Tahap Kepuasan Pelajar Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Terhadap Perkhidmatan Kemudahan Kesihatan dalam Kampus Induk

Setiap universiti sememangnya menawarkan perkhidmatan kemudahan kesihatan untuk dimanfaatkan oleh setiap warganya di dalam kampus terutama pelajar. Perkhidmatan kemudahan kesihatan yang baik merupakan perkara utama yang perlu dititikberatkan oleh pihak universiti bagi memastikan kelestarian kesihatan pelajar terjamin. Kepuasan pelajar merupakan perkara yang penting untuk menilai kualiti perkhidmatan kemudahan kesihatan yang disediakan oleh universiti. Oleh itu, makalah ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji tahap kepuasan pelajar USM terhadap perkhidmatan kemudahan kesihatan yang ditawarkan di dalam kampus. Kajian ini menggunakan kaedah borang kaji selidik sebagai kaedah untuk mengumpul data dengan melibatkan seramai 300 responden pelajar di kampus induk USM yang dipilih secara rawak. Analisis statistik deskriptif digunakan untuk mendapatkan nilai kekerapan dan peratusan. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahawa pelbagai maklum balas daripada para responden tentang perkhidmatan kemudahan kesihatan yang disediakan di dalam kampus. Kajian ini dirujuk penting kepada pihak universiti sebagai bukti sama ada kemudahan perkhidmatan kesihatan yang ditawarkan di dalam kampus dapat diakses dengan baik mahupun sebaliknya. Kajian ini juga dapat memberi panduan dan cadangan kepada pihak universiti untuk menambah baik mutu perkhidmatan dan kemudahan kesihatan yang sedia ada khususnya kepada pelajar

Cabaran Mendapatkan Akses Kesihatan dalam kalangan Komuniti Nelayan di Tanjung Dawai, Kedah: Satu Tinjauan Awal

Makalah ini bertujuan mengenal pasti cabaran yang dihadapi oleh komuniti nelayan di Tanjung Dawai dalam mendapatkan akses kesihatan. Kaedah borang kaji selidik digunakan dengan melibatkan seramai 50 responden yang terdiri daripada ketua isi rumah. Data daripada kaji selidik dianalisis secara statistik deskriptif untuk memperoleh nilai frekuensi dan peratusan. Hasil kajian mendapati bahawa sebilangan besar responden mengalami cabaran yang ketara untuk mendapatkan akses kesihatan dari aspek kewangan untuk mendapatkan rawatan, jarak ke hospital/klinik yang jauh dari tempat tinggal, dan tempoh menunggu yang lama untuk mendapatkan rawatan. Kajian ini dirujuk penting kepada pihak berwajib supaya melaksanakan strategi yang proaktif dalam menaiktarafkan aksesibiliti kesihatan kepada komuniti nelayan di Tanjung Dawai supaya mereka dapat memperoleh ekuiti kesihatan dengan sewajarnya

Developing a Drift Rate Distribution for Technosignature Searches of Exoplanets

A stable-frequency transmitter with relative radial acceleration to a receiver will show a change in received frequency over time, known as a "drift rate''. For a transmission from an exoplanet, we must account for multiple components of drift rate: the exoplanet's orbit and rotation, the Earth's orbit and rotation, and other contributions. Understanding the drift rate distribution produced by exoplanets relative to Earth, can a) help us constrain the range of drift rates to check in a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project to detect radio technosignatures and b) help us decide validity of signals-of-interest, as we can compare drifting signals with expected drift rates from the target star. In this paper, we modeled the drift rate distribution for $\sim$5300 confirmed exoplanets, using parameters from the NASA Exoplanet Archive (NEA). We find that confirmed exoplanets have drift rates such that 99\% of them fall within the $\pm$53 nHz range. This implies a distribution-informed maximum drift rate $\sim$4 times lower than previous work. To mitigate the observational biases inherent in the NEA, we also simulated an exoplanet population built to reduce these biases. The results suggest that, for a Kepler-like target star without known exoplanets, $\pm$0.44 nHz would be sufficient to account for 99\% of signals. This reduction in recommended maximum drift rate is partially due to inclination effects and bias towards short orbital periods in the NEA. These narrowed drift rate maxima will increase the efficiency of searches and save significant computational effort in future radio technosignature searches.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure

On Detecting Interstellar Scintillation in Narrowband Radio SETI

To date, the search for radio technosignatures has focused on sky location as a primary discriminant between technosignature candidates and anthropogenic radio frequency interference (RFI). In this work, we investigate the possibility of searching for technosignatures by identifying the presence and nature of intensity scintillations arising from the turbulent, ionized plasma of the interstellar medium (ISM). Past works have detailed how interstellar scattering can both enhance and diminish the detectability of narrowband radio signals. We use the NE2001 Galactic free electron density model to estimate scintillation timescales to which narrowband signal searches would be sensitive, and discuss ways in which we might practically detect strong intensity scintillations in detected signals. We further analyze the RFI environment of the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) with the proposed methodology and comment on the feasibility of using scintillation as a filter for technosignature candidates.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, published by Ap

An Automated Fully-Computational Framework to Construct Printability Maps for Additively Manufactured Metal Alloys

In additive manufacturing, the optimal processing conditions need to be determined to fabricate porosity-free parts. For this purpose, the design space for an arbitrary alloy needs to be scoped and analyzed to identify the areas of defects for different laser power-scan speed combinations and can be visualized using a printability map. Constructing printability maps is typically a costly process due to the involvement of experiments, which restricts their application in high-throughput product design. To reduce the cost and effort of constructing printability maps, a fully computational framework is introduced in this work. The framework combines CALPHAD models and a reduced-order model to predict material properties. THen, an analytical thermal model, known as the Eagar-Tsai model, utilizes some of these materials' properties to calculate the melt pool geometry during the AM processes. In the end, printability maps are constructed using material properties, melt pool dimensions, and commonly used criteria for lack of fusion, balling, and keyholing defects. To validate the framework and its general application to laser powder-bed fusion alloys, five common additive manufacturing alloys are analyzed. Furthermore, NiTi-based alloys at three different compositions are evaluated to show the further extension of the framework to alloy systems at different compositions. The defect regions in these printability maps are validated with corresponding experimental observations to compare and benchmark the defect criteria and find the optimal criterion set with the maximum accuracy for each unique material composition. Furthermore, printability maps for NiTi that are obtained from our framework are used in conjunction with process maps resulting from a multi-model framework to guide the fabrication of defect-free additive manufactured parts with tailorable properties and performance.Comment: 18 Figures, 35 page

High-throughput Alloy and Process Design for Metal Additive Manufacturing

Designing alloys for additive manufacturing (AM) presents significant opportunities. Still, the chemical composition and processing conditions required for printability (ie., their suitability for fabrication via AM) are challenging to explore using solely experimental means. In this work, we develop a high-throughput (HTP) computational framework to guide the search for highly printable alloys and appropriate processing parameters. The framework uses material properties from state-of-the-art databases, processing parameters, and simulated melt pool profiles to predict process-induced defects, such as lack-of-fusion, keyholing, and balling. We accelerate the printability assessment using a deep learning surrogate for a thermal model, enabling a 1,000-fold acceleration in assessing the printability of a given alloy at no loss in accuracy when compared with conventional physics-based thermal models. We verify and validate the framework by constructing printability maps for the CoCrFeMnNi Cantor alloy system and comparing our predictions to an exhaustive 'in-house' database. The framework enables the systematic investigation of the printability of a wide range of alloys in the broader Co-Cr-Fe-Mn-Ni HEA system. We identified the most promising alloys that were suitable for high-temperature applications and had the narrowest solidification ranges, and that was the least susceptible to balling, hot-cracking, and the formation of macroscopic printing defects. A new metric for the global printability of an alloy is constructed and is further used for the ranking of candidate alloys. The proposed framework is expected to be integrated into ICME approaches to accelerate the discovery and optimization of novel high-performance, printable alloys.Comment: 46 pages, 20 figure

The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A 3.95-8.00 GHz Search for Radio Technosignatures in the Restricted Earth Transit Zone

We report on a search for artificial narrowband signals of 20 stars within the restricted Earth Transit Zone as a part of the ten-year Breakthrough Listen (BL) search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The restricted Earth Transit Zone is the region of the sky from which an observer would see the Earth transit the Sun with an impact parameter of less than 0.5. This region of the sky is geometrically unique, providing a potential way for an extraterrestrial intelligence to discover the Solar System. The targets were nearby (7-143 pc) and the search covered an electromagnetic frequency range of 3.95-8.00 GHz. We used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope to perform these observations with the standard BL data recorder. We searched these data for artificial narrowband ($\sim$Hz) signals with Doppler drift rates of $\pm 20$ Hz s$^{-1}$. We found one set of potential candidate signals on the target HIP 109656 which was then found to be consistent with known properties of anthropogenic radio frequency interference. We find no evidence for radio technosignatures from extraterrestrial intelligence in our observations. The observing campaign achieved a minimum detectable flux which would have allowed detections of emissions that were $10^{-3}$ to $0.88$ times as powerful as the signaling capability of the Arecibo radar transmitter, for the nearest and furthest stars respectively. We conclude that at least $8\%$ of the systems in the restricted Earth Transit Zone within 150 pc do not possess the type of transmitters searched in this survey. To our knowledge, this is the first targeted search for extraterrestrial intelligence of the restricted Earth Transit Zone. All data used in this paper are publicly available via the Breakthrough Listen Public Data Archive (http://seti.berkeley.edu/bldr2).Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Ap

A 4-8 GHz Galactic Center Search for Periodic Technosignatures

Radio searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have mainly targeted the discovery of narrowband continuous-wave beacons and artificially dispersed broadband bursts. Periodic pulse trains, in comparison to the above technosignature morphologies, offer an energetically efficient means of interstellar transmission. A rotating beacon at the Galactic Center (GC), in particular, would be highly advantageous for galaxy-wide communications. Here, we present blipss, a CPU-based open-source software that uses a fast folding algorithm (FFA) to uncover channel-wide periodic signals in radio dynamic spectra. Running blipss on 4.5 hours of 4-8 GHz data gathered with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, we searched the central 6' of our Galaxy for kHz-wide signals with periods between 11-100 s and duty cycles ($\delta$) between 10-50%. Our searches, to our knowledge, constitute the first FFA exploration for periodic alien technosignatures. We report a non-detection of channel-wide periodic signals in our data. Thus, we constrain the abundance of 4-8 GHz extraterrestrial transmitters of kHz-wide periodic pulsed signals to fewer than one in about 600,000 stars at the GC above a 7$\sigma$ equivalent isotropic radiated power of $\approx 2 \times 10^{18}$ W at $\delta \simeq 10\%$. From an astrophysics standpoint, blipss, with its utilization of a per-channel FFA, can enable the discovery of signals with exotic radio frequency sweeps departing from the standard cold plasma dispersion law.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, published in AJ, in press (http://seti.berkeley.edu/blipss/