The ratification of the 1951 refugees convention: protection of the rights of asylum seekers in Malaysia / Amsyar Ahmad Zawawi, Maziah Martin and Mohammad Afif Daud

This project paper discusses the issue of ratification of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (also known as the 1951 Refugees Convention) in order to provide protections and rights to asylum seekers in Malaysia. The project paper outlines our research proposal which consists of basic layouts in conducting our research. It comprises of the historical development of the law on asylum seekers throughout the years, basically before and after the introduction of the 1951 Refugees Convention. Furthermore, this project paper illustrates the present situation in regards to the protection of asylum seekers in Malaysia as Malaysia currently is not a party to the said convention. Subsequently, we will look into practices by countries that had ratified the 1951 Refugees Convention, more specifically United Kingdom and Australia; to know the basic standard of care and the treatment provided by these countries in the protection of asylum seekers. Conjointly, this project paper explores on the issue of conflict on duties of states on asylum seekers, as well as the settlement on the issue of rights of asylum seekers. In addition to all the foregoing, this project paper highlights on recommendations to be observed to protect the rights of asylum seekers

Multi-circuit air-conditioning system modelling for temperature control

The suitable application of innovative control strategies in Heating, Ventilation, and Airconditioning systems is important to improving the energy efficiency and maintenance of temperature set point to improve thermal comfort in buildings. The increased focus on energy savings and appropriate thermal comfort has resulted in the necessity for more dynamic approach to the use of these controllers. However, the design of these controllers requires the use of an accurate dynamic modelling. Substantial progresses have been made in the past on model development to provide better control strategy to ensure energy savings without sacrificing thermal comfort and indoor air quality in the Heating, Ventilation, and Air-conditioning systems. However, there are scarce model using the data driven approach in the Multi-circuit air-conditioning system. This research, carried out a study on the choice of a dynamic model for an operating centralized multi-circuit water-cooled package unit air-conditioning system using a system identification procedure. Baseline data were collected and analyzed, the model development was achieved by processing, estimating and validating the data in system identification. Result shows that the Autoregressive-moving average with exogenous terms (ARMAX) of the third order model, established the best model structure with the highest Best Fit and Lowest Mean Square Error

Long short-term memory neural network model for the control of temperature in a multi-circuit air conditioning system

Temperature control is important in energy management of buildings. Air conditioning system contributes a high percentage of the total energy consumption, the compressor, which is a major component of the Air conditioning system, utilizes up to 90% of the energy. This can drastically be reduced by varying the frequency of the compressor with respect to the required indoor temperature, as such, reducing the overall energy usage of the air conditioning system. The combination of a well-tuned controller and variable frequency drive can be used to achieve this. It is important to develop a good model which can be used to design the controller. Although there are published research works in the development of models for the control of air conditioning systems, there seems to be a lack of study in the area of multi-circuit centralized air conditioning system. In this study, two models were developed using Long Short Term Memory Neural Network and Recurrent Neural Network, utilizing compressor speed and indoor air temperature of a multi-circuit water cooled packaged unit as input and output respectively. Comparing the two models, results shows that the Long Short-Term Memory Neural Network model performed better across evaluation metrics such as R-squared, Mean Squared Error and Mean Absolute Error, with the value of 0.9638, 0.0049, and 0.0190 respectively

Performance of yield and yield contributing characteristics of BC2F3 population with addition of blast resistant gene

The study was carried out in the University Putra Malaysia (UPM) Rice Research Centre to evaluate the yield performance of newly developed selected blast resistant plants of BC2 F3 generations derived from a cross between MR263, a high yielding rice variety but blast susceptible and Pongsu Seribu 1, donor with blast resistant (Pi-7(t) and Pi-d (t)1, Pir2-3(t) genes and qLN2 QTL), Malaysian local variety. On the basis of assessed traits, the plants 12, 6, 7, 5, 21, 22, 5, 26, 11, 8, 10, 13 and 15 had the higher yield, blast resistant and good morphological traits. More than 70% heritability was found in days to maturity, plant height, tiller numbers per hill, and panicle per hill, 80% heritability was found in filled grain and yield per hill and more than 90% heritability was found in grain length, grain width and seed weight. Cluster analysis based on the traits grouped 30 plants along with MR263 into seven clusters. According to PCA, the first four principal components account for about 69.3% total variation for all measured traits and exhibited high correlation among the characteristics analyzed

Introgression of blast resistance genes into the elite rice variety MR263 through marker-assisted backcrossing

BACKGROUND Blast caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is a significant disease threat to rice across the world and is especially prevalent in Malaysia. An elite, early-maturing, high-yielding Malaysian rice variety, MR263, is susceptible to blast and was used as the recurrent parent in this study. To improve MR263 disease resistance, the Pongsu Seribu 1 rice variety was used as donor of the blast resistance Pi-7(t), Pi-d(t)1 and Pir2-3(t) genes and qLN2 quantitative trait locus (QTL). The objective was to introgress these blast resistance genes into the background of MR263 using marker-assisted backcrossing with both foreground and background selection. RESULTS Improved MR263-BR-3-2, MR263-BR-4-3, MR263-BR-13-1 and MR263-BR-26-4 lines carrying the Pi-7(t), Pi-d(t)1 and Pir2-3(t) genes and qLN2 QTL were developed using the simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers RM5961 and RM263 (linked to the blast resistance genes and QTL) for foreground selection and a collection of 65 polymorphic SSR markers for background selection in backcrossed and selfed generations. A background analysis revealed that the highest rate of recurrent parent genome recovery was 96.1% in MR263-BR-4-3 and 94.3% in MR263-BR-3-2. CONCLUSION The addition of blast resistance genes can be used to improve several Malaysian rice varieties to combat this major disease

Toward understanding of rice innate immunity against Magnaporthe oryzae

The blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae, causes serious disease on a wide variety of grasses including rice, wheat and barley. The recognition of pathogens is an amazing ability of plants including strategies for displacing virulence effectors through the adaption of both conserved and variable pathogen elicitors. The pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP)-triggered immunity (PTI) and effector-triggered immunity (ETI) were reported as two main innate immune responses in plants, where PTI gives basal resistance and ETI confers durable resistance. The PTI consists of extracellular surface receptors that are able to recognize PAMPs. PAMPs detect microbial features such as fungal chitin that complete a vital function during the organism’s life. In contrast, ETI is mediated by intracellular receptor molecules containing nucleotide-binding (NB) and leucine rich repeat (LRR) domains that specifically recognize effector proteins produced by the pathogen. To enhance crop resistance, understanding the host resistance mechanisms against pathogen infection strategies and having a deeper knowledge of innate immunity system are essential. This review summarizes the recent advances on the molecular mechanism of innate immunity systems of rice against M. oryzae. The discussion will be centered on the latest success reported in plant–pathogen interactions and integrated defense responses in rice