Kenaf Fiber Composite in Automotive Industry: An Overview

Recently, natural fibers become an attractive to automotive industry as an alternative reinforcement for glass fiber reinforced thermoplastics. Additionally, natural fiber components in the automotive industry can provide numerous advantages compared to synthetic conventional such as reduction of weight and cost,  recyclability, renewability and in addition to eco-efficiency. Thus, the use of natural fibers in automotive industry has shown increasingly stringent environmental criteria. Furthermore, amongst grouped bast fibers such as flax, hemp, jute, ramie and kenaf; kenaf fiber seen as potential natural fiber with robust mechanical properties. Kenaf fiber had been explored to enhance desired mechanical properties as an automotive structural components. As usual, natural fibres have some issues and disadvantages when used as reinforcements for polymeric composites. Therefore, some modification performed on fibers such as chemical treatment was carried out. In addition, the use of a coupling agent and a plasticizer can also increase fiber-matrix adhesive bonding

Glucose detection in blood using near-infrared spectroscopy: significant wavelength for glucose detection

World Health Organization (WHO) stated in 2004, about 347 million people suffered from diabetes and from this statistic, about 3.4 million died from the complication of kidney failure, heart attack, body part amputation and adequately reported suffered from blindness. There are several non-invasive techniques in measuring the blood glucose level developed nowadays and among the popular technique is the near-infrared (NIR) measurement, ultrasonic sensor implementation, multisensory systems, absorbance of transmittance, bio-impedance, voltage intensity, and thermography. Among these techniques, there are several approaches that displayed a lot of potential, nonetheless some of them have produced unsatisfying results. The NIR technique has been applied in some of previous research, however the wavelength used vary for different researcher. There are several points of views on the significant wavelength range that contains suitable information regarding the peaks of glucose in blood. This paper is focusing on the experimental data collection using the near-infrared spectroscopy technique. This paper furthermore discussing on determine the significant peaks of glucose that is suitable to be used as the indicator of the glucose in blood. The highest significant peaks of blood glucose detected from the range around 1450nm and 1930nm

Theodicy and End-of-Life Care

Acknowledgments The section on Islamic perspective is contributed by information provided by Imranali Panjwani, Tutor in Theology & Religious Studies, King's College London.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Use of gas liquid chromatography in combination with pancreatic lipolysis and multivariate data analysis techniques for identification of lard contamination in some vegetable oils

A study was conducted to investigate the use of gas liquid chromatography (GLC) to identify lard (LD) contamination in palm oil (PO), palm kernel oil (PKO), and canola oil (CLO). Vegetable oils were deliberately adulterated with animal fats such as LD, beef tallow (BT), and chicken fat (CF) in varying proportions. In order to monitor the fatty acid (FA) compositional changes due to adulteration, GLC analyses of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) were performed on 2-monoacylglycerol (2-MG) and neutral triacylglycerol (TAG) isolated from each sample. For the evaluation of FA data, multivariate statistical techniques were employed. The results showed that canonical discriminant (CANDISC) analysis was the most effective technique for discriminating LD-adulterated samples from those adulterated with other animal fats. Additionally, mathematical equations obtained by simple regression analysis could be used for quantification of LD contents in admixtures

Global Climate Change as Perceived by Elementary School Teachers in YOGYAKARTA , Indigenous Psychology Approach

This study aimed to describe how the global climate change was perceived by teachers of elementary schools. The subjects were 111 teachers from 7 elementary schools in Yogyakarta City and Sleman district. The data were collected using open-ended questions (including perception about the weather, feeling evoked by global warming words and free responses related to global warming issues). The data were analyzed using the technique of qualitative and quantitative content analysis with Indigenous Psychology Approach. The result showed that only one teacher reported that there was no weather anomaly, while 110 teachers reported that they perceived weather anomaly. Of those who perceived weather anomaly mostly referred to natural conditions (including global climatic condition and environmental destruction) and human behavior as its causes. Responses about feeling as evoked by global warming word were classified into three categories, i.e. emotional, physical and irrelevant responses. Free responses about global warming were classified into four categories respectively from the highest frequency of responses: prevention (including statement “must be prevented”, prevention behaviors and prevention efforts), states (including the weather states and feeling), causes (including technological advances and human behavior generally), and others. The research finding was discussed in the frame of environmental concern as a means of character education in elementary school

Proceedings of the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC) 2011

These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2011 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference(SPARC). It includes papers from PhD students in the arts and social sciences, business, computing, science and engineering, education, environment, built environment and health sciences. Contributions from Salford researchers are published here alongside papers from students at the Universities of Anglia Ruskin, Birmingham City, Chester,De Montfort, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester

Effect of treatments on the physical and morphological properties of SPF/phenolic composites

This study aims at evaluating the physical properties and effects of fiber treatments of natural fiber reinforced polymer composite’s friction applications. Sugar palm fibers (SPFs) were used as fillers (≤ 150 µm) with phenolic resin to fabricate the composites by the hot press technique. The loading of SPFs varied from 0 to 40 vol.% with an interval of 10 vol.% in phenolic composites. The fibers were treated with sea water for 30 days, and with 0.5 M of alkaline solution for 4 hrs. Rockwell hardness, density, voids content, water/oil absorption, and moisture content were studied. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate the morphology and interfacial bonding of the fiber-matrix in composites. With an increase in the SPF loading in the composites, the results indicated a decline in Rockwell hardness, an increase in water/oil absorption, and density. It was also observed that higher the density of the composites, lower was the voids content. In terms of physical properties, sea water treatment showed better improvement than alkaline treatment. The outcome of this research indicated that SPFs can be effectively used in reinforcing polymer composites, such as friction composites

Indirect exchange in GaMnAs bilayers via spin-polarized inhomogeneous hole gas: Monte Carlo simulation

The magnetic order resulting from an indirect exchange between magnetic moments provided by spin-polarized hole gas in the metallic phase of a GaMnAs double layer structure is studied via Monte Carlo simulation. The coupling mechanism involves a perturbative calculation in second order of the interaction between the magnetic moments and carriers (holes). We take into account a possible polarization of the hole gas due to the existence of an average magnetization in the magnetic layers, establishing, in this way, a self-consistency between the magnetic order and the electronic structure. That interaction leads to an internal ferromagnetic order inside each layer, and a parallel arrangement between their magnetizations, even in the case of thin layers. This fact is analyzed in terms of the inter- and intra-layer interactions.Comment: 17 pages and 14 figure

A theory of ferromagnetism in planar heterostructures of (Mn,III)-V semiconductors

A density functional theory of ferromagnetism in heterostructures of compound semiconductors doped with magnetic impurities is presented. The variable functions in the density functional theory are the charge and spin densities of the itinerant carriers and the charge and localized spins of the impurities. The theory is applied to study the Curie temperature of planar heterostructures of III-V semiconductors doped with manganese atoms. The mean-field, virtual-crystal and effective-mass approximations are adopted to calculate the electronic structure, including the spin-orbit interaction, and the magnetic susceptibilities, leading to the Curie temperature. By means of these results, we attempt to understand the observed dependence of the Curie temperature of planar $\delta$-doped ferromagnetic structures on variation of their properties. We predict a large increase of the Curie Temperature by additional confinement of the holes in a $\delta$-doped layer of Mn by a quantum well.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

The Emergence of New Islamic Economic and Business Moralities

This article aims to explore the sources of the observed transformation in the embeddedness of economic, business, and financial practices of Muslim individuals in comparison to premodern period Muslims. It argues that the predomination of instrumental reasoning in modern times, as opposed to substantive morality in everyday practice, is one of the main reasons behind the transformation of embeddedness of Muslim individuals. Instrumental reasoning, being the dominant methodology, leads to diminished submergence in social relations; that is not limited to interpersonal relationships, but further extended to the core religious acts. How such an emergent economic and business morality is reconciled with the Islamic substantive morality is examined. It is argued that “transformation of exception into norm” is the main method used to reconcile instrumental reasoning with Islamic law in fulfilling religious obligations, at least in terms of fulfilling the form and in complying with the necessities of modern life. This has led to the emergence of new economic and business moralities