Development, Democracy, and Post-Islamism in Indonesia

The democratization of Indonesia since the late 1990s has inspired an unprecedented atmosphere of openness and inclusion in the country. Accordingly, many political organizations including Islamic parties and movements have liberalized their organizational philosophies to accommodate a wider and more diverse range of issues and concerns. Several Islamist groups too, while maintaining their Islamic identity, have since transitioned toward secularizing their goals and objectives as a means to adapt to the changing political environment. Political analysts refer to this development as Post-Islamism. To understand  Post-Islamism in Indonesia, this article analyzes the historical  development of political Islam  through the interplays between changing global-historical currents and local cultural-political conditions

Malaysia and Singapore in the world economy : state, capitalism, and authoritarianism

This dissertation is a comparative historical analysis between Malaysia and Singapore on the relationship between capitalist development and authoritarianism. Both Malaysia and Singapore have recorded remarkable economic growths and rapid industrial development, but both these countries have also shown to be moving toward state authoritarian rule. The rise of authoritarianism in these countries is analyzed through four interactive state development-related variables that shape the nature of politics in these countries. First is the development of institutions that have enabled the state to assume and strengthen its power over all other social forces. This in turn has empowered the state to forge alliances with both foreign and local capitalists in order to survive in the world economy. In this regard, even though so-called democratic institutions such as representative government and electoral processes are seen to exist, their effectiveness as genuine democratic institutions is limited. Second, social and political tensions entrenched in ethnonational-class inequalities have given rise to serious difficulties in the formation of cross-ethnonational popular alliances. These difficulties arise not from the multi-ethnonational character of society but rather from the domination of economic power by one group used to politically subsume other groups. The state also frequently justifies authoritarian rule as a way to suppress ethnonational tensions and enforce coexistence between the various groups. Third, the dependent nature of capitalist development itself aggravates existing wealth concentration, thereby reinforcing statecapital alliances and widening existing disparities. The more dependent the state is, the more repressive is its administration to accommodate capital investments. Fourth, peripheral state development has thrust the state into the leading role of economic planning as well as policy formulation. Thus by exploiting ideologies constructed around economic nationalism, the state often justifies its authoritarian rule as a politically legitimate means of attaining an economically prosperous end. Both Malaysia and Singapore are chosen for this comparative study due to their phenomenal economic growth, their development toward state authoritarian rule, and their unique social-political histories, that in many ways set these countries apart from many capitalist peripheral states

Diasporic Insecurity as Constructional Framework for Chinese Political Identity in Colonial Malaya (1826-1957)

The ethnic Chinese in Malaysia have always been a politically conscious minority. Much of this was shaped during Malaysia’s (Malaya) colonial period when the Chinese community began experiencing various social insecurities associated with life as a diaspora. For one, as a migrant minority in a colonial society, the Chinese faced various uncertainties over their ability to maintain their cultural identity in a multiethnic capitalist society. Additionally, their own contradictory ideas about their status in Malaya as well as their segmented experiences along socio-economic lines did not accord them any unity in deciding their own political future. Using theories in political identity-building among minorities, this essay provides a historical overview of how these insecurities have constructed for the Chinese diaspora a general framework for political identity-building in colonial Malaya. It shows that although the Chinese in colonial Malaya shared a common diasporic origin, they were nevertheless differentiated in their social outlooks and political activism

OTSUHARA-WATH Filter for Poisson Noise Removal in Low Light Condition Digital Image

Nowadays, the digital images are used widely due to the development of sophisticated technologies. The recent device that is very popular among its users related to digital images is smartphone. This is due to nowadays smartphone is embedded with its own camera that can capture digital images. Nevertheless, the digital image is easily exposed to various types of noise, especially the Poisson noise in low light condition. Therefore, this study aims to develop a new denoising technique for Poisson noise removal in low light condition digital images. This study proposes a denoising method named as OTSUHARAWATH Filter, which utilizes the Otsu Threshold, Kuwahara Filter and Wavelet Threshold. The proposed methods performance is evaluated based on the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Squared Error (MSE) and visual inspection. The comparison between the proposed methods and the existing denoising methods is also performed. From the results of PSNR, MSE, computational time and visual inspection, it can be proven that the OTSUHARA-WATH Filter is able to reduce and smooth noise, while preserving the edges and fine details of the image at low and medium level of Poisson noise in comparison to the existing methods

Students' statistics perception towards Difficulty of Calculus 3 course in UiTM Seremban Campus / Muhammad Syabil Tajuddin, Nur Amalina Mohamad Saleh and Nurul Hadfina Nor Azlan

Calculus is the branch of mathematics that extremely important for many areas of science and engineering in the career and industry. In Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Calculus 3 has the highest failure rate because most of the students who have problem with understanding the concept and theory of basic mathematics usually they lack of cognitive skills. This research is to describe the demographic profile towards student"s perception on difficulty of Calculus 3 and to classify the student into the category of final grade Calculus 3 course at UiTM Seremban Campus. This study used a primary data which is collected from questionnaires. The researcher obtained 150 samples of respondents at UiTM Seremban Campus. The data is analyses by using Discriminant Analysis method since the dependent variables are categorical. From the result the researcher found that 33% of students have been affected by the lecturer in learning Calculus 3 and the highest contribution to the final grade of A and Final Grade of B in Calculus 3 course was affected by lecturer teaching style but students who get final grade of C are affected by confidence and the least affected is lecturer teaching style. In addition, the researchers had classified the respondents into categories of grade among students in UiTM Seremban Campus based on several factors. The assumption of covariance matrices were meet. The result shows that the original classified group model is 51.3% to make a prediction about students' grade with 48.7% of error rate. Therefore, these functions were not good enough to be used in classification since the error rate is more than 20%

Gastrointestinal parasites of zoonotic importance observed in the wild, urban, and captive populations of non- human primates in Malaysia

Background: A study was undertaken to determine gastrointestinal (GI) parasites commonly found in Malaysia’s non- human primates (NHP) living in three different types of populations (wild, urban, and captive) and the basis of major GI parasites of zoonotic importance. Methods: A total of 308 samples was collected and microscopically screened from the NHP in the wild (n = 163), urban (n = 76), and captive (n = 69) populations. The samples were taken from 12 species of local NHPs. Results: At least, 44 species of GI parasites comprising of protozoans (seven species), nematodes (26 species), cestodes (five species), trematodes (five species), and pentastomida (one species) were detected. There were no significant differences for the overall prevalence and no great differences in GI parasite species among the wild, urban, and captive NHP populations. Conclusion: The most common GI parasite was Ascaris spp. (49.7%), followed by Oesophagostomum spp. (26.9%), and 31 species discovered in this study are of known public health importance

Solving gate allocation problem (AGAP) using distance-evaluated particle swarm optimization (DEPSO)

Assignment of flights to gates at an airport become very complex nowadays, especially for unprepared airport. In this investigation, the airport gate allocation problem is solved using a recently introduced Meta-heuristic and also one of the extensions from Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) which is called Distance-Evaluated Particle Swarm Optimization (DEPSO). The first objective of this investigation is to minimize the passengers; total walking distance from gate to exit/entrance and from gate to gate (transit). Since the airport gate allocation problem is a discrete combinatorial problem, the original continuous PSO is extended to DEPSO such that PSO can be used to solve these discrete combinatorial problem. After that, the second objectives is to evaluate the performance of the DEPSO manually using Excel. Last but not least, a small real life problem or an application for the case study, an airport with 40 flights, 14 numbers of plane and 16 gates has been successfully optimized using DEPSO algorithm