Model of a Corrosion Pit with Movement of Active Boundaries

Pitting is one of the most destructive types of localized corrosion. This paper presents the mathematical model of the early stages of pitting corrosion after its initiation stage, using a commercial finite element program. In view of the chemical and electrochemical reactions inside a single pit in steel, a two dimensional model that allows the prediction of movement of boundaries of a pit is developed

Integrating vocational training in culinary arts and Islamic studies at juvenile rehabilitation centres: Malaysian experience

The Juvenile Rehabilitation Centres (JRC) in Malaysia aims to provide shelter, counselling and skills training to juveniles specifically for those who wish to transform themselves from the regrettable misdeeds they have committed. At JRCs, an integrated Culinary Vocational Training and Islamic education forms part of their training curriculum. The skills acquired should enable trainees to secure jobs upon completion of training. However, there are some training institutions that lack systematic training structures resulting in trainees becoming less skilful in both vocational and Islamic education. The objective of this research is to identify the effectiveness of an integrated Culinary and Islamic Education curriculum implemented at JRCs in Malaysia. This is a descriptive survey and data was obtained using questionnaire and interview. Respondents comprised 92 trainees, four managers, four culinary trainers and four Islamic education teachers, all from four different JRCs. The findings show that the trainees are happy with their trainings that brought about positive effects for them. Some suggestions have been made to provide improvements in the implementation of the course among them the inclusion of prayers in the Islamic education syllabus

Separation of CO2/CH4 through Carbon Tubular Membranes: Effect of Carbonization Temperature

Carbon membranes have received much attention as advance materials in the gas separation technology due to their superior gas permeation performance and thermal and chemical stability. In order to increase the mechanical strength of the membrane, supported carbon membrane were produced using ceramic tube as support layer. Carbon tubular membranes were produced by carbonizing polymeric tubular membrane under different process parameter. In this study, carbon tubular membranes originating from Matrimid were prepared and characterized n term of its gas permeation properties. The preparation method involved dip-coating of the ceramic tubes with a Matrimid-based solution. The carbon tubular membranes were obtained by carbonization of the resultant polymeric tubular membrane under Argon gas flow in the horizontal tube furnace. The effects of the carbonization temperature on the gas permeation performance were investigated. Pure gas permeation tests were performed using CO2 and CH4 at room temperature with pressure 8 bars. The permeance and selectivity data indicate that the highest CO2/CH4 selectivity of 87.30 was obtained for carbon tubular membrane prepared at carbonization temperature of 850 ºC

A Study of Some Community Water Supply Problems in Wilayah Persekutuan

This study was carried out to examine the various sources of water which are being used by residents in squatter settlements around Kuala Lumpur. The results showed that piped water from the public stand-pipes was used primarily Jar drinking and cooking purposes but water from other sources was also collected to augment their water supply jar use in washing, gardening, etc. An evaluation of the methods used Jar the collection and storage of water other than piped water, indicated that the system can be further improved to yield good quality water by adoption of appropriate technologies for household water treatment

Nutritional enhancement of total lipid, n-3 and n-6 fatty acids in Artemia urmiana nauplii by enriching with ICES/30/4

Artemia urmiana nauplii were enriched with three different concentrations (100, 200 and 300 ppm) of commercial emulsion, ICES/30/4 during two periods (12 and 24 h) to evaluate the enhancement of its Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (HUFAs). This source was selected because of its high concentration of the longest chain HUFA's in the n-3 and n-6 series. When 24-h-old Artemia nauplii were enriched with 100 ppm concentration of ICES30/4 during 12 h enriching period, the docosahexanoic acid (DHA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and arachidonic acid (ARA) contents of the nauplii increased to 0.77, 1.22 and 0.34 and when enriched with 300 ppm during 24 h increased to 5.99, 4.97 and 0.73 mg g(-1) dry weight, respectively. DHA, EPA and ARA in control nauplii were 0.00, 0.82 and 0.61 mg g(-1) dryweight, respectively. Total lipid increased from 16.79% in control group to 20.87% in the treatment ICES30/4 24-300. The results suggest that high amount of emulsion and prolong the enriching period are effective in enriching Artemia nauplii in both DHA and EPA increasingly (p < 0.05) but in other fatty acids, there are differences only among period treatments (p < 0.05) and concentration are not any increasing effective. There are only differences among concentration treatments in total lipid p < 0.05) and enriching period do not show any differences

Electronically steerable antenna for WLAN application

In wireless communication systems, interference becomes a major problem in limiting the quality of the transmitted and received signals. A common problem in wireless communications is to eliminate the interference signal that is mixed with the original signal. Thus, adaptive beamforming is proposed to eliminate the interference signal. This paper presents an adaptive antenna using a slotted patch antenna for WLANs operated at 2.4 GHz. A reactively steerable antenna concept has been applied. A downhill simplex algorithm is used to maximize the cost function. The radiation pattern of the antenna is controlled by the reactance value connected to each port. From numerical simulation, null is performed for the incoming interference

MEDIA OPTIMIZATION FOR BIOPROTEINS PRODUCTION FROM CHEAPER CARBON SOURCE

There are high demands for animal and human food supply especially protein, which is an important dietary component. Agricultural wastes, cheap carbon sources- which are rich and have high energy, can be used for producing the value added bioprotein. A lab scale study was carried out to optimize the media composition for bioprotein production from a cheaper carbon source - wheat flour using potential strain, which was selected earlier by screening different microorganisms. The performance of the selected strain was enhanced by media optimization with varied substrate concentration, nitrogen sources and nutrient supplementation according to the central composite design from STATISTICA software. Statistical optimization was carried out to evaluate the polynomial regression model through effect of linear, quadratic and interaction of the factors. The maximum biomass produced was 21.89 g/L with optimum fermentation conditions of wheat flour (4 g/L), nitrogen concentration (0.5 g/L), nutrient concentration (0.1 g/L), and four days of fermentation

Moringa oleifera seeds as natural coagulant for water treatment

Developing countries and third world countries are facing potable water supply problems because of inadequate financial resources. The cost of water treatment is increasing and the quality of river water is not stable due to suspended and colloidal particle load caused by land development and high storm runoff during the rainy seasons especially in a country like Malaysia. During the rainy seasons the turbidity level increases and the need for water treatment chemicals increase as well, which leads to high cost of treatment which the water treatment cannot sustain. As a result, the drinking water that reaches the consumer is not properly treated. Therefore, it is of great importance to find a natural alternative for water coagulant to treat the turbidity. It has been found that Moringa oleifera is the best natural coagulant discovered yet, that can replace aluminium sulphate (Alum) which is used widely all around the world. The study is focusing in Moringa oleifera seeds to find the active constituents which are responsible about the coagulation mechanism and improving the coagulation property. This will help in producing this alternative locally as Moringa oleifera is grown in Malaysia and other tropical countries and can be of great benefit for water treatment

Using Media Independent Handover to Support PMIPv6 Inter-domain Mobility Based Vehicular Networks

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) was proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a new network-based mobility protocol which does not require the involvement of MN’s in any form of mobility management. MN can handover relatively faster in PMIPv6 than in host-based mobility protocols (e.g. Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6)) because it actively uses link-layer attachment information which reduces the movement detection time, and eliminates duplicate address detection procedures. However, the current PMIPv6 cannot provide continuous mobility support for MN when roaming between different PMIPv6 domains; we introduce a novel inter-domain PMIPv6 scheme to support seamless handover for vehicle in motion to support continuous and seamless connection while roaming in the new PMIPv6 domain. In this paper we analytically evaluate our proposed scheme to support inter-domain mobility for vehicle roaming between two PMIPv6 domains by using Media Independent Handover (MIH) and Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) to support the handover in addition to a continuous connection

Regionalization and harmonization in TVET

A transversal skill is one of the skills needed in every type of workplace setting. There is limited information about the perceptions of which transferable skills are needed in the workplace. The objective of this study is to explore the transferable skills among students and lecturers in TVET higher learning institutions in Indonesia and Malaysia. In the present study, transferable skills consist of communication skills, collaboration skills, problem-solving skills, entrepreneurship, and learning to learn skills. A qualitative research was conducted using survey. The five Likert scale questionnaire was distributed to lecturers and students from selected Malaysian and Indonesian universities who have bachelor program in engineering. Based on the analysis outcomes, it is clearly shown that Malaysian university engineering students yielded significantly higher scores on the perceptions of transferable skill acquisition in all measured components compared to their counterparts in Indonesia. Similar patterns of data distribution have been observed in Malaysian and Indonesian engineering students. Based on the lecturers’ perception, Malaysian and Indonesian Engineering Lecturers have comparable perceptions in the aspects of problem solving skills and entrepreneurship skills. In contrast, Malaysian university engineering lecturers gained significantly higher scores on the perception of communication skill, collaboration skill, and learning to learn skill compared to the Indonesian lecturers. The results indicate the need to increase transferable skills of both lecturers and students