Technical and vocational skills (TVS): a means of preventing violence among youth in Nigeria

Technical and vocational skills are an important tool for reducing violence among youth, especially in Nigeria, who face security challenges due to different kinds of violence. This paper focusses on the policies and programmes intended to provide youth with skills that can help them improve their life instead of engaging in violence. The paper also studies youth participation in violence. The study shows that youth in Nigeria participate in violence because of unemployment and economic pressure. These youth are mostly from poor families and are mostly used by others to achieve their own unlawful ambition. The data were collected from various secondary sources such as textbooks, journals and conference papers that were carefully reviewed. The results obtained from the literature revealed that youth are not committed, sensitised and mobilised to taking advantage of the opportunities available to them. The results also revealed that almost all the programmes meant to provide youths with skills have failed. Poverty alleviation programmes established to create jobs, self-employment and self-reliance have been unsuccessful. Therefore, alternatives must be provided to help the younger generations. Based on the literature reviewed, the paper discusses related issues and outcomes and ends with recommendations to improve the situation

Complex formation and enantioselectivity studies of triazole fungicide and organophosphorus pesticide enantiomers using capillary electrophoresis

Several cyclodextrin modified-micellar electrokinetic chromatography (CDMEKC) methods were developed for the successful triazole fungicides separation. In the first part, an efficient method was developed for the simultaneous enantioseparation of cyproconazole (4 stereoisomer), bromuconazole (4 stereoisomer) and diniconazole (2 stereisomer) enantiomers using CD-MEKC with a dual mixture of neutral cyclodextrins as chiral selector. The best simultaneous separation of cyproconazole, bromuconazole, and diniconazole enantiomers was achieved with a mixture of 27 mM HP-β-CD and 3 mM HP-γ-CD in 25 mM phosphate buffer (pH 3.0) containing 40 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and 15% iso-propanol as organic modifier. Complete separation of 10 stereoisomer of triazole fungicides were obtained in a single run with good resolution (Rs 1.74“26.31) and high peak efficiency (N > 400 000). In the second part of the study, enantioseparation of hexaconazole, penconazole, myclobutanil, and triadimefon was investigated. Simultaneous enantioseparation of penconazole, myclobutanil, and triadimefon was achieved under acidic condition (pH 3.0) using 25 mM phosphate buffer, 50 mM SDS, and 30 mM HP-γ-CD, with Rs greater than 0.9 whereas, simultaneous enantioseparation of hexaconazole, penconazole, and myclobutanil was successfully achieved under neutral condition (pH 7.0) using 25 mM phosphate buffer, 40 mM SDS, and 40 mM HP-γ-CD, with Rs greater than1.6. In order to improve detection sensitivity, on-line preconcentration technique was investigated. It was found that sweeping technique as an on-line preconcentration technique improved the detection sensitivity of the enantioseparation of cyproconazole, bromuconazole, and diniconazole by 30 to 60-fold, with good repeatabilities in the migration time, peak area and peak height were obtained with RSDs in the range of 0.08“0.32%, 0.03“ 2.44%, and 2.13“8.44% respectively. Furthermore, sweeping technique improved the detection sensitivity of the enantioseparation of hexaconazole, penconazole and myclobutanil by 62- to 67-fold. Good repeatabilities in the migration time, peak area and peak height were obtained with RSDs in the range of 2.39“3.90%, 1.96€“6.15%, and 2.80“6.64% respectively. Finally, the formation constant of diniconazole enantiomers with HP-γ-CD under neutral and acidic condition was investigated using CD-MEKC

Development in Synthesis of Silicon Carbide from Natural Resource

Silicon Carbide (SiC) is categorized as an important structural ceramic material because of its combination of excellence properties which are inherent due to highly covalent bonding. Composition of tetrahedral carbon and silicon atoms with strong bonds in crystal lattice resulted to very hard and strong SiC materials. Silica sands was chosen as the main resource of SiO2 and being the most abundant natural resources available in Tronoh, Perak is used as major reference of the project. The most fundamental synthesis development of SiC is the reduction process of SiO2 by carbonaceous material such as graphite and petroleum coke with addition of Al2O3 as additive. In this project, the development in synthesis of SiC from base materials silica oxide and graphite will be demonstrated using Low Energy Ball Milling and sintering techniques with significant low cost production and environmental concerns. The preparation for developing nano-crystalline particles of SiC is done by prolonged low energy milling process at constant speed of 100 rpm for 100 and 200 hours accordingly. The ball to powder weight ratio and operating speed are two key parameters of effective milling condition during milling and crucial introduce sufficient reaction energy to overcome the activation energy of SiC phase in the powder mixture. Throughout the experiment, comparison analysis between two time interval of milling on the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns has proven that the 200 h activated mixture revealed that SiC phase had been formed almost completely after reduction at temperature range from 1400oC to 1600oC. However, SiC crystalline has also developed during 100 h milling time with considerable amount. As the particle sizes and morphology behaviors are concerned, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) was applied and finally revealed that the particle sizes of the powder mixture had been decreased from 63 μm to 300 nm due to the extending milling time. The SiO2 particles had been covered by carbon particles and it is proven that the nano-particles of SiC whiskers were developed using this combination techniqu

Hubungan Sosial, Sokongan, Dan Kesejahteraan Warga Tua: Satu Kajian di Pedesaan Kelantan

Hubungan sosial dan sokongan yang mencukupi adalah cukup penting untuk kesejahteraan warga tua. Oleh itu kajian ini bertujuan untuk memperihal hubungan dan sokongan sosial daripada ahli keluarga dan jiran tetangga kepada warga tua. Kajian ini, yang dilakukan di Daerah Limbongan, Pasir Puteh, Kelantan juga bertujuan untuk menentukan perkaitan di antara ciri latar belakang terpilih warga tua, hubungan sosial warga tua dengan keluarga, dan jiran tetangga, serta sokongan sosial daripada keluarga dan jiran tetangga, dengan kesejahteraan sebenar dan kesejahteraan tanggapan warga tua de sa. Seramai 214 orang warga tua daripada 1,067 buah keluarga yang mempunyai isirumah berumur 60 tahun dan ke atas di Daerah Limbongan, telah dipilih secara rawak mudah sebagai responden kajian. Data dikumpul dengan menggunakan kaedah temu bual berstruktur dan dianalisis dengan menggunakan teknik korelasi product-moment dan teknik regresi linear berganda. Hasil kajian menunjukkan kebanyakan responden tidak pemah mendapat pendidikan formal. Walaupun mereka sudah mencapai umur Ianjut, mereka terpaksa terus bekerja untuk menyara kehidupan. Bagi warga tua yang masih bekerja, kebanyakan mereka terlibat dalam kegiatan pertanian tradisional. Analisis ke atas hubungan sosial mendapati kehidupan warga tua tidak tersisih ataupun terbiar daripada ahli keluarga dan jiran tetangga. Kebanyakan warga tua menanggapi bahawa keluarga, khususnya pasangan dan anak-anak, serta jiran tetangga adalah sumber terpenting sokongan sosial kepada mereka. Analisis juga menunjukkan tahap kesejahteraan sebenar bagi kebanyakan warga tua adalah agak rendah. Walaupun tahap kesejahteraan sebenar warga tua rendah tetapi tahap kesejahteraan tanggapan mereka adalah sederhana tinggi. Kualiti perumahan, jumlah anak, pendidikan dan status pekerjaan, didapati mempunyai pengaruh yang signifikan ke atas kesejahteraan sebenar warga tua. Sebaliknya kualiti perumahan, hubungan sosial dengan jiran tetangga, pendidikan, status pekerjaan dan hubungan sosial dengan pasangan pula mempunyai pengaruh yang signifikan ke atas kesejahteraan tanggapan mereka. Oleh yang dernikian, secara keseluruhannya kajian mendapati pendidikan, pekerjaan, anak-anak, keadaan rumah yang sesuai, adanya hubungan sosial, terutama dengan pasangan dan jiran tetangga, dilihat sebagai faktor penyumbang terpenting kepada kesejahteraan warga tua desa di kawasan kajian

Modeling of acetosolv pulping of oil palm fronds using response surface methodology and wavelet neural networks

Mathematical models based on response surface methodology (RSM) and wavelet neural networks (WNNs) in conjunction with a central composite design were developed in order to study the influence of pulping variables viz. acetic acid, temperature, time, and hydrochloric acid (catalyst) on the resulting pulp and paper properties (screened yield, kappa number, tensile and tear indices) during the acetosolv pulping of oil palm fronds. The performance analysis demonstrated the superiority of WNNs over RSM, in that the former reproduced the experimental results with percentage errors and mean squared errors between 3 and 8% and 0.0054–0.4514 respectively, which were much lower than those obtained by the RSM models with corresponding values of 12–40% and 0.0809–9.3044, further corroborating the goodness of fit of the WNNs models for simulating the acetosolv pulping of oil palm fronds. Based on this assessment, it validates the exceptional predictive ability of the WNNs in comparison to the RSM polynomial model

Pembentukan Model Ruangan Kegagalan Cerun Bagi Sub-Lembangan Hulu Sungai Langat

Penambahan tekanan bagi tujuan pembangunan di Malaysia dalam tahun kebelakangan ini disebabkan oleh pertambahan populasi Increasing pressure for development in Malaysia in recent years due to rapid populatio

Supercritical fluid extraction of plant and environmental samples

Since the inception of analytical supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) in the early 80's, this technique has garnered great attractions in the extractions of variety of analytes from variety of matrices. In this study. supercritical carbon dioxide (SC CO2) has been examined as a sample preparation method for the extraction of eugenol from plant matrix prior to high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis and for the extraction of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) from sewerage sludges and chlorpyrifos from formulation and soil samples prior to capillary gas chromatography (GC) analysis. This is an area of considerable interest as many current methods use environmentally hazardous chlorinated solvents and alternative methods are required. Although numerous studies have examined the potential application of SFE to isolate pesticides and plant products, the work has been qualitative rather than quantitative. The present work describes studies which have examined the supercritical conditions needed for complete extraction of the pesticides and plant product eugenol. Initially a complex matrix sludge was chosen. Later a simple matrix soil was chosen and a single pesticide chlorpyrifos was used as the SFE of sludge was unsuccessful. In the extraction of chlorpyrifos problems were encountered in the trapping of the extract on depressurisation of the SC CO2. The effect of collection solvent, CO2 flow rate, solvent depth, and restrictor heating on the trapping efficiency have been investigated. Two methods of trapping were evaluated. Once a quantitative trapping method was established, the effect of different soil matrices on the recovery of chlorpyrifos at different chlorpyrifos spiking level was investigated. The SFE of soil was compared to Soxhlet extraction

RELIABIUTY PREDICTION AND MODELING: A Case Study ofDry Gas Seal and Buffer Gas System on Compressor for Gas Transportation

Improvement in compressor reliability in petrochemical, chemical and gas industry services will results in higher production revenue and significant savings in maintenance related cost. Centrifugal compressors play a major role in the successful operation of transporting hydrocarbons from offshore by compressed and boosted it to the onshore refinery facilities. To reach the onshore facilities, the pipeline system required several other compression stations to help boost the gas to the shore depending on the distance covered. The compressor is interconnected with the driver which will drive the compressor. Each compressor is supported with gas seal and buffer gas seal supplyto deliver the dry gas to the mechanical seal install at the both end of the shaft. For the seal to function without any failure, the dry gas and buffer gas system has to have high reliability. The study conducted is to calculate the reliability of the compressor dry gas seal and buffer gas seal system which is used in the oil and gas industry and identify weather the system is reliable or not for the operation. The Pipping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) of dry gas and buffer gas system of Baram compressor was converted to Reliability Block Diagram(RBD) which simplified and derived the mathematical model of both systems. Using Offshore Reliability Data Handbook 2002 (OREDA 2002), data on failure rate and reliability of each equipment was obtained. Finally, the mathematical model was simulated using the failure rate value and the overall gas seal system reliability is obtained

An automated framework for software test oracle

Context: One of the important issues of software testing is to provide an automated test oracle. Test oracles are reliable sources of how the software under test must operate. In particular, they are used to evaluate the actual results that produced by the software. However, in order to generate an automated test oracle, oracle challenges need to be addressed. These challenges are output-domain generation, input domain to output domain mapping, and a comparator to decide on the accuracy of the actual outputs. Objective: This paper proposes an automated test oracle framework to address all of these challenges. Method: I/O Relationship Analysis is used to generate the output domain automatically and Multi-Networks Oracles based on artificial neural networks are introduced to handle the second challenge. The last challenge is addressed using an automated comparator that adjusts the oracle precision by defining the comparison tolerance. The proposed approach was evaluated using an industry strength case study, which was injected with some faults. The quality of the proposed oracle was measured by assessing its accuracy, precision, misclassification error and practicality. Mutation testing was considered to provide the evaluation framework by implementing two different versions of the case study: a Golden Version and a Mutated Version. Furthermore, a comparative study between the existing automated oracles and the proposed one is provided based on which challenges they can automate. Results: Results indicate that the proposed approach automated the oracle generation process 97% in this experiment. Accuracy of the proposed oracle was up to 98.26%, and the oracle detected up to 97.7% of the injected faults. Conclusion: Consequently, the results of the study highlight the practicality of the proposed oracle in addition to the automation it offers