The importance of design characteristics in walking from student's perspective: a case study in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Walking is a common form of physical activity, which has a lot of both social and recreational impacts. It is studied as a way of achieving sustainability. Many researchers recommend that walking can increase mental and physical health. Spectators of new urbanism recommend that the good design will encourage walking. There are several characteristics for designing walkable communities, which were frequently described in researches by many authors. In this paper, the four criteria noticed for making walkable university campus include connectivity, accessibility, safety/security and comfort. These criteria have been assessed by gathering survey in the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia to find out if these criteria can cause or affect walkability in university campus and it has been supported by previous studies. The result of the survey shows that these criteria are important from students’ perspective as high numbers of the students consider these characters as important for walking activity. The conclusion is to achieve walkable university campus as it will be necessary to evaluate present walking conditions, research walking behavior in different settings and consider these four criteria in designing campus for improving walking condition

Social learning approach in designing persuasive e-commerce recommender system model

Intention to purchase in existing online business practice is learned through observation of information display by online seller. The emergent growth of persuasive technologies currently holds a great potential in driving a positive influence towards consumer purchase behavior. But to date, there is still limited research on implementing persuasion concept into the recommender system context. Drawing upon the principle design of persuasive system, the main purpose of this study is to explore social learning advantages in creating persuasive features for E-Commerce recommender system. Based on Social Cognitive Theory, the influence of personal and environmental factors will be examined in measuring consumer purchase intention. In addition, dimensions of social learning environment are represented by observational learning theory and cognitive learning theory. From those reviews, this study assumed that social learning environment can be created based on attentiveness, retentiveness, motivational, knowledge awareness and interest evaluation cues of consumer learning factors. Furthermore, the persuasive environment of recommender system is assumed to have positive influence towards individual characteristics such as self-efficacy behavior, perceived task complexity and confused by over choice. Findings from those reviews have contributed to the development of a research model in visualizing social learning environment that can be used to develop a persuasive recommender system in E-Commerce and hence measures the impact towards consumer purchase intention

Persistent spin current in mesoscopic ferrimagnetic spin ring

Using a semiclassical approach, we study the persistent magnetization current of a mesoscopic ferrimagnetic ring in a nonuniform magnetic field. At zero temperature, there exists persistent spin current because of the quantum fluctuation of magnons, similar to the case of an antiferromagnetic spin ring. At low temperature, the current shows activation behavior because of the field-induced gap. At higher temperature, the magnitude of the spin current is proportional to temperature T, similar to the reported result of a ferromagnetic spin ring.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, one more reference adde

Competing Ground States of the New Class of Halogen-Bridged Metal Complexes

Based on a symmetry argument, we study the ground-state properties of halogen-bridged binuclear metal chain complexes. We systematically derive commensurate density-wave solutions from a relevant two-band Peierls-Hubbard model and numerically draw the the ground-state phase diagram as a function of electron-electron correlations, electron-phonon interactions, and doping concentration within the Hartree-Fock approximation. The competition between two types of charge-density-wave states, which has recently been reported experimentally, is indeed demonstrated.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures embedded, to appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Factor Retention Decisions in Exploratory Factor Analysis Results: A Study Type of Knowledge Management Process at Malaysian University Libraries

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a versatile statistical modeling tool which uses in the social sciences research. Recently, in Library and Information Science (LIS) environment, structural equation modeling has gained popularity across many disciplines, due to its generality and flexibility. Its estimation techniques, modeling capabilities and breadth of application are expanding rapidly.This paper reported a structural equation modeling through an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) result, which involves 300 lead users at six selected Malaysian university libraries through survey. The decision of how many factors to retain is a critical component of exploratory factor analysis. Evidence is presented that parallel analysis is one of the most accurate factor retention methods. SPSS 20 was utilized to analyze the factor analysis data. In this regards, the results of EFA could provide empirical evidence of each hypotheses construct. It is hoped that the EFA results could be used to level Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to perform full Structural Equation Modeling.© 2013 The Authors. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

A comparative study of proximate composition of Artemia urmiana enriched with different sources and levels of HUFA

The nutritional quality of commercially available Artemia strains is relatively poor in Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), Arachidonic acid (ARA) and especially Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Hence, it is essential and common practice to enrich this live prey with emulsions of special oils. One commercial ICES30/4 (Belgium), Linseed oil as a vegetable oil, Cod liver oil and Sturgeon ovary oil as two animal oils with EPA amounts in these oils were 6.29, 0.03, 11.39, 7.55 and the DHA amounts were 20.90, 0.00, 7.64, 2.76 respectively with three concentrations (100, 200 and 300ppm) during two enrichment periods (12 and 24h) were tested in order to improve the HUFA content, the DHA/EPA ratio and ARA content of Artemia urmiana nauplii. The results showed that Artemia enriched with different levels of vegetable oil and enrichment periods was poor in relation to either HUFA content or DHA/EPA ratio but the fish oils and emulsion resulted in HUFA incorporation. Sturgeon ovary oil caused the poorest DHA/EPA ratio enrichment (0.40 in 300ppm-24h) but the commercial emulsion (ICES30/4) was found as the best for DHA/EPA ratio enrichment (1.20 in 300 ppm- 24h). Cod liver oil (0.53 in 100ppm-24h) can be a good internal source substitute for improving the DHA/EPA ratio enrichment compared to ICES30/4 due to price and availability. As a result, HUFA content was increased with enrichment level 200ppm during 24h. Also, all oil sources improved lipid and protein percentages in A. urmiana nauplii

Interaction of Individual Skyrmions in Nanostructured Cubic Chiral Magnet

We report the direct evidence of field-dependent character of the interaction between individual magnetic skyrmions as well as between skyrmions and edges in B20-type FeGe nanostripes observed by means of high resolution Lorentz transmission electron microscopy. It is shown that above certain critical values of external magnetic field the character of such long-range skyrmion interactions change from attraction to repulsion. Experimentally measured equilibrium inter-skyrmion and skrymion-edge distances as function of applied magnetic field shows quantitative agreement with the results of micromagnetic simulations. Important role of demagnetizing fields and internal symmetry of three-dimensional magnetic skyrmions are discussed in details.Comment: accepted in PR

Quantum and Thermal Phase Transitions of Halogen-Bridged Binuclear Transition-Metal Complexes

Aiming to settle the controversial observations for halogen-bridged binuclear transition-metal (MMX) complexes, finite-temperature Hartree-Fock calculations are performed for a relevant two-band Peierls-Hubbard model. Thermal, as well as quantum, phase transitions are investigated with particular emphasis on the competition between electron itinerancy, electron-phonon interaction and electron-electron correlation. Recently observed distinct thermal behaviors of two typical MMX compounds Pt_2(CH_3CS_2)_4I and (NH_4)_4[Pt_2(P_2O_5H_2)_4I]2H_2O are supported and further tuning of their electronic states is predicted.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures embedded, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. Vol.70, No.5 (2001

The mechanical relaxation study of polycrystalline MgCNi3

The mechanical relaxation spectra of a superconducting and a non-superconducting MgCNi3 samples were measured from liquid nitrogen temperature to room temperature at frequency of kilohertz. There are two internal friction peaks (at 300 K labeled as P1 and 125 K as P2) for the superconducting sample. For the non-superconducting one, the position of P1 shifts to 250 K, while P2 is almost completely depressed. It is found that the peak position of P2 shifts towards higher temperature under higher measuring frequency. The calculated activation energy is 0.13eV. We propose an explanation relating P2 to the carbon atom jumping among the off-center positions. And further we expect that the behaviors of carbon atoms maybe correspond to the normal state crossovers around 150 K and 50 K observed by many other experiments.Comment: 4 figure