Effects of temperature treatment on seed germination, root development and seedling growth of Citrullus lanatus (watermelon)

The objective of the present study is to investigate the effects of temperature on the seed germination, root development and seedling growth of watermelon. Yellow flesh watermelon seeds were incubated with control (normal temperature 25°C, 20°C, 30°C, 35°C and 40°C under lab condition. This experiment was carried out with Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with five treatments and each treatment consists of five replications. The morphological and physiological parameters were measured once a week for five weeks during the germination and early seedling establishment. The results showed that seed treated under 35°C treatment produced the best results for the days require to germination, germination percentage, root development, vine and root length, leaf expansion and seedling growth of watermelon. In addition, chlorophyll content, carotenoid content, chlorophyll fluorescence, photosynthetic yield and stomatal conductance also affected positively with the temperature treatments. Fresh and dry biomass accumulation in the seedlings of watermelon was also the highest in 35°C treatment. It can be concluded that seeds incubated with 35°C during the germination increased the germination rate, root development and seedlings growth of watermelon

A study of relationship between emotional intelligence towards academic achievement in public university from northern region / Azlyantiny Mohammad ...[et al.]

This study attempts to highlight the issues related to Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement. The populations are chosen from students at Public University from Northern region. A few studies conducted have shown that emotional intelligence have a significant relationship in increasing the student’s academic achievement (Koh Bee Hong, 1999; Adeyemo, 2007; Dubey, 2012; Nwadinigwe and Azuka-Obieke, 2012; Bradshaw, 2008). This is also agreed by the former Education Minister of Malaysia, in his interview with New Strait Times (1999) reiterated the important of a holistic education and said that entry to boarding schools will be based not only on academic excellence, but also on emotional intelligence as cited in Koh (1999) study. Researcher believes that emotional intelligence is also important to be implemented towards universities student as well. The objective of this study is to find a relationship between dimension of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills) and academic achievement and measure to what extent do the dimensions of emotional intelligence contribute towards academic achievement. The dimensions were measured using questionnaires from other researcher. Quota sampling is used to determine the number of population. Three hundred questionnaires will be distributed to the students from public.university in the northern region. Data will be explored using SPSS 19.0 and it is hoped from the result derived it will somehow provide some kind of preliminary assessment and feedback of the emotional intelligence of students and how it relates with the student’s achievement. On the other hand, it is hoped that the result will provide information of the need to focus on five dimensions of emotional intelligence in helping the students to succeed in their academic achievement. Last but not least it is hopeful that the findings will create interest and provide an avenue for the development of future research in the same or related area

Enhancing cost estimation performance through effective organizational control: the moderating role of project complexity in construction projects

Accurate cost estimation is important for the success of any project, particularly in complex industries like construction. However, many organizations fail to recognize the importance of good cost estimation performance. Previous research has identified various factors that impact cost estimation performance, with most under organizational controls, including input, behaviour, and output controls. Despite this, the causal relationships between these controls and cost estimation performance have not been thoroughly explored, especially from the perspective of diverse project complexities. To address this gap, this paper aimed to evaluate the effect of organizational controls on cost estimation performance, including the moderating effect of project complexity. Data were collected from 152 respondents in Malaysian construction firms, and a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) method was used for data analysis. This paper reveals that all organizational controls significantly influenced cost estimation performance dimensions, except for one relationship. Additionally, only three moderating effects were found to be significant. These results highlight the importance of effective organizational controls in achieving better cost estimation performance across various levels of project complexity. By implementing the right control modes, organizations can improve their cost estimation performance and enhance project success

Performance comparison of artificial intelligence techniques in short term current forecasting for photovoltaic system

This paper presents artificial intelligence approach of artificial neural network (ANN) and random forest (RF) that used to perform short-term photovoltaic (PV) output current forecasting (STPCF) for the next 24-hours. The input data for ANN and RF is consists of multiple time lags of hourly solar irradiance, temperature, hour, power and current to determine the movement pattern of data that have been denoised by using wavelet decomposition. The Levenberg-Marquardt optimization technique is used as a back-propagation algorithm for ANN and the bagging based bootstrapping technique is used in the RF to improve the results of forecasting. The information of PV output current is obtained from Green Energy Research (GERC) University Technology Mara Shah Alam, Malaysia and is used as the case study in estimation of PV output current for the next 24-hours. The results have shown that both proposed techniques are able to perform forecasting of future hourly PV output current with less error

The Impact of task and technology characteristics on cost estimation performance in construction projects: A regression analysis

Accurate cost estimation is crucial for the success of construction projects worldwide. However, many projects encounter failures due to challenges in this area. Existing research has primarily focused on developing and comparing cost estimation methods, as well as identifying factors and best practices for improving cost estimation performance. Yet, only a limited number of studies have explored deeply into the relationship between these factors and cost estimation performance. This study aims to address this gap by investigating how task characteristics and cost estimation method characteristics affect cost estimation performance from the perspective of cost estimators. Data were collected from cost estimators in construction projects and subsequently analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results demonstrate that task interdependence and the cost estimation method characteristics significantly impact the cost estimation performance. This study provides novel insights regarding the significance of these method characteristics and sheds light on which task characteristics influence the cost estimation performance. It also provides the importance of fostering a positive organizational culture to mitigate the adverse effects of task interdependence on cost estimation performance. Furthermore, this study recommends further exploration of the interaction between task and cost estimation method characteristics through task-technology fit theory or moderator analysis

Cost Estimation Performance in the Construction Projects: A Systematic Review and Future Directions

Cost estimation in construction project is very critical for avoiding cost overrun in the project. This paper aims to provide a basis for improving cost estimation performance in construction through a systematic review of previous studies for last 31 years. The papers have identified a total of 238 construction cost estimation papers in 23 journals. Only 33 papers focused on factors influencing the performance of cost estimation. These papers were then analyzed, synthesized, and summarized in terms of the distribution across countries and citation influences. The factors of cost estimation performance were clustered to several themes with most of the factors in control themes. The factors in control themes are cluttered based on Organizational Control Theory (OCT). However, control themes provide less conceptual basis and dynamic to explain cost estimation performance and relationship among the factors. Therefore, this study reclassified other factors of cost estimation performance with reference to Contingency Theory (CT) and Task-Technology Fit Theory (TTFT). Hence, a new framework with relationship among the factors and cost estimation performance was developed. Further development and research of using the CT and TTFT frameworks were also discussed

Smart water irrigation / Mohamad Amirul Mohamad Basri, Mohammad Fazrul Ashraf Mohd Fazil and Khairul Nizam Mohd Noor

Today’s modem lifestyle required people to gain a progressive life. Time is an essence that can never be brought back. Nowadays, a successful agriculture business needs people to invest a lot of time to obtain the achievement. Most important feature in agriculture is the irrigation system, a good irrigation bring a much better result. Therefore, this project gave birth to Smart Water Irrigation which mainly focused on saving and accuracy time for watering. Arduino Uno is use as an indicator for the progression of the project. The benefit of this project is every types of agriculture can used it as the cost is lower and easy to maintenance

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE INSTRUMENT

The main purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to measure the Healthy Lifestyle among employees of KPTM Ipoh, KPTM Alor Setar, UniSHAMS and Intel Kulim. The sample was collected using self-administered questionnaire from 16 people for our focus group based on our sampling frame design and distributed four instruments for each strata group. The total instrument from the pilot study are 64 instruments. Three (3) constructs of the Healthy Lifestyle Instrument primarily consist of Fitness Wellness, Dietary Wellness and Behavior Wellness. The result of descriptive analysis show that the alpha reliability of the construct items in healthy lifestyle are acceptable. This would be express that the Healthy Lifestyle Instrument be considered reliable. However, in the exploratory factor analysis show that the findings are expanded from three factors to seven factors of employee healthy lifestyle practices. As related to this and previous analysis, we conclude that the Healthy Lifestyle Instrument are valid and reliable. However, this will require full data collection in order to fully validate the instrument. Therefore, the 3 aspects of employee’s healthy lifestyle practices will remain the same as before the test performed. This is due to small sample size in pilot study. The same analysis procedure will be performed using sufficient sample size. However, in term of factor analysis in the main study, the finding of new emerge factors from the previous pilot study will be executed in order to conclude the final factoring involve. Keywords: health, lifestyles, exploratory factor analysi

Genome-wide association study identifies 48 common genetic variants associated with handedness

Handedness has been extensively studied because of its relationship with language and the over-representation of left-handers in some neurodevelopmental disorders. Using data from the UK Biobank, 23andMe and the International Handedness Consortium, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of handedness (N = 1,766,671). We found 41 loci associated (P < 5 × 10-8) with left-handedness and 7 associated with ambidexterity. Tissue-enrichment analysis implicated the CNS in the aetiology of handedness. Pathways including regulation of microtubules and brain morphology were also highlighted. We found suggestive positive genetic correlations between left-handedness and neuropsychiatric traits, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Furthermore, the genetic correlation between left-handedness and ambidexterity is low (rG = 0.26), which implies that these traits are largely influenced by different genetic mechanisms. Our findings suggest that handedness is highly polygenic and that the genetic variants that predispose to left-handedness may underlie part of the association with some psychiatric disorders