Software defined radio testbed of television white space for video transmission

Recently, television white space (TVWS) has grabbed a lot of attention from researchers in the Cognitive Radio (CR) area. This underutilized spectrum is one of the possible solutions for spectrum scarcity problem in wireless communication. Thus, many research works have been carried out in order to find a suitable method to utilize this spectrum in an efficient manner. Nevertheless, the actual hardware implementation on utilizing this spectrum is still lacking. Therefore, in this research, an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) real-time video transmission is proposed using software defined radio (SDR) platform. Two modulation schemes are used namely Phase-shift keying (PSK) with its Binary-PSK (BPSK) and Quadrature-PSK (QPSK) and Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) with 16QAM and 64QAM modes. The free channel used in this work is selected under ultra high frequency (UHF) band based on the energy detection, which is either on channel 54 or channel 56. The proposed system is developed with the physical (PHY) layer design of the transmitter and receiver in GNU Radio and integration of medium access control (MAC) layer functionality. Video capture and display programs are designed based on OpenCV modules. The performance of this design is evaluated based on two types of environment, indoor and outdoor, with packet delivery ratio (PDR) and end-to-end delay (EED) as the performance metrics. Three types of video motion are used in the experimentation which are fast (mobile), medium (foreman) and slow (akiyo). Under allocated bandwidth of 1.0 MHz, optimal performances of PDR and EED for both scenarios are shown. In the indoor scenario, QPSK½ exhibits the best performance with 0.92 of PDR and 24.7 seconds of EED for akiyo. Meanwhile for foreman and mobile, BPSK¾ achieves the best performance with PDR of 0.96 and 0.95 and EED of 33.2 seconds and 35.0 seconds, respectively. In the outdoor scenario, the best performance of PDR is achieved by 16QAM½ with 0.9 and 23.5 seconds of EED for akiyo. For foreman and mobile, QPSK½ exhibits the best performance with 0.94 and 0.9 of PDR and 31.2 seconds and 32.5 seconds of EED, respectively. In conclusion, the proposed design exhibits promising solutions for the OFDM real-time video transmission over TVWS

Ambulance Response Time at Three Selected Tertiary Hospitals In Malaysia: Performance of Hospital-Based Ambulance Equipped With Computerized Call Centre System

AbstractIntroduction. The importance of rapid ambulance response to emergency medical crises is undeniable and early access to advanced care is a crucial to safe life. Modern computerized call centre and the hospital based ambulance are believed to enhance the quality of service delivery. However, whether it will further reduce the response time is debatable.Methodology. A cross-sectional study was conducted in June 2012 until July 2012 at three selected tertiary hospitals in Malaysia. The aims were to determine and compare the association of response time in the hospital based ambulance and community-based ambulance and hospital with computerized call centre system and the call centre using voice only respectively. The ambulance response time was expressed in a median and interquartile range (IQR) and Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine the associations between types of ambulance and computerized call centre system versus voice only. Wilcoxon Rank Sign Test was used to assess the significance of means difference.Result. A hospital-based ambulance had the median of 0.19 minutes while community-based ambulance had the median of 0.20 minutes (The Z score - 0.916, P value - 0.360). The hospital with computer call centre had the median of 0.19 minutes while hospital without computer call centre had the median of 0.20 minutes (The Z score - 0.816, P value - 0.414).Conclusions. The response time of hospital-based ambulance equipped with computerized call center system is comparable in three selected tertiary hospitals in Malaysia. Keywords: Ambulance response time; Hospital-based ambulance; computerised call centre

A Potentially Disastrous Life -Threatening Complication of Emergency Tube Thoracostomy in A Simple Case of Spontaneous Pneumothorax

Emergency tube thoracostomy carries risks of infective and technical complications. The aseptic technique is essential to prevent infections, while blunt dissection method can minimise the associated technical complications. Preparation and adherence to protocols as well as appropriate knowledge and skills, however, are of utmost importance to reduce risks of complications. Physicians must have adequate knowledge of anatomy and the procedure to ensure for accurate site tube placement without any complication. This case illustrates how a failure to appropriately use the instrument resulted in a displaced scalpel blade inside the thoracic cavity. It caused an unnecessary thoracotomy for blade retrieval. The mishap escalated a simple procedure to the potentially disastrous life-threatening event

Porosity and density characteristic of double-layer concrete paving blocks incorporating rubber granules

Porous cement concrete (PCC) is among the most effective voids reducer as compared to other types of concrete paver. The understanding on the techniques to produce durable pavement, the double-layer rubberized concrete paving blocks (DRCPB) was investigate in this study. Two rubber granules (RG) sizes, 1 mm to 4 mm, and 5 mm to 8 mm, were used as partial replacement aggregate to enhance the influence of DRCPB. The DRCPB containing 10 % (DRCPB-10), 20 % (DRCPB-20), 30 % (DRCPB-30), and 40 % (DRCPB-40) of RG designated with 10 mm, 20 mm, 30 mm, and 40 mm thick of top layer, and control concrete paving block (CCPB) were manufactured. Porosity and density test were carried out to analyse the durability characteristics of DRCPB. The results show that the porosity of DRCPB increased multiple when RG content increases from 0 to 40 % where the density of rubberized concrete is directly affected by the RG content

ARGarden: 3D outdoor landscape design using handheld augmented reality with multi-user interaction

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology to display the virtual object by overlaying on the physical marker in the real environment. Nowadays, the handheld device becomes a trend in AR since it has high processing power and compatible with the AR system. However, most of the AR applications did not fully support the interaction from multiple users for the collaborative AR interface. Therefore, this research aim is to develop multi-user interaction for collaborative handheld AR. There are a few phases involved to design and develop the collaborative AR application for the handheld device called ARGarden. All the interaction that has been done for the virtual object transformation such as translation, rotation and scaling can be seen by the other users, and this data is synchronized by using a network protocol. Then, a queue system is implemented for the multi-user interaction to allow the virtual object can only be selected by one user at one time, and the other users must wait for their turn. The significance of this research is all the method that has been implemented for the ARGarden can be applied in different fields such as simulation, modelling, medical and education

Development of design response spectra for Northern Peninsular Malaysia based on UBC 97 code

Link to publisher's homepage at http://www.myiem.org.my/The main objective of this paper is to develop design spectrum based on UBC 97 for Northern Peninsular Malaysia, which covers Penang Island, Alor Star and Ipoh. Existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures in Malaysia have been designed according to BS 8110 without any provision for seismic loading. Although situated on the stable shelf, several places especially in Northern Peninsular Malaysia, which is Penang Islands, Alor Star and Ipoh have experienced ground shaking effect due to the long distant earthquake occurred in Acheh and Nias recently. Northern Penang are situated close to the earthquake tremors may demand a quick review on the existing design code for designing structures. This paper presents the design spectrum for Northern Peninsular Malaysia based on total 193 boreholes from site investigation reports derived using Seismic Design provision of 1997 Uniform Building Code. The results indicated that most soil in Northern Peninsular Malaysia can be categorised as class D, SD (stiff soil). Most of the soils categorised in SD, but the highest Response Spectrum Acceleration (RSA) are in other categorised, which is Penang Island for SC (0.76 g), Ipoh and Alor Star is SE are 0.31 g and 0.47 g respectively

A semi-synthetic glycosaminoglycan analogue inhibits and reverses Plasmodium falciparum cytoadherence

A feature of mature Plasmodium falciparum parasitized red blood cells is their ability to bind surface molecules of the microvascular endothelium via the parasite-derived surface protein Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1). This ligand is associated with the cytoadherence pathology observed in severe malaria. As pRBC treated with effective anti-malarial drugs are still able to cytoadhere, there is therefore a need to find an adjunct treatment that can inhibit and reverse the adhesion process. One semi-synthetic, sulfated polysaccharide has been identified that is capable of inhibiting and reversing sequestration of pRBC on endothelial cells in vitro under physiological flow conditions. Furthermore, it exhibits low toxicity in the intrinsic (APTT assay) and extrinsic (PT assay) clotting pathways, as well as exhibiting minimal effects on cell (HUVEC) viability (MTT proliferation assay). These findings suggest that carbohydrate-based anti-adhesive candidates may provide potential leads for therapeutics for severe malaria

Performance of Kaolin Clay on the concrete pavement

This paper investigates the performance of concrete pavement containing kaolin clay with their engineering properties and to determine the optimum kaolin clay content. The concrete used throughout the study was designed as grade 30 MPa strength with constant water to cement ratio of 0.49. The compressive strength, flexural strength and water absorption test was conducted in this research. The concrete mix designed with kaolin clay as cement replacement comprises at 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% by the total weight of cement. The results indicate that the strength of pavement concrete decreases as the percentage of kaolin clay increases. It also shows that the water absorption increases with the percentage of cement replacement. However, 5% kaolin clay is found to be the optimum level to replace cement in a pavement concrete