Recently, the contamination of heavy metals towards the environment especially in aquatic system has drastically increased. Heavy metals are able to transform into persistent metallic compound in which it can be accumulated within the organisms’ body system, disrupting the food chain and eventually threatened the human life. The occurrence of heavy metals spillage in the rivers and lakes are due to the careless disposal of excess heavy metals used for human activities. The accumulation of heavy metals in water system will affect all aquatic organisms especially fish. The toxicity of copper in fish can be determined by several changes in the fish under treatment with heavy metals sub-lethal concentration, LC50 within 96-hours period of acute exposure. Therefore, fish can be considered as a high potential biomarker for monitoring heavy metals pollution in aquatic system. Several selective organs are highly sensitive to the xenobiotic pollution and express changes to the exposure. One of the most potential biomarker is the biochemical biomarker of cholinesterase (ChE) inhibition by heavy metals in fish has been well studied in pollution monitoring recently. Thus, this paper gives an overview of the manipulation of fish as a biomarker of heavy metals through enzymatic reaction which have proven to be very useful in the environmental pollution monitoring.
The utilization of bamboo as a manufacturing material is becoming globally attractive in
the wood and wood product industries today. This is due to the numerous industrial applications and
uses of the bamboo plant from its fast growth, availability, unique appearance and strength. Bamboo
has been popularly known for its traditional uses such as poultry cages, vegetable baskets, incense
sticks, skewers and chopsticks, woven blinds and handicrafts. Very little has been done on the
industrial processing of bamboo into boards. Several authors have studied and reported on the
utilization, processing and the properties of this emerging material as an alternative to the increasing
decline of wood in the forest. This review aims to compare and contrast some of the works done on
the advancement in producing laminated bamboo timber. The properties of bamboo and its laminated
products attest to its potency in substituting wood. Bamboo utilisation has increased significantly in
the wood and wood product industries, with adequate retooling in most processing firms in the sector.
In line with the development and use of bamboo-laminated timber for the purpose of wood in
furniture production, the creation of bamboo plantations on degraded lands will meaningfully support
production and mitigate the degradation of forest.
The use of remote sensing in detecting aerosol or air pollution is not widely applied in Malaysia. The large area of coverage provided by remote sensing satellite may well be the solution to the lack of spatial coverage by the local ground air quality monitoring stations. This article discusses the application of remote sensing instruments in air quality monitoring of Malaysia. The remote sensing data is validated using ground truths either from local ground air monitoring stations or the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). The correlation between remote sensing is relatively good with R from 0.5 to 0.9 depending on the satellite used. The correlation is much improved using the mixed effects algorithm applied on MODIS Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data. Accuracy of predicted air quality data by remote sensing is generally tested using the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) against the ground truths data. Besides the Geographic Information System (GIS) tools are used in manipulating the data from both remote sensing and ground stations so as to produce meaningful results such as spatio-temporal pattern mapping of air pollution. Overall the results showed that the application of remote sensing instruments in air quality monitoring in Malaysia is very useful and can be improved further.
Diabetes mellitus has a high prevalence in Malaysia and is expected to rise in the future due to lifestyle changes. Thus, consumers are turning to alternative methods in the prevention and cure of the disease. The Momordica charantia has been studied for its anti-diabetic activity both in vitro and in vivo and is shown to be effective in inhibiting glucose absorption. Therefore, the MC is used as a main ingredient in the development of health beverages to offer alternatives for patients or the health conscious. The microbial quality of the product is examined to ensure the safety of the product and to find methods to enhance its shelf life.
Isoprenoids biosynthesis in plants involves two separate pathways, mevalonate (MVA) pathway and 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol 4-phosphate (MEP) pathway. A large group of isoprenoids are found to play crucial roles in common plant biochemical functions and have been produced on a large scale for commercial applications. 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMGR) is the key enzyme that catalyses the first committing step in the MVA pathway. In mammals and yeast, HMGR is a well-studied enzyme as many studies have been done on this enzyme due to its important function in the biosynthesis of cholesterol. In plants, many researches on HMGR have been done on different plant species, for example, Arabidopsis thaliana, tobacco, gingko, Zea mays, potato, rose, rubber tree, muskmelon, ginseng and others, in the past decades since it was discovered. Previous researches that worked on plant HMGR focused on the cloning and characterisation of its physiological functions. Little is known about the aspect of regulation and structural characteristics of plants’ HMGR. This review is aimed at providing an overview of the characteristics and structure of HMGR, the transcriptional and post-translational events related to HMGR that have been reported in plants, and proposes areas on the regulation event of HMGR in plants that can be explored to further enhance understanding towards HMGR regulatory interactions.
Living in today's era, artists’ practice in creating artwork is different from those practiced 20 years ago. With the existence of digital art followed by electronic art in the local art scene, the presentation, style and approach have evolved. Back in 2005 and 2007, some exhibitions brought hybrid art concept into an art exhibition. One of the shows was ‘Hybrid+ism’ which highlighted in various disciplines, media, applying unlimited processes and medium. The purpose of this paper is to study the artists’ practice in the hybrid art based on selected artworks. The artworks are selected based on some criteria ranging from experimental, mixed media, multi-disciplines, integration and technology as well as culture aspects. This paper is discussing the hybrid art practice among artists in the Malaysian art scene and the challenges to creating awareness on hybrid practice among audiences.
Torque Teno Virus (TTV) is a human-infected virus that is present ubiquitously in nature. Globally, it infects up to 95% of the healthy individuals without any clinical manifestations. The widely used laboratory diagnosis of TTV infection is Polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Nevertheless, several other methods have been developed. The rapid growth of TTV variants over time has posed a challenge in estimating the global TTV infection as none of the PCR protocol has the ability to detect the entire spectrum of TTV variants. Multiple TTV epidemiological studies have been conducted among Asian population, whereas other continents showed a limited number of studies. The horizontal and vertical transmission of TTV among humans population, as well as interspecies transmission are potentially related to the global widespread of TTV infection.
Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni in the Asteraceae family is commercially valuable and cultivated throughout the world due to the great demand for its steviol glycosides (SGs) contents particularly rebaudioside A. Previous studies confirmed that maximal content of SGs in stevia was achieved at or just before flowering, and delayed flowering with long days provide longer duration for steviol glycosides accumulation. However, there is no suitable stevia variety to be cultivated in Malaysia due to her short day length. Mutation induction, including gamma irradiation, had been shown to be useful for generating genetic variations as well as developing new plant varieties from which desired mutants were successfully selected. The use of mutagens, both physical and chemical, has helped in creating mutants that expressed the selected desirable traits. This paper presents some selected essential data available in extant scientific studies on stevia with the focus on application of gamma irradiation on stevia. Both established achievements and recent publications of gamma radiation on stevia were reviewed. Emphasis is on the exceptional potential of stevia through induced mutation approach especially by using gamma rays.
Ergogenic aids usage by athletes is a common scenario that can be seen in any level of athletes and any types of sports nowadays. Ergogenic aids can range from drugs, food, hormone, mechanical aid and herbs. Traditionally, ergogenic aids can be classified into categories namely: physiological, psychological, mechanical, pharmacological and nutrition. Despite all these classification, all ergogenic aids had one common purpose, which is to improve physical performance. Herbs consumption as ergogenic aids had been practiced since years ago by athletes as either nutritional or pharmacological aids. Using herbs as physical performance booster has gained popularity since it was claimed safer and natural. One of local herb that gets attention as energy booster is Ficus deltoidea (Mas Cotek). Ficus deltoidea had been used traditionally to restore energy. Few studies had reveal that Ficus deltoidea had medicinal properties such anti-nociceptive, antioxidant, wound healing enhancer and blood glucose regulation properties. There is no direct study on Ficus deltoidea as energy booster or ergogenic aids, but this medicinal value might be beneficial to increase athlete’s physical performance. Ergogenic aids, especially those that been produce using herbs, rarely have scientific evidence to determine its effectiveness, safety, dosage and mechanism of action. Ergogenic aids were normally marketed with claims and report as their reference, not scientific evidence. The most frequent claim used by traders is that ergogenic aids can increase and sustain body’s energy. This review will discuss on how ergogenic aids might help athletes to increase their physical performance and possibility of using Ficus deltoidea as ergogenic aids based on its medicinal properties.
The aim of this paper is to review the potentialities and major methodological challenges
of integrating remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) with socioeconomic data
from published articles or book chapters. RS and GIS combined with social science (SS)(termed as
geoinformation technology) serve many applications for sustainable management and monitoring of
the environment. This combined approach gives more accurate results than the single one. It makes
information available about the trend and pattern of land use and land cover change (LUCC) with
socioeconomic variables like population, demographic or income. This combined study which links
RS and GIS with socioeconomic data can also be used successfully for monitoring transmission rate
of disease and mapping or preparing vulnerability index. For impact assessment and modelling, this
combined technology provides better results than the single one. There are some methodological
problems for the researchers to link completely two different disciplines as the object of study and
observational unit is completely different. However, this interdisciplinary study is gaining popularity
day by day to researchers from different disciplines as well as decision makers.
It is hard to identify the local Malay identity in a design context compared to other cultural oriented design in several countries. This paper tries to uncover how designers interpret local identity embodied agent based on local items influences and understood and the influence of incremental, radical design that changes respective to preceding designs. A descriptive study through the literature reviews focusses on a type of artefact initiated through cultural-oriented design. Based on the preliminary study, a sampling taken from the Chinese, Indian, Japanese or European consistently apply the same fundamental understanding in regards to the culture-oriented design. From the same point of view, teapot seems to be used as one of the dominant artefact indicating the design preferences. This research will benefit both the academia and the industry and identify significant identity based on the local context and become an embodied agent to give impact in establishing the state-of-the-art of brand, the identity of local design, establish new trademark towards generating domestic, international economy and promote the nation worldwide throughout design platform.