bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Food Security: Self–Sufficiency of Rice in Malaysia
Authors: Mohamed Arshad Fatimah , Alias Emmy Farha , Mohd Noh Kusairi , Tasrif Muhammad
Published: August 2020

Malaysia’s stance on food security is largely translated in terms of achieving self-sufficiency in rice production at about 65-70% of the local consumption. Since Malaysia does not have the comparative advantage in rice production, it implements a wide range of market interventions to achieve the intended level of rice production. The policy instruments include among others: guaranteed minimum price for paddy, price control, price and input subsidies and import monopoly. These interventionist instruments may not be sustainable in the long-term as they incur a high budgetary burden to the government, misallocation of resources and liberalization demand from WTO. The industry faces challenges in terms of land competition for urbanization and industrial uses and declining soil fertility due to heavy use of chemical fertilizer. This paper examines the influence of the fertilizer and the cash subsidies, as well as land conversion and fertility on the level of self-sufficiency in rice. A system dynamics model is applied to analyse the causal and feedback relationships of these variables in the paddy production system framework. The study shows that Malaysia may not be able to sustain the targeted self-sufficiency level without adequate R&D to address the production constraints particularly below-optimum productivity and the threats of climate change. The consumption of rice on the other hand continues to rise due to the increase in population.   Keywords: Paddy and rice, Malaysia, system dynamics, policy analysis.
Conceptualisation of Nation Brand Image
Authors: Handayani Bintang , Rashid Basri
Published: August 2020

This paper examines the nation brand image notion. Literature review is employed as the method to develop the conceptual model. This paper suggests that the multifaceted nature of a nation can be covered in the nation brand image. In addition, the theoretical relationship between national brand identity, national identity, tourism brand and nation brand image and is also explored. This paper eventually proposes a conceptual model of nation brand image and suggests that future research include the multi elements of national brand identity and national identity as the components of nation brand image.   Keywords: Conceptual model, nation brand image.
Managerial Competencies and Small Business Growth: Empirical Evidence From Microfinance Participants
Authors: Sidek Syamsuriana , Mohamad Mohd Rosli
Published: August 2020

A large number of studies have been conducted on small business performance. However, potential influence of managerial competencies on small business growth, particularly among microfinance participants is hardly existent. In fulfilling the literature gap, this study provides some insight into the relationship between managerial competencies and small business growth. Using data collected from microfinance participants in Kelantan and Terengganu and applying the Structural Equation Modelling approach, this study found that all the managerial competency dimensions – technical, generic and conceptual skills – had positive and significant impacts on small business growth. While consolidating the theories that managerial competencies explain business growth, this study has several limitations. Future studies should delve into, through qualitative research, why managerial skills are significant for small business growth. Sampling should also include small businesses in other parts of Malaysia, instead of Kelantan and Terengganu.   Keywords: Small business, growth, management competencies, generic skills, technical skills, Conceptual Skills, Microfinance.
Malaysian Hospitality Industry: Graduates’ Justifications for Leaving the Industry
Authors: Ahmad Rozila , Rashid Basri , Mohd Shariff Nurhazani
Published: August 2020

Continuous skilled-employee shortage has been reported in the hospitality industry despite the mushrooming growth of higher learning institutions off ering the Bachelor of Hospitality Management (BHM) programme. The purpose of this study is to assess the BHM graduates’ areas of employment and their justifi cation for not seeking employment or leaving the hospitality industry. To meet the purpose, a quantitative research paradigm supported by open-ended questions was used. This study focused on Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) BHM graduates. The fi ndings revealed that the UUM BHM graduates’ Islamic faith plays a signifi cant role in the religious Muslim graduates’ career paths. However, as widely documented in the literature, unattractive compensation in the hospitality industry appears to be the most important reason for graduates to seek employment in other industries. This is followed by poor career development opportunities and working conditions. Information from this study may help remedy the continuous shortage of skilled employees in the industry. It may also ensure the graduates’ ability to secure suitable jobs. In addition, it indirectly helps in the initiative to improve the BHM curriculum.   Keywords: Hospitality, workforce, graduate, employment, hospitality industry, career, Malaysia.
Predicting Turnover Intention Through Organizational Support and Organizational Commitment: The Case Of A Manufacturing Company
Authors: Othman Zubaidah , Mohd Shkuri Nur Syafiqah
Published: August 2020

This paper reports a research that investigated factors that might relate to employees’ turnover intention. The study was a cross-sectional study where respondents’ perception was measured at one point in time. 105 respondents participated in this study. Two factors, namely organizational support and organizational commitment (affective commitment and continuance commitment) were tested to predict turnover intention among employees in the company. Results from the study reveal that only affective commitment is significantly negatively related to turnover intention. The findings were discussed and implications were also put forward.   Keywords: Turnover intention, organizational support, organizational commitment, affective commitment, continuance commitment.
Perancangan Perniagaan dan Prestasi Perniagaan: Kajian Ke Atas PKS Islam di Malaysia
Authors: Mohd Saad Rosli , Abdul Ghani Abdullah , Ahmad Shuhymee
Published: August 2020

Aktiviti perancangan perniagaan telah terbukti berjaya mempengaruhi hubungan yang signifikan dengan prestasi perniagaan. Namun demikian, terdapat segelintir pengkaji yang melaporkan bahawa aktiviti perancangan perniagaan tidak penting. Hal yang demikian ini memberi kesan dan mempengaruhi ramai usahawan untuk tidak menyedia dan melaksanakan aktiviti ini dalam perniagaan. Rentetan itu, makalah meneliti kecenderungan usahawan mengaplikasikan aktiviti perancangan perniagaan dan hubungan aktiviti tersebut ke atas prestasi perniagaan. Kajian dijalankan menggunakan strategi kutipan data secara pos dan berdasarkan pensampelan kebarangkalian kelompok. Kajian ini melibatkan 117 sampel daripada sektor perkilangan/pembuatan dan sektor pertanian dalam kalangan usahawan Perusahaan Kecil Sederhana (PKS) Islam di Malaysia. Penemuan kajian mendapati usahawan PKS Islam di Malaysia berkecenderungan mengaplikasikan aktiviti rancangan perniagaan dalam operasi perniagaan mereka. Selain itu, kajian juga mendapati perancangan perniagaan mempunyai hubungan yang signifikan positif dengan prestasi perniagaan.   Kata kunci: Perancangan perniagaan, prestasi perniagaan, perusahaan kecil dan sederhana.
A Study on the Customer’s Acceptance Towards Islamic Banking Products Among Non-Muslim in Dual Banking System
Authors: Mohamad Juwairiah , Che Majid Muhammad Fakhirin
Published: August 2020

Islamic banking products (IBP) are offered not only to the Muslim community, but also to communities of other religions who are free to choose products depending on their convenience. According to a report, the percentage of non-Muslim communities choosing IBP in Malaysia has been steadily increasing and is expected to continue to increase in future. The Dual Banking System is one of the initiatives that has been created in conventional banks as an extra facility for the communities to engage with IBP easily without going to Islamic Banks. This paper aims to study the factors that drive non-Muslim customers to accept IBP. Specifically, this paper examines the relationship between four factors: knowledge, understanding, perception and the level of awareness among non-Muslim customers regarding their acceptance on IBP in the Dual Banking System. About 140 non-Muslim IBP customers of the Dual Banking System around Changlun, Jitra and Alor Setar were selected based on convenience and were randomly picked as respondents of this study. Some data were also collected through interviews with the bank personnel and the bank’s customers besides the self-administered questionnaire survey. Employing the SPSS approach, the hypotheses of the study were tested. The findings showed that there are significance relationships between customer’s knowledge, understanding, positive perception, and the level of awareness perceived among non-Muslim customers and their acceptance of IBP.   Keywords: Islamic banking products; non-Muslim customers; acceptance.
The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in China: A Spatial Panel Analysis
Authors: Yong Chen-Chen , Yew Siew-Yong , Huang Xin , Chin Mui-Yin
Published: August 2020

China is currently the major foreign direct investment (FDI) destination arising from her open door policies since 1978. FDI has become a large impetus to China’s economic growth. However, the geographical distribution of FDI in China is severely biased with 83% concentrated in the eastern region. This is a result of not only differences in locational advantages but also the result of the initiating policies and temporal differences of FDI inflows among the regions. This study aims to examine the determinants of FDI and examine empirically the possible coherent policies for the three regions of China (Eastern, Central and Western) using the spatial panel analysis for the data within the period of 1994 to 2008. The empirical results show that the determinants of FDI vary among the three regions, depending on the motives of the investor and the results of policy bias. The entrepreneurial nature of competition of FDI among the provinces revealed by the spatial FDI factor is a conclusion that cannot be ignored. A more coherent policy on FDI inflows into China is an urgent necessity, though the policies for each region must be, of necessity, different for each of the three regions.   Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment, China, Spatial panel model, spatial variables JEL: F14, C33
Petroleum Consumption and Financial Development in Malaysia
Authors: Chen Jen-Eem , Tan Yan-Ling , Lee Chin-Yu , Goh Lim-Thye
Published: August 2020

This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature by examining the dynamic relationship among petroleum consumption, financial development, economic growth and energy price. The sample of this study is based on the Malaysian annual data from 1980 to 2010. The model specification was examined in the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) framework and the results revealed the existence of a long-run equilibrium. The findings indicated that financial development and economic growth cause a demand for energy to escalate in the long run. The Toda-Yamamoto (TYDL) non Granger-causality test provides evidence that there is unidirectional Granger-causality running from financial development and economic growth to energy consumption in the long run. This suggests that Malaysia is not an energy-dependent country. Hence, the government could implement energy conservation policies to reduce the waste of energy use. Given that development in the financial sector, and economic growth increase petroleum consumption in Malaysia, the policies pertaining to energy consumption should incorporate the development of the financial sector and economic growth of country.   Keywords: Petroleum consumption, financial development, non-renewable energy, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL), Toda-Yamamoto (TYDL) non Granger-causality test
CORAK PEMBELIAN PRODUK BERASASKAN HERBA DI MALAYSIA (Buying Patterns of Herbal-Based Products in Malaysia)
Authors: Ismail Sarina , Mohd. Mokhtar Sany Sanuri
Published: August 2020

Penggunaan herba semakin mendapat tempat dalam kehidupan masyarakat moden pada masa ini dan sering digunakan sebagai perubatan alternatif. Terdapat peningkatan pembelian produk berasaskan herba dalam pasaran sama ada keluaran tempatan mahupun antarabangsa. Akan tetapi, bagaimanakah caranya untuk usahawan industri herba menjadi lebih berdaya saing dalam memasarkan produk berasaskan tanpa mengetahui corak pembelian? Corak pembelian dianggap penting dan dapat membantu usahawan untuk mengetahui persoalan berkaitan dengan apa, di mana, bagaimana, dan berapa banyak pembelian untuk sesuatu produk? Lantaran itu, ianya dapat membantu usahawan dalam proses penentuan campuran pemasaran serta memastikan kelangsungan jangka hayat perniagaan, kepuasan hati para pelanggan dan juga mengenal pasti keberkesanan strategi pemasaran. Dalam menentukan pensampelan kajian, kajian ini menguna pakai kaedah pensampelan kuota untuk menentukan jumlah populasi, manakala kaedah mall intersep digunakan sebagai salah satu kaedah pengumpulan data, pemilihan kaedah ini dibuat adalah untuk mendapatkan kepelbagaian karakter responden. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa corak pembelian produk berasaskan herba terdiri daripada pembeli sering membeli produk pemakanan kesihatan berbanding produk yang lain serta membeli di kedai yang menjual produk berasaskan herba berbanding lokasi pembelian yang lain. Para pembeli juga didapati lebih mempercayai maklumat yang disampaikan oleh rakan-rakan berbanding saluran maklumat yang lain. Hasil daripada analisis ini juga menunjukkan bahawa pembeli lelaki lebih kerap membeli dan lebih lama menggunakan produk berasaskan herba berbanding pembeli wanita.   Kata Kunci: Corak pembelian; Produk berasaskan herba; Pensampelan kuota; Mall intersep; Malaysia.
ENTREPRENEURIAL SELF-EFFICACY DIMENSIONS AND HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION PERFORMANCE
Authors: Bakar Muhammad Shukri , Ramli Azahari , Ibrahim Najafi Auwalu , Muhammad Ibrahim Garba
Published: August 2020

A detailed literature review provided consistent justification for the effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) on entrepreneurial intention. Recently, the literature yielded similar relationship on the link between ESE to firm performance. Although there are a significant number of studies on this effect that was mostly conducted in the private sector, they mainly focused on the composite ESE construct. The present study replicated and validated these findings with data from the public sector, specifically, higher education institutions (HEIs). Moreover, the study focused on the individual effect of all dimensions of ESE identified by Chen, Greene, and Crick (1998). Using PLS-SEM and non-probability sampling, the data were collected from 180 academic leaders from selected HEIs in Kano, Nigeria. The findings indicated that three dimensions of ESE (financial control ESE, innovation ESE, and risk taking ESE) were found to be significantly related to HEI performance, while two (management ESE and marketing ESE) were insignificantly related to HEI performance. The practical implication and suggestion for future study are also discussed. Keywords: Entrepreneurial self-efficacy, HEIs, Performance
Impact of the New Public Management Paradigm on the Operation of Federal Establishments in Borno State, Nigeria
Authors: Umaru Usman D
Published: August 2020

The study examined the impact of the New Public Management Paradigm on the operation of Federal establishments in Borno State, Nigeria. To achieve this objective, the collected data were analysed using Chi-square, Correlation and ANOVA. The study revealed that there is a significant improvement in the performance of the staff and the quality of service delivery in the Federal establishments under study. The study concluded that the outsourcing of services has improved the quality of service delivery. However, the policy was not being properly implemented because in some of the Federal establishments under study, the same services outsourced were being carried out by very few retained staff. They were not enough to do the job and the outsource firms given the contract, did not provide enough qualified staff to augment the short-fall. The study recommended that qualified service providers (outsourcing firms) in the relevant cadres be allowed to do the job or as an alternative, the Federal government can encourage the setting up of Independent Units in all its establishments to compete with the outsourcing firms in carrying out outsourcing services at a fee, in order to attain qualitaty service delivery.   Keywords: New Public Management, Public service, Outsourcing and Service delivery.
MICROCREDIT COVERAGE IN MALAYSIAN MACROECONOMIC CONTEXT: AN EVIDENCE USING PANEL DATA ANALYSIS
Authors: Selvaraj Thilagarani , Abdul Karim Zulkefly , Abdul-Rahman Aisyah , Chamhuri Norshamliza
Published: August 2020

This paper aims to examine the effect of macroeconomic condition on microcredit coverage in Malaysia. The Microcredit Organizations (MO) was established to complement the mainstream financial institutions but challenges remain with microcredit performances associated with microcredit coverage. The paper accordingly investigates the effects of macroeconomic condition on microcredit coverage in the Malaysian context. To achieve the objective, the static panel data technique is adopted, which comprises 13 states and three Federal Territories in the country, spanning 2011 to 2015. The findings reveal  the resiliency of MO towards macroeconomic conditions in Malaysia. The increase in the inflation rate and agriculture GDP (LNAGDP) share shows significant negative and positive effects (non-resilient) on microcredit coverage. The main findings will assist in addressing the newly identified macroeconomic condition to improve on micro credit performance. Policy implications emanating from the study are expected to be relevant to the government, MOs and borrowers. The government accordingly can make important contributions to borrowers by maintaining macroeconomic stability (inflation and LNAGDP share) through appropriate policies in order to achieve good microcredit coverage. MOs may revisit the existing quality regulation (MOs risk weighing loan disbursement) based on the macroeconomic condition which, in turn, can be used in outreaching more microcredit borrowers. Finally, this study may also help to elucidate specific understanding of the government and MO objectives in outreaching microcredit borrowers.   Keywords: microcredit coverage, macroeconomic condition, microcredit organisation, Malaysia
INNOSAT ATTITUDE CONTROL SYSTEM BASED ON ADAPTIVE NEURO-CONTROLLER
Authors: Sharun Siti Maryam , Mashor Mohd Yusoff , Mohd Nazid Norhayati , Yaacob Sazali , Wan Jaafar Wan Nurhadani
Published: August 2020

The current research focuses on the designing of an intelligent controller for the Attitude Control System (ACS) of the Innovative Satellite (InnoSAT). The InnoSAT mission is to demonstrate local innovative space technology amongst the institutions of higher learning in the space sector. In this study, an Adaptive Neuro-controller (ANC) based on the Hybrid Multi Layered Perceptron (HMLP) network has been developed. The Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) system is used as a control scheme to control a time varying systems where the performance specifications are given in terms of a reference model. The Weighted Recursive Least Square (WRLS) algorithm will adjust the controller parameters to minimize error between the plant output and the model reference output. The objective of this paper is to analyse the time response and the tracking performance of the ANC based on the HMLP network and the ANC based on the standard MLP network for controlling an InnoSAT attitude. These controllers have been tested using an InnoSAT model with some variations in operating conditions such as varying gain, measurement noise and disturbance torques. The simulation results indicated that the the ANC based on the HMLP network is adequate to control satellite attitude and give better results than the ANC based on the MLP network.
COMPUTER-AIDED SYSTEM FOR MODELLING MACHINERY PROCUREMENT DUE-DATE PREDICTION IN PRODUCTION INDUSTRIES
Authors: Akinnuli Basil O. , Oluwadare Samuel A.
Published: August 2020

Machinery procurement is carried out in both government and private sectors. One of the major criteria for the selection of vendors is their ability to meet the due-date of supply. Failure to meet the supply due-date will affect installation time, commissioning time, as well as start- up date negatively. The set target for the period will be difficult to meet and working overtime to recover the lost period will cause over-flogging of machine, increase in wear rate which can lead to the life-span reduction of the machine. To arrest this situation, a stochastic model was developed to predict machinery/equipment procurement flow time and set due-date for the supply of the machine by the vendor. The model utilized data on the procurement activities which were analysed based on optimistic, most likely and pessimistic time for each activity. The stochastic model used Project Evaluation and Review Techniques (PERT) for analysing these three time estimates from which expected time was predicted. The model accommodates procurement strategic decisions, flow chart development, data collection form, network analysis, activities paths determination and critical path identification. This research was able to develop a model for machinery procurement, develop computer software for implementing the model and validate the effectiveness of the model using an existing company as case study. The expected completion time is 45 days, with variance of 2 days while the probability of supplying the machine in not more than 2 days is 86%. This model will find application in small, medium and large scale industries in both developing and developed countries.
DETERMINANTS OF TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION AMONG MALAYSIAN SMES: AN IDT PERSPECTIVE
Authors: Ramayah Thurasamy , Mohamad Osman , Omar Azizah , Marimuthu Malliga , Yeap Ai Leen Jasmine
Published: August 2020

Traditional competitive advantages such as raw material availability, inexpensive labour and proximity to local markets are fast losing their importance to other factors such as technology adoption. In order to survive, it is imperative that organizations incorporate technology into their daily operations. Still, technological adoption and information and communications technology penetration among the Malaysian SME industry is yet to reach a much desired level. Hence, this paper aims to reveal the factors that drive technology adoption among SMEs in Malaysia using the perceived innovation characteristics outlined in the Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT). Data was gathered from manufacturing and manufacturing-related services; SMEs scattered throughout the country and analyzed using the partial least squares technique. The analysis revealed that innovation characteristics such as perceived relative advantage, observability and image are positively-related to the adoption of a technology while compatibility and ease of use do not influence adoption. Interestingly, though trialability was found to have a significant impact on adoption, its effect turned out to be a negative one instead of a positive hypothesized relationship. The findings are further discussed and elaborated.
A RULE-BASED APPROACH FOR DISCOVERING EFFECTIVESOFTWARE TEAM COMPOSITION
Authors: Gilal Abdul Rehman , Omar Mazni , Sharif Kamal Imran
Published: August 2020

Human aspects in software engineering play a key role in composing effective team members. However, to date there is no general consensus on the effective personality types and diversity based on software team roles. Thus, this paper aims to discover the effective personality types and diversity based on two software team roles – team leader and programmer by using a rule-based approach. The rule-based approach by employing the rough set technique was used to discover patterns of the data selected. In this study, four main steps were involved to discover the patterns – reduct generation rules, rules generation, rules fi ltering, and rules evaluation. The results show that the rules generated achieved acceptable prediction accuracy with more than 70 per cent accuracy. In addition, the ROC value achieved 0.65, which indicates the rule-based model is valid and useful. The results reveal that the extrovert personality type is dominant for both software team roles and a homogeneous or heterogeneous team plays an equal role to determine an effective team. This study provides useful rules for decision makers to understand and get insight into selecting effective team members that lead to producing high quality software.
THE EVALUATION OF AN EMBEDDED SYSTEM KIT AS A C PROGRAMMING TEACHING TOOL
Authors: Suliman Azizah , Nazeri Surizal
Published: August 2020

This paper describes the methodology used in evaluating the effectiveness of an embedded system teaching tool for C programming. Teaching programming is one of the major problems among schools and universities. To overcome this problem, a teaching module and an embedded-system training kit for teaching programming to beginners were developed. The teaching module and kit were then tested on selected groups of school children. Focusing more on the testing phase of the research work, this paper gives a detailed account of the testing process and the evaluation method used. The result shows that the students are interested to learn programming using the embedded system.
OBJECT-BASED KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION OF FEMALE RELATED ISSUES FROM THE HOLY QURAN
Authors: Ku-Mahamud Ku Ruhana , Mohamed Din Aniza , Che Pa Noraziah , Ahmad Faudziah , Wan Ishak Wan Hussain , Kabir Ahmad Farzana , Din Roshidi
Published: August 2020

Focusing on the use of Semantic Network and Conceptual Graph (CG) representations, this paper presents an easy way in understanding concepts discussed in the Holy Quran. Quran is known as the main source of knowledge and has been a major source reference for all types of problems. However understanding the issues and the solution from the Quran is diffi cult due to lack of understanding of Quran literature. Meticulously, the Quran contains much important information related to female. However, this information are scattered and complexly linked. Technically, to extract and present the encapsulated knowledge on female matters in the Quran is a challenging task. Thus, this paper discusses on how to understand and represent the knowledge in an easy way. A total of 18 female terms are identifi ed. Through the terms, the name of surah, verses number and text from the verses are gathered. The texts are then analyzed and clustered into specifi c issues. Result of the analysis that consists of extracted knowledge on female issues is presented in a systematic structure using Semantic Network and CG. The strength and advantages of both approaches are compared, discussed and presented.
CLASSIFICATION OF MALAYSIAN VOWELS USING FORMANT BASED FEATURES
Authors: Mohd Yusof S. A. , M Paulraj , Yaacob S.
Published: August 2020

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has made great strides with the development of digital signal processing hardware and software, especially using English as the language of choice. Despite of all these advances, machines cannot match the performance of their human counterparts in terms of accuracy and speed, especially in case of speaker independent speech recognition. In this paper, a new feature based on formant is presented and evaluated on Malaysian spoken vowels. These features were classified and used to identify vowels recorded from 80 Malaysian speakers. A back propagation neural network (BPNN) model was developed to classify the vowels. Six formant features were evaluated, which were the first three formant frequencies and the distances between each of them. Results, showed that overall vowel classification rate of these three formant combinations are comparatively the same but differs in terms of individual vowel classification.
THE COMMERCIALISATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES TO K-BASED DEVELOPMENT IN MALAYSIA
Authors: Raja Kasim Raja Suzana
Published: August 2020

This paper studies the connection between the commercialization of knowledge management practices and its contributions toward the knowledge-based development in Malaysia. Theoretical relations in this paper were tested through an empirical study carried out among public-listed organisations in the industrial products, consumer products, and service industries in Malaysia. The findings of this paper revealed that it is important for corporations to focus on knowledge management in the development of the organisation’s corporate strategy. Empirical evidence supported the view that firms with knowledge management capabilities and understanding will utilise these capabilities to drive their quality strategy, thus performing better than those that do not. In addition, the finding serves as an initial move among private sector business toward a knowledge-based country. This paper concludes that these practices have a positive incidence not only on the performance of the firm but it also gives some initial contributions toward the development of Malaysia as a knowledge-based country.
A HYBRID SIMULATION APPROACH IN DEVELOPING A RISK QUANTIFICATION MODEL FOR COAL PROCUREMENT IN POWER GENERATION
Authors: Ibrahim Jafni Azhan , Sapiri Hasimah , Mat Tahar Razman
Published: August 2020

All energy systems provide some level of security to its consumers. However, the right or optimum level of security is very diffi cult to assess. In order to make a comparison between the cost of providing energy security and level of security, the quantifi ed risks have to be in the common accounting platform of cost. Then, an optimum level of security and cost can be estimated using appropriate methods. Since no such attempts have been done to compare the risks and the cost in the same platform, i.e. monetary unit, it is unpractical to determine the optimum point between the risks and cost of providing security in any energy systems. The objective of this paper is to present a new hybrid simulation model in risk analysis which computes the total exposure of coal procurement in power generation through the summation of quantifi ed supply shortage risk in monetary terms and the cost of coal procurement. The hybrid simulation model is made up of two main components: 1) Dynamic Risk Calculation Program (DR-P) which was developed in System Dynamics platform for capturing the effect of dynamics behavior of price toward coal procurement risk, and 2) Non-delivery Probability Table Program (NdPT-P) which was developed in Matlab platform for computing all possible shortage level and the probability of shortage in selected coal procurement portfolio. The result from this paper has shown that the risks of coal procurement were increased as the cost of coal procurement were decreased and vice versa. However, the summation of risk and cost which give the total exposure of coal procurement has provided more accurate information for selecting the best coal procurement portfolio option.
SOFT BIOMETRICS: GENDER RECOGNITION FROM UNCONSTRAINED FACE IMAGES USING LOCAL FEATURE DESCRIPTOR
Authors: Arigbabu Olasimbo Ayodeji , Syed Ahmad Sharifah Mumtazah , Wan Adnan Wan Azizun , Mahmood Saif
Published: August 2020

Gender recognition from unconstrained face images is a challenging task due to the high degree of misalignment, pose, expression, and illumination variation. In previous works, the recognition of gender from unconstrained face images is approached by utilizing image alignment, exploiting multiple samples per individual to improve the learning ability of the classifier, or learning gender based on prior knowledge about pose and demographic distributions of the dataset. However, image alignment increases the complexity and time of computation, while the use of multiple samples or having prior knowledge about data distribution is unrealistic in practical applications. This paper presents an approach for gender recognition from unconstrained face images. Our technique exploits the robustness of local feature descriptor to photometric variations to extract the shape description of the 2D face image using a single sample image per individual. The results obtained from experiments on Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) dataset describe the effectiveness of the proposed method. The essence of this study is to investigate the most suitable functions and parameter settings for recognizing gender from unconstrained face images.
QUANTITATIVE METRIC FOR RANKING WEB ACCESSIBILITY BARRIERS BASED ON THEIR SEVERITY
Authors: Abuaddous Hayfa Yousef , Jali Mohd Zalisham , Basir Nurlida
Published: August 2020

Web accessibility aims at providing disabled users with a barrierfree user experience so they can use and contribute. However, not all websites comply with WCAG 2.0 which results in Web accessibility barriers in websites. Thus, assistive technologies such as screen readers would not be able to interpret the presented contents on the monitor due to these barriers and this will contribute to making websites inaccessible to disabled users. This paper proposed an innovative metric that assigns measurable weight to each identified barrier based on its severity and impacts on the accessibility level, and then ranks the barriers accordingly. Following, Web developers can fix the highly ranked severe barriers instead of wasting time in studying and fixing less severe types of barriers that may rarely occur. An experiment was conducted to check the metric validity. We found the metric was valid and thereby we suggested the usage of the metric as a valid scientific measurement.
ROBUST WATERMARKING TECHNIQUE USING DIFFERENT WAVELET DECOMPOSITION LEVELS FOR SIGNATURE IMAGE PROTECTION
Authors: Thanki Rohit , Dwivedi Ved Vyas , Borisagar Komal
Published: August 2020

This paper proposed a non-blind watermarking technique based on different wavelet decomposition levels for biometric image protection. In this technique, a biometric image is used as a watermark instead of a standard image, logo or random noise pattern type watermark. For watermark embedding, the original host image and the watermark biometric image are transformed into various levels of wavelet coefficients. The watermark biometric image is embedded into the host image by modifying the values of the wavelet coefficients of the host image using the values of wavelet coefficients of the watermark biometric image. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed technique was able to withstand various watermarking attacks. The novelty of the proposed technique is that it is used to transform coefficients of the watermark biometric image instead of the Pseudo Noise sequences or any other feature extraction technique.
EFFICIENT MOBILE VIDEO TRANSMISSION BASED ON A JOINT CODING SCHEME
Authors: Boudjadja Rima , Azni Mohamed , Dahmani Abdelnasser , Zennir Mohamed Nadjib
Published: August 2020

In this paper, we propose a joint coding design which uses the Symbol Forward Error Correction (S-FEC) at the application layer. The purpose of this work is on one hand to minimize the Packet Loss Rate (PLR) and, on the other hand to maximize the visual quality of video transmitted over a wireless network (WN). The scheme proposed is founded on a FEC adaptable with the semantics of the H.264/AVC video encoding. This mechanism relies upon a rate distortion algorithm, controlling the channel code rates under the global rate constraints given by the WN. Based on a data partitioning (DP) tool, both packet type and packet length are taken into account by the proposed optimization mechanism which leads to unequal error protection (UEP). The performance of the proposed JSCC unequal error control is illustrated over wireless network by performing simulations under different channel conditions. The simulation results are then compared with an equal error protection (EEP) scheme.
HIGH ACCURACY EEG BIOMETRICS IDENTIFICATION USING ICA AND AR MODEL
Authors: Kaewwit Chesada , Lursinsap Chidchanok , Sophatsathit Peraphon
Published: August 2020

Modern biometric identification methods combine interdisciplinary approaches to enhance person identification and classification accuracy. One popular technique for this purpose is Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). The signal so obtained from BCI will be further processed by the Autoregressive (AR) Model for feature extraction. Many researches in the area find that for more accurate results, the signal must be cleaned before extracting any useful feature information. This study proposes Independent Component Analysis (ICA), k-NN classifier, and AR as the combined techniques for electroencephalogram (EEG) biometrics to achieve the highest personal identification and classification accuracy. However, there is a classification gap between using the combined ICA with the AR model and AR model alone. Therefore, this study takes one step further by modifying the feature extraction of AR and comparing the outcome with the proposed approaches in lieu of prior researches. The experiment based on four relevant locations shows that the combined ICA and AR can achieve higher accuracy than the modified AR. More combinations of channels and subjects are required in future research to explore the significance of channel effects and to enhance the identification accuracy.
A SYSTEMATIC READING IN STATISTICAL TRANSLATION: FROM THE STATISTICAL MACHINE TRANSLATION TO THE NEURAL TRANSLATION MODELS.
Authors: Maazouzi Zakaria El , El Mohajir Badr Eddine , Al Achhab Mohammed
Published: August 2020

Achieving high accuracy in automatic translation tasks has been one of the challenging goals for researchers in the area of machine translation since decades. Thus, the eagerness of exploring new possible ways to improve machine translation was always the matter for researchers in the field. Automatic translation as a key application in the natural language processing domain has developed many approaches, namely statistical machine translation and recently neural machine translation that improved largely the translation quality especially for Latin languages. They have even made it possible for the translation of some language pairs to approach human translation quality. In this paper, we present a survey of the state of the art of statistical translation, where we describe the different existing methodologies, and we overview the recent research studies while pointing out the main strengths and limitations of the different approaches.
DEVELOPING AGENT BASED HEURISTIC OPTIMISATION SYSTEM FOR COMPLEX FLOW SHOPS WITH CUSTOMER-IMPOSED PRODUCTION DISRUPTIONS
Authors: Adediran Tunde Victor , Al-Bazi Ammar
Published: August 2020

The study of complex manufacturing flow-shops has seen a number of approaches and frameworks proposed to tackle various production-associated problems. However, unpredictable disruptions, such as change in sequence of order, order cancellation and change in production delivery due time, imposed by customers on flow-shops that impact production processes and inventory control call for a more adaptive approach capable of responding to these changes. In this research work, a new adaptive framework and agent-based heuristic optimization system was developed to investigate the disruption consequences and recovery strategy. A case study using an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) production process of automotive parts and components was adopted to justify the proposed system. The results of the experiment revealed significant improvement in terms of total number of late orders, order delivery time, number of setups and resources utilization, which provide useful information for manufacturer’s decision-making policies.
IDENTIFYING SKYLINES IN CLOUD DATABASES WITH INCOMPLETE DATA
Authors: Gulzar Yonis , Aljuboori Ali Amer Alwan , Salleh Norsaremah , Al Shaikhli Imad Fakhri
Published: August 2020

Skyline queries is a rich area of research in the database community. Due to its great benefits, it has been integrated into many database applications including but not limited to personalized recommendation, multi-objective, decision support and decision-making systems. Many variations of skyline technique have been proposed in the literature addressing the issue of handling skyline queries in incomplete database. Nevertheless, these solutions are designed to fit with centralized incomplete database single access. However, in many real-world database systems, this might not be the case, particularly for a database witha large amount of incomplete data distributed over various remote locations such as cloud databases. It is inadequate to directly apply skyline solutions designed for the centralized incomplete database to work on cloud due to the prohibitive cost. Thus, this paper introduces a new approach called Incomplete-data Cloud Skylines (ICS) aiming at processing skyline queries in cloud databases with incomplete data. This approach emphasizes on reducing the amount of data transfer and domination tests during skyline process. It incorporates sorting technique that assists in arranging the data items in a way where dominating data items will be placed at the top of the list helping in eliminate dominated data items. Besides, ICS also employs a filtering technique to prune the dominated data items before applying skyline technique. It comprises a technique named local skyline joiner that helps in reducing the amount of data transfer between datacenters when deriving the final skylines. It limit the amount of data items to be transferred to only those local skylines of each relation. A comprehensive experiment have been performed on both synthetic and real-life datasets, which demonstrate the effectiveness and versatility of our approach in comparison to the current existing approaches. We argue that our approach is practical and can be adopted in many contemporary cloud database systems with incomplete data to process skyline queries.
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF WIRELESS COLLABORATIVE NETWORK ON MOBILE DEVICES
Authors: Lee Thian Seng , Sulaiman Riza
Published: August 2020

Researchers and companies of telecommunication sector have been working hard to enhance wireless network infrastructure to fulfill the end user’s needs for Internet connectivity. However, it is not easy to satisfy the high demand and expectation of end users always. There are some situations where Internet connectivity is not enabled due to the locations and environmental constraint. For example, network infrastructure breakdown during a disaster or the user’s device is out of the network coverage area. Besides relying only on the network infrastructure provided by telecommunication companies, one possible strategy to provide Internet connectivity in the ubiquitous environment is to exploit the functionality of end-user mobile devices to be the tool to share Internet connectivity. This paper aims to identify the constraints and challenges of forming Wireless Collaborative Network (WCN) by the end user devices. To identify the constraints and challenges, we have reviewed and categorized the past and current research focusing on collaborating mobile devices in the mobile ad-hoc network for communication and resource sharing. For validation, a simple test case was conducted which involves few mobile devices in a random formation. Base on the finding, it is concluded that the biggest challenge of forming WCN is the ability of mobile devices to provide bridging functionality. This paper also discussed the expecting architecture of WCN and suggested the simulation tools with relevant metrics to be considered in this research area.
Nepal: From Constitutional Monarchy to a Republican State (1990-2008)
Authors: Manandhar Tri Ratna
Published: August 2020

The peoples’ movement of 1990 was a great landmark in the history of modern Nepal for it ended the three-decades of the old dictatorial rule of the king and established a parliamentary system with the king as a nominal head of state. But unfortunately, the country could not form a good government because of inter and intra-party conflicts. To add fuel to the flame, the rise of the Maoist movement and the royal massacre put the country in a state of confusion and uncertainty. The new king tried to revive dictatorial rule once again by suppressing the political parties and the Maoists. But his attempts failed, and the 19-day movement in 2006 re-established peoples’ sovereignty in the country. The first meeting of the elected constituent assembly in 2008 formally ended monarchy and declared Nepal a republic. But the first constituent assembly ended its four–year term without drafting a constitution. The second constituent assembly has pledged to promulgate a democratic constitution by January 2015, but all indications are that that the country is unlikely to get a constitution in time.
Energy Security and Climate Change: India’s Responses to the Challenges
Authors: Vinodan C. , Kurian Anju Lis
Published: August 2020

Energy is the prominent navigator of climate change as it contributes to most of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the burning of fossil fuels are the foremost sources of GHG emissions. Climate change is a major challenge for developing countries like India that face large scale climate variability and are exposed to enhanced risks from climate change. Few countries in the world are as vulnerable to the effects of climate change as India is with its vast population that is dependent on the growth of its agrarian economy, its expansive coastal areas and the Himalayan region and islands. The vulnerabilities of climate change and energy insecurity are directing a global changeover towards a low carbon and sustainable energy path. In the UNFCC, India has cleared its stand that it would not make any commitments to trim down its GHG emissions as it has one of the least per capita emissions and in the fi rst place the developed world is responsible for the dilemma and the developing world requires the carbon space to spring up. But by being a responsible and progressive member of the international community, India demonstrated the flexibility towards the endeavours to trim down climate change causalities. India is endowed with diverse natural resources such as solar, wind, water and biomass; these are the promising resources to meet up the energy requirements of the coming years. The present paper attempts to analyse the linkages between climate change and energy security. The paper also aims to project India’s response to the global climate regime. The paper argues that the problems of climate change and energy security are the major obstacles for India’s energy policy while they open gargantuan opportunities to shift its people to cleaner energy trajectories and know-how in the long term.