Ethnic differences and predictors of racial and religious discriminations among Malaysian Malays and Chinese

Studies on racial and religious discriminations in Malaysia tend to be avoided. This is due to their sensitive nature, possibly becoming political ammunition, and individuals being accused of seditious intent. Much that is necessary to discuss discrimination in Malaysia remains unclear. It is not known to what extent contact between groups is undesirable especially as neighbors in Malaysia. This study examined ethnic differences and predictors of racial and religious discriminations among 1200 Malaysians (319 Chinese and 881 Malays). Discrimination was conceptualized through having the attitude of not wanting people of a different race or a different religion as neighbors. Ethnic differences in discriminating against others were found to be significant. Malays showed higher means of not wanting neighbors of a different race or religion compared to Chinese. Demographic factors and beliefs reflecting conservatism were not good predictors, explaining only slight variances. However, a person who discriminates based on religion was consistently a predictor of exhibiting racial discrimination, and vice-versa, with approximately double the odds among Malays. The finding highlights a strong interplay between race and religion, suggesting that Chinese and Malays conflate the two together

Gender – Fair Language in Teaching Basic Education

Education aims to create equality and respect through its components. One of those components is the learning delivery of any subject matter wherein language is mainly utilized. The study aimed to determine the usage of the gender sensitive language in teaching basic education at Don Honorio Ventura State University. It specifically sought to answer on the level of familiarity of the teachers on the gender-fair language; the frequency on the teacher’s usage of the gender-fair language; the common gender-fair terminologies used in motivation, discussion, performance tasks, assessments, and assignments; and the difficulties that the teachers encountered in using gender-fair language. The study used sequential explanatory type of research. It used questionnaires and interviews in gathering data. There are 65 participants who answered the survey and 11 of them participated in the focal group discussion. Based on the findings, the teachers are familiar with the gender-fair language but they sometimes use them in various areas of teaching such as in motivation, discussion, performance task, assessment, and assignment  due to the topic pertinence and student ability. With those findings, the conduct of wide dissemination through capability building on the use of gender-fair language is still needed.&nbsp

Anomalous SAXS at P12 beamline EMBL Hamburg: instrumentation and applications

Small‐angle X‐ray scattering (SAXS) is an established method for studying nanostructured systems and in particular biological macromolecules in solution. To obtain element‐specific information about the sample, anomalous SAXS (ASAXS) exploits changes of the scattering properties of selected atoms when the energy of the incident X‐rays is close to the binding energy of their electrons. While ASAXS is widely applied to condensed matter and inorganic systems, its use for biological macromolecules is challenging because of the weak anomalous effect. Biological objects are often only available in small quantities and are prone to radiation damage, which makes biological ASAXS measurements very challenging. The BioSAXS beamline P12 operated by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) at the PETRA III storage ring (DESY, Hamburg) is dedicated to studies of weakly scattering objects. Here, recent developments at P12 allowing for ASAXS measurements are presented. The beamline control, data acquisition and data reduction pipeline of the beamline were adapted to conduct ASAXS experiments. Modelling tools were developed to compute ASAXS patterns from atomic models, which can be used to analyze the data and to help designing appropriate data collection strategies. These developments are illustrated with ASAXS experiments on different model systems performed at the P12 beamline