Access audit on universal design: the case of Kota Kinabalu water front

Most developed countries have enforced the use of “Universal Design” in any physical development of their cities, for the purpose of eliminating discrimination among the society members towards the unfortunate handicapped persons. Nevertheless, in many developing countries, the awareness and inclusion of Universal Design is still in its initial stage. Cities’ authorities have not fully enforced the requirement of providing access to people with disability in their built environment; neither in public nor private spaces. The Department of Standard Malaysia (SIRIM) had initiated the publication of Malaysian Standards as guidelines for designers; architects, city planners, landscape architects, interior designers, and others who are involved in the construction of physical development with Universal Design. The Ministry also commissioned researchers to do access audit on various public spaces in several cities, to examine whether or not the cities’ public spaces are built in compliance of the Universal Design or not. This research describes the procedures, process and findings of the access audit done in the city of Kota Kinabalu. Simulation of the access audit utilised five (5) people, each with different type of disability such as: fully impaired vision, partially impaired vision, hearing impaired, wheel-chair bound, and a crutch user. With guidance from the researchers, the disabled respondents simulated their movements at the water front area of the city stretching about one (1) kilometre in length and 200 metres wide. The access audit done in Kota Kinabalu concluded that the water front area was designed without consideration of Universal Design, and renovation of the built environment is urgently needed to comply with the Malaysian standard requirements

Dielectric Property of Waste Tire Dust-Polypropylene (WTD-PP) Composite For High Voltage Outdoor Insulation Application

High voltage insulation technology is still undergoing continuous development and improvement from time to time, from conventional ceramic type since to newly polymeric composite insulation material. This includes the development of new composite materials. This paper focused on the possibility of using Waste Tire Dust-Polypropelene (WTD-PP) composite with Alumina Trihydrate (ATH) as the main reinforcement filler for high voltage insulation material. Compound of WTD-PP without and with ATH were prepared with different compositions of WTD-PP content and different amount of ATH filler. A step of processes to produce this newly polymeric composite is presented in this paper. The basic requirement to determine and evaluate the performance of the selected materials as high voltage outdoor application shall comply to the international standard, BS EN 62039:2007. This standard lists several requirements of electrical and mechanical properties that must be fulfilled for materials to be used for high voltage outdoor application. Experimental work has been conducted on the dielectric strength of WTD-PP composite. Breakdown test complying with BS EN 60243-1:1998 is adopted to examine the breakdown strength of this newly polymeric composite. It was found that the breakdown strength of these composites is less than 10kV/mm due to it carbon black content but can be used for lower voltage insulation application

The introduction of bioterrorism in Malaysia: A legal approach

The deliberate use of biological agents and the emergence of infectious diseases which can produce harm to human health and give effects to the public health and security are well recognised.A few years back, an attack of biological agents would be the most unthinkable situation to happen. However, the threat of bioterrorism is real and it is growing.It continues to be a major challenge today and the possibility of bioterrorism is undeniable as it is increasingly defined globally as ‘not if, but when’.Therefore, this paper attempts to give a brief explanation on the threat of bioterrorism as to the emergence of infectious diseases and the legal history of international law on bioterrorism.The main objective of this paper is to fi nd out the need for bioterrorism law in Malaysian i.e. a legal approach.The study is a social legal research, which uses a qualitative approach.Thus, due to lack of materials and publications in Malaysia, in order to achieve the objectives, the methodology used was based on a semi structured interviews conducted with three respected experts in public health and security to explore the real situation in Malaysia.The authors found out that the fi nding of this study had established that an outbreak of infectious diseases can now be viewed as a threat that may result to bioterrorism if there is no preparation to handle it

The impact of Malaysian industrial energy use in carbon dioxide emissions.

This study attempts to identify the impact of Malaysia economy on CO2 emission by analyzing the energy intensity and CO2 emission intensity. Environment issues such as global warming and climate change give the negative effects to the Mother Nature such as floods, landslides, erosion and extremely heat. Otherwise, there is positive effect to the economy subsequent to disaster through the substitution of capital. Moreover, the government policy seen recently in the 10th Malaysian Plan will highly promote to energy efficiency and focus on high value added sector that produce less CO2 emission. This study found that Transportation sector has produced the highest value added with the highest CO2 emission. The finding of this study will facilitate energy policy makers to investigate the sector contributed high CO2 emission, and encouraged the high value added (productivity) sectors that produce less CO2 emission. Moreover, it is very important because recently the government, economist and policy makers have discussed the best strategies to protect the environment particularly in regarding to reduce the CO2 emission. From the finding, in order to reduce CO2 emission, the energy intensive sectors will also have to reduce energy consumption by applying the energy efficiency technology less CO2 technique in the future

Power quality analysis using spectrogram and gabor transformation

This paper discusses the implementation of time-frequency analysis techniques to analyze power quality disturbances. The approached methods are spectrogram and Gabor transform algorithms. Signal parameters such as time marginal and frequency marginal are extracted from the time-frequency distributions. The parameters are analyzed in terms of correctness measurement of root mean square (RMS), total harmonic distortion (THD), total waveform distortion (TWD) and total interharmonic distortion (TnHD) values. Power quality events that are analyzed are swell, sag, interruption, harmonic, interharmonic, transient, notching and normal voltage. The results show that Gabor transform provides better performance in terms of correctness of parameters measurement, window length, frequency resolution and memory size

Brain lesion segmentation from diffusion weighted MRI based on adaptive thresholding and gray level co-occurrence matrix

This project presents brain lesion segmentation of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance images (DWI) based on thresholding technique and gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). The lesions are hyperintense lesion from tumour, acute infarction, haemorrhage and abscess, and hypointense lesion from chronic infarction and haemorrhage. Pre-processing is applied to the DWI for intensity normalization, background removal and intensity enhancement. Then, the lesions are segmented by using two different methods which are thresholding technique and GLCM. For the thresholding technique, image histogram is calculated at each region to find the maximum number of pixels for each intensity level. The optimal threshold is determined by comparing normal and lesion regions. Conversely, GLCM is computed to segment the lesions. Different peaks from the GLCM crosssection indicate the present of normal brain region, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), hyperintense or hypointense lesions. Minimum and maximum threshold values are computed from the GLCM cross-section. Region and boundary information from the GLCM are introduced as the statistical features for segmentation of hyperintense and hypointense lesions. The proposed technique has been validated by using area overlap (AO), false positive rate (FPR), false negative rate (FNR), misclassified area (MA), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and pixels absolute error ratio (rerr). The results are demonstrated in three indexes MA, MAPE and rerr, where 0.3167, 0.1440 and 0.0205 for GLCM, while 0.3211, 0.1524 and 0.0377 for thresholding technique. Overall, GLCM provides better segmentation performance compared to thresholding technique

Automated Region Growing for Segmentation of Brain Lesion in Diffusion-weighted MRI

This paper presents an automatic segmentation of brain lesions from diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI or DWI) using region growing approach. The lesions are acute infarction, haemorrhage, tumour and abscess. Region splitting and merging is used to detect the lesion region. Then, histogram thresholding technique is applied to automate the seeds selection. The region is iteratively grown by comparing all unallocated neighbour pixels to the seeds. The difference between pixel’s intensity value and the region’s mean is used as the similarity measure. Evaluation is made for performance comparison between automatic and manual seeds selection. Overall, automated region growing algorithm provides comparable results with the semi-automatic segmentation

The Relationship of Emotional Intelligence and Stress In SMEs

Emotional intelligence is an important topic in management and entrepreneurial education. This study focused on the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (Cognition & Ability, Understanding Emotions, and Emotional Decision Making) and stress among SMEs. A total of 70 entrepreneurs from different areas in Melaka participated in the survey. Reliability analysis was applied to test the instrument’s reliability. Moreover, correlation analysis was applied to examine the relationship of EI factors with stress in SMEs. Regression analysis applied to determine the predicted factors of EI towards stress. The results of the analysis indicated cognition & ability, understanding other’s emotions and emotional decision making had a positive relationship with stress among SMEs. For the practicality of this study, emotional intelligence can be well implemented through education to instill a sound stress management to all potential entrepreneurs

Housing for 3 generation with application of universal design (Sentul, Kuala Lumpur)

The main objective for this paper is to obtain a framework to allow adaptable and flexible housing solution for multi-generational living by applying universal design approach to make it more user friendly. Malaysian population shall reach 32 million by 2020, and almost 70 percent will be in urban area by 2020, today, 63.8 percent is urbanized. Malaysia will also reach ageing nation and the projection of 15 percent of the population will be aged 60 and above in 2050. This calls for a new housing trend that will address these issues. Application of universal design during pre-construction should be encouraged. The methodology applied is by using table research and literature review. Primary data from qualitative approach, including interviews, observation and questionnaire will be analysed. Secondary data from literature, using content analysis will be carried out. This paper will conclude by producing a set of design criteria for three generation housing, which applied universal design approach, which promote financially rewarding to both developers and residents, and to create as a catalyst for the future housing development in Malaysia

Cegah mungkar, hapus denggi

Siapa sangka ia cuma seekor makhluk kecil yang tidak bernilai. Kitaran hidupnya tidak panjang. Beratnya pun tak sampai beberapa miligram, namun kesan buruknya mampu menggetar badan dan menggugat nyawa. Itulah bahaya seekor makhluk Allah bernama nyamuk. Nyamuk kelihatan remeh dan kecil, namun ia miliki impak luar biasa pada kehidupan manusia. Jika tidak masakan Allah menyebut namanya dalam al-Quran ketika menyindir kebebalan golongan bukan Islam yang tidak mahu memahami perumpamaan yang dibawa al-Quran: Firman Allah ertinya: “Sesungguhnya Allah tidak malu membuat perbandingan apa sahaja, (seperti) nyamuk hingga ke suatu yang lebih daripadanya (kerana perbuatan itu ada hikmatnya), iaitu kalau orang yang beriman, maka mereka tahu bahawa perbandingan itu benar daripada Tuhan mereka; dan kalau orang kafir pula maka mereka akan berkata: “Apakah maksud Allah membuat perbandingan dengan ini?” (Jawabnya): Tuhan akan menjadikan banyak orang sesat dengan sebab perbandingan itu, dan akan menjadikan banyak orang mendapat petunjuk dengan sebabnya; dan Tuhan tidak akan menjadikan sesat dengan sebab perbandingan itu melainkan orang yang fasik.” (al-Baqarah 2:26)