Penglibatan wanita yang mengikuti Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) dalam industri Oil & Gas

Persediaan wanita yang mengikuti TVET untuk menceburkan diri dalam industri oil & gas merupakan suatu masalah yang sering diperkatakan dikalangan wanita ketika ini. Permasalahan ini menjadi suatu persoalan dalam kalangan wanita tentang apakah persediaan yang perlu mereka lakukan dalam merencana kerjaya dalam industri oil & gas ini. Secara umumnya kajian ini adalah bertujuan mengenalpasti faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi pemilihan kerja dalam industri oil & gas, kesediaan diri wanita dari segi fizikal dan mental serta cabaran yang dihadapi dalam merealisasikan kerjaya mereka dalam industri oil & gas ini. Kajian ini telah dilakukan ke atas pekerja wanita yang telah berkhidmat dalam industri ini bagi zon selatan dan zon tengah. Seramai 110 sampel kajian yang terlibat dalam penyelidikan ini melalui pengedaran borang kaji selidik sebagai instrumen kajian. Data daripada 86 sampel kajian yang diperolehi dari soal selidik kemudiannya dianalisis dengan menggunakan perisian Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) versi 20.0. Hasil dapatan kajian menunjukkan faktor yang mempengaruhi wanita untuk menceburkan diri dalam industri oil & gas ini adalah faktor gaji iaitu skor min sebanyak 4.41 dan diikuti dengan kesediaan dari segi mental dengan nilai skor min pada tahap yang tinggi iaitu 4.392. Dapatan kajian juga mendapati cabaran semasa mendapatkan pekerjaan adalah perkara paling mencabar yang perlu dihadapi oleh wanita iaitu dengan dapatan skor min sebanyak 4.242. Ini membuktikan bahawa wanita perlu mempersiapkan diri dengan sebaiknya sebelum menceburi industri ini. Terdapat hubungan yang signifikan di antara faktor pemilihan kerja dan kesediaan diri wanita. Kesimpulannya, wanita perlu mempersiapkan diri bukan sekadar dengan memperolehi keputusan yang baik dalam akademik, tetapi kecenderungan dan minat dalam meletakkan diri untuk bersaing dengan lelaki bagi membuktikan wanita turut berkemahiran dan mempunyai jati diri yang tinggi untuk berkerja dalam bidang yang sungguh mencabar

Effect of fines content on critical state parameters of sand matrix soils

Natural sand does always contain significant amounts of fine particles, known as sand matrix soils. The development of critical state for sand and clay are both well established. However, limited researchers focused on the sand matrix soils. This paper discusses the effect of fines content on the critical state parameters of sand matrix soils. Two types of plastic fines with different plasticity (kaolin and bentonite) were mixed into poorly graded Johor clean sand at different percentages to form the sand matrix soils. The critical state was obtained from the strain controlled triaxial compression test. All tested soils had been isotropically consolidated to four different effective confining pressures and sheared under consolidated undrained condition until the critical state was ascertained. The critical state line was plotted for each sand matrix soils on space and compression spaces. Based on linear regression analysis, the critical state parameters, M, λ and Γ were obtained and the ranges are from 0.807 to 1.102, 0.062 to 0.160 and 1.732 to 2.431, respectively. The trend of the critical state lines of sand matrix soils in both stress and compression space coincides with the concept of threshold fines content. The threshold fines content identified for sand-kaolin mixtures is 25 % kaolin while it is 20 % bentonite for sand-bentonite mixtures

The grading effect of coarse sand on consolidated undrained strength behaviour of sand matrix soils

In geotechnical engineering field, the behaviour of soil does rely much on the shear strength for design purpose. Previously, findings show that the change of grained size in soil will change the structure (microstructure) and behaviour of the soil; consequently, affected the strength. To date, limited study focused on the effect of grading on the behaviour of sand fine mixtures. This study aims to investigate the effect of coarse sand on undrained strength behaviour of sand matrix soils in comparison with clean sand. A series of test on reconstituted sand matrix soils had been carried out by conducting consolidated undrained (CU) triaxial test using GDS ELDYN® triaxial machine. Coarse sand (retain within 2.0 mm to 0.6 mm) was mixed with 0%, 10 %, 20%, 30%, and 40% of fine particles (kaolin) independently by weight to prepare reconstituted samples. Triaxial samples of 50 mm diameter and 100 mm height were prepared using wet tamping technique (5% of moisture content) with targeted relative density at 15% (loose state). Each reconstituted sample was sheared at two effective confining pressures of 100 kPa and 200 kPa, respectively. Results show that the gradation contributed to the behaviour of the sand matrix soils. Increasing percentage of coarse sand in sand matrix soils exhibited higher effective friction angle. Similar trends were also observed on the angularity effect on undrained shear strength parameters

Asymmetry in translating heterolingualism: A Singapore case study

Using two plays and their translations as texts, this article explores how heterolingualism is treated in Chinese–English and English–Chinese literary translation in Singapore. It is observed that the ways in which heterolingualism is negotiated between source and target texts are asymmetric between the two translation directions. Specifically, while traces of code-switching tend to be effaced in Chinese–English translation, such traces tend to be increased in the reverse translation direction. By locating this finding within the reception contexts of the original and translated plays, and on the basis of Bakhtin's conceptualisation of linguistic varieties in discourse as social voices, it is hypothesised that the treatment of heterolingualism in literary translation is contingent on the extent to which one language lends itself to code-switching in another language, which is in turn indexical of the relative power of these languages. Textual choices in translation are thus subject to the influence of language ideological factors

Micro-level planning for a Papua New Guinean elementary school classroom: “copycat” planning and language ideologies

In the early 1990s, the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) enacted educational reform. It officially abandoned its English-only policy at elementary school level, in favour of community languages. In response, the Kairak community of East New Britain Province developed a vernacular literacy programme. This paper, based on original fieldwork research in PNG, assesses the viability of Kairak vernacular literacy in the context of the community's broader literacy practices. While mother tongue literacy is generally regarded by linguists and policy-makers as the best-case scenario, it can pose a variety of practical challenges in the classroom. This paper examines the community's micro-planning processes and cautions that the agents of micro planning must be wary of applying, wholesale, the policies of neighbouring communities to their own situation ("copycat" language planning (LP)). It also discusses the influence that language ideologies (vis-A-vis the vernacular, Tok Pisin, and English) have on LP. The paper concludes by recommending that in rural elementary schools with mixed linguistic populations, PNG's (northern) lingua franca, Tok Pisin, may in fact be a more sensible choice for the teaching of initial literacy