Language is essential for communication. People who are involved in cross cultural communication have to be bilingual in order to interact with people from a different language background (Blackwell. Woolard, K. (2005). Bilingualism opens up various new pathways of thoughts, expressions, and it helps to reduce misunderstanding in interactions (Hidayat, T. 2012). The purpose of this review is to find out how code-switching plays a vital role in language communication especially in the social media such as Facebook, Twitter, SMS and Chat. This study reviewed fifteen journal articles to examine the ways code-switching was used. The review was to discover social phenomena and authentic identities of social actors. The study discovered that code-switching has been used widely to unmask bilinguals’ cultural background and group identity during online communication via Facebook. Finally, code-switching can be used to obtain positive feelings to the interlocutor, which here was combined with introducing humour as an in-group marker, quoting, and to some extent topic specificity as well as possible vocabulary limitation in one language or the other, in the online conversation by bilinguals such as to express group solidarity.
Zingiberaceae is one of the largest plant families consisting of rhizomes that are commonly used as spice in soups and curries as well as alternative medications in folklore medicine. Zingiber officinale or commonly known as ginger is extensively employed in Asian, Ayurvedic, Chinese, and Arabian folklore medicine for the treatment of pain, inflammation and various spasm-associated gastric ailments. The past few decades saw rapid advancements in the extraction process of ginger bioactive constituents and validation of their corresponding pharmacodynamic and pharmacotherapeutic activities, and biological properties in vivo and in vitro. Results reported from several biological studies on ginger showed that extracts and compounds from this tuberous rhizome exhibit antiemetic, anticancer, antipyretic, antispasmogenic and antimicrobial activities. This article reviews the effect of Zingiber officinale and its bioactive constituents on isolated organ preparations from several species of animals in view of its potential use as an alternative treatment for muscle spasms and common gastric ailments.
Changes in tick-vector densities and a resultant incidence of tick-borne diseases are
caused mainly by human activities affecting the environmental ecosystem, especially in tropical
countries. As one of the most important invertebrate arthropod vectors of disease transmission, ticks
are susceptible to changes in their environment due to their sole dependence of all their life stages on
prevailing environment. Upon completion of their lifecycle, ticks depend on the availability of hosts
and other several factors related to their surroundings to survive. This review discusses the major
factors that influence the prevalence and distribution of tick-borne diseases among domestic animals
in Malaysia. It is highly imperative to understand the factors that lead to increase in tick-vector
populations, infection intensity and hence the spatial distribution of ticks and tick-borne diseases in
order to prevent their emergence and resurgence as well as to serve as a basis for effectivecontrol.
This paper explores the construct of motivation from the perspective of the instructional designer or teacher. It describes the motivation to learn in the context of intrinsic motivation, Expectancy-value Theory, Self-efficacy Theory, and Attribution Theory. The ARCS motivational model is examined in detail before discussing how motivation can be integrated in instructional design to enhance learning. This paper also explicates Cheng and Yeh’s (2009) framework in the context of classroom learning.
Recently research in creative leadership has ballooned to encompass the essential qualities in organizational leaders (Petrie, 2014). In this study, Generativity Theory was utilized to explore the concept of creativity in leaders. Epstein (1999) presented four main core skills and abilities that assist people in expressing creativity individually which are capturing, challenging, broadening and surrounding. Model of high performing school by Shannon and Bylsma (2007) was utilized to measure school effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to determine teacher’s perceptions related to principals’ creative leadership practices towards school effectiveness in secondary schools in Klang District. Simple random sampling was used to select ten secondary schools from three different clusters of schools in the Klang District. A total of 250 teachers from these ten schools participated in this study. The study used self-administered questionnaires. The data are collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation and Multiple Regressions). This research endeavoured to answer the research questions through employing quantitative research method. This study discovered that the level of school effectiveness as practiced by secondary school teachers was overall high level. On the other hand, it was concluded that the level of creative leadership practiced by school leaders is at moderate level. This study also found out a moderate correlation between school principals’ creative leadership practice and school effectiveness (r = .617, p < .01). Additionally, multiple regression analysis indicated creative leadership practices domain; Encourage Capturing received the strongest weight in the prediction (β = 0.383, p
Issues regarding misconception of the same piece of information are solicited from users with different cultural background and needs. Various efforts have been conducted to cater to such issue. However studies regarding cultivation of cultural elements in user interface design seem to be neglected. Numerous studies show that interface design preferences are related to the user’s cultural background. Furthermore, studies of user cultural needs could enhance user’s understanding and acceptance of the interface design. Thus, the purpose of this article is to review the cultural factors influencing interface design elements. Indirectly, it exhibits the concept of culture centered design.
Remote sensing and geographic information system techniques are significant and popular approaches that have been used in recent years to measure and map urban growth patterns. This paper primarily aims to provide a basis for a literature review of urban growth measurement and mapping by using different methods. For this purpose, the general characteristics of measuring and mapping urban growth patterns are described and classified. The strengths and weaknesses of the various methods have been identified from an analysis and discussion of the characteristics of the techniques. Results of reviews confirm that combining quantitative and qualitative techniques, such as Shannon approach and change detection, to measure and map urban growth patterns will improve understanding of the phenomenon of urban growth. Moreover, using social and economic data such as population and income data will improve understanding of the relationships between causes and effects. The integration of social and economic factors with quantitative and qualitative techniques will contribute to a perfect evaluation of urban growth patterns and land use changes, taking technical, social, economic, spatial, and temporal factors into account.
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.
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.
The successful in vivo horizontal transfer of mobile genetic elements carrying resistance and virulence determinants have contributed immensely to a global dissemination of virulent and multi-drug resistant pathogens. In addition, the pathogenesis of MRSA infection is enhanced via initial colonization of the skin through the component of the microbial surface antigen recognizing adhesive matrix molecules and by their ability to evade host immune response. Furthermore, it was also observed that the genetic diversity of pathogenic MRSA is due to its’ ability to rapidly acquire resistance and virulence determinants. A characteristic feature that made it one of the most important nosocomial pathogen worldwide. Similarly, the expression of virulence gene in MRSA has been observed to be regulated by the accessory gene regulator system (agr). These system is made up of a series of genes whose product build up quorum-sensing regulatory mechanisms that is growth dependent. In addition, at a certain growth stage, the agr systems triggers a pronounced changes in the expression of genes called the quorum sensing. The findings of this review affirms the importance of horizontal gene transfer in the dissemination of resistance and virulence determinants and as well as the genetic diversity of MRSA.
As reported by the World Health Organisation (2014), Malaysia is the fattest country among the Southeast Asia. Among others, obesity is a leading contributor of non-communicable diseases (e.g., type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cancer). This article aims to review the exiting weight management programmes targeting overweight and obesity in Malaysia from 2005 to 2015. The findings from this review could be useful for future intervention efforts in an attempt to address such issues in Malaysia.