13474 research outputs found
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Valorization of disposable Covid-19 personal protection equipment through the thermo-chemical process / Ahmed Faizal Ayub Khan
No full textMedical waste in the form of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) has been in the
rise in these days especially due to the pandemic hit in 2019. These surge in medical
wastes skyrocketed as compared to previous years making it one of the wastes that had to
divert our attention to treat it properly. Several attempts at treating it has been done such
as incineration, landfill, chemical disinfection microwave and autoclaving but pyrolysis
had been found out to be one of the viable options that is much greener than the others.
Through pyrolysis a usable and beneficial product can be obtained in the form of
hydrocarbon while ensuring the environment clean. The hydrocarbon which is the bio-oil
obtained from the pyrolysis process had to be of good quality in order it to be compatible
for substitution of petroleum-based oil. As such upgradation of the oil is also essential
due to the volatile nature of the PPE. This is where the coconut shell/copra comes into
play. Coconut shell can be also found abundant in Malaysia due high usage of coconut
milk in households. With this opportunity, a co-pyrolysis process had been developed
between PPE and CCS in this study. The experiment showed addition of coconut shell
(CCS) to PPE for co-pyrolysis had decreased the yield of the bio-oil when compared to
pure pyrolysis of PPE and CCS. This is due to the CCS being already a good feedstock
itself by having high amount of hydrocarbon compound produced. The yield drop can be
also explained due to the volatile nature of PPE and most of the compounds formed in
gaseous state. However, from the HHV analysis, it has also been found there was
significant increase in hydrocarbon compounds in co-pyrolysis product when compared
to pure PPE. The amount of esters and other oxygenates also been removed from CCS
due to synergistic effect making the final product of co-pyrolysis that has much better
heating value at 20% when compared to PPE and 50% to CCS with much closer attribute to the petroleum-based hydrocarbon. This study concludes that by having CCS introduced to PPE, the bio-oil yield had dropped but the quality of the bio-oil obtained of better
quality
Deep learning-based classification of breast tumors in ultrasound images / Ayub Ahmed Omar
No full textThe use of ultrasound imaging techniques to diagnose breast cancer at an early stage
is a popular and effective method. The issue with traditional breast ultrasound
diagnosis is that, unlike magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and mammography, it is
prone to making a mistake due to its subjectivity, which could result in a missed
diagnosis and an unnecessary biopsy. In this research project, recent breast tumor
classification model algorithms are investigated and analyzed, and then the limitations
and gaps in previous techniques are highlighted. The Breast Ultrasound Images
Dataset (BUID) has been prepared and preprocessed in order to train both the U-Net
and Convolutional neural network (CNN) classifier models. The U-Net model is used
to locate tumor growth in original medical images because of its capacity to do
classification on each pixel in the input image and produce input and output images
that are the same size. Then, a CNN classifier model is built to classify the U-Net
model's generated mask images as benign, malignant, or normal. The accuracy
performance matrices and Dice loss function are used to evaluate the performance of
both U-Net and CNN classifier models. The U-Net model have achieved an accuracy
of 93% and a dice loss value of 0.4391. Whereas the CNN classifier model has
achieved an accuracy of 85%
Automated scanned receipt processing with optical character recognition and machine learning / Hor Zhang Neng
No full textText detection and recognition in parsing optical character recognition (OCR) receipts are less studied than other popular OCR tasks. Study for post-OCR parsing of receipts is scarce, which opens up the opportunity to explore extracting key information from receipts and classifying them. This dissertation explores how the OCR and machine learning (ML) techniques can optimize and automate receipt handling for reimbursement purposes. Automating the reimbursement process keeps faulty reimbursement expense reporting behaviour to a minimum and speeds up employee claims. The dataset prepared for this work consists of one hundred receipts commonly found in Malaysia's employee expense reimbursement report. The receipts are organized into six categories: meals, groceries, petrol, accommodation, telecommunication, and transportation fares. The receipts are of Malaysian origin, and the language of receipts is restricted to only containing English text. This work does not consider parsing handwriting on the receipt nor addresses text ambiguity. The text processing accuracy follows the accuracy of the OCR tool selected. This dissertation proposes three objectives; developing an image processing framework in improving receipt quality pre-parsing, recognizing text and extracting key information from receipts using the OCR technique, and evaluating the ML classifiers in improving receipt classification post-parsing. The overall text extraction is 90.72% and 78.51% accurate at character and word level, with harmonic mean of the precision and recall, F1 score of 0.89 and 0.78. Overall accuracy for key information extraction is 74.33%, with an F1 score of 0.74. Seven ML classifiers, Naive Bayes, maximum entropy, Support Vector Machine (SVM), linear Support Vector Classifier (SVC), k-nearest neighbours (KNN), decision tree and random forest, were compared. They perform between 52% and 80% overall, with F1 scores between 0.55 and 0.79. Interestingly, the linear SVC has the highest score and accuracy for its searching capability in finding the best dividing field that separates high-dimensional text data into classes
Islamic alternatives in mitigating disputes of debts in Islamic bankings: A comparative study between Islamic jurisprudence and Kuwait Law / Abdelkader Zenati
No full textThis research aims to find some legitimate alternatives for Islamic banks’ debt disposition
on a jurisprudential level, such as sale or pledge of debt with the possibility of al-
Muqassah or al-Hawalah; with trancing shari’ah roots of penalty clause which most banks
use. The research problem lies in having clauses penalizing delays in the banks’ contracts,
and banks’ rigidity in some of their funding modalities which are similar to the usurious
instalments, then Islamic banks resort to positive law which, based on the study of the
civil law, might differ from the Islamic legislation and might contradict the specificities
of Islamic banks who must commit to the rulings of Islamic shari’ah in settling conflicts.
The significance of this research is therefore presented in bringing Islamic banks to the
forefront in dealing with their issues while maintaining their specificities so that they
remain the best and safest option among their conventional counterparts. The descriptive
analytical method is used by describing the transactions, their meanings and modals based
on Quran, Sunnah, and the opinions of the jurists and civil law experts. The research also
carried a financial analysis of the two most important Islamic banks (Kuwait Finance
House, and Al-Rajihi Bank). Deductive approach was used as well to derive the most
significant models that can be based on to the application of the deposition of debts as a
means of solving financial disputes. comparative method was used by comparing between
the Islamic jurisprudence and Kuwaiti civil law. Among the significant results that have
been reached is that there are numerous alternatives of the penalty clause, and that the
aforementioned legitimate alternatives have been examined in terms of the agreement or
disagreement between the jurists regarding their legitimacy, while choosing the opinions
which bring ease to people and considering the opinions of the doctrines that use the
principles of sad al-dara’I’ and accusation in financial transactions to avoid riba and
modalities that eventually lead to it. The research also concluded that the Kuwaiti civil
law is compatible with the Islamic shari’ah in many legal provisions while it disagrees in
others. The compatibility of other provisions in Kuwaiti civil law with Islamic shari’ah
has not yet been examined, such as differentiating between selling debt to the debtor and
selling it to other parties. Such loopholes might be used to circumvent the rulings and
eventually fall in riba or cause harm to the other party of the conflict. Therefore, the
researcher recommends treating many cases which the civil law addressed in broad terms
and focusing more on generating solutions for the financial issues between Islamic banks nd debt burdened clients, especially with the occurrence of many calamities, such as
earthquakes and fires that affect industrial and agricultural enterprises; also, the
emergence of pandemics such as the Covid-19
Isu-isu hukum Islam dalam transplantasi badan-kepala / Ahmad Amer Rahimi Che Ramli
No full textPerkembangan sains dan teknologi telah menyumbang kepada kemajuan teknik pembedahan yang membolehkan organ dan anggota manusia ditransplankan kepada penerima. Terbaru, seorang pakar neurosurgeri Itali, Dr. Sergio Canavero telah menjalankan pemindahan badan manusia kepada kepala manusia yang lain. Beliau bersama kumpulannya berjaya menjalankan proses ini kepada haiwan dan mayat. Ia menjadi polemik hangat dalam kalangan pakar perubatan dan etika. Namun, perbincangannya dari aspek fiqh masih belum mendapat tempat dalam kalangan sarjana Muslim. Oleh itu, kajian ini membincangkan empat isu, iaitu isu autonomi, karāmah insāniah, pertimbangan manfaat mudarat dan isu jangkaan, iaitu identiti dan genetik. Kajian ini dijalankan melalui pendekatan kualitatif dengan menggunakan kaedah perpustakaan dan lapangan yang melibatkan temubual. Informan merangkumi enam pakar iaitu tiga pakar hukum Islam, dua pakar bio-etika dan seorang pakar perubatan. Data-data dianalisis mengikut empat isu yang dibincangkan secara induktif. Dapatan kajian mendapati isu karāmah insāniah melibatkan dua perbahasan fiqh iaitu memanfaatkan jasad mayat serta mendermakannya. Isu autonomi pula melibatkan hak musytarikah pesakit ke atas jasad yang memberi kesan kepada keabsahan keizinan mereka. Selain itu, isu identiti pula merangkumi tiga teori pembentukan identiti manusia, iaitu psichological continuity, animalism dan embodied coginitive yang memberi kesan kepada aspek genetik. Seterusnya, isu pertimbangan maṣlaḥah dan mafsadah pula berdasarkan tiga situasi resipien iaitu pesakit peripheral neuromuscular, pesakit lumpuh dan resipien ingin menukar jantina
Mixed waste classification based on vision inspection / Hassan Mehmood Khan
No full textClassification of dry waste garbage is crucial since incorrect labelling of dry waste types may contribute huge loss to waste industry. An automated garbage sorting conveyor system is developed on image analysis of dry waste garbage samples which involves image acquisition, feature extraction and classification. In this study, an Automated Sorting Conveyor (ASC) integrated with Garbage Image Analysis (GIA) System with capabilities to classify and sort multiple types of garbage autonomously i.e., Crumble (Paper/Plastic), Flat (Paper/Plastic), Tin Can, Bottle (Plastic/Glass), Cup (Paper/Plastic), Plastic Box, Paper Box. A total of 640 samples of image data was collected, out of which 320 image data was used for training of machine learning model while the remaining 320 image data was used for testing purposes. Feature selection was also carried out to find the most relevant features with respect to dry garbage of interest. First, 40 features were selected with training accuracy of 79.59%. Then, better accuracy was obtained when redundant features were removed which accounted for 20 features with 81.42%. Finally, 17 features were tested and excellent accuracy of 90.69% was obtained. However, when the features F1 and F2, were removed which left with 15 features, the accuracy was reduced to 81.83%. The best 17 resulting features were used for the next process. Four classification algorithms specifically the Cubic SVM (C.SVM), Quadratic SVM (Q.SVM), Ensemble Bagged Trees (EBT) and k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) are employed to test the classification accuracy. The Q.SVM achieved the highest training accuracy of 90.69% with 17 features in the application. Q.SVM was used for 320 testing images with the overall testing accuracy of 89.9% and the result was promising for the implementation of an ASC which is eventually crucial to cater mass recycling activities as a replacement for manual sorting
Rational design of PAN:P(VP-co-VAC) polymer blend gel electrolyte incorporating functional additives for dye-sensitized solar cells / Norshahirah Mohamad Saidi
No full textToday, the demand for clean and sustainable energy keeps increasing. Fossil fuels are the most common energy source used to generate electricity. The usage of fossil fuels leads to excessive emission of greenhouse gases and global warming. Therefore, dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) will be an option by most of the community as it is the most efficient, clean, sustainable, and reliable energy source. It is also cost-effective, easy to assemble, and functions under a wide range of light illumination including dim light. Unfortunately, DSSC-based polymer electrolytes have a major challenge in commercialization due to inadequate photovoltaic conversion efficiency (PCE). To address this issue, the introduction of blending host polymers such as polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and poly(1-vinyl pyrrolidone-co-vinyl acetate) (P(VP-co-VAc)) through a physical blending with various functional additives is an attractive initiative. Blending host polymer is less time-consuming method in the production of new material with desirable properties by combining the advantages of the individual polymer. The best ratio of PAN and P(VP-co-VAc) in the ethylene carbonate (EC) - propylene carbonate (PC) binary organic solvents have been determined based on their appearance and performance. It was found that 50:50 wt. % of PAN:P(VP-co-VAc) polymer blend had met the criteria where it formed a homogeneous gel mixture and high ionic conductivity of 1.51×10-5 S cm-1. Herein, three different functional additives were added into the optimized PAN:P(VP-co-VAc) host polymer blend. For the first system, the polymer blend gel electrolytes were formulated by adding different concentrations of iodide/tri-iodide redox couple. Sodium iodide (NaI) salt and iodine (I2) were used as the source of iodide/ tri-iodide. It was reported that electrolyte consist of 40 wt. % of NaI salt shows the highest ionic conductivity and PCE of 3.54×10-5 S cm-1 and 3.04 %, respectively. In the next electrolyte system, cobalt oxide (Co3O4) nanoparticles synthesized via sonochemical and co-precipitation (for the sake of comparison) were added into the optimized polymer blend gel electrolytes which consisting of 40 wt. % NaI salt. The sonochemical method was successfully reduced the crystallite size and increased the surface area of Co3O4 nanoparticles. Hence, the electrolyte containing 3 wt. % of sonochemically synthesized Co3O4 nanoparticles delivers the highest ionic conductivity and PCE of 4.62×10-5 S cm-1 and 6.46 %, respectively. The last electrolyte system, 4-tert-butyl-pyridine (TBP) was chosen as the next functional additive. The result reported that the ionic conductivity values show a significant change after the addition of TBP into the formulated polymer blend gel electrolytes employed with 3 wt. % sonochemically synthesized Co3O4 nanoparticles. Besides, the addition of TBP had a positive influence on the open-circuit voltage, (VOC) of the DSSC. The VOC increased from 610 to 750 mV after the addition of 7 wt. % of TBP. But high TBP content has reduced the short-circuit current (JSC) value. Considering all the DSSC parameters, the cell using an electrolyte containing 3 wt. % of TBP resulted in the highest PCE of 8.11 % under light illumination of 100 mW cm-2
Ferroptosis-related long noncoding RNA signature predicts the prognosis of clear cell renal cell carcinoma / Liu Jiawen
No full textClear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (ccRCC) is very common and accounts for most kidney
cancer deaths. While many studies are being conducted in finding the prognosis
signatures of ccRCC, we believe that ferroptosis, that involves programmed cell death
dependent on iron accumulation has therapeutic potential in ccRCC. Recent research
showed that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to be involved in
ferroptosis-related tumor processes and are closely related to survival in patients with
ccRCC. Hence in this study we aim to further explore the role of ferroptosis-related
lncRNAs (FRLs) in ccRCC, hoping to establish a signature to predict the survival
outcome of ccRCC. Here we analyzed transcriptome data from The Cancer Genome Atlas
database (TCGA) and ferroptosis-related genes (FRGs) from FerrDb to identify FRLs
using Pearson’s correlation. Lasso Cox regression analysis and multivariate Cox
proportional hazards models screened seventeen optimal FRLs for developing prognostic
signatures. Kaplan–Meier survival curves and receiver operating characteristic (ROC)
curves were then plotted for validating the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the
identified signatures. CIBERSORT algorithm were deployed to explore the role of these
FRLs in tumor microenvironment (TME). It was concluded that these models
demonstrate excellent performance in predicting prognosis among patients with ccRCC
and which also indicated association with the clinicopathologic parameters such as tumor
grade, tumor stage and tumor immune infiltration. In conclusion, our findings provide
novel insights into ferroptosis-related lncRNAs in ccRCC which are important targets for
investigating the tumorigenesis of ccRCC
Influence of organic deposit on Rhizophora spp. growth and sediment chemical properties in Tanjung Piai mangrove forest, Johor / Nur Hafiza Abd Halim
No full textMangrove ecosystems are critical for maintaining ecological processes and acting as natural
barriers against erosive wave action, tsunami, and strong coastal winds. However, mangrove
forests are currently in jeopardy as a result of urbanization, aquaculture expansion, and
increased pollution loads. Marine debris containing organic deposits are intentionally or
unintentionally dumped into the marine environment, which was reported to have the
potential to alter the mangrove’s natural environment. Therefore, this study was carried out
to investigate the influence of organic deposit on growth of Rhizophora spp. and sediment
chemical properties in Tanjung Piai mangrove forest, Johor. The first objective of this study
is to characterize the chemical of organic deposits at three different locations. Samples of
organic deposit were collected at Pulau Ketam in Perlis, Pantai Kelanang in Selangor and
Tanjung Piai, Johor. The analysis of the organic deposit samples from these three different
locations showed that organic deposit at Tanjung Piai contains the highest concentration of
heavy metals, especially Cu, Pb and Zn with 21.50 mg kg-1, 82.41 mg kg-1, 133.12 mg kg-1
respectively. Concentrations of Cd, Cu and Pb at Tanjung Piai exceed the limits set for biocompost
of European countries and the United States. From this assessment, the influence of
organic deposit on growth of Rhizophora spp. and sediment chemical properties in Tanjung
Piai mangrove forest, Johor was carried out by measuring the growth performance, soil
fertility and the fractionation of heavy metals between different localities having fresh,
decomposed and without organic deposit material as the second and third objectives of this
study. Four different sampling sites have been establish based on the presence of organic deposits at each plot; T1: site without organic deposit material, T2: site with new organic
deposit material, T3: site with decomposed organic deposit material, T4: site with
decomposed organic material. Generally, sites with decomposed organic deposit resulted in
the highest growth increment of Rhizophora spp. compared with sites without organic deposit
with total mean increment of 19 cm after one year of study. The highest nitrogen, organic
carbon, CEC, Cu and Pb were also recorded at sites with decomposed organic deposit. pH at
decomposed organic deposit (T3 and T4) was slightly acidic with the lowest pH recorded
4.78. Modified sequential extraction BCR method was adopted for the fractionation of heavy
metals. Results showed Fe and Mn are highly mobile and available for the plant intake. The
concentration of Fe and Mn in Rhizophora spp. leaves was high compared to the
concentration of Cd, Pb and Zn.
The correlation between the Rhizophora spp. growth with physio-chemical properties shows
positive correlation with N, C, CEC, Exch Mg, and Exch K. For the correlation between
heavy metals with sediment fertility, Zn and Mn were only positively correlated with pH.
While other heavy metals (Pb, Cd, Cu and Fe) were positively correlate with total nitrogen
and organic carbon in the sediment. Overall, this study implies that upon decomposition and
degradation of organic deposit, it increases some of the nutrients and also heavy metals in
the sediment at Tanjung Piai mangrove forest
Agronomic traits and phytochemical content of popularly grown tomato cultivars in Malaysia / Khor Jing Herng
No full textTomato is a popular crop because of its taste and nutritious value. Despite many tomato cultivars being found in the market in Malaysia, several of them are only known by their trade name and nothing much is known about the agronomic traits and phytochemical profiles. Systematic profiling of flowering, fruit yield and phytochemical content for tomato cultivars can aid in establishing a platform to support cultivar improvement studies. To study tomato cultivars in Malaysia, a survey was conducted among seed producers and online-shopping platforms. It was found that at least 38 tomato cultivars are grown in Malaysia and that these have variable agronomic traits. Empirical knowledge was gained on tomato farming, from seed sowing to fruit sorting, via interviewing four farmers during an educational farm visit at Cameron Highlands. Among the 38 cultivars, the three most popular cultivars Red Rock, Super Star, and Tropical were selected for collection of detailed agronomic trait information and phytochemical characterisation in controlled growth conditions. Among the three cultivars, Super Star showed the highest germination rate (100.00 ± 0.00 %). Red Rock showed the highest plant height (277.90 ± 1.4 cm), leaf number (288 ± 2), flowering rate (68 ± 1 flower plant), fruiting rate (60 ± 1 fruit/plant) and the shortest flowering (125 DAP) and fruiting time (136 DAP). Flowers of all cultivars showed differences in petal and sepal numbers and reproductive phenology such as pistil, pollen and ovary. In fruit morphology and characteristic analysis, it was observed that fruit of Tropical showed the highest fruit area (40.31 ± 2.25 cm2), fresh weight (64.90 ± 2.13 g) and dry weight (4.63 ± 0.34 g). Among all cultivars, fruits of Super Star showed the highest phytochemical content, DPPH inhibition (89.69 ± 1.46 %), total phenol content (164.57 ± 1.91 mg CE/100 g DW), total anthocyanin (4.81 ± 0.32 mg ME/100 g DW), total flavonoids (163.29 ± 3.41mg CE/100g DW) lycopene (2.18 ± 0.02 mg/100g FW) among three tomato cultivars. Fruits of Red Rock showed the highest total sugar content (1503.74 ± 0.93 mg/100g FW). Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) content (74.68 ± 1.74 mg/100g FW) was highest in fruits of Tropical cultivar. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed a strong correlation between fruit characteristics and phytochemical properties, depicting that with the exception of fruit area, these parameters can be used to differentiate tomato cultivars. Red Rock was characterized by relatively high values for moisture content, total flavonoids, and total sugar; Super Star was characterized by relatively high values for TPC, total anthocyanin, fruit area, DPPH inhibition and lycopene; Tropical was characterized by relatively high fresh weight, dry weight and ascorbic acid content. It was also found that lycopene, TPC, DPPH and total anthocyanins were positively correlated with each other and negatively correlated with ascorbic acid content. On the other hand, total flavonoids and total sugar were positively correlated with each other and negatively correlated with lycopene and fruit weight. This data from this study could be used as a reference in selection of desired tomato cultivars