Whither Objective Journalism in Digital Age: Malaysia's Mainstream versus Alternative Media

In this digital age of online news, objective journalism is increasingly treated as unnecessary, if not obsolete. In the liberal West, news portals can offer different views to counter the political economic status quo proffered by traditional hyper-commercial corporate media. In more authoritarian Asian countries like Malaysia, "alternative" news portals are assumed to provide opposition political parties with favourable coverage to balance whatever bias the traditional, mainstream print and electronic media might have displayed towards the ruling political party. As a result, Malaysia's ruling political party, including many from the critical mass, has claimed that Malaysia's "mainstream" and "alternative" media, collectively, have attained the democratic principle of offering diverse, balanced and fair news coverage. This has strengthened the view that there is no need for objective journalism-as in providing fair and balanced news coverage. To what extent then are Malaysia's "mainstream" print media biased towards the ruling political party and to what extent Malaysia's "alternative" news portals biased towards the opposition party? Has the digital age finally rendered objective journalism obsolete, at least in Malaysia? These are key questions examined in a study that content analysed the coverage of Malaysia's general elections in 2013 performed by three "mainstream" newspapers and three "alternative" news portals based in Malaysia. The results show that even though partisan journalism continues to dominate, especially the "mainstream" newspapers, objective journalism is far from being abandoned. It is rendered unnecessary only by being politicized by the ruling political regime

User cooperation for IRS-aided secure MIMO systems

An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is proposed to enhance the physical layer security in the Rician fading channel wherein the angular direction of the eavesdropper (ED) is aligned with a legitimate user. A two-phase communication system under active attacks and passive eavesdropping is considered in this scenario. The base station avoids direct transmission to the attacked user in the first phase, whereas other users cooperate in forwarding signals to the attacked user in the second phase, with the help of IRS and energy harvesting technology. Under the occurrence of active attacks, an outage-constrained beamforming design problem is investigated under the statistical cascaded channel error model, which is solved by using the Bernstein-type inequality. An average secrecy rate maximization problem for the passive eavesdropping is formulated, which is then addressed by a low-complexity algorithm. The numerical results of this study reveal that the negative effect of the ED's channel error is larger than that of the legitimate user

Physicomechanical assessments and heavy metals’ leaching potential of modified asphalt binders incorporating crumb rubber and tin slag powders

Industrial solid waste has been widely used as an alternative additive for bituminous material modification. This study aims to evaluate the basic properties and quantify the leaching potential of modified asphalt binders incorporating crumb rubber powder (CRP) from waste tires and tin slag (TS) for a local smelting company. Three percentages of CRP and TS, at 5, 10, and 15%, were considered. The conventional asphalt binder (PEN 60/70), CRP, and TS-based modified asphalt binders were analyzed for toxicity, softening point, penetration value, elastic recovery, torsional recovery (TR), and coatability index. The findings indicated that the addition of the waste materials led to no significant heavy metal content in the asphalt binder mix. Moreover, the basic and physical properties of the asphalt binders were also improved by 5, 10, and 15% of the waste, respectively. However, TS waste exhibited limited effects on all the parameters and had a 5% optimum dosage. The modified binders’ results showed that the CRP modified asphalt binders had fewer heavy metals and responded more to elastic recovery and coatability

Integration of an On-Axis General Sun-Tracking Formula in the Algorithm of an Open-Loop Sun-Tracking System

A novel on-axis general sun-tracking formula has been integrated in the algorithm of an open-loop sun-tracking system in order to track the sun accurately and cost effectively. Sun-tracking errors due to installation defects of the 25 m2 prototype solar concentrator have been analyzed from recorded solar images with the use of a CCD camera. With the recorded data, misaligned angles from ideal azimuth-elevation axes have been determined and corrected by a straightforward changing of the parameters' values in the general formula of the tracking algorithm to improve the tracking accuracy to 2.99 mrad, which falls below the encoder resolution limit of 4.13 mrad

Micro check valves for integration into polymeric microfluidic devices

In this paper we describe the design, simulation, fabrication and characterization of micro check valves suitable for integration into polymeric microfluidic devices such as micropumps or test cartridges for biomedical analysis. The valves are fabricated by a polymeric surface micromachining process, which utilizes SU-8 as the functional material. The devices are assembled with the lamination technique. A micro check valve consists of three layers: an inlet layer, a valve layer and an outlet layer. The valve is a disc with a diameter of 1 mm. The disc is suspended on folded beams, which act as valve springs. Both valve disc and springs are fabricated in a 100 µm SU-8 layer. The valves prove a clear flow rectification function. Relatively low pressure is required for opening the valve. The valves were tested and characterized with water. One of the valves is successfully integrated into a polymeric micropump. These valves prove the facile and reliable lamination technology for the fabrication of complex polymeric microfluidic devices for biomedical analysis.Accepted versio