An improved simulated annealing algorithm to avoid crosstalk in optical omega network

A major problem called crosstalk is introduced by Optical Omega Network (OON), which is caused by coupling two signals within a Switching Element (SE). It is important to focus on an efficient solution to avoid crosstalk, which is routing the traffic through an N times N optical network to avoid coupling two signals within each SE. Optimal routing in OON is an NP-hard problem. Many heuristic algorithms were designed by many researchers to perform this routing. Routing the messages in degree-decreasing of the message conflicts gave best performance among them. When Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm was used to solve the problem, it gave good results. It is a good idea to use these two algorithms to improve the performance. This paper presents an Improved SA (ISA) for message routing in OON that combines SA algorithm with the best heuristic algorithms. Simulation Results show that the proposed ISA can be a competitive choice for solving the crosstalk problem

Parallel Optical Window Algorithm Applied to Optical Multistage Interconnection Network

The crosstalk problem is introduced in an optical multistage interconnection network caused by coupling two signals within a switching element. To avoid this crosstalk, a time domain approach is used, which is to partition the set of permutation connections into several subsets such that the connections in each subset can be established simultaneously in the network without crosstalk. Since we want to partition the messages to be sent to the network into several groups, we have to use the window method that is used for finding the conflicts among all the messages to be sent. In this paper, a new parallel algorithm of the window method is developed called the Balanced Parallel Window Method (BPWM) algorithm. The BPMW algorithm reduces the execution time by a percentage of 83% of the time compared to the sequential algorithm with seven processors

Tahap Kepuasan Kerja Dalam Kalangan Pensyarah Kolej Vokasional : Level of Job Satisfaction Among Vocational College Lecturers

Kepuasan kerja merujuk kepada perasaan positif atau puas yang dimiliki seseorang terhadap pekerjaannya. Terutamanya, kepuasan kerja pendidik TVET akan memberikan impak kepada pencapaian akademik, penglibatan, dan kesejahteraan pelajar. Maka kajian ini dijalankan untuk mengenalpasti tahap kepuasan kerja para pensyarah TVET di Kolej Vokasional. Seramai 44 orang pensyarah di Kolej Vokasional dari Negeri Sembilan telah terlibat dalam kajian ini. Kajian berbentuk kuantitatif ini menggunakan borang soal selidik yang mengandungi 50 item soalan yang merangkumi lima faktor iaitu keadaan kerja, kedudukan gaji, penyeliaan pengarah, rakan sekerja dan peluang kenaikan pangkat. Data dianalisis menggunakan perisian Statistical Package for Social Science Version 22.0. Hasil kajian mendapati secara keseluruhannya tahap kepuasan kerja pensyarah TVET di Kolej Vokasioanal berada pada tahap sederhana. Faktor rakan sekerja berada pada tahap kepuasan yang tertinggi manakala faktor kenaikan pangkat berada pada tahap kepuasan yang paling rendah. Analisis data juga mendapati bahawa tiada perbezaan yang signifikan antara tahap kepuasan kerja dengan jantina, bidang dan pengalaman bekerja. Untuk meningkatkan kualiti pengajaran dan komitmen para pensyarah, pihak berkepentingan perlu bertindak untuk meningkatkan tahap kepuasan kerja para pensyarah dengan menawarkan lebih banyak peluang kenaikan pangkat kepada mereka. Pada masa yang sama, para pensyarah juga perlu memanfaatkan peluang laluan guru cemerlang untuk peningkatan kerjayanya.     Job satisfaction refers to an employee's positive or contented feelings about his or her work. Significantly, the job satisfaction of TVET educators will impact academic achievement, engagement, and student well-being. Thus, this study aimed to determine job satisfaction among TVET instructors at vocational colleges, which involved 44 lecturers from the Vocational College in Negeri Sembilan. This quantitative study employs 50 questions covering five factors: working conditions, salary, direct supervision, coworkers, and promotion opportunities. The Statistical Package for Social Science Version 22.0 software analysed the data. The study results indicate that overall job satisfaction among TVET instructors at the Vocational College is moderate. The colleague factor is at the highest level of satisfaction, while the promotion opportunities factor is at the lowest level of satisfaction. The data analysis also revealed no significant correlation between job satisfaction and gender, expertise, or years of experience. In order to improve the quality of teaching and the commitment of lecturers, stakeholders need to increase the level of job satisfaction of lecturers by offering them more promotion opportunities. At the same time, the lecturers should take advantage of the excellent teacher pathway opportunities for career advancement

Pro-active QoS resource management schemes for future integrated packet-switched networks

In this research two pro-active dynamic QoS resource management schemes are designed, namely the dynamic QoS control scheme with delay estimation, and the hybrid dynamic QoS control scheme. In both schemes, every new packet arrival is compared against the computed estimated delay it will experience, prior to being admitted into the buffer. If the computed estimated delay expires the requested delay bound, then the packet is dropped. In the hybrid scheme, every packet is first assessed for the estimated delay prior to being admitted into the buffer, subsequently the packets which have been successfully admitted into the buffer are evaluated on the actual delay experienced before being transmitted to the receiver. The paper studies the performance of the two proposed schemes with a dynamic resource management scheme, known as the OCcuPancy_Adjusting (OCP_A). The results obtained through the simulation models show that the proposed schemes have significantly improved the average delay for different traffic patterns. In addition to improving the average delay in delay sensitive traffic, improvement is seen in the average packet loss ratio, and subsequently increasing the throughput of delay sensitive traffic

Implementation of parallel boundary integral method on spherical bubble dynamics using shared memory computer

The boundary integral method is employed to model the dynamic behavior of the 3D spherical bubble. It has been solved on the Sequent Symmetry S5000 SE30 computer to better understand the opportunities and challenges the parallel processing presents. Analyses of the parallel performance of the approximation to the potential at certain external points as well as the normal derivatives of the potential on the surface of the bubble were generated using linear representations of the surface and the functions. In these calculations, 4, 6 and 8 Gauss points were used in the integration on 4, 8, 16 32 and 64 segments. Results from this study demonstrate that parallel computing greatly conserves the computational effort and is shown to be an effective tool for several problems related to bubble dynamics

Exploring career success among women engineers: The Malaysian case

Since the beginning of the 1960’s, women have increasingly entered into the career occupations and professions.However, those women that began their careers towards the mid-70’s and the early 80’s were considered as those set of women that tried to have it all in relation to their professional career success and family work balance (Gordon & Whelan, 1998; Auster & Ekstein, 2005).It should be noted that women workforce in Malaysia had increased tremendously.In terms of population, women account for about the half of the total number of Malaysian population (Ismail & Ibrahim, 2008).Hence they were found participating in many sectors of the economy such as agriculture, manufacturing, business and service organizations, in addition to their traditional or domestic un-paid sector of the economy.Thus over the years, the percentage of women in the workforce had continued to increase since the period of the year 2000 upward and is expected to continue

Leadership and personality influence on creativity

Creativity is a pertinent agenda in ensuring the success of an organisation in the face of stiff global competition.Creativity is a trait that can be instilled within an individual, other than occurring naturally. In a person, creativity can result from the interaction between two factors, namely situational factor(external factors to the individual) and person factor (internal factors of the individual).This research focuses on the influence of work design on creativity among workers.Additionally, this study also looked at the influence of leadership moderator (one of the situational factors) and personality (a person factor), toward the relationship between work design and creativity among workers.A total of 158 respondents answered the questionnaire given in this cross-sectional study. Results from the correlational and regression analyses showed that work design has a significant relationship with creativity. Also, results from the hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the personality factor has a stronger moderating effect as compared to the leadership factor toward the relationship between work design and creativity.This shows that the person factor gives a greater effect as compared to the situational factors for forming creativity. Based on the results of this research, several management actions are recommended for enhancing creativity amongst employees at the workplace.In addition, theoretical implications were also discussed in view of the research limitations which were observed.At the end of this paper, future research directions are also presented

Tourists Perceptions of Kota Bharu Islamic City

The aim of this paper is to determine tourists' pereptions on spiritual experience, brand image, cultural attributes and service quality they experienced in Kota Bharu, the capital and administration centre of Kelantan, Malaysia. Kota Bharu was declared an Islamic City in 2005. It has many mosques, various museums, unique architectural old building and palaces. As the number of tourist arrivals to Kelantan is encouraging and contributing to the state income, it is important too examine what these tourists perceive during their stays in Kota Bharu Islamic City. Variance Based Structural Equation Modelling technique of Partial Least Square (PLS) was employed. The findings show that all the variables are significantly influencing tourists' pereption except for service qualiity. In other words, tourists perception of Kota Bharu are positively related to spirituality, brand destination and cultural attributes. Tourists perceptions play a crucial role as this will affect the future tourists arrivals in the stte. Thus, the findings of the study will be useful in helping policy planners to ounderstand how tourists perceived Kota Bharu and design policies too increase tourism receipts and to perserve tourism attributes

Carbonized rice husk and cocopeat as alternative media bed for aquaponic system

The study evaluates the suitability of carbonized rice husk and cocopeat substrates as alternative media bed in aquaponics unit for cultivation of red Nile tilapia and Gynura procumbens. Area occupied by the aquaponics unit is about 4.5 m2 and it was operated under equatorial climate conditions. Various substrates namely lightweight expanded clay aggregate (LECA), cocopeat, carbonized rice husk and a mixture of cocopeat-rice husk at ratio 1:1 were prepared using polybags for growing of the longevity spinach. The resultant effects from fish cultivation and plants growth on the water qualities and nitrification efficiency of the aquaponics unit were reported. The aquaponics unit were operated for twelve weeks and the values of pH, temperature, and dissolved oxygen level were measured to be within the range of 6.4-6.9, 27.7-29oC, and 5.5-7 mg·L-1, respectively. Survival rate for fish was 98% with specific growth rate (SGR) and food conversion ratio (FCR) of 6.9% per day and 1.13, respectively. Nutrient deficiency was not evident and plants showed healthy growth with harvest yield ranging between 3.6 and 3.9 kg·m-2. Results attained signified the suitability of utilizing carbonized rice husk and cocopeat as alternatives media bed compared to commercial media bed such as LECA

Solar-powered aquaponics prototype as sustainable approach for food production

This paper presents the establishment of a solar-powered aquaponics prototype as a sustainable, cost effective and environmentally sound approach for food production. In this study, a prototype bench top aquaponics rig with an integrated 20 W solar panel were fabricated for the cultivation of red Hybrid Tilapia (Oreochromis spp.) and leaf mustard (Brassica juncea). The size of the fish tank is about 29.5L and serves as the base for the setup. Additionally, the hydroponic grower compartment (0.45 m (L) � 0.32 m (W) � 0.13 m (H)) was stacked on top of the fish tank and was filled with LECA media bed for the plant growth. Two important operating parameters were studied. First, the amount of energy produced by the solar panel and the energy consumption by the water pump used in the setup. Secondly, the resultant effects from fish cultivation and plants growth on the water qualities and nitrification effi�ciency of the aquaponics unit. The aquaponics unit was operated for a month and the values of pH, tem�perature, and ammonia level were measured to be within the range of 6.4–7.2, 27.1–31.7 �C, and 1 mg�L�1 , respectively. Survival rate for fish was about 75% with specific growth rate (SGR) of 3.75% per day and food conversion ratio of about 1.15. A slight nutrient deficiency was evident and plants showed a healthy growth with height gain as high as 5 cm was achieved. Despite raining season, our data shows that the energy produced via 20 W solar panel enabled the unit to run at night without depending on local electricity for nearly two hours. Clearly, a larger solar panel is needed for longer operation. Nevertheless, the study has proven the potential of operating a low cost aquaponics setup using renew�able energy for a sustainable food production method