Prevalence of Smoking among Secondary School Students and its Associated Factors in the District of Kuantan, Malaysia

The aims of this study were firstly to determine the prevalence of smoking and factors associated with smoking, and secondly to determine the knowledge, attitudes and practices among secondary school in the District of Kuantan, Malaysia. A cross-sectional study design was used. A stratified proportionate and random size sampling technique was used to select the sample. The lists of 29 selected schools with a population of 10,983 students are registered under the District of Kuantan Education Department served as the sampling frame. By using formula in Krejcie & Morgan (1970), for determining sample a total of 1036 samples was used. Data was collected commencing July 2005 t hrough using a structured pre test and actual test questionnaire. The response rate was 86.9%. Out of 900 respondents, 55.4% are males’ students and 44.6% are females’ students with 94.9% of them being Malays (Muslim). More ever 33.4% of respondents were in Form 1, 33.2% were in Form 2 and 33.4% were Form 3 students. The overall prevalence of smoking is 43%; with males’ and females’ proportions at 63.5% and 17.5% respectively. Among the three forms, the Form 3 with 18.6% represents the highest percentage of smoking. The main reason for male students to start smoking is the influence of friends with 60.3% and females 35.7%. Waiting for the bus (32.4%) was the most common occasion for smoking. The prevalence of smoking was significantly associated with age, economic status, race, religions, and family and peer groups smoking habits. Most students had average knowledge on the health risk of smoking. Females and non-smoker had better knowledge on hazards of smoking and possed more positive attitudes. In conclusion, smoking prevalence of school students from the district of Kuantan, Malaysia is low in comparison with the national prevalence. However, It stills constitutes a problem among secondary students in spite of their knowledge of its hazard, attitudes and practices. There is a need to implement an antismoking program for secondary school students

Risk Analysis of the Implementation of IPv6 Neighbor Discovery in Public Network

Internet is ubiquitous, and in recent times its growth has been exponential. This rapid growth caused the depletion of the current Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address, prompting IETF with the design of the new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in the 1990’s. IPv6 is the next generation of the Internet Protocol designed with much larger address space and additional functions to ease its use for the users. One of the new functions is address auto configuration of new host’s via Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP). However, the implementation of NDP is not without risk in terms of security. This paper analyzes the risk of NDP implementation in public network. The result shows a number of risks that appear on the implementation of NDP over a Public Network. Neighbors cannot be trusted 100%. One of them could be an attacker who may exploit the NDP message to get their own benefit. In addition the number of insiders increases time to time

Impact of ISO 9000 certification in academic libraries in Malaysia : Empirical study

The study investigates the impact of ISO 9000:2001 certification toward employees satisfaction, the results derived from the selected academic libraries in Malaysia.. The study used the Academic Library Employee Satisfaction Questionnaire (ALESQ) to ascertain the level of library staff satisfaction of the libraries that implementing the ISO 9001into their systems. The instrument assessed seven dimensions of employee satisfaction - resources management, team building/coworkers, recognition, leadership, communication, training and job satisfaction. A total of 549 respondents were selected from 60 academic libraries, which 409 represented Public Higher Education Institute (PuHEI) and 60 represented Private Higher Education Institute (PrHEI). The study shows the overall employee satisfaction of between 5.0 and 5.4 on a 7-point scale. It showed a statistically significance difference in employees satisfaction score for 10 categories of academic library (resource management, staff recognition and job satisfaction – were statistically difference). There is a significant difference between males and females in the employees satisfaction scores

An investigation into the effectiveness of ISO 9000 on academic library services: A case study of Sultanah Bahiyah Library, Universiti Utara Malaysia

The study investigates the impact of ISO 9000:2001 certification toward employees satisfaction, the results derived from the selected academic libraries in Malaysia. The study used the Academic Library Employee Satisfaction Questionnaire (ALESQ) to ascertain the level of library staff satisfaction of the libraries that implementing the ISO 9001into their systems. The instrument assessed seven dimensions of employee satisfaction - resources management, team building/coworkers, recognition, leadership, communication, training and job satisfaction. A total of 549 respondents were selected from 60 academic libraries, which 409 represented Public Higher Education Institute (PuHEI) and 60 represented Private Higher Education Institute (PrHEI). The study shows the overall employee satisfaction of between 5.0 and 5.4 on a 7-point scale. It showed a statistically significance difference in employees satisfaction score for 10 categories of academic library (resource management, staff recognition and job satisfaction – were statistically difference).There is a significant difference between males and females in the employees satisfaction scores

Cabaran integrasi aplikasi teknologi maklumat di perpustakaan: Penentuan wajaran dari perspektif indeks pelbagai kriteria

Revolusi teknologi maklumat (IT) telah mengubah landskap bagaimana kakitangan perpustakaan mengurus kerja hakiki mereka di samping mempengaruhi tugas perpustakaan dalam penyediaan maklumat kepada pengguna serta berjaya memudahkan pengguna mengakses pelbagai maklumat di perpustakaan. IT juga membawa cabaran dan halangan baru kepada perpustakaan. Kajian-kajian mendapati implementasi IT menyebabkan pelbagai halangan dalaman/langsung dan luaran/tak langsung kepada perpustakaan. Punca kepada halangan tak langsung, iaitu berkaitan kakitangan dapat dielak dan dikurangkan sekiranya pengurusan sumber manusia yang berkesan dapat dilakukan. Kajian ini bertujuan menyelidik sejauh mana aplikasi IT mempengaruhi tiga konstruk aktiviti pengurusan manusia iaitu komunikasi, latihan dan kepuasan kerja. Seramai 153 responden telah terlibat; 67 responden lelaki dan 84 perempuan; 48 responden berpengalaman lebih 5 tahun, 27 responden pengalaman 3~5 tahun, 41 responden 1~3 tahun dan 36 kurang 1 tahun; 8 responden adalah pustakawan, 116 pembantu perpustakaan, 6 responden kerani dan 17 responden lain-lain. Berdasarkan pendekatan pembuatan keputusan multi-kriteria, penentuan wajaran berbentuk objektif digunakan. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan elemen mengikut pangkat tertinggi ialah elemen (i) perubahan dalam perpustakaan dihebahkan dengan jelas kepada kakitangan bagi konstruk komunikasi; (ii) latihan yang diberikan kepada kakitangan baru mencukupi bagi konstruk latihan; dan (iii) tiada pilih kasih dalam peluang kenaikan pangkat dalam organisasi merupakan bagi konstruk kepuasan kerja

Performance Evaluation of IPv6 Jumbogram Packets Transmission using Jumbo Frames

IPv6 is an ultimate solution to the Internet address exhaustion. It is believed, the protocol will be requested by not only human but also everything on the earth surface. Furthermore, the improvement on the protocol is important to achieve IP packets transmission efficiently. Processing technology has been improved to become very fast packet processing both in host as well as intermediate systems. The lower layer technologies have supported to transmit Gigabits data per second. However, there is a limitation on transferring large data due to the current MTU on the widely used link layer technology which is Ethernet is still 1500 bytes. This research aims to evaluate performance of IPv6 packets transmission using jumbo frames. The evaluation was done by transmitting IPv6 packets larger than 1500 bytes in Windows  operating  systems.  The  results  show,  transmitting larger packets size using jumbo frame can increase the network throughput by up to 117%

Role of Electrode Binder on Contact Formation between La0.6Sr0.4CoO3-? Cathode and Yttrium Doped Cerate-Zirconate Solid Electrolyte

Powder of La0.6Sr0.4CoO3-? (LSCO) was synthesized by a combined citrate-EDTA synthesis route. The high purity of LSCO cathode powder as confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis was prepared to become cathode slurries using different electrode binders namely polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyvinyl butyral-co-vinyl alcohol-co-vinyl acetate (PVB), polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP), ethyl cellulose (EC) and ethylene glycol (EG). These slurries were separately painted on the pellet surfaces of BaCe0.54Zr0.36Y0.1O2.95 (BCZY) solid electrolyte to fabricate symmetrical cell of LSCO/BCZY/LSCO. The role of electrode binder on contact formation between LSCO and BCZY was investigated. The contact formation at LSCO/BCZY interface was examined by Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with Electron Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM/EDS). Three distinct areas corresponding to the LSCO cathode, BCZY electrolyte and LSCO/BCZY interface with free or crack/hole was observed in the SEM micrographs. The elemental compositions at these three areas were confirmed by EDS and their percentage was presented. The cells prepared with the aid of EC, EG, PVA and PVB showed poor contact between LSCO and BCZY due to the presence of the crack and/or hole (air gap) at interface except for the cell prepared with PVP. Therefore, PVP plays an important role in making a good contact between LSCO cathode and BCZY electrolyte. Keywords: La0.6Sr0.4CoO3-? cathode, BaCe0.54Zr0.36Y0.1O2.95 electrolyte, electrode binder, SEM/ED

Characterization of La0.6Sr0.4CoO3-α cathode powder prepared by a combined citrate-EDTA method / Abdullah Abdul Samat, Mohd Azlan Mohd Ishak and Nafisah Osman

The La0.6Sr0.4CoO3-α (LSCO) cathode powder was prepared by a combined citrate-EDTA method using nitrate based chemicals. Citric (CA) and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) were used as chelating agents and ethylene glycol (EG) as a polymerizing agent. The formation of metal complexes of LSCO was analyzed using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Various organic compounds such as carbonyl and carbonate groups were observed in FTIR spectra. The as-synthesized LSCO powder analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) showed there were three stages of weight losses with a drastic weight loss observed between 150-550 ºC. A complete decomposition of intermediate compounds was observed at 800 ºC indicating the formation of metal oxide was formed. This result was further confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis which revealed the calcined LSCO powders at 800 ºC and 900 C formed a single perovskite phase. LSCO cathode slurry was prepared by adding polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) as binder. This slurry was painted on pellet surfaces of BaCe0.54Zr0.36Y0.1O2.95 (BCZY) electrolyte. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results showed the LSCO cathode was well adhered on BCZY electrolyte. It is apparent that the binder plays an important role in making a good contact between the obtained high purity LSCO cathode and BCZY electrolyte

Performance comparison of transmitting jumbo frame on Windows and Linux System

IPv6 is the successor of IPv4, the current Internet Protocol that runs out its address. It offers some improvements including simpler header format and extension header resulting in faster transmission of IP packets. However, IPv6 is a network layer protocol that requires lower layer services. IP packets from the network layer pass to data link layer to be encapsulated by layer 2 headers and trailer to become frames. Ethernet is the most widely used data link layer protocol in the current network devices. The technology is always improved to support high speed transmission. However, from standard Ethernet until ten gigabit Ethernet, the size of MTU remains unchanged at 1500 Bytes. This prevents the network from gaining an optimum performance on transmitting IP packets and operating systems cannot take full advantage of the high-speed performance of Gigabit Ethernet. This research aims to implement the transmission of IPv6 packets using jumbo frame on a test-bed environment. The implementation can be used to justify the impact of jumbo frame on the network as well as operating systems performance. The results prove that the OS used on implementation of jumbo frame affects on the network performance. The highest percentage of increasing throughput is 33.6% when both sender and receiver are running Windows. The decreasing delay by 54.36% was happened when using Linux in sender and Windows in receiver