The significant exodus of containers inland due to the container revolution has increased the salience of inland terminals for efficient freight distribution. Further, the migration of containers gradually inland has forced seaports to depend on these inland terminals to determine their competitiveness and offer a mechanism for competitive freight price to the consumer. The performance of dry ports need to be improved along with the dynamic nature of maritime business, to efficiently fulfil the demand all the key players in the container seaport system, provide economies of scale and scope to their respective clients and enhances the importance of inland networks to improve and consistently elongate the competitiveness of container seaports. Predicated to these importance, this paper aims to enhance dry port performance by adapting a process benchmarking strategy among the Malaysian dry ports. Prior to the adaptation of the process benchmarking approach, a grounded theory had been conducted as a method of analysis among the key players of the Malaysian container seaport system in order to provide essential inputs for the benchmarking. Through this paper, the outcome shows all four Malaysian dry ports need to improve their transportation infrastructure and operation facilities, container planning strategy, competition, location and externalities in order to assist all the key players in the container seaport system efficiently and effectively.

The “Sipadan and Ligitan” dispute was settled by the ICJ (2002), but its impact on basepoint for baseline and maritime delimitation on the Ambalat remains a contentious issue until now. Since the islands are used as basepoints by Malaysia that results in controversy between Indonesia and Malaysia. This essay will investigate the current situation over Ambalat regarding two basepoints islands for maintaining Equidistance Line in Disputed Area. It will discuss why Malaysia has no right to use the straight baseline or straight archipelagic baseline to connect the basepoints of Sipadan and Ligitan at Sabah and suggest measures to maintain equidistance line in Ambalat.

We report a spatial uctuation analysis of the sky brightness in the near-infrared from observations towards the north ecliptic pole (NEP) by AKARI at 2.4 and 3.2 μm. As a follow up study of our previous work on the Monitor eld of AKARI, we used NEP deep survey data, which covered a circular area of about 0.4 square degrees, in order to extend uctuation analysis at angular scales up to 1000". After pre-processing, additional correction procedures were done to correct time varying components and instrumental effects such as MUXbleed. To remove resolved objects, we applied 2α clipping and point spread function (PSF) subtraction. We finally obtained mosaicked images which can be used for the study of various diffuse emissions in the near-infrared sky and found that there are spatial structures in the mosaicked images using a power spectrum analysis.

How does the presence of an AGN in uence the total SFR estimates of galaxies and change their distribution with respect to the Galaxy Main Sequence? To contribute to solving this question, we study a sample of 1133 sources detected in the North Ecliptic Pole field (NEP) by AKARI and Herschel. We create a multi-wavelength dataset for these galaxies and we fit their multi-wavelength Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) using the whole spectral regime (from 0.1 to 500 μm). We perform the fit using three procedures: LePhare and two optimised codes for identifying AGN tracers from the SED analysis. In this work we present an overview of the comparison between the estimates of the Infrared bolometric luminosi- ties (between 8 and 1000 μm) and the AGN fractions obtained exploiting these dierent procedures. In particular, by estimating the AGN contribution in four different wavelength ranges (5-40 μm, 10-20 μm, 20-40 μm and 8-1000 μm) we show how the presence of an AGN affects the PAH emission by suppressing the ratio L8 μm L4:5 μm as a function of the considered wavelength range.

The recent updates of the North Ecliptic Pole deep (0.5 deg2, NEP-Deep) multi-wavelength survey covering from X-ray to radio-wave is presented. The NEP-Deep provides us with several thousands of 15 μm or 18 μm selected galaxies, which is the largest sample ever made at these wavelengths. A continuous filter coverage in the mid-infrared wavelength (7, 9, 11, 15, 18, and 24 μm) is unique and vital to diagnose the contributions from starbursts and AGNs in the galaxies out to z=2. The new goal of the project is to resolve the nature of the cosmic star formation history at the violent epoch (e.g. z=1{2), and to find a clue to understand its decline from z=1 to present universe by utilizing the unique power of the multiwavelength survey. The progress in this context is brie y mentioned.

We show Akari data, Herschel data and data from the SCUBA2 camera on JCMT, of molecular clouds. We focus on pre-stellar cores within the clouds. We present Akari data of the L1147-1157 ring in Cepheus and show how the data indicate that the cores are being externally heated. We present SCUBA2 and Herschel data of the Ophiuchus region and show how the environment is also aecting core evolution in this region. We discuss the eects of the magnetic eld in the Lupus I region, and how this lends support to a model for the formation and evolution of cores in lamentary molecular clouds.

The aim of this paper is to identify the potential benefits and obstacles of the interstate Short Sea Shipping (SSS) operation in the archipelagic Southeast Asia sub-region. Although literature has addressed a myriad of benefits and obstacles that were caused by the SSS operation as an alternative mode to unimodal land transport, it has been recognised that each SSS corridor may have its own peculiarities. Therefore, the identification of the potential benefits and obstacles through a Delphi survey among sub-regional expert respondents is expected to inform the countries of Southeast Asia on how to direct their limited resources to address the obstacles identified in order to enable a viable interstate SSS operation. The initial review of the benefits and obstacles of SSS operations will focus on case studies performed in Europe as the breadth of literature on SSS outside Europe is still limited. Hence, this study addresses the gap in the literature by focusing on SSS in archipelagic Southeast Asia particularly those involving interstate Ro-Ro operations and extending the usage of Delphi technique to the realm of interstate SSS.