Malaysian Domestic Firms’ Contribution Towards Community Based Csr

This study examines the level of community based CSR disclosure among Malaysian domestic firms. Kajian ini mengkaji tentang tahap pendedahan amalan-amalan berkaitan tanggungjwab sosial korporat di kalangan firma tempatan di Malaysia

Using of English in teaching Mathematics and Science: Is the performance satisfactory?

The policy of changing the medium of instruction in the teaching of Mathematics and Science from Bahasa Melayu to English is an important innovation affecting teachers of Mathematics and Science generally. It poses special challenges not only for teachers who have been trained in the Malay medium but also for those trained in English, whose professional experience has largely involved the use of Bahasa Melayu as the medium of instruction. This investigation seeks to find out the achievement of students after considering the impact of prominent independent variables such as environment, teaching methodology, and attitude. Analysis of the development in the state of Terengganu has been carried out by the distribution of questionnaire to teachers involved. Results of the correlation and multiple regression indicated that all the three factors are significantly associated towards students achievement. However teaching methodology indicated a low level of moderate correlation which is believed to be the immediate issue that needed to be addressed in the new system

Substitution-based approach for linguistic steganography using antonym

Steganography has been a part of information technology security since a long time ago. The study of steganography is getting attention from researchers because it helps to strengthen the security in protecting content message during this era of Information Technology. In this study, the use of substitution-based approach for linguistic steganography using antonym is proposed where it is expected to be an alternative to the existing substitution approach that using synonym. This approach still hides the message as existing approach but its will change the semantic of the stego text from cover text. A tool has been developed to test the proposed approach and it has been verified and validated. This proposed approach has been verified based on its character length stego text towards the cover text, bit size types of the secret text towards the stego text and bit size types of the cover text towards the stego text. It has also been validated using four parameters, which are precision, recall, f-measure, and accuracy. All the results showed that the proposed approach was very effective and comparable to the existing synonym-based substitution approach

Design of heat exhanger network using pinch method

Chemical or oil refineiy processes utilize huge amounts o f energy in their routine operations. Therefore, it is vital for such industries to find ways o f maximizing the use of energy and make the system more efficient through reduction in energy, water and raw material consumption. Waste energy can be transferred to another process and that will increase the profitability of the industries. When the use of a heat exchanger network (HEN) is considered for these tasks, the framework developed in this study can be implemented to make a cost-benefit analysis. This thesis represents a framework for generating the H E N over a specified range of variations in the f l ow rates and temperature o f the streams. So that the heat exchanger area, number o f heat exchange units and load on the heat exchangers can be estimated. The proposed method to analyze and design the H E N is called pinch method, which is one o f the most practical tools and used to improve the efficiency o f energy usage, fuel and water consumption in industrial processes. This method investigates the energy flows within a process and identifies the most economical ways of maximizing heat recovery. This method consists o f five major steps to follow, which will finally lead to H E N design. The steps are: (1) choose a minimum temperature approach temperature (DTmin), (2) construct a temperature interval diagram, (3) construct a cascade diagram and determine the minimum utility requirements and the pinch temperature, (4) calculate the minimum number o f heat exchangers above and below the pinch and (5) construct the heat exchanger network. The emphasis of this work has been on the designing of the H E N . However, to demonstrate the practical implications of pinch analysis, D T m i n and the heat exchanger costs, it is necessary to estimate the heat transfer area o f the H E N , which will help in arriving at the total cost including capital and running costs o f the designed H E N . The effect o f changing the D T m i n gave a good indication on the overall costs

SECTORAL EFFECTS OF RINGGIT DEPRECIATION SHOCKS

The paper seeks to address two important questions-namely, is exchange rate depreciation expansionary or contractionary and are there distributional consequences of exchange rate shocks for the case of Malaysia? In the paper, we consider the relations between aggregate output as well as eight sectoral outputs and real effective exchange rate in multivariate setting. Applying multivariate cointegration test, we find evidence for cointegration among the variables for all sectors. More importantly, both real output (aggregate output as well as all sectoral output) and real exchange rate contribute significantly to the cointegration space, affirming the presence of long run relations between the two focused variables. In most cases, the estimated cointegrating vectors suggest expansionary currency depreciation. Our simulated dynamics using generalized impulse responses further substantiate this finding especially over longer horizons. Over shorter horizons, however, exchange rate depreciation can be contractionary for certain sectors particularly for the construction sector. Lastly, we also find evidence indicative of the differential effects of the currency shocks. Comparatively, the manufacturing sector, transport, storage and communication sector, and finance, insurance, real estates and business services sector seem to be affected more by exchange rate fluctuations.Exchange Rate Shocks, Sectoral Output, Cointegration, Generalized Impulse Responses

An Empirical Analysis of Real Activity and Stock Returns in an Emerging Market

The present paper analyzes the role of stock market returns as a predictor of real output for a fast-growing emerging market, Malaysia. In the analysis, forecasting equations for 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-quarter forecasting horizons based on autoregressive distributed lags framework are adopted. From the estimation, we find evidence that stock market returns do contain predictive ability at short-forecasting horizons, especially at less than 4-quarter horizons. Estimating the forecasting models recursively, we note reduction of out-of-sample forecasting evaluation statistics, namely the mean absolute errors (MAE) and the mean squared forecast errors (MSFE), from those obtained from the simple autoregressive (AR) model. More importantly, the null hypothesis of equal predictive accuracy between the model with stock returns as a predictor and the AR model is rejected for the 1-quarter and 2-quarter forecasting horizons by the McCraken’s (2007) out-of-sample-F statistics.Stock Return, Real GDP Growth, Out-of-Sample Forecasts, Malaysia

Weedy plants of Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve, Selangor

The Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve has possibly been under constant threat from invasive species especially the weeds from surrounding development sites. The total number of weed taxa identified from this forest were 33 species, 29 genera and J3 families. Of these taxa, only two species aquatic weeds vizs., Ceratopteris thalictroides (Parkeriaceae) and Hydrilla venieillata (Hydrocharitaceae). The most dominant terrestrial weedy speeies in this forest were Clidemia hirta (Melastomataceae) and Chromalaena odorata (Compositae). All grasses and sedges !lIJi~si,~s were recorded at the disturbed sampling sites only. Limosa pigra was only found at the most disturbed site bordering the forest

Tax compliance cost of bumiputera small and medium enterprises in Northern Malaysia

This paper explores and measures the level of tax compliance costs among Bumiputera small and medium enterprises in the Northern Region of Malaysia for the year of assessment 2003. The findings revealed that the tax compliance costs have a significant relationship with the paid up capital(size of enterprises). Overall, the tax compliance cost of Bumiputera small and medium enterprises was RM880,110 for the assessment year 2003. Furthermore tax compliance cost of smaller Bumiputera enterprises amounted to RM413,670 while the larger Bumiputera enterprises was RM466,440.The average tax compliance cost is RM22,003. Most of the large Bumiputera enterprises incurred more external tax compliance costs than internal compliance costs (62.34%) compared to the smaller Bumiputera enterprises (37.66%). In contrast, the smaller Bumiputera enterprises incurred more internal tax compliance costs of about 83% as compared to external tax compliance costs (17%). The results also indicated that small Bumiputera enterprises have a higher percentage of tax compliance costs based on tax revenue, which is 2.57 times more compared to large Bumiputera enterprises,which amounted to only 0.46 times

Diet composition and food habits of demersal and pelagic marine fishes from Terengganu waters, east coast of Peninsular Malaysia

Fish stomachs from 18 demersal and pelagic fishes from the coast of Terengganu in Malaysia were examined. The components of the fishes’ diets varied in number, weight, and their frequency of occurrence. The major food items in the stomachs of each species were determined using an Index of Relative Importance. A conceptual food web structure indicates that fish species in the study area can be classified into three predatory groups: (1) predators on largely planktivorous or pelagic species; (2) predators on largely benthophagous or demersal species; and (3) mixed feeders that consume both pelagic and demersal species

On-the job knowledge sharing: how to train employees to share job knowledge

One of the challenging issues many organizations are facing is to find the best ways to encourage employees share what they have learned on their jobs. Rewarding employees may be one of the techniques used to promote knowledge sharing but there are still psychological barriers preventing employees from sharing knowledge. In many cases, rewarding employees for sharing knowledge ends up in developing the behaviour of hoarding knowledge among employees. Based on a review of existing literature, this article explains how employers can make employees practice knowledge sharing in their daily work activities. The article introduces 12 approaches on how knowledge sharing can be cultivated in the job and train employees to accept that it is their job to share knowledge. Some of the methods discussed include; peer assist, training and mentoring, challenging projects, job description, job rotation, cross training, and sharing sessions. The article also discusses how on-the-job knowledge sharing can promote individual performance among employees. The intention of this article is to provide a framework that helps organizations to choose various methods of knowledge sharing that suit the organization’s needs in order to cultivate sharing of job knowledge and to save the knowledge as an asset