Application of Carbon Nanomaterials as Supports in Heterogeneous Catalysis

The overall objective of this project is to investigate the application of carbon nanomaterials as support in heterogeneous catalysis. In the study, carbon nanomaterials such as single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs), carbon replica of zeolites and activated carbon are proposed as support in heterogeneous catalysis. The performance of carbon nanomaterials used will be studied and the comparison with activated carbon will be made to determine the effectiveness of the carbon nanomaterials as potential support in heterogeneous catalysis. The heterogeneous distribution of the nanoparticles that will be use such as nickel, iron and cobalt were evidenced by bulk and surface structural and compositional characterizations, that is, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA). The significant of the application of carbon nanomaterials will be observed with the improvement in the catalytic efficiency of the chemical reaction. Various applications of carbon nanomaterials as support in heterogeneous catalysis can be seen in pharmaceutical, electrical, optical and mechanical applications

Multi-agent reputation point system framework

An interview survey was conducted on respondents from service, manufacturing and education industries in Malaysia, to understand the processes of personal knowledge management (PKM) among knowledge workers. The findings show that personal knowledge network is enhanced when recommendations from associates outside the organisation are relied upon to identify the required knowledge experts.Thus the reputation of knowledge experts is known by some people in the network since it is the basis for assessing and deciding the reliability of the expertise required.This paper proposes a framework for a multi-agent system to search an existing network, analyse and manage reputation points in the process of identifying knowledge experts to fulfill the need of connecting to knowledge experts in managing personal knowledge. Recommendation on future work includes the technical possibility of expanding this multi-agent system to be implemented in the Semantic Web

Emerging personal intelligence in collective goals: Data analysis on the bottom-up approach from PKM to OKM

There is a pattern of personal intelligence seen emerging from the concept of agent-mediated personal knowledge management (PKM) in achieving the organisational collective goals.This paper presents the results of analyses of related surveys implemented to prove this emergence, which include a quantitative analysis supported by a qualitative analysis on surveys across three main industries in Malaysia, namely manufacturing, service and education. From these analyses, we discovered that the emergence of personal intelligence is embedded within the collaborative interactions among software agents, and among agents and human knowledge workers. We show that our hypotheses discussed in this paper, which is supported by the results of the surveys manifest some organisational knowledge management (OKM) practice as a consequence of the agent-mediated PKM processes.Future work recommended to proving these hypotheses include the development of agent-based system that animates these theories in the real working environment

Acceptance of Islamic finance products: a study on muslim consumers attitude in a non Muslim country

In accordance with the teachings of Islam which prohibit the utilisation of Riba (interest), this has led to the development of a banking approach which are based on the laws of shariah. Although these methods are not totally new or revolutionary as it has been written and practiced during the renaissance of the Islamic civilisation, it has yet to establish itself and tested in the modern world as compared to the conventional banking. Many Muslims worldwide still engage in non-interest-free in financing their purchases especially those who are staying in non-muslim countries. There are many reasons why Muslims still engage in non-interest-free products. one of the reasons is the availibility of Muslim financial product or non-interest bearing financial instruments offers by the banks. it is quite difficulut to find such instruments as most of them are not easy to get. To some extent, there are only a few financial instituitions that offer such products products among Muslims outside the Islamic world and will explain whether there is demand for such product from Muslims staying in non Muslim countries. The study reveals that Muslims living in non Muslim countries are very much willing to change their practices from the conventional system into the new system – the Islamic financial system

Conceptual framework of knowledge growth for enhancing organizational knowledge capital

This paper proposes a conceptual framework that details the main component features for modeling of knowledge growth.It contributes important insights to future studies in the field of knowledge management to design a theoretical and operational model of knowledge growth in enhancing organizations’ knowledge capital. The paper is a contribution to the body of knowledge as it helps enhance the management and delivery practices of organizations tantamount to helping the organizations prepare themselves for eventualities in the future

Formulating layered adjustable autonomy for unmanned aerial vehicles

Purpose - In this paper, we propose a Layered Adjustable Autonomy (LAA) as a dynamically adjustable autonomy model for a multi-agent system. It is mainly used to efficiently manage humans and agents share control of autonomous systems and maintain humans’ global control over the agents. Design/Methodology/Approach - We apply the LAA model in an agent-based autonomous Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV) system. The UAV system implementation consists of two parts, software, and hardware. The software part represents the controller and the cognitive and the hardware represents the computing machinery and the actuator of the UAV system. The UAV system performs three experimental scenarios of dance, surveillance and search missions. The selected scenarios demonstrate different behaviors in order to create a suitable test plan and ensure significant results. Findings - The results of the UAV system tests prove that segregating the autonomy of a system as multidimensional and adjustable layers enables humans and/or agents to perform actions in a convenient autonomy levels. Hence, reducing the adjustable autonomy drawbacks of constraining the autonomy of the agents, increasing humans’ workload and exposing the system to disturbances. Originality/value - The application of the LAA model in a UAV manifests the significance of implementing dynamic adjustable autonomy. Assessing the autonomy within three phases of agents run cycle (task-selection, actions-selection, actions-execution) is an original idea that aims to direct agents’ autonomy towards performance competency. The agents’ abilities are well exploited when an incompetent agent switches with a more competent on

Resolving conflicts between personal and normative goals in normative agent systems

In this paper, we present a framework for resolving conflicts between personal and normative goals in normative agent systems. The conflicts occur in the decision making process of time-constrained tasks of those goals. The agents observe the environment, generate the tasks based on their obligation to an authority, their desires, and intentions. They select and execute the tasks from a set of pre-compiled tasks based on their beliefs of the reward and penalty associated with the selected tasks. To resolve the conflicts within the constraint of the tasks’ duration, we supplement the agents’ normative capacity with two essential functions: Sacrifice and Diligence. The Sacrifice function enables an agent to reason and discard any tasks that have lower priorities to make way for accomplishment of the normative goal. The Diligence function enables an agent to increase its effort in accomplishing the normative goal in time-constrained situations. We simulate these situations and present the results

An Automated Negotiation-based Framework via Multi-Agent System for the Construction Domain

In this paper, we propose an automated multi-agent negotiation framework for decision making in the construction domain. It enables software agents to conduct negotiations and autonomously make decisions. The proposed framework consists of two types of components, internal and external. Internal components are integrated into the agent architecture while the external components are blended within the environment to facilitate the negotiation process. The internal components are negotiation algorithm, negotiation style, negotiation protocol, and solution generators. The external components are the negotiation base and the conflict resolution algorithm. We also discuss the decision making process flow in such system. There are three main processes in decision making for specific projects, which are propose solutions, negotiate solutions and handling conflict outcomes (conflict resolution). We finally present the proposed architecture that enables software agents to conduct automated negotiation in the construction domain

An Investigation on Measuring Accuracy of Explicit Knowledge Sources in Universities

At present, e-libraries contain huge volumes of articles that may be irrelevant or inaccurate to academics’ research areas. The academics may spend extensive time and efforts to retrieve knowledge contents from these articles. Thus, universities need to manage their articles’ libraries effectively to deliver the most suitable explicit contents based on academics’ research areas. Consequently, in this paper, we identify potential factors that could contribute to candidate relevant and accurate articles that meet employees need. These factors work on measuring the accuracy of articles to identify the most relevant articles from the huge resources of online articles. Therefore, the search time and efforts could be reduced through classifying articles based on the contents’ knowledge using practical measurement factors. To address the objectives of this research, quantitative and qualitative studies are made to collect data using questionnaire survey and interview of experts in knowledge management. The results of the data analysis are used to identify the relevant factors and to compute the accuracy of articles based on these factors. Keywords: knowledge management, explicit knowledge, knowledge measurement