Monday, November 16, 2009

Al-Fatihah untuk Arwah Kak Jamsiah Mohd Hussin (7 Jun 1940 - 15 Nov 2009)


Al-Fatihah untuk Arwah Kak Jamsiah Mohd Hussin (kakak sulong keluarga kami) yang telah kembali kerahmatullah tepat jam 2:05 pagi 15 November 2009.

1 Dengan menyebut nama Allah Yang Maha Pemurah lagi Maha Penyayang.
2 Segala puji bagi Allah, Tuhan semesta alam.
3 Maha Pemurah lagi Maha Penyayang.
4 Yang menguasai di Hari Pembalasan
5 Hanya Engkaulah yang kami sembah, dan hanya kepada Engkaulah kami meminta pertolongan.
6 Tunjukilah kami jalan yang lurus,
7 (yaitu) Jalan orang-orang yang telah Engkau beri ni'mat kepada mereka; bukan (jalan) mereka yang dimurkai dan bukan (pula jalan) mereka yang sesat.



Kak adalah anak kelima dan kakak sulung kami dari 15 adik beradik (5 perempuan dan 10 lelaki). Tiga abang sulong dari mak lain telahpun meninggal. Kami juga telahpun lama kehilangan kedua-dua ayah dan mak, ayah meninggal pada tahun 1973 manakala mak menyusul kemudian pada awal tahun 1976 dan dikebumikan di Mekah sehari sebelum beliau sepatutnya pulang ke Malaysia. Oleh itu kak lah yang jadi pengganti kepada mak dan semasa hayatnya beliau banyak mengasuh adik-adik, anak-anaknya dan juga anak saudara.

Pengorbanan kak pada keluarga amat besar kerana memikul tanggungjawab sebagai ibu. Beliau amat setia menghuni rumah pusaka di kampung di mana ianya menjadi tempat kami berkumpul walaupun tanpa mak dan ayah. Alhamdulillah ikatan kekeluargaan tetap akrab dan kerap kali kami dapat berkumpul pada Hari Raya (selalunya pada hari raya ketiga).

Selepas suami kak meninggal pada tahun 2001, Kak mula tinggal dengan anak-anaknya di Kangar atau KL. Kak pulak, sejak sebelum berkawin lagi kerap kali diduga dengan penyakit yang kadang-kadang menjadi misteri bagi kami. Semasa hayatnya dia selalu saja pening kepala, ditambah pulak dengan penyakit kencing manis dan arthritis. Selepas pembedahan jantung yang dilaluinya pada penghujung tahun lepas, beliau tidak dapat kembali pulih dengan sepenuhnya. Keadaannya makin merosot dan pada petang Jumaat 13 Nov beliau dimasukkan ke PPUM apabila anaknya mendapati dia sukar bernafas. Paru-parunya didapati berair, jantung lemah, oksigen kurang dari 50% dan tahap karbon dioksid terlampau tinggi. Kami dari Alor Setar mula turun ke KL selepas dimaklumkan bahawa keadannya amat kritikal. Pada petang Sabtu doktor menyatakan bahawa kak sebenarnya dalam keadaan nazak dan keluarga perlu buat keputusan samada untuk meneruskan dengan rawatan atau bawa balik. Kami memutuskan untuk bawa balik supaya dia dapat menghembuskan nafas terakhir di rumah di kelilingi keluarga.

Kak dibawa balik ke rumah Kak Arah. Kami tau yang Kak memang nak balik ke Alor Setar tapi keadaannya masa itu memang tak mengizinkan. Selepas sampai di rumah dan selepas bantuan oksigen dihentikan kami dimaklumkan yang selalunya pesakit hanya dapat bertahan selama setengah jam sahaja. Semua adik-adik kak (kecuali Bang Cik yang berada di Alor Setar) dan anak-anaknya ada dan kami sempat memohon ampun dan maaf serta menghalalkan segalanya supaya kak dapat pergi dengan aman. Beliau memang dalam keadaan sedar masa itu sebab apa yang kami nyatakan, dia memberi maklum balas. Masa itu abang sulong sekarang iaitu Bang Pin dari Kuala Kangsar belum sampai. Selepas setengah jam kak masih bertahan dan masih dalam keadaan sedar, dapat bercakap dan membaca ayat-ayat Al-Quran. Tapi kami dapat lihat bahawa kak dalam keadaan sakit dan sukar menarik nafas. Selepas solat Maghrib kami mula beramai-ramai membaca Yasin, solat Isyak dan solat hajat. Bang Pin dan isterinya Kak Timah sampai lebih kurang jam 11mlm. Masa dengan Kak Timah, kak nak sembahyang Isyak katanya dan Kak Timah bantu dia walaupun tak sempurna solatnya. Selepas itu ada yang dah balik dan ada yang dah tidor, saya pulak tak balik ke USJ, duk dalam bilik kak bersama anak-anaknya, Kak Arah, Abang Lah dan Zati. Kak menghembuskan nafasnya yang terakhir pada 2:05 pagi 15 Nov 2009.

Oleh kerana banyak kali Kak sebut nak balik Alor Setar maka anak-anak dan adik-adik dah buat keputusan supaya jenazah disemadikan di Alor Setar. Jenazah dimandikan dan dikapan di TTDI, KL. Van jenazah tiba di Alor Setar pada jam 12:30 tgh dan selepas solat Asar, jenazah selamat dikebumikan. Semoga Allah memberi keampunan bagi kak, sesungguhnya kak banyak berjasa kepada keluarga, kami semua sayang pada kak, halalkan makan minum kami, kami mohon ampun dan maaf di atas segala kesalahan dan kekasaran bahasa samada secara sedar atau tidak sedar dan kami juga memaafkan kak dan menghalalkan segalanya, kami redha sebagaimana kakpun redha atas segala-galanya. Ya Allah ya Tuhan ku, anugerahkanlah rahmatMu, ampunkan kakak ku dan tempatkan kak bersama orang-orang yang soleh. Amin.


Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un (انّا للہ و انّا الیہ راجعون) “Sesungguhnya kami adalah kepunyaan Allah dan kepada Allah jualah kami kembali.”

Ya Tuhan kami, berilah kami keampunan dan keampunan bagi saudara-saudara kami yang telah beriman lebih dahulu daripada kami. (al-Hasyr: 10).

Friday, November 6, 2009

META 2010

International Conference on Metaheuristics and Nature Inspired Computing

The 3rd International Conference on Metaheuristics and Nature Inspired Computing, META’10, will held in Djerba Island in Tunisia ().

The Conference will be an exchange space thanks to the sessions of the research works presentations and also will integrate tutorials and a vocational training of metaheuristics and nature inspired computing.

The scope of the META’2010 conference includes, but is not limited to:

  • Local search, tabu search, simulated annealing, VNS, ILS, …
  • Evolutionary algorithms, swarm optimization, scatter search, …
  • Emergent nature inspired algorithms: quantum computing, artificial immune systems, bee colony, DNA computing, …
  • Parallel algorithms and hybrid methods with metaheuristics, machine learning, game theory, mathematical programming, constraint programming, co-evolutionary, …
  • Application to: logistics and transportation, telecommunications, scheduling, data mining, engineering design, bioinformatics, …
  • Theory of metaheuristics, landscape analysis, convergence, problem difficulty, very large neighbourhoods, …
  • Application to multi-objective optimization
  • Application in dynamic optimization, problems with uncertainty, …

Conference

  • October 28-30, 2010

Paper:

  • Submission of a paper: May 15, 2010
  • Notification: July 15, 2010
  • Final version: September 15, 2010

Session:

  • Submission of a session: May 15, 2010
  • Notification: June 15, 2010

Tutorial:

  • Submission of a session: May 15, 2010
  • Notification: June 15, 2010

Friday, October 30, 2009

CAMP’10: International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management 2010

Call for Papers (Extended deadline: 3 November 2009)

CAMP’10: International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management 2010

16–18 March 2010, Shah Alam, Malaysia

http://fskm.uitm.edu.my/camp10



[Please excuse us if you are receiving this CFP more than once]

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to invite you to CAMP’10 to share your research findings and experience in the field of Information Retrieval in support for Knowledge Management. This conference is organised by PECAMP, the Malaysian society of Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management together with Universiti Teknologi MARA, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and is supported by the IEEE Malaysian Section and theIEEE Computer Society.

The proceedings of CAMP’10 will be included in the IEEE Xplore database

- Show quoted text -

Scope

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Invisible World
• Second Life
• Augmented Virtuality
• Augmented Reality
• Collaborative Workspace
• Digital Community
• Social Networks
• Online Behaviour
• Online Gaming
• Simulation

Emerging Computing
• Autonomous Computing
• Cloud Computing
• Natural Computing
• Social Computing
• Trust Computing
• Contextual Computing
• Ubiquitous Computing
• Pervasive Computing
• Network Computing

Network Security
• Network Surveillance
• Intrusion Detection
• Threat Avoidance
• Privacy, Trust and Security Assurance

Knowledge Intelligence
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Intelligence
• Ambient Intelligence
• Emotional Intelligence
• Reasoning Strategies

Information Storage and Retrieval
• Multimedia Information Retrieval (Audio, Video, Music, Image, Text)
• Storage and Indexing Techniques
• Semantics and Metadata
• Natural Language Processing
• Distributed and Parallel Information Retrieval
• Information Fusion
• Information Recovery
• Visualisation

Knowledge Management
• Knowledge Management Processes (Creation, Sharing, Representation and Use of knowledge)
• Knowledge Management Techniques and Tools (for Acquisition, Learning, Sharing and Processing of knowledge)
• Change Management
• Culture of Innovation
• Organisational Complexity

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Deadline for manuscript submission: 3 November 2009
Notification of acceptance: 20 November 2009

Camera ready paper due: 10 January 2010

Deadline for author’s registration: 10 January 2010

More information
Kindly visit the conference web site at http://fskm.uitm.edu.my/camp10 for further details.

The 8th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling

PATAT 2010: PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS & DEMONSTRATIONS

The 8th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling
10th August - 13th August 2010
Belfast, UK

This conference is the eighth in a series of conferences that serve as a forum for an international community of researchers, practitioners and vendors on all aspects of computer-aided timetable generation. For more information about the conferences see

http://www.cs.qub.ac.uk/~B.McCollum/patat10/index.html

Featured Keynote Speakers
Graham Kendall (University of Nottingham, UK)
Jeff Kingston (University of Sydney, Australia)
David Ryan (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
George White (University of Ottawa, Canada)

The themes of the conference include (but are not limited to):

  • Educational Timetabling
  • Transport Timetabling
  • Employee Timetabling and Rostering
  • Sports Timetabling
  • Complexity Issues
  • Distributed Timetabling Systems

Research Areas, including;

  • Implementations
  • Commercial Packages
  • Interactive vs Batch Timetabling
  • Timetable Updating
  • Standard Data Formats
  • Relationship with Other Scheduling Problems

  • Constraint-Based Methods
  • Evolutionary Computation
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Mathematical Programming
  • Expert Systems
  • Heuristic Search
  • Knowledge Based Systems
  • Operational Research
  • Simulated Annealing
  • Local Search
  • Ant Colony Methods
  • Soft Computing
  • Tabu Search
  • Meta-Heuristics
  • Hyper-Heuristics
  • Very Large Neighborhood Search
  • Graph Colouring
  • Hybrid Methods
  • Multi-Criteria Decision Making
  • Fuzzy Reasoning
  • Data Mining

Submissions

Authors are invited to submit presentations in one of three categories:

(a) Full Papers. Authors should submit papers describing significant, original and unpublished work. Such papers are expected to be approximately 10-20 pages in length but this guideline is not strict. These papers will be fully refereed by the programme committee and the accepted ones will appear in conference proceedings. As in previous years, a selection of the papers will appear in a post conference volume. The second round of refereeing for this volume will take place shortly after the conference.

(b) Abstracts. Authors can submit abstracts of up to 1000 words. Abstracts will be fully refereed. The accepted ones will appear in the conference proceedings. Abstracts will not go forward to the second round of refereeing for the post-conference volume. However, authors of accepted abstracts will have the opportunity to write a full paper based on their abstract and submit it for the selected papers volume. People who wish to give a talk (e.g. practitioners, researchers with preliminary or incomplete papers) but do not want to submit a full paper can submit under this category.

(c) System Demonstrations. Authors can submit an abstract, describing the major properties and contribution of implemented and/or commercial timetabling systems. Abstracts should not exceed 1000 words (3-4 pages). Authors of accepted submissions in this category would be expected to provide a demonstration of their software during the conference. Demonstration submissions will be evaluated on the basis of their innovation, relevance and scientific contribution. The abstracts will be published in the conference proceedings but they will not be forwarded to the second round of refereeing for the post-conference volume. However, authors of accepted system demonstration abstracts are welcome to submit a full paper to the post-conference volume if they so wish.

Submission Instructions

Authors of all types of submitted papers are kindly requested to prepare a paper in English and submit it through our online submission system (available by the end of November 2009). The length of the paper should fulfil the requirements given for each category above. All papers must be submitted as a PDF file and authors will be requested to use the templates provided:

  • the LaTeX version is preferred,
  • the Microsoft Word version is also acceptable,
  • no other format can be accepted.

Please note that all participants will need to register for the conference and pay the registration fee in order for accepted submissions to appear in the conference proceedings.

Deadlines

  • Paper/abstract/system submissions: January 20th, 2010
  • Notification: April 20th, 2010 (at the latest)

Organizing and Programme Committee co-chairs

Barry McCollum
School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Queen's University Belfast

and

Edmund Burke
Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Research Group, School of Computer Science and Information Technology University of Nottingham Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8 1BB United Kingdom

PATAT 2010 website:

http://www.cs.qub.ac.uk/~B.McCollum/patat10/index.html

Copyright © 2009 PATAT 2010


4th International Symposium on Information Technology ITSim' 10

4th International Symposium on Information Technology
ITSim' 10 (www.itsim.org)

June 15 - 17, 2010
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*** Paper Submission Deadline is extended --- January 31, 2010 ****

Hosted by :

Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, IEEE Malaysia Section, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Co-sponsored by :

IEEE Computer Society, Malaysian Information Technology Society (MITS)

Important Dates:

31 January 2010 : Submission of Full Paper

15 March 2010 : Notification of Papers Acceptance

30 April 2010 : Camera Ready due

1 – 15 April 2010 : Early Bird Registration

Paper submission :

Prospective authors must submit their original papers for review through the EDAS conference management system at http://edas.info/.

The manuscript template is available at: http://www.itsim.org/instruction.html

Areas :

The topics of the conference include, but not limited to, the following:

Engineering and Technology

  • GRID and peer-to-peer computing
  • Decision Support Systems
  • Distributed control systems
  • Computer networking
  • Data and communications protocol
  • Mobile computing
  • Signal processing
  • Electronics
  • Scientific computing
  • Computer security
  • Biometrics and security
  • Knowledge representation
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Neural networks
  • Machine learning
  • Fuzzy logic
  • Data mining
  • Information storage and retrieval
  • Cryptography and compression
  • Pattern recognition
  • Agent technologies

Green Computing

  • Hardware reusability
  • Server virtualization
  • Thin client solution
  • Material recycling
  • Power management
  • Electronics waste management
  • Telecommuting
  • Minimalism computing
  • Software reusability
  • Algorithm efficiency
  • Performance per watt
  • Hibernation features

Human and Natural Ecosystem

  • Biologically-inspired computing
  • Bioinformatics
  • Cerebral computing
  • Genetic computing
  • Autonomic computing
  • Nature of software
  • Natural intelligence
  • Natural knowledge
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Neural computation
  • Neural informatics
  • Quantum processing
  • Cognitive linguistic
  • Expressive mathematics

Energy Informatics

  • Data exploration on energy data set
  • Energy information system
  • Energy analysis
  • Energy and ICT
  • Renewable energy technology
  • Sustainable energy technology
  • Energy efficiency

Systems Development and Application

  • Software engineering
  • Knowledge engineering
  • Knowledge-based applications
  • Web-based information systems
  • E-commerce systems
  • E-learning systems
  • Expert systems
  • Intelligent systems
  • Adaptive systems
  • Voice recognition systems
  • Haptics systems
  • Industrial application systems
  • Augmented Reality
  • Simulation and visualization
  • Comparative programming
  • Evaluation of systems
  • Technology impact assessment
  • Software reusability
  • Virtual reality

Knowledge Society

  • Knowledge society indicators
  • Knowledge divide
  • Knowledge Management
  • E-community
  • Personalized knowledge
  • Intellectual capital
  • Meta-knowledge
  • Libre knowledge

Registration & Fees

Registration must be made via EDAS website http://edas.info/.

Information on fees can be found at http://www.itsim.org/registration.htm .

Symposium Partners:


Universiti Malaya(UM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Teknologi MARA(UiTM), Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), Universiti Islam Antarabangsa (UIA), Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Universiti Multimedia, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Universiti Kreatif Lim Kok Wing, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Open University Malaysia, Kolej Tunku Abdul Rahman, MIMOS.

Symposium Co-chairs

Ahmad Kamil Mahmood, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia

Halimah Badioze Zaman, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia
Steve Elliot, University of Sydney, Australia
Peter Haddawy, Asian Insitute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand
Stephan Olariu, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, USA
Timothy Shih, National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan
Zaiki Awang , Chairman, IEEE Malaysia Section


Contact us:

For further information, visit www.itsim.org or kindly contact us at :
Tel: +605-3687475/ +605-3687411
or
E-mail: itsim2010@petronas.com.my

International Workshop on Scheduling in Healthcare Systems (SCHEALS'10)

International Workshop on Scheduling in Healthcare Systems (SCHEALS'10)

25-27 August 2010

IAMSR, Åbo Akademi University
Turku, Finland

=======================================================================

Abstract

Many Healthcare providers have suffered a crisis of poor quality and inefficiency with rapidly increasing costs. Healthcare delivery faces complex scheduling needs and stands to gain from advances in scheduling technology and understanding. The SCHEALS 2010 workshop will take place at Åbo Akademi University in the city of Turku, in conjunction with the 2nd International Conference on Applied Operational Research (ICAOR'10). We invite you to join your colleagues for this international forum. Sharing of ideas, knowledge and experience is the primary goal of the workshop. The meeting would be ideal for young researchers to present their work, even at a preliminary stage, for constructive discussion and feedback.


Workshop Theme

The workshop will cover the general area of scheduling with particular emphasis being placed on healthcare applications, including, but not limited to:

* Automation
* Exact Methods
* Expert Systems
* Heuristics
* Machine Scheduling
* Meta-Heuristics
* Optimization
* Patient Scheduling
* Personnel Scheduling
* Queuing
* Rescheduling
* Shift Timetabling
* Simulation
* Uncertainty


Paper Submission

Researchers wishing to contribute to the conference are invited to submit manuscripts of not more than 12 pages either as full papers or extended abstracts. The working language of the conference is English. Authors are encouraged to prepare their manuscripts in LNCS style using the MS Word template provided by the Springer, please see Information for LNCS Authors.
Papers should be submitted online through the conference website submission system in MS Word 2003 format (.doc). All submissions will be reviewed by at least two referees, and successful papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings.


Special Issue

The authors of accepted papers will have the opportunity to submit extended versions of their papers for consideration to post-workshop special issues of the Journal of Applied Operational Research (JAOR) or Lecture Notes in Management Science (LNMS).


Important Dates

15-Aug-2009 - Submission opens
15-Mar-2010 - Paper submission deadline
15-May-2010 - Notification of decisions
15-Jun-2010 - Registration deadline
30-Jun-2010 - Camera-ready deadline
25-Aug-2010 – Workshop starts


International Scientific Programme Committee

Ben Atkinson, London Metropolitan University, UK
Sigrid Knust, Clausthal University of Technology, Germany
Gilbert Laporte, HEC Montréal, Canada
Jesper Larsen, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Rym Hallah, Kuwait University, Kuwait
Margarida Moz, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
Andrea Schaerf, University of Udine, Italy
Kaveh Sheibani, Tadbir Institute, Iran (Chair)


Registration

All workshop participants are expected to register for the ICAOR 2010 conference. The conference registration fee is €300 per delegate. This includes participation in all conference sessions, the proceedings, coffee breaks, lunches and the conference dinner.


Contact Details

General information on the conference email to:
icaor2010@gmail.com

Local Chair
Doc. Dr. Mikael Collan
Institute for Advanced Management Systems Research
Abo Akademi University
Joukahaisenkatu 3-5 A 4th floor
20520 Turku
Finland
Tel +358 (0)2 215 4033
Fax +358 (0)2 215 4809
mcollan@abo.fi

ICAOR/SCHEALS General Chair
Prof. Dr. Kaveh Sheibani
Tadbir Institute for Operational Research,
Systems Design and Financial Services Ltd.
122 Mahmudi 2ND Street
Tehran 19797-13673
Iran
Tel +98 (0)21 2271 7097
Fax +98 (0)21 2271 6816
tadbir@tadbirstm.org.ir


Please visit ICAOR website at http://www.tadbirstm.org.ir
or ICAOR 2010 conference website at http://iamsr.abo.fi/icaor2010

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Eid Mubarak

I would like to wish to everybody

"Selamat Hari Raya, Maaf Zahir dan Batin".

That is the normal phrase when Hari Raya comes again. This year we do not have to join the rush to 'balik kampung' since we are already staying near to my kampung (i.e. Alor Star). Normally my first hari raya I will go back to the house where I have been brought up. I lost both my parents when I was in the secondary school, but I have a very close-knit family with 11 surviving siblings (from 15 siblings) and our nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, grand-nephews and great-grand-nieces and great-grand-nephews. I have been keeping a database of all family members and this remind me that I should update it more often.

Normally the third hari raya, we will have a gathering and most family members will try to come back. Last year was very meaningful to me because that is when everbody celebrate my marriage. I got married in the UK while I was doing my Phd. Eventhough I came back in 2005, last year was the first year that my hubby came back from the UK.

This year we have not made any plan for the third hari raya. We'll see how it goes.