Background: This study examined parents' developmental concerns for their children within the context of systems of care in Malaysia. Methods: Focus groups and interviews were conducted in peninsular Malaysia and Borneo. Results: Parents' perceptions of developmental delay stemmed from three sources: the cultural, resource, and the social environments. Conclusion: There is a need to develop a medical support system in Malaysia that considers a life-course perspective, including prenatal care, screening/diagnosis, and services. This system should embrace a family-centered approach to diagnosis, referral, intervention, and support with sensitivity to cultural beliefs, family preferences, and barriers to care. Implications for Rehabilitation Parental perceptions of disability affect the strategies they use to cope. This research found that cultural conceptions of disability, available resources, and social support affect parental perceptions of disability. The resource environment in Malaysia significantly restricts parents' ability to cope with their child's disability. This research recommended that the medical system of Malaysia develops a life-course perspective to disability to provide a range of care for children with disabilities including prenatal care, screening and rehabilitation or coping services.
High reproductive compatibility between crops and their wild relatives can provide benefits for crop breeding but also poses risks for agricultural weed evolution. Weedy rice is a feral relative of rice that infests paddies and causes severe crop losses worldwide. In regions of tropical Asia where the wild progenitor of rice occurs, weedy rice could be influenced by hybridization with the wild species. Genomic analysis of this phenomenon has been very limited. Here we use whole genome sequence analyses of 217 wild, weedy and cultivated rice samples to show that wild rice hybridization has contributed substantially to the evolution of Southeast Asian weedy rice, with some strains acquiring weed-adaptive traits through introgression from the wild progenitor. Our study highlights how adaptive introgression from wild species can contribute to agricultural weed evolution, and it provides a case study of parallel evolution of weediness in independently-evolved strains of a weedy crop relative.
In 2012, more than 400,000 urinary bladder cancer cases occurred worldwide, making it the 7(th) most common type of cancer. Although many previous studies focused on the relationship between diet and bladder cancer, the evidence related to specific food items or nutrients that could be involved in the development of bladder cancer remains inconclusive. Dietary components can either be, or be activated into, potential carcinogens through metabolism, or act to prevent carcinogen damage.