No abstract

Early flood warnings are important to allow sufficient time for evacuation.Although warning systems are now in place, key questions remain as to their effectiveness in sending information to the public, which may in part depend on the media used. This paper assesses the effectiveness of warnings disseminated to the public for the December 2014 Kelantan Flood, Malaysia. The flood was the worst in decades making it an appropriate case study with which to assess public awareness and perceptions associated with flood warnings and their dissemination. The effectiveness of warnings issued via different media was assessed by questionnaire.Results show that 56% of respondents received warnings prior to the flood, a majority of them through television and information shared among the public.While the preferred medium of warning is not dependent on age, assessment of peoples' response to warnings shows that with increasing age responsiveness to orders and readiness to evacuate decreases. To increase the number of people receiving the warnings, short message service (SMS) communications sent from the authorities to a wider audience may be considered, as information shared among the public is observed to be most effective in reaching the greatest number of people. K E Y W O R D S community response, disaster management, effective flood warning, flood disaster

No abstract

In this article, a wideband monopole antenna with band notched reconfigurability is proposed. The antenna consists of a wideband monopole antenna, incorporated with reconfigurable electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structures. Six EBG structures with different band notched frequency are used to achieve six band notched reconfigurations. The EBG structures are placed underneath the feed line of the antenna. A switch is placed at each EBG structure, and by controlling the state of the switch, the band notched operation of the EBG can be activated or deactivated. The proposed antenna is capable to provide useful features for the notched band UWB communication system. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:497–501, 2015

Lignocellulosic biomass resources are renewable materials that can be converted to fermentable sugars and subsequently into ethanol. Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is a cellulosic aquatic plant that has high carbohydrates, low lignin content, and notable reducing sugars content in its structure. Based on the literature review in the case of water hyacinth, the most frequently used pretreatment methods were acid and alkali, while ionic liquid and microwave-assisted methods were used rarely. The dominant sugars were glucose, xylose, galactose, arabinose, and mannose. Based on the findings, cellulase and S. cerevisiae were mostly used for enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation of water hyacinth to ethanol, respectively. This review presents the recent studies in pretreatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation of water hyacinth biomass into ethanol.