Assessment of Impact on Landscape Development to Ecological Service Values and Goods Using Integrated Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Amongst the impacts of converting forest to agricultural activities is the degradation of ecology service values and goods (ESVG). Impacts on ESVG can be devastating in environmental, biological, and socio-economics manners. This paper highlights the study undertaken on the impacts of agricultural development in 0.8x106 ha of forest dominated landscape in Pasoh Forest Region (PFR), Malaysia, within period of 8 years from 1995 to 2003. Three folds of impacts on agricultural development examined and analysed are: (i) relationship of total soil loss and changes in land use pattern, (ii) mapping trends of ESVG for PFR in 1995 and 2003, and (iii) risk assessment of ESVG based on simulation of converting 339x103ha of primary forest into mass-scale oil palm plantation. Results of this study indicated that although only minor changes of about 1464ha (~0.2% of PFR) of primary forest was converted to agricultural activities, it have significantly increased the total soil loss from 59x106 to 69x106 t/ha/yr. The mean rate of soil loss within PFR is 0.8x106 t/yr, and if translated into ESVG term, costing US$4.8x106/yr. However, majority of the soil loss within all land use classes are within range of very low - low risk categories (<10 t/ha/yr). Estimated cost of ESVG for PFR was US$179x106 in 1995, declined to US$114x106 in 2003 due to 0.2$963x106 and US$575x106, respectively. This difference, however, is only marginal when full 17 attributes of ESVG were considered

Physico-chemical properties of the oils and fat from crotalaria cleomifolia seeds

The seeds of C. cleomifolia (locally known as kacang hantu) collected along Simpang Pulai - Berinchang Road, Cameron Highlands, was defatted with hexane and the resulting oil was analysed for their physico-chemical properties. The percentage yield of the oil was calculated as 5.3%. The acid value (1.2%), iodine value (85), peroxide value (0.6), saponification value (192.0) and unsaponifiable matter (2.3%) were determined to assess the quality of the oil. The physico-chemical characterisation showed that C. cleomifolia seeds oil is unsaturated semi-drying oil, with high saponifi cation and acidic values. The fatty acid composition of C. cleomifolia seed oil was determined by Gas Chromatography and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (ToF). The seed oil of C. cleomifolia contained linoleic acid (57.59%) and palmitic acid (5.07%), the most abundant unsaturated and saturated fatty acids, respectively. The polyunsaturated triacylglycerol (TAG) in C. cleomifolia seed oil determined by reverse phase High performance Liquid Chromatography; contained as PLL (18.04%) followed by POL + SLL (11.92%), OOL (7.04%) and PLLn (6.31%). The melting and cooling point of the oil were 16.22°C and -33.54°C, respectively

Cultural Mapping and Heritage Trail in Kuala Kangsar

Kuala Kangsar is the Royal Town of Negeri Perak. It was established in the 1720s. The name Kuala Kangsar is believed to be derived from the kangsar&nbsp;plant (Hibiscus flocussus) that grows in abundance along the banks of the Sungai Kangsar. Another strong suggestion claims that the name was handed down by explorers and settlers who had established a settlement at the mouth of the river. They called their new home Kuala Kurang Sa, a short form for Kuala Kurang Seratus because there were 99 tributaries that flowed into the Sungai Perak around the area. Kuala Kangsar became famous and remarkable not only because of its title as a royal town but also for its heritage and historical factors. There are a lot of heritage assets in this area. Because of these reasons, Kuala Kangsar has become popular and appealing to attract more tourists. This paper will identify and classify the heritage assets in Kuala Kangsar. The identifications and classifications will be based on some methods which consist of site familiarisation, unstructured interviews, visual observation and literature reviews. After heritage assets identification is done, this paper will develop the Cultural Mapping for Kuala Kangsar where Cultural Mapping is a tool to illustrate all the heritage assets’ location and position in mapping and graphics. Finally, this paper will introduce the Heritage Trail to link all these heritage assets in Kuala Kangsar

Performance and emission evaluations of a prototype stepped-piston engine using carburetor and direct fuel-injection systems

Two-stroke engines have been used for sometimes in automotive and stationary applications since early 20th century. The advantages of two-stroke engines are obvious, i.e., lighter, simpler and less expensive to manufacture. Technically, two-stroke engines have the potential to pack almost twice the power into the same space because there are twice as many power strokes per revolution. The combination of lightweight and twice the power gives two-stroke engines a great power-to-weight ratio compared to many four stroke engine designs. However due to the short-circuiting process of the fuel before combustion, this has resulted in deterioration in overall performances especially poor combustion efficiency and high white smoke emission problem. Coupled with the improvement in the four-stroke engine technology, the former has overcome the latter in being the choice for mobile platform applications. Due to high fuel cost and the need to explore the use of other fuel sources, notably gaseous fuels, a number of enthusiasts and engine developers have revisited the two-stroke engine design. Fuels such as hydrogen and methane are said to be ideal for use with the incorporation of the some new features (Goldsborough and Blaringan, 2003). An engine design and development program was initiated at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in year 2003 to develop local R&D capabilities in small power-train engineering. The exercise evolved around the development of an air-cooled single cylinder of stepped-piston engine concept. The term “stepped piston” refers to the conventional piston having compounded with a larger diameter section at the rear section of its geometry. The changes to the original design were made as the research group feels that there are rooms for improvements. In addition to this, the modifications will infuse other innovative scope of work from design to product testing activities (Hooper, 1985).This program, eventually leads to the incorporation of features, is expected to enhance performance of the prototype and subsequently exhaust emission. This is in anticipation of producing a working prototype for multiple applications namely stationary and automotive. The gasoline stepped-piston engine is a relatively new design concept for small mobile power plants. It is an engine, operating on a two-stroke cycle but is infused with four-stroke engine features. It has a build-in supercharger mechanism (by virtue of the extended flange) that improves the scavenging process thus improve combustion efficiency. Due to these operating characteristics, the engine has all the attributes of a low emission, high-efficiency power plant that eliminates many of the major weaknesses associated with the Otto four-stroke engine and with modern two-stroke engines

Utilization of waste hydraulic oil as fuel in diesel engine

Production of alternative diesel fuel has been increasing drastically in many Asian countries. Since the reduction of petroleum production by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the research on alternative fuel for diesel engine has gain interest. The target of this project is to substitute some percentage usage of conventional diesel fuel with waste substance without compromising on engine performance and exhaust emissions. This study has produced two type of alternative fuels. A test fuel consisting 30% of water into diesel fuel with the existence of additive or emulsifier (span 80) is called as DW Emul. Another test fuel which is named as DHW Emul produced by blending 30% of water into a mixture consisting of 20% of waste hydraulic oil and 80% of diesel fuel with the existence of span 80. The engine performance and exhaust emissions of DW Emul and DHW Emul are measured and has been compared with the conventional diesel fuel. A 600cc single cylinder direct injection diesel engine was used. The experiment was conducted at 1500 rpm with variable engine loads. Results show that DHW Emul and DW Emul has higher brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC). However, by considering the total use of diesel fuel contained in DW Emul, the quantity was lower at all loads. The same goes for DHW Emul at low load but deteriorate at high load which show slightly higher compared with of using 100% conventional diesel fuel. DHW Emul has suppressed CO emission that is usually high of using emulsion fuel to the level similar to conventional diesel fuel. NOx and Smoke emissions for DHW Emul are lower than conventional diesel. The use of DHW Emul can give significant reduction of NOx and Smoke emissions without deterioration of CO emission

Combustion performance of firing biodiesel from waste cooking oil in an oil burner

Depletion of fossil fuels, concerns on the environment, and the fluctuating fuel price have become the major drives in searching for sustainable alternative fuel. With these regards, a study was conducted to develop alternative diesel fuel from waste cooking oil (WCO) through esterification and transesterification processes. The study involves production of WCO biodiesel, characterisation of fuel physical properties, and determination of combustion temperature and gaseous emissions. Several fuel blends are used in the combustion test, i.e. petroleum diesel fuel, WCO B5, WCO B15, and WCO B25. Combustion test is conducted under several equivalence ratios which are 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 to examine the combustion performance in the lean, stoichiometric, and rich conditions. The results suggest that increasing the percentage of WCO biodiesel in the fuel blends causes the wall temperature to decrease due to lower energy content in WCO biodiesel. Significant improvements in the emissions of NOx, SO2, and CO are observed with 7.27%, 37.5%, and 54.5% reductions respectively for WCO B25 at equivalence ratio of 1.0. Findings from this study show that WCO biodiesel blend is a promising alternative to diesel fuel

How does immigration affect wages and the unemployment rate in Malaysia? a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) approach

Malaysia had approximately 2 million migrants in 2018, and this number was increasing dramatically by 25 percent in 2019. Parallels with the aims of country policy to reduce migrant workers' dependency in 2020, managing the workers needs to be clarified. At the same time, the country still needs to keep them for specific sectors. These issues motivate us to analyze the migrant worker's requirements at different levels of skills and wages. Using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling, at four-level nested CES production function, this study found high skilled migrants will harm wages for the high skilled and skilled groups while the opposite effect was observed for the semiskilled and low-skilled groups. However, when the migrant stock increases slightly below 1 percent, it will reduce the wages for semiskilled workers due to substitution effects. This study also found that the influx of low-skilled migrant workers will reduce salaries for semiskilled and low-skilled workers. The analysis also indicates that a small rise in high skilled immigrant labour will reduce the unemployment rate; likewise, increasing more than 4 percent will increase the unemployment rate. The results provide the policymaker guidelines to employ foreign workers' best skills to control the inequality of wages among skilled and low-skilled workers

Public debt, institutional quality and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa

While other regions with better institutional quality have benefitted considerably from borrowing, sub-Saharan Africa continues to accumulate public debt with a long history of dismal economic performance. This paper examines the impact of public debt and institutional quality on economic growth using the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) approach on a sample of 46 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000–2014. The empirical result indicates that institutional quality has both a direct and indirect impact on economic growth and therefore reveals that the interaction term of institutional quality and public debt has a statistically significant impact on the debt-growth relationship. This confirms the hypothesis that the impact of public debt on economic growth is a function of institutional quality. Moreover, government effectiveness, control of corruption and regulatory quality were found to have the strongest influence in mitigating the negative impact of public debt on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, comprehensive improvement of the institutional quality is necessary not only in minimising the negative impact of public debt but also in delivering the unwavering benefits of government borrowing

Kesan pandemik Covid-19 ke atas kesejahteraan sosial penduduk PPR di Kuala Lumpur

Pandemik COVID-19 adalah satu fenomena baru yang tidak dijangka sehingga mengubah kesemua aspek kehidupan manusia ke norma baharu. Para penduduk Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) yang terdiri daripada kelompok B40 dijangka mengalami kesukaran kehidupan seiring dengan gelombang perintah kawalan pergerakan yang telah dilaksanakan berulang kali. Oleh itu, kajian ini bertujuan untuk meninjau kesan pandemik COVID-19 ke atas kesejahteraan sosial penduduk PPR. Seramai 1200 penduduk PPR telah mengisi borang soal selidik yang diedarkan samada secara fizikal mahupun secara atas talian. Sebanyak sembilan soalan digunakan untuk meneroka tahap kesejahteraan sosial dan kesemua soalan tersebut adalah diadaptasikan daripada dua set soal-selidik terpiawai iaitu The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) oleh Diener et al. (1985) dan Perceived Stress Scale oleh Cohen (1994). Ujian t berpasangan telah dilakukan untuk membuat perbandingan min bagi sembilan soalan tersebut untuk situasi sebelum dan selepas perintah kawalan pergerakan (PKP). Umumnya, kesejahteraan sosial penduduk PPR telah merosot secara signifikan. Antara kemerosotan ketara yang dikenalpasti adalah keadaan kehidupan, kepuasan tentang kehidupan dan rancangan kehidupan. Namun, analisis frekuensi menunjukkan bilangan penduduk yang menganggap gaya hidup mereka menghampiri idaman masing-masing adalah sangat sedikit tidak kira waktu sebelum PKP mahupun selepas PKP. Walaupun kesejahteraan sosial penduduk PPR merosot secara signifikan selepas PKP, gaya hidup mereka sebenarnya tidak berubah secara drastik. Selain itu, data kualitatif yang telah dikumpul daripada temubual kumpulan berfokus dengan wakil persatuan penduduk PPR menjelaskan bahawa para penduduk PPR sebenarnya biasa hidup dalam keadaan yang susah sejak sebelum berlakunya Pandemik COVID-19 lagi. Mereka didapati memiliki daya tahan tersendiri untuk berdepan dengan tahap kesejahteraan sosial yang merosot. Implikasi daripada penemuan kajian ini adalah segala perancangan dan bantuan kepada kelompok B40 perlu mengambil kira faktor daya tahan yang dimiliki oleh mereka yang sedang hidup dalam keadaan yang susah