The crab carapace is a waste which cannot be decomposed. This waste was used to
remove the Reactive Orange 16 (RO16) and Basic Blue 3 (BB3) from aqueous solution
at different operational parameters such as pH, mass load, the concentrations of dye and
the temperature. The crab collected was modified to obtain quaternized crab (QC) using
(3-chloro-2-hydroxypropyl) trimethylammonium chloride solution (C6H15Cl2NO, 65% w/w
in water). The pH of the dyes solution was varied from pH 4 to 10. The highest adsorption
percentage was achieved at pH 7 for both dyes. Increasing the QC mass for the adsorption
process had granted an increase of dyes removal percentage. The highest adsorption
percentage was achieved at 91.00% for RO16 and 29.40% for BB3 dyes with 7.5 g/L QC
used. However, the adsorption capacity of QC decreased with higher QC mass because the
dye molecules occupied on the surface and prevented other molecules to diffuse into the
QC. At higher concentration beyond 20 mg/L and 10 mg/L of RO16 and BB3, respectively,
the maximum adsorption was achieved at 2.5362 mg/g and 0.6812 mg/g. The adsorption of
both dyes by QC was best fitted using Langmuir isotherm model, explaining the adsorption
mainly occurred as a single layer on the surface of QC. Comparison to the results obtained
from the kinetic models, the adsorption was
chemisorption in nature. According to the
thermodynamic studies, the adsorption of
RO16 was an exothermic, while BB3 was
an endorthermic process.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a ubiquitous, an indoor and outdoor air pollutant. It is not a significant greenhouse gas as it absorbs little infrared radiation from the Earth. It is produced by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, and biomass burning. The CO data are obtained from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. The AIRS provides information for several greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4, CO, and O3 as a one goal of the AIRS instrument (included on the EOS Aqua satellite launched, May 4, 2002) as well as to improve weather prediction of the water and energy cycle. The results of the analysis of the retrieved CO total column amount (CO_total_column_A) as well as effective of the CO volume mixing ratio (CO_VMR_eff_A), Level-3 monthly (AIR*3STM) 1º*1º spatial resolution, ascending are used to study the CO distribution over the East and West Malaysia for the year 2003. The CO maps over the study area were generated by using Kriging Interpolation technique and analyzed by using Photoshop CS. Variations in the biomass burning and the CO emissions where noted, while the highest CO occurred at late dry season in the region which has experienced extensive biomass burning and greater draw down of CO occurred in the pristine continental environment (East Malaysia). In all cases, the CO concentration at West Malaysia is higher than East Malaysia. The southeastern Sarawak (lat. 3.5˚ - long. 115.5˚) is less polluted regions and less the CO in most of times in the year. Examining satellite measurements revealed that the enhanced CO emission correlates with occasions of less rainfall during the dry season.
Digital elevation model (DEM) generation from stereo images is an effective and economical method in topography mapping. This paper used the stereo pair methodology to generate the digital elevation model (DEM) from PRISM (Panchromatic Remote-Sensing Instrument Satellite) sensor which is onboard of ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite). The pair of forward-backward is used as stereoscopic imagery in this study. Ten ground control points (GCPs) are collected with residual error 0.49 pixels to generate an absolute DEM. This generated DEM with 2.5 m spatial resolution is then matched with the 90 m spatial resolution of
SRTM (Space Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) DEM to compare the result. Although SRTM-DEM has a much coarser resolution, the positional accuracy of the matching is found. The difference of the height from the mean sea level (MSL) between the SRTM-DEM and the PRISM-DEM is analyzed and the correlation between the two DEMs is R²=0.8083. The accuracy of the DEM generated is given by the RMSE value of 0.8991 meter.
Prolonged mechanical ventilation (PMV) is associated with increase in mortality and resource utilisation as well as hospitalisation costs. This study evaluates the risk factors of PMV. A retrospective study was conducted involving 890 paediatric patients comprising 237 neonates, 306 infants, 223 of pre-school age and 124 who are of school going age. The data mining decision trees algorithms and logistic regression was employed to develop predictive models for each age category. The independent variables were classified into four categories, that is, demographic data, admission factors, medical factors and score factors. The dependent variable is the duration of ventilation where it is categorized 0 denoting non-PMV and 1 denoting PMV. The performances of three decision tree models (CHAID, CART and C5.0) and logistic regression were compared to determine the best model. The results indicated that the decision tree outperformed the logistic regression model for all age categories, given its good accuracy rate for testing dataset. Decision trees results identified length of stay and inotropes as significant risk factors in all age categories. PRISM 12 hours and principal diagnosis were identified as significant risk factors for infants.
The potential of a major accident may significantly increase when change is unprepared especially in a temporary and emergency change. An unplanned change may lead to the emergence of new hazards which eventually lead towards severe impact on human, property, environment and business reputation. Management of Change (MOC) with integrated risk analysis is an important Process Safety Management (PSM) elements involving planning and controlling risks and hazards that come with the proposed change. However, lacking systematic technique for easy adoption of this element has delayed its application in plant. Corresponding to these weaknesses, an integrated MOC management system focusing on the temporary and emergency change is presented in this study. Results of this study comprise MOC process framework and MOC management system (MOCMS) which act as a guidance and documentation inventory tool. Implementation of this technique and system at the selected plant as a case study is examined and discussed. The system is beneficial to industries to manage underlying risks in a temporary and emergency change which ease the tracking of MOC case inventory to improve risk controls in changes.
Credit risk assessment has become an important topic in financial risk administration. Fuzzy clustering
analysis has been applied in credit scoring. Gustafson-Kessel (GK) algorithm has been utilised to cluster
creditworthy customers as against non-creditworthy ones. A good clustering analysis implemented by
good Initial Centres of clusters should be selected. To overcome this problem of Gustafson-Kessel (GK)
algorithm, we proposed a modified version of Kohonen Network (KN) algorithm to select the initial
centres. Utilising similar degree between points to get similarity density, and then by means of maximum
density points selecting; the modified Kohonen Network method generate clustering initial centres to get
more reasonable clustering results. The comparative was conducted using three credit scoring datasets:
Australian, German and Taiwan. Internal and external indexes of validity clustering are computed and
the proposed method was found to have the best performance in these three data sets.
Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm has experienced a significant increase in terms of usage in many fields of study. In this paper, the performance of the said algorithm in finding the Maximum Likelihood for the Gaussian Mixed Models (GMM), a probabilistic model normally used in fraud detection and recognizing a person’s voice in speech recognition field, is shown and discussed. At the end of the paper, some suggestions for future research works will also be given.
Adnexal masses are growths that form near the uterus; the majority being ovarian tumours. Although
there is no established population-screening tool for detecting ovarian cancer, ultrasound and contrastenhanced
computed tomography (CECT) are useful imaging tools in the management of adnexal masses.
Our study aimed to determine the characteristics of malignant adnexal masses on CECT scan and to
describe common pitfalls in diagnosis of ovarian cancer when interpreting images. We also determined the
sensitivity and specificity of diagnosing ovarian cancer using CECT. A retrospective study was conducted
in Hospital Serdang using data from all patients who underwent CECT scan and detected with adnexal
masses, and had histopathological examination correlation from January 2013 until January 2015. Out of
the 64 cases analysed; the majority of malignant lesions were serous carcinoma of the ovary (40%). The
CECT scan characteristics, tumour consistency of mixed type, presence of wall enhancement, septations,
ascites and peritoneal nodule/omental caking were significantly associated with ovarian malignancy
(p
Cross-document Structure Theory (CST) has recently been proposed to facilitate tasks related to multidocument analysis. Classifying and identifying the CST relationships between sentences across topically related documents have since been proven as necessary. However, there have not been sufficient studies presented in literature to automatically identify these CST relationships. In this study, a supervised machine learning technique, i.e. Support Vector Machines (SVMs), was applied to identify four types of CST relationships, namely “Identity”, “Overlap”, “Subsumption”, and “Description” on the datasets obtained from CSTBank corpus. The performance of the SVMs classification was measured using Precision, Recall and F-measure. In addition, the results obtained using SVMs were also compared with those from the previous literature using boosting classification algorithm. It was found that SVMs yielded better results in classifying the four CST relationships.
Detailed geophysical investigations have been carried out using integrated geophysical methods with a view to characterising the subsurface lithologic features that might indicate suitable places for structural developments. An overview of the subsurface resistivity distribution has been achieved employing 8Vertical Electrical Soundings with the Schlumberger array and 4 2D resistivity imaging using Wenner array. In order to constrain the results of the electrical resistivity methods, we carried out a ground magnetic survey along E-W direction using the Proton precession magnetometer at 1m sampling interval. Analysis of well logs data available and VES results showed 4 to 5 geoelectric layers corresponding to sand, clayey sand, clay, silty sand and sandy clay. The 2D resistivity imaging sections showed relative decrease of apparent resistivity with depth implying a geological transition from sand with high resistivity value of about 508Ωm to clay with low resistivity value 16Ωm at depths of 0-20m and 25-50m respectively. The magnetic profiles showed that the study area was characterised by short wavelengths and amplitudes ranging from –3800 to 700 nT. The highs and lows of the magnetic responses occasioned by lithological variations and structural features were magnetically resolved. In view of the identified subsurface structures, the suggested depth to the competent layer is about 20m for low to medium structures while above 50m would be suitable for heavy or massive engineering structures. The use of integrated geophysical methods for the delineation, identification and imaging of the subsurface geological structures which could provide clues to the nature and type of foundation suitable for the development of the study area has been successfully achieved.
Rough neutrosophic multisets are an improved model of generalization pf neutrosophic multisets represented within the Pawlak’s boundary set of information: lower and upper approximation. The concepts of rough neutrosophic multisets can be easily extended to a relation, mainly since a relation is also a set, i.e. a subset of a Cartesian product. This paper establishes an axiomatic definition of rough neutrosophic multisets relation of Cartesian product over a universal set. Some of the operations and properties of rough neutrosophic multisets, such as max, min, the composition of two rough neutrosophic multisets relation and inverse rough neutrosophic multisets relation, are studied with a proven condition. An algorithm of rough neutrosophic multisets relation is also presented as a step followed to obtain the rough neutrosophic multisets relation. Successful analysis using rough neutrosophic multisets relation theory is represented by the illustrative example of expert opinion about automobile popularity. In conclusion, with a specified condition in uncertainty information, rough neutrosophic multiset relations are generalized in terms of the relation properties of a rough fuzzy relation, rough intuitionistic fuzzy relation, and rough neutrosophic relation over universal. Subsequently, their properties could also be examined.
The information on the combustion properties of local timber is crucial in Malaysia as the archival material related to this subject matter is found to be very limited in scope and incomplete. The heat release rate (HRR) is the most precious variable of combustion properties as it provides the key to understand and quantify the hazard in fires. Thus, this work is to verify the reliability of the HRR obtained from cone calorimeter tests conducted upon six Malaysian wood species: Shorea laevis, Vatica rassak, Koompassia malaccensis, Heritiera, Shorea parvifolia and Cratoxylum arborescens. The single factor one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to investigate statistically significant differences between the means of the HRR dataset of each species during the combustion tests at three different heat fluxes. Later, the confidence interval estimation was occupied to determine the range around the HRR dataset, where the means of the data was likely to be found. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) test was also implemented to assess the reliability of the heat release rate data obtained from the cone calorimeter test. From the surveillance, the P-values of all the six species were higher than α = 0.05, insinuating that the difference between the means of the dataset was not statistically significant. The confidence interval values consisting of the upper bound and lower bound limits indicate that the certainty that these ranges contain the true mean of the heat release rate dataset is 95%. Finally, the fact that heat release data received from the cone calorimeter test were highly reliable to statistically calculate the variation in measurements taken by a single instrument under the same condition confirmed by the ICC’s values of 0.82 to 0.99 that reflect good to excellent correlations.
Degradation of coastal water quality is one of the major concern in the Malacca Strait since this area is one of the most important fishing ground in Malaysia. Despite being great in the fishery industry, Malacca and Negeri Sembilan somehow recorded the lowest marine fishes landing, which raises a question about dynamics of this area. It is therefore, a preliminary study of the physical properties and nutrient concentrations carried out from 27 March to 4 April 2016 at the coastal water off the southern west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, specifically at Pulau Besar, Malacca and Tanjung Tuan, Negeri Sembilan. Data for temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen (DO) was acquired by using Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth (CTD) probe. Meanwhile, nutrient concentrations determination in this study was done by using a Westco Smartchem 200 Discrete Analyser, according to the procedure adopted from United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). In general, results of this study indicated the coastal stations were characterised with cooler, less saline, and high DO waters than stations away from coast. Large sea surface heating and weak winds were determined as the causative factors affecting dynamics of water column at the study area. At nearshore area, temperature, salinity, and DO variability were modulated by degree of freshwater intrusion. High nutrient concentrations at the stations closer to the coast was believed to be associated with river outflow, which acted as the main source of nutrients supply in this area. Comparison to previous study had shown that nutrient concentrations in this research were low, which could contribute to an insight on declining marine fish catches in these two states. With regard to Malaysian Marine Water Quality Criteria and Standard (MWQCS), mean nutrient concentrations at the study area were in Class 1, which are suitable for marine parks and marine protected areas conservation. Regardless of limited scope, the outcome of this study is believed to be a good baseline reference for future studies seeking to understand coastal dynamics.
Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) method is widely used as a modulation technique
to drive a three-phase inverter. It is an advanced computational intensive method used in pulse width modulation (PWM) algorithm for the three-phase voltage source inverter. Compared with the other PWM techniques, SVPWM is easier to implement, thus, it is the most preferred technique among others. Mathematical model for SVPWM was developed using MATLAB/ Simulink software. In this paper, the interface between MATLAB Simulink with the three-phase inverter by using Arduino Uno microcontroller is proposed. Arduino Uno generates the SVPWM signals for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) and is described in this paper. This work consists of software and hardware implementations. Simulation was done via Matlab/Simulink software to verify the effectiveness of the system and to measure the percentage of Total Harmonic Distortion (THD). The results show that SVPWM technique is able to drive the three-phase inverter with the Arduino UNO.
Hydrological models are reliable tools that have been extensively used for hydrological studies. However, the complexity of some of these models has been a major setback, which affects their performance. This study compared Hydrologic Engineering Corps Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) with most widely applied Soil Water Assessment Tool (ArcSWAT) model and used to assess impacts of climate change on streamflow at Bernam Basin, Malaysia for 2010-2039, 2040-2069 and 2070-2099 to the baseline period (1976- 2005) using an ensemble of ten GCMs under three RCP scenarios (RCPs 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5). The models performed satisfactorily. However, HEC-HMS performed better compared to ArcSWAT with 0.74, 0.71, 4.21 and 0.37; and 0.71, 0.69, 5.32 and 0.31 for R2 , NSE, PBIAS and RSR, respectively, during the calibration and validation periods. Future periods suggest a decreasing pattern in streamflow, with a higher percentage (−5.94%) expected for the RCP 8.5 scenario in the late century (2080s) during dry season period. In the wet season, streamflow decreases in all future periods except for RCP4.5 where it is expected to increase (0.36%). Therefore, the Basin may likely experience tremendous pressure in the late century due to low streamflow, particularly in dry season months.
Part of the Seremban flood mitigation project in the state of Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia is to mitigate
the flood at Jalan Rasah. The mitigation is planned to be implemented in packages. Package I and Package II of River Anak Air Rasah are parts of the project work. In these packages, wider and deeper concrete sections for the river are constructed. The existing undersized culverts were replaced by bigger reinforced concrete box culverts. The size of the box culverts was based on 100-years average reoccurrence interval (ARI). One of these culverts intersected with a rail line connecting Singapore and Malaysia. Trenchless jacking technique was used to lay the box culvert. The total length of the box culvert jacked under the railway line is 33 m, whereas the total width of the twin box culvert is 7.8 m with a total height of 3 m. This was the first time that the trenchless jacking techniques were used for the urban flood mitigation purpose in Malaysia, and it is mainly used to minimise traffic disruption. This study reports the success of using jacking technique in the development of the flood mitigation program of DID in Negeri Sembilan. Among other things, it explains significant performance of the technique under local conditions and experiences gained towards the advancement of tunnelling and trenchless technology.
This paper proposes a 3D object recognition method based on 3D SURF and the derivation of the robot space transformations. In a previous work, a three fingered robot hand had been developed for grasping task. The reference position of the robot hand was programmed based on predetermined values for grasping two different shapes of object. The work showed successful grasping but it could not generate the reference position on its own since no external sensor was used, hence it is not fully automated. Later, a 2D Speed-Up Robust Features (SURF) and 3D point cloud algorithm were applied to calculate the object’s 3D position where the result showed that the method was capable of recognising but unable to calculate the 3D position. Thus, the present study developed 3D SURF by combining recognised images based on 2D SURF and triangulation method. The identified object grasping points then are converted to robot space using the robot’s transformation equation which is derived based on dimensions between robot and camera in the workplace. The result supported the capability of the SURF algorithm for recognising the target without fail for nine random images but produced errors in the 3D position. Meanwhile, the transformation has been successful where the calculated object positions are inclined towards the directions of actual measured positions accordingly related to robot coordinates. However, maximum error of 3.90 cm was observed due to the inaccuracy of SURF detection and human error during manual measurement which can to be solved by improving the SURF algorithm in future.
Diuron has been substantially used in different parts of the world as an herbicide and as a bioactive ingredient in antifouling paint. However, knowledge on the toxicity of Diuron that could adversely affect non-targeted aquatic organisms, especially fish; is still deficient. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the possible sublethal effects of phenylurea herbicide Diuron at the cellular level of the liver and kidneys of an adult Javanese medaka (Oryzias javanicus), which has been used as the novel model organism. In the present study, histological assessment was carried out using the hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining protocol where the samples were preserved in 10% buffered formalin and sectioned into 5 μm thickness. The 210 samples used contained a range of Diuron concentrations comprising 1 μg/L, 50μg/L, 100 μg/L, 500 μg/L and 1000 μg/L; which also included the control treatments. Semi quantitative analysis revealed that liver and kidney tissues exposed at higher concentrations (500 μg/L and 1000 μg/L) showed significantly moderate to severe deformities and mild lesion alterations were already shown even at a lower concentration of Diuron exposure (1.0 μg/L), as compared to the control treatment of dechlorinated water (p
The new emergence and re-emergence of arbovirus infections transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes have been spreading across Southeast Asia, Central Africa, United States, tropical Oceania and has become a major of public health concern. These arbovirus diseases were found to have a similar vector, symptoms, and environments. The situation is complex due to no specific vaccine or treatments being available for the diseases. Therefore, vector control is currently the best defense against arbovirus diseases, but with its own challenges such as the difficulty in controlling scattered breeding sites and biological behavior. Herein, we present a literature review of studies on current techniques proposed to combat dengue transmission that can fill a crucial gap in vector control programs, which is the inability of conventional control methods to eliminate and destroy cryptic breeding sites. In particular, we focused on the concept of autodissemination, which is a self-delivery technique by manipulating the behavior of mosquitoes, carrying the insecticide and disseminating it to cryptic breeding sites. This technique has shown promising results in some countries and can be considered as an additional tool in a vector control program. Therefore, we conducted Boolean searches in several electronic databases including Google Scholar, PubMed, SciELO and ScienceDirect to identify relevant published data regarding dengue and autodissemination techniques.
In this paper work, three-dimensional terrain models were reconstructed from twodimensional contour lines. Firstly, spatial curves were generated from contour lines using
parameterized cubic B-spline curve interpolation. Then surfaces were constructed by using
B-spline ruled surface. In the reconstruction process, some issues such as keyholes and
branching may arise. Therefore, we propose a method that handles the branching object to
construct a bilinear patch by following the proposed data point’s extraction algorithm. We
also solved keyholes issues by retaining the same knot vector condition on B-spline ruled
surface. Results are also demonstrated for models with branching and without branching.