National Defence University, Pakistan

About: National Defence University, Pakistan is a education organization based out in Islamabad, Pakistan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Decision support system. The organization has 802 authors who have published 816 publications receiving 3701 citations. The organization is also known as: National Defence University of Pakistan & National Defence University Islamabad.

Ergonomic Risk Assessment on Oil Palm Industry Workers

Abstract: Background: This study was an investigation conducted at two oil palm plantations in Slim River District, Perak, Malaysia on the prevalence of back pain among workers in the Malaysian oil palm industry. Many manual handling activities and tasks performed were not designed ergonomically, thus a high prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders was found among oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) manual workers. The three main objectives of this study were to determine the level of employee awareness on health and safety of manual handling tasks; to recognize the musculoskeletal symptom on the workers body parts; and to analyze their working postures and identify the relevant risk factors. Methods: Modified Nordic questionnaire was used to collect data in 2012 at two oil palm plantations located in Slim River District, Perak, Malaysia. Later, Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) analysis was conducted for high risk working postures. Seventy workers participated in the study. Results: 81.4% of workers were aware on the correct methods to perform the manual handling tasks. The upper back and lower back pain were experienced by 87.1% and 94.3% of the workers respectively. Conclusion: Manual workers have high level (81.4%) health and safety awareness on manual handling tasks but failed to practice it. As a result, 87.1% of them are sufferring from lower back and 94.3% from upper back pain. FFBs loading activity into the lorry is a high risk and changes needed to be done immediately. The two major risk factors identified were awkward lifting postures and repetitive lifting of FFBs.

Mitigating the Effects of Social Desirability Bias in Self-Report Surveys: Classical and New Techniques

Abstract: Self-reporting is a frequently used method to measure various constructs in many areas of social science research. Literature holds abundant evidence that social desirability bias (SDB), which is a special kind of response bias, can severely plague the validity and accuracy of the self-report survey measurements. However, in many areas of behavioral research, there is little or no alternative to self-report surveys for collecting data about specific constructs that only the respondents may have the information about. Thus, researchers need to detect or minimize SDB to improve the quality of overall data and their deductions drawn from them. Literature provides a number of techniques for minimizing SDB during survey procedure and statistical measurement methods to detect and minimize the validity-destructive impact of SDB. This study aims to explicate the classical and new techniques for mitigating the SDB and to provide a guideline for the researchers, especially for those who focus on socially sensitive constructs. Mitigating the Effects of Social Desirability Bias in Self-Report Surveys: Classical and New Techniques

Performance of membrane filtration in the removal of iron and manganese from Malaysia's groundwater

Abstract: The aim of this research was to investigate the ability of nanofiltration (NF) and ultrafiltration (UF) membranes as a filtration unit for groundwater treatment for drinking water resources. Commercial membranes denoted as TS40, TFC-SR3 and GHSP were used to study the performance based on rejections and fluxes. The investigation has been conducted using natural groundwater obtained from a deep tube well with initial concentration of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) at 7.15 mg/L and 0.87 mg/L, respectively. Experimental results showed that NF membranes exhibited higher fluxes than UF membrane with pure water permeability at 4.68, 3.99 and , respectively. For metal rejection, these membranes have performed higher removal on Fe with TS40, TFC-SR3 and GHSP membranes having more than 82%, 92% and 86% respectively. Whereas, removal on Mn only achieved up to 60%, 80% and 30%, for TS40, TFC-SR3 and GHSP membranes respectively. In order to achieve drinking water standard, the membranes were efficient in removing Fe ion at 1 and 2 bar in contrast with Mn ion at 4 and 5 bar. Higher rejection of Fe and Mn were achieved when pH of feed solution was increased to more than 7 as TFC-SR3 membrane was negatively charged in basic solution. This effect could be attributed to the electrostatic effect interaction between membrane material and rejected ions. In conclusion, this study proved that NF membrane especially the TFC-SR3 membrane successfully treated local groundwater sources for public drinking water supply in line with the WHO standard.

Analysis and simulation of nonlinear handling characteristics of automotive vehicles with focus on lateral load transfer

Abstract: This paper mainly investigates steady-state nonlinear cornering behaviour of vehicles under lateral load transfer A normal load dependent nonlinear cornering stiffness is utilised instead of the c

A novel definition of generalized synchronization on networks and a numerical simulation example

Abstract: This paper develops a novel definition of generalized synchronization on complex networks consisting of systems evolving in a chaotic or regular fashion. With two usual methods for detecting generalized synchronization, two criteria for generalized synchronization on networks are advanced. Some complex dynamical behaviors are discussed briefly on the basis of numerical simulations of a real network example.