The Constitutional Court\u27s Role in Consolidating Democracy and Reforming Local Election

Within the same group as the USA and India Indonesia is one of the largest democracies in the world. After experiencing authoritarian rule for a few decades since its independence the country finally at the beginning of the twenty first century managed to chart along its new direction along democratic course and values. More than a decade has passed since the democratic transition begun yet the country still faces various constitutional dilemmas and enigmas. One of organs of the government which has been entrusted to transform the country into a democratic nation is the Constitutional Court. The objective of this paper is to provide critical analyses of the role of the Constitutional Court of Indonesia in the process of consolidating local democracy. The scope of analysis is confined to a number of important cases heard by the court on local election disputes from the year 2008 to 2013. The rationale to focus on local election is because local government provides the second layer of government for this unitary country making the governance more democratic and more in touch with local population. The result of the study is the Constitutional Court through its decisions has created conducive political situation and has provided significant contributions in the process of consolidating local democracy. In spite of limited number of judges and short period of settlement to disputes brought before it the Court have settled all disputes regarding local elections without much delay and complaint. Nevertheless there are some areas that need to be addressed by the court to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness. A few factors have been identified to be the cause of the problems namely problem of design of structure of the Court, extension of the scope of authority, period of settlement, over-dosis of authority and the breach of code of ethics of the judges.Thus it is recommended that in order to perpetuate the excellent achievements of the court the institution need to be strengthened by addressing the problems

Evaluation of different time domain peak models using extreme learning machine-based peak detection for EEG signal

Various peak models have been introduced to detect and analyze peaks in the time domain analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. In general, peak model in the time domain analysis consists of a set of signal parameters, such as amplitude, width, and slope. Models including those proposed by Dumpala, Acir, Liu, and Dingle are routinely used to detect peaks in EEG signals acquired in clinical studies of epilepsy or eye blink. The optimal peak model is the most reliable peak detection performance in a particular application. A fair measure of performance of different models requires a common and unbiased platform. In this study, we evaluate the performance of the four different peak models using the extreme learning machine (ELM)-based peak detection algorithm. We found that the Dingle model gave the best performance, with 72 % accuracy in the analysis of real EEG data. Statistical analysis conferred that the Dingle model afforded significantly better mean testing accuracy than did the Acir and Liu models, which were in the range 37–52 %. Meanwhile, the Dingle model has no significant difference compared to Dumpala model

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF AN IMPROVED ITU-R RAIN ATTENUATION PREDICTION MODEL OVER MALAYSIA EQUATORIAL REGION

Attenuation due to rainfall is one of the most fundamental constraints on the performance of satellite links above 10 GHz. This work presents the results of rain attenuation measurement using radar data collected from MMD and DIDM Malaysia. The results were compared with newly improved ITU-R P530-16 and four other selected tropical rain attenuation prediction models. The statistical analysis showed that ITU-R P 530-16 has significantly addressed the problem of rain attenuation underestimation prediction as presented by older version of the recommendatio

Spatial water quality assessment of Langat River Basin (Malaysia) using environmetric techniques

This study investigates the spatial water quality pattern of seven stations located along the main Langat River. Environmetric methods, namely, the hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis (HACA), the discriminant analysis (DA), the principal component analysis (PCA), and the factor analysis (FA), were used to study the spatial variations of the most significant water quality variables and to determine the origin of pollution sources. Twenty-three water quality parameters were initially selected and analyzed. Three spatial clusters were formed based on HACA. These clusters are designated as downstream of Langat river, middle stream of Langat river, and upstream of Langat River regions. Forward and backward stepwise DA managed to discriminate six and seven water quality variables, respectively, from the original 23 variables. PCA and FA (varimax functionality) were used to investigate the origin of each water quality variable due to land use activities based on the three clustered regions. Seven principal components (PCs) were obtained with 81% total variation for the high-pollution source (HPS) region, while six PCs with 71% and 79% total variances were obtained for the moderate-pollution source (MPS) and low-pollution source (LPS) regions, respectively. The pollution sources for the HPS and MPS are of anthropogenic sources (industrial, municipal waste, and agricultural runoff). For the LPS region, the domestic and agricultural runoffs are the main sources of pollution. From this study, we can conclude that the application of environmetric methods can reveal meaningful information on the spatial variability of a large and complex river water quality data

Современные концепции управления высшим учебным заведением

Целью и задачами статьи является исследование современных подходов к управлению вузом, их критический анализ и возможность оптимизации процессов деятельности вуза

Short-range correlations in low-lying nuclear excited states

The electromagnetic transitions to various low-lying excited states of 16O, 48Ca and 208Pb are calculated within a model which considers the short-range correlations. In general the effects of the correlations are small and do not explain the required quenching to describe the data.Comment: 6 pages, 2 postscript figures, 1 tabl

Histopathological Changes of the Flaxseed Extract on Skin Wound Healing in Diabetic Rabbits

BACKGROUND: Wound healing includes phases such as cell migration, extracellular matrix deposition, remodeling, and angiogenesis. There are growing medicines that accelerate wound healing, significantly herbal medications that mainly safe and reliable. AIM: The aim of the study is to examine the histological changes induced by flaxseed oil during wound healing in diabetic animal model. METHODS: Forty-five male white New Zealand rabbits divided into two main groups diabetic and non-diabetic each group is divided into three groups (n = 9).Diabetic animal group include: (1) Study group (adding Flaxseed), (2) positive control group (adding fucidin 2% cream), and (3) negative control group (no treatment) same distribution of non-diabetic animals groups. Four linearshape,full-thickness wounds were made in both sides of the backbone skin in each animal. Tissue samples were obtained at days 4th, 7th, and 14th post wounding for microscopical analysis, histopathological parameters included inflammation, re-epithelialization, neovascularization, and surface closure rates. RESULTS: The study groups (using flax seed) in both diabetic and non-diabetic groups show significant reduction in inflammatory cells infiltration at day 14 (0.67 ± 0.753) (1.67 ± 0.516), and noticeable increase in wound closure rate (4.00+-0.000). Both diabetic and non-diabetic animal groups show high re-epithelialization potential at day 4 and day 7, respectively (2.00 ± 1.549; 4.00 ± 0.00). Diabetic animal study group using flaxseed shows high neovascularization rate at the day 14 (2.17 ± 0.753) compared with positive control diabetic animal group (2.00 ± 0.000). CONCLUSION: Topical application of flaxseed promoted healing process particularly in diabetic animal model by shortening inflammation phase, elevating surface closure rate, promoting re-epithelialization process, and enhancing neovascularization, flaxseed is suggested as a potential effective herbal base medication for facilitating wound healing

Bending AdS Waves with New Massive Gravity

We study AdS-waves in the three-dimensional new theory of massive gravity recently proposed by Bergshoeff, Hohm, and Townsend. The general configuration of this type is derived and shown to exhibit different branches, with different asymptotic behaviors. In particular, for the special fine tuning $m^2=\pm1/(2l^2)$, solutions with logarithmic fall-off arise, while in the range $m^2>-1/(2l^2)$, spacetimes with Schrodinger isometry group are admitted as solutions. Solutions that are asymptotically AdS$_3$, both for Brown-Henneaux and for the weakened boundary conditions, are also identified. The metric function that characterizes the profile of the AdS-wave behaves as a massive excitation on the spacetime, with an effective mass given by $m_{eff}^2=m^2-1/(2l^2)$. For the critical value $m^2=-1/(2l^2)$, the value of the effective mass precisely saturates the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound for the AdS$_3$ space where the wave is propagating on. The analogies with the AdS-wave solutions of topologically massive gravity are also discussed. Besides, we consider the coupling of both massive deformations to Einstein gravity and find the exact configurations for the complete theory, discussing all the different branches exhaustively. One of the effects of introducing the Chern-Simons gravitational term is that of breaking the degeneracy in the effective mass of the generic modes of pure New Massive Gravity, producing a fine structure due to parity violation. Another effect is that the zoo of exact logarithmic specimens becomes considerably enlarged.Comment: 9 pages. Minor typos correcte