Traditionalism and its impact on the administration of justice: the case of the Syariah Court of Singapore

Abstract

This paper examines, by way of case studies, the influence of traditionalism as a style of thought on the administration of Muslim law on divorce in the Syariah Court of Singapore. It focuses on the mode of its operation in the selection, construction and application of the law, and highlights its repercussions on the lives of parties in family breakdowns. The paper also touches upon the effects of traditionalism on the development of a more progressive legal culture and identifies measures that would alleviate the problem.     

From mousedeer to mouse: Malaysian animation at the crossroads

Abstract

Long‐form animation began commercially in 1995 on a Government initiative. Since then, there has been an unprecedented production of animation for television and cinema, far surpassing several ASEAN countries that have studios providing animation services for foreign countries but do not have their own, homegrown series or features. However, Malaysian animation is at the crossroads. Even though foreign sales have been made, it is not cost‐effective for producers to continue making animation. The delay in approving contracts by the Government station (the only TV station that pays US$10,000 per episode), has caused some producers to fold up or downsize. The problem is further compounded with the large number of graduates entering the industry – with too few studios willing, or able, to employ them. More and more foreign TV series are flooding the TV channels. Action needs to be taken to prevent the animation industry from floundering. This paper will explore the state of the industry to see what needs to be done so that Malaysia will not lose out in the production of animation films and TV series featuring local stories and characters that can effectively reach out to young people and, at the same time, can appeal to a global audience.     

Vocational education and development: key issues, with special reference to the Arab world

Despite the considerable capacity of most Arab governments to invest in education for development, relatively little has been achieved in the vocational and technical sector. Yet, as is well known, it is the production of good quality technicians that is crucial to sustainable industrial development at a national level. In this paper we attempt an analysis of the situation — to identify key issues that need to be addressed if progress is to be made. Two broad problems underlie the contemporary crisis: aspects of Arabic culture that tend to constrain wider involvement in vocational and technical employment, and the low status of technical education in the Western model of education bequeathed to these nations by the legacy of colonialism. Some recommendations are made to assist the resolution of the problem.     

Effectiveness of antigraffiti treatments in connection with penetration depth determined by different techniques

The elimination of spray paint using traditional (chemical and mechanical) methods inevitably entails altering surface characteristics. Hence, the impact and deterioration caused by graffiti in heritage buildings and monuments have led to the development and application of preventive systems in the form of antigraffiti coatings (which prevent paint from seeping into the pores of the surface material and facilitate cleaning). The effectiveness of two of these treatments, a commercial product (fluoroalkyl siloxane, protectosil, marketed by Degussa) and a hybrid organic-inorganic material (Ormosil), was evaluated in five construction materials (limestone, granite, cement mortar, lime mortar and brick), in terms of their penetration into the substrate. A number of techniques were used to determine the penetration depth (SEM/EDX, micro-Raman and LIBS), because a comparative analysis showed that none was universally valid for all types of treatments. The results show that the presence of the coating on the surface of less porous materials only ensures effective cleaning when the surface is fairly smooth. In granite, for instance, the CF₃ terminals in the fluorinated treatment hinder spray paint bonding more effectively than Ormosil, but not efficiently enough to ensure complete removal of the paint from granite surfaces.     

Electrical power free, low dead volume, pressure-driven pumping for microfluidic applications

This paper presents a simple-to-construct, low dead volume pump capable of generating a wide range of positive and negative pressures for microfluidic applications. The pump generates pressure or vacuum by changing the volume of air confined inside a syringe and is able to generate pressures between -95 and +300 kPa with a resolution as high as 1 Pa. Different from syringe pumps and electrokinetic pumping, which are capable of controlling flow rates only, our pump can be used to generate constant flow rates or constant pressures, which are required for certain applications such as the aspiration of biological cells for biophysical characterization. Compared to syringe pumps, the new pump has almost zero dead volume and does not exhibit pulsatile flows. Additionally, the system does not require electrical power and is cost effective (～$100). To demonstrate the capabilities of the pump, we used it to aspirate osteoblasts (MC3T3-E1 cells) and to determine Young's modulus of the cells, to generate a concentration gradient, and to produce variable-sized droplets in microchannels using hydrodynamic focusing.     

A new approach for constrained chaos synchronization with application to secure data communication

In this paper, a new technique is introduced for chaos secure data communication. In this approach, in addition to the usually used techniques for data encryption, the concept of carrier encryption is introduced to increase the security level of the secure communication scheme. To fulfill this objective, at the transmitting end, two chaotic oscillators are coupled, and a set of inequality time dependent constraints with time dependent bounds is imposed on the generated chaotic signals. Moreover, to increase system complexity and its security level, the imposed set of constraints and their bounds are allowed to be changeable from one time period to another during the transmission process. As a result, the patterns of the generated chaotic signals are completely changed and the chaotic oscillator is completely encrypted. At the receiving end, the newly developed Constrained Smoothed Regularized Least Square (CSRLS) observer is used to synchronize the received constrained chaotic signals and hence retrieve the transmitted data. Using such an approach, the quality of the received information, measured by the Bit Error Rate (BER), is highly improved due to the superior performance of the developed CSRLS observer. The stability of the observer is analyzed, and simulation results are presented to show the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed secure communication scheme.     

A hybrid partial feedback linearization and deadbeat control scheme for a nonlinear gantry crane

This paper presents the design of a hybrid partial feedback linearization and deadbeat control scheme for a nonlinear gantry crane with friction to control its position and sway angle. The partial feedback linearization is used to linearize the nonlinear model and to stabilize its internal dynamics. In many crane applications, it's necessary to accelerate the system response. As a result, this will cause oscillation in the position as well as the sway angle. So, the deadbeat controller is added to get the desirable accelerated response without any oscillation or adverse effects on the internal dynamics stability. By using Lyapunov stability method, the proposed scheme is proved to be globally stable, with converging tracking errors to the desired performance. The simulation results are accomplished to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and to demonstrate its reliability to control crane systems with comparative results.