To lend or not to lend, that is the question – Economic considerations for Malaysian bankers

The research aims to see if a few macroeconomic indicators can provide a broader perspective to Malaysian bankers & help sharpen one of thecriteria of the 7 C’s of Credit – Conditions – by pin-pointing which economic indicators that can be most helpful to bankers. Statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS: Correlation. The results show that there is a strong correlation between the chosen Macro economic factors that allows for a good indication of “Conditions”. The conclusion is that bankers could use them as indicators when considering “Conditions”

Tahap kemahiran insaniah dalam kalangan pelajar kejuruteraan tahun akhir di Politeknik KPM

Dalam dunia yang semakin berkembang dengan pesat, majikan tidak hanya mementingkan kemahiran teknikal sahaja tetapi juga kepada kemahiran insaniah agar pelajar mereka dapat menyesuaikan dan melengkapkan diri dengan semua jenis pekerjaan dan dalam masa yang sama memiliki pelbagai kemahiran. Sehubungan dengan ini, kajian ini dilaksanakan adalah mengenal pasti tahap kemahiran insaniah dari segi komunikasi, menyelesaikan masalah secara kritis dan kerja berpasukan dalam kalangan pelajar kejuruteraan tahun akhir di Politeknik Premier Malaysia. Sampel kajian terdiri daripada 350 orang pelajar diploma tahun akhir sesi 2013/2014 dari bidang kejuruteraan yang ada ditawarkan di Politeknik Ungku Omar, Politeknik Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah dan Politeknik Ibrahim Sultan. Kajian yang dijalankan adalah kajian kuantitatif berbentuk tinjauan dimana untuk menjawab setiap persoalan kajian. Instrumen kajian yan digunakan adalah satu set soal selidik yang mengandungi maklumat diri dan item elemen kemahiran insaniah. Data yang diperolehi dianalisis secara diskriptif dan inferensi. Hasil dapatan kajian mendapati tahap kemahiran insaniah pelajar Politeknik Premier Malaysia berada pada tahap tinggi dengan nilai min keseluruhan adalah 4.16, dimana aspek kemahiran komunikasi adalah 4.17, kemahiran menyelesaikan masalah secara kritis adalah 4.15 dan kemahiran kerja berpasukan adalah 4.16. Untuk melihat perbezaan tahap kemahiran insaniah berdasarkan jantina, Ujian-t tidak bersandar digunakan dan hasil dapatan menunjukkan bahawa tidak terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan tahap kemahiran insaniah bagi pelajar lelaki dan pelajar perempuan. Secara keseluruhannya, tahap kemahiran insaniah pelajar kejuruteraan tahun akhir di Politeknik Premier adalah tinggi berdasarkan persepsi dan ini telah membuktikan setiap pelajar menitikberat kemahiran insaniah agar mereka dapat bersaing di pasaran

Machining feature-based system for supporting step-compliant milling process

STEP standards aims at setting up a standard description method for product data and providing a neutral exchanging mechanism that is independent of all the information processing systems for product information model. STEP Part 21 is the first implementation method from EXPRESS language and implemented successfully in CAD data. However, this text file consists of purely geometrical and topological data is hardly to be applied in machining process planning which requires machining features enriched data. The aim of this research is developing a new methodology to translate the EXPRESS language model of CAD STEP data into a new product data representation and enriched in machining features which is more beneficial to machining process planning. In this research, a target Database Management System (DBMS) was proposed for developing this system by using its fourth-generation tools that allow rapid development of applications through the provision of nonprocedural query language, reports generators, form generators, graphics generators, and application generators. The use of fourth-generation tools can improve productivity significantly and produce program that are easier to maintain. From this research, a new product data representation in a compact new table format is generated. Then this new product data representation has gone through a series of data enrichment process, such as normal face direction generation, edge convexity/concavity determination and machining features with transition feature recognition. Lastly, this new enriched product data representation is verified by generating to a new STEP standard data format which is according to ISO1030-224 standard format and providing an important part of solution for supporting STEP-compliant process planning and applications in milling process

Scherk-Schwarz Supersymmetry Breaking in 4D

Using the techniques of dimensional deconstruction, we present 4D models that fully reproduce the physics of 5D supersymmetric theories compactified on an S^1/Z_2 orbifold with general Scherk-Schwarz supersymmetry breaking (SSSB) boundary conditions. In contrast to previous approaches, our deconstruction involves only soft supersymmetry breaking. Deconstruction preserves many of the attractive features of SSSB without the cumbersome architecture of a full fifth dimension, ambiguity of the ultraviolet completion, or challenges associated with stabilizing a large radius of compactification. We proceed to deconstruct various five-dimensional models featuring Scherk-Schwarz boundary conditions, including folded supersymmetry.Comment: 21 pages with appendices, 6 figure

Optimal Energy Allocation for Wireless Communications with Energy Harvesting Constraints

We consider the use of energy harvesters, in place of conventional batteries with fixed energy storage, for point-to-point wireless communications. In addition to the challenge of transmitting in a channel with time selective fading, energy harvesters provide a perpetual but unreliable energy source. In this paper, we consider the problem of energy allocation over a finite horizon, taking into account channel conditions and energy sources that are time varying, so as to maximize the throughput. Two types of side information (SI) on the channel conditions and harvested energy are assumed to be available: causal SI (of the past and present slots) or full SI (of the past, present and future slots). We obtain structural results for the optimal energy allocation, via the use of dynamic programming and convex optimization techniques. In particular, if unlimited energy can be stored in the battery with harvested energy and the full SI is available, we prove the optimality of a water-filling energy allocation solution where the so-called water levels follow a staircase function.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publications at IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Semi-visible Jets: Dark Matter Undercover at the LHC

The dark matter may be a composite particle that is accessible via a weakly coupled portal. If these hidden-sector states are produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), they would undergo a QCD-like shower. This would result in a spray of stable invisible dark matter along with unstable states that decay back to the Standard Model. Such "semi-visible" jets arise, for example, when their production and decay are driven by a leptophobic $Z'$ resonance; the resulting signature is characterized by significant missing energy aligned along the direction of one of the jets. These events are vetoed by the current suite of searches employed by the LHC, resulting in low acceptance. This Letter will demonstrate that the transverse mass---computed using the final-state jets and the missing energy---provides a powerful discriminator between the signal and the QCD background. Assuming that the $Z'$ couples to the Standard Model quarks with the same strength as the $Z^0$, the proposed search can discover (exclude) $Z'$ masses up to 2.5 TeV (3.5 TeV) with 100 fb$^{-1}$ of 14 TeV data at the LHC.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. v3: Supplementary material and references added. Model changed from scalar to fermionic dark quarks and figures updated accordingly. Conclusions unchange

Wireless Information and Power Transfer: Architecture Design and Rate-Energy Tradeoff

Simultaneous information and power transfer over the wireless channels potentially offers great convenience to mobile users. Yet practical receiver designs impose technical constraints on its hardware realization, as practical circuits for harvesting energy from radio signals are not yet able to decode the carried information directly. To make theoretical progress, we propose a general receiver operation, namely, dynamic power splitting (DPS), which splits the received signal with adjustable power ratio for energy harvesting and information decoding, separately. Three special cases of DPS, namely, time switching (TS), static power splitting (SPS) and on-off power splitting (OPS) are investigated. The TS and SPS schemes can be treated as special cases of OPS. Moreover, we propose two types of practical receiver architectures, namely, separated versus integrated information and energy receivers. The integrated receiver integrates the front-end components of the separated receiver, thus achieving a smaller form factor. The rate-energy tradeoff for the two architectures are characterized by a so-called rate-energy (R-E) region. The optimal transmission strategy is derived to achieve different rate-energy tradeoffs. With receiver circuit power consumption taken into account, it is shown that the OPS scheme is optimal for both receivers. For the ideal case when the receiver circuit does not consume power, the SPS scheme is optimal for both receivers. In addition, we study the performance for the two types of receivers under a realistic system setup that employs practical modulation. Our results provide useful insights to the optimal practical receiver design for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT).Comment: to appear in IEEE Transactions on Communication