sensor networks. Forward error correction (FEC) andautomatic repeat request (ARQ) are the two main error correction techniques in underwater networks. In this paper, a mathematical energy efficiency analysis for FEC and ARQ techniques in underwater environment has been done based on communication distance and packet size. The effects of wind speed, and shipping factor are studied. A comparison between FEC and ARQ in terms of energy efficiency is performed; it is found that energy efficiency of both techniquesincreases with increasing packet size in short distances, but decreases in longer distances. There is also a cut-off distance below which ARQ is more energy efficient than FEC, and after which FEC is more energy efficient than ARQ. This cut-off distance decreases by increasing wind speed. Wind speed has great effecton energy efficiency where as shipping factor has unnoticeable effect on energy efficiency for both techniques

EuroSpine Task Force on Research: support for spine researchers

In recognition of the value of research to the practice of spine care, Federico Balagué and Ferran Pellisé, at the time President and Secretary for EuroSpine, asked Margareta Nordin to set up a Task Force on Research (TFR) for EuroSpine during summer 2011. The concept was to stimulate and facilitate a research community within the society, through two main functions: (1) distribution of EuroSpine funds to researchers; (2) develop and deliver research training/education courses. What has the EuroSpine TFR accomplished since its inception

Effect of welding tool geometry on microstructure and hardness in Friction Stir Welded Plates

Friction Stir Welding is a solid state welding process for joining aluminum and other metallic alloys where the metal is not melted during the process and the original metal characteristic remains unchanged as far as possible. It was invented in 1991 in The Welding Institute (TWI), United Kingdom to substitute conventional welding of aluminum alloy. Friction Stir Welding can be use in shipbuilding marine, aerospace industry and railway industries. The welding parameters and tool pin profile play a major role in defining the weld quality. This report covers the theoretical background of friction stir welding, literature reviews on related research works, implemented methodology, and current results. The objective of the project is to study the effect of welding tool geometry on the microstructure and hardness of welded plates. The project will focus on three types of pin design which are straight cylindrical, threaded cylindrical and tapered. The tools are fabricated using CNC Machine and undergo heat treatment. Two plates of aluminum alloy work piece were set-up in butt joint configuration and clamped rigidly during welding operation. The work pieces are welded using different type of welding tool pin profile and different sets of parameters. Welded work pieces that have been welded by the designed tools were undergo lab testing which are hardness and microstructure test in order to rectify the difference of the weld results. From this project, it can be observed that different geometry of tool will produce different weld result

Unsteady movement of ripples and dunes related to bed-load transport

CER65DBS-EVR-CFN2.At head of title: International Association for Hydraulic Research.Includes bibliographical references.Two methods for computing bed-load transport from dune movement are considered. An equation based on the mean forward velocity and mean height of ripples and dunes is applied to flume data, and yields satisfactory results where the average dune shapes, velocities and heights can be determined accurately, as it the case for uniform two-dimensional flow. For unsteady flow, or for three-dimensional flow, where the size, shape, and movement of dunes varies in time and space, the volume of material passing through a series of incremental widths during some total time can be determined from sonic records. Bed-load transport rates are then estimated by integrating across the width of the stream. Applications of these concepts to field conditions are considered

The Flavonoids of Orophea polycarpa A. DC. (Annonaceae)

Investigation on the neutral fraction of the leaves of Oraphea polycarpa A. DC. led to the isolation of two flavonoids identified as 2'-hydroxy-4,4',6'trimethoxychalcone and 5,7,4'-trimethoxyflavanone

Interpreting depositional environments of sedimentary structures

CERDFN-DBS-EVR15.January 28-30, 1965.Includes bibliographical references (page 11).Presented at the Southwest Regional Meeting, American Geophysical Union, Socorro, New Mexico, January 28-30, 1965