Food, cloth and shelter are three basic necessities of life. Food can be regarded as essential component for growth and survival of human being. So, the source of cooking is one of the most important things in our daily lives. There are various cooking sources of energy like kerosene, LPG, Firewood and Renewable sources etc. and one of them is solar cooking which is a renewable source of energy. Solar cooks are limited by the fact that cooking can only take place during daytime. If a thermal energy storage system is provided to solar cookers, food can be cooked during hours of evening or night. In the last few decades, the cooking sector has used various solar cookers, including the box type solar cooker, flat plate type solar cooker, parabolic dish type solar cooker, evacuated tube type solar cooker and Scheffler dish solar cooker with sensible heat, latent heat and Combined heat storage technologies for the solar cooker. As a result, this paper summarizes the investigation and analysis of the available thermal energy storage materials (sensible heat, latent heat and combined heat storage materials) to store heat during the daytime and use it for purposes other than daytime hours for use in solar cooking application. The current study also compares the Sensible heat, Latent heat and combined heat storage systems for cooking.

Keywords : Solar energy, Solar cooker, Sensible heat storage materials, Latent heat storage materials, Combine heat storage materials, Evening cooking, Energy storage

Micro-expression is a type of facial expression that is manifested for a very short duration. It is difficult to recognize the expression manually because it involves very subtle facial movements. Such expressions often occur unconsciously, and therefore are defined as a basis to help identify the real human emotions. Hence, an automated approach to micro-expression recognition has become a popular research topic of interest recently. Historically, the early researches on automated micro-expression have utilized traditional machine learning methods, while the more recent development has focused on the deep learning approach. Compared to traditional machine learning, which relies on manual feature processing and requires the use of formulated rules, deep learning networks produce more accurate micro-expression recognition performances through an end-to-end methodology, whereby the features of interest were extracted optimally through the training process, utilizing a large set of data. This paper reviews the developments and trends in micro-expression recognition from the earlier studies (hand-crafted approach) to the present studies (deep learning approach). Some of the important topics that will be covered include the detection of micro-expression from short videos, apex frame spotting, micro-expression recognition as well as performance discussion on the reviewed methods. Furthermore, major limitations that hamper the development of automated micro-expression recognition systems are also analyzed, followed by recommendations of possible future research directions.

Keywords: Micro-expression; Apex frame; Spotting; Emotion Recognition; Deep Learning

This study focuses on dam structures in Nigeria, its availability, features, usefulness, benefits and costs, functionality and sustainability. The gap found in World Commission on Dams (WCD) Report on Dam Development being inability to proffer solutions to problems encountered by the downstream population was highlighted and discussed also. The procedure for this research work involved use of journals, books and other related literature. It was observed that many dam projects in Nigeria are lacking in areas of feasibility studies, design and construction procedure, operation and maintenance, which resulted to dam related problems like flooding and sometimes collapse of some dams. Downstream population rather than reaping abundant dam benefits record costs since their means of livelihood is hampered, affecting their social, environmental and economic well-being. This study observed that Nigeria has large, medium and small dams which are also single and multipurpose. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is recommended for each dam project and a committee should be set-up to monitor its implementation to the later, from inception to end of the project for its sustainability. This paper recommends fresh attention to dam impacts on upstream and downstream population to enable them benefit immensely from these river valley projects.

Keywords: Dam Engineering, World Commission on Dams, Benefits and Costs, Downstream, Environmental Impact Assessment, Sustainability.

In many arid and semi-arid regions, collapsible soils are well-known to be problematic in nature and negatively affect the performance of engineering structures. Gypseous soil considers one of the well-known types of collapsible soil. It represents a real challenge to engineers due to different problems encountered by engineering projects implemented in this soil. The mineralogy, composition, and fabric of gypseous soil affect its ability to deform when subjected to wetting (due to changing the whole structure soil particles). Numerous studies considered the problems of gypseous soils and their treatment with different additives and using different methods. In this paper, the properties of gypsum (physical appearances, hardness, density, chemical structure), gypsum effect on soil properties (specific gravity, compaction properties, shear strength), main geotechnical properties of gypseous soils, their problems, and different important additives (traditional and non-traditional) and methods used in gypseous soils problems mitigation have been discussed. Gypsum is one of unpredictable materials that have different forms, low hardness, and low density. Gypsum is the main occurring source of sulphate in soils, it affects their geotechnical properties to different degrees depending on its content, the presence of the other salts (than gypsum), soil gradation and type, and organic matters. There is a critical gypsum content beyond which gypsum negatively affects the shear strength of soils, this content is (10-20)%. Finally, although there are many additives used in the treatment of gypsum soil, the use of some additives should be done with caution to avoid destructive results, especially with clay gypseous soil.

Keywords: Gypseous soils; Collapse; Stabilization; Wetting and soaking; Soil improvement

The present study focuses on the synthesis of stable metal oxide nanoparticles (MO-NPs) using Aloe Vera Barbadensis leaf extracts via a green route approach. The MO-NPs were synthesized by the interaction of Aloe-Barbadensis leaf extract with metaloxide salt and its azodye (Congo red). These NPs were then characterized using SEM (surface morphology), XRD (Crystallography structure, peaks of MO-NPs), UV-Vis (Absorption spectrum) and FTIR (presence of functional group). The SEM images revealed the surface morphology of nano sized powder while the XRD results showed that the particle size ranged between 5-30 nm. The UV-Vis absorption spectrum revealed that the MO-NPs are iron and copper oxide respectively. FTIR data, on the other hand, indicated the hydroxyl (OH) functional group stretching due to the presence of alcohols and phenolic chemicals in the extract. Moreover, the effect of physical properties such as solution concentration, their PH and MO-NPs adsorbent dosage on percentage of dye degradation was also determined. As per results, the NPs removed about 70-80% of Congo red dye solution at optimum condition of reaction factors. The dynamics of pseudo-second order was followed in the adsorption process by MO-NPs.

Keywords: Aloe barbadensis, Metal oxide nanoparticles (MO-NPs), Cogo red.

Vision-based inspection of printed circuit board (PCB) soldering defects was studied for preparing feature data and classifying the overall PCB soldering defects on a PCB prototype into different classes. The image data of overall PCB soldering defects on a PCB prototype was developed using an image sensor camera. Image data augmentation was conducted to enhance the dataset volume. Image pre-processing included image resizing, image colour conversion, and image denoising. Watershed-based image segmentation was performed in the image post-processing to segmented images; then, feature extraction was conducted using curvelet transform to prepare image feature data. The feature data as the statistical data include kurtosis, contrast, energy, homogeneity, and variance. These data were analysed, and the percentage difference of mean values of statistical data between image classes was calculated. Kurtosis had the highest percentage difference among the statistical data. In the comparison of the mean values, kurtosis obtained 4.97% difference for the class of good and medium condition; 17.02% difference for the good and bad condition; and 12.08% difference for the bad and medium condition. Through this analysis, kurtosis is considered more reliable data for the machine-learning based classification in this project. The extracted data can be applied in future studies to classify overall solder joint defects on a PCB prototype by artificial neural network in machine learning classification.

Keywords: Solder joints defect; Watershed transform; Curvelet transform; Statistical data

Nanoparticles have a size of 1nm-100nm in any one of the three dimensions. Smaller nanoparticles have different physical, chemical and biological properties than atoms and molecules. Metals, non-oxide ceramic materials, metal oxides, silicates, and polymers, and organic and biomolecular components can be used to create material nanoparticles. Nanoparticles come in various shapes, like spheres, platelets, cylinders, and tubes. Green synthesized nanoparticles are not costly due to unemployment of toxic and hazardous compounds. Plants are widely spread, freely accessible, and safe to touch. They also supply a variety of metabolic compounds which are advantageous in reducing, capping and stabilizing process throughout in synthesis process. The reduction mechanism is based on the phytochemicals present in plant extract. In present work we synthesize silver nanoparticles by using Murraya Koenigii leaves through ecofriendly method. For synthesis of Silver nanoparticles, Silver nitrate (AgNO3) used as metal precursor salt and green extract of Murraya Koenigii used as reducing and capping agent for formation of nanoparticles. The nanoparticles then formed characterized by X-ray diffraction, Scanning electron microscope, Energy dispersive spectroscopy, Dynamic light scattering, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and optical properties by UV-Visible spectroscopy. XRD revealed the crystalline structure of silver nanoparticles, FESEM and Dynamic light scattering reveled the particle size of 60 nm, FTIR revealed the presence of different functional groups which are attached with sample and Optical properties of sample revealed by UV-Visible spectroscopy that also satisies different experimental results.

Keywords: Silver nitrate; Nanoparticle; Green extract; Murraya Koenigii

Aluminium is a non ferrous corrosive resistance metal mainly used in automotive coolers, inter coolers and radiators. They are the part of automobile vehicles and made from aluminium alloys. The joints in this application are created by fusion welding process specifically Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) and Pulsed current TIG (PCTIG) welding process. The working temperature range of different coolers, radiators are 20° C to 300° C and pressure ranges from 2.5 bar to 3.5 bar. During actual working of coolers, the weld joint experiences sudden high level and low level temperature changes. These will create high thermal stresses in the joints. It leads to cracking in the weld region and create failure of the weld joints. Various factors such as mechanical, metallurgical and thermal are responsible for cracking in the weld joints. Range of solidification temperature is one of metallurgical factor, stress generation is mechanical factor and cooling rate of weld metal is thermal factor for cracking. Houldcroft weldability test is employed to identify the cracking susceptibility (CS) of the weld. The current investigation is intended to discover the effect of pulse TIG welding process parameters on the mechanical properties and cracking susceptibility of precipitated aluminium Al-Mg-Si alloy. Diverse pulsed TIG welding process parameters such as peak current (Ip), base current (Ib) and frequency (f) were investigated with the objective of identify the tensile strength, yield strength and cracking susceptibility. The corresponding findings of optimum parameters are 180 peak current (Ip), 60 A base current (Ib) and at 6 Hz frequency (f) with tensile strength of 185.55 MP, yield strength 156.62 MPa. The significant of each parameter for tensile strength are Ip, Ib, Ip*Ib, Ip*f and Ib*f. The corresponding contributions in % are 14.56, 49.49, 12.26, 5.44, 12.15, 5.04, and 1.05 respectively. The statistical method such as Taguchi was employed for experiment design. Weldability test (Fishbone test) was performed on standard specimen and the cracking susceptibility index was identified. The cracking susceptibility index 5.26 % were observed with the value of 180 A of Ip, 80 A of Ib & 2 Hz of frequency (f).The results give an idea about the effect of pulsed TIG welding parameters on mechanical properties and cracking susceptibility.

Keywords : PCTIG welding; Houldcroft weldability test; cracking susceptibility; tensile strength; yield Strength

Professionals are integral to the project. However, conflicts of interest among professional such as clients and contractors, project managers, architects play an important role in unethical practices that have an adverse effect in the construction industry. Therefore, this study aims to identify the effects of unethical issues that occur among the professionals in Klang Valley construction industry. The data collection has been conducted via questionnaire survey and has been analyzed using SPSS. Most respondents agree that “Delay of construction project” is the main effect of unethical behavior with a mean of 4.36 and SD= 0.848. When a project is delayed, it would cause major problems such as project abandonment, cost overrun, conflicts against parties and poor-quality works. This is because a project depends on the cost and time in order to be completed. Furthermore, a delayed project leads to a rushed project that will cause defective works. Frequent maintenance will be needed for repairing works, thus increasing the cost to bear in the project itself. Lastly, it is recommended that the timeframe for future studies should be increased to allow researchers to have sufficient time to collect more data in order to improve the accuracy and reliability of data collected.

Keywords: Professionals; unethical behavior; construction industry; effects; Klang Valley

The construction industry is a risky and complex industry involving various parties characterized with different objectives, skills, cultures, and values. This requires effective communication management to facilitate interaction between them and ensure delivery of successful projects. The poor performance of the Malaysian construction sector has its root in poor communication. Poor communication may result in project failure. Therefore, this paper is essential to investigate the effects of communication issues in the construction industry. This research study was conducted and analysed using SPSS Software. The five-point Likert type scale has been adopted for the questions which is distributed to over 121 respondents who are working in the construction industry around Petaling Jaya, Klang Valley, Malaysia. A total of 8 effects of poor communication in the construction industry were identified. The most dominant effect is time overrun while other effects include project failure, cost overrun, fatal and non-fatal accidents, waste generation, increase carbon footprint and contribute to greenhouse effect. However, questionnaire surveys may result in dishonest answers. Hence, the study recommends conducting physical interviews to better understand respondents view on the negative impacts of poor communication and at the same time, raise awareness as a strategic approach to achieve successful construction projects.

Keywords: Construction Industry; effects of poor communications; poor communication; Klang Valley, Malaysia

Existing single-lane free flow (SLFF) tolling systems either heavily rely on contact-based treadle sensor to detect the number of vehicle wheels or manual operator to classify vehicles. While the former is susceptible to high maintenance cost due to wear and tear, the latter is prone to human error. This paper proposes a vision-based solution to SLFF vehicle classification by adapting a state-of-the-art object detection model as a backbone of the proposed framework and an incremental training scheme to train our VehicleDetNet in a continual manner to cater the challenging problem of continuous growing dataset in real-world environment. It involved four experiment set-ups where the first stage involved CUTe datasets. VehicleDetNet is utilized for the framework of vehicle detection, and it presents an anchorless network which enable the elimination of the bounding boxes of candidates’ anchors. The classification of vehicles is performed by detecting the vehicle’s location and inferring the vehicle’s class. We augment the model with a wheel detector and enumerator to add more robustness, showing improved performance. The proposed method was evaluated on live dataset collected from the Gombak toll plaza at Kuala Lumpur-Karak Expressway. The results show that within two months of observation, the mean accuracy increases from 87.3 % to 99.07 %, which shows the efficacy of our proposed method.

Keywords: Single-lane free flow (SLFF); automated vehicle detection and classification (AVC)

Oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) is one of the major biomass wastes produced from palm oil extraction process. Due to high cellulose content in OPEFB, the cellulose fibers in OPEFB can be extracted and utilized in versatile applications as a sustainable process technology development. Among multiple pre-treatment processes, chemical pre-treatment is most efficient for the removal of hemicellulose and lignin in extracting high purity cellulose from lignocellulosic biomass. With the undisputed importance of green technology for the progress of our society, it is vital to engage and leverage on green technology in chemical pre-treatment method for extracting cellulose from OPEFB. The objective of this study is to explore a green extraction method for cellulose from OPEFB using low concentration and eco-friendly chemicals. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and field emission scanning electron microscope was used to detect the functional groups and to observe the surface morphology of OPEFB, de-waxed OPEFB fibers, delignified OPEFB fibers, acid hydrolyzed OPEFB fibers, and OPEFB extracted cellulose fibers at different stages in confirming the removal of wax, lignin, and hemicellulose from OPEFB extracted cellulose at the end of the extraction process. Crystallinity index increased from 28% for OPEFB to 72% for the OPEFB extracted cellulose, affirms the degradation of OPEFB’s amorphous structure and transforms into higher crystallinity structure. This work has successfully developed a green extraction method for OPEFB cellulose fibers as part of sustainable process technology which would promote the utilization of lignocellulosic agricultural waste from palm oil industry in various applications.

Keywords: Cellulose; Chemical pre-treatment; Extraction; Green technology, Oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB)

Rice husk is widely recognized as significant biomass containing cellulose, lignin and silica. Usually, rice husk is combusted for energy purposes but it contributes to severe environmental pollution. Therefore, the integrated components of rice husk (i.e. silica) can be extracted and converted into value-added products. However, the metallic impurities must be removed before further extraction. Generally, rice husk is leached with conventional acids such as HCl and nitric acid, however, the present study has used aqua regia and compared the results with conventional acids. The leached rice husk samples were characterized using TGA, SEM and EDX. The results of the present work indicate that the aqua regia carries a significant leaching potential to remove metallic impurities from rice husk with 1 M and 2 M solutions removing more than 98% and 99% of impurities respectively. However, its brief chemical stability compels it to be prepared and used immediately.

Keywords: Aqua regia; leaching agent; rice husk

With the uprising trend of modern management systems adoption, the enthusiasm for corporates to exercise the working culture of work from home are seemingly proliferated to fit in the recent corporate world. However, the published research papers and statistics regarding the information and comprehension of quantity surveyor to work from home are unexpectedly sporadic. Therefore, this research reviews the insights of quantity surveyor to work from home while drawing discussion and conclusion on the uprising challenges of work from home for quantity surveyors to execute their roles. The paper compiles the responses obtained from the methodology of surveying 145 related professions in construction industry around Klang Valley area. The questionnaire was designed with five-point Likert scale, and the data was analyzed by using SPSS software. The study displayed reduced supervision and direction as the greatest challenge, followed by significant challenges which include communication and coordination challenges, organization performance and productivity, job performance and productivity, and unclear performance metrics. Hence, personnel in the industry should be aware of the potential challenges of a quantity surveyor to work from home due to their roles, in order to indicate the potential effects that may incur to the individual and organization.

Keywords: Quantity surveyor; work from home; challenges; Klang Valley; SPSS

In construction, the successful completion of a project is accomplished through an of efficient project management. All construction-related disciplines working together are responsible for the completion of the project by the stipulated completion date. However, poor professional employees’ retention is a significant issue in the construction industry. The objective of this paper is to identify the determinants of employee turnover in the Malaysian construction industry with a focus on professional employees. This study employed a doctrinal research approach consisting of a qualitative research design. Two databases were used, in which four cases were obtained from the Labour Court and 19 cases were obtained from the Industrial Court. Data has been analysed through application of the thematic analysis concept. Findings in this study indicate three main themes of employee turnover determinants in construction industry namely organisation, personal and external determinant. Inconsistencies of finding were found in current data as compared to previous studies including training and development, compensation, stress, job satisfaction and external determinants. Since the data focuses on Malaysia court cases, it is recommended that in the future data from other countries to be included. It is also proposed that a diverse range of industries should be analysed in future studies to arrive at an in-depth conclusion. Finally, recommendation for future studies to include more occupational groups for more generalised findings.

Keywords: Construction Project management; Construction industry; Employee turnover; Construction professionals

Various factors affect the standard method of measurement adoption in civil construction projects, especially in developing countries such as Malaysia. Hence, this study investigates the relationship between affected factors towards standard adoption using the SEM approach. As a case study, this study focused on quantity surveyors working at a consulting firm in Selangor, Malaysia. This study identifies the effect of standard measuring technique adoption in Malaysian building projects that have a beneficial impact. The factors research model is the first stage in determining the reasons for using the most recent standard measuring technique in civil engineering construction projects and explaining the link between the barrier factors and standard adoption. The information was gathered using a questionnaire survey sent to participants at construction firms that used the standard measurement method. The PLS-SEM approach was used by SmartPLS 3 software to construct and assess a hierarchical model to assess variables and their effects on measuring method adoption. The findings revealed that 17 barrier factor indicators had a significant impact on adopting the standard assessment technique. The coefficient of determination (R2 value) of 0.307 represents the proportion of variance in the dependent variable that one or more predictor variables can explain. Furthermore, the conceptual model’s predictive significance value Q2 is 0.156 greater than zero, indicating that it can predict endogenous latent components. The measured effect size (f2) between the barrier factors (exogenous latent) and the adoption of the model’s standard (endogenous latent) was 0.443, indicating that the developed model had significant explanatory power to represent the relationship among the variables of the factors and the effect on measurement method adoption. There is a need to improve the methods and increase the driver elements described in this study to promote the adoption of standard measurement in construction projects, which impacts the adoption of the standard method of measuring. In the future, researchers can start from this study to compare the situation in Malaysia with developed countries to discover shortcomings and develop a framework for measurement factors that can be applied.

Keywords: Standard measurement method; effected factors; construction projects; structural equation modelling

Giving birth to a child is one of the precious moments in life. Every second a life is brought into the world and not many children are lucky enough to be healthy. Monitoring the health conditions of a baby in the incubator is a critical medical issue. Many researchers are working in this area to improve the safety of newborn babies. As far as the study that we proceeded with, there exists a fundamental issue in ensuring whether the doctor has attended the emergency or not. In this paper, a system is proposed to monitor the baby inside the incubator using a global system for mobile technology (GSM). The proposed system detects the baby’s temperature, heartbeat, weight, and baby’s sound inside the incubator. If there are any changes in the above-said parameters beyond the threshold level, an intimation will be sent to the concerned doctor through the GSM. The system will keep sending the alert message to the doctor every minute until the doctor acknowledges the baby’s condition. This system will enhance the safety of newborn babies by addressing the above-said issue, thereby reducing the risk involved in monitoring the babies inside the incubator. A prototype is developed and it was tested for functional verification.

Keywords: Incubator; GSM; temperature; heartbeat; weight; sound; baby

Pavement modulus is believed as one of the important features to characterize the pavement condition, specifically the pavement stiffness. The value of pavement modulus may be calculated using the existing Witczak mathematical dynamic pavement modulus prediction formulae. However, the equation developed by Witczak is heavily impacted by temperature while underestimating the impact of other mixing factors thus, only offering an adequate approximation for the circumstances for which they were designed. In this study, the Spectral Analysis of Surface Wave (SASW) test data was used to develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) that accurately backcalculates pavement profiles in real-time. The pavement modulus calculated from the equation was validated by using ANN developed in Matlab software to avoid any mistakes during calculation based on the equation. Three parameters, shear wave velocity, depth and thickness from SASW test data were used as inputs and elastic modulus calculated using Witczak pavement modulus equation was used as an output to train the models developed in ANN. Five segments of pavement are presented in this paper where almost compromise that the greater the depth, the lesser the shear wave velocity as well as pavement modulus. Nine neural network models were developed in this study. The network architecture of 4-80-4 is the most optimized network with the highest correlation coefficient of 0.9992, 0.9994, 1.0, 0.9996 for validation, testing, training and all respectively. The created ANN models’ final outputs were reasonable and relatively similar to the real output.

Keywords: SASW; ANN; Pavement Modulus; Network Architecture

Degradation of water quality due to the presence of pollutants in water is an emerging issue in many countries, including Malaysia. Phytoremediation is one of the environmentally friendly, cost-effective conventional technologies that are still used in modern times. However, the selection of plant species is the most important aspect for the application of phytoremediation in wastewater treatment. Nevertheless, there are species of floating aquatic macrophytes that are capable of coping with various pollutants present in wastewater. Among the various floating aquatic macrophyte species, water hyacinth (WH) and water lettuce (WL) have been described as effective phytoremediators in reducing water pollution through bioaccumulation in their body tissues. Hence, WH and WL were chosen in this study as it is easily found, propagated, and cultivated. This paper aims to determine the biosorption capacity of these species in eliminating various pollutants present in wastewater as well as to define the optimum harvesting time for each species. Although these floating aquatic macrophytes are considered the most problematic plants due to their uncontrollable growth in water bodies worldwide, their ability to remove pollutants from wastewater has created a sustainable approach for their use in phytoremediation. In this sense, the use of phytoremediation by implementing the invasive floating aquatic macrophytes can certainly support the sustainable management of wastewater treatment in the future. Based on the results, it was found that WH efficiently removed higher PO43-, NO3- and NO2- concentrations compared to WL from the wastewater. Both WH and WL showed the same trend of correlation between the growth rate and sugar content, where the sugar content increased when the plants reached the highest growth rate. The maximum nutrient uptake occurred in 14-17 days, proving that nutrient availability is critical for plant growth. This study concludes that the sugar content of WH and WL are increased with the biomass growth rate, and both plants species are competent in eradicating the nutrient pollution in wastewater. On top of that, this study infers that the maximum harvesting period for WH biomass is on day 18, while WL biomass is on day 21; based on the highest sugar content and biomass weight of each species.

Keywords: Biomass growth rate; nutrients; phytoremediation; sugar content; water hyacinth; water lettuce

A concrete box culvert with a dimension of 2.1 x 2.1 m and a concrete pipe culvert of 0.9 m diameter founded on soft soil were experiencing soil settlement causing undulation and discomfort to the traffic users. Voids that appeared beneath the culvert foundations triggering the road surface to sag. Objectives of the study are to assess the settlement of culverts underlain by soft soil using PLAXIS simulations on the initial subsoil conditions, after rehabilitation works with Polygeo foam injection and to evaluate the performance of Polygeo foam as a rehabilitation method. The settlement of the culverts underlain by the soft soil will be determined using finite element model based on the data and information obtained from geoforensic assessments including 12 nos. of deep borehole as well as soil laboratory tests. There were six culverts area undergone settlement problem, with two boreholes were executed at the side of each culvert. Throughout the five-year period of Post Construction stage with Polygeo rehabilitation works, the pipe culvert was shown to settle around 22 mm whilst the box culvert with pile settled around 14 mm. The study concluded that the rehabilitation works using Polygeo foam has been successfully reduced the rate of settlement and complied to JKR settlement criteria.

Keywords: Culvert; finite element method; polygeo foam injection; geoforensic; settlement

Baghdad city population is growing rapidly and soon it will reach 10 million, and this has increased the number of drivers on city streets which accompanied with the absence of adequate traffic enforcement and traffic control devices to match this increase. Current research main objective is to assess city drivers and passenger’s compliance to use seat belts as a safety precaution. The study consists of two main surveys conducted in the field considering gender, vehicle type, and other drivers characteristics. The first one consists of a questionnaire asking respondents to answer multiple choice questions about seat belt use and other questions associated with respondents’ demographics. Whereas second part involves observing seat belt use among city drivers and passengers at selected locations. Also, we sought information about seat belt use as a driver, front seat passenger, and rear seat passenger. Only 20% of the sample in field observational survey were wearing seat belt as a driver. Printed questionnaire reveals that only 12% are used to buckle up all the time, and 28% never use seat belt in their life, and the rest use seat belt occasionally. Seat belt rates for passengers were 5% only, and most passengers do not care about seat belts and many cars have disabled or malfunction seat belts. Four reasons for putting seat belt were considered and ranked as to avoid injuries, to avoid fines, to follow seat belt law, and wearing seat belt when people in the same car are wearing it.

Keywords: Traffic safety, seat belt use, seat belt awareness, traffic surveys

Natural fibres in composite materials, such as kenaf fibres, are used to reinforce polypropylene (PP) due to their light weight and high mechanical performance required in various applications, such as automotive. Although natural fibres seem to be the most promising material, manufacturing parameters and material composition are crucial to determining balanced output performance. Therefore, this study provides essential knowledge on defining the parameters and the effect of addition of graphene content to kenaf fibres composites using computer simulation via Abaqus CAE software. Detailed analyses were compared with the experimental data of Young’s modulus and tensile strength. General static and dynamic explicit analyses were conducted using Abaqus CAE simulations, and set at 40 wt. % kenaf fibres, 0, 1, 3, and 5 wt. % graphene. Short kenaf fibres were utilised together with graphene nanoplatelets and prepared using a hot-pressing technique with the temperature set at 190 °C and pressure of 5 MPa for 5 min. The findings indicated that the simulation and experimental data from previous studies data congruent which is Young’s modulus and tensile strength increased with addition of graphene content. Thus, the simulated data could predict the experimental mechanical performance, in which 24 MPa of tensile strength was recorded for 3 wt. % of graphene additions.

Keywords: Traffic safety, seat belt use, seat belt awareness, traffic surveys

Public transportation provides basic mobility services to various types of facility actions including those involving education, employment, medical care, and recreation. The general goal of this study was to develop a model with respect to travel time. Public bus transport which connects two cities, A/Hitam- B/Pahat), was selected to conduct this study. Factors such as departure delays, route length, delays at marked traffic light intersections, delays at bus stops, and bus speeds were collected using observation methods. SPSS is a methodological tool used for statistical analysis. The results of the analysis showed a strong positive correlation of ‘0.942’ between travel time and route length, a moderate positive correlation of ‘0.697’ between travel time and delay at marked traffic light intersections, a weak correlation of ‘0.272’ between travel and departure time. delay with a significance level of 0.05. The determination coefficient showed a great regression explanatory power with R2 = 0.954. and (P <0.001). SPSS is also used to examine the data and generate models.

Keywords: Model development, reliability travel time, public bus, delay time, SPSS

Inertial can be defined as disinclination to motion, action, or change. The inertia of an object is the propensity to remain at rest or if in motion, stays in motion at a steady speed. MPU6050 is one of the low-cost motion tracking sensors that contain a 3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis accelerometer orientation measurement. It is used to analyse the movement or location of a person in an indoor environment. This research is to analyse the accuracy of the inertial measurement of the MPU 6050 sensor. Next, is to improve the achievable accuracy rate up to 95% using the complementary filter and finally to visualize the results on an IoT platform. This MPU6050 sensor is beneficial to an emergency responder such as the firefighter’s department. The accurate inertial measurement and location will help to detect the movement and the motion of the firefighter during operation, especially in an indoor environment. The sensor will detect and collects the inertial measurement of an emergency responder and transmit the data wirelessly by using ESP8266 NodeMCU. Finally, the results can be viewed on an IoT platform. However, the results obtained from the MPU 6050 sensor is not perfectly accurate as there is noise during the measurement. Therefore, a complementary filter is used and analysed in this research. It is expected that the inertial location’s accuracy could be improved by 95% that will provide a precise movement and location of the firefighter during operation.

Keywords: Inertial; gyroscope; accelerometer; complimentary filter; MPU6050 sensor

Children with autism are known for their difficulties in social interaction, communication, and behaviour characteristics. Hence, this study proposed to develop a markerless-based gait method for anomaly gait detection in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Firstly, a depth sensor is used during walking gait data collection of the 23 ASD children and 30 typical healthy developing (TD) children. Further, these walking gait data are divided into the Reference Joint (REF) and Direct Joint (DIR) features. For each type, five sets of features are derived that represents the whole body, upper body, lower body, the right and left side of the body. The three classifiers used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method are Naïve Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). Results showed that the highest accuracy, precisely 94.22%, is achieved using the ANN classifier with DIR1 gait features representing the whole body. The highest sensitivity and specificity obtained are 94.49% and 93.93% accordingly. In addition, the proposed markerless model using the DIR1 gait features and the ANN as classifier also outperformed previous studies that have utilised the marker-based model. This promising result showed that the proposed method could be used for early intervention for the ASD group. The markerless-based gait technique also has fewer experiment protocols, thus causing the ASD children to feel more comfortable.

Keywords: ASD children; autism; gait classification; gait features; markerless-based.

Nanofiber Polyethersulfone (PES) membrane fabrication using the electrospinning method incorporating dry/wet phase inversion was investigated. The electrospinning process is a straightforward and versatile method to produce one-dimensional nanostructures, especially nanofibers. The electrospun’s outcome can be affected by the various process parameters and solution parameters, making it an interesting study subject and an opportunity for customized nanofiber membrane. In this work, the analysis includes dope formulation and electrospinning parameter influence to membrane morphology dimensional structure based on Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and filtration capability. Fibrous membranes were electrospun at 1 to 3 ml/h feeding rate and at 12 to 25kV voltage rate in a fixed 10 to 12 cm distance between the filter membrane and the syringe needle tip. The PES dope solution with N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as solvent electrospun onto a wet filter base membrane (5A 90 mm Advantec Filter Paper) to refine the fabricated fibrous membrane and to induce the dry-wet phase inversion process. The results indicate that the PES fiber dimension reduced at a lower feeding rate and higher voltage rate. In terms of liquid separation performance, experimental results showed that pure water permeation flux was reduced with the increased flow spinning rate of 1 to 3ml/hr but triple times higher than the increased concentration PES formulation, even at higher voltage spinning. The electrospun performance of polyethersulfone was also explained using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). It focused on the polymer content, tip-to-collector distance, and flow rate parameters toward fiber diameter and contact angle. Among these factors, the effect of PES content (f-value = 65.87) was the most significant, followed by tip-to-collector distance (f-value = 11.26) and flow rate (f-value = 2.59).

Keywords: Polyethersulfone (PES), tight ultrafiltration, electrospinning, water separation performance Response-Surface Methodology (RSM).