Oriential ceramic finds in West Malaysia: a study of their distribution and typology

No serious attempt has so far been made to study the types and the distribution of oriental ceramic finds in West Malaysia. This thesis is the first of such an attempt. The oriental ceramic finds in West Malaysia are ranging from the Chinese, South-east Asian to the Japanese and Middle Eastern origins which are discussed in Chapters II, III and IV respectively. It is generally accepted that Malay Peninsula is known to the Indian, Arab and Chinese traders since ancient times. The presence of ceramics originated from those countries in West Malaysia in particular, though scanty but are not altogether lacking, provides the proof for this. Indeed, Malay Peninsula by virtue of its geographical position astride the sea routes between the Middle East and the Far East, became the sites of economic importance where Chinese merchants could meet merchants from India and the West Asia. They carried out their business while waiting for the favourable wind to take them to their destination. This is the age when the sailing activities were entirely depend on the changing of the monsoon winds. Historically, West Malaysia were once subjected to many outside powers; the Khmer and the Thais just to mention a few. Indeed, the presence of the Khmer and Thai ceramics, beside the one came with the trade, are of course of no surprise. Many of the Chinese ceramic finds in West Malaysia are similar with those discovered in the Philippines and Indonesia. This is not only proves the extent of Chinese ceramic trade in South-east Asia, and the uses of ceramic by the West Malaysian people, but it also provides further indication as this thesis intends to prove that the study of the West Malaysian culture cannot be approached in complete isolation but in association with her neighbouring countries which belong to the same general cultural context. This thesis also emphasizes the significant role played by the West Malaysia in the ancient overland and maritime trades as discussed in Chapter I, and stresses the value of ceramic as an invaluable historical source while other cultural materials have perished due to the humid tropical climate

Manuskrip lama: asas keupayaan dan Kearifan Melayu Tradisi

Generally this article provides a brief overview of Malay manuscripts. Malay manuscript is considered to be one of the contributions of traditional Malay society who are able to produce ideas that can be utilised until now. The production of this manuscript reflects the ability of the creative community and basically its production also reflects the cultural life of the Malays of the past. In studying this situation, the introduction of a manuscript in general is really needed. It covers the physical picture and its content

Environmental Reporting Practices In Malaysia And Australia

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the state of environmental reporting by Malaysian and Australian companies on ‘other’ reports, i.e. other than annual reports.  The paper employs content analysis to study the environmental disclosures made by the selected 100 companies in the two countries.  Regression analysis is performed on potential influencing factors for environmental reporting.  The findings are also compared to previous studies on environmental reporting in corporate annual reports by Yusoff and Lehman (2008).  The paper finds that environmental reporting in ‘other’ reports (Malaysia and Australia) are largely descriptive and in qualitative form.  In addition, the influencing factors for environmental reporting are of similar quality to those made in annual reports, in both countries.  These findings imply that this type of communicating environmental information does not contribute greater corporate accountability among companies in fulfilling stakeholders’ needs and demands for environmental information.  Hence, more efforts are needed to promote better and greener environmental reporting practice.  This study comparatively explores the environmental practices and interprets the possible link between influencing factors for environmental reporting and actual environmental reporting practices on a two-country basis, between Malaysia and Australia

Size of offer, over-subscription ratio and performance of Malaysian IPOs

This paper examines the initial and the long-run performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) of stocks listed on the Main Board of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange. This study finds a significant mean initial return and mean over-subscription ratio, even-though not as high as reported in earlier studies. Size of offer is not correlated with the over-subscription ratio. In general, initial returns are significantly higher than returns for subsequent longer-term holding periods. Mean initial returns among the three types of issue compared are not significantly different from each other: Only in the case of offer for sale that we find a significant positive correlation between its over-subscription ratio and its initial return. Offer-for sale also shows a positive correlation between its over-subscription ratio and its raw return for day-365, but turns significantly negative for day-910 and day-1095. In the case of combination of public issue and offer for sale, over-subscription ratio is not significantly correlated with longer term returns, for either raw or adjusted return. Finally, in the case of public issue, its over-subscription ratio is significantly correlated with its raw return only for day-180 and day-540, and for its adjusted return, the correlation is significant only for day-180 and day-365

On the derivation of second order variable step variable order block backward differentiation formulae for solving stiff ODEs

In this paper, we derive a second order Variable Step Variable Order Block Backward Differentiation Formulae (VSVO-BBDF (2)). This method pertains to the study of solving stiff Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) of second order (y"). The pertinent findings in term of total number of steps, accuracy and computational time are displayed and discussed through distinct tables

A Numerical Algorithm for Solving Stiff Ordinary Differential Equations

An advanced method using block backward differentiation formula (BBDF) is introduced with efficient strategy in choosing the step size and order of the method. Variable step and variable order block backward differentiation formula (VSVO-BBDF) approach is applied throughout the numerical computation.The stability regions of the VSVO-BBDFmethod are investigated and presented in distinct graphs.The improved performances in terms of accuracy and computation time are presented in the numerical results with different sets of test problems. Comparisons are made between the proposed method and MATLAB’s suite of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) solvers, namely, ode15s and ode23s

Design of Stacked Wafers AMC at 920 MHz for Metallic Object Detection in RFID Application

Artificial Magnetic Conductor, AMC is introduced into RFID application to overcome the problem of metal object detection. The AMC act as the Perfect Magnetic Conductor, PMC exhibits a reflectivity of +1 (in-phase reflection). In this paper, the stacked wafers AMC structure is designed to operate at 920 MHz frequency. The proposed stacked wafers AMC is an evolution from the basic square patch AMC. By introducing different size of slots into the square patch will help to reduce the frequency hence increase the bandwidth of the reflection phase. Another method to increase the bandwidth is by increasing the thickness of the structure. For the single cell of stacked wafers AMC proposed in this paper, the simulated bandwidth is 3.5% with reduced size of 45.56% than the square AMC. An optimized structure of 3x2 stacked wafers AMC give better return loss = - 21.8 dB and gain = 3.04 dB with total efficiency of 82.3%

Wi-fi fingerprint database construction using Chebyshev wavelet functions

In this research we propose a new approach of constructing Wi-Fi fingerprints database using Chebyshev wavelet functions. Proposed algorithm combines the reference data collection procedure with path-loss prediction. Our algorithm requires only a few samples to be collected in a given region, and thus significantly reduces the calibration time. Next, the collected reference samples are used to construct area specific path-loss prediction function using Chebyshev wavelets. Once we have the path-loss function, we can predict the signal strength values at any point of the target area. One of the advantages of proposed algorithm is that it does not require any detailed information about target area, i.e. location of wireless access points, number of walls (floors, obstructions) between the transmitter and reference points and etc