Developing climate change dimensions in Malaysia through tourists’ perception

Climate change has long since ceased to be a scientific curiosity and is no longer just one of many environmental and regulatory concerns. It is a growing crisis with economic, health and safety, food production, security and other dimensions. Shifting weather patterns for example, threaten food production through increased unpredictability of precipitation. Rising sea levels contaminate coastal freshwater reserves and increase the risk of catastrophic flooding. Climate change in Malaysia is usually associated with extreme weather and seasonality. Extreme weather variables include temperature, rainfall and to a certain extent, wind. Meanwhile, seasonality is always associated with dry and wet/monsoon season. This paper outlines the research experience that sets out to determine the dimension of climate change in Malaysia based on tourists’ perception. The establishment of these dimensions will provide structured framework for other researches. The exploratory nature of this research and its comprehensiveness employ both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The research suggests that there are five dimensions of climate change, which are humidity, rainfall, sea level, vegetation and activity. The outputs are expected to establish knowledge on how climatic dimensions affected the socio-economy of a country especially in the tourism industry and help policy-makers to strategise future adaptation planning and responding to the potential threats of climate change in order to achieve sustainable development

Detection of Sugar-Lectin Interactions by Multivalent Dendritic Sugar Functionalized Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

We show that single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) decorated with sugar functionalized poly (propyl ether imine) (PETIM) dendrimer is a very sensitive platform to quantitatively detect carbohydrate recognizing proteins, namely, lectins. The changes in electrical conductivity of SWNT in field effect transistor device due to carbohydrate - protein interactions form the basis of present study. The mannose sugar attached PETIM dendrimers undergo charge - transfer interactions with the SWNT. The changes in the conductance of the dendritic sugar functionalized SWNT after addition of lectins in varying concentrations were found to follow the Langmuir type isotherm, giving the concanavalin A (Con A) - mannose affinity constant to be 8.5 x 106 M-1. The increase in the device conductance observed after adding 10 nM of Con A is same as after adding 20 \muM of a non - specific lectin peanut agglutinin, showing the high specificity of the Con A - mannose interactions. The specificity of sugar-lectin interactions was characterized further by observing significant shifts in Raman modes of the SWNT.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Technique of definition of cracking resistance characteristics of metal plates and envelopes of small thickness

The technique of cracking resistance tests of metal plates of small thickness is given. Features of such tests, among which are occurrence of warp in the places of fastening of plates, occurrence of waves because of loss of stability at out-centre loading are shown. Ways to eliminate these shortcomings with the help of special equipment are specified. Tests by the proposed methods allow to make recommendations for technology and choice of steels at creation of valve tapes

The affect of mentoring, management support and training and development on the employees' job performance

This study analyzes the employment job performance by examining the relationship on mentoring, management support and training and development in State Federal Development Office of Sabah. Issues such as the complexity of the staffs from the different demographic and transformation of ICT systems give added insights to this study. The methodology for this study is using quantitative approach. The findings of this study reveal that mentoring, management support and training and development have significant positive relationship with job performance. This study recommends that human resource management in all over Sabah Development Office (SDO) in Malaysia should implement such practices in order to formulating and implementing strategies of employees’ job performance at the workplace