Detectability of fibrils by dilation technique in digital mammography

The detectability of fibrils in mammographic phantom images by morphological enhancement was analysed in the present study. Materials that mimic fibrils were imaged by a digital mammography machine at 28 and 29 kVP. The images were processed by a dilation technique to produce second set of images. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed to compare the detection performance from the two sets of images. As compared to original images, the 28 kVP's fibrils images from dilation technique become more prominence to be detected by observers. While at 29 kVP only a few observers can found the fibrils images from dilation technique. This study suggests morphological enhancement of mammography image did not increase the detection of low frequency signals of the images

Abandoned construction: Factors and ways to circumvent abandoned housing projects in Peninsular Malaysia

Abandoned housing projects are one the major problems in the housing industry in Peninsular Malaysia.A housing project is considered abandoned when construction activities on-site housing construction has ceased for 6 (six) months or more in a row, after the completion of the sale and purchase agreement has been signed by the developer and the buyer or the developer has put under the control of the Official Receiver and Controller of Housing.This paper reviewed information on the current issues of causes of occurrence of abandoned projects.The reasons leading to this problem are many.This catastrophe has caused multifarious problems to the stakeholders, particularly the purchasers who become the aggrieved parties.Until to date there is no effective and once-and-for-all means to face the problems of abandoned housing projects. This project aims to analyze the factors of existence abandoned housing project in Peninsular Malaysia and find the best way to revive this abandoned housing project

Engineering conventional and engineering technology programs in Malaysian universities

One of the goals of the education system in Malaysia is to ensure the development of highly educated, highly skilled and strongly motivated human resources to fulfill the needs of the nation and the requirements of the industry as well as to support the country's aspiration to be an industrialized nation. Thus, several government-funded universities in Malaysia are required to offer engineering technology programs. These universities are known as Malaysian Technical Universities Network (MTUN), comprising Universiti Teknikal Melaka, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn and Universiti Malaysia Perlis with a mission to educate and train highly skilled manpower that can contribute to the world class industrial nation. The purpose of engineering technology programs is to complement existing engineering conventional programs. This study reports the differences between engineering conventional programs and engineering technology programs in terms of curriculum design and delivery and assessment of student learning. This knowledge is important as it will differentiate the job scope of the graduates from both programs. The data collection method in this study was qualitative method involving document analysis and focus group interviews. The documents analyzed were Malaysian Qualifications Agency Program Standards for Engineering and Engineering Technology and Malaysian Engineering Program Accreditation Manual. The teaching staffs from MTUN were interviewed for data triangulation. The results indicate that there exist differences in the curriculum design and delivery and assessment of student learning for both programs

Restoration of neutron radiography images

Neutron radiographic images have been used in a wide variety of industrial research and non-destructive testing applications since the early 1960s. Image in any form was never an exact representation of the object under observation because it is always corrupted by the imaging system itself. Neutron radiography image also encounters the same problem. Digital image restoration of image degraded by blurring and random noise is a solution to the problem. This research will try to restore the neutron radiography images with several restoration methods. The proposed methods are Weiner filter, regularized filter, Lucy-Richardson algorithm and blind deconvolution. All of the techniques were implemented using MATLAB programming to facilitate the demonstration of the effect of the methods. The result obtained will be analyzed and compared. It is shown that all the proposed methods can be used for restoration of neutron radiography images. The best and effective result for neutron radiography are by using Weiner filter with autocorrelation function and Lucy-Richardson (LR) algorithm with 500 iterations compared to other methods

Effect of temperature on the epr response of gamma irradiated potassium tartrate hemihydrate

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) can be used as radiation detection for appropriate materials exposed to ionizing radiation. In this study, potassium tartrate hemihydrate (PT) was irradiated with Co-60 gamma rays with absorbed dose range from 1 to 9 Gy. The effect of temperature to the unirradiated and irradiated samples were investigated using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. The EPR spectra were recorded in the temperature range from room temperature (293 K) to 413 K. The results show that the unirradiated PT sample does not exhibit any EPR signal when thermal energy is given to the sample. However, the irradiated PT samples exhibit EPR spectrum with three lines recorded at room and high temperatures. The main strong line dominates the spectrum of the irradiated PT sample appears at g = 2.0032. Heating the irradiated sample above room temperature showed increases in signal intensity. The dose response curves of the signal at variable temperature were described well by a linear function

EPR dosimeter material properties of potassium tartrate hemihydrate

The ability of potassium tartrate hemihydrate as a radiation sensitive material for electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) dosimetry was investigated. The samples were subjected to different doses, in the range of 1-9 Gy of 60Co gamma rays at room temperature. The EPR spectra were investigated through variation of signal intensity with respect to absorbed dose, magnetic field modulation amplitude, microwave power and time stability. The results indicate that the sensitivity of potassium tartrate hemihydrate is about 30% higher than that of alanine. However, the EPR signal is timely less stable within the first two weeks after irradiation

Skyrme-Hartree-Fock approach for description of static nuclear properties of well-deformed nuclei

Nuclear structure data plays an important role in nuclear physics studies and applications such as nuclear power generation. This article presents evaluations of a mean-field approach to describe two nuclear structure quantities namely the electric and magnetic moments. The Hartree-Fock-plus-pairing approach was employed with pairing correlations treated within the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) framework. The Skyrme SIII parametrization and seniority force are chosen to approximate the effective nucleon-nucleon and pairing interactions, respectively. Calculated results show that the self-consistent blocking procedure which takes into account time-reversal symmetry breaking is important to reproduce experimental magnetic momen

Synthesis and charaterization of magnesium zinc ferrites as electromagnetic source

Fabrication of Mg1-XZnXFe2O4 (where x = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5) samples using a conventional technique is reported. Oxides of magnesium, zinc and iron with purity of about 99.99% were mixed with distilled water in a milling machine for 12 hours. They were then filtered and presintered at 1250°C and sintered at 1350°C for 10 h in air. The phase and the crystal structure of the asprepared samples were identified using X-Ray Diffraction analysis (XRD). Hysteresis graph was evaluated using Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) to get the saturation magnetization (emu g-1)and coercivity (G) value. Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) was used to observe the surface morphology. The X-ray diffraction analysis showed major peak at plane (3 1 1) of the cubic structure for all the ferrites. The largest value of density achieved was 4.69 gcm-3 which was exhibited by sample with 0.5 mole fraction of zinc content. Highest saturation magnetization value (3.652emu g-1)was obtained for the 0.3 mole fraction of zinc content. A strong correlation between the saturation magnetization and zinc content was observed. We speculate that it is due to the Heisenberg superexchange interaction of magnetic Fe3+ and non-magnetic Zn2+ occupying the tetrahedral sites. The sample was used to induce electromagnetic (EM) waves in high operating frequency (5 MHz)

Laboratory facilities for engineering technology programs in Malaysian technical universities

Malaysia has put emphasis on Engineering Technology programs in its effort to be a developed country by 2020. This demand for Engineering Technology programs to be implemented is to increase the number of technical graduates for the industry needs. The Malaysian Technical University (MTUN) institutions and UniKL are among the higher education institutions in Malaysia that offer Engineering Technology programs at the undergraduate level. These institutions main agenda is to produce skilled work-ready graduates. Being in its infancy, MTUN has yet to produce their first batch of Engineering Technology graduates. This article reports the evaluation of the facilities at MTUN, as part of a bigger research scope. The data collection method in this study is mainly qualitative, which comprise of interviews, observations and document analysis. The interview protocol and observation checklist were developed and validated by experts and found reliable after running a set of pilot interview and observation. Interviews were carried out on the lecturers, whereas observations were made in the classroom, laboratories and a teaching factory. Document analysis that was carried out was on the Code of Practice for Program Accreditation (COPPA) document. This study also adopted the quantitative method using survey questions on students’ satisfaction of the facilities related to the application-based practice oriented at the institutions. From the laboratories observations, interviews with the lecturers, analysis of COPPA document and survey questionnaires answered by students, it can be concluded that the laboratory facilities provided by the three MTUN are adequate for the current number of students