Level of employers awareness towards the importance of employee benefits among Anika Insurance Brokers clients / Nur Zafira Kamardin

This research has been conducted meeting point on employer awareness towards employee benefits scheme. An employee benefit is any kind of benefits provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries. Anika Insurance Brokers plays an important role as an intermediary between insurance companies and employers in order to ensure employees or workers have their benefits as well as their welfare at the event of any accidents that related to their employment which may affect the public financial security. Employees in Malaysia are entitled to participate in various schemes which provide for social insurance and retirement benefits. This scheme provides retirement benefits for members through the management of their savings in an efficient and reliable manner. These savings are accrued for each employee through contributions from employees and their employers. In view of the current demand for skilled workers, attractive incentives are currently being offered to Malaysian citizens working and residing overseas to encourage their return to Malaysia. The purpose of these research are mainly focus on employers awareness on employee benefits scheme among Anika Insurance brokers clients and also the factors that influenced their awareness. This study is done by using secondary data and distribution of questionnaires to clients of Anika Insurance Brokers to find the issue. From the findings obtained, there are some factors that contribute to the employer awareness on employee benefits scheme. Thus, by conducting this study the researcher hope that the result and some of recommendations can improve the awareness level of employers towards employee benefits scheme

Mechanical properties and fracture toughness of polypropylene reinforced kenaf fibre and nanoclay composites / Nur Kamarliah Kamardin

This research was carried out to study the effects of kenaf fiber (K) and nanoclay (NC) loadings on the mechanical properties and fracture toughness of polypropylene (PP) reinforced kenaf fiber and nanoclay composites. There were three composite system involve in this study, namely polypropylene/nanoclay (PP/NC), kenaf/polypropylene (KPP) and kenaf/polypropylene/nanoclay (KPP/NC) composites. Kenaf fibre (160 - 250 µm) loadings were varied at 20 wt%, 30 wt% and 40 wt%, meanwhile nanoclay loadings were varied at 0, 3 and 6 phr (part per hundred resin). Thermal mixer was used to mix kenaf, polypropelene and nanoclay to produce composite pellets and the pellets were injection molded to produce composite test specimens. The tensile test, impact test and fracture test were performed according to ASTM D638, ASTM D256 and ASTM D5045 respectively. Incorporation of 6 phr NC to the PP had resulted in a decreased about 8% in tensile strength and 44% in impact strength, however its fracture toughness had increased about 58%. The incorporation of kenaf fiber had lowered 19% of the tensile strength compared to pure PP. The impact strength decreased meanwhile the fracture toughness had indicated an increment about 14% as the kenaf loading increased. PP with 6 phr nanoclay was the highest tensile strength with 22.48 MPa. PP with 3 phr nanoclay composite showed the highest impact strength with the value of 12 kJ/m2 whilst 40% of kenaf loading with 6 phr nanoclay was the highest fracture toughness of about 2.02 MPa.m1/2

Focal Region Ray Tracing of Conventional and Shaped Lens Antenna

Multibeam lens antennas are useful for 5G mobile communication systems. For multibeam design, feed position determination of specified lens becomes an important subject. The feed position data can be obtained from focal region ray tracing. In this paper, a simple and convenient ray tracing method by using the MATLAB function of “polyxpoly” is proposed. To evaluate the program, focal region ray tracing on conventional hyperbolic planar, spherical convex, and Abbe’s sine condition lens are presented in this paper. For focal region ray tracing, parallel incident ray is considered. The incident ray’s angle is changed from 0 degree to 30 degrees with an interval of 10 degrees. On hyperbolic planar and spherical convex lenses, ray concentration at the focal region is distorted at incident angle of 10 degrees and above. On Abbe’s sine condition lens, good concentration is maintained until 20 degrees. Concentration points agree well with the theoretical value. Therefore, the correctness of the program is ensured

Low-temperature growth of zinc oxide structures on flexible conductive substrate: effect of naoh and C7H8O9 presence in sol-gel

ZnO is a unique material that exhibits semiconducting, piezoelectric, and pyroelectric multiple properties. ZnO nanostructures have drawn a widespread interest from researchers because of their multi-functional properties. The purposes of this study are to investigate the effects of adding sodium hydroxide and citric acid in the basic sol-gel on the formation of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures via a chemical method. A ZnO sol was prepared by dissolving zinc acetate dehydrate (ZnAC) and diethanolamine (DEA) in deionized water (H2O) and isopropanol (2- PrOH). The precursor solutions were spin-coated on the ITO/PET substrate and were dried at room temperature and pre-heated oven at 150°C for 3 minutes. Hot Water Treatment (HWT) was carried out at 70°C, 80°C, and 90°C for 8, 12, and 16 hours. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis recorded that (100) and (101) planes were formed as the preferred orientation samples with good quality and crystallization of the ZnO thin films. Based on Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM), HWT of 12 h immersed time was noticed as the optimum time for the growth of ZnO structures with the basic sol-gel solution. A 0.75 mol of NaOH and C6H8O7, respectively, was dropped in the basic solution for the second part of this study. The HWT was carried out at 90°C for 8, 12, and 16 hours. The presence of NaOH recorded higher intensity with ZnO sheet structure in a flower bud shape. The size of the structures approached nano-size. The presence of NaOH and C6H8O7 has changed the ZnO dimension from 1D to 2D. The ZnO 1D rod structures and 2D sheet structures can be used in LED, solar cells, photodetectors, gas sensor, field emitter, and photovoltaic devices

Impact of audit committee and audit quality on preventing earnings management in the pre- and post- Nigerian corporate governance code 2011

Earnings management have been considered as one of the methods used by the business leaders to mislead their stakeholders to report unrealistic numbers, despite the various check and balances (e.g. corporate governance code) on the process.Nigeria experienced two corporate governance codes issued by SEC, code 2003 and code 2011.This study tends to measure the effectiveness of these two codes and make comparisons using audit committee and audit quality against earnings management in the pre- and post-code 2011

Directors’ independence, internal audit function, ownership concentration and earnings quality in Malaysia

Concentration of ownership in Malaysian public listed companies contributes to agency conflict between majority and minority shareholders. An effective monitoring mechanism is critical to mitigate this conflict.The study aims to examine the influence of board and audit committee independence, internal audit function and ownership concentration on earnings quality proxied by discretionary accruals.The sample of the study 508 companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia Main Market from 2009 to 2012.Two measures of discretionary accruals are used: Modified Jones model (Dechow et al., 1995); and extended Modified Jones Model (Yoon et al., 2006). Using OLS regression, results of the study suggest that audit committee independence and more investment in internal audit function are related to higher earnings quality. However, board of directors’ independence and ownership concentration are associated with lower earnings quality. The finding indicates the importance of audit committee independence in producing quality financial reporting. Consistent findings are found for most variables in both models.The findings of the study have implication on the use of measurement of discretionary accruals in earnings quality studies and corporate governance practices in Malaysia

Directors’ remuneration disclosure transparency in Nigeria and the influence of block share ownership

This paper examines directors’ remuneration disclosure transparency in an emerging economy (Nigeria).We specifically examine how the block share ownership influences the level of transparency in the disclosure of directors’ remuneration in a sample of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2012. Using ordinary least squares and binary logistic regressions to examine the relationship, we find that block share ownership is associated with lower transparent disclosure of directors’ remuneration.The result shows a positive relationship between audit quality and transparent disclosure of directors’ remuneration. The study finds that the transparency score is less than 40%.On the whole, we provide evidence that managers in Nigerian Listed Companies are inclined not to make voluntary disclosure of their remuneration to the public.This paper has implication for policy makers and regulatory authorities in Nigeria on the need to embark on remuneration disclosures reforms so as to make directors’ remuneration disclosure mandatory for Nigerian Listed Companies to make it comparable with accepted global good practice.This study contributes to the remuneration disclosure transparency literature by providing support for the expropriation hypothesis in the behaviour of block shareholders from an emerging economy whose market is very much different from those of developed economies

Company performance in Nigerian listed companies: Do large shareholders expropriate minority shareholders?

It is argued that large shareholders have enormous influence over their companies as their ability to monitor the executives can mitigate the agency problems.This paper examines how large shareholders are related to company performance after distinguishing domestic large shareholders from the foreign large shareholders Using a panel of 58 companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange with 222 company-year observations from 2009 to 2012, firm-level fixed effects regression was used for analysis.We find evidence that domestic large shareholders are associated with better company performance while foreign large shareholders show a concave relationship with company performance with inflection point at 31.88%.The empirical result also shows that the joint presence of the both domestic large shareholders and foreign large shareholders in companies seems to make them pursue overall wealth maximization objective of the company.The result is consistent with the contention that concentrated ownership remains an effective corporate governance mechanism in an environment with weak investor protection rights.The study contributes to the corporate governance literature of the substitution effect of large shareholders for effective corporate governance practice

The Effect Of Compression Ratio By Different Piston Head Shape On The Performance Of Motorcycle Engine

The compression ratio has a significant impact on engine power, fuel economy, emission, and other performances of internal combustion engines. Basic engine theory states that a higher compression ratio produces higher torque and horsepower. One way of having different compression ratio is by changing piston head shape. A piston is a cylindrical engine component that slides back and forth in the cylinder bore via forces produced during the combustion process. The piston acts as a movable end of the combustion chamber transmitting power generated from the burning of fuel and air mixture in the combustion chamber. The objective of this study is to compare the engine performance in horsepower and torque produced by the different shapes of the piston head in an internal combustion engine. Three pistons with different head shapes - standard, mug (low compression) and dome (high compression) with a compression ratio of 8.8:1, 7.61:1 and 10.06:1 were selected for the study. An experiment was also performed to a standard piston installed with 1.5 mm gasket, which has a compression ratio of 7.31. The experiments were carried out using a standard internal combustion engine of a Honda EX5 motorcycle. The engine runs on a chassis dynamometer to measure its torque and horsepower. Piston performance was evaluated based on the maximum available torque and horsepower. The result shows that all three pistons produce different torque and horsepower. The domed piston head produces higher torque and horsepower followed by the standard and mug. By just changing the piston head shape, torque and horsepower increased up to 7.14% and 20.05% respectively

Corporate voluntary disclosure practices of banks in Bangladesh

This study aims to explore the corporate voluntary disclosure practices of the listed banks in an emerging economy namely Bangladesh.Results show that the extent of voluntary disclosure significantly improves from 2005 to 2008.However, the level of disclosure items related to corporate governance and risk management are lower than other disclosure categories.Overall findings of this study contribute in the accounting and economic literature by adding an empirical results of voluntary disclosure of a highly regulated industry from an emerging economy. Nevertheless, the results have the limitation to generalize for other industries as well as for banks from countries