Using word problems in Malaysian mathematics education: looking beneath the surface

This paper reports on aspects of a project that investigated the influence of Chinese Malaysian students&rsquo; schooling in a tradition of abstract, technical mathematics and rote learning on ways that they responded to mathematical word problems. Data from an action research project are reported. Supposedly &ldquo;shallow&rdquo; and &ldquo; deep&rdquo; learning are shown to be interlinked, and assumptions frequently made by Western educators about modelling and practice are questioned.<br /

Quasilocal Smarr relation for an asymptotically flat spacetime

A quasilocal Smarr relation is obtained from Euler's theorem for Einstein-Maxwell(-Dilaton) theory for an asymptotically flat spacetime, and its associated first law is studied. To check both, we calculate quasilocal variables by employing Brown-York quasilocal method along with Mann-Marolf counterterms, which are consistent with Tolman temperature. We also derive entropy by constructing a quasilocal thermodynamic potential via Euclidean method. Here we found that the Euclidean action value in a quasilocal frame just yields a usual thermodynamic potential form, which do not include a $PA$ term, and entropy just becomes the Bekenstein-Hawking one. Through the examples, we confirmed that our quasilocal Smarr relation is satisfied with all cases, and its first law is also exactly satisfied except the dyonic black hole with the dilaton coupling constant $a=\sqrt{3}$. In that case when making a large $R$ expansion, the first law is satisfied up to $1/R$ order but it does not hold for higher sub-leading order of $R$. This issue should be resolved in future.Comment: 24 page

Development of Online Facilities Booking System

The purpose of this project is to develop an online system that manages company resources by using web technology. By using this system, the author hopes to reduce the workload of employees, cut the cost of resources and people and enable the booking of resources to be done quickly. The system is operated in Windows environment and supported by IIS or PWS web server and Microsoft Access database. VB Script and Java Script with ASP of server side technology are used to write the whole system. As this system is web-based, employees can access to this system at anytime and any place that have internet access. Bookings done are easily to monitor and track from the Bookings Calenda

Electrochemical Activation Process for Treating High Strength Waste

Electrochemical Activation Process (ECA) is a method whereby electrical current is introduced to induce a chemical reaction in water containing natural salts. As a result, this process will produce a substantial electrical potential difference, leading to the generation of anolyte and catholyte. The anolyte generated by the STEL®-ECA unit system were found to contain Cl2, Cl, HClO, HCl, Cl02, O2, 03, and H2O2. As for catholyte, analyses using the ICP and IR spectroscopy showed that it contains the hydroxides of sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium. Besides, kinetic studies on the decomposition of the components in anolyte were also studied. Both activated solutions, anolyte and catholyte were used to treat passivation waste and landfill leachate. The studies include using anolyte and catholyte in COD reduction, the effect of contact time (of anolyte and the waste) on COD reduction, kinetics of the reaction between anolyte and the waste, using of catholyte in coagulation and flocculation, biodegradability of the waste after treatment and others. Finally, a case study was carried out to investigate the possibility of using anolyte in combination with other treatment method for example, aerobic, anaerobic, sedimentation and absorption to treat chemical waste. The physical-chemical-biological treatment reactor designed for the treatment of chemical waste was closely monitored for 143 days on its COD, BOD and biodegradability. F or passivation waste, COD removal was 70% using anolyte for at least 24 hours of contact time. High efficiency on the formation and settling of floc were observed when catholyte is used together with alum and anionic polymer. In addition, the non-readily biodegradable waste was transformed to a more readily biodegradable waste after at least a 24 hours reaction with the activated solutions. As for leachate, anolyte showed good reduction in COD and ammoniacal nitrogen, whereas catholyte showed good reduction in ferum and zinc. Finally, data obtained from the case study showed that anolyte is able to convert a non-readily biodegradable waste to a more readily biodegradable waste

PROTECT: container process isolation using system call interception

Virtualization is the underpinning technology enabling cloud computing service provisioning, and container-based virtualization provides an efficient sharing of the underlying host kernel libraries amongst multiple guests. While there has been research on protecting the host against compromise by malicious guests, research on protecting the guests against a compromised host is limited. In this paper, we present an access control solution which prevents the host from gaining access into the guest containers and their data. Using system call interception together with the built-in AppArmor mandatory access control (MAC) approach the solution protects guest containers from a malicious host attempting to compromise the integrity of data stored therein. Evaluation of results have shown that it can effectively prevent hostile access from host to guest containers while ensuring minimal performance overhead

Detection of Phishing Websites using Generative Adversarial Network

Phishing is typically deployed as an attack vector in the initial stages of a hacking endeavour. Due to it low-risk rightreward nature it has seen a widespread adoption, and detecting it has become a challenge in recent times. This paper proposes a novel means of detecting phishing websites using a Generative Adversarial Network. Taking into account the internal structure and external metadata of a website, the proposed approach uses a generator network which generates both legitimate as well as synthetic phishing features to train a discriminator network. The latter then determines if the features are either normal or phishing websites, before improving its detection accuracy based on the classification error. The proposed approach is evaluated using two different phishing datasets and is found to achieve a detection accuracy of up to 94%

Thermodynamics of accelerating AdS4_4 black holes from the covariant phase space

We study the charges and first law of thermodynamics for accelerating, non-rotating black holes with dyonic charges in AdS$_4$ using the covariant phase space formalism. In order to apply the formalism to these solutions (which are asymptotically locally AdS and admit a non-smooth conformal boundary $\mathscr{I}$) we make two key improvements: 1) We relax the requirement to impose Dirichlet boundary conditions and demand merely a well-posed variational problem. 2) We keep careful track of the codimension-2 corner term induced by the holographic counterterms, a necessary requirement due to the presence of "cosmic strings" piercing $\mathscr{I}$. Using these improvements we are able to match the holographic Noether charges to the Wald Hamiltonians of the covariant phase space and derive the first law of black hole thermodynamics with the correct "thermodynamic length'' terms arising from the strings. We investigate the relationship between the charges imposed by supersymmetry and show that our first law can be consistently applied to various classes of non-supersymmetric solutions for which the cross-sections of the horizon are spindles.Comment: 42 pages, 1 figur

Symmetry Breaking and Consistent Truncations from M5-branes Wrapping a Disc

We construct new supersymmetric solutions corresponding to M5-branes wrapped on a topological disc by turning on additional scalars in the background. The presence of such scalar fields breaks one of the U(1) isometries of the internal space, explicitly realising the breaking by the Stuckelberg mechanism observed previously. In addition, we construct a consistent truncation of maximal seven-dimensional gauged supergravity on the disc to five-dimensional Romans' SU (2) x U(1) gauged supergravity, allowing us to construct a plethora of new supergravity solutions corresponding to more general states in the dual SCFTs as well as solutions corresponding to M5-branes wrapping four-dimensional orbifolds.Comment: 27 pages + appendices, 4 figure