Brunei: building and enshrining an absolute monarchy

Brunei Darussalam is one of the few remaining absolute monarchies in the world today. In an era that sees countries move towards democratisation, Brunei has moved towards the entrenchment of its absolute monarchy. With that in mind, the question this thesis seeks to examine is how Brunei has managed to remain an absolute monarchy in the face of global democratisation, particularly given that it was under the British sphere of influence until 1984. What are the reasons behind Brunei’s exceptionalism in development and will these reasons allow Brunei to remain an absolute monarchy? To answer the central question, this research looks at constitutional developments in the light of Brunei’s history, traditions, culture and society. The research undertaken to answer this question has been purely doctrinal in nature. The primary reason this approach was adopted was because the nature of Brunei’s absolute monarchy has resulted in general disinclination in the country to discuss matters of local politics frankly. This has resulted in a distinct lack of authoritative research about Brunei in most fields. The contribution that this research makes to the subject is that, it is the first research that attempts to explain the existence of the constitutional anomaly that is the absolute monarchy of Brunei, through a contextual understanding of Brunei’s constitutional journey. Drawing on historical, legal, political and sociological elements, this thesis concludes that the absolute monarchy of Brunei was built by the restructuring of traditional governance by the British, entrenched by the manipulation of constitutional provisions by the Sultan and enshrined through the use of nation building ideology also by the Sultan. This ideology being so successfully implanted into Brunei society over the last thirty years, barring the entry of new variables, it seems likely that Brunei will remain an absolute monarchy in the years to come

A new egg parasitoid for possible biological control of the asiatic maize borer in Malaysia

A species of egg parasitoid tentatively identified as Trichogramma papilionis Nag. was found attacking egg masses of Ostrinia furnacalis Guenee. The life cycle of the parasitoid was completed within 9 days; the egg, larval and pupal stages lastedfor 2,4 and 3 days, respectively. The female: male sex ratio was 3:1, higher than the usual 2:1 sex ratio for Trichogramma spp. Superparasitism was observed whereby 3 individuals were produced from one . host egg. All eggs were parasitized in 4 days at 2:1 (host: parasitoid) ratio. The female parasitoid showed a high degree of searching efficiency and normally parasitized all eggs in a batch before continuing her search for the next egg batch. The female spent 40% of the time searching on the upper surface of a maize leaf, 30% on the lower surface and 30% on the leaf edges. The female searching and parasitization behaviour followed the Type III functional response curve. The female parasitoid showed positive response to the odour ofthe maize leaf, indicating a possibility that a kairomone or contact communication chemical is involved. T. papilionis appeared to be a very efficient egg parasitoid of O. furnacalis and a good candidate for a biological control programme of the pest

Holographic Screening Length in a Hot Plasma of Two Sphere

We study the screening length of a quark-antiquark pair moving in a hot plasma living in two sphere $S^2$ manifold using AdS/CFT correspondence where the background metric is four dimensional Schwarzschild-AdS black hole. The geodesic solution of the string ends at the boundary is given by a stationary motion in the equatorial plane as such the separation length $L$ of quark-antiquark pair is parallel to the angular velocity $\omega$. The screening length and the bound energy are computed numerically using Mathematica. We find that the plots are bounded from below by some functions related to the momentum transfer $P_c$ of the drag force configuration. We compare the result by computing the screening length in the quark-antiquark reference frame where the gravity dual are "Boost-AdS" and Kerr-AdS black holes. Finding relations of the parameters of both black holes, we argue that the relation between mass parameters $M_{Sch}$ of the Schwarzschild-AdS black hole and $M_{Kerr}$ of the Kerr-AdS black hole in high temperature is given by $M_{Kerr}=M_{Sch}(1-a^2l^2)^{3/2}$, where $a$ is the angular momentum parameter.Comment: Major revision: title changed, adding authors, 13 pages, 8 figures, etc. Accepted for publication in European Physical Journal

Experimental investigation of minimum quantity lubrication in meso-scale milling with varying tool diameter

Minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) is a method that uses a very small amount of liquid to reduce friction between cutting tool and work piece during machining. The implementation of MQL machining has become a viable alternative to flood cooling machining and dry machining. The overall performance has been evaluated during meso-scale milling of mild steel using different diameter milling cutters. Experiments have been conducted under two different lubrication condition: dry and MQL with variable cutting parameters. The tool wear and its surface roughness, machined surfaces microstructure and surface roughness were observed for both conditions. It was found from the results that MQL produced better results compared to dry machining. The 0.5 mm tool has been selected as the most optimum tool diameter to be used with the lowest surface roughness as well as the least flank wear generation. For the workpiece, it was observed that the cutting temperature possesses crucial effect on the microstructure and the surface roughness of the machined surface and bigger diameter tool actually resulted in higher surface roughness. The poor conductivity of the cutting tool may be one of reasons behind

2-Methyl-N-[(3-methyl-2-pyrid­yl)carbamothio­yl]benzamide

In the title compound, C15H15N3OS, the thio­urea group is stabilized by an intra­molecular hydrogen bond between the carbonyl O atom and the thio­amide group. A C—H⋯N intramolecular hydrogen bond is also present. Mol­ecules are linked by inter­molecular N—H⋯O and C—H⋯S hydrogen bonds

Compressive Strength and Water Permeability Performance of Micronised Biomass Silica Concrete

Concrete is a common material that is widely used in construction industry. Cement is the main material component for producing concrete but its production has lead into CO2 emission. This work presents a study on Micronised Biomass Silica (MBS) that can be used as pozzolan material which can enhance the quality of concrete. The material can be produced from a by-product of biomass agricultural waste but for this study rice husk has been used. From the chemical analysis, MBS has a chemical composition that is fulfill the standard requirement for becoming pozzolan material. The result of MBS concrete shows that the MBS material can enhance the performance of concrete by increasing the compressive strength development and reducing the water permeability. The drawback of MBS is the workability of fresh concrete but can be rectify by using superplasticizer. By replacing up to 12% of cement, MBS material gives the highest performance in term of strength and permeability of the concrete

Grinding characteristics of Asian originated peanuts (Arachishypogaea L.) and specific energy consumption during ultra-high speed grinding for natural peanut butter production

Roasted peanuts of China and India origin were ground in a commercial ultra-high speed grinder operated at 20,000 rpm for 2.0–5.0 min for natural peanut butter production. Grinding characteristics of both peanuts were evaluated in terms of specific energy consumption, Esc with respect to its grinding time and mean particle size. The Esc increased with grinding time with China peanuts having higher Esc than India peanuts. The specific energy consumption modeled to the size reduction ratio of China and India peanuts was predicted more accurately using a linear and exponential model respectively compared to the classical models by Bond, Rittinger and Kick. From the comparison of Bond’s working index, Wi, the ultra-high speed grinder is said to be more energy efficient than other comminutors in terms of its capability to produce finer particle size in shorter time than the rest

Acoustic Analysis of Nigerian English Vowels Based on Accents

Accent has been widely acclaimed to be a major source of automatic speech recognition (ASR) performance degradation. Most ASR applications were developed with native English speaker speech samples not minding the fact that the majority of its potential users speaks English as a second language with a marked accent. Nigeria like most nations colonized by Britain, speaks English as official language despite being a multi-ethnic nation. This work explores the acoustic features of energy, fundamental frequency and the first three formats of the three major ethnic groups of Nigerian based on features extracted from five pure vowels of English obtained from subjects who are Nigerians. This research aimed at determining the differences or otherwise between the pronunciations of the three major ethnic nationalities in Nigeria to aid the development of ASR that is robust to NE accent. The results show that there exist significant differences between the mean values of the pure English vowels based on the pronunciation of the three major ethnics: Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba. The differences can be explored to enhance the performance of ASR in recognition of NE

Natural radioactivity from non-nuclear power generation power industries: regulatory control of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) for environmental sustainability

Coal is a widely used mineral and contains almost all elements which include Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) from natural origin such as from Uranium-238 (238U) and Thorium-232 (232Th) Series along with Potassium-40 (40K). It is the most important source of fossil fuel for non-nuclear power generation industries due to its accessibility and abundance in nature. The burning of coal generates bottom and fly ash which are released into the atmosphere. This process potentially tends to distribute the natural radionuclides originating from coal and enriched in the environment that could contribute to higher external radiation exposure to the population at large. This study aimed to presents an analysis of radioactivity concentration of feed coal burned and ashes from a typical coal fired power plants (CFPP) which is a non-nuclear power generation in Malaysia. The sample was analyzed for two most important natural radionuclides content namely 238U and 232Th by using Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA). An extensive investigation of this nature is warranted for radiation protection towards legislative compliance in ensuring safety of the public and workers and the protection of the environment