Increasing Endurance of an Autonomous Robot using an Immune-Inspired Framework

This paper describes the implementation of an online immune-inspired framework to help increase endurance of an autonomous robot. Endurance is defined as the ability of the robot to exert itself for a long period of time. The immune-inspired framework provides such capability by monitoring the behavior of the robot to ensure continuous and safe behavior. The immune-inspired framework combines innate and adaptive immune inspired algorithms. Innate uses a dendritic cell based innate immune algorithm, and adaptive uses an instance based B-cell approach. Results presented in this paper shows that when the robot is implemented with the immune-inspired framework, health and survivability of a robot is improved, therefore increasing its endurance

Adaptive and Online Health Monitoring System for Autonomous Aircraft

Good situation awareness is one of the key attributes required to maintain safe flight, especially for an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). Good situation awareness can be achieved by incorporating an Adaptive Health Monitoring System (AHMS) to the aircraft. The AHMS monitors the flight outcome or flight behaviours of the aircraft based on its external environmental conditions and the behaviour of its internal systems. The AHMS does this by associating a health value to the aircraft's behaviour based on the progression of its sensory values produced by the aircraft's modules, components and/or subsystems. The AHMS indicates erroneous flight behaviour when a deviation to this health information is produced. This will be useful for a UAS because the pilot is taken out of the control loop and is unaware of how the environment and/or faults are affecting the behaviour of the aircraft. The autonomous pilot can use this health information to help produce safer and securer flight behaviour or fault tolerance to the aircraft. This allows the aircraft to fly safely in whatever the environmental conditions. This health information can also be used to help increase the endurance of the aircraft. This paper describes how the AHMS performs its capabilities

Coalescence of Oil Droplets using Sponge-like Structure of Polyvinylidene Fluoride Membranes

This work reports the effect of the membrane pore size distribution on the oil droplets size distribution in permeate using the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes. The spongelike structures of the PVDF membranes were fabricated via the phase inversion technique using 30% v/v ethanol aqueous solution as coagulation medium. Water and polyethylene glycol (PEG1000) were used as the pore forming additives in the dope solutions. Microfiltration was employed to coalesce the oil droplets at the transmembrane pressure of 2.5 bar. Simulated alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) produced water was tested as the feed solution. Results revealed that the PVDF membranes with sponge-like structure were formed. The additives in the dope solutions have induced the membranes to become thicker due to more porous, spongy and resilient structure. The membrane pore sizes increased with the presence of the additives in the dope solutions especially when larger molecular weight of the additive, i.e., PEG1000 was used. The mode of the oil droplets radius increased from 61.2 nm in the feed solution to 95.1, 356.2 and 1335 nm in the permeates by the corresponding membranes without additive, with water and PEG1000 as the additives. The membranes with larger pore sizes as well as more open structure were able to trap and coalesce more oil droplets which produced larger size of the oil droplets in the permeates

Determining Characteristics of the Software Components Reusability for Component Based Software Development

Nowadays, due to the availability of many alternatives of common-off-the-shelf software components, Component-based Software Development (CBSD) is becoming a popular approach to software development. CBSD is the software development with the assembly of existing software components. There are many characteristics and sub characteristics for software component reusability available today. The challenge is how to determine the suitable characteristics and sub characteristics reusable component for CBSD. The aim of this study is to determine the suitability of characteristics and sub characteristics for software component reusability for CBSD. The survey is conducted among of software reuse practitioners at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. The finding from the empirical study conducted that involves software developers and practitioners as the respondents will be used in development of metrics for reusable component. This metrics can be used to measure the reusable component for CBSD

Seroprevalence of brucellosis among farmers and veterinary technical staff in Peninsular Malaysia

A study was conducted to determine the seroprevalence and risk factors associated with brucellosis in farmers, veterinary technical staff and other volunteers in Peninsular Malaysia using the One Health concept. A cross sectional study design was employed to sample a population of farmers and Veterinary technical staff on a volunteer basis. The Brucella Coombs test was used to elucidate the seroprevalence of brucellosis in the sampled population and the associated factors and predictors for brucellosis. The seroprevalence of brucellosis among farmers and non-farmers (veterinary technical staff and others) of 446 people studied was 1.35% (95% CI=0.28-2.42). Occupation, age and drinking unpasteurized milk were significant risk factors for brucellosis using multivariate logistic regression at 90% confidence level. The odds of having brucellosis increased by 7.19 times in farmers compared to non-farmers (90% CI=1.16, 44.71), it increased 7.16 times in individuals 40 years and below compared with those above 40 years old (90% CI=1.16, 44.41) and 4.45 times among those who drink unpasteurized milk compared to those who do not (90% CI= 1.03, 19.15). This study highlights the current state of human brucellosis in Malaysia among those groups that are occupationally at risk. A nationwide health education of the occupationally exposed population especially farmers may decrease the incidence of the infection and support the on-going eradication efforts of brucellosis in Malaysia

Nurse managers' experience with ethical issues in six government hospitals in Malaysia: A cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nurse managers have the burden of experiencing frequent ethical issues related to both their managerial and nursing care duties, according to previous international studies. However, no such study was published in Malaysia. The purpose of this study was to explore nurse managers' experience with ethical issues in six government hospitals in Malaysia including learning about the way they dealt with the issues.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was conducted in August-September, 2010 involving 417 (69.2%) of total 603 nurse managers in the six Malaysian government hospitals. Data were collected using three-part self-administered questionnaire. Part I was regarding participants' demographics. Part II was about the frequency and areas of management where ethical issues were experienced, and scoring of the importance of 11 pre-identified ethical issues. Part III asked how they dealt with ethical issues in general; ways to deal with the 11 pre-identified ethical issues, and perceived stress level. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and Pearson's Chi-square.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 397 (95.2%) participants experienced ethical issues and 47.2% experienced them on weekly to daily basis. Experiencing ethical issues were not associated with areas of practice. Top area of management where ethical issues were encountered was "staff management", but "patient care" related ethical issues were rated as most important. Majority would "discuss with other nurses" in dealing generally with the issues. For pre-identified ethical issues regarding "patient care", "discuss with doctors" was preferred. Only 18.1% referred issues to "ethics committees" and 53.0% to the code of ethics.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Nurse managers, regardless of their areas of practice, frequently experienced ethical issues. For dealing with these, team-approach needs to be emphasized. Proper understanding of the code of ethics is needed to provide basis for reasoning.</p

Activated carbon and halloysite nanotubes membrane for CO2 and CH4 separation

In this study, mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) were prepared where activated carbon and halloysite nanotubes with a loading of 1 wt% is incorporated into the polysulfone membrane, and the performance of each membrane was investigated. The morphological properties, mechanical strength and their correlations with the gas separation performance for CO2 and CH4 for halloysite-mixed matrix membrane (MMMs-HNT) and activated carbon-mixed matrix membrane (MMMs-AC) was studied by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM-EDX), tensile test and gas permeation test. From the characterization of MMMs, SEM shows an increase of 30.77% on the thickness of the dense layer of MMMs-HNTs compared to neat membrane and MMMs-AC. The EDX results also showed that HNTs evenly distributed in the polymeric matrix without any sign of agglomeration. Elongation at the break for MMMs-HNTs also decreases to 11.38%. The gas separation performance for MMMs-HNTs increased by about 55.43% compared to MMMs-AC at 2 bar. Furthermore, MMMs-HNTs also showed in increase in the selectivity of membrane towards CO2 and CH4 from 0.82 to 15.83 at 2 bar. In conclusion, the addition of 1 wt% of HNTs into PSF polymeric matrix showed a better permeance of CO2 and a greater selectivity compared to the neat membrane and the MMMs-AC and thus is the optimum inorganic filler for the mixed matrix membrane

Adsorption of ammonium ion using zeolite, chitosan, bleached fibre and activated carbon

Several materials have been studied for the adsorption of ammonium ion from synthetic solution. Zeolite is having the highest adsorption capacity (3.160 mg/g) with fast reaction time followed by chitosan (2.5770 mg/g). Activated carbon derived from Tarap (Artocarpus odoratissimus) and rice husk shows better performance than the low-cost bleached fibre