Regional validation of retracked sea levels from SARAL/Altika over the South China sea and adjacent seas

This paper focuses on assessing the quality of sea level anomaly (SLA) data from the new generation of Ka-band SARAL/AltiKa satellite altimetry over the continental shelf of the South China Sea. The region consists of peninsulas, shallow seas, and small islands that produce complicated altimetric waveform patterns. The improved-accuracy of SLAs data from the MLE4, Ice1 and Ice2 retrackers which are provided in the AVISO-Sensor Geophysical Data Records (SGDR) were optimized in this study. The quality of retracked SLAs is assessed by making comparison with tide gauge data from six stations. In general, the percentage of data availability of Ice-1 retracker is superior ( > 68%) to those of MLE- 4 and Ice-2 retrackers. The improvement of percentage (IMP) also shows that Ice-1 retracker improves the standard deviation > 12% better than those of Ice-2 retracker. Over complex areas of Lubang and Ko Taphao Noi, the temporal correlation of Ice-1 retracker is superior (r > 0.80) to those of MLE4 and Ice-2 retrackers (r 5.8) and lower RMS error ( < 34 cm) than those of Ice-1 retracker. It can be concluded that the Ice-1 and Ice-2 retrackers were superior for the coastal region of Maritime Continent

Practical Database Design for Industrial Maintenance System

This paper describes how a database design can play an important role for developing practical industrial maintenance system. The good database design will in return give a better information sharing and good system in term of data accessibility. The design of the database are presented and illustrated by a case. The preliminary result presented to show that is possible to access a more correct view of the situation in the system development and thereby obtain a better base for making maintenance decisions. The database supports the development of applications e.g. for monitoring the performance of a maintenance in the production, for deciding the most appropriate maintenance policy or for simulating possible maintenance solutions

CAWRES: A waveform retracking fuzzy expert system for optimizing coastal sea levels from Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellite altimetry data

This paper presents the Coastal Altimetry Waveform Retracking Expert System (CAWRES), a novel method to optimise the Jason satellite altimetric sea levels from multiple retracking solutions. CAWRES' aim is to achieve the highest possible accuracy of coastal sea levels, thus bringing measurement of radar altimetry data closer to the coast. The principles of CAWRES are twofold. The first is to reprocess altimeter waveforms using the optimal retracker, which is sought based on the analysis from a fuzzy expert system. The second is to minimise the relative offset in the retrieved sea levels caused by switching from one retracker to another using a neural network. The innovative system is validated against geoid height and tide gauges in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia for Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellite missions. The regional investigations have demonstrated that the CAWRES can effectively enhance the quality of 20 Hz sea level data and recover up to 16% more data than the standard MLE4 retracker over the tested region. Comparison against tide gauge indicates that the CAWRES sea levels are more reliable than those of Sensor Geophysical Data Records (SGDR) products, because the former has a higher (≥0.77) temporal correlation and smaller (≤19 cm) root mean square errors. The results demonstrate that the CAWRES can be applied to coastal regions elsewhere as well as other satellite altimeter missions

Self-efficacy of catering students of Faculty Technical and Vocational Education, University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia in the Field of Career to be pursued

The increasing rate of unemployed graduates in Malaysia has received alarming attention in recents years. One of the factors that contribute to the unemployment problem is the lack of self-efficacy among graduates in making career choices. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the self-efficacy of catering students to make decision on career field options to be pursued either as a teacher, hospitality employee or entrepreneur. The design of this study is a quantitative descriptive study through survey and questionnaire is used as research instruments. A total of 66 catering students of year 3 and 4 from Faculty of Technical and Vocational Education (FPTV) were selected as the study sample. The data obtained were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 22.00 software involving mean, standard deviation, and ANOVA. The results showed that the mean scores of self-efficacy of catering students were high to become teachers (M= 4.11, SD=0.617) and followed by hospitality employee (M= 3.87, SD= 0.574) and entrepreneurs (M= 3.93, SD=0.514). However, there was no significant difference between the three career fields with a value of p = 0.052. In conclusion, catering students have high self-efficacy in venturing into the field of career when graduating from university. Graduates need to see the importance of enhancing self-efficacy because it opens paths for career opportunities and advancement

A review of gelatin: properties, sources, process, applications, and commercialisation

This review begins with a discussion of the general properties of gelatin and its sources, particularly in the food and health industries, and then briefly address the status quo of gelatin in today’s market. Apart from the basic chemical compounds and gelatin types, this paper also discussed the commercialisation of gelatin. This study also highlights the production of conventional gelatin and its current method of processing, i.e. enzymatic hydrolysis. In addition, the variety of raw materials of collagen is outlined and briefly broached the plant hydrocolloids which have been labeled as ’veggie-gelatin’. With regard to the potential and market stability of gelatin, its recent studies are summarised in this paper. Accordingly, this paper focuses on assessing the general utilities of the various sources of collagen as gelatin derivatives. At that basis, the aim of this review is to provide an insight into gelatin in current applications, market value and progress in gelatin extraction

The influence of land-use land-cover changes on urban bird communities

City development changes the landscape and has been claimed to pose threat to the survival of birds that heavily relies on healthy forest ecosystem. As such, this study assessed the effect of land-use land-cover (LULC) changes due to sub-urbanisation on birds' community using geostatistical method. In this study, geostatistical analyses, namely Kernel Density and Ordinary Least Square (OLS), were executed to identify the dominant factors that affected the birds' community in the Johor Bahru region. The birding data were obtained from eBird, an online crowd source database of bird distribution. The distribution of bird community was analysed by using Kernel density for years 2016 and 2018. This study found that the hotspot locations of the birds were in Danga Bay and Kempas Denai for year 2016, whereas Kampung Pok, Bukit Chagar, Taman Sentosa and Kampung Dato Sulaiman Menteri for year 2018. Certain urban bird species increased from year 2016 to 2018. The OLS regression was applied to analyse the relationship between birds' occurrence and LULC features within the study area. The global regression model indicated that distance to forest and distance to recreational and open space were positively associated with the number of bird occurrence. On the contrary, distance to road was negatively associated with the number of bird occurrence. The OLS model for year 2016 between birds' occurrence and distance to road, distance to forest, as well as distance to recreational and open space, demonstrated an adjusted R2 value of 0.32. In year 2018, the correlation between birds' occurrence and distance to road, as well as distance to recreational and open space, demonstrated an adjusted R2 value of 0.11. As a conclusion, urbanisation seems to affect the birds' communities as it increases the number of urban birds spotted in Johor Bahru, which is attributed to the increasing recreational and open space areas in Johor Bahru. The study outcomes can be applied to comprehend the relationship between birds' community and LULC changes, as a result of urbanisation

Children’s Schooling and Parents’ Behavior: Evidence From the Head Start Impact Study

Parents may have important effects on their children, but little work in economics explores whether children\u27s schooling opportunities crowd out or encourage parents\u27 investment in children. We analyze data from the Head Start Impact Study, which granted randomly chosen preschool-aged children the opportunity to attend Head Start. We find that Head Start causes a substantial increase in parents\u27 involvement with their children—such as time spent reading to children, math activities, or days spent with children by fathers who do not live with their children—both during and after the period when their children are potentially enrolled in Head Start

3D biofabrication of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)/poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) electrospun nanofibers containing maghemite (γ-Fe2O3) for tissue engineering aortic heart valve

Valvular dysfunction as the prominent reason of heart failure may causes morbidity and mortality around the world. The inability of human body to regenerate the defected heart valves necessitates the development of the artificial prosthesis to be replaced. Besides, the lack of capacity to grow, repair or remodel of an artificial valves and biological difficulty such as infection or inflammation make the development of tissue engineering heart valve (TEHV) concept. This research presented the use of compound of poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA), thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and maghemite nanoparticle ( -Fe2O3) as the potential biomaterials to develop three-dimensional (3D) aortic heart valve scaffold. Electrospinning was used for fabricating the 3D scaffold. The steepest ascent followed by the response surface methodology was used to optimize the electrospinning parameters involved in terms of elastic modulus. The structural and porosity properties of fabricated scaffold were characterized using FE-SEM and liquid displacement technique, respectively. The 3D scaffold was then seeded with aortic smooth muscle cells (AOSMCs) and biological behavior in terms of cell attachment and proliferation during 34 days of incubation was characterized using MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay and confocal laser microscopy. Furthermore, the mechanical properties in terms of elastic modulus and stiffness were investigated after cell seeding through macro-indentation test. The analysis indicated the formation of ultrafine quality of nanofibers with diameter distribution of 178 ± 45 nm and 90.72% porosity. In terms of cell proliferation, the results exhibited desirable proliferation (109.32 ± 3.22% compared to the control) of cells over the 3D scaffold in 34 days of incubation. The elastic modulus and stiffness index after cell seeding were founded to be 22.78 ± 2.12 MPa and 1490.9 ± 12 Nmm2, respectively. Overall, the fabricated 3D scaffold exhibits desirable structural, biological and mechanical properties and has the potential to be used in vivo