Architectural building safety and health performance model for stratified low-cost housing: education and management tool for building managers

The safety and health performances aspects of a building are the most challenging aspect of facility management. It requires a deep understanding by the building managers on the factors that contribute to health and safety performances. This study attempted to develop an explanatory architectural safety performance model for stratified low-cost housing in Malaysia. The proposed Building Safety and Health Performance (BSHP) model was tested empirically through a survey on 308 construction practitioners using partial least squares (PLS) and structural equation modelling (SEM) tool. Statistical analysis results supports the conclusion that architecture, building services, external environment, management approaches and maintenance management have positive influence on safety and health performance of stratified low-cost housing in Malaysia. The findings provide valuable insights for construction industry to introduce BSHP model in the future where the model could be used as a guideline for training purposes of managers and better planning and implementation of building management

An appraisal of section 377A and section 377B of the penal code (act 574) / Samir Zainal Zainal, Rezli Endi Ramli and Roslizi Sulaiman

Our objective is to appraise Section 377A and 377B of Malaysian Penal Code by looking into the essence of the law itself as to its effectiveness and its relevance to the Malaysian society. Will it help moralize society or just enforce it on them? The scope of this research will be on the applicability and the practicality of those sections in Malaysia and whether they are suitable towards the globalize world or in need of further revising to suite the evolution of the Malaysian society. This research will be based on books, articles, magazines, journals and other suitable materials from the law library of Mara University of Technology, Malaysia (PTAR UiTM Malaysia). Furthermore, observation also is made to the culture and acceptance of the particular involved in our research through the forum section in then internet and individual's life

Tracking human movement in office environment using video processing

In this paper, we proposed an approach of multi-person movement tracking in office environment without any identity conflicts. Simple image processing with frame differentiation method is applied to identify multiple human motion. An Expert System is applied to predict next camera occurrence of the tracking human. The main objective of this work is to detect and track multi-human motion using single camera in more than a room in an office

A simple circuit to improve the power yield of PV array during partial shading

In a typical photovoltaic (PV) power system, when part of the PV module is shaded, the bypass diode is activated to protect the module from hot-spot damages. As a result, the output power is reduced significantly because the power generated from the shaded module is totally unusable. In this paper, a simple circuit is proposed to increase the power yield of PV system under partial shading condition. The idea is to recover the power generated by the shaded module and then process it using power electronics circuit to become part of the output power. Consequently, the inclusion of the circuit enables the system to deliver more power compared to the bypass diode method. The concept is evaluated using Matlab-Simulink simulation and proven using an experimental test rig. The performance of the proposed circuit is compared with (1) PV system with bypass diode and (2) micro-inverter. The results show marked improvement in the efficiency, especially under heavy partial shading condition

Impact Of An Asthma Care Programme On Process And Cost Outcome Amongst Children With Asthma In Two Major Hospitals In Malaysia

INTRODUCTION: Childhood asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases. Due to its high prevalence, asthma places a considerable economic burden on the health care system and society. Optimal management can help to control the disorder and various interventions have been put into place based on recommendations of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). However despite the availability of these CPGs and effective pharmacotherapy, care often fall short of the accepted best practices. This study was aimed at assessing the current management of paediatric patients in terms of guideline adherence and to evaluate the impact of a structured Asthma Care Programme (ACP) on resource utilisation and cost associated with the management of asthma

AC voltage regulation of a bidirectional high-frequency link converter using a deadbeat controller

This paper presents a digital controller for AC voltage regulation of a bidirectional high-frequency link (BHFL) inverter using Deadbeat control. The proposed controller consists of inner current loop, outer voltage loop and a feed-forward controller, which imposes a gain scheduling effect according to the reference signal to compensate the steady-state error of the system. The main property of the proposed controller is that the current- and the voltage-loop controllers have the same structure, and use the same sampling period. This simplifies the design and implementation processes. To improve the overall performance of the system, additional disturbance decoupling networks are employed. This takes into account the model discretization effect. Therefore, accurate disturbance decoupling can be achieved, and the system robustness towards load variations is increased. To avoid transformer saturation due to low frequency voltage envelopes, an equalized pulse width modulation (PWM) technique has been introduced. The proposed controller has been realized using the DS1104 digital signal processor (DSP) from dSPACE. Its performances have been tested on a one kVA prototype inverter. Experimental results showed that the proposed controller has very fast dynamic and good steady-state responses even under highly nonlinear loads

Prediction Supply Modelling for High-Cost Housing in Malaysia

Oversupply and overhang among the high-cost housing type has become a blazing field that is often discussed in the press due to the failure in getting a balance of construction demand and supply unit. The basic purpose of the research is to develop a prediction modelling for high-cost housing supply based on the macroeconomic factors. The investigation involved the improvement of the analytical framework by synthesizing the models and framework advanced by a past analyst on the housing supply market framework. As initial, macroeconomic data of MHPI, GDP, BLR, CPI, population size, PCI, CBI, housing demand rate and housing stock index from 2007 to 2017 are collected from National Property and Information Centre (NAPIC) and Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) website. The prediction of the housing supply is investigated using Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA). Based on these problem, the investigation contended that the housing supply prediction model will be accomplish using experimental data from economic data with supported from macroeconomic factors such as world borrowing cost, outflows of foreign capital, subprime crisis, population characteristics, migration, urbanization, stamp duty exemption, moratorium, RPGT, and also microeconomic factors such as location and accessibility, basic and public facility, financial loan, location and placement, credit facility, construction cost, development approval, price and rental and housing stock

Grey-Level Cooccurrence Matrix Performance Evaluation for Heading Angle Estimation of Moveable Vision System in Static Environment

A method of extracting information in estimating heading angle of vision system is presented. Integration of grey-level cooccurrence matrix (GLCM) in an area of interest selection is carried out to choose a suitable region that is feasible for optical flow generation. The selected area is employed for optical flow generation by using Horn-Schunck method. From the generated optical flow, heading angle is estimated and enhanced via moving median filter (MMF). In order to ascertain the effectiveness of GLCM, we compared the result with a different estimation method of optical flow which is generated directly from untouched greyscale images. The performance of GLCM is compared to the true heading, and the error is evaluated through mean absolute deviation (MAE). The result ensured that GLCM can improve the estimation result of the heading angle of vision system significantly

AC Voltage Regulation of a Bidirectional High-Frequency Link Converter Using a Deadbeat Controller

This paper presents a digital controller for ac voltage regulation of a bidirectional high-frequency link (BHFL) inverter using deadbeat control. The proposed controller consists of inner current loop, outer voltage loop and a feed-forward controller, which imposes a gain scheduling effect according to the reference signal to compensate the steady-state error of the system. The main property of the proposed controller is that the current- and the voltage-loop controllers have the same structure, and use the same sampling period. This simplifies the design and implementation processes. To improve the overall performance of the system, additional disturbance decoupling networks are employed. This takes into account the model discretization effect. Therefore, accurate disturbance decoupling can be achieved, and the system robustness towards load variations is increased. To avoid transformer saturation due to low frequency voltage envelopes, an equalized pulse width modulation (PWM) technique has been introduced. The proposed controller has been realized using the DS1104 digital signal processor (DSP) from dSPACE. Its performances have been tested on a one kVA prototype inverter. Experimental results showed that the proposed controller has very fast dynamic and good steady-state responses even under highly nonlinear load

PERAN HUMOR DALAM MODAL SOSIAL

The purpose of this study is to look at the other side of humor, meaning that besides producing fun, it turns out that humor can also bond and can even build social relations. The method used in the study was descriptive qualitative. The results showed that humor plays a role in shaping trust, norms and solidarity in groups. Humor as a social capital bonding in building social relations by being inward looking as an initial way of fostering trust and becoming glue in groups, then paving the way for faster growth with the ability to create strong networking. Humor as a bridging social capital in connecting members to one another. Indirectly humor creates more intense interactions involving all members. Humor can be a link to the creation of interactions between group members, so members can understand each other's characters. Humor also indirectly forms the norm in the form of habits interacting with the aggressive style of humor that is agreed upon by members and becomes an identity in the group. Third, the existence of good social relations between members created through humor can create networking to strengthen solidarity