A simulation study of single cell inside an integrated dual nanoneedle-microfludic system

Electrical properties of living cells have been proven to play significant roles in understanding of various biological activities including disease progression both at the cellular and molecular levels. Analyzing the cell’s electrical states especially in single cell analysis (SCA) lead to differentiate between normal cell and cancer cell. This paper presents a simulation study of micro-channel and nanoneedle structure, fluid manipulation and current flow through HeLa cell inside a microfluidic channel. To perform electrical measurement, gold dual nanoneedle has been utilized. The simulation result revealed, the cell penetration occurs at microchannel dimension and solution flow rate is 22 µm x 70 µm x 25 µm (width x length x height) and 0.396 pL/min, respectively. The purposed device has capability to characterize the electrical property of single cells can be used as a novel method for cell viability detection in instantaneous manner

Mechanical performance of roselle/sugar palm fiber hybrid reinforced polyurethane composites

The effect of sugar palm fiber (SPF) loading was studied relative to the mechanical properties of roselle (RF)/SPF/thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) hybrid composites. RF/SPF/TPU hybrid composites were fabricated at different weight ratios (100:0, 75:25, 50:50, 25:75, and 0:100) by melt mixing and hot compression. The mechanical (tensile, flexural, and impact test) and morphological properties of tensile fractured samples were examined using a universal testing machine, impact machine, and scanning electron microscope. It was found that the hybridization of RF/SPF increased its impact strength corresponding to the increases in the SPF content of the composites. The tensile and flexural properties of the hybrid composites decreased due to poor interfacial bonding between the fiber and matrix. Scanning electron micrographs of the tensile fractured surface of the RF/SPF hybrid composites revealed fiber pullouts and poor adhesion bonding. In conclusion, the hybridization of SPF with RF/TPU composites enhanced its impact strength while decreasing the tensile and flexural strength

Measurement of the area and diameter of human pupil using Matlab

This paper presents the simple guide of measuring the area and diameter of human pupil using the MATLAB. The pupil measurement and recognition system is very useful in biometric field because the measurement of pupil is unique and is different for each person. The image of eye use in this work is an image that has been downloaded from CASIA Iris Image Database. The image is converted into the binary image and estimated the threshold value of the dark region. After several steps, the result of diameter and area of pupil have been successful calculated in the pixel unit. The measurement is converted in millimeter (mm) unit, and the result is displayed using Graphical User Interface (GUI). It shows that from five samples, different people have different area and diameter of the pupil, and this is the reason why it could be use in biometric field like fingerprint recognition

Implementation of Single Minutes of Exchange Die (SMED) in Malaysia Metal Stamping Industry: A Case Study

Downtime loss due to long set-up time will lead to shorter actual production time. This situation will result in a loss to the company because they could not produce their products as planned. Therefore, set-up time needs to be reduced to maximize the resources invested by the company. The most popular approach to is an approach to improve setup time is Single Minutes of Exchange Die (SMED), developed by Shigeo Shingo in early 1960s. Setup operations were divided by into fundamental types; Internal setup and External setup. By Converting Internal setup to External setup, the company can reduced the setup time and thus, lead to longer actual production time. This paper presents an afford of a Malaysia’s metal stamping company in implementing SMED in their company. The company is a supplier of passenger car’s components to Malaysia’s major car makers. The implementation was carried out by separating Internal and External Setup, converting Internal to External Setup and finally streamlining all aspects of the setup operation. After implemented SMED approach, the company managed to reduce their set-up time from 32 minutes to 12 minutes. However, the company still working hard to achieve the objective of SMED, which is to complete all changeovers are in a single number of minutes or less than 10 minutes

Dual element MIMO planar inverted-F antenna for 5G millimeter wave application

This work presents a 28 GHz Dual Element Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) Planar Inverted-F Antenna for millimeter wave 5G mobile terminal. The antenna design employs PIFA design concept as it is a common antenna type use for mobile phone as it provides wide bandwidth and good performance. The antenna design begins with a characterization of the single element PIFA design and then extended to Dual Element MIMO PIFA design. The single element PIFA design is enhanced to MIMO design by extending the ground plane and locate the second PIFA at the other end. Isolation between the antenna elements of the MIMO PIFA is analyzed by varying the gap distance between the antenna elements. The result for Envelope Correlation Coefficient, Diversity Gain and Multiplexing Efficiency is also presented. The simulation computed using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Microwave Studio software

Employee retention in the Malaysian banking industry: Do flexible practices work?

The objective of the study was to determine whether employee retention in Malaysian banks can be improved through flexible working. Using a quantitative approach, the effects of five types of flexible working practice, i.e. flex time, job sharing, flex leave, flex career and flex place, on employee retention were examined. The results suggest that only flex time has a positive significant effect on employee retention, while the effects of other flexible practices are unstable. Unlike most studies which generally demonstrate the positive effects of flexible working on employee retention, the current one indicates that the effectiveness of each flexible practice is influenced by contextual factors. These findings underline the importance of further studies comparing societies of different cultural, political, economic and technological backgrounds. They have also raised the need to re examine human resource management and organizational culture in the Malaysian work environment. Challenges lie in developing a flexible environment which values continuous learning, trust, accountability and strong corporate governance

Optimizing Economic Load Dispatch with Renewable Energy Sources via Differential Evolution Immunized Ant Colony Optimization Technique

Recently, renewable energy (RE) has become a trend in power generation. It is slowly evolving from an alternative energy source into the main energy source. The technology is currently working as an auxiliary to the existing generators. Demands for electricity is expanding rapidly nowadays, which require generators to run near its operation limit. This activity put grieve risk to the generators. Nonetheless, the extensive analysis should be conducted upon RE integration into the existing power system. This paper assesses its economic impact on the power system. Setting up RE technology such as photovoltaic and wind turbine are costly, yet may reduce generator’s fuel cost in the long run. Thus, economic load dispatch (ELD) is conducted to compute the operating cost of power system with the integration of RE system. In this study, the operating cost represents the fuel cost of conventional fossil-fuel generators. Furthermore, a novel optimization technique namely Differential Evolution Immunized Ant Colony Optimization is proposed as the optimization engine. Comparative studies are conducted to assess the performance of the proposed approach

Simplification of wastes for a warehouse using Boolean logic: A conceptual paper

Warehouse accumulate wastes consisting of inventory, waiting and transportation. However, the existence of warehouse will increase the operation expenditure and can lead to profit losses. Therefore, manufacturers need to identify and minimize wastes to reduce the consumption of resources and keep minimum inventory in the warehouse. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is an approach to minimize waste. This tool visualizes the information and material flow of manufacturing activities. The development of a model based from VSM determined the current state of wastes in a warehouse. From the information flow, the optimum combination of wastes was determined through Boolean concept. The wastes are simplified and combined by passing through the Boolean operators consist of AND Gate and OR Gate. The outcomes of this paper is to propose a conceptual model of new VSM to identify and minimize wastes in a warehouse. At the same time, to propose a method that can cater for time consumed in every activity which differs from one station to another