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Abstract:The predominantly hilly terrain of Penang Island combined with average maximum daily temperatures ranging between 27-35 o C and peak rainfall as high as 647 cm makes the overall area potentially susceptible to landslips. Over the recent past construction industry has shown a rapid growth mainly due to increase in the inflow of international tourists and other economic reasons. Eventually, the magnitude of disaster associated with landslides has also increased and that is one of the major concerns of engineering geologists and geotechnical engineers. With this background this paper attempts to characterize the largely granitic residual soils of Penang Island by discussing the nature, structural features, engineering behavior and field properties of soil samples extracted from 8 sites. These sites are distinctly chosen from a database of 31 sites for they are located over different prime geological formations. The mean values of various design properties at different depths are calculated and plotted to identify the property trend with depth and important behavioral features relevant to landslides are discussed. Similarly, compression index values are plotted against initial void ratio and liquid limit separately and resulting correlations are compared with the established ones. Correlations given by Azzous are found to hold good. Lastly, in the light of the lessons learnt from the past landslides and the current characterization results some improvements regarding slope instability problem are discussed.

Betulinic acid is a known natural product which has gained a lot of attention in the recent years since it exhibits a variety of biological and medicinal properties. This review provides the most important biological properties of betulinic acid

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Abstract. Geopolymer technology have been developed and explored especially in the construction material field. However, lack of research related to geopolymer stabilized soil. In this research, the utilization of geopolymer has been investigated to stabilize the soil including the factors that affecting the geopolymerization process. Unconfined compressive test (UCT) used as indicator to the strength development and hence evaluating the performance of geopolymer stabilized soil. This paper focusing on the effect of fly ash/alkaline activator ratio, Na 2 SiO 3 /NaOH ratio and curing time on geopolymer stabilized soil. A various mix design at different fly ash/alkaline activator ratio, Na 2 SiO 3 /NaOH ratio were prepared and cured for 7 and 28 days. Molarity and the percentage of geopolymer to soil were fixed at 10 molar and 8 percent respectively. Then, the UCT tests were carried out on 38mm diameter x 76mm height specimens. The highest strength obtained at the fly ash/alkaline activator ratio 2.5 and Na 2 SiO 3 /NaOH ratio 2.0 at 28 days curing time.