Effects of Open-Top Chamber on soil chemical properties and microbial growth

Global warming is the main concern in today’s century as it comes with numerous side effects to the natural environment. Open Top Chambers (OTC) consist of metal constructions with transparent vertical side-walls and a frustum on top. An opening in the middle of the frustum allows an air exchange to reduce temperature and humidity effects in the chamber. The size of the open top chamber which is located in Universiti Putra Malaysia is slanted 60o , 50cm tall, 2.08m basal diameter hexagon chamber. The Open Top Chamber experiments were carried out to determine how much global warming has affected and is still affecting the temperature, pH, the moisture and the growth of the microbes in the tropical soil. The aim of this study is to elucidate the effects of temperature increase on the soil microbes’ population and on the pH of the soil. The study was conducted to observe the effect of heat on the population of soil microbes and the pH of the soil which was collected on the same day for 6 consecutive months. The microbes from the samples were grown on agar plates. The population of microbes on the plates were used as values were for Colony Forming Unit (CFU) value calculations. The effects of OTCs on mean temperature showed a large range of CFU values throughout the 6 months but did not differ significantly between studies. Increases in mean monthly and diurnal temperature were strongly related, indicating that the presence of warming effect by the OTCs. Such predictive power allows a better mechanistic understanding of observed biotic response to experimental warming. This study will be useful for the understanding of the global warming effect on microbes. The Open Top Chamber experiment has proven to be one of the effective model for global warming research and data collected especially on the growth of soil microbial obtained would be of great use for further experiments

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Organizing social contextual information for display on mobile devices.

Users are increasingly overwhelmed with information as they embrace the hugely popular and successful social media as a means to create and use it. There is a rising concern on organization and display of information on mobile devices to meet users’ satisfaction. The multimodal capability, small screen size and limited interactivity of mobile devices have prompted researchers and designers to focus on the use of context as a means to filter and show only relevant and useful information to their users. However, the small screen size of mobile devices poses a number of design challenges in the provision of services to users. Using tourism as the domain, this thesis looks at such challenges in an attempt to overcome the problem of organizing and displaying information so as to deliver more effective services and functions to users. This thesis attempts to address three issues: First, there is a lack of consensus in defining context and an understanding of users’ goals. To study this, the thesis includes a literature review of existing research; a focus group to gather users’ information needs for commonly executed tasks by tourists; a participatory design group to gather ideas on value-added features and preferred screen design; and a quantitative survey to determine tourists’ information needs and their different preferences by tourist groups. As part of the findings, the TILES (Temporal, Identity, Location, Environment and Social) model was proposed to define and classify five main contextual types, and the properties associated with each type for tourism-related applications.​Doctor of Philosophy (WKWSCI

Influence of processing parameters in the mechanical properties enhancement of forsterite ceramic / Tan Yoke Meng

Phase pure forsterite was synthesized by mechanochemical method owing to its simplicity and low cost process. Different milling methods, i.e. ball milling and attrition milling, were investigated over sintering temperature ranging from 1200 oC to 1500 oC. Upon comparison and selection for the best method based on relative density, Vickers hardness and fracture toughness, the effect of ZnO addition ranging from 0.1-3.0 wt% on the sinterability of forsterite when sintered at 1200 oC to 1500 oC was evaluated. Subsequently, microwave sintering was conducted on both undoped and doped forsterite bulk at temperature ranging from 1100 oC to 1250 oC. In the present study, phase pure forsterite was successfully synthesized upon sintering at 1200 oC and 1300 oC for attrition-milled and ball-milled samples, respectively. It was revealed that attrition milling provides higher grinding energy and particle refinement on the mixtures thus producing powder with significantly smaller particle size as compared to ball-milled powder. The optimum sintering temperature obtained was 1400 oC for both samples having the highest fracture toughness value of 4.3 MPa m1/2 and 3.52 MPa m1/2 for attritor-milled and ball-milled samples, respectively. No decomposition of forsterite was observed throughout the sintering regime. This study had also revealed that the incorporation of 1.0 wt% ZnO into forsterite had enhanced the overall mechanical properties of forsterite with a maximum of 4.51 MPa m1/2 fracture toughness value obtained upon sintering at 1400 oC. In general, all doped samples showed better mechanical properties than the undoped sample at all sintering temperatures studied. In addition, microwave sintering was proven to be beneficial towards the mechanical properties enhancement at a lower sintering temperature with very short sintering duration. Fracture toughness of 4.25 MPa m1/2 was successfully obtained at sintering temperature of 1250 oC for 1.0 wt% ZnO doped sample. The fracture toughness value obtained was 36% higher as compared to the conventional sintered sample under equal sintering temperature. This promising result had shown the potential of microwave sintering in further enhancing forsterite ceramic without sacrificing the phase stability of the material. This research had highlighted the advantageous of using attrition milling in synthesizing phase pure forsterite, the economical production of ZnO doped forsterite having enhanced mechanical properties and the significant reduction in sintering process with acceptable mechanical properties for clinical application via microwave sintering

Impact of security technology on the electronic commerce.

This thesis is a study of the impact of security technologies on Electronic Commerce. The study argued that the customers participate in Electronic Commerce because of the convenience provided by the services.Master of Science (Information Studies

Presenting social media information on mobile devices using multiple contexts

Purpose – Research has shown that when presenting large amounts of social media information on small devices, design should consider multiple contexts which include user preferences, time, location, environment and so on. It should also take into account the purpose of use, for example, the kind of tasks undertaken by users. However, little research has been done on the organization of social media information by multiple context and tasks. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Using tourism as a domain, the authors conducted a user evaluation study with a prototype to investigate users’ preferred ways of organizing different types of social media information based on multiple contexts. Findings – In this paper, the authors present a sequence of context types for organizing four types of social media information (recommendations, events, friends and media elements). The study revealed that users preferred to view recommendations by location and environment context, events by location and temporal context, contacts by location and identity context and finally, list of media elements by environment and identity context. Research limitations/implications – There may be different sequences of context types for organizing social media information in domains other than tourism. Researchers are encouraged to analyze users’ needs in other domains so as to find their preferred ways of organizing social media information. Practical implications – This paper includes implications for the design and development of user interface, in particular, for mobile applications presenting large amount of social media information. Originality/value – It presents a new way of organizing social media information using multiple context types and with consideration of users’ needs.Accepted versio

Urban Conservation As A Development Strategy to Revitalize Real Estate Market: An Analysis Of Property Transactions In Georgetown Penang

Penang is well known for its heritage character especially in the city of Georgetown with more than 200 years of urban history. To retain its heritage character, the state and local governments have implemented various conservation policies and identified a heritage zone in the inner city of Georgetown. In many parts of the world, designation as a heritage property would have increased a property’s value and this is one of the reasons put forward for urban effects of conservation related policies on the heritage property market. In this paper, we focus the analysis on data from property transactions and price to intervention strategies, socio-economic and political changes. Our analysis of the transaction date and price trends shows that urban conservation has a potential to be a viable real estate development strategy for Georgetown. Even with conservation policies to place, the demand for old buildings in the conservation zones has not diminished but has shown relatively high transaction counts and high price of heritage properties

Enhancing consumer repurchase intention towards Airbnb

Airbnb is the world largest accommodation platform, and it has expanded rapidly across the world since 2008. However, the growth rate of Airbnb is slower than the hotel industry in the hospitality market. In Malaysia, Airbnb is also facing strong competition with the hotel industry in the hospitality market. The average hotel occupancy level is roughly 65%, but the occupancy rate of Airbnb in Malaysia is much lower than the hotel industry. It is important for marketers to focus on factors that can lead to repurchase intention of Airbnb. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the factors that affect the user's adoption of the Airbnb website and guest's satisfaction with the Airbnb stay, as well as Airbnb's repurchase intention. A total of 143 samples were collected using quantitative method through Google Form. Purposive sampling technique was employed to select respondents who have stayed with Airbnb before. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed for data analysis. The findings indicated that perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) of the Airbnb website have positive and significant effects on consumer attitudes toward the Airbnb website. In contrast, the trust of the Airbnb website has no effect on consumer attitudes. Besides, amenities in the Airbnb property and host-guest relationship have a positive and significant effect on consumer satisfaction. Additionally, consumers' attitudes toward the Airbnb website and consumers' satisfaction also have a positive and significant effect on their repurchase intention on Airbnb. This study is expected to contribute to Airbnb website developer, Airbnb hosts, and Airbnb marketing team regarding the factors influencing consumer attitudes and satisfaction, which ultimately lead to repurchase intention

Data set on oil palm plantation production and LUC emissions under different management strategies

Oil palm plantations are the fundamental units in a palm supply chain. The fresh fruit bunch (FFB) yield at a plantation varies based on the maturity (age) of the oil palm trees. Failure to account for the maturity can lead to a demand-supply mismatch. To address this issue, Rajakal et al. (2021) have developed a mathematical optimisation model to determine the optimal maturity of the plantations needed to meet the crude palm oil demand. This article presents the data set on the FFB production and land use change (LUC) emissions at the plantations. The model was coded and solved in LINGO 18.0. The data can be used for further investigation in optimising other related activities in a palm supply chain