Codeswitching in communication: a sociolinguistic study of Malaysian secondary school students

Codeswitching is a common phenomenon in a multilingual society like Malaysia. Furthermore, the language policy of the Malaysian government has made it mandatory for the students to learn both in bahasa melayu and English at their primary school level. The Indian and Chinese students acquired their respective mother tongues, namely Tamil and Mandarin, besides the two compulsory languages, (bahasa Melayu and English). This study was conducted at four secondary schools situated in the Klang Valley, in which one school was chosen from an urban setting, two from suburban, and one from a rural area. Twenty samples were selected of which twelve were Indian students, four Malays, and four Chinese. The samples were give two topics for discussion and their conversations were recorded and transcribed. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to determine the respondents' demographic details and their language choice at home. The findings indicated that codeswitching that occurs from bahasa Melayu to English, Tamil or Chinese to English or vice versa during conversations is more habitual by nature. Respondents from the average economic and educational category were found to have used both English and their mother tongue as their matrix language. However, the respondents from the lower economic and educational category used their mother tongue as the dominant language or matrix language. Similarly, when the same ethnic group converse, their mother tongue becomes the domain language, with English and bahasa Melayu as the embedded languages

Prediction of grinding machinability when grind P20 tool steel using water based ZnO nano-coolant

Grinding is often an important finishing process for many engineering components and for some components is even a major production process. The surface roughness, Ra is also an important factor affecting many manufacturing departments. In this study, a model have been developed to find the effect of grinding condition which is depth of cut, type of wheel and type of grinding coolant on the surface roughness on AISI P20 tool steel and wheel wear. Besides that, the objective of this study is to determine the effect of Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nano-coolant on the grinding surface quality and wheel wear for various axial depth. Precision surface grinding machine is used to grind the AISI P20 tool steel. The work table speed would be constant throughout the experiment which is 200 rpm. The experiment conducted with grinding depth in the range of 5 to 21µm. Besides, Aluminum Oxide wheel and Silicon Carbide wheel are used to grind the work piece in this experimental study. Next, the experiment will conduct using ZnO nano-coolant. Finally, the artificial intelligence model has been developed using ANN. From the result, it shows that the lower surface roughness and wheel wear obtain at the lowest cutting depth which is 5 µm. Besides that, grind using ZnO nano-coolant gives better surface roughness and minimum wheel wears compare to grind using water based coolant. From the prediction of ANN, it shows that the surface roughness became constant after cutting depth 21 µm. In conclusion, grind using ZnO nano-coolant with cutting depth 5 µm obtain a better surface roughness and lowest wheel wear. As a recommendation, various machining can be conducted using ZnO nano-coolant to emphasize better results

Lie symmetries, Kac-Moody-Virasoro algebras and integrability of certain (2+1)-dimensional nonlinear evolution equations

In this paper we study Lie symmetries, Kac-Moody-Virasoro algebras, similarity reductions and particular solutions of two different recently introduced (2+1)-dimensional nonlinear evolution equations, namely (i) (2+1)-dimensional breaking soliton equation and (ii) (2+1)-dimensional nonlinear Schr\"odinger type equation introduced by Zakharov and studied later by Strachan. Interestingly our studies show that not all integrable higher dimensional systems admit Kac-Moody-Virasoro type sub-algebras. Particularly the two integrable systems mentioned above do not admit Virasoro type subalgebras, eventhough the other integrable higher dimensional systems do admit such algebras which we have also reviewed in the Appendix. Further, we bring out physically interesting solutions for special choices of the symmetry parameters in both the systems

Water Leakage In Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) From Taps to Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emission

This report shows the water leakage problem in Universiti Teknologi Petronas and its impact to the amount of energy which is wasted due to the water leakage. Water leakage due to poor maintenances is a major issue in every building around the country and in Universiti Teknologi Petronas the issue had reached a critical stage. Domestic water which is acquired form a 3rd party which treats the water and supply to UTP is bought at certain stipulated price. The water outlet especially water taps which are leaking and allows continuous water flow. This creates constant flow of wastage of resources in UTP. These report shows the amount of water is being wasted in UTP campus in per minute basis which is crucial for our research. Data collection was done from point to point by measuring the amount of water being leaked at each point using measurement tools. Site visits were done accordingly based on the schedule in Gantt chart. Interviews were conducted with relevant personals who are involved in water facility management and handling to support data gathering process. Interviews also was conducted with personals involved in energy supply for UTP, for data collection on analysis purposes Due to the increment number of students in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, the accommodations are also increased. This directly had resulted in the increased need of water .Treated water supply and demand comes with an energy usage tag. All activities related to water treatment and supply such as treating raw water, pumping, filtering, storage requires the usage of energy. This directly results in the release of greenhouse gas, more specifically Carbon dioxide. Wastage of water due to poor maintenance and services contributes for the loss of energy, increased in cost and also increase in Carbon Dioxide emission. 6 These problems can be avoided if proper maintenance is done routinely in the campus. A schedule should be prepared for maintenance personals to constantly monitor the water outlets in UTP. The minor repairs should be tackled from time to time to avoid more wastage and increased maintenance cost. A permanent vendor with contractor licence of class F can be appointed to tackle the water leaking problems in campus. A minor allocation of budget can help to eliminate leakage problems. Recommendations such as stakeholder’s awareness and appointment of extra maintenance personals should be considered in avoiding the main issue. When the major issue is tackled the correlating problems such as energy wastage and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission can be avoided

Genotype-Phenotype Correlations in Fuchs Corneal Endothelial Dystrophy

Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy (FECD) is the most common form of corneal dystrophy and the leading indication of corneal transplant surgery worldwide. Over the past decade, greater insight into the genetic changes causative of FECD has provided clinicians with an opportunity to improve our understanding of this dystrophy and to explore new potential therapeutic avenues. In this thesis, I investigate the genotype-phenotype correlations identified in a cohort of 342 FECD patients recruited from Moorfields Eye Hospital. By first studying the CTG trinucleotide repeat expansion within the TCF4 gene (termed CTG18.1), the causal variant in the majority of FECD patients, I have shown the existence of significant demographic differences between FECD patients who carry this mutation (ExpPos) and those who do not (ExpNeg). I have also demonstrated a significant correlation between repeat expansion size and disease severity in ExpPos subjects, as longer repeat length was associated with younger age at transplantation. I then carried out phenotype analysis on ExpNeg patients who were identified to harbour other FECDassociated variants via whole exome sequencing. The findings within this subgroup support the classification of corneal decompensation secondary to mutations in the COL8A2 gene as a clinical entity distinct from FECD, in view of significant differences in both disease onset and severity. Investigation of the FECD cohort further highlighted the rare concurrent presentation of keratoconus in this population. Although we found no definitive genetic link between the two diseases, this study highlights the clinical challenges that arise in the diagnosis and management of patients presenting with the dual pathology. Finally, to translate the advances made in the field of molecular genetics into improved treatment options for FECD patients, I discuss the design of a Phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate the therapeutic potential and safety of an antisense oligonucleotide therapy targeting ExpPos FECD

Serving deep learning models in a serverless platform

Serverless computing has emerged as a compelling paradigm for the development and deployment of a wide range of event based cloud applications. At the same time, cloud providers and enterprise companies are heavily adopting machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to either differentiate themselves, or provide their customers with value added services. In this work we evaluate the suitability of a serverless computing environment for the inferencing of large neural network models. Our experimental evaluations are executed on the AWS Lambda environment using the MxNet deep learning framework. Our experimental results show that while the inferencing latency can be within an acceptable range, longer delays due to cold starts can skew the latency distribution and hence risk violating more stringent SLAs