Sailing the Archipelago in a Boat of Rhymes Pantun in the Malay World

The extremely popular poetic form from Insular Southeast Asia, the pantun, travelled from its unknown source throughout the Malay Archipelago, first in Malay, then in the languages of Southeast Asia. In the ports and states where they were received, local colour, other idiosyncrasies, references, and linguistic characteristics have been added, and in fact, special forms with special names developed. This basic form is known, composed, and loved in at least 40 dialects of Malay, and 35 non-Malay languages, in the Peninsula and many of the islands of Malaysia and Indonesia. It spread through trade routes, ports, and also via diasporas and colonial economic projects which caused numerous peoples to move, who in turn brought the pantun along with them. It is now the most dynamic single literary form and has the longest history

Recent Trends in Islamic Revivalism in Malaysia

The focus of the article is on the trends of Islamic revivalism before the sacking of Anwar, though where necessary, the Anwar issue has been mentioned briefly for reference. Specifically, this paper attempts, firstly, to understand the trend of Islamic revivalism before the Anwar Ibrahim episode; secondly, to analyze the factors and reasons that culminated in the changing of approach from confrontational to non-confrontational; and thirdly, to seek answers to several vital questions relating to the form of Islamic revivalism in the country that has been molded by this developing trend. Since these findings are based on on-going researchs the arguments embodied in this paper should be considered rather preliminary.DOI: 10.15408/sdi.v6i2.73

A new multistage lattice vector quantization with adaptive subband thresholding for image compression

Lattice vector quantization (LVQ) reduces coding complexity and computation due to its regular structure. A new multistage LVQ (MLVQ) using an adaptive subband thresholding technique is presented and applied to image compression. The technique concentrates on reducing the quantization error of the quantized vectors by "blowing out" the residual quantization errors with an LVQ scale factor. The significant coefficients of each subband are identified using an optimum adaptive thresholding scheme for each subband. A variable length coding procedure using Golomb codes is used to compress the codebook index which produces a very efficient and fast technique for entropy coding. Experimental results using the MLVQ are shown to be significantly better than JPEG 2000 and the recent VQ techniques for various test images

Multiple Description Coding Using A New Bitplane-LVQ Scheme.

In this paper, a novel Bitplane-LVQ technique to compress subbands bitplane coefficients is proposed for multiple description coding (MDC) system

Optical Fiber Bending Detection on Long Distance OPGW using OTDR

In Malaysia, thousands of kilometers of Optical Ground Wire (OPGW) have been installed by a utility company. For long distance fiber cable, there is a possibility of optical fiber to bend with very small radius especially in joint closures which caused optical power to attenuate. This attenuation is known as ‘bend losses. Bend loss increases the total power attenuation of optical fiber. In addition, for long distance fiber cable, it is important to avoid any extra loss as the fiber itself attenuates 0.2 to 0.35 dB/km and splice loss about 0.1 dB each. Hence, in this study, the method of detecting bend loss as well as optical fiber bending is presented. The result of this study is expected to allow fiber industry players to determine the exact location and proper rectification can be done to solve bend loss problem

Regionalization and harmonization in TVET

A transversal skill is one of the skills needed in every type of workplace setting. There is limited information about the perceptions of which transferable skills are needed in the workplace. The objective of this study is to explore the transferable skills among students and lecturers in TVET higher learning institutions in Indonesia and Malaysia. In the present study, transferable skills consist of communication skills, collaboration skills, problem-solving skills, entrepreneurship, and learning to learn skills. A qualitative research was conducted using survey. The five Likert scale questionnaire was distributed to lecturers and students from selected Malaysian and Indonesian universities who have bachelor program in engineering. Based on the analysis outcomes, it is clearly shown that Malaysian university engineering students yielded significantly higher scores on the perceptions of transferable skill acquisition in all measured components compared to their counterparts in Indonesia. Similar patterns of data distribution have been observed in Malaysian and Indonesian engineering students. Based on the lecturers’ perception, Malaysian and Indonesian Engineering Lecturers have comparable perceptions in the aspects of problem solving skills and entrepreneurship skills. In contrast, Malaysian university engineering lecturers gained significantly higher scores on the perception of communication skill, collaboration skill, and learning to learn skill compared to the Indonesian lecturers. The results indicate the need to increase transferable skills of both lecturers and students