Exposure to any type of stressors either environmental, chemical or perceived stressors, results in a series of physiological responses in animals. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of thermal stress on physiological responses in red hybrid tilapia. Adult red hybrid tilapia were previously exposed to gradual increment of water temperature in thermoregulated recirculating tanks at a rate of 1oC/8 h from 28 to 31oC and kept for 1, 7 and 14 days. Cortisol, HMG-CoA reductase, total protein and osmolality were determined. Plasma cortisol and HMG-CoA levels were significantly increased in the heat-stressed groups compared to nonstressed groups. Osmolality was also significantly higher (p
Diverting waste material from landfill sites has a big implication for the creation of new markets and has environmental benefits through offsetting the need for the extraction of raw materials. Besides, the major attention especially in construction industry is the problem to make natural resources sustainable for three to four decades in future. However, in this study finely glass powder with pozzolanic properties is found to be a partial replacement for cement and can acts as filler in the microstructure of a mortar block. Thus, a study was conducted to see the effects of various proportions of windscreen glass waste powder (WGWP) in determining the degree of water absorption on mortar incorporated with WGWP and to determine the optimum replacement to the ordinary Portland cement (OPC) with WGWP. Several compositions of WGWP (0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% by cement weight) of mortar cube sample were prepared and cured at 7, 28 and 60 days to undergo a water absorption test. From this research, it shows that the use of WGWP was found to be the best features pozzolanic enough to use as a partial replacement for cement and it can reduced the pores of mortar by blocking the large voids in the hydrated cement paste through pozzolanic reaction. In the term of water absorption, the lowest reading was achieved in 15% and it can be said that 15% replacement is the optimum replacement of OPC.
The proposed development of Sibu Central hinges on the fact that it attracts high number of visitors from all over Sarawak. The development of Sibu Central would definitely improve the surrounding areas in future as Sibu Central will be one of the landmarks for Sibu. This development therefore will automatically generate more road traffic which will affect the performance of the existing road. The performance of the existing road was evaluated by two signalized intersections surrounding the proposed development of Sibu Central. It was carried out in order to determine the current traffic volume data, upon the completion of Sibu Central and 5 years after the development was completed. The road performance of Intersection 1 and Intersection 2 was analysed by using Sidra software. It was found that the existing road was still within the satisfactory performance, as the Level of Service (LOS) was in the range of LOS A until LOS D. This was due to the current traffic volume that was still under the capacity of the existing road which also influenced the satisfactory result for Volume by Capacity (V/C) ratio, average delay and queue length of all directions in Intersection 1 and Intersection 2. This result will not be adequate as the capacity of the road still remains unchanged due to the fact that the traffic volume keeps on increasing every year. The deterioration of the existing road in Intersection 1 and Intersection 2 was established in this study based on the performance of LOS, V/C ratio, average delay and queue length.
Protease is an enzyme that catalysed the hydrolysis of protein into peptide. Application of protease in industry has been linked with cost effective substrates and complex of enzyme-substrate stability. Molecular docking approach has identified casein as a preference substrates. However, lack of data on casein mode of binding to protease and enzyme stability represents a limitation for its production and structural optimization. In this study, we have used a molecular dynamic (MD) to examine the stability of complex enzyme-substrate of protease from Bacillus lehensis G1. The 3D structure of protease (BleG1_1979) was docked with substrate casein using AutoDock Vina. Structural analysis of the substrate-binding cleft revealed a binding site of casein was predominantly at the hydrophobic region of BleG1_1979. The MD of complex BleG1_1979-casein was tested with two temperatures; 298 K and 310 K using GROMACS v5.1.4. MD simulation showed a stable behaviour of BleG1_1979 over the 20 ns simulation period. The molecular docking and MD simulation suggested that the production of protease from B. lehensis G1 by utilization of casein and the stability of complex protease-casein could be a potential application to generate a cost effective enzyme to be develop for industrial use.
A temperature-stable, low-power ring oscillator design for implementation in an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) is presented. In this work, the design uses a new arrangement of chain delay elements consisting of a current-starved inverter and a CMOS capacitor. This power consumption improvement ring oscillator design was built in the environment of 130nm CMOS process technology using Mentor Graphics environment with voltage supply 1V. The simulation results show a maximum power consumption of 1.036 nW and it shows that the presented design is applicable in low power advanced sensing systems application including biomedical, chemical, and other sensors.
This study aims to develop a year one STEM Comic for science and mathematics subjects. The STEM comic was developed based on the Technology Knowledge, Pedagogy and Content (TPACK) model. The development of this comic involves two phases which is development phase and assessment phase. However, this article only discusses the development phase of STEM comic. 13 Excellent teachers of science and mathematics from the Hulu Langat district were involved in the analysis of syllabus year one science and mathematics subjects and the preparation of scripts while the STEM comic illustrator was created by two lecturers from the Faculty of Art, Computing and Creative Industry from the Sultan Idris Education University. As a result, a STEM comic that contains 10 series for year one science and mathematics subjects has been successfully developed. This comic is expected to attract and enhance the achievement of year one students in science and mathematics. Implication of this study, STEM comic can be used by teachers as science and mathematics teaching aids.
The aim of this study is to predict the next day PM10 concentration using Bayesian Regression with noninformative
prior and conjugate prior models. The descriptive analysis of PM10, temperature, relative humidity,
nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and ozone (O3) are also included. A case
study used two-years of air quality monitoring data at three (3) monitoring stations to predict the future PM10
concentration with seven parameters (PM10, temperature, relative humidity, NO2, SO2, CO, and O3). The descriptive
analysis showed that the highest mean PM10 concentration occurred at Klang station in 2011 (71.30 µg/m3
) followed
by 2012 (68.82 µg/m3
). The highest mean PM10 concentration was at Nilai in 2012 (68.86 µg/m3
) followed by 2011
(66.29µg/m3
) respectively. The results showed that the Bayesian regression model used a conjugate prior with a
normal-gamma prior which was a good model to predict the PM10 concentration for most study stations with (R2 =
0.67 at Jerantut station), (R2 = 0.61 at Nilai station) and (R2 = 0.66 at Klang station) respectively compared to a
non-informative prior.
Aero Intel mobile application (mobile app) is an interactive learning application which is specific to aircraft airframe providing information to help aircraft maintenance engineering students. The objective for this study is to investigate students’ perceptions towards Aero Intel mobile app. Quantitative study using questionnaires have involved 78 respondents of semester 1 students of Diploma Engineering of Aircraft Maintenance from Politeknik Banting Selangor. The questionnaires constructed about ownership of smartphone, frequency use of type of apps, are they interested to download educational app and most importantly, students’ perceptions after exploring the Aero Intel mobile app. All respondents owned smartphones and 97.4% interested to use apps for academic purposes. The data obtained were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The finding results revealed the students have positive perception towards Aero Intel mobile application. Thus, the use of this application is expected to help students’ understanding in aircraft airframe and various feedbacks given to encourage educator as the developer to explore and improving development of mobile app for diverse needs in teaching and learning.
Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a common neurodevelopmental condition encountered by pediatricians. The condition may present itself in many different kinds of classification. In many cases, the cause of CP may not be apparent. Cerebral Palsy is always showing many deficits such as mental retardation, speech and language and oral motor problems. This project inspired from Elisya, a nine-year-old kid that has CP since born and she have the communication problems since she cannot speak to express her opinions and desires. The main focus on this project is to help to improve the communication issues among CP children. In order to assist the people with CP, the assistive tool is required to help them to communicate or interact with people around them. Assistive technology includes equipment, devices and software solutions that increase functional capabilities of people with disabilities and improve the quality of their lives. There are several Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices for people with Cerebral Palsy that are not able to speak. One of the ways to make this happen is to implement the AAC technology with mobile technology by developing a mobile application named as Make Me Speak and React Native technology in order to build the cross platform for this application since the application should be run on IOS and Android platform so it’s easier for other people to bring it anywhere and use it at any time. It also involves CP centres and school to do experimental studies for this project. There are several studies shows that AAC technology can help in enhancing the speech and language development and in this project, the suggested mobile application should be friendly to our language and culture of our nation, Malaysia and the project is in line with the social innovation in the Eleventh Malaysia Plan (RMK-11).
A new innovation has been created which is called AUTOMATIC MEAT SLICING (AMS) MACHINE. The main purpose of the machine creation is to replace the old-style method in slicing the chicken meat to modern method. BABARITTOS DELIGHT supplies Tortillas Wrap to the latest trend of Food & Beverage (F&B) business called Food Truck. The main ingredient of Burritos is slices of boneless chicken meat, where each slice is approximately has to be 5 mm thick. Formerly, the slicing procedure used a normal cutting knife and its production rate was truncated as the demands of the Burritos are going higher by days. This method requires 3 to 4 workers to team up to complete the 30 kg boneless chicken meat to be cut into roughly 5 mm per slice within one and half hour. The AMS machine is predominant to help the company to grow the output of sliced meat and at the same time can reduce the number of workers. The usage of AMS machine is only required one worker for the operation and the output can be up to 30kg per 30mins, which is actually can end up almost 3 times quantity of output and 3 times labor cost-saving. Meanwhile the quality of the sliced meat is much enhanced as most of the slice meat is precisely 5mm thick. The AMS concept design is cutting the meat using several circular cutting blades, where the chicken will be put on the moving conveyor and finally will fall onto the hygienic tray.
Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC) caused by the presence of Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) is a big concern in heavy industries. Pipeline infrastructure may experience severe metal loss due to corrosion induced by the species and can potentially lead to catastrophic failure. By studying SRB growth condition, important parameter can be controlled to prevent or slow down a corrosion process. This study discussed on the effect of pH value to the corrosion growth rate on API 5L X70 low carbon steel subjected to outer part of underground pipeline. In this research, the type of SRB that's been used is Postgate C of Desulfovibrio Desulfuricans. There are 80 numbers of samples prepared with various pH value and temperature, which each of the samples contains two coupon steel immersed in the medium together with SRB for 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. The process in determining weight loss is analyzed and the corrosion rate for each steel sample is identified by weight loss. The result is plotted and analyzed, the particular pH values and temperature affect the growth of SRB in the medium where the existence of SRB could accelerate the corrosion rate towards the steel surface of API X-70. The samples are exposed to SRB in days’ time. This experiment aims to determine the optimum temperature for SRB growth and demonstrate the corrosion rate simulation using One-Factor-at-A-Time method (OFAT) method. The consequences of SRB activity, it is shown that pitting corrosion produced on the surface of steel. In fact, the sulphur element is identified as one of the corrosion products due to SRB activity.
Annual air temperature data obtained from twenty-two meteorological stations across Malaysia are modeled using multiple regression. A correlation test was conducted to find statistical relationship between each of the dependent variables: annual maximum and annual average air temperature and predictor variables: longitude, latitude, elevation and wind speed. Regression models using least square estimation method were developed relating the dependent variables to independent variables and the adequacy of the models is determined by the coefficient of determination. The result shows that the longitude and wind speed factors have a significant influence on the annual air temperature in Malaysia.
Layered double hydroxide (LDH)-based nanocomposite, created by interacting LDH with another nanoparticles usually applied in the area of environmental, catalytic, industrial and biomedical field. In this study, a new herbicide delivery system was developed through the intercalation of Magnesium Aluminiumlayered double hydroxide (MAN host) with 4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid (4-CPA). This intercalation was done by using co-precipitation method at pH 10 with different concentration of 4-CPA which were 0.5 M and 0.7 M. The successful intercalation was obtained at 0.7 M Magnesium Aluminium-4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid (MAC) and had been confirmed through several analysis. Firstly, the XRD pattern shows expansion of basal spacing shifted from 8.9 Å to 9.3 Å. This result supported by the FTIR-ATR spectrum that shows the disappearance nitrate peak (NO3 - ) and appearance of carboxylate ion (COO- ) peak at 1596 cm-1 . Furthermore, this intercalation was validated with the result of surface morphology by FESEM. The controlled release study of 4-CPA from 0.7 M MAC shown sodium carbonate solution released the percentage of 4-CPA higher than tap water. This study has signifies MAC as a safer agent of agrochemicals by reducing the dosage of herbicide in the agriculture field and protect the herbicide through encapsulation system.
The objective of this paper is to design an efficient room automation system in POLIMAS to control and automatize lighting, fan and air-condition.. This system will overcome human mistakes where the students or staffs forget to switch off the appliances in classroom or laboratories, and effectively reduce the cost of operation and power consumption of the buildings. Room Automation involves the automation and controlling the electrical appliances. The system will monitors electrical parameters of room appliance such as temperature, humidity and ambient light. The factors like temperature and light can have significant effects on the productivity of office workers as well as students. Thus, classrooms, laboratories and staff offices can be equipped with super sensors featuring temperature and light monitors. Besides, it helps in reducing power consumption by monitoring the environment condition and controlling the appliances as well as conservation of energy in the campus. Furthermore, it provides simple and cost effective to the institution. The system uses Arduino ESP8266 NodeMCU platform as the IoT enddevice connecting to various sensors and actuators to the platform via Wi-Fi channel. By using Wi-Fi connectivity, the hardware integrates with software application to control, monitoring and analysis. A sequence testing is conducted to determine the connectivity and integration of hardware and software. The performance of each sensor was performed to measure the accuracy. As a result, PIR sensors are able to detect general movement in effective range of about 10 meters. Moreover, the DHT temperature sensor in range of 5 meters away from air-condition is able to read the present room temperature and send command to the air-condition adjusting the air- condition’s set temperature similar to the air-condition’s remote. Thus, by implementing this system, not only the electrical appliances in a room more manageable and under control but also able to reduce the operational cost and improve environmental protection.
Virtual reality (VR) headsets are becoming remarkably well-known nowadays, especially in gaming industry. Their ability to immerse users into virtual world makes them captivating. However, there is limited research about the impacts of this technology on our eyes and vision. This study investigated if there is any effect on blink rate (BR) and inter-blink interval (IBI) after 30 minutes of watching 3-dimensional (3D) movie on VR. Besides, this study compares between watching 3D movie on VR headset and 2D movie on laptop. Blinks were recorded over 1 minutes for 32 participants volunteered in this study before and after 30 minutes of watching 3D movie on VR headset and 2D movie on laptop. The result of BR and IBI between pre- and post-watching 3D movie on VR was not significant (p= >0.05). The result between watching movie on laptop and VR also not significant (p= >0.05). Watching 3D movie on VR for 30 minutes resulted in no effects on blink rate and inter-blink interval of the users.
In this research, study on mutual coupling of aperture coupled cylindrical DRA and its influence on return loss, radiation pattern including the directivity, gain and bandwidth was computed and illustrated. The DRA was excited by a micro strip line with aperture coupled slots where the slot locations were calculated using the characteristic of standing wave ratio over a short ended micro strips. Small dielectric resonator antenna was designed using high permittivity dielectric material with permittivity the substrate of 3.38. The diameter of the dielectric resonator is 12mm with the height of 4.2mm. The element spacing that been investigated for the effect of mutual coupling was at 0.5λ, 0.75λ and 1λ with maximum of four DRA been used. The final result shows the effect of mutual coupling is decreased with three DRA element with the gain measured at 5.948GHz frequency is about 8.619dB with high directivity measured at 11.4dBi. This shows that the proposed DRA with three 1λ spacing DRA elements exhibits an enhancement of the gain and directivity in comparison with a single pellet DRA. Hence, by increasing the level of isolation between the two identical DRAs to 1λ it actually helps electromagnetic interaction to attract and further increase the directivity and effective area.
The location of Sarawak State in the equatorial region makes it an area of high rainfall. For this reason, hydroelectric power plants have been built in several catchments in Sarawak, especially in the Kapit area. This needs to be harnessed to improve the economy and social living standards of the people of Sarawak in particular. This paper presents the land cover change by analyzing the stratification change for 30 years (1985-2018) at Bakun Dam, Sarawak. This study uses Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 satellite data. Both data have to go through pre-processing such as geometric, radiometric, and atmospheric corrections. In this study, Normalized Water Difference Index (NDWI) is used to classify water areas, built human areas, and vegetation areas. Overlay analysis was applied to identify areas that had changed over the 30 years in the study area. The results showed the greatest changes from vegetation areas to water bodies for 30 years. The results showed that the most affected land cover was forest cover with a reduction of 740 km², which shifted mainly to water bodies with 669.9 km² and human development with an area of 68.7 km². The study area is less populated and anthropogenic influences are rather low, but deforestation is observed in the upper river basin. These events would change the hydrological behavior of these catchments in the future. Land cover mapping is very important to provide information to those responsible for planning sustainable development. In addition, land cover maps are important for land use planning and land use regulation to avoid land-use conflicts.
The study was carried out to determine the physical and mechanical properties of composite lumber made from cassava (Mahinot esculenta Crantz) and bamboo (Bambusa vulgaris) in different ratios which is 100% cassava with 0% bamboo, 75% cassava with 25% bamboo, 50% cassava with 50% bamboo, 25% cassava with 75% bamboo and 0% cassava with 100% bamboo. The tests samples for determining the strength properties were divided into two categories namely mechanical testing and physical testing. Basic density of the samples was carried out for physical testing. The lowest basic density was in samples with 100% cassava which is 0.49 g/cm3 and highest in samples with 100% bamboo which is 0.68 g/cm3. Two tests for the mechanical testing are bending test and compression test. In bending test, modulus of elasticity (MOE) and modulus of rupture (MOR) were both highest for samples with 100% bamboo which the reading of MOE was 16794.03 N/mm2 and 122.52 N/mm2 for MOR. Similar to the bending test, compression test is the highest for the samples with 100% bamboo which are 65.58 N/mm2. From statistical analysis, the basic density, static bending can compression strength give significant value at 95% confidence interval.
Recently, the industry and academia there is significant activity in research and development towards the next generation micro and Pico cellular wireless Networks (5th generation). This paper presents, a structure design of microstrip patch antenna array operate at the central frequency of 28 GHz waveband is proposed. The patch antenna array consists of four elements with rectangular patch and uniform distribution. It has a compact size of 26.51 x 20.37 mm with operating frequency at 28 GHz. The inset feed technique is used for the matching between radiating patch and the 50Ω microstrip feedline. The proposed 2x2 antenna array successfully improve the antenna gain up to 8.393dB compare to existing CRLH TL CPW antenna with 2.99 dB, wideband antenna with 7.1 dB and 3.7 dB for broadband elliptical-shaped slot antenna. As a conclusion, the directivity of 10.13 db and efficiency is higher than 80% considered as a potential candidate for the 5G wireless networks and applications.
System Analysis and Design (SAD) is one of the core courses offered in Bachelor’s degree programme in Information Technology. However, it is observed that students are not grasping the details of the lessons, and this is affecting their employability and the productivity value in the software development chain. This experience is linked to the presently-used teaching method. In this regard, blended learning model, which improves students’ learning experience and reduces underachievement in computer science, is suggested. This study therefore aims to identify the effects of the identified success factors on academic success of SAD. To achieve these objectives, a quantitative research method was employed, involving administration of survey instruments distributed to 151 students, who took SAD as a course in UUM, using simple random sampling, and data collected were analysed with correlation and regression techniques. The study found that students’ attitude, students’ technology usage level, students’ access to technology, students’ courseware, curriculum, learning system interface quality, lecture quality, and e-learning system comprehensiveness positively influence students’ academic success in SAD.