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Although several learning theories ranging from behaviourism to cognitive to humanism have been proposed to choose the appropriate effective teaching models, none can be applied across the broad to all learners in all situations, nevertheless some commonalities emerge. A combination of pedagogical and andragogical, "middle of the road" approach meets the need of a larger segment of the audience. Our experiences and many surveys confirmed that the theory of behaviourism may be well suitable to first and second year students and cognitive approach may be well fit to third and forth year students. Only for supervising final year project work, the theory of teachers and students work together, humanism may be adoptable. The survey was conducted among the students enrolled for engineering courses in Curtin University, Sarawak to assess the grade of importance on twelve basic aspects of knowledge, skill and planning expected from the teachers. This paper describes the analysis of the action survey results and summaries of the recommendations for the effective teaching. The survey concludes that each well defined lecture arranged in right sequences should be orally presented in a simple constructive language with the consistent flow speed optimum suitable to majority of the audience for better learning outcomes. Language proficiency and fluency are not the barriers for the successful teaching to multicultural class room in tertiary education. It concludes that "Teachers of student choice" are not born and they are trained by acquiring required relevant knowledge and sincere practice of delivering the lectures in an optimum suitable way to the audience for effective learning.

The study explores the factors influencing tax compliance behaviour among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. Its main objective is to examine the relationship between psychological empowerment and tax transparency on tax compliance behaviour. Malaysia continues to struggle with issues of under-reporting. Due to limited resources, the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRB) cannot fully ascertain the underlying causes of non-compliance. This study is novel in that it proposes a different model for measuring tax compliance behaviour, including the variable of psychological empowerment, which has been limited in previous taxation studies. The study employed SPSS and AMOS for data analysis. Responses from 230 SMEs in the manufacturing sector were collected using stratified random sampling. The results indicate that both psychological empowerment and tax transparency have a positive and significant relationship with tax compliance behaviour. These findings will be valuable for tax authorities and administrators by highlighting key areas that can be managed more effectively to reduce the high number of tax compliance issues in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's biodiesel demand is rising from day to day due to the urgency to tackle fuel crisis, greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and climatic changes in the near future. This alternative energy will minimize the dependency on fossil fuels while guarantees a continuous energy supply and upholds the ecosystem sustainability. Malaysia, as a developing country is still finding a suitable green energy source to support the national daily energy consumption without affecting the political stability and socio-economic background. In this article, a realistic effort made by applying microalgal biotechnology for biodiesel production and concurrently mitigating CO2 and other flue gases in the presence of tertiary wastewater. Microalgae produce high amount of biomass feedstock in a short time with less amount of land capacity by using wastewater as the medium to grow. Malaysia is producing variable wastes from both agro-industrial and industrial sectors that can be recycled as a nutrient supply for microalgae. Wastewater that is available in Malaysia comprises high nutrient value compounds that have high amount of nitrogen and phosphorus. The current trend in Malaysia in the biodiesel industry as well as the application of microalgae as a superlative feedstock to replace conventional methods and boost future biodiesel industries are well elaborated in this article. This also includes the opportunities and challenges of Malaysia in cultivating microalgae with stronger technical feasibility and higher turnout in the economy by using the high rate algal pond (HRAP). Apart from that, this review paper illustrates the process of converting waste from five different sources in biofuel production by using microalgae as the intermediate tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A technical and feasibility assessment has been conducted for catalytic cracking of waste plastics to produce fuel oils in Malaysia. The availability and current technologies for using plastic waste has been reviewed. Flow sheet for the process has been conceptualized and the material and energy balances for the process along with a plant-wide simulation using the software ASPEN Plus have been undertaken. Amorphous silica-alumina has been proposed as catalyst to give 94.36% conversion. Furthermore, the economic analyses for small, medium, and large scale have been done and in all cases, the rates of return (ROR) analysis have been undertaken. From the economic analysis, it has been observed that the total estimated cost for a large scale plant would be USD $58,591,260 for an annual feed rate of 120,000 ton. Based on current market of gasoline and diesel the payback period for the large scale plant would be 1.42 yr with the total annual profit of USD $72,933,156, which corresponds to a ROR of 35.97%. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 33: 298-307, 2014 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Empty fruit bunch (EFB) is one of the most abundant residues of the Palm oil mill industry in Malaysia. The novel magnetic bio-char was synthesized by single stage microwave heating technique, using EFB in the presence of ferric chloride hexahydrate. The effect of microwave powers, radiation time and impregnation ratio (IR) of ferric chloride hexahydrate to biomass were studied. Also the process parameters such as microwave powers, radiation times and IR were optimized using response surface method. The statistical analysis revealed that the optimum conditions for the high porosity magnetic bio-char production were at 900 W microwave power, 20 min radiation time and 0.5 (FeCl3: biomass) impregnation ratio. These newly produced magnetic bio-char have a high surface area of 890 m2 g−1 and that leads to highly efficient in the removal of methylene blue (MB) with an efficiency of 99.9% from aqueous solution with a maximum adsorption capacity of 265 mg g−1. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]