Tax compliance cost of bumiputera small and medium enterprises in Northern Malaysia

This paper explores and measures the level of tax compliance costs among Bumiputera small and medium enterprises in the Northern Region of Malaysia for the year of assessment 2003. The findings revealed that the tax compliance costs have a significant relationship with the paid up capital(size of enterprises). Overall, the tax compliance cost of Bumiputera small and medium enterprises was RM880,110 for the assessment year 2003. Furthermore tax compliance cost of smaller Bumiputera enterprises amounted to RM413,670 while the larger Bumiputera enterprises was RM466,440.The average tax compliance cost is RM22,003. Most of the large Bumiputera enterprises incurred more external tax compliance costs than internal compliance costs (62.34%) compared to the smaller Bumiputera enterprises (37.66%). In contrast, the smaller Bumiputera enterprises incurred more internal tax compliance costs of about 83% as compared to external tax compliance costs (17%). The results also indicated that small Bumiputera enterprises have a higher percentage of tax compliance costs based on tax revenue, which is 2.57 times more compared to large Bumiputera enterprises,which amounted to only 0.46 times

Intrusion detection on the in-vehicle network using machine learning

Controller Area Network (CAN) is a protocol for the in-vehicle network that connects microcontrollers called Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and other components in a vehicle so that they may communicate among themselves and control the operations of the vehicle. The CAN protocol was initially not designed with security in mind, but as modern vehicles are increasingly becoming connected to the outside world through wired and wireless interfaces, the CAN bus has become susceptible to intrusions and attacks such as message injection, replay attacks, denial of service (DoS) attacks, and eavesdropping. This paper presents an intrusion detection method based on the Isolation Forest (iForest) algorithm that detects message insertion attacks using message timing information. The resulting intrusion detection system benefits from the linear time complexity and low memory requirement of the iForest algorithm, as well as the ability to train the classifier with only a small sample of normal CAN traffic. The usage of only timing information for intrusion detection makes it a vehicle-agnostic method that does not rely on the message content, which is often proprietary and confidential information. The intrusion detection system was trained with normal CAN traffic trace and tested with two spoof attack CAN datasets. The high values obtained for the Area Under Curve (AUC) measure in the two cases, 0.966 and 0.974, indicated the effectiveness of this approach for intrusion detectio

Log Your Car:The Non-invasive Vehicle Forensics

Digital forensics is becoming an important feature for many embedded devices. In automotive systems, digital forensics involves multiple electronic control units (ECUs) used to support the connected and intelligent vehicle’s technology. Digital evidence from these ECUs can be used in forensics investigation and analysis. Such a mechanism can potentially facilitate crash investigation, insurance claims and crime investigation. Issues related to forensics include the authenticity, integrity and privacy of the data. In this paper, the security of the forensic process and data in automotive systems is analysed. We propose an efficient, secure, privacy-preserving and reliable mechanism to provide a forensics data collection and storage process. A diagnostic application for smart phones, DiaLOG, is incorporated in the proposed process that uses a secure protocol to communicate the collected forensic data to a secure cloud storage. The proposed protocol for communicating forensic data is implemented to measure performance results and formally analysed using Scyther and CasperFDR with no known attack found

Tax Compliance Costs of Bumiputera Small and Medium Enterprises in Northern Malaysia

This paper explores and measures the level of tax compliance costs among Bumiputera small and medium enterprises in the Northern Region of Malaysia for the year of assessment 2003. The findings revealed that the tax compliance costs have a significant relationship with the paid up capital (size of enterprises). Overall, the tax compliance cost of Bumiputera small and medium enterprises was RM880,110 for the assessment year 2003. Furthermore tax compliance cost of smaller Bumiputera enterprises amounted to RM413,670 while the larger Bumiputera enterprises was RM466,440. The average tax compliance cost is RM22,003. Most of the large Bumiputera enterprises incurred more external tax compliance costs than internal compliance costs (62.34%) compared to the smaller Bumiputera enterprises (37.66%). In contrast, the smaller Bumiputera enterprises incurred more internal tax compliance costs of about 83% as compared to external tax compliance costs (17%). The results also indicated that small Bumiputera enterprises have a higher percentage of tax compliance costs based on tax revenue, which is 2.57 times more compared to large Bumiputera enterprises, which amounted to only 0.46 times.

“Forent – Vehicle forensics for car rental system”

Car rental agencies primarily serve people who require temporary vehicles. However, many car rental damage scam cases involving car renter fail to present any evidence and being unfairly charged, for the damage that did not happen during rental. Concerning the current car rental systems that only allow customers to inspect the physical condition of the car, the objective of this project is to develop a mobile application for car rental system, FoRent, that implements the car diagnostic features. Through this system, the car owner and car renter will be able to record the physical condition and retrieve forensic data of the car using ELM327 device, before signing the rental agreement. In order to reduce security risk, this project introduces a security protocol to provide the integrity and availability of the data in FoRent. Enhancing the existing paper-and-pen car rental system, FoRent is remarkable as it introduces these special features that meet the requirement of the car rental company and customers

Effect of surfactants on plasmid DNA stability and release from Poly (D, L-lactide-co-glycolide) microspheres

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of surfactants on plasmid DNA during preparation and release from polylactic glycolide (PLGA) microspheres. Methods: Various surfactants, both ionic and non-ionic (Span, Tween, Triton X100, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide and sodium dodecyl sulphate), were added during the microsphere preparation and their effect was evaluated. Supercoil index (SCI) was introduced as a harmonised value derived from encapsulation efficiency and supercoil preservation efficiency in order to evaluate the impact of different surfactants on pDNA encapsulation. Results: Polyvinyl alcohol and Span revealed low SCI whereas Tween increased the SCI in a fraction- dependent manner. The Tween blend of hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB) of 16 and Triton X-100 (HLB = 13.5) showed the highest SCI. Span revealed high burst release of pDNA whereas Triton X-100 exhibited low burst release. Following the burst release, diffusion mechanism was found to predominate in DNA release. Conclusion: The microspheres were non-toxic to the neuro-2a cells which suggest they can be potentially used in the gene therapy of neuronal diseases

Comparative assessment of plasmid DNA delivery by encapsulation within or adsorbed on poly (D, L-lactide-co-glycolide) nanoparticles

Purpose: To compare the gene delivery effectiveness of plasmid DNA (pDNA) encapsulated within poly (D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) nanoparticles with that adsorbed on PLGA nanoparticles. Methods: PLGA nanoparticles were prepared using solvent-evaporation method. To encapsulate pDNA within the particles, it was first complexed with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and then added to the oil phase during the synthesis. For the adsorption, PLGA nanoparticles were first modified with either CTAB or chitosan and then pDNA was adsorbed on the particle surface by electrostatic interaction. Results: Nanoparticles encapsulating pDNA exhibited better plasmid loading and protection with significantly lower burst release (p < 0.05) compared to that of the nanoparticles with adsorbed plasmid. Cell uptake of chitosan-modified nanoparticles by murine neuroblastoma (N2a) cells was significantly (p < 0.05) higher than that of chitosan-free nanoparticles. Nanoparticles encapsulating pDNA showed higher transfection efficiency (p < 0.05) in N2a cells. Conclusion: Encapsulation of pDNA within PLGA nanoparticles presents a potential strategy for gene delivery that is superior to pDNA adsorbed on the nanoparticle surface. In addition, encapsulation keeps the particle surface free for further modifications such as the addition of targeting ligands

Stress recognition using photoplethysmogram signal

This study proposed a novel method of stress recognition using photopletysmogram (PPG) signal. PPG devices are now widely used because it is convenient, low powered, cheap and also easy to handle due to its small size. A total of 5 subjects were involved in this study. The PPG signals were taken in resting condition using pulse oximetry. The subject then goes through a stressor test in order to record the physiological changes. The data were collected before and after the test was conducted and later extracted. These samples were then categorised using classification techniques to differentiate between normal and stress condition. Based on the experimentation results, the systolic peak value differences of normal and stress conditions are evident.Therefore, the outcome of this study suggest the reliability of implementing PPG signal for stress recognition. Keywords: Photoplethysmogram (PPG), stress, systoli