A sustainable competitiveness model for strategic alliances: a study of rural entrepreneurs and commercial organisations in Malaysia with special emphasis on Malaysian farmers' organisations

It is evident that strategic alliance route offers Malaysian Farmers’ Organisations a reliable and realistic way forward, towards wealth creation and socio-economic development. It has brought about positive financial rewards to the farmers as well as that of the farmer’s organisations themselves. Statistical significance on effectiveness of the various types of alliance and important control factors of profitable alliance have also been identified. Based on 1991-2004 international strategic alliance development models, a three-stage Dynamic Domestic Sustainable Competitiveness Development Model of Strategic Alliance was developed. It consists of Start-up Period, Adaptation Process and Transformation/termination. With the presence of dynamic business entities, strategic alliance projects inevitably face Competitive Challenge from time to time. A Sustainable Competitiveness Cycle, a product of the Adaptation Process, turns saviour in more ways than one, in a lifespan of an alliance

Retorik dalam novel-novel Abdullah Hussain

Rhetoric means the art, competence and effective usage of language, either in oral or writing. In communication, rhetoric is the skill and competence of speaking, using the language effectively in order to win over an audience or a listener. In essay writing, rhetoric is the art of using attractive writing style; beautiful and effective word choices with the goal of influencing the reader. The understanding of this concept guides the researcher to make a study in linguistic field with five Abdullah Hussain’s novels being used as the subject of the study. The rational for these novels as the subject of the study is the genre relevance as rhetoric tool because novels are not read just for fun or amusement but they serve as a medium for disseminating the author’s ideas, ideologies or discourses about human life or events to the reader too. Even though many studies on Malay novels had been carried out by local scholars, an exhaustive linguistic study that focuses on the rhetoric elements is quite rare. Base on the researcher searches on the Malay corpus, most of these linguistic studies are based on the rhetoric elements usage in advertisement, public speaking, and poems. This descriptive study is based on the Rhetoric Theory. The content analysis approach is used to examine the texts’ context and contextual elements. The main objective or focus of the study is to identify the type, structure, form, and the style of the rhetoric used in these Abdullah Hussain’s novels. Besides that, this research is to examine and explain the relations between the rhetoric signs in the texts vis a vis to their functions and to the author’s ideas. The findings of this research shows that the author used five types of rhetoric in his novels, namely, narrative, descriptive, exposition, argumentative and persuasive. From the structural analysis perspective, the rhetoric types used in the novels are the grammatical and lexical items, phrases, clauses, sentences as well as discourses. The research findings reveal that the author’s rhetoric style usage includes comparative stylistic, repetition and highlighting, confrontational approaches and extensive usage of linguistic forms of proverb and metaphor. And, the analysis of the rhetorical signage reveals that these rhetoric signs have direct relation to the author ideas of propagating his social critiques to his readers. Hence, rhetoric is an important element utilized in the writing of an author to gloss up his works as well as to win over his audience

Image Indexing and Retrieval based on Hybrid Feature Extraction and Classification Using Image Processing and Machine Learning Algorithms

Everyday more images are being created, stored and transmitted. However these three acts themselves do not really pose serious problems. The problem becomes apparent when the stored images need to be retrieved. Query using the traditional text-based approaches, though simple and easy to implement, are no longer sufficient when considering the large volume of images that have to be manually labelled. A logical solution to this problem is to search for images based on its content. Thus ContentBased Image Retrieval (CBIR) was born. Since then, many systems have been developed either commercially or in the form of research prototypes. The heart of any CBIR system is feature extraction. In other words features extracted from the images (usually in the form of a vector representation) becomes the index by which the images will be searched. In terms of the number of features used to represent images, it is generally accepted that the use of multiple image features is more desirable than using a single feature. This is evident judging from the major CBIR systems that have been developed. In this thesis, a hybrid feature extraction scheme is proposed based on a combination of features derived from the compressed as well as the pixel domain. By using two well-known classifiers; the Backpropagation Neural Network and Support Vector Machines, the performance of the proposed hybrid feature approach is compared with that of the other feature based approaches which serve as benchmarks. From the results obtained it has been shown that the hybrid feature extraction approach outperforms all the other feature based methods used in the experiments

Managing File/Data Compression In CD-Based Multimedia Application

The purpose of this thesis paper is to look at the most suitable file formats to be used in the development of a CD-ROM based multimedia application. A few problems encountered by the developers in producing a quality CD-ROM titles especially when dealing with the sizes of the files. Files that took a lot of space in the disk, normally will take quite some time to be downloaded. Multimedia application is an application that combines elements such as text, graphics, audio, video and animation. A few file formats have been identified for each element. In determining the types of file format to be used in the development of a CD-ROM based multimedia application, comparison was made between these types of file formats. Comparison was not only made on the sizes of the files, but also to the quality of the files to be delivered to the users. For the graphics element, the JPEG (.jpg) file format has been identified as the most suitable format to be used in the production of a CD-ROM title. The video element should be saved into the MPEG (.mpg) file format for the ease of viewing for the users without compromising on the quality of the video. The MP3 (.mp3) file format is suitable for audio files and the HTML (.him, .html) file format is suitable for texts files. For the animation, files are saved in FLICK (.fli, .flc) file format before being converted to JPEG (.jpg) file format. It is then manipulated in the authoring software such as Macromedia Director

Information Retrieval From The World Wide Web

This dissertation is being presented as a partial requirement for the degree of Master of Software System Technology in the University of Sheffield. The thesis on title “Information Retrieval From The World Wide Web” is undertaken from May to September 1995. The aim of this project is to design a system which uses the Web searching technology. When this system is completed, it can be implemented to do indexing and searching any interested document that stored in the Web. This application may give some benefits to its users especially to the Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield. Ideally, this system is developed by using one of the software engineering approaches called “Incremental delivery strategy”. The project began with the feasibility study of the techniques used in Information Retrieval and also the components involved in the World Wide Web and continued with the process of requirement analysis. The designer chose to use the data flow diagram method in order to show the design of this system. After the design was done, the system was implemented by using the C programming language and aided by the World Wide Web Library (or known as libwww). This dissertation describes the development stages of this system. Problems faced and suggestions to recover were presented as discussions. And other relevant information was attached as appendixes

Aerodynamic Analysis of External Flow for Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)

The group goals and objectives are to design and construct a new design of aerodynamic interchangeable body and new vehicle architecture. The objective of the project at this stage is more on how to design vehicle shapes that produce desirable flow characteristic. Nevertheless, the pursuit of drag reduction remains one of the principal objectives. Theoretically, the shape of a moving vehicle causes the airflow to create force acting on the surface of the vehicle. The force is known as drag force. Therefore, by streamlining the vehicle body will help to reduce the effect of this force and increase its performance. Besides, the vehicle will have an attractive body design and minimized its fuel consumption. The frontal area of a vehicle does influence the drag force exerted on the vehicle's body. The drag coefficient (Cd) depends mainly on the shape of the vehicle, regardless of thensize or driving speed. Therefore, there is a relation between frontal area and the Co, so that the vehicle with low Cd and A will experience much lower aerodynamic drag, and vice versa. For this project, the important phases involve are the concept sketching, drawing and simulation analysis. The concept sketching is about the ideas that are being looked for, not refined designs. The selected concept was draw as a 3D drawing, using CATIA software. Finally, the drawingwas used in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), using the STAR-CD software. STAR-CD is a powerful CFD tool and it has a built-in links with CAD/CAE systems. Several designs used in the CFD analysis and the result shows the pressure distribution, separation points as well as the wake generated at the rear of the vehicle. Various analysis and improvement of the design have been done, and as a result die value ofCd which is 0.14, has been obtained. As a conclusion, the combination of underbody profiling, front, and rear end would lead to produce a vehicle shapes that produce desirable flow characteristic as wellas possess low drag coefficient value

Composting of Selected Organic Sludges Using Rotary Drum and Windrow System

Various organic sludges were composted by using rotary drum system and windrow system. In this research i.e. palm oil mill effluent (POME), food factory, sewage and leachate were composted with shredded wood and sawdust as bulking agents with a ratio of 3:1. The rotary drum used was modified from a 75Liter cement mixer with insulated drum. In composting of using windrow system, heap method was applied. In compo sting using rotary drum, fermentation process for sewage sludge, POME sludge, food factory sludge and leachate sludge took around 5, 5, 10 and 13 days respectively. The pH of the compost products was ranged from pH 6.0 to pH 8.0. The highest temperature was achieved around 60°C when heated air was supplied by heat gun. The moisture content profiles during compo sting was maintained around 50-70% moisture in the compost mass. The carbon content decreased and the nitrogen content increased towards the end of compo sting process, which resulted in the reduction of C/N ratio during compo sting process to below 20. The low C/N ratio of the final compost product was very important as the indicator of maturity. The compost substrates reduced around 50% based on wet weight basis at the end of the process. Overall, the composting for the whole process of organic sludges using rotary drum took around 30 to 35 days. Planting out test was performed with spinach, whereby the size of tree and colour of leaves were observed. The result showed that the best compost product was produced from sewage sludge compost. In compo sting using windrow system, two experiments were carried using 0.1% EM and 1.0% EM. The results observed from both experiments were almost similar. The difference was reflected in compost product from windrow system, which contained a higher number of total coliforms at around 10⁵- 10⁶ cfu/g because the temperature just increased to 37°C due to the small size of heap used. The whole compo sting process for windrow system only took around 30-35 days due to the high activity of EM during the compo sting process. The physicochemical and biological characteristics of these sludges were measured and can be applied in compo sting process. By using rotary drum and windrow system the products were improved based on nutrient contents and duration of compo sting process. Overall, the characteristics of the end products for both systems were similar and also complied with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) standards

Factors of customer's intention to use Ar-Rahnu at Post Office: A case study in Kedah

Nowadays, the cost of living is increasing and most of the banking system has a strict procedure of financing. Both of these factors lead to the introduction of Ar-Rahnu in the financing field in Malaysia as one of the alternative ways for lower income group to borrow money quickly and easily without bear any higher cost of profit rate. This study aims to inspect the customer’s intention to use Ar-Rahnu @ POS in the state of Kedah since it is a new service provided by Malaysia Post Office. A survey comprised of 200 respondents was carried out. In addition, the use of syariah view, attitude, pricing and customer service as the factors will helps the researcher to find out the most factors that influence factor customer’s intention to use Ar-Rahnu @ POS. A structured question was designed where the data was analyzed by using t-test, ANOVA, correlation and multi regression analysis. Results show that syariah view, attitude, pricing and customer service are significantly important determinants to predict customer’s intention to use Ar-Rahnu @ POS. The result from multiple regression shows that the most influencing factor is a customer service. Recommendation for the future research is security and confidentiality can be used as one of the determinants to predict customer’s intention to use Ar-Rahnu @ POS. In conclusion, this study is useful for the Post Office to planning better Ar-Rahnu service for their customers in order to attract more customers to use their service

Production, Characterization And Expression Of An Organic Solvent Tolerant Lipase From Pseudomonas Aeruginosa S5s5

Lipolytic bacterium was screened from five pure bacteria cultures available in Enzyme and Microbial Technology laboratory in UPM. The stock cultures were tested for lipase production. Two isolates (S5 and 205W) showed the highest activity in tripticase soy broth and brain heart infusions. These isolates were further incubated in different basal media. Isolate S5 was shown to give higher activity (0.327 Ulml) than isolate 205W in media MI and stable in various organic solvents tested. Therefore isolate S5 was chosen for further studies. Based on its morphological, biochemical characteristics and 16s rDNA sequence, strain S5 was identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. P. aeruginosa lipase exhibited the highest relative activity with n-hexane (410%) for 20 min reaction. Optimum lipase production was obtained at pH 7.0 and 37°C at static condition with peptone as the best nitrogen source and olive oil as the best carbon source. The best inoculum size was 6%. The surfactants, Tween 60 and Tween 80 were found to enhance for bacterial growth and lipase production by S5. The lipase was purified to homogeneity by affinity column chromatography and anion exchange column chromatography. The purified lipase was highly homogeneous as determined by sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDSPAGE) and the molecular mass was estimated to be 60 kDa by SDS-PAGE and G-100 gel filtration column chromatography. The optimum temperature and pH of the purified enzyme was 45°C and pH 9.0, respectively. S5 lipase was stable at pH 6-9 for 30 min. The half-life of the S5 lipase at 45°C and 50°C was 2 h and 1 h, respectively. The lipase exhibited high stability in the presence of n-dodecane, 1-pentanol and toluene. As for metal ions, it was found that ca2+ stimulated lipase activity in 15 min incubation time, while EDTA had no effect on lipase activity. However, the S5 lipase was strongly inhibited by the addition of 1 mM phenyl methyl sulfonyl fluoride (PMSF) (87% inhibition) and 1 rnM of Pepstatin (76% inhibition) after 30 min incubation. The S5 lipase exhibited the highest activity in the presence of palm oil as a substrate and followed by coconut oil. S5 lipase was found to have the highest activity against triolein which possess longer carbon chain length. S5 lipase is a non-specific lipase as shown by triolein hydrolysis. The gene encoding for the intracellular lipase of P. aeruginosa strain S5 was isolated via genomic DNA library and cloned into pRSET. The cloned sequence included two open reading frames (OW) consisting of 1575 bp for the first ORF (ORF1) and 582 bp for the second ORF (ORF2). The OW2 was located at the downstream and function as the act gene for O w l . The conserved pentapeptide Gly- X- Ser- X-Gly was located in the ORF1. Catalytic triad resembling of that serine protease, consisting of serine, histidine, aspartic acid or glutarnic acid residues was present in this lipase gene. Expression in E.coli resulted a 100-fold increase in enzyme activity after 9 h induction with 0.75 mM IPTG. The recombinant plasmid revealed a size of 60 kDa on SDS-PAGE. The Lip S5 gene was stable in the presence of 25% (v/v) n-dodecane and n-tetradecane after 2 h incubation at 37OC. Predicted 3D structure of S5 lipase revealed topological organization of a / @-hydrolase fold consisting of 10 a-Helices and 5 @-strands. The Ramachandran plot of S5 lipase showed that 85.8% (229) of residues lie in the most-favored region and only 2.2% (6) of residue lie in generously allowed regions and 1 residue lie in disallowed region

A Web-Based Computer Lab Management System: Case Study in Sekolah Kebangsaan Tikam Batu, Sungai Petani

This study will be conducted to manage the computer laboratory at school in a systematic and effective manner. A web-based computer lab management will be developed to provide facilities for teachers to make a reservation for using lab computer, to log the use of computer by students, and produce reports about the computer lab utilization to the management of school and education authority. Teachers do not have to wait on school hours for booking the computer lab. They can perform a reservation in anywhere and at any time term through the internet. Reports on the analysis of the use of computer laboratories will be submitted to the State Education Department (PPD) and others education authority periodically. This study will adapt automated analysis usage system for computer lab management system. The prototype of computer lab management system will be developed by using PHP and MySQL for ensuring the proposed model/methodology/approach/framework/system is workable. The system will be tested for usefulness at the computer laboratory in Sekolah Kebangsaan Tikam Batu. The web-based computer lab management system has potential to be implemented in other schools, which required laboratory management system to manage their facilities