Impact of land legislation in Sarawak: politics and its legislative trends / Ahmad Bakhtiar Hamdan, Ahmad Dzufadzli, Nur ‘Asyiqin Ahmad

This paper is entitled "Impact of Land Legislation in Sarawak: Politics and its Legislative Trends". It is aimed at analyzing the development of land related legislations that have been passed by the Sarawak Legislative Assembly, since its inauguration till date. The analysis will also include the impact of the numerous amendments made to the ordinances and the Sarawak Land Code. Then, this paper seeks to highlight probable reasons that fuelled the initiative to amend the legislations

Exploring service quality and customer satisfaction at Library in Malaysia University

Services are intangible and a service represents a process, consequently the quality of a service is more difficult to perceive and its more complicated. In general, the perceived quality is defined as the customer‟s judgment on overall satisfaction.Customer satisfaction is depending on the high quality services.The main objectives of this study was to identify the level of service quality among customers at one library in Malaysia public university and tried to examine the relationship between SERVQUAL and overall quality of service offered.Besides, this study also tried to analyze the dominant factor that affected the relationship between SERVQUAL and overall quality services

Combination of narrow bipolar pulses and attempted leaders in Melaka, Malaysia

This paper presents the characteristic of the positive attempted leaders preceded by positive narrow bipolar pulses (NPBPs). Attempted leaders are the preliminary breakdown process with no subsequent event (return stroke). On the other hand, narrow bipolar pulse is the lightning event commonly isolated and produces a strong electromagnetic field (in a short period). Attempted leaders hardly occurred in the tropics, and the preceding of the NBP (the combination) should be considered unique. In this present study, we found four samples in which the arithmetic means of duration of NPBPs pulse was 32.19 µs, with separation between the positive attempted leader was 1.86 ms apart. For the positive attempted leader, the arithmetic means of the whole pulse train, individual pulse and interval pulse of positive attempted leaders were 3.47 ms, 29.66 µs and 486.53 µs, respectively. The pulse train in this study seems to fade out fast compared to the isolated positive attempted leader pulse train. Next, the NPBP's pulse duration in this study shows well in agreement with the type of isolated NPBPs indicates that the association does not affect its pulse duration characteristic already present in the title

Sentencing disparities in rape: a legal review / Wan Amalina Hamizah Wan Zaidi … [et al.]

Rape is a serious sexual crime and it is a growing problem in Malaysia. It degrades the human's value and demarcates women's dignity. In Malaysia, although harsh punishment have been provided for rapist, these set of sanctions are not compulsory in nature. It is the discretionary powers of the court in punishing the offenders. Thus, sentencing disparities emerged in consequences of different approaches used by courts. This study intends to review the sentencing disparities in rape offence in Malaysia as to what extend does the court departed from statutory sanction laid down in Penal Code for rape offence. Other than that, this study also analyzes the different approaches used by the states of Virginia and Minnesota in handling this issue. For this purpose, the relevant provisions in the Penal Code Act 574 are reviewed and judgments given by the courts are also taken for analyzing the factors sentencing disparities. There are loopholes in the existing laws that can be improved in order for the court to achieve consistencies in giving sentence to the rapist. A sentencing guideline is proposed as a recommendation from our team

High levels of antibiotic resistance in isolates from diseased livestock

Overuse of antimicrobials in livestock health and production beyond therapeutic needs has been highlighted in recent years as one of the major risk factors for the acceleration of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of bacteria in both humans and animals. While there is an abundance of reports on AMR in clinical isolates from humans, information regarding the patterns of resistance in clinical isolates from animals is scarce. Hence, a situational analysis of AMR based on clinical isolates from a veterinary diagnostic laboratory was performed to examine the extent and patterns of resistance demonstrated by isolates from diseased food animals. Between 2015 and 2017, 241 cases of diseased livestock were received. Clinical specimens from ruminants (cattle, goats and sheep), and non-ruminants (pigs and chicken) were received for culture and sensitivity testing. A total of 701 isolates were recovered from these specimens. From ruminants, Escherichia coli (n = 77, 19.3%) predominated, followed by Staphylococcus aureus (n = 73, 18.3%). Antibiotic sensitivity testing (AST) revealed that E. coli resistance was highest for penicillin, streptomycin, and neomycin (77–93%). In addition, S. aureus was highly resistant to neomycin, followed by streptomycin and ampicillin (68–82%). More than 67% of E. coli isolates were multi-drug resistant (MDR) and only 2.6% were susceptible to all the tested antibiotics. Similarly, 65.6% of S. aureus isolates were MDR and only 5.5% were susceptible to all tested antibiotics. From non-ruminants, a total of 301 isolates were recovered. Escherichia coli (n = 108, 35.9%) and Staphylococcus spp. (n = 27, 9%) were the most frequent isolates obtained. For E. coli, the highest resistance was against amoxicillin, erythromycin, tetracycline, and neomycin (95–100%). Staphylococcus spp. had a high level of resistance to streptomycin, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, tetracycline and gentamicin (80–100%). The MDR levels of E. coli and Staphylococcus spp. isolates from non-ruminants were 72.2 and 74.1%, respectively. Significantly higher resistance level were observed among isolates from non-ruminants compared to ruminants for tetracycline, amoxicillin, enrofloxacin, and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole

The use of Waze navigation application among UiTM Rembau students / Farah Liyana Nazaruddin... [et al.]

The evolution of technology has contributed many inventions for the society which gives them much simpler lifestyle. The invention of Waze nowadays has brought up a novel innovation in this modern era for people to reach to their destination without worrying about the direction if they are not familiar with the direction. This paper seeks to explore the perception of university students toward using Waze navigation application as their medium to reach to the desired destination. Qualitative and in-depth interview were used to elicit the information from selectively seven informants of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Rembau Campus. This paper has discovered that Waze is the best navigation application for students as it gives much benefit to them rather than disadvantages because of its smart features as it notifies the driver about the traffic situation. Despite the disadvantages, students are still resorting to Waze navigation application instead of others which they have yet to find it useful and the best planner for their journey

Distribution Of Attempted Leader With Monsoon Seasons And Negative Cloud-To-Ground Flashes In Melaka, Malaysia

Ninety (90) waveforms recognized as attempted leader were identified with both positive (84 events) and negative (6 events) initial polarity observed from four consecutive years of data (N=10,206). The positive attempted leader shows no correlation with the number of thunderstorms producing it during monsoon. Meanwhile, the negative attempted leader during monsoon and both polarity of attempted leader (positive and negative) during inter-monsoon shows positive correlation with the number of thunderstorms producing it. In this study, the yearly statistical distribution of negative cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning flashes which were classified as positive preliminary breakdown pulses (214 events) and negative preliminary breakdown pulses (4982 events) in accordance of their preliminary polarity were also presented. In addition, there is no relationship of attempted leader and the initial breakdown of negative ground flash since both mechanisms performed as a negative correlation

Clinical performance of reverse transcription loop mediated isothermal amplification COVID-19 assay on gold- nanoparticle-modified screen-printed Carbon Electrode using differential pulse voltammetry

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) as the gold standard for coronavirus disease detection. In this study, we aim to validate the clinical performance of reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assay on gold-nanoparticle-modified screen-printed carbon electrode (AuNP/SPCE) using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and to compare it with real-time RT-PCR. The shape of the electrodeposited AuNP on SPCE was quasi-spherical with a size of ±500 nm. The developed RT-LAMP primer was designed from the GenBank database using the NCBI Multiple Alignment tools and Jalview software. Nasopharyngeal clinical samples were obtained from suspected COVID-19 patients (n = 148). The RT-LAMP products were dropped on the modified AuNP/SPCE under DPV setting, which resulted in current change (∆I) responses. The positive and negative samples produced significantly different ∆I signals with a p-value <0.0001 at a 95% confidence interval using Student’s t-test. The RT-LAMP assay using Au/SPCE exhibited a 30 s response time per analysis. The clinical sensitivity and specificity obtained were 79.7% and 85.1%, respectively, with a detection limit of 0.4 copies µl−1. Hence, this proposed method is suitable for COVID-19 RNA detection in resource-limited settings

A Review of Organic Waste Treatment Using Black Soldier Fly (<i>Hermetia illucens</i>)

The increase in solid waste generation is caused primarily by the global population growth that resulted in urban sprawl, economic development, and consumerism. Poor waste management has adverse impacts on the environment and human health. The recent years have seen increasing interest in using black soldier fly (BSF), Hermetia illucens, as an organic waste converter. Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) feed voraciously on various types of organic waste, including food wastes, agro-industrial by-products, and chicken and dairy manure, and reduce the initial weight of the organic waste by about 50% in a shorter period than conventional composting. The main components of the BSFL system are the larvero, where the larvae feed and grow, and the fly house, where the adults BSF live and reproduce. It is essential to have a rearing facility that maintains the healthy adult and larval BSF to provide a sufficient and continuous supply of offspring for organic waste treatment. The BSF organic waste processing facility consists of waste pre-processing, BSFL biowaste treatment, the separation of BSFL from the process residue, and larvae and residue refinement into marketable products. BSFL digest the nutrients in the wastes and convert them into beneficial proteins and fats used to produce animal feed, and BSFL residue can be used as an organic fertilizer. This review summarizes the BSFL treatment process to provide an in-depth understanding of the value of its by-products as animal feed and organic fertilizer