Internal combustion engine / Nor Azizi Othman and Mahmud Lop Abdul Rahman

Loji kuasa automobil adalah injin pembakaran dalam atau internal combustion engine (Ic engine) Kitar thermodinamik dimana ic engine berfungsi atau bergerak ialah kitar otto,diesel dan dual

Preliminary study on current process of bus component inspection among public bus transport in Malaysia

Public transport bus services are generally based on regular operation of transit buses, along a route calling at agreed bus stops according to a published public transport timetable. Types of bus services are urban transport, long distance transport, flexible bus services and specialist services. Buses services are sometimes delayed due to breakdown of the bus components. Therefore, continuous inspection of buses is needed to make sure they are in good condition to avoid any breakdown. The process of bus inspection in Malaysia is mostly carried out either by the bus company itself or sending the buses back to the bus manufacturers. A bus will be inspected daily, weekly or monthly based on the usage of the bus or mileage. A preliminary study was conducted to find out the preliminary screening process of a bus before it is used for a trip. A set of questionnaire with open and closed questions were presented to some of the bus companies through the workshop manager. The survey was conducted on five companies that run regular bus inspections in the country. The results showed that each company has its own process in the course of an inspection. Though there are companies that still use checklist form, there are companies that use special software and conduct online checks. In addition, there are also companies which inspect buses depending on the bus mileage. Mileage for bus inspections should be based on the type of bus service for either a short or long distance. Therefore, a strategic and futuristic plan has to be developed for systematic examination for proper management, safety, high reliability and reduce cut maintenance cost

Comparison of Gravity Anomalies from Recent Global Geopotential Models with Terrestrial Gravity and Airborne Gravity over Johor Region

Gravity anomalies can yield an indirect but extremely useful picture of lateral changes in rock composition and structural patterns especially for rapid development area such as Johor region. The gravity anomalies can be derived from Global Geopotential Model (GGM) which is one of special product from the satellite technology that able to determine high accuracy of the earth's gravity field. In this study, the gravity anomalies derived from recent GGM published by International Global Geopotential Model were compared with five other GGMs model that compromised either terrestrial or airborne or both to derive the gravity anomalies.  In order to identify the best gravity model over the Johor region, two types of GGM class model has been selected for the comparisons which known as satellite only and combined class model.  The result shows that the gravity anomalies de-rived from satellite only class model with up 300 spherical harmonic coefficients is the best fit model and can be used as a reference for the Johor region. The RSME for the recent GGM via satellite only were +/- 5.865 and +/- 3.347 mGal for terrestrial and airborne gravity anomalies respectively compared to other GGM

Contour Based Tracking for Driveway Entrance Counting System

Managing vehicle in free-flow entrance is tiring to do manually by a guard control especially due to the increase in transportation demand. Providing an accurate vehicle counting approach is vital for traffic management and it will surely be an essential part in tomorrow's smart cities. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to propose a more accurate vehicle counter by using the tracking and heuristic rules approaches. EzCam v1.0 is a vehicle surveillance system for a free-flow entrance where a module of vehicle counting based on proposed idea has been applied. The proposed method does not require high computational resources more than any relatively affordable non task specific hardware. It employs single threshold, contour extraction and sequential frame analysis and finally, vehicle counting process subsequently. The tracking-based method employs foreground object detection method and a mechanism for object filtering approach as compared to Chris Dahms approach which does not consider any object rejection and accept all contour information as relevant to be counted as vehicles. As a result, EzCam v1.0 which utilizes the exploited contour-based approach is able to achieve up to 94 percent of accuracy rate and outperforms the classic Chris Dahms method which obtained an accuracy of 88 percent. Therefore, the Exploited Contour based tracking method helps vehicle counting system to perform better accuracy in comparison to Chris Dahms approach

Preparation and characterization of sodium alginate-based edible film with antibacterial additive using lemongrass oil

Sodium alginate films at various concentrations of glycerol (0.4, 0.6, and 0.8% v/v) were prepared and characterized. The thickness, water solubility (WS), water vapor transmission rate (WVTR), tensile strength (TS), elongation at break (EB) and Young’s Modulus (YM) of the films were affected by the amount of glycerol added. Among these films, the film containing lower glycerol (0.4 % v/v) presents better WS, WVTR, and the highest TS compared to other concentrations. Sodium alginate films containing lemongrass essential oil (LEO) were prepared to examine its antibacterial properties on four common foodborne pathogens: B. subtilis, S. aureus, E. coli, and P. aeruginosa using Disc-diffusion assay. The highest inhibition was shown by E. coli (21 mm/susceptible), B. subtilis (18 mm/intermediate), S. aureus (16 mm/intermediate), and P. aeruginosa (13.5 mm/resistant). The incorporation of lemongrass essential oil as a natural antibacterial agent in the film formulation has developed its potential to be used as an active packaging with improved physical properties, especially water barrier properties

Compact Ultra-Wideband Antenna Using Coplanar Stripline (CPS)-Fed

Today’s wireless communication systems should be capable to fulfill various insatiable demands for higher data rate and resolutions requirement. In order to satisfy those requirements in UWB system, a lot of antennas that can provide wide bandwidth have been proposed. In this paper, a coplanar stripline (CPS)-fed antenna for ultra-wideband (UWB) application was proposed. This antenna was designed using FR4 board with dielectric constant, r = 4.4, tangent loss, tan = 0.02 and substrate’s thickness, h = 1.6mm. The simulation was done using Computer Technology (CST) software. The simulation result shows that the modified coplanar stripline (CPS)-fed antenna significantly improved the fractional bandwidth by 200 % at frequency range 3.386 GHz -12.943 GHz. The optimal results of this coplanar ultra-wideband antenna were 5.100 GHz, 9.836 GHz and 12.155 GHz with a gain of 2.598 dB, 4.452 dB and 5.383 dB and the return loss of – 46.845 dB, - 23.428 dB and – 13.595 dB

MPI communication benchmarking on Intel Xeon dual quad-core processor cluster

This paper reports the measurements of MPI communication benchmarking on Khaldun cluster which ran on Linux-based IBM Blade HS21 Servers with Intel Xeon dual quad-core processor and Gigabit Ethernet interconnect. The measurements were done by using SKaMPI and IMB benchmark programs. Significantly, these were the first results produced by using SKaMPI and IMB to analyze the performance of Open MPI implementation on Khaldun cluster. The comparison and analysis of the results of point to point and collective communication from these two benchmark programs were then provided. It showed that different MPI benchmark programs rendered different results since they used different measurement techniques. The results were then compared to the experiment's results that were done on cluster with Opteron dual quad-core processor and Gigabit Ethernet interconnect. The analysis indicated that the architecture of machines used also affected the results

Analisis profil pesawah padi di Malaysia dan kepatuhan membayar zakat pertanian

Hasil pertanian merupakan salah satu harta yang diwajibkan zakat.Di Malaysia, hanya tanaman padi sahaja yang dikenakan zakat pertanian.Oleh itu, hanya pesawah padi sahaja yang dikenakan zakat pertanian sedangkan mereka merupakan antara golongan termiskin berbanding petani yang mengusahakan tanaman lain.Berdasarkan beberapa kajian lain, didapati kebanyakan pembayar zakat padi berada di bawah garis kemiskinan.Oleh itu, artikel ini bertujuan untuk melihat profil pesawah padi di Malaysia serta mendapatkan pandangan mereka terhadap pengalaman pembayaran zakat pertanian dan seterusnya menganalisis kepatuhan mereka dalam membayar zakat pertanian.Metode soal selidik telah digunakan dengan khidmat enumerator bagi mendapatkan data tersebut di seluruh Semenanjung Malaysia. Sebanyak 488 soal selidik daripada sejumlah 625 soal selidik yang telah diedarkan kepada petani-petani yang mengusahakan sawah padi di Semenanjung Malaysia telah digunakan di dalam analisis kajian ini dengan menggunakan SPSS.Hasil kajian mendapati bahawa kebanyakan pesawah padi membayar zakat dan tidak merasa terbeban dalam membuat pembayaran zakat padi. Walau bagaimanapun seramai 227 responden (48.1 %) menyatakan bahawa pendapatan mereka lebih kurang sama dengan taraf hidup orang miskin

Identification of missense mutations in genes related to cancer pathways in glioma

Glioma is the most common primary brain tumour of the central nervous system. Many genetic alterations and mutations have been identified in glioma using various approaches. We performed DNA sequencing on the tumours of 16 patients with Grade I, II, III and IV glioma. The AmpliSeq Cancer Primers Pool was used to generate the amplicons. The targeted-ion sphere particles were prepared using the Ion One Touch and Ion Enrichment systems. DNA sequencing was performed on the Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine (PGM) and the data were analysed using the Torrent Suite Software. In total, 14 mutations were identified in the following genes: KDR (Q472H), MLH1 (V384D), MET (N375S), PTPN11 (E69K), BRAF (V600E), TP53 (D149E, E154K, V157F), IDH1 (R132H), PIK3CA (H1047R), CSF1R (c1061_1061 ins A), KIT (M541L), PTEN (c1373_1373 del A) and PDGFRA (E556V). In addition, there were four novel mutations identified; TP53 (E154K, and D149E), CSF1R (c1061_1061 ins A) and PDGFRA (E556V). The pathogenicity prediction showed that only three mutations were pathogenic: PTPN11 (E69K), BRAF (V600E) and Tp53 (E154K). These mutations result in changes of the proteins’ structure and could affect their functions. Pathway analyses suggested that these genes are closely related to the pathogenesis of GBM through several pathways such as proliferation and invasion, metabolism and angiogenesis. In conclusion, PGM in combination with the AmpliSeq Cancer Panel could be utilised as a potential molecular diagnostic tool not only for glioma but also for other cancers

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions-was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing-and in some countries reversal-of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.Peer reviewe