16 research outputs found
A comparative study on the regulations of anabolic steroids in domestic use: between Malaysia and United Kingdom / Mohamad Asif Mohd Noor … [et al.]
No full textThis research has been conducted to analyse the existing legal enforcement in Malaysia governing the use, sale and distribution of anabolic steroids, where, special references have been made to the legal position in United Kingdom. This research aims to examine the adequacy of the existing law Poison Act 1952, Sale of Drugs Act 1952 and Control of Drugs and Cosmetic Regulations 1984 which are ought to be revised in order to handle cases that involves in illegal use and illicit sale and distributions of anabolic steroids. This study also reveals how currently in Malaysia there exist no specific law that focuses on illegal personal use of anabolic steroids and how its enforcement are given very little attention upon. The continuing evolution of the trend of gaining a well-developed aesthetic physical appearance is the main drive that contributes to the demand the anabolic steroids from the market, which in a way leads to a rampant illicit distribution and sale throughout the country. Thus, a comparative study between, Malaysia and United Kingdom has been carried out in this study to determine the present parameters of the law and its enforcement of the illegal use, and illicit sale and distributions
Mijies Café & Nursery: wajah usahawan siswa kental
No full textSelain berbekalkan modal, usaha dan minat, jatuh bangun sesebuah perniagaan itu pastinya berkait rapat dengan semangat dan kekentalan pengusahanya. Untung rugi sesebuah perusahaan dan perniagaan itu adalah resam dan kekuatan serta kekentalan untuk menempuh setiap cabaran itu adalah kunci kepada kejayaan berterusan. Perkara inilah yang menjadi pengangan utama kepada seorang pesona keusahawanan siswa yang cukup disegani di UiTM Cawangan Kedah iaitu Saudara Muhammad Tarmizie Alias, 34 tahun, berasal dari Rantau Panjang, Kelantan Darul Naim
Renaissance Sdn. Bhd. lucy glucose drink / Muhammad Zairi Ab. Rahim …[et al.]
No full textWe are from Renaissance Sdn. Bhd. proudly presents our newest product from our company which is LUCY. It is a supplement drink that were made out of pure glucose. What makes our product differs from others is that our raw materials comes from the durian and pineapple peels which basically is just a waste product from the fruit. Our target customers focuses mostly on daily consumers who usually doing vigorously activities and heavy workers. This drink will provide them enough energy for all day long and also control their sugar intake for the diabetics which makes them healthier and energize. Some of the existing energy or supplement drinks in the market right now does not highlight where do they get the raw materials from and mostly the raw materials such as sugar were come from their main source such as sugar cane. However, with our technology we can get sugar from an alternate source and maximize its usage and also minimize the waste product as possibly as we can. We are fully confident that our product can generate enough profit to our company and make our business feasible. This is due to introduction of our new intakes on supplement and energy drinks and make it to whole new level. Also, we were determined that our product will give a whole new idea on how waste products can be manipulated to be as a good resources and thus bring a whole new green technology to this industry
Friction and wear analysis of ceramic cutting tool made from Alumina-Zirconia-Chromia
No full textThis research focused on the friction and wear analysis of
ceramic cutting tool made from Al2O3, ZrO2 and Cr2O3.
80 wt% of Al2O3 and 20 wt% of ZrO2 compacts were
prepared by ball milling process with Cr2O3 addition at
the variation of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 wt%. Each sample was
pressed by Cold Isostatic Press at 350 MPa before sintered
at the constant temperature of 1400oC and 9 hours
soaking time. Relative density, hardness, flexural strength
and Pin-on-disc tribotest were performed for each sample.
The samples with desired mechanical properties were
further machined with AISI 1045 at the cutting speed of
200 m/min, 0.175 mm/rev feed rate and 0.5 mm depth of
cut. The results show the sample with composition ratio of
Al2O3-ZrO2-Cr2O3 at 80-20-0.6 wt% demonstrated
lowest Coefficient of Friction (COF) of 0.23 with hardness
and relative density recorded at 71.3 Hrc and 95.81%
respectively. Microstructure of Al2O3-ZrO2-Cr2O3
presenting significant grains compaction as compared to
Al2O3-ZrO2 and single Al2O3 that showed significant
appearance of porosity. In terms of tool wear, Al2O3-
ZrO2-Cr2O3 performed 51% and 800% better tool life
than Al2O3-ZrO2 and Al2O3 cutting tools
Technical, Pure Technical and Scale Efficiency: A Non-Parametric Approach of Pakistans Insurance and Takaful Industry
No full textIn this modern era of advanced technology, financial sector becomes a backbone of each and every economy. The financial sector is playing its significant role in mitigating the risk factors but the risk is the main ingredient of most of the business ventures. On the other hand stock market provides the investment opportunities to its investors. The financial chaos of 2007-2008 changed the worldview of the financial market (Harrington, 2009). Thus, experts are compelled to think about the alternative system rather than the conventional one. Islamic financial system, considered as alternative system got more attention than the other alternatives which are available in the financial market. Islamic financial institutions have shown their resilience during the financial distress of 2007-2008. Financial gurus, experts, academicians and policymakers are keen to analyse the different dimensions of the Islamic financial systems and they have shown their interest in the development of the different products and innovations (Chapra, 2011). Currently most of the Islamic Financial Institutions are launching new products which are compatible with the prevailing conventional system; most of their products are asset-based or Sharī’ah compliant. Almost 20% annual growth of Islamic finance has been observed (Chapra, 2008).
In the current literature, the academicians and financial experts are trying to compare the performance of the Islamic and conventional financial institutions. A number of studies discussed this behaviour by using different methodologies and observed different findings. Quite a number of studies found that Islamic financial institutions are more efficient, for example, Azhar Rosly and Afandi Abu Bakar (2003) found for Malaysia, (El-Gamal and Inanoglu (2004); El‐Gamal and Inanoglu (2005)) estimated for Turkey, El Moussawi and Obeid (2011) for GCC, Sufian and Chong (2008) observed more efficient than conventional institutions in Malaysia, Ul Haque and Mirakhor (1986) observed that these are more stable and contributing to the growth of the economy whereas Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt and Levine (2010) found Islamic financial institutions are comparatively cost effective.
It is well observed that Islamic banking industry is passed its infancy stage and moving towards its maturity, however, still Islamic insurance industry (Takaful) is passing the phase of infancy. The concept of cooperative risk sharing is the oldest form of insurance but the term and concept of takaful were first introduced in Sudan in 1979 and later on in Saudi Arabia. Now takaful is operating its business in more than 22 countries and getting popularity in other regions (Qureshi, 2011). Majma-al-Fiqh, the Grand Council of Islamic Scholars, Saudi Arabia, approved takaful as an alternate to insurance according to the shari’ah ruling in 1985 and Takaful industry has its global volume US $25 billion with only 305 takaful-retakaful operators and windows. However, it is worthwhile to note that the growth of takaful industry is 12% per annum which higher than the conventional insurance industry which is only 4% per annum ("Annual Islamic Financial Services Industry Stability Report", 2017).
At the time of independence in 1947, 84 insurance companies were operative in Pakistan but the insurance industry was nationalized in 1972 and merged into State Life of Pakistan. However there was a major breakthrough in the 1990s, the financial reforms took into place and these reforms allowed private and foreign companies to establish their business in the insurance sector (Malik, Malik & Faridi, 2011; "State Bank of Pakistan", 2005).
The Council of Islamic Ideology in Pakistan reviewed the model for Pakistan’s financial sector according to the shari’ah rulings, on 29th April 1992 (Khan, 2016) and the Government of Pakistan issued “Takaful Rules 2005″ on 3rd September 2005, an Islamic compatible takaful operational model. Since then, takaful industry established and currently, two family takaful and three general takaful firms are in operation. It attracts the new customers because of its shari’ah compliance ("Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan," 2016).
Although like other parts of the world efficiency analysis have been conducted in Pakistan accounting for Insurance sectors as Takaful sector has started in Pakistan in 2005 and it is an infant industry and the studies of the efficiencies including Technical, Pure Technical and Scale efficiencies are lacking for a responsible period of time for Pakistan. This study will try to fill the gap by taking data of Pakistani Insurance companies from 2007-2016 with panel-based comparative analysis further decomposing the sector into Conventional and Islamic.
The primary objectives of this paper are to present the efficiencies of Insurance sector by evaluating Technical, Pure Technical and Scale efficiencies using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) by taking data from the period 2007-2016 and also to find any difference of efficiency in Islamic and Conventional segments of these sectors.
Literature Review
The efficiency measurement for the financial sector is one of the most rapidly growing literature in the market. A number of efficiency studies for the insurance sector, in particular, have been conducted and primarily employed two different approaches, namely, the parametric and non-parametric approach. There are a number of studies measuring the efficiency of the insurance industry at a country level. A number of researchers estimated the efficiencies of the insurance industry of US. Gardner and Grace (1993) estimated the efficiency of the sample of 561 firms and found the inefficiencies for the different internal and external factors. Cummins and Xie (2013) estimated 781 property and liability of US insurance companies from 1993 to 2009 and found that the maximum firms are operating with a decreasing return to scale.
Some of the researchers studied the European insurance industry including Fecher, Kessler, Perelman and Pestieau (1993) who estimated the efficiency of life and non-life insurance companies of France for the period of 1984 to 1989 and found the non-life insurer more efficient than the life insurers. Cummins and Turchetti (1996) estimated the efficiency and productivity growth of Italian insurance industry through the production frontier by applying parametric (SFA) approach and found the efficiency level between 70 to 78%. Noulas, Lazaridis, Hatzigayios and Lyroudi (2001) and Cummins and Rubio Misas (2001) studied Greece and Spanish insurance industry simultaneously and found the firms operating with decreasing return to scale.
Some researchers made the comparison of the insurance companies of the US and other European countries. Rai (1996) measured the X-efficiencies of the insurance companies (life and non-life) of nine European countries (France Switzerland, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden,) one Asian (Japan) and US using the SFA technique between 1988-1992 and found the variation in the efficiencies on the basis of size, nature and location. Kasman and Turgutlu (2011) measured the efficiency of a group of countries by using the Stochastic Cost Frontier (SCF) covering the period 1995-2005 and found that small companies are more efficient than the large firms for the said countries.
Some researcher worked on Asian and African insurance industry including Alhassan and Biekpe (2015) and Barros and Wanke (2014) examined the technical efficiency and capacity issues of the companies of South Africa and Mozambique found high technical inefficiency. Huang and Eling (2013) analysed the behaviour of the insurance companies of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC Economies) and found that India is less technical efficient whereas Brazil is maximum efficient amongst them. Hu, Zhang, Hu and Zhu (2009) studied the efficiency of the insurance sector in China over the period of 1999 to 2004 and found the relationship between ownership structure and efficiency. Firms are mixed efficient, in the beginning and at the last, they perform efficiently whereas in the middle they were less efficient.
The takaful is mostly being used in Muslim countries. Some of the researchers tried to calculate the efficiency of the takaful industry. Miniaoui and Chaibi (2014) presented a comparative analysis of GCC countries and Malaysia, from 20006 to 2009. They selected 12 takaful operators (three were from UAE, two from Saudi Arabia, two from Qatar, one from Bahrain and four from Malaysia) and found GCC market more efficient than Malaysia. Kader, Adams and Hardwick (2010) using DEA for evaluating the cost efficiency of 26 non-life takaful firms from the sample of 10 Islamic countries and Cost efficiency score was 0.70.
Some researcher computes the efficiency of insurance and takaful companies including Singh and Zahran (2013) who estimated the cost efficiency of both types of the insurance companies for the eight MENA countries, i.e., Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. They concluded that takaful companies are less efficient due to Shari’ah compliant products. Janjua and Akmal (2015) compared the efficiency of both types of insurance (conventional and Islamic) companies operating in Pakistan over the period of 2006-2011. Saad (2012) examined the efficiency of conventional and Islamic insurance companies in Malaysia for 2007-2009 and concluded that the performance of takaful companies (Islamic Insurance Companies) was less than the average of the industry
Bedload Sediment Concentration of Sungai Kahang Downstream Kahang Dam in Johor
No full textDams construction globally on rivers have generated a significant adjustment to stream hydrology and sediment dynamics. The impoundment of rivers by dam reservoirs will trap the sediments following freely downstream the river channel. Kahang dam is constructed to impound Sungai Kahang (Kahang River) for water supply purposes; this may have adverse effects downstream the dam by starving the river its natural sediments and changing the river flow. This study evaluates the bedload sediments and river discharge downstream the dam by taking field measurements, using the area-velocity and single increment method at three selected gauging locations (St0, St1, St2). The results obtained between January and July 2017 show the highest bedload discharge for all the gauging Stations to be 0.0736 tones/day at St0 and 0.0077 tones/day at St2 while the river flow remains relatively steady between 0.528 m3/s to 2.534 m3/s. The high bedload discharge recorded can be attributed to the anthropogenic activities going on during external construction works going on, as lower bedload concentration values followed immediately after the external construction work was completed
Bedload Sediment Concentration of Sungai Kahang Downstream Kahang Dam in Johor
No full textDams construction globally on rivers have generated a significant adjustment to stream hydrology and sediment dynamics. The impoundment of rivers by dam reservoirs will trap the sediments following freely downstream the river channel. Kahang dam is constructed to impound Sungai Kahang (Kahang River) for water supply purposes; this may have adverse effects downstream the dam by starving the river its natural sediments and changing the river flow. This study evaluates the bedload sediments and river discharge downstream the dam by taking field measurements, using the area-velocity and single increment method at three selected gauging locations (St0, St1, St2). The results obtained between January and July 2017 show the highest bedload discharge for all the gauging Stations to be 0.0736 tones/day at St0 and 0.0077 tones/day at St2 while the river flow remains relatively steady between 0.528 m3/s to 2.534 m3/s. The high bedload discharge recorded can be attributed to the anthropogenic activities going on during external construction works going on, as lower bedload concentration values followed immediately after the external construction work was completed
A study of smart home: UUM student perspective
No full textThere are several issues related in housing development such as a continued rise in house prices became an issue for potential first time buyers and unsuccessful in the house industry that will contribute to homelessness for young generation and low-income wages. Therefore, a housing developer should identify the potential buyers’ criteria before designing the house to create uniqueness in housing industries.Innovation should be applied in developing innovative homes so that it will meet the affordable requirement for the potential buyers. Smart homes are a part of innovative home examples.A smart home is not just a home of the future, but rather an
integrated way to wire a home to a network that controls all of function at once.The application
of innovation in developing innovative homes will provide advantage to the developer’s business
performance. This research is designed to investigate the relationship between innovative homes with business performance which reflects identifying the critical variable of innovative homes, investigating the requirements of potential buyers and examining the relationships of innovative homes with business performance. Besides using a survey to gather customer perceptions, this research will also employ key personnel perspectives into the analysis.It is expected that the findings could contribute towards greater understanding in view of innovative homes and business performance.This research is also expected to provide some innovative ideas for managerial applications in the housing industry
Optimisation of alginate-pectin bead formulation using central composite design guided electrospray technique
No full textAlginate-pectin beads act as a carrier in improving the oral bioavailability of bioactive compounds. Electrospray technique facilitates the production of uniform size and shape of alginate-pectin beads. Interaction between key electrospray process parameters affects the size and shape of the beads. A proper model should be employed to establish these correlating interactions. In this study, the electrospray technique was guided with a central composite design (CCD) and response surface methodology (RSM). One quadratic and one linear model were obtained for size and the sphericity coefficient, respectively. The CCD-RSM empirical model derived from this study is essential to determine significant factors and their levels in producing beads with consistent size and sphericity coefficient. The results indicate that the applied voltage has the most significant influence on size, while the alginate-pectin concentration is the most prominent factor in producing spherical beads. The quite spherical beads with a minimum size of 2.97 mm were obtained at an alginate-pectin concentration of 3.5%, a flow rate of 10.0mL/h, an applied voltage of 2.4 kV, and a distance between the nozzle and the gelation bath of 16.0 cm
Bedload sediment concentration of Sungai Kahang downstream Kahang dam in Johor
No full textDams construction globally on rivers have generated a significant adjustment to stream hydrology and sediment dynamics. The impoundment of rivers by dam reservoirs will trap the sediments following freely downstream the river channel. Kahang dam is constructed to impound Sungai Kahang (Kahang River) for water supply purposes; this may have adverse effects downstream the dam by starving the river its natural sediments and changing the river flow. This study evaluates the bedload sediments and river discharge downstream the dam by taking field measurements, using the area-velocity and single increment method at three selected gauging locations (St0, St1, St2). The results obtained between January and July 2017 show the highest bedload discharge for all the gauging Stations to be 0.0736 tones/day at St0 and 0.0077 tones/day at St2 while the river flow remains relatively steady between 0.528 m3 /s to 2.534 m3 /s. The high bedload discharge recorded can be attributed to the anthropogenic activities going on during external construction works going on, as lower bedload concentration values followed immediately after the external construction work was completed
