17,448 research outputs found
Evaluation of carbon dioxide emissions in Malaysia's highlands using airborne remote sensing / Dr. Norhusna Mohamad Nor and Nur Syifa Salim
No full textEnvironmental issue is one of the serious issues affecting the ecosystem. Release of CO2 emissions is really important that need to be considered. Most of spatial region at highlands in Malaysia were affected due to the excessive release of CO2 emissions and many changes occur such as air temperature and atmospheric moisture changes. However, some previous study shows that the CO2 emission forecasting is hardly being considered on multiple factors. Therefore, the Grey Relational Analysis approach was proposed in this study to investigate the correlation between multiple factors and CO2 emission signified the objective of this study which to analyse the CO2 emission data in Malaysia’s highlands using correlation coefficient analysis (GRA) method. The satellite database remote sensing that suitably used for the collection of the data is Giovanni which correlate to the objective in collecting CO2 emission data. The comparison between the multiple factors shows that the proposed method has higher accuracy compared on forecasting method presenting that correlation between atmospheric moisture and CO2 emissions has the significant outcomes in proving the factors that been affected by the CO2 emissions. From result analysed by GRA method, presenting the most affected factors due to the CO2 emissions is atmospheric moisture within Cameron Highland as it states the higher grey relational degree compared to the other associated factor within other highlands in 2009 and 2011 which were 2.812451 and 2.394842 respectively. While in 2010, the atmospheric moisture within Kundasang is the most greatly been affected by the CO2 emissions based on higher grey relational degree between other highlands which about 1.705437. Thus, the studying in satellite database remote sensing in analysing CO2 emissions in Malaysia’s highlands can be proved in this study
The effectiveness of syifa exercise module towards the psychological well-being and quality of life among teachers in Kuala Terengganu
No full textPsychological well-being and quality of life are important aspects of ensuring individual welfare
as a whole. Nevertheless, psychological or mental problems often affect humans/people,
regardless of their profession and teachers are no exception. Teachers today are frequently wound
up either due to the school environment, workload or family stresses. This study aims to
utilize/employ the Syifa exercise module to address this problem and improve the teachers’
psychological well-being and quality of life in Kuala Terengganu, as well as to test the
effectiveness of the module. This research project is made up of two distinct phases. The first
phase of the study focused on the development of the Syifa exercise module specifically its
module content, expert evaluation, and pilot study. The second phase then evaluated the module
based on the quasi-experimental method. Samples based on inclusive criteria were randomly
placed either in the treatment group or controlled group. The treatment/experimental group was
exposed to the Syifa exercise whereas, the controlled group performed an exercise regime
endorsed by the Ministry of Health Malaysia. Both groups continued the respective exercises for
three months. The level of psychological well-being was then tested using the Ryff’s
Psychological Well-Being Scale while the quality of life was tested using the World Health
Organization's Quality of Life Scale (WHOQOL-BREF). Pre and post-intervention assessments
were done to gauge the teachers’ level of psychological well-being and quality of life. The data
were analyzed using repeated measures, ANCOVA tests. The findings showed significant
differences in the mean between teachers’ psychological well-being and quality of life in the pre
and post-intervention assessments for both treatments/experimental and control groups. The
means that were recorded post-intervention exhibited a clear-cut difference of teachers’
psychological well-being and quality of life between treatment and control group. Overall, there
was a pragmatic rise in mean value within the treatment group in comparison to the controlled
group’s psychological welfare and quality of life. The results of this study demonstrated the
effectiveness of the implementation of the Syifa exercise module in improving the psychological
well-being and quality of life of teachers in Kuala Terengganu. It is expected to be widely used to
overcome psychological and mental problems among Malaysia citizens
Neither illness nor wellness
No full textAn article written by the listed author above as part of the "Writing Black Canadas" issue.Peer reviewedFinal article publishe
Redevelopment after the Abruzzo event
No full textNatural disasters raise quite a number of interdisciplinary issues concerning regional economic growth and local development, as well as public finance and sustainability, to mention only a few of them. These issues deserve special attention in our globalized world, given the expectation of a growing impact of climate-related disasters: no surprise that disaster management stands as a new discipline aimed at bridging the gap between theory and practice, so as to prevent natural disasters in the first place; afterwards, considerable efforts are required to accelerate business recovery, quickly restore vital energies, and hopefully carry out specific improvement projects as a sort of compensation for the (both personal and economic) losses suffered. Interesting lessons can be learned from natural disasters and can be shared as a payback to those who helped upon their occurrence. Actually, cooperation calls for cross-cultural activities that are likely to benefit from direct experience made by impacted scholars and practitioners: a case in point has to do with the earthquake that devastated L’Aquila and its environs on April 6, 2009 causing more than 300 deaths, apart from extensive damage in the Abruzzo region, in Central Italy; the Abruzzo event – as this natural disaster is currently referred to – fuels the debate on redevelopment problems to be faced under similar circumstances, that may obliterate the economic environment and attractiveness of an area in a few moments. Due to the huge amount of money needed to undertake appropriate strategies, finance plays a key role and useful insights can be gained by exploring the process of financial innovation. A supporting argument deals with the recourse to micro-finance in order to make the business and economic scenario revive after a natural disaster: micro-credit might be resorted to even within the framework of new financial engineering instruments, such as Urban Development Funds, recently promoted by the European Investment Bank; they include JESSICA (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas) and JEREMIE (Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises), to be properly considered as strategic tools in sight of redeveloping L’Aquila and its surrounding boroughs.
Think Too Fast Nor Too Slow: The Computational Trade-off Between Planning And Reinforcement Learning
No full textPlanning and reinforcement learning are two key approaches to sequential decision making. Multi-step approximate real-time dynamic programming, a recently successful algorithm class of which AlphaZero [Silver et al., 2018] is an example, combines both by nesting planning within a learning loop. However, the combination of planning and learning introduces a new question: how should we balance time spend on planning, learning and acting? The importance of this trade-off has not been explicitly studied before. We show that it is actually of key importance, with computational results indicating that we should neither plan too long nor too short. Conceptually, we identify a new spectrum of planning-learning algorithms which ranges from exhaustive search (long planning) to model-free RL (no planning), with optimal performance achieved midway.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Interactive IntelligenceTeam Bart De Schutte
An Architecture for Augmenting the SCORM Run-Time Environment with a Personalised Link Service
No full textAs the result of recent advances in the business of e-learning there has been a growing interest in e-learning standards, particularly SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model). SCORM is a reference model that integrates a collection of e-learning resource standards and specifications. In a SCORM compliant courseware, content and the pedagogic approach to be taken are predefined by the course author. As a consequence, users are unable to learn according to their preferences, and implicitly they will all encounter the same learning experience. Recent attempts to personalise learning in SCORM often resulted in either modifying SCORM or substituting its course sequencing mechanism with Adaptive Hypermedia techniques. Nonetheless, SCORM is a widely-used solution to interoperability problems with e-learning resources and can realise not only content sharing and reusability but also a consistent sequencing of course content across different systems and tools. For these reasons, this thesis focuses on supplementing SCORM sequencing rather than redefining it. The novelty of this work is that it builds an adaptive environment around the existing SCORM, without extending or modifying SCORM itself. The work integrates Adaptive Hypermedia principles into the SCORM Run-Time Environment as an independent service to support the environment with learning materials that are preferable to both teachers (primary materials of their choice) and students (supplementary materials that are pre-selected to suit some aspects of their user models to assist their understanding of the primary materials). This SCORM-complementing approach can also enable the SCORM Run-Time Environment to include on-demand external resources into the environment in order to address SCORM’s limitation of static pool of learning resources. The novel contribution of this work is the design of an authoring architecture which enables the automatic generation of a concept map and consequently links to alternative learning resources, and a run-time service oriented architecture which delivers these alternative resources, alongside the SCORM defined resources, according to a dynamic user model
Perencanaan Berkeluarga dalam Perspektif al-Qur’an
No full textPenelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh kurangnya kesadaran dan pamahaman
Masyarakat mengenai perencanaan berkeluarga, terutama pada Masyarakat
didaerah pedalaman yang hanya memahami tentang keluarga berencana yang
bertujuan pembatasan anak, padahal perencanaan berkeluarga lebih daripada itu
yang mencakup beberapa aspek, akibatnya masih banyak terjadi kasus pernikahan
dini dan lonjakan kasus perceraian semakin meningkat di beberapa daerah akibat
kurangnya perencanaan dan ketahanan keluarga.
Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis konsep perencanaan
berkeluarga dalam perspektif al-Qur’an, serta implikasinya terhadap praktik
perencanaan berkeluarga dengan program keluarga berencana di masyarakat.
Keluarga berencana merupakan upaya untuk mengatur jumlah dan jarak kelahiran
anak, yang bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kualitas hidup keluarga dan anak-anak.
Dalam konteks Islam, al-Qur’an memberikan panduan yang mendalam mengenai
tanggung jawab orang tua, pendidikan anak, dan pentingnya menjaga kesejahteraan
keluarga melalui panduan dalam perencanaan baik sebelum berkeluarga maupun
sesudah berkeluarga.
Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah studi literatur yang bersifat
deskriptif-analisis dengan pendekatan kualitatif, menggunakan metode tafsir
tematik dan teknik analisis isi (content analysis). Hasil penelitian menunjukkan
bahwa al-Qur’an menekankan pentingnya memilih pasangan yang baik, mendidik
anak dengan nilai-nilai agama, serta menjaga kesehatan dan kesejahteraan keluarga,
serta menjaga keluarga dari api neraka. Selain itu, penelitian ini juga menemukan
bahwa prinsip-prinsip keluarga berencana yang diajarkan dalam al-Qur’an sejalan
dengan program-program yang diselenggarakan oleh BKKBN, yang berfokus pada
pendidikan kesehatan reproduksi dan perencanaan keluarga.
Kesimpulan dari penelitian ini adalah bahwa perencanaan berkeluarga
dalam perspektif al-Qur’an tidak hanya mencakup aspek pengaturan jumlah anak,
tetapi juga menekankan pentingnya kesiapan dan juga pemilihan pasangan untuk
membangun sebuah keluarga, serta menekankan pendidikan, akhlak, dan tanggung
jawab orang tua dalam membangun keluarga yang harmonis dan sejahtera.
Penelitian ini diharapkan dapat memberikan kontribusi bagi pengembangan
pemahaman tentang keluarga berencana dalam konteks Islam dan mendorong
praktik yang lebih baik di masyaraka
Dynamic augmentation of SCORM pre-authored course materials with adaptive links to supplementary resources
No full textIn a SCORM compliant courseware, content and the pedagogic approach to be taken are predefined by the course author. As a consequence, users are unable to learn according to their preferences, and implicitly they will all encounter the same learning experience. Recent attempts to personalise learning in SCORM often resulted in either modifying or substituting SCORM specification elements. Nonetheless, SCORM is a widely-used solution to interoperability problems. For this reason, this work focuses on supplementing SCORM rather than redefining it. This is accomplished by dynamically associating each pre-authored learning material in a SCORM package with adaptive links to relevant supplementary resources upon delivery. As a result, we have developed a Personalised Link Service (PLS) to deliver these links into user’s SCORM-compliant learning environment. In this paper, we present the design of a PLS authoring architecture which enables the automatic generation of a concept map from a SCORM package and consequently links to alternative learning resources, and a PLS run-time service oriented architecture which delivers these alternative resources, alongside the SCORM defined resources, according to a user model. We demonstrate the feasibility of our architecture by implementing a service to support a simple notion of a user model (Preferred Learning style)
A study of procurement behaviour in small firms
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to introduce research which analyses buyer-supplier relationships from the perspective of small and medium firms (SMEs). The study to be outlined shows that actors within a supply chain are not homogeneous in terms of their size, resources and business motives, which bring into question the validity and relevance of the purchasing literature when examining small firms. The paper will explain the usefulness and importance of studying purchasing behaviour in SMEs and explain how these relationships might differ depending on the nature of the firm. The methodology for the field research will be explained in the paper. The fieldwork draws principally from a series of interviews undertaken with owner-managers within plastic moulding companies in Lancashire. The empirical data will be explored in some depth with a particular focus on their implications for practice
Turbulent plane Couette flow with wall-transpiration
No full textIn the present abstract, DNS results obtained for turbulent plane Couette flow with wall-normal transpiration velocity are presented. Important equations valid in such a flow are derived, describing the total shear stress and the relation between the friction velocities at the lower and upper wall. These expressions are of importance, as there are neither experimental nor DNS data to compare with. Equally important, we derive a center region and a viscous sublayer velocity scaling for the suction wall, which were both validated using the DNS data
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