Zebrafish abcb4 gene (ortholog to human ABCB1 gene) serves primarily in multidrug resistance (MDR) mechanism by effluxing chemotherapeutic agents, chemicals, xenobiotics, and numerous anti-cancer drugs out of the cells. This study aims to identify the specific transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) within the promoter region of zebrafish abcb4 gene and determine the functional roles of these factors in abcb4 gene expression regulation via mutagenesis analysis. First, primers were designed to target and amplify the promoter region of zebrafish abcb4 gene through gradient PCR. The zebrafish abcb4 gene promoter was then cloned into pGL3.0 vector and sent for sequencing. The sequencing results revealed high similarity to zebrafish DNA sequence from clone DKEY-24I24 in linkage group 16, indicating a successful cloning of targeted gene. Thereafter, consensus sequence of zebrafish abcb4 gene promoter was generated with the length of 1,392 bp which was close to its expected size during primer design (1,500 bp). Using MATCH tool, 155 TFBSs were found within zebrafish abcb4 gene promoter region. Activator protein 1 (AP-1) TFBS at 1,255 bp was chosen to be mutated through site-directed mutagenesis. Mutagenic primers (forward primer: 5’ GGG CAA GGC AGT ATA AAC GTG 3’ and reverse primer: 5’ TTA TGT TTC TAG GGA TTA CGT CAC 3’) were designed to substitute AGT with GGG to remove the AP-1 TFBS. By mutating the zebrafish abcb4 gene promoter, the MDR phenomenon driven by zebrafish abcb4 gene can be elucidated and this might provide clues to the development of tumor and malignancy in human. The results from this study may enrich the knowledge in chemotherapy and cancer treatments.
On the 10th December 2018, an unprecedented historic event took place in the lower courthouse of the Malaysia Parliament. After years of repressive and regressive stance on student activism, members of parliament voted unanimously to amend the Universities and University Colleges Act 1975, which finally allows student political participation on campus. However, claims of youth apathy and the portrayal of youth in mass media as “unprepared and inexperienced political actors” pose a detrimental dilemma on the participation front. Intrinsic experiences of the youth community, especially from within the confines of universities have been misunderstood, and in fact, very much alienated. Therefore, the impact of the amendment amongst students is assessed in this research. Through exploring the experiences of youth who are caught up between state autonomy and civil liberties, this study employs qualitative research methods through asynchronous in-depth interviews in understanding youth’s freedom of expression. The findings are analyzed thematically to extract emergent themes from interviews derived from participants’ experiences with bureaucratic structures of the university environment and secondary data on the existing models of polity within the campus. Results show that structural barriers empowered by the existing ideological control provide both perceived positive and negative experiences to the participants. The majority of participants were alienated from the mechanisms of existing democratic institutions and discourses whereas subaltern voices of the youth prevail outside the confines of state-oriented spaces. This study has implications on the Overton Window practices of policymakers in providing true autonomy to students.
Proverbs are created when people started to observe and understand the nature around them. Proverbs consist of literal meanings and implicated meanings. The way these proverbs have been said, portrays the beauty and smoothness of the language to which the proverbs belong. This research is mainly conducted to distinguish Indian community's intellectual and philosophical abilities in conveying direct and indirect meanings. The theoretical framework used in this research is inquisitive semantics by Nor Hashimah Jalaluddin (2014). This is a qualitative research. The researcher attained 25 datas by interviewing four (4) Indian informants. However, this research acquired only three 3 data in which the image of sugarcane has been used. Finding shows that the Indian community's proverbs are established from their observation towards nature and the Indian community has their own philosophical understanding and also intellectual standards in the creation of proverbs. Actual meanings behind the data used in this research have been successfully decoded using the theory of inquisitive semantics. In a nutshell, this study is highly justifiable as the theory used in this research is a renowned and authoritative theory.
This study aims to investigate the perception of Muslim travellers toward Halal lifestyle in South Korea. This study is significant due to a huge growth of Muslim tourists in South Korea over recent years. Statistics has shown an influx of Muslim tourists from Malaysia travelling to South Korea from year-to-year. Interviews were conducted to gain in-depth and comprehensive insights of Malaysian Muslims’ percipience on the Halal culture in South Korea. The questions were designed in the interview covers three issues, which include the pre-travel behaviour, extensity of information search, and travel decision. According to the interviews, most of the travellers spent their time conducting research, explicitly on Halal dietary matters before heading to South Korea. They also stated that it was quite hard finding places that serve Halal food. Therefore, we concluded that the Halal principle adoption in Korea influences the travel decision by most Muslim travellers.
In the age of modern competitive market force, where traditional marketing system is not enough to capture the loyalty from customers, and the increasing consciousness toward the brand making the marketer more concern to survive and the competition are becoming more difficult. So, customers are more conscious about their choice and giving more priority on the right product with right features, conditions, images and quality at the right price. The aim of this study is to explore customer consciousness toward brand loyalty between Malaysian and International Students. Quantitative research method is being used to evaluate the outcome of the research where total survey respondents were 197 (140 Malaysian and 57 International students) and the scope of the research is limited to the respondent of University Malaysia Sarawak, Kota Samarahan. The result of regression linear and Pearson Correlation showed that except price-consciousness, brand-consciousness, quality-consciousness and social-consciousness have positive significant relationship toward brand loyalty.
This study examines the impact of tax on consumption behaviour by focusing on selected countries from Asia. The study adopts panel fixed effect and random estimators to gauge the influence of tax on consumption expenditures. Findings of the study support negative influence of tax on household consumption. The finding is parallel with the absolute income hypothesis that high volume of tax collected from the public results in falling households’ disposable incomes, hence downwardly affecting households’ consumption levels. The study’s finding implies the importance of carefully observing appropriate tax policy that suit the country’s level of development in promoting high rates of economic growth and consumption.
New history is created in Malaysia. After over six decades of Federal rule, the Barisan Nasional (BN) government has been replaced by a coalition of opposition parties, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) in the most recent general election. PH also managed to form several state governments traditionally held by BN in Peninsular Malaysia. This study aims to seek the perception of the Malays in West Malaysia in accepting the return of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad into power. It focuses on the so-called political comeback of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad – the first leader to be appointed Prime Minister twice considering this rarely happens in Malaysia. This study was conducted in West Malaysia involving eighty-eight respondents using the 5-point Likert-scale survey questionnaire. Respondents were given an option to answer the questionnaire in Bahasa Malaysia or English. The general result showed that perception towards political issues in Malaysia, especially with regard to Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s comeback drew mixed reactions. On the same note, it showed that people could have lost their hopes and direction of Malaysian politics.
When we heard Retro design, people will think about the fashion, music, poster, style and trend of the 1940s to1980s. The trend retro-futurism, however, is entirely different. It is a trend that was created by writers, artists and film directors in the past and is closely related to science fiction. This research concentrates on investigating the characteristics of retro-futurism and how it can be used to incorporate its features into building design for 3D animation. An exploratory method was used to analyse the architectural design of the past. The gathered information could give some insights and understanding of what retro-futurism is and the reason behind why the architectural design in the previous era was created that way. The process and challenges of implementing retro-futurism visual style are also discussed. As the result of the collected data, developing a design with the aesthetic of retro-futurism become more accessible and well-planned.
This study documented details of the dentitions, skulls and other skeletal remains of Crocodylus porosus and Tomistoma schlegelii, from western part of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. The remains of both reptiles were exhumed, followed by standard cleaning procedures and then detail morphological assessments were carried out accordingly. Both species show similar structure of vertebral columns, but T. schlegelii has the following unique structures: a long and narrower snout, D-shaped eye sockets, long and sharp pointed protruding quadratojugal bones, straight maxillae and dentary, a smooth surfaced skull, elongated triangular suborbital fenestrae, round shaped internal nares and visible supraoccipital from a dorsal view. C. porosus has heterodont dentition with blunt-pointed and irregular size of teeth whereas T. schlegelii has almost homodont dentition with sharp and similar size teeth. This is the first collection of teeth, skulls and other skeletal remains of both species obtained from Sarawak, and the materials have been used regularly to educate the public through science exhibitions, hoping they will spark the interests of young budding scientists to be involved in wildlife taphonomic studies in the future.
The objective of this study is to identify the relationship between task characteristics (variety of skills, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback) and employee engagement. The study was conducted in a healthcare service in Sabah, Malaysia. A self administered questionnaire was used to collect data by using convenience sampling. A total of 78 respondents participated in the study. Data was analyzed using Spearman Correlation. The results revealed a significant and positive relationship between task characteristics (variety of skills, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback) and employee engagement in the studied organization. This has important implications to employers. It is recommended that managers, human resource development (HRD) practitioners and supervisors provide employees with more challenging tasks, autonomy and feedback from time to time. Moreover, work designs should include how the tasks may improve employee identity and significance.
The use of proverbs in Iban community illustrates that the community exercise language politeness in giving reproach, advice or insinuation to others. The elements used in the proverbs also reflect and describe the culture of this community by applying their experiences and observations to the environment. This study is conducted to analyze the natural elements in Ibans’ proverbs using inquisitive semantic analysis. This research is based on two objectives, namely listing and identifying Ibans’ proverbs (jaku' sempama) which contain elements of nature in the creation and to analyzing the mind and philosophy of Iban community in the creation of proverbs (jaku' sempama) by using inquisitive semantics as the theoretical framework. The natural elements identified are divided into 4 domains, namely animals, plants, resources or energy, and the universe. This is a qualitative research. Corpus data is gathered and two informants were interviewed. The meanings of the proverbs, the cognitive and the philosophy behind the creation of the proverbs plus the intellects of the Iban community are incorporated to reveal the Iban ingenuity behind the creation of a particular proverb. This study also incorporated knowledge from other areas in giving answers on the use of the natural elements identified in the Iban proverbs. Findings show that there are hidden philosophy behind the creations of the proverbs and this philosophy can be attributed to the culture of the community that behold the proverbs.
A survey of ectoparasitic fauna on birds was conducted in October 2017 until January 2018. The aims of this study were to investigate the ectoparasitic fauna on birds and to compare its prevalence in the selected mainland and island of Sarawak. A series of sampling by using mist-net has been done in Mount Sadong and Satang Besar Island with a total of 1440 hours of sampling effort for each locality. A total of 53 individuals of birds were captured and examined for its ectoparasites. Twenty-one species of ectoparasites were recorded comprising four species of lice and 17 species of mites. Four species of lice and 11 species of mites were detected in Mount Sadong while eight species of mites and no lice were detected in Satang Besar Island. The prevalence of ectoparasites infested on birds in Mount Sadong (33.33%) was higher than Satang Besar Island (17.39%). The p-value (p= 0.474) indicated there was no significant difference between the prevalence of ectoparasites from both localities. The result is important since ectoparasites infestation could affect the survival of birds and has the potential transmission of zoonotic disease.
Increasing evidence of the association between ribosomal protein (RP) genes with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) have been derived from findings of their differential expression patterns in NPC cell lines. Nevertheless, expression data from a comprehensive list of RP gene family members is still lacking. This paper reports the assessment of two RP genes, eL13 and eL14, with regards to their expression patterns in several NPC cell lines (TW04, TW01, HK1, HONE1 and SUNE-1) relative to a non-malignant control (NP69). A conventional Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) assay was employed. Analysis of eL13 has never been explored before this, whereas investigation of eL14 represents an extended study. We found a general over-expression trend of eL14 in 40% (2 of 5; TW01 and HONE-1) of the NPC cell lines studied, with higher upregulated level in only one (TW01) of them. However, this pattern of expression level is not statistically significant. Expression of eL13 was not detected in any of the cell lines used. The inconsistency of these expression patterns demonstrates an elusive nature of RP activities in the malignancy of the nasopharynx.
Agents are the most important marketing tools for company to become a successful in business. Agents not only operate as a channel to customers, but they also play an important role in providing customers with a variety of services before and after the sales. The main purpose of this study is to identify the factor influencing agent’s sales at an Apparel Manufacturing company. There are three categories of agents at the company namely, Trial agent, Basic agent and Premium agent. Based on the sales records in May 2018, the sales of product obtained by Trial Agent is lower than Basic and Premium Agents in this company. Therefore, this study aims to determine difference mean on record sales by agent among three categories of agents. This study also investigates the relationship between sales records by agents and years of experienced in business. Data was collected using questionnaire from 46 active agents at the company. Data was analyzed using One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlation coefficient and Multiple Linear Regression. Result showed that there is a statistically significant difference in the mean sales records among the three of agent’s categories. Furthermore, there is a strong positive correlation between sales records by agent and years of experienced in business. Meanwhile, factors of knowledge and skills in business are most contributed to the agent’s sales. This study can help the company to create a strategic business plan and conducting several workshop trainings for agents to increase their knowledge and skills in business.
Nowadays, gold prices have been volatile, and the wealth of gold investors depend on the movement of gold prices. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between gold prices, crude oil prices, inflation rate, real interest rate and stock prices in United States. This study uses monthly data covering the period ranging from January 1990 to August 2018. The Johansen and Juselius (JJ) Cointegration test and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) are conducted in this study. The result shows that there is a long-run relationship among gold prices, crude oil prices, inflation rate, real interest rate and stock prices. The results show that inflation rate and crude oil prices are significance and positively related to gold prices, while stock prices and real interest rate are negatively affecting gold prices. There are three unidirectional Granger causality and one bidirectional Granger causality in the short run. Only inflation rate Granger cause gold price, which means that inflation rate directly affects the gold prices. This study allows community such as central bank, government, financial institution, economist, investor and policy makers in manipulating and controlling the movement of the gold prices so that they have a better decision making to diversify their risks.
This article examines the impact of gender socialization in Malaysian families, especially on daughters regarding their perception towards work inside and outside the home. Hence, this study utilized in-depth interview as part of the qualitative methods to obtain quality data needed. The study establishes, that patriarchy environment, especially one with the classic model of ‘breadwinner father, housewife mother’ creates a pressure on women to bear more household responsibility. Thus, the dominant gender ideologies are entangled with ‘motherhood mandate’ and ‘superior feminine virtue’ that is associated with the reason women left the labour force. It was equally necessary to point out here that other agents of socialization such as media, peers and education played its part as well and influenced the respondent’s conformity to patriarchal values.
A livelihood is a means of making a living, securing necessities of life such as water, shelter medicine and clothing. For communities dependent on forest resources for livelihoods, sustainability of forests are important. In Kampung Tambirat this study aims to find the income generated from forest resources particularly Nypah palm forests, the measures of conservation, challenges and type of assistance required so that the villagers engagement in the activities will flourish in the future and benefit the younger generations. It is found that there are no conservation measures for Nypah forests and seasonal floods further increases the difficulty for the villagers to sustain their livelihood activities.
Face recognition is an emerging field due to the technological advances in camera hardware and for its application in various fields such as the commercial and security sector. Although the existing works in 3D face recognition perform well, a similar experiment setting across classifiers is hard to find, which includes the Random Forest classifier. The aggregations of the classification from each decision tree are the outcome of Random Forest. This paper presents 3D facial recognition using the Random Forest method using the BU-3DFE database, which consists of basic facial expressions. The work using other classifiers such as Neural Network (NN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) using a similar experiment setting also presented. As for the results, the Random Forest approach has yield 94.71% of recognition rate, which is an encouraging result compared to NN and SVM. In addition, the experiment also yields that fear expression is unique to each human due to a high confidence rate (82%) of subjects with fear expression. Therefore, a lower chance to be mistakenly recognized someone with a fear expression.
The occupational safety and health of workers are aimed to protect employees.. Safety at workplace is a crucial aspect in a company’s organization. Safety in workplace is important in guaranteeing the worker’s wellbeing. The Malaysia Government has taken the required steps by introducing the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 on 25th of February 1994. The responsibilities in enforcing Occupational Safety and Health Act is given to the Occupational Safety and Health Department (OSHD) which is under the Ministry of Human Resource.
Tourism is an economic activity that can contributes various impacts (both positive and negative) to local communities. This article presents the preliminary result of a research that was conducted in order to study the impacts of tourism at Lamin Dana on the lives of the local residents at Kampung Tellian Tengah, Mukah. The data for this study was collected using direct observation and interviews, which were conducted among the local residents of Kampung Tellian Tengah. The data were analysed qualitatively in order to identify the impacts from tourism activities at Lamin Dana. The preliminary results show that the impacts experienced by the local residents are in the aspects of economy, culture and life, and infrastructure and environment.