The Practice of Halal Concept among Food Premises in Perlis: The Hygiene Perspective

The term halal is well known in Malaysia, especially in Muslim society. However, the practice of halal concept among Muslim food operators is questionable and doubtful.  The cleanliness aspect of hygiene is one of the main aspects that contributed to the concept of halal in Islam, besides the aspect of pure, safety and quality. There are many issues and cases reported in the media regarding the cleanliness of the food premises in Malaysia. Many cases of food poisoning originated from poor food preparation and improper cleaning by the food premise operators themselves. These practices could lead to serious contamination and food poisoning to customers. Thus, this study is conducted to examine the practice of halal concept in the aspect of hygiene among food premises. The study is qualitative based research by adopting a phenomenology approach. Data was collected through an in-depth interview with six food premise operators in Perlis.  Data are analyzed using the inductive analysis approach by using Creswell analysis. Results showed that only one of the informants did not apply the hygiene practice very well. Overall, all of the informants have good understanding and awareness in practicing the halal concept at their food premises. Thus, high awareness and commitment about the practice of hygiene in the halal concept are needed especially to food premise operators. The municipal authority and health department should enhance their monitoring enforcement towards the operations of food premises to make sure all food premises apply good hygiene practices in their daily operation

Calcul de la capacité portante des murs en maçonnerie de petits éléments sous charges verticales

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Numerical study of near-field pollutant dispersion around a building complex emitted from a rooftop stack

The topic of environmental pollution is of special significance in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) especially in urban areas as it is one of the significant sources of poor indoor air quality due to contamination of fresh-air intakes. In city centres where external air pollution levels are relatively high, it is usually assumed that natural ventilation may not be able to provide adequate indoor air quality. Therefore mechanical ventilation and air-conditioning systems are thus being solicited to "clean" the incoming air (Kukadia and Palmer, 1998). There is evidence that such systems do not always provide clean fresh-air to the occupants of the building since several contaminants from nearby outside sources exist (e.g. vehicle exhaust, rooftop stack exhaust, wind-blown dust). Control of the pollutant sources and understanding the dispersion mechanisms, therefore, shall be considered as the first alternative to evaluate better these harmful phenomena. This thesis focuses on dispersion and transportation of pollutant emissions from a building rooftop stack situated in the wake of a neighbouring tower using numerical simulation approach. The main objective of this work is to contribute to the "best-practice" of numerical modelling for dispersion studies. For that, wind tunnel tests as well as full-scale experiments are numerically reproduced to shed light on the uncertainties related to the complex dispersion phenomenon when using CFD simulations. In the first study of this thesis, the behaviour of the flow and pollutant concentration fields around the two-building configuration are investigated by means of various k − �e turbulence models (i.e. standard, re-normalization group (RNG) and realizable k −� e models). The results show that the realizable k − �e model yields the best agreement with wind tunnel experimental data for lower stack height and smaller momentum ratio, while the RNG k −� e model performs best for taller stacks. Despite an overestimation of concentrations using the realizable k − e �model, it remains the only model that provides the correct trend of concentration distribution in the lower region between the two buildings. Based on this finding, the second study deals with the ability of CFD to simulate controlled (wind tunnel scale) and non-controlled (fullscale) environments using realizable k − e � model. This study details also the main steps for conducting consistent and reliable numerical simulations for dispersion studies. Additionally, CFD is shown to simulate better controlled environments than non-controlled environments. The third study investigates the influence of two important parameters related to the pollutant exhaust source, i.e. stack height and pollutant exhaust velocity, on the concentration fields measured in the wind tunnel. The results show that increasing the stack height has an effect that is similar to increasing the pollutant exhaust velocity on the concentration distributions and that such effect depends upon the wall of the building under consideration. In addition,recommendations on fresh-air intake locations for the two buildings are provided. In the final study, an unsteady turbulence model (i.e. detached-eddy simulation) is tested to evaluate the flow-field and the dispersion field around the two-building configuration. The results show that the flow fluctuation capture is crucial to address better the dispersion in the wake of buildings. Consequently, the strengths of using an unsteady approach are compared to RANS methodology which provides however good results far from the exhaust source. The results of this extensive research support the use of an unsteady methodology in future works

Factors contributing to customer satisfaction toward claim services in Anika Insurance Brokers Sdn Bhd / Mohd Amri Yusof Lateb

The research entitled “Factors Contributing to Customer Satisfaction toward Claim Services in Anika Insurance Brokers Sdn Bhd” is conducted with four objectives mainly which the first objective is to measure the level of customer satisfaction towards claim services provided by Anika Insurance Brokers, second is to identify the most important factors that contributes to customer satisfaction toward claim services provided by Anika Insurance Brokers, third is to determine the direction of relationship between Service Quality and Commitment toward Customer Satisfaction and the last objective is to determine the direction of relationship between Knowledge and Efficiency toward Customer Satisfaction. Respondents that involve in this research study are mainly clients of Anika Insurance Brokers Sdn Bhd that having a claim history with Anika with 50 questionnaires were distributed toward them. At the end of this research, researcher found that all of the independent variable is trust to be the important factors that contribute towards customer satisfaction among clients of Anika Insurance Brokers Sdn Bhd

The practice of halal concept among food premises in Perlis

Even though the term halal is already known in this society, the practice of halal concept is not well understood by people especially the Muslim food operators in this country. Thus, this study was conducted to explore the practice of halal concept among food premise in Perlis. Its objective is to explore the concept of halal applied in Malaysia Halal Certification and to identify the practice of halal concept among food premises in Perlis. This study is a qualitative research using a phenomenology approach. Data collection was conducted by using document analysis using Manual Procedure for Malaysia Halal Certification (Third Revision) 2014 (MPPHM 2014) and followed by field interviews of six informants of food premise operators in Perlis. Data will be analyzed using the inductive analysis approach by using Creswell analysis. The halal concept and the practice of halal concept are divided into four aspects which are pure, hygiene, safe and quality. It was found that all of the informants have applied those four elements of halal concept except for only one informant who did not practicing the hygiene element correctly. Overall, all of the informants have good understanding and awareness in practicing the halal concept at their food premise. Thus, high awareness and commitement about halal concept is needed especially to food premise operators so that all those four elements of halal concept is been practicing in the best manner

Simulation of Near-field Dispersion of Pollutants Using Detached-Eddy Simulation

A numerical simulation is developed using the unsteady-state turbulence model on a structured highly refined grid to predict the wind-flow field and dispersion field of a pollutant emitted from a rooftop stack around a two-building configuration. The results obtained are compared with those of a steady-state model previously reported by the authors. The pollutant concentrations are examined on the roof where the stack is located as well as on the leeward wall of an upstream tower to the emitting building in order to evaluate how the pollutant is dispersed by the DES model compared to RNG model. DES results are discussed against those from RNG k–ε approach and wind tunnel. The study emphasises limits in reproducing correctly the wind flow and dispersion fields due to underestimation and/or overestimation of the Reynolds stress components and the steady-state methodology when using the RNG k–ε model. Despite such limits, the RNG model produces a similar average error, in terms of concentrations, to that obtained with the DES model

Effect of Stack Height and Exhaust Velocity on Pollutant Dispersion in the Wake of a Building

The dispersion of pollutants exhausted from a building roof stack located in the wake of a tower is investigated by means of the realizable k–ɛ turbulence model. Variations in stack height and pollutant exhaust velocity are considered to assess their influence on the distribution of pollutant concentrations in the neighbourhood of the emitting building. In order to determine optimum locations for fresh-air intakes, the worst case is considered, namely when the wind originates directly upstream of the tower and places the emitting building in its wake. Special attention is given to the evolution of the plume and distribution of pollutant concentrations on the roof and windward wall of the emitting building, as well as on the leeward wall of the upwind tower. Simulation results are compared to wind tunnel experiments conducted in a boundary layer wind tunnel. For this particular configuration, the paper shows that increasing the stack height has an effect similar to that obtained by increasing the momentum ratio, but with some differences, depending upon which wall of the two buildings is considered. On the emitting building, the leeward wall has the lowest concentration values for all stack heights and momentum ratios considered; thus this is the best location for fresh-air intakes. However, for the tower, fresh-air intakes should not be located on the leeward wall due to high pollutant concentrations. The results show completely different pollutant dispersion patterns from those for an isolated building. This highlights the importance of accounting for structures that lie in close proximity to the emitting building

Numerical Simulation of Pollutant Dispersion around Building Complex. Building and Environment

The dispersion of exhausted pollutants from a building roof stack situated in the wake of a neighbouring tower has been studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with the realizable k–ɛ turbulence model for closure. Two scales are considered in this work, full-scale (1:1) and wind tunnel scale (1:200). Of primary interest are the distributions of the plume and of the pollutant concentrations on the building roof as well as on the leeward wall of the tower. Two stack heights and pollutant exhaust velocities have been considered for the distribution of pollutant concentrations in the neighbourhood of the building from which the pollutant is emitted. Results are compared with measurements from field and wind tunnel experiments to estimate the accuracy of simulations