Guarding the Neighbourhood: The New Landscape of Control in Malaysia

While securitised enclaves have become a global phenomenon, case studies of particular nations reveal the unique interplay between local conditions and international influences. This article presents the first major empirical study of gated developments in Malaysia. We found two types of enclosures being produced in urban Malaysia. Market-produced gated communities, attracting affluent households to live within elegant walls, dominate new growth areas in major cities. Guarded neighbourhoods are a post-market product: that is they result from resident-initiated actions to impose makeshift boundaries and controls in older neighbourhoods. Although concerns about safety and security permeate the national discourse around gates and guards, new structures of enclosure reinforce and reproduce shifting structures of inequality, class and ethnicity in urban Malaysia.     

Numerical Modeling of Bed Evolution in Channel Bends

A two-dimensional numerical model is developed to predict the time variation of bed deformation in alluvial channel bends. In this model, the depth-averaged unsteady water flow equations along with the sediment continuity equation are solved by using the Beam and Warming alternating-direction implicit scheme. Unlike the present models based on Cartesian or cylindrical coordinate systems and steady flow equations, a body-fitted coordinate system and unsteady flow equations are used so that unsteady effects and natural channels may be modeled accurately. The effective stresses associated with the flow equations are modeled by using a constant eddy-viscosity approach. This study is restricted to beds of uniform particles, i.e., armoring and grain-sorting effects are neglected. To verify the model, the computed results are compared with the data measured in 140° and 180° curved laboratory flumes with straight reaches up- and downstream of the bend. The model predictions agree better with the measured data than those obtained by previous numerical models. The model is used to investigate the process of evolution and stability of bed deformation in circular bends.     

Enhanced Magnetic Properties in Cu0.5Tl0.5Ba2Ca2Cu3O10−δ Superconductor Doped with Carbon Nanotubes

Fluctuation-induced conductivity (FIC) analysis in the critical fluctuation region (cr), three-dimensional (3D), two-dimensional (2D), and zero-dimensional (0D) regions is reported for undoped and carbon nanotubes (CNT)-doped Cu_0.5Tl_0.5Ba₂Ca₂Cu₃O_10?δ (CuTl-1223) superconductors. Samples were synthesized by well-known solid-state reaction method by adding CNT up to 7 wt %. The X-ray diffraction data confirms the single-phase orthorhombic structures following PMMM space group for all the samples. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) images reveal that the carbon nanotubes are present in the spaces between the grains and connect the grains electrically to help the intergranular current flow. From FIC analysis, it was found that the width of critical and 3D regimes are shrunken with the increased CNT doping in the final compound. Also, the coherence length (ξ_c(0)), the Fermi velocity (V _F), and the coupling constant (J) are suppressed with increased CNT doping except for the 0.25 wt % doped sample. The decrease in important superconductivity parameters most likely arises due to low CNT doping which indeed functions as columnar defects that are produced by heavy ion irradiation. In this analysis, we also found that the critical magnetic fields (B _c(0), B _c1(0)) and critical current density (J _c(0)) were found to increase with increased CNT concentration. These observations suggest that addition of CNT (efficient pinning centers) to CuTl-1223 compounds improve the electrical connection between the superconducting grains to result in the improvement of magnetic properties of the final compound.     

On Design Engineering

London-based Adams Kara Taylor (AKT) is one of the most innovative design-led structural and civil engineering practices in the UK. Seeking out creative collaborations with leading architectural firms and schools of architecture and design internationally, it has, as Hanif Kara , Co-Founder and Director at AKT, explains, developed a holistic approach in which architecture and engineering converge. Here Kara defines the emerging methods of ‘design engineering’, emphasising the importance of early input at the conceptualisation stage and research over even the contribution of digital technologies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Hybrid System for Customer Churn Prediction and Retention Analysis via Supervised Learning

Telecom industry relies on churn prediction models to retain their customers. These prediction models help in precise and right time recognition of future switching by a group of customers to other service providers. Retention not only contributes to the profit of an organization, but it is also important for upholding a position in the competitive market. In the past, numerous churn prediction models have been proposed, but the current models have a number of flaws that prevent them from being used in real-world large-scale telecom datasets. These schemes, fail to incorporate frequently changing requirements. Data sparsity, noisy data, and the imbalanced nature of the dataset are the other main challenges for an accurate prediction. In this paper, we propose a hybrid model, name as “A Hybrid System for Customer Churn Prediction and Retention Analysis via Supervised Learning (HCPRs)” that used Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (SMOTE) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to address the issue of imbalance class data and feature selection. Data cleaning and normalization has been done on big Orange dataset contains 15000 features along with 50000 entities. Substantial experiments are performed to test and validate the model on Random Forest (RF), Linear Regression (LR), Naïve Bayes (NB) and XG-Boost. Results show that the proposed model when used with XGBoost classifier, has greater Accuracy Under Curve (AUC) of 98% as compared with other methods.     

Enhancing Lipase Biosynthesis by Aspergillus Melleus and its Biocatalytic Potential for Degradation of Polyester Vylon-200

Catalysis Letters - Herein, response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to optimize the bioprocess parameters for improved production of extracellular lipase by Aspergillus melleus and...     

Fast spatiotemporal MACH filter for action recognition

Human action recognition has been an active field of research in computer vision community for the last decade. The spatiotemporal MACH (maximum average correlation height) filter approach has proved to be a very efficient method to solve the problem. It captures the intra-class variability and produces a very high response at the spatiotemporal location $(x,y,t)$ where the action is present in a video. Its computation cost is significantly lower than any other action recognition approach. However, faster algorithm is always needed to perform a computer vision task in real-time. Therefore, we propose a very efficient algorithm for normalized spatiotemporal MACH filtering for action recognition. It is based on the computations performed both in the frequency domain as well as the spatiotemporal domain exploiting integral video. We compare its speed with that of the relevant traditional algorithms and show that our approach drastically outperforms all of them.     

A hybrid genetic algorithm and tabu search approach for post enrolment course timetabling

The post enrolment course timetabling problem (PECTP) is one type of university course timetabling problems, in which a set of events has to be scheduled in time slots and located in suitable rooms according to the student enrolment data. The PECTP is an NP-hard combinatorial optimisation problem and hence is very difficult to solve to optimality. This paper proposes a hybrid approach to solve the PECTP in two phases. In the first phase, a guided search genetic algorithm is applied to solve the PECTP. This guided search genetic algorithm, integrates a guided search strategy and some local search techniques, where the guided search strategy uses a data structure that stores useful information extracted from previous good individuals to guide the generation of offspring into the population and the local search techniques are used to improve the quality of individuals. In the second phase, a tabu search heuristic is further used on the best solution obtained by the first phase to improve the optimality of the solution if possible. The proposed hybrid approach is tested on a set of benchmark PECTPs taken from the international timetabling competition in comparison with a set of state-of-the-art methods from the literature. The experimental results show that the proposed hybrid approach is able to produce promising results for the test PECTPs.     

Polymer‐Based Porous Microcapsules as Bacterial Traps

Exposure to live bacteria and accumulation of dead bacteria during bactericidal processes can cause bacterial infectious diseases, implant failure, and antibacterial surface deterioration. Microcapsules with asymmetrically distributed, funnel‐shaped pores, which are capable of capturing, retaining, and killing bacteria are developed, offering a solution to bacterial contamination in liquids. It is found that bacterial isolation inside microcapsules is mainly driven by the bacteria's own motility and the microcapsules' geometry. After entry into the microcapsule cavity, the bacteria are stably retained inside. The microcapsules shield surrounding cells from exposure to bacterial toxins, as demonstrated by the coculture of rat embryonic fibroblast cells with microcapsules loaded with live Escherichia coli. The microcapsules can be enhanced with a bactericidal coating covering only the interior cavity. This confines the bacteria‐killing process, thereby further increasing biocompatibility. The microcapsules may offer a viable bacteria combatant approach as a potentially advantageous method to eradicate bacterial contamination.