Knowledge management implementation in information society: A study of IIUM library

Most organizations implementing knowledge management are thrilled by the numerous opportunities it offers and the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) library is not left behind in the innovative shift.Even though knowledge management practice is demanded in information society, it does not exist as a full-fledged solution in most organizations yet.The reality in IIUM library is that it already employs certain elements of knowledge management through the use of IT to support various activities from administrative jobs to user education.Among the IT support system used include: the staff intranet and email to share and exchange information, library database to capture and store data and the digital library facilities to serve the diverse interest of its numerous customers.The following questions therefore arise: do these elements of knowledge management available in IIUM library suffice and provide the opportunities it affords? Do the staff and users of IIUM library see it in the light of the benefits that accrue from it? Therefore the purpose of this study lies in its concern for whether the elements of knowledge management involved in the administration of IIUM library is achieving the goals of knowledge management and whether the staff and customers of IIUM library are maximizing the benefits of knowledge management in information societies

Review of offshore pipeline span creation mechanism

The various span creation mechanisms have been studied in great detail and this work has presented the state of the art in the area of offshore pipeline span creation mechanism analysis. The different span creation mechanisms of a pipeline during operation include residual uplifts, scouring, sandwaves, underwater landslides, strudel scour, etc. With this information a software can be formulated which can incorporate the different characteristics of elements of span creation

Demand for energy among households in Ijebu Division, Ogun State, Nigeria

This study examines the influence of householdsÂ’ socio-economic characteristics on household demand for electricity, petrol, diesel, kerosene, firewood, domestic gas, and transport in commercial vehicles. Primary data obtained in a cross-section survey of 90 households selected across six communities in Ijebu-Division of Ogun State, Nigeria was used in estimating a system of energy demand equations and elasticities. The study reveals that an average household in the sample had about five members, headed by a 52 year old male that had about nine years of formal education. The mean monthly household consumption expenditure was N 15,458.63, of which about 25% was expended on the seven commodities. While the influence of education and household size on household energy use were insignificant; income (budget size), household ownership of electrical/electronic appliances and automobiles, as well as age of household heads exercised significant influence on the relative shares of some/all of the seven energy commodities in household budgets in the study area. The income effects were positive for all the energy commodities, except firewood. Demand for petrol, diesel and domestic gas were income elastic. Thus, the study concludes that improvement in income would cause increase in demand for electricity and petroleum products in the study area, but worsening real income would place greater demand on biomass fuel.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Off-farm labour supply and production efficiency of farm household in rural Southwest Nigeria

This study examines the influence of off-farm employment on production efficiency of farm household in Southwest Nigeria. The study was based on primary data collected from a cross-section of 489 rural farm households, drawn by multi-stage random sampling from Ogun and Oyo States, in Southwest Nigeria. The data was analysed by descriptive and econometric techniques, including specification and estimation of a conditional revenue frontier and a production inefficiency equation. The results showed that 47.1% of the rural farm households had some of their members involved in off-farm activities with a typical member devoting 34.3% of his/her work efforts to off farm activities, while off farm activities contributed 27.6% of a typical farm household's labour income (N282, 263.54 in 2005/2006). Increase in off-farm labour supply was found to be associated with significant (p < 0.01) reduction in production in-efficiency among the rural farm households. The study also found that farm household production efficiency is significantly enhanced by increasing the share of tree crops and livestock in farm household farming activities, having access to land by leasing and operating a much more consolidated landholdings. However, remittances from rural out-migrants do not significantly affect rural farm household production efficiency

On fractionally integrated logistic smooth transitions in time series

Long memory and nonlinearity are two key features of some macroeconomic time series which are characterized by persistent shocks that seem to rise faster during recession than it falls during expansion. A variant of nonlinear time series model together with long memory are used to examine these features in inflation series for three economies. The results which compares favourably with that of van Dijk et al. (2002) elicit some interesting attributes of inflation in the developed and developing economies

Application of principal component analysis on equity valuation multiples: Evidence from Malaysian firms

Investment analysts often used equity valuation multiples to assess the performance of stocks in relation to likely future return to shareholders. Valuation multiples used by analysts are price to earnings, price to book value, price to cash flow and price to sales multiples. However, researchers have argued that correlation exists between the multiples hence assessing them individually and later merging them to one multiple results to reduplication.This study employed the principal component analysis (PCA) method to condense the four equity valuation multiples (EVM) of 223 randomly selected listed firms in Malaysia for the period of 2008-2013. The PCA result reveals that three (3) components explained 99% of the total variables variance. Suggesting that, the three components (price to earnings, price to book value and price to cash flow multiples) can satisfactorily explain all the EVMs.The implication is that strong correlation exists between EVMs of Malaysian firms.Therefore, the study recommends the application of principal component analysis methodology in the analysis of the equity valuation multiples because of correlation that exists between the valuation multiples. The study is limited to EVMs, entity valuations are not covered in the study.Applying PCA to equity valuation multiples ensures accuracy and reliability of result interpretation due to absence of multicolearity in the decomposed principal component

Evaluation of Cell Phone Business in Nigeria: A Paradox of Gains and Losses

Communication of information has been enhanced with the advent of Information and Communication Technology, mobile phone technology inclusive, which contribute to economic growth and development. This study assessed the profitability and hidden disincentives of cell phone business in Nigeria. 200 respondents were sampled in five randomly selected States. Data analysis included descriptive and gross margin techniques. In terms of gains, margin-cost ratio (MCR) of mobile phone business was 1.72 while in terms of losses, about 54% reduction in margin was experienced in using generator to provide power. It was suggested that improvement in public power supply must be relentlessly pursued

A Tool for Appraising Mobility Environment with a Perfect Based Index Measure

Diverse methods, approaches and models have been employed in explaining mobility in both the urban and human context. However, there has been the ever-present drawback premised on data unavailability, “dyrtiness” or scantiness. More so, the techniques and parameters used, does not provide clues about mobility complexities engendered by attributes of “mobility environments”, as a result, determinants of mobility complexities are hardly fully described. To narrow the gap, it is conjectured that systematic evaluation of traveler perception of “mobility environments”, may provide hints about the degree to which specified spatial units enhance or hinder mobility, by rating such environment with a perception based index construct we hope will help improve assessments of “mobility environments”. This need is underscored by the necessity to explore alternative decision support tools, for mobility evaluations, especially where it may be implausible to apply advanced, high end, data hungry models of mobility evaluation. The method involved a two-pronged survey of transport professionals and randomly selected travelers. The professionals helped with “mobility environment” attributes identification and selection of contextually relevant ones from a list of potential attributes of influence, extracted from relevant literature using the Delphi method. Randomly selected travelers were in turn presented with the short listed attributes for rating on a five point Likert scale. Ratings were then used to determine attribute rankings and their commensurate index equivalents, as a basis for classification. Travelers indicated that a high activity mix, high road and pedestrian network density are good mobility enhancing qualities a city should possess. However, aggregate indexing indicated that enhancing development characteristics, mode characteristics, travel and economic attributes, are the most important for the study area. The measures are targeted at facilitating development of cost effective and parsimonious means of identifying urban mobility challenges by local authorities, to provide a strategic pathway for a city’s “mobility environments” qualities to be identified and objectively appraised, in order to satisfactorily target interventions at improving both the “mobility environment” and the quality of life of city inhabitants

A New Metric for Prioritising Intrusion Alerts Using Correlation and Outlier Analysis

In a medium sized network, an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) could produce thousands of alerts a day many of which may be false positives. In the vast number of triggered intrusion alerts, identifying those to prioritise is highly challenging. Alert Correlation and prioritisation are both viable analytical methods which are commonly used to understand and prioritise alerts. However, to the author’s knowledge, very few dynamic prioritisation metrics exist. In this paper, a new prioritisation metric - OutMet, which is based on measuring the degree to which an alert belongs to anomalous behaviour is proposed. OutMet combines alert correlation and prioritisation analysis and in given attack scenarios, is capable of reducing false positives by upto 100%. The metric is tested and evaluated using the recently developed cyber-range dataset provided by Northrop Grumman