Biotechnology Commons^™

Narrowing The Digital Divide In Malaysia: Issues And Initiatives, Foo L.N., Lai W.K., Elamzazuthi C.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Equity of and access to information and communication technologies (ICT) is currently a burning issue in many countries around the world. Malaysia, as a nation with about 22 million inhabitants, has taken some strong strides in recent times to bridge the access and equity gaps through appropriate policies and strategic national programmes. This paper will examine some of the key elements of several of these initiatives to bridge the digital divide in the country, in particular, the Titian Digital programme. We will also be identifying some of the major challenges that this programme hopes to resolve.

Mitigating Co Emissions From The Power Sector: Least-Cost Analysis Of Policy Options In Thailand, Limmeechokchai Bundit, Tanatvan Somporn, Shrestha Ram M.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Traditionally, the method used in the electricity generation expansion planning has concentrated only on the supply-side options to identify the sequence of generation additions meet the forecasted demand at a minimum cost. Electricity generation expansion planning with both supply- and demand-side options, commonly known as integrated resource planning are also being used in some developed countries. With growing environmental concerns, especially the emission of air-pollutants from the power generation, demand-side management and clean and efficient generation technology options in the power sector development are getting increasing attention. In this paper, we compare the traditional planning approach with integrated resource planning. …

Steady State Finite Element Analysis Of A Single Stack Cold Plate With Heat Losses, Quadir G. A., Bell Shiao Lin, Seetharamu K. N., Hassan A. Y.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Steady state analysis of a single stack cold plate used for the cooling of electronic components is carried out using the finite element method. The present methodology takes into account the heat losses from the top and bottom surfaces of the stack. In addition dimensionless parameters are used in the analysis. The analysis is divided into two parts: a single unit cell analysis and the analysis of the assembly of several unit cells. The results from the present analysis of a single unit cell for single stack cold plate without heat losses compare well with those available in the literature. …

Thermal Performance Prediction Of Plastics Ball Grid Array (Pbga) Using Artificial Neural Network, Leong C.H., Azid I.A., Seetharamu K.N.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based on feed-forward backpropagation model is used to predict junction temperature in PBG A package. The limited results obtained from FEM (using IDEAS software) are used to train the neural network. The effect of source power, substrate and mold compound thermal conductivity, die size, substrate thickness and air velocity on junction temperature and thermal resistance has been investigated using ANN. The predicted junction temperature using ANN agrees closely with the prediction from FEM. ANN method takes a small fraction of the time and effort compared to that required by HEM for prediction.

Analysis Of Quality Costs For Statistica Quality Control Planning, Chiadamrong N., Thaviwatanachaikul C.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Quality has become one or the most important force leading to organizational success and company growth in national and international markets. The return-on-investment from strong and effective quality programs is providing excellent profitability results in firms with effective quality strategies. Due to the wide variation in quality results, the search for the genuine keys to success in quality has become a matter of deep concern to management of companies. This paper suggests a way to quantifying quality costs. As a result, the appropriate quality strategies can be adjusted and set to match with each company situation based on the categorization …

Fusion Decision For A Bimodal Biometric Verification System Using Support Vector Machine And Its Variations, Teoh A., Samad S.A., Hussain A.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

This paw presents fusion detection technique comparisons based on support vector machine and its variations for a bimodal biometric verification system that makes use of face images and speech utterances. The system is essentially constructed by a face expert, a speech expert and a fusion decision module. Each individual expert has been optimized to operate in automatic mode and designed for security access application. Fusion decision schemes considered are linear, weighted Support Vector Machine (SVM) and linear SVM with quadratic transformation. The conditions tested include the balanced and unbalanced conditions between the two experts in order to obtain the optimum …

Study Of Preparation And Characterization Of Hydroxyapatite Coatings By Sol-Gel Technique, Ramanan Sutapa Roy, Venkatesh Ramanan

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Hydroxyapåtite (HAP) coatings were prepared on glass substrates by sol-gel dip coating method, using a isopropanol solution of calcium nitrate and 2-butanol solution of phosphorous pentoxide as starting precursors and mixing them to get a coating solution with Ca/P ratio of 1.67. The prepared coatings were dried at 150°C and subsequently fired at 500°C to obtain dense coatings. Multilayer coatings were prepared to increase the final thickness. For some samples, SiO2, TiO2, Al2O, and Zr02 coatings modified the interface between the glass and HAP. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, FTIR and DTA/TG were used for characterization. All the coatings obtained …

A Sensitive Assay For Non-Specific N-Methyltransferase Activity In Rat Tissues By High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Electrochemical Detection, Shimbhu Dawan, Kojima Kohichi, Nagatsu Toshiharu

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase (PNMT) and non-specific N -methyltransferase (EC 2.1.1.28) catalyze the N-methylation of aromatic amines. PNMT is specific for phenylethanolamines such as noradrenaline (NA). and catalyzes the step in catecholamine biosynthesis, forming adrenaline (AD) from NA. PNMT activity is high in adrenal gland, whereas non-specific N-methyltransferase is distributed in various tissues such as the lungs. Borchardt et al. first reported a method to detect PNMT activity by high-performance liquid chromatography electrochemical detection (HPLC-EICD), which could demonstrate the activity only in the adrenal medulla and hypothalamus. Recently, Troeewicz et al. reported a highly sensitive assay method for PNMT using HPLC-EICD by …

Advanced Biotechnology Tools For Invasive Species Management, Invasive Species Advisory Committee

National Invasive Species Council

Increasingly, genetic tools are being used to detect and solve pressing environmental, social, and health-related challenges. It is clear that investments in technology innovation can be game changing, as advances in biotechnology may provide new methods to protect the nation’s resources from the negative impacts of invasive species. The current toolbox of management options is recognizably insufficient to deal with many of the high-impact species that have been introduced. However, “surrendering” to these species is generally not a viable option from ecological, health, economic, socio-cultural, or political perspectives. Cost-efficient solutions to these “grand invasive species challenges” need to be found. …

One-Step Hot Formamide Extraction Of Rna From Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Daniel Shedlovskiy, Natalia Shcherbik, Dimitri G Pestov

Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine Departmental Research

Current methods for isolating RNA from budding yeast require lengthy and laborious steps such as freezing and heating with phenol, homogenization with glass beads, or enzymatic digestion of the cell wall. Here, extraction with a solution of formamide and EDTA was adapted to isolate RNA from whole yeast cells through a rapid and easily scalable procedure that does not require mechanical cell lysis, phenol, or enzymes. RNA extracted with formamide-EDTA can be directly loaded on gels for electrophoretic analysis without alcohol precipitation. A simplified protocol for downstream DNase treatment and reverse transcription reaction is also included. The formamide-EDTA extraction of …

A Neuroprotective Role For Mir-1017, A Non-Canonical Mirna, Matthew De Cruz

Master's Theses

miRNAs are post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression, with numerous being involved in neurobiology. Within the human genome a quarter of the identified miRNA loci derive from a class of miRNAs termed tailed mirtrons. Despite the identification of this large population of miRNA, no functional studies have been conducted to identify their role. In this study we examined the highly expressed and deeply conserved Drosophila 3’ tail mirtron, miR-1017, as a candidate to elucidate tailed mirtron functionality. We identified acetylcholine receptor transcripts, Da5 and Da2, as bona fide targets for miR-1017. Interestingly, Da2 is also the host transcript for miR-1017. We …

Development, Evaluation, And Application Of A Novel Error Correction Method For Next Generation Sequencing Data, Isaac Akogwu

Dissertations

Tremendous evolvement in sequencing technologies and the vast availability of data due to decreasing cost of Next-Generation-Sequencing (NGS) has availed scientists the opportunity to address a wide variety of evolutionary and biological issues. NGS uses massively parallel technology to accelerate the process at the expense of accuracy and read length in comparison to earlier Sanger methods. Therefore, computational limitations exist in how much analysis and information can be gleaned from the data without performing some form of error correction.

Error correction process is laborious and consumes a lot of computational resources. Despite the existence of many NGS data error correction …

Deformation Of Wood In Compression During Moisture Movement, Hamdan Sinin, Hasan Mahbub, Yew Chew Meng

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

This work presents the phenomenon of mechano-sorptive strain in the deformation of wood during moisture content (MC) changes. A series of experiments were designed to demonstrate the greatly enhanced deformation due to the mechano- sorptive effect. The purpose of this work is to show the magnitude of mechano-sorptive creep compared to the ordinary viscoelastic creep with applied compressive load. In order to do this, the moisture movement with MC change, moisture movement without MC change and conditions without moisture movement were induced. The unique patterns of strains of various conditions induced in the experiments were observed. The characteristics shown in …

Processing Of Cu-Cr Alloy For Combined High Strength And High Conductivity, Olofinjana A.O, K. S. Tan A. And

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

High strength and high conductivity (HSHC) are two intrinsic properties difficult to combine in metallic alloy design because; almost all strengthening mechanisms also lead to reduced conductivity. Precipitation hardening by nano-sized precipitates had proven to be the most adequate way to achieve the optimum combination of strength and conductivity in copper based alloys. However, established precipitation strengthened Cu- alloys are limited to very dilute concentration of solutes thereby limiting the volume proportion hardening precipitates. In this work, we report the investigation of the reprocessing of higher Cr concentration Cu- based alloys via rapid solidification. It is found that the rapid …

Optical Ph Sensing Material Prepared From Doped Sol-Gel Film For Use In Acid-Base Titration, Ahmad Musa, Tan T.W.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

An optical pH sensing material has been prepared in this study by using sol-gel technique. Bromothymol blue, bromophenol blue and thymol blue were chosen in this study as acidbase indicators for strong acid-strong base, strong acid-weak base and weak acid-strong base titration, respectively. The results show that these indicators could be successfully entrapped inside the sol-gel film and still maintain its chemical behaviour as in solution. The entrapped acid-base indicators respond well to any pH changes and could be used to determine the end-point of the acid-base titration.

Characteristics Of Unsupported Alumina Membrane Prepared Using Sol-Gel Technique, Othman, M.R., Ahmad, A.L., Mukhtar And H.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

A laboratory scale alumina membrane was prepared using sol-gel technique. Results from the experiment demonstrate that the addition of PVA is important for viscosity adjustment to determine the appropriate coating time if the membrane is required for coating on the porous support. The effects of varying PVA content and sintering temperature on the characteristics of the sintered membrane are discussed. In this work, a 2 volume % of PVA solution containing 4g of PVA in lOOml of water was discovered to be adequate to achieve appropriate porosity level and avoid cracks in the gel layer. It was also discovered that …

Membrane Cleaning Using Electric Pulse In Dead End Ultrafiltration Of Proteinaceous Solution, Ahmad' A.L., Azid And I.A.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Dead end ultrafiltration of Bovine Serum Albumine (BSA) using a polymeric membrane has been studied. Membrane fouling for such fine biological product due to the formation of filter cake and adsorption of the proteinaceous solution is the major bottleneck for such separation process. The application of electric pulses has shown an effective means in cleaning the membrane and reducing the fouling rate for dead-end ultrafiltration of BSA. The flux is significantly increased by both electrophoretic motion of solutes away from the membrane surface and electro-osmosis occurring in the filter cake. An automated experimental rig equipped with data acquisition system has …

Developm Ent Of Carboxymethylcellulose From Nata De Coco, Manguiat, Lydia S., Sabularse And, Veronica C., Sabularse Dario C. Sabularse

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Nata de coco was used as raw material for the preparation of food-grade carboxymethylcellulose referred to as carboxymethyl-nata (CMN). The effect of various conditions in the carboxymethylation of nata cellulose was determined. The concentration of NaOH, mercerisation time, shredding time during mercerisation and etherification, and the concentration of monochloroacetic acid significantly affected the following physico-chemical properties of CMN, namely, degree of substitution (DS), viscosity, degree of polymerisation (DP), and solubility. The best processing conditions were: the use of 40% NaOH, 60 mins mercerisation time, 60 mins shredding time during mercerisation and etherification, and J.35g/mL ClCH COOH. CMN with desirable properties …

Effects Of Pressure On Thermal Contact Resistance For Rough Mating Surfaces, Abdullah, M. Z., Yau, Y. C., Alauddin And, Z. A. Zainal, Seetharamu K. N.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Thermal contact resistance has been studied experimentally to investigate the effect of pressure between two aluminium or two brass rough surfaces at three different heat flux levels. Three different rough surfaces are considered in the range of 2.63 to 40.69μm. It is demonstrated that the thermal contact resistance reduces significantly with pressure for both materials, the harder material gives higher thermal contact resistance as expected

Forecasting Water Demand Using Back Propagation Networks In The Operation Of Reservoirs In The Citarum Cascade, West Java, Indonesia, Mashudi Mulya R.

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

This study investigates the use of Neural Networks (NN) as a potential means of more accurately forecasting water demand in the Citarum River basin cascade. Neural Networks have the ability to recognise nonlinear patterns when sufficiently trained with historical data. The study constructs a NN model of the cascade, based on Back Propagation Networks (BPN). Data representing physical characteristics and meteorological conditions in the Citarum River basin from 1989 through 1995 were used to train the BPN. Nonlinear activation functions (sigmoid, tangent, and gaussian functions) and hidden layers in the BPN were chosen for the study.