Exploring the relationship between Internet ethics in university students and the big five model of personality

The widespread use of the Internet and the convenient mechanism it provides, such as easy access, easy downloads, and easy copy and paste functions have made many types of unethical behaviors easier, particularly those involving students in academic settings. Among the issues in ethics within the academic environment that can be triggered by the Internet are fraudulence, plagiarism, falsification, delinquency, unauthorized help, and facility misuse. Given these issues, the study seeks to investigate the extent to which students at a public university in Malaysia engage in such unethical behavior and their relationship with the big five personality model. This study was conducted using a survey method of 252 students in three different academic faculties. The results of factor analyses confirm and refine the reliability of the scales for both big five personality variables and unethical Internet behaviors as conceptualized through Internet triggered academic dishonesty (ITADS). The findings indicate that personality traits such as (1) agreeableness, (2) conscientiousness and (3) emotional stability are significantly and negatively correlated with unethical Internet behavior in university students. Significant differences in facility misuse are also observed between the three academic faculties investigated. This research should provide significant contributions to educators in designing the computer ethics curriculum and in allowing for educational institutions as well as other organizations in developing relevant policies and guidelines on matters pertaining to academic conduct, utilization of computers and Internet, and recruitment exercises.     

GENOTOXICITY IN CHIRONOMUS KIIENSIS (CHIRONOMIDAE: DIPTERA) AFTER EXPOSURE TO POLLUTED SEDIMENTS FROM RIVERS OF NORTH PENINSULAR MALAYSIA: IMPLICATION FOR ECOTOXICOLOGICAL MONITORING

Rapid industrialization and urbanization has led to increasing input of chemical contaminants into the aquatic environment of Malaysia. Despite the threat civilization poses to the biota, there are still very few relevant studies on ecotoxicological testing of river ecosystems. To overcome this knowledge gap, we examined lethal and genotoxic effects of sediments from different rivers of the northern Malaysia against Chironomus kiiensis, a group well represented in the aquatic fauna of this region. We exposed the larvae to sediments from Selama River (SR), Permatang Rawa River (PRR) and Kilang Ubi River (KUR) at various durations (0, 6, 12, 24 and 48 h). The larval mortality was monitored, whereas DNA damage in survivors' cells was determined using the comet assay. Pollution level indexed by the amounts of heavy metals and other organic contaminants in the sediment showed progressive increases from SR to PRR to KUR. Highly polluted sediments (PRR to KUR) were detrimental to C. kiiensis larvae, most of which did not survive following exposure for long periods. DNA analyses revealed greater damages in nuclei derived from larvae maintained on polluted sediments, in particular, those from KUR. The effects on the genomic material of C. kiiensis larvae occurred in a time‐dependent manner, with damage level increasing as exposure time progressed. Our results highlight the genotoxic properties of polluted sediments. More importantly, this study showed that C. kiiensis larvae could respond to different levels of pollution with respect to exposure time. It is concluded that C. kiiensis larvae is a potential candidate for river ecotoxicological monitoring. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Location allocation modeling for healthcare facility planning in Malaysia

Malaysia has seen tremendous growth in the standard of living and household per capita income. The demand for a more systematic and efficient planning has become increasingly more important, one of the keys to achieving a high standard in healthcare. In this paper, a Maximal Covering Location Problem (MCLP) is used to study the healthcare facilities of one of the districts in Malaysia. We address the limited capacity of the facilities and the problem is formulated as Capacitated MCLP (CMCLP). We propose a new solution approach based on genetic algorithm to examine the percentage of coverage of the existing facilities within the allowable distance specified/targeted by Malaysian government. The algorithm was shown to generate good results when compared to results obtained using CPLEX version 12.2 on a medium size problem consisting of 179 nodes network. The algorithm was extended to solve larger network consisting of 809 nodes where CPLEX failed to produce non-trivial solutions. We show that the proposed solution approach produces significant results in determining good locations for the facility such that the population coverage is maximized.     

Implementation of genetic algorithm in an embedded microcontroller-based polarization control system

Implementation of genetic algorithm in a PIC32MX microcontroller-based polarization control system is proposed and demonstrated. The controller measures the signal intensity that is used to estimate the genetic value. This process is controlled by the genetic algorithm rather than referring to the Look-Up-Table as implemented in existing solutions. To reach optimum performance, the code is optimized by using the best genetic parameters so that the fastest execution time can be achieved. An ability of genetic algorithm to work efficiently in polarization control system possesses many advantages including easy code construction, low memory consumption and fast control speed. Genetic algorithm is intelligent enough to be used for endless polarization stabilization and in the worst case, able to stabilize the polarization changes in 300 μs. In the best case the response time can reach 17 μs.     

Multisensor Fusion: An Autonomous Mobile Robot

A conventional autonomous mobile robot is introduced. The main idea is the integration of many conventional and sophisticated sensor fusion techniques, introduced by several authors in recent years. We show the actual possibility of integrating all these techniques together, rather than analyzing implementation details. The topics of multisensor fusion, observation integration and sensor coordination are widely used throuhout the article. The final goal is to demonstrate the validity of both mathematical and artificial intelligence techniques in guaranteeing vehicle survival in a dynamic environment, while the robot carries out a specific task. We review conventional techniques for the management of uncertainty while we describe an implementation of a mobile robot which combines on-line heterogeneous sensors in its navigation and localisation tasks.     

Recent developments in catalyst synthesis using DBD plasma for reforming applications

The catalyst has a significant role in gas processing applications such as reforming technologies for H₂ and syngas production. The stable catalyst is requisite for any industrial catalysis application to make it commercially viable. Several methods are employed to synthesize the catalysts. However, there is still a challenge to achieve a controlled morphology and pure catalyst which majorly influences the catalytic activity in reforming applications. The conventional methods are expansive, and the removal of the impurities are major challenges. Nevertheless, it is not straightforward to achieve the desired structure and stability. Therefore, significant interest has been developed on the advanced techniques to take control of the physicochemical properties of the catalyst through non-thermal plasma (NTP) techniques. In this review, the systematic evolution of the catalyst synthesis using NTP technique is elucidated. The emerging DBD plasma to synthesized and effective surface treatment is reviewed. DBD plasma synthesized catalyst performance in reforming application for H₂ and syngas production is summarised. Furthermore, the status of DBD plasma for catalyst synthesis and proposed future avenues to design environmentally suitable and cost-effective synthesis techniques are discussed.     

Reduction of the Nitrate Content in Baby Spinach Leaves by Vacuum Impregnation with Sucrose

Vacuum impregnation (VI) has been widely utilized as a pre-treatment method prior to, e.g., the minimal processing, freezing, or drying of foods. In many cases, VI has been used to focus on the enrichment of fruits and vegetables with probiotics or micronutrients, texture enhancement, the modification of the sensory attributes, and extension of shelf life by pH reduction. However, little attention has been paid to the exploration of the metabolic consequences of VI that could lead to changes in the quality characteristics of plant tissues. Since nitrate has long been discussed as a compound that is harmful to human health, the aim of this investigation was to reduce the nitrate content in spinach leaves by feeding sucrose into the tissue using VI. The leaves, either non-treated or treated with VI, were stored under saturated humidity conditions and in darkness at 8 °C, for up to 72 h. VI-treated leaves showed a remarkable reduction in nitrate content as compared to the non-treated samples. Upon storage, sucrose was reduced, indicating that this sugar had been respired and had induced metabolization of the stored nitrate. The nitrite content of the treated leaves was unaffected, proving that this toxic compound was not accumulated in the baby spinach leaves upon external sucrose feeding.     

Analysis of fading statistics in cellular mobile communication systems

Spatial channel models are often proposed for modeling the angular aspects of mobile radio channel in picocell, microcell, and macrocellular environments. These models are validated through comparison with available measurement results. The comparisons are usually based on the fitness of their pdfs of angle of arrival to the histogram of occurrences of the signals over an angular span, given in the measurement data. This paper presents a comparison of the notable scattering models with various spatial channel measurements. The paper suggests criteria for the comparative analysis of the previously proposed spatial channel models and measurements on the basis of their fading statistics. Quantitative analysis of the considered models and the field measurements is also presented using multipath shape factors i.e. angle spread, the angular constriction and direction of maximum fading. Based on the obtained shape factors, fading statistics like level crossing rates, average fade duration, auto-covariance and coherence distance are evaluated. Effect of increasing Doppler spread on the level crossing rates and average fade duration is also elaborated in detail.     

Optimal channel coordination in use-based product-service system contracts

Nowadays, service economy efficiencies are key to keep competitiveness and increase market advantages. The development of Product-Service Systems (PSS) can be an interesting strategy as they seek to improve the business performance of all the participants in the value chain. This paper proposes a novel reliability-based reward scheme for use-oriented PSS contracts. In a PSS instead of paying for the product, the client pays a fee for its performance. The contribution of this work to the existing literature is to provide a quantitative tool for the development of a use-oriented PSS contract based on non-repairable component reliability and risk sharing. It can be extended to other performance metrics such as availability and reliability. A well designed PSS achieves a mutual growth agreement for the client and the supplier if it aligns their interests through channel coordination. This is achieved by balancing the improvement in the expected cost and profit for the client and the supplier, respectively. The improvement is measured with respect to a baseline scenario where no PSS contract exists. The methodology is tested using a case study that analyses mining haul truck tires. The results show a significant overall improvement in the main key performance indicators and environmental impact of the value chain.     

Oxidation and Oxidative Bromination Reactions Catalyzed By a Reusable Polymer-Anchored Iron(III) Complex in Water at Room Temperature

A polymer-anchored iron(III) catalyst was synthesized and characterized. Its catalytic activity was evaluated for the oxidation of various alkenes, sulfides, aromatic alcohols and ethylbenzene with 30 % H₂O₂ as the oxidizing agent. The catalyst was also effective for the oxidative bromination reaction with 80–100 % selectivity of monobrominated products with H₂O₂/KBr at room temperature. The above reactions require a minimum amount of H₂O₂ and short reaction time. Most importantly, all the above reactions occur in aqueous medium. The catalyst can be facilely recovered and reused six-atimes without significant decrease in its activity and selectivity.