The relevance of capital structure theories to consumer product firms at bursa Malaysia / Abdul Razak Abdul Hadi, Jaafar Pyeman and Ahmad Kasyidi Ismail.

This paper examines the relevance of Capital Structure Management theories to the value of consumer product firms listed at Bursa Malaysia. Within the framework of Modigliani-Miller and Trade-Off theories, this paper uses Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) as an estimation model employing yearly panel data from the year 2010 to 2014. The test results from GMM indicate that earnings per share (EPS) and debt-equity ratio (D/E) have no significant relation with the firm’s value as represented by the closing price per share (CP). Even though the findings are rather alarming, one must admit that the Modigliani-Miller and Trade-Off theories are irrelevant to those consumer product companies at Bursa Malaysia. Perhaps, this is an indication that the efficient market hypothesis applicable to certain sectors at Bursa Malaysia

The relevance of capital structure theories to consumer product firms at bursa Malaysia / Abdul Razak Abdul Hadi, Jaafar Pyeman and Ahmad Kasyidi Ismail.

This paper examines the relevance of Capital Structure Management theories to the value of consumer product firms listed at Bursa Malaysia. Within the framework of Modigliani-Miller and Trade-Off theories, this paper uses Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) as an estimation model employing yearly panel data from the year 2010 to 2014. The test results from GMM indicate that earnings per share (EPS) and debt-equity ratio (D/E) have no significant relation with the firm’s value as represented by the closing price per share (CP). Even though the findings are rather alarming, one must admit that the Modigliani-Miller and Trade-Off theories are irrelevant to those consumer product companies at Bursa Malaysia. Perhaps, this is an indication that the efficient market hypothesis applicable to certain sectors at Bursa Malaysia

Correlation between the HBsAg level and the peripheral blood lymphocytes profile in chronic hepatitis B patients from Malaysia

Background: In recent times, the hepatitis B virus surface antigen (HBsAg) level, a cheaper marker compared to the molecular method, has been used not only for indicating active hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, but also for predicting the clinical and treatment outcomes. Chronic HBV (CHB) infection is related to defects in cells-mediated immunity; however, data linking the level of HBsAg with changes of immune response during a CHB infection is still lacking in Malaysia. Therefore, the aim of this study was to quantify the HBsAg level in CHB patients and to investigate its correlation with the immune status. Materials and methods: A total of 50 patients with CHB infection and 20 healthy controls were recruited for this cross-sectional study. Serological and biochemical analyses were performed on the serum samples. The HBV genotype was determined by direct sequencing and the viral load in the serum was measured using qPCR. The immunophenotype profiles of the peripheral blood lymphocyte were analyzed using flow cytometry and the HBsAg concentration was measured using Roche’s Elecsys HBsAg II assay. Results: The analyzed data demonstrated a narrowly higher mean level of bilirubin and liver enzymes exhibited by the viremic CHB patients compared to the healthy controls. In the viral load study, 15 patients had a high viral DNA load (≥ 3×106 genome copies/ mL), while 35 patients had a low or undetectable viral load (< 3×106 genome copies/mL). The phylogenetic tree analysis for 35 detectable samples elucidated that the genotypes were B and C, and they were at equal prevalence rates. The outcome of the peripheral blood lymphocyte study revealed that the percentages of CD4+ and CD8+ cells were significantly reduced, while the CD4+/CD8+ ratio were observed to be slightly increased in the CHB patients compared to the healthy controls. At the same time, there were no statistically significant differences between the CHB patients and healthy controls with respect to other peripheral blood lymphocyte cells. More than half of the patients had HBsAg titre above 1000 IU/mL, and there was a positive and negative correlation between the HBsAg titre and the percentage of total T cell lymphocytes and natural killer cells, respectively. Conclusion: Our findings indicated that serum HBsAg suppressednatural killer cells population, but enhanced total T cells lymphocyte in response to CHB infection. This study has shown the importance of quantitative HBsAg as a laboratory biomarker that may help to define the immune state of CHB patients

A decade after the tsunami: preliminary exploration deposit layer of sediment at coast area of Kedah, Malaysia

Study on tsunami deposits is done after a decade of the incident happened at Kedah, Malaysia. This article discusses the characteristics, measurement and thickness of tsunami deposits. It also provides the latest remaining evidences of the tsunami incident including imbrication pattern of cobbles, types of coastal protection and plants at the affected area. Run-up heights and inundation distance were taken into account for field exploration and investigation. This study may provide opportunities to understand how remaining evidences of tsunami could be tracked and recorded

Tourism Potential of The Dieng Culture Festival in Increasing Community Income and Development Strategy

The purpose of this study is to analyze the potential of the Dieng Culture Festival (DCF) tourism performance in increasing the community income around Dieng and develop the strategy for the Dieng Culture Festival. To collect the data, the techniques of observation, interviews, and literature study were used. The selected research respondents included the Tourism Awareness Group Chairperson and street vendors around the DCF tourist complex. 40 street vendors were selected as samples using a stratified random sampling method. This research was done during the 2022 Dieng Culture Festival, using the SWOT and QSP Matrix methods. The results showed that the development strategy for the Dieng tourism program was the WT strategy aimed at minimizing weaknesses and avoiding external threats. In addition, the DCF increased the number of tourists enjoying the Dieng tourist complex and the income of street vendors

Accuracy Enhancement for Forecasting Water Levels of Reservoirs and River Streams Using a Multiple-Input-Pattern Fuzzification Approach

Water level forecasting is an essential topic in water management affecting reservoir operations and decision making. Recently, modern methods utilizing artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, and combinations of these techniques have been used in hydrological applications because of their considerable ability to map an input-output pattern without requiring prior knowledge of the criteria influencing the forecasting procedure. The artificial neurofuzzy interface system (ANFIS) is one of the most accurate models used in water resource management. Because the membership functions (MFs) possess the characteristics of smoothness and mathematical components, each set of input data is able to yield the best result using a certain type of MF in the ANFIS models. The objective of this study is to define the different ANFIS model by applying different types of MFs for each type of input to forecast the water level in two case studies, the Klang Gates Dam and Rantau Panjang station on the Johor river in Malaysia, to compare the traditional ANFIS model with the new introduced one in two different situations, reservoir and stream, showing the new approach outweigh rather than the traditional one in both case studies. This objective is accomplished by evaluating the model fitness and performance in daily forecasting

Performance Analysis Of Acceleration Sensor For Movement Detection In Vehicle Security System

The vehicle security system is a critical part of an entire car system in order to prevent unauthorized access into the car. As the statistic has shown that the number of cases of the private car being stolen is increasing and the recovery rate is decreasing sharply, it shows that the car security system failed to perform to prevent unauthorized access. Most of the vehicle security system simply consists of a few door-open detection switches, siren, and remote control to protect the car, which appears to be weak against experienced car theft. Therefore, the project is carried out to develop a vehicle security system that can measure the dynamic acceleration inside the vehicle using the ADXL345 accelerometer and locate the coordinate of the vehicle by using U-Blox Neo-6M GPS receiver. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed vehicle security system, the experiment to determine the most suitable position among the four places inside a car to place the device was conducted. Then, the performance analysis of the GPS receiver for accurate tracking also was done. The results showed that the most suitable position to place the device is inside the center of the car dashboard and the GPS receiver has a mean cold start-up time of 5 minutes 47 seconds and hot start-up time of 11.72 seconds, with a standard deviation of 0.000003706° in latitude and 0.000002762° in longitude for position tracking

Application of Particle Swarm Optimization in Optimizing Stereo Matching Algorithm’s Parameters for Star Fruit Inspection System

This paper reports the finding of the experimentation of the Particle Swarm Optimization in optimizing the stereo matching algorithm’s parameters for the star fruit inspection system. The star fruit inspection system is built by CvviP Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. While the stereo matching algorithm used in the experiment is taken from the Matlab library. Each particle of Particle Swarm Optimization in the search pace repsents a set of candidate numerical value of the stereo matching’s parameters. The fitness function for this application is the sum of absolute error of the gray scale value of both images. Based on this information, the particles will improve its position in the search space by moving towards its best record and the swarm best record. The process repeated until the maximum iteration met. The result indicates that there is potential application of Particle Swarm Optimization in stereo matching’s parameters tuning