Analysis of program outcomes attainment for diploma in civil engineering at Universiti Teknologi MARA Pahang

Analysis of program outcomes involves the assessment of the learning objectives based on cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains and their attainment is measured using both direct and indirect approaches. This study aims to assess the program outcomes attainment for the civil engineering diploma program at Universiti Teknologi MARA Pahang. The program outcomes attainment in this study was obtained from two categories of students based on cohort 20174 using the Plan ID 6541, namely i) 257 graduated on-time students and ii) 365 overall students including extended students. The attainments were analyzed quantitatively using key performance indicators for each program outcome and program performance indicators for the overall attainment of program outcomes. Based on the key performance indicator, the results reveal that nine program outcomes are indicated as excellent while three program outcomes are indicated as good. Meanwhile, based on the program performance indicator, this cohort is indicated as well performed where 9 out of 12 program outcomes recorded above 70% average attainment. Various effective continuous quality improvement (CQI) program can be identified by the school’s committee based on these findings to further enhance the program outcomes attainment

Performance evaluation of task scheduling using hybrid meta-heuristic in heterogeneous cloud environment

Cloud computing is a ubiquitous platform that offers a wide range of online services to clients including but not limited to information and software over the Internet. It is an essential role of cloud computing to enable sharing of resources on-demand over the network including servers, applications, storage, services, and database to the end-users who are remotely connected to the network. Task scheduling is one of the significant function in the cloud computing environment which plays a vital role to sustain the performance of the system and improve its efficiency. Task scheduling is considered as an NP-complete problem in many contexts, however, the heterogeneity of resources in the cloud environment negatively influence on the job scheduling process. Furthermore, on the other side, the heuristic algorithms have satisfying performance but unable to achieve the desired level of efficiency for optimizing the scheduling in a cloud environment. Thus, this paper aims at evaluating the effectiveness of the hybrid meta-heuristic that incorporate genetic algorithm along with DE algorithm (GA-DE) in terms of make-span. In addition, the paper also intends to enhance the performance of the task scheduling in the heterogeneous cloud environment exploiting the scientific workflows (Cybershake, Montage, and Epigenomics). The proposed algorithm (GA-DE) has been compared against three heuristic algorithms, namely: HEFT-Upward Rank, HEFT – Downward Rank, and HEFT – Level Rank. The simulation results prove that the proposed algorithm (GA-DE) outperforms the other existing algorithms in all cases in terms of make-span

Trust-aware scheduling for tasks with precedence constraints in heterogeneous distributed computing

Demands for reliability in distributed computing systems have become extremely important now a days due to strong requirements imposed by the dynamic behaviour of user and resource communities. With the increasing number of entities in the distributed systems, inadequate information and unsuccessful accessibility have becoming critical factors that impact system performance. We present an adaptive scheduling which attempts to improve system reliability. Specifically, our scheduling approach combines trust-based matching scheme with robust mapping rules to deal with diverse processing requirements and heterogeneous resources. Simulation experiments proved the efficacy of our approach in achieving better system performance and implicitly help to gain reliable and cost-effective computation

In vitro antiplasmodial properties of selected plants of Sabah

The antiplasmodial activity of the crude extracts of thirty plant species collected from Sabah was evaluated using chloroquine-sensitive strain (D10) and chloroquine-resistant strain (Gombak A) of Plasmodium falciparum. Significant activities were observed for the bark extract of Polyalthia insignis (IC50 3.89 and 11.89 µg/ml against Gombak A and D10, respectively), the leaf extracts of Kopsia dasyrachis (4.62 µg/ml against Gombak A) and Litsea elliptibacea (IC50 8.88 µg/ml against Gombak A), as well as the leaf and bark extracts of Neouvaria acuminatissima (IC50 6.90-10.08 and 0.69 µg/ml against Gombak A and D10, respectively), and the bark extract of Polyalthia microtus (IC50 9.0 and 12.12 µg/ml against Gombak A and D10, respectively)

Screening of cellulolytic and xylanolytic fungi for enzymes cocktail studies of ganoderma boninense inhibition

Ganoderma boninense is a basidiomycetes white rot fungus which causes basal stem rot (BSR), one major disease in oil palm plantation in Malaysia. The objective of the present study was to screen the most potential fungus that has a capability to produce crude xylanase and cellulase to be used as a biological control for Ganoderma boninense. Twenty four different strains of fungi were obtained from the Biorefinery Technology Research Laboratory of Faculty Biosciences and Medical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor. They were screened for their potential to degrade cellulose and hemicelluloses. The screening of the fungi were based on the diameter of holozones on red color of congo red and the formation of yellow-opaque area on the carboxymethlycellulose(CMC) and xylan agar, respectively. Among these strains, five potential fungi which showed the maximum enzyme activities for endoglucanase (CMCase), filter paper degrading enzyme (FPase), beta-glucosidase, xylanase and reducing sugar were selected to produce enzyme cocktail on untreated oil palm trunk will be further study through its performance in solid state fermentation. The potential enzyme producers from fungi were CT2, Pycnoporus cinnabarinus, EFB1, EFB2 and TG6 that produced 304.04 U/g of CMCase, 13.25 U/g of FPase, 83.15 U/g for ß-glucosidase,523.10 U/g of xylanase and 164.04 U/g of reducing sugar respectively. Cellulase and xylanase cocktail produced from these five fungi were mixed and applied on the Ganoderma boninense at ratio 1:1:1:1:1 were made up to 0.025mL in the culture plates. However, the inhibition of Ganoderma boninense when treated with cellulase and xylanase cocktail was undetected in this study

Evaluation of Programme Outcomes Under the Psychomotor and Affective Domain for Diploma Civil Engineering Students Through Industrial Training: A Statistical Study from Employers' Perspective in Malaysia

The psychomotor and affective are important domains in Programme Out-comes (PO) and are used to assess the achievement of learning objectives. The psychomotor domain refers to performing motor activities accurately, smoothly, and quickly. The affective components are those personality and behavioural characteristics which focuses on feelings, emotions, and attitudes. Through industrial training, students are exposed to engineering practices, the real civil engineering environments and the ethical and communication skill required. This paper identified the employer's perspective on the students’ attainment for psychomotor and affective domains while undergoing industrial training. There were 272 students are involved in this study that undergoing the Industrial Training in session II 2019/2020. The portion of marks from the industry evaluation for the psychomotor domain is 40% and for the af-fective domain is 10%. The marks were analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis to measure student’s performance. The Pearson correlation (r) was used to identify the relationship between each POs with related domain and the t-test analysis was completed to evaluate any significant difference be-tween the performance evaluation of male and female students. The result shows that most of the students were excellent in the psychomotor and affective domain. The r-value for each POs shows a moderately positive correlation. Therefore, the outcomes of this study can provide input to the faculty to improve the important elements of the psychomotor and affective domain to produce good quality of future civil engineering technical personnel

UNIMAS MOOC: Fundamentals of Management

https://www.openlearning.com/courses/fundamentals-of-management-unima

Factors affecting SMEs successful utilization of tax incentives in manufacturing sectors / Nadiah Abd Hamid, Rohaya Mohd Noor and Mustaffa Mohamed Zain.

This study aimed to determine the key factors associated with successful utilization of tax incentive and to further investigate which factors were significant via the logistic approach. Using the convenient sampling, 125 SMEs in the manufacturing sector were selected as samples. The findings showed four factors; capital investment, business strategies, government support and environment were significant in attributing to successful utilization of tax incentives. A further analysis using the logistic approach was extended to determine the underlying factors of why some SMEs were able to utilize the tax incentives, whilst others were not. The results from the logistic approach revealed that factors related to the governance of companies had significant influence on the ability of the company to effectively utilize the tax incentives. This study used both primary and secondary data and employed methods, such as, survey and real financial data analysis retrieved from companies’ financial statements

Career Consultation as an Intervention Strategy in Alleviating Family’s Mental Health: A Case Study on Students with Disabilities

Relevant information is critical in assisting families and teachers to help students with disabilities in planning their careers appropriate for their capabilities and abilities. Having the correct information and understanding will alleviate the psychological burden faced by family members in dealing with children with special educational needs. This study aimed to explore the knowledge and understanding of parents with special needs on the job marketability of their children. This qualitative study was conducted with 11 multi-case multi-site families of special education students. The consultation process for phase one involved consultations conducted by special education teacher trainees. The second phase of consultation and collaborative process involved students and special education students with undergraduate education guidance and counselling. The verbatim data were analysed using NVivo 11. The study showed that families still lack knowledge in the marketability of their special needs children particularly due to the limited information channel. The findings showed that knowledge on job marketability can help the parents plan their special needs children’s job marketability, which in turn, would directly contribute to the family wellbeing

Potential application of lignin from paddy husk for biovanilin production by phaenarochaeta crysosoporium in submerged fermentation

The processing of paddy produces two main types of residues namely paddy husk and paddy straw. Paddy husk, the outer coat of paddy grain consists approximately 25-30% of lignin. It contains ferulic acid that acts as precursor for biovanillin production. In this study, lignin recovery from paddy husk was investigated for biovanillin production by Phanerochaete chrysosporium in batch culture, using submerged fermentation which was conducted at 30º C, 150 rpm. The biovanillin yield of lignin obtained from physical, chemical, physicochemical and biological pre-treatments were compared. Lignin recovered from microwave irradiation at 330W for 12 min was able to produce the biovanillin up to 0.0997 g/L. The recovery of lignin from microwave was optimized by Response Surface Methodology based on Central Composite Design to improve the production yield of vanillin. Three parameters were studied; namely time (5-30 min), solid to liquid ratio (5-25%) and microwave power (80-800 Watt). The lignin recovered from microwave was chosen for further study by considering the pre-treatment process without any chemical addition which is more environmental friendly for biovanillin production. Lignin recovered from paddy husk was successfully used for the production of biovanillin