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The use of information and communication technology (ICT) has become progressively widespread in various sectors including agriculture. This study investigated the barriers to the diffusion of ICT in agricultural extension. Further, the study examined the effect of barriers toward ICT acceptance in agricultural extension. A paper and pencil survey by mail was conducted to collect data from 355 respondents in the Greater Surakarta Region, Indonesia. The study discovered that individual barriers, cultural barriers, government policy barriers, support and technological barriers significantly influenced the acceptance of ICT. In line with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), these variables influenced perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and perceived intention to use of ICT. The findings suggested the methods that could be adopted by governments and non-government bodies to overcome the barriers in ICT implementation.

A novel compact ultra-wide band micro-strip band-pass filter has proposed in this paper for the application of wireless communication systems. By using DGS, desired UWB micro-strip BPF has designed. The designed filter has maintained lesser insertion loss, high selectivity and very good return loss. The proposed pass band filter has guaranteed the sharpness of skirts of the parameters because of appearances of transmission zero near the each pass band edges. The presences of three poles at the pass band in the designed UWB BPF could scale up the bandwidth and enhanced the selectivity. At 6 GHz centre frequencies, the 3dB fractional bandwidth is 56.07%. The simulated values of the insertion loss and return loss of the proposed filter are-0.0184dB and-43.84dB respectively. The Ansoft high frequency structural simulator has used for frequency response of the designed filter.

Negative-pressurized isolation rooms have been approved effectively and applied widely for infectious patients. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 has led to a huge demand for negative-pressurized isolation rooms. It is critical and essential to ensure infection control performance through best practice of ventilation systems and optimum airflow distribution within isolation rooms. This study investigates a retrofitting project of an isolation room to accommodate COVID-19 patients. The field measurement has been conducted to ensure the compliance with the design specification from the CDC of Taiwan. The pressure differentials between negative-pressurized isolation rooms and corridor areas should be at least 8 Pa, while the air change rate per hour (ACH) should be 8–12 times. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is applied to evaluate the ventilation performance and contamination control. Different layout arrangements of exhaust air have been proposed to enhance the ventilation performance for infection control. A simple projected air-jet curtain has been proposed in the simulation model to enhance extra protection of medical staff. The resulting ventilation control revealed that the contamination control can be improved through the minor adjustment of exhaust air arrangement and the application of an air-jet curtain.

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