Nurture Students Soft Skills Through Project-oriented Problem-based Learning Approach in Siswa@Fesyen

The quality of graduates should be strengthened to enhance their marketability after graduation. Unemployment issues among graduates in Malaysia are still reported to be high. Several factors have contributed to the occurrence of this situation including the lack of soft skills in graduates. This article discusses the role, implementation, and outcomes of Siswa@Fesyen programs that have been implemented to nurture student’s soft skills through Project-oriented Problem-based Learning (PoPBL). The Siswa@Fesyen program involves 40 final-year students from the Bachelor of Home Economics Education at Universiti Putra Malaysia. Qualitative studies involving observation and interviews were conducted to review the program’s outcomes in nurturing student’s soft skills and character development. Students’ feedback shows that this program has successfully achieved the main objective which is to nurture student’s soft skills as well as strengthening student’s sewing skills in producing fashion designs. Finally, the findings show that the Siswa@Fesyen program can be a significant platform to nurture soft skills and thus provide students with the opportunity to face the working environment and life after graduation.     Keywords: soft skills, PoPBL, fashion entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship outcome

Explaining Software as a Service Outsourcing: Economic and Social Considerations

Software as a service (SaaS) offers an innovative way to deliver software over the Internet to distributed organizations. While more and more SaaS providers are joining the market and competition among providers becomes more intense, we need to understand the considerations of potential clients. Built on transaction cost theory and social exchange theory, this study empirically investigates, with a national survey of IT/IS executives, the role of economic factors and the impact of social relationships on the economic factors in firms’ deciding to adopt SaaS. We found that cost savings are a critical consideration in SaaS and that social relationships exert a strong, positive direct impact on cost savings and positively moderate the impact of cost savings on SaaS. This paper expands our theoretical understanding of the SaaS phenomenon and provides some managerial insights

Upgrading IT101 With Handheld Computers

This study examines the impact of handheld computers on students in a first year Information Technology course (IT101), measuring IT attitudes, skills, and performance. Students in standard sections used their laptop computers and traditional textbooks. Students in intensive sections used both handheld computers and laptop computers, that is, multiple platforms. Both standard and intensive sections covered the same topics. Although students in both standard and intensive sections became more skilled during the semester, students in the intensive sections improved more in programming and Microsoft Excel skills. Students in intensive sections also scored significantly better than students in the standard sections on the common portion of the final exam. Finally, according to anecdotal evidence, students in the intensive sections gained significantly more skill-based confidence in IT unrelated to handheld computers compared to students in the standard sections. Seven of our ten expectations were supported. While students benefited from the intensive version of IT101, several factors could account for the improvements: a self-selection factor, an active learning vs. textbook learning factor, and possibly an instructor factor. Future research should shed light on the relative weights of these factors

Champion Networks in Federated Interorganizational Systems: Case Studies in Telemedicine

Champions are critical to the success of an information system implementation. Research shows that success in implementing a large information system may hinge on there being more than one type of champion. This study investigates the types of champions used in federated inter-organizational systems (FIOS) in a state telemedicine context. Case studies were conducted in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin to identify the network of champions in state telemedicine systems. We found that FIOS that relied on a network of champions, including a sponsorship champion at the state level, as well as a technical champion and user champion at site locations, were more successful than those that lacked such a network. We suggest that our model of champions in FIOS applies not only to state telemedicine, but also to any large-scale system implementation spanning a federation of loosely coupled organizations

Stomatal Conductance In Relation To Xylem Sap Abscisic Acid Concentration In Hopea Odorata Roxb. And Mlmusops Elengi Linn.Seedlings

Xylem sap ABA and leaf ABA of Hopea odorata and Mimusops elengi were measured under condition of soil compaction and drought and the role of ABA were investigated in the regulation of stomatal cooductance of these two species. A rapid and substantial increase in xylem sap abscisic acid (ABA) concentration rather than leaf ABA concentration, which was closely related to soil drying and stomatal conductance, was observed in both species. The increase in xylem sap ABA concentration observed at high bulk density was closely related with reductions of stomatal conductance. These results suggest that xylem ABA may act as a stress signal in the control of stomatal conductance. The inability of M elengi seedlings to produce as much xylem ABA concentration compared to H. odorata_seedlings in response to soil compaction and water stress may have been crucial to its Wlure to maintain near-normal rates of leaf expansion at certain critical level of compaction

Characteristics of butt welding imperfections joint using co-occurrence matrix

1164-1169The goal of this paper is to study the characteristics of the butt joint imperfections with different types of joint shapes (curve, straight and tooth saw work piece) according to their class categories (good welds, excess welds, insufficient welds and no welds). The work piece is placed in a center position on the workbench. The distance between camera and workpiece is set as 300 mm during welding imperfections process and the entire work piece image is taken from the same distance to maintain the accuracy. The input feature vector is determined by feature co-occurrence matrix consisting of energy, correlation, homogeneity and contrast both no scaled and scaled by 0.5. Results show that no welds class categories exhibit higher homogeneity compared to the other class categories. This is because the homogeneity value depends on bright and dark parts of a certain size and also include some changes from dark to bright. Meanwhile, insufficient welds class categories produced larger contrast value, but good weld class categories recorded higher contrast value

Modelling of Fatigue Failure for Plasma Coated Members Using Artificial Intelligence Technique

Coating materials in form of powder such as Magnesium Zirconate, Aluminum Bronze and Molybdenum were mixed in different portions and sprayed on steel specimen to find the fatigue properties of steel using plasma technique. The effect of coating mixture on the number of cycles needed for failure under different loads was done experimentally. A cyclic loading was applied to it repeatedly until failure occurs. The results were compared with those for the same specimen without coating. The results were then modelled using Artificial Intelligence Technique then optimized for maximum cycles of coated substance failure. The results showed significant improvement to the specimen’s resistance to failure with coating. Further, models were developed out of the experimental data and tested for accuracy and gave satisfactory results. However, the time consumed by the GA method was greater than that consumed by the same software for the ANN model development.Also, sensitivity analysis showed that the key effect for the variables studied was for the load while the least effect was for the Molybdenum mixture. On the other hand, using GA method, the importance of variables was maximum for the load and minimum for Magnesium oxide and Zirconate oxide mixture Further, using the correlation method, there was strong negative (i.e. inverse relationship) correlation between the number of cycles and load and weak with Magnesium oxide and Zirconate oxide mixture   while strong positive correlation was shown with Molybdenum and least positive for  Aluminum Copper Balance. Keywords: Artificial neural network, modeling, Plasma coating, fatigue failure

Parkinsonian motor impairment predicts personality domains related to genetic risk and treatment outcomes in schizophrenia

Identifying endophenotypes of schizophrenia is of critical importance and has profound implications on clinical practice. Here we propose an innovative approach to clarify the mechanims through which temperament and character deviance relates to risk for schizophrenia and predict long-term treatment outcomes. We recruited 61 antipsychotic naïve subjects with chronic schizophrenia, 99 unaffected relatives, and 68 healthy controls from rural communities in the Central Andes. Diagnosis was ascertained with the Schedules of Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry; parkinsonian motor impairment was measured with the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale; mesencephalic parenchyma was evaluated with transcranial ultrasound; and personality traits were assessed using the Temperament and Character Inventory. Ten-year outcome data was available for ~40% of the index cases. Patients with schizophrenia had higher harm avoidance and self-transcendence (ST), and lower reward dependence (RD), cooperativeness (CO), and self-directedness (SD). Unaffected relatives had higher ST and lower CO and SD. Parkinsonism reliably predicted RD, CO, and SD after correcting for age and sex. The average duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) was over 5 years. Further, SD was anticorrelated with DUP and antipsychotic dosing at follow-up. Baseline DUP was related to antipsychotic dose-years. Further, ‘explosive/borderline’, ‘methodical/obsessive’, and ‘disorganized/schizotypal’ personality profiles were associated with increased risk of schizophrenia. Parkinsonism predicts core personality features and treatment outcomes in schizophrenia. Our study suggests that RD, CO, and SD are endophenotypes of the disease that may, in part, be mediated by dopaminergic function. Further, SD is an important determinant of treatment course and outcome

Effect of xylanase immobilisation conditions by combination of entrapment and covalent binding on alginate beads

The immobilisation of enzymes offer improvement in enzyme stability and characteristics as well as overcome the limitations of free enzyme systems for commercial purposes. In the current study, xylanase was immobilised using a combination technique of entrapment and covalent binding within and onto calcium alginate beads. The sodium alginate and calcium chloride (CaCl2) concentration used for the preparation of alginate beads which is the support matrix for xylanase immobilisation were fixed at 3% (w/v) and 0.3 M, respectively. The effect of immobilisation conditions (agitation rate, enzyme loading, and glutaraldehyde concentration) were studied using One-Factor-At-a-Time (OFAT) approach. The best condition for optimum immobilisation yield (83.93%) was found to be made up of the following parameter combination: agitation rate, 200 rpm; xylanase loading, 200 U; and glutaraldehyde concentration, 12% (w/w). The study shows the immobilisation conditions play a significant role towards the immobilisation yield of xylanase

The mitochondrial genome of Angiostrongylus mackerrasae as a basis for molecular, epidemiological and population genetic studies

BACKGROUND: Angiostrongylus mackerrasae is a metastrongyloid nematode endemic to Australia, where it infects the native bush rat, Rattus fuscipes. This lungworm has an identical life cycle to that of Angiostrongylus cantonensis, a leading cause of eosinophilic meningitis in humans. The ability of A. mackerrasae to infect non-rodent hosts, specifically the black flying fox, raises concerns as to its zoonotic potential. To date, data on the taxonomy, epidemiology and population genetics of A. mackerrasae are unknown. Here, we describe the mitochondrial (mt) genome of A. mackerrasae with the aim of starting to address these knowledge gaps. METHODS: The complete mitochondrial (mt) genome of A. mackerrasae was amplified from a single morphologically identified adult worm, by long-PCR in two overlapping amplicons (8 kb and 10 kb). The amplicons were sequenced using the MiSeq Illumina platform and annotated using an in-house pipeline. Amino acid sequences inferred from individual protein coding genes of the mt genomes were concatenated and then subjected to phylogenetic analysis using Bayesian inference. RESULTS: The mt genome of A. mackerrasae is 13,640 bp in size and contains 12 protein coding genes (cox1-3, nad1-6, nad4L, atp6 and cob), and two ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes. CONCLUSIONS: The mt genome of A. mackerrasae has similar characteristics to those of other Angiostrongylus species. Sequence comparisons reveal that A. mackerrasae is closely related to A. cantonensis and the two sibling species may have recently diverged compared with all other species in the genus with a highly specific host selection. This mt genome will provide a source of genetic markers for explorations of the epidemiology, biology and population genetics of A. mackerrasae