A qualitative analysis on methadone maintenance programme in the Malay language newspapers / Noor Mayudia Mohd Mothar, Hajar Abd Aziz and Shahril Anuar Abdul Ghalim

How do the Malay language newspapers in Malaysia report the Methadone Maintenance Therapy programme? Based on this main question, the study investigates the news reports of the Berita Harian and Harian Metro, to see how the Methadone Maintenance Theraphy (MMT) were being treated in their news reports. The researchers adopted interpretive approach to analyse a sample of 11 news reports on MMT published on these newspapers throughout the year 2009. Five research questions were generated from the samples studied, namely "how do the newspaper reports on methadone-related issue", “does the report potrayed addiction as a sickness?”, “is there any misconception on the reporting of methadone issues”, “does the government care about methadone issues” and “what were people‟s reactions on MMT”. Study findings suggested that methadone has not been reported negatively by the newspapers, but there is a general idea in Berita Harian that the MMT programme has not been fully successful. On the contrary, Harian Metro prefers to give an idea that the MMT is a promising programme for drugs addicts to actually lead a normal life. These newspapers too have been treating drug addictions as sickness and not as social problem, therefore answered the main question that the newspapers has portrayed methadone as a recommended substitution for theraphy and not a type of harmful drug. News reports too were often medicallysound and had highlighted the government‟s intention to champion the programme as a main effort to help drug addicts become a productive members of the society. The study found out that the newspapers too has treated the public as the antagonist in their reports, and that it is a task uphill to correct their persistent misconception on MMT programme and drug addictions

Media and the methadone drug substitution therapy (MDST): a content analysis of news on methadone In Berita Harian And Harian Metro in 2008 / Siti Hajar Abd Aziz...[et al.]

Malaysia media has been covering the issues of Methadone Drug Substitution Therapy (MDST) since the year 2005, when the government decided to give free syringes, condom and methadone as part of a “harm-reduction” programme for the drug addicts. After a number of years, the public’s perception of methadone users and the treatment has not improved much. The public still misconceived the treatment as just another alternative to meet the addiction habits. Question arose whether the media has been supporting the MDST programme in their news based on the style of news writing and the information offered in the news. Therefore, the paper will examine the contents and writing style of news on methadone treatment by Berita Harian and Harian Metro in throughout year 2008 to determine their level of support on the programme. The study found out that Berita Harian was dedicated at focusing their news on methadone to on the awareness and the treatment part of the methadone maintenance, using sources from ministry and health practitioners. Harian Metro, however, preferred to represent methadone in the form of crime news, and using enforcement bodies as their sources. Although both newspapers has shown their support to the methadone treatment programme, but methadone treatment did suffered from this stereotype of news values practised by most tabloid newspapers when it often fall under the theme of crime. It was feared that associating methadone with crime and harmful drugs would create a perception that methadone is just another type of harmful drugs and not a therapy drug or medicine for the addicts

Evaluation of the lethal potency of scorpion and snake venoms and comparison between intraperitoneal and intravenous injection routes.

International audienceScorpion stings and snake bites are major health hazards that lead to suffering of victims and high mortality. Thousands of injuries associated with such stings and bites of venomous animals occur every year worldwide. In North Africa, more than 100,000 scorpion stings and snake bites are reported annually. An appropriate determination of the 50% lethal doses (LD50) of scorpion and snake venoms appears to be an important step to assess (and compare) venom toxic activity. Such LD50 values are also commonly used to evaluate the neutralizing capacity of specific anti-venom batches. In the present work, we determined experimentally the LD50 values of reference scorpion and snake venoms in Swiss mice, and evaluated the influence of two main venom injection routes (i.e., intraperitoneal (IP) versus intravenous (IV)). The analysis of experimental LD50 values obtained with three collected scorpion venoms indicates that Androctonus mauretanicus (Am) is intrinsically more toxic than Androctonus australis hector (Aah) species, whereas the latter is more toxic than Buthus occitanus (Bo). Similar analysis of three representative snake venoms of the Viperidae family shows that Cerastes cerastes (Cc) is more toxic than either Bitis arietans (Ba) or Macrovipera lebetina (Ml) species. Interestingly, the venom of Elapidae cobra snake Naja haje (Nh) is far more toxic than viper venoms Cc, Ml and Ba, in agreement with the known severity of cobra-related envenomation. Also, our data showed that viper venoms are about three-times less toxic when injected IP as compared to IV, distinct from cobra venom Nh which exhibited a similar toxicity when injected IP or IV. Overall, this study clearly highlights the usefulness of procedure standardization, especially regarding the administration route, for evaluating the relative toxicity of individual animal venoms. It also evidenced a marked difference in lethal activity between venoms of cobra and vipers, which, apart from the nature of toxins, might be attributed to the rich composition of high molecular weight enzymes in the case of viper venoms

An analysis of The Star and The New Straits Times global Islamic news / Siti Hajar Abd Aziz, Noor Mayudia Mohd Mothar and Shahril Anuar Abdul Ghalim

Malaysian media received their world news from the international news agencies; therefore readers are flooded with news reports structured by the Westerns point ofvielv. This paper wishes to investigate the portrayal of Islam in news selected and republished in the World section of The Star and the New Straits Times. A content analysis revealed that most ofthe stories on Islam are revolved around war, crime and politics. News on Islam has reported that this religion been relatively associated with violence; suggesting that the news agencies are bias as reporting on Islam, especially in the news republished by The Star. The main frames projected in The Star are "Islam is inherently violent" and "Islam does not go well with the concept of peace ". Although news reports in NST suggested that terrorism and wars are common in the Islamic countries, yet the tones suggested that Islam is not the source of the act of extremism. The mainframes in NST are "terrorism and warsare common in the Islamic countries, yet Islam is not to be blamed" and "the Muslim countries are slowly moving from extremism to peace and moderation. The finding indicates that there English newspapers are forced to republished negative news on Islam which will resulted in a misconception of Islam among the readers

Analysis of Genomic Regions Associated With Coronary Artery Disease Reveals Continent-Specific Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in North African Populations.

ACKGROUND: In recent years, several genomic regions have been robustly associated with coronary artery disease (CAD) in different genome-wide association studies (GWASs) conducted mainly in people of European descent. These kinds of data are lacking in African populations, even though heart diseases are a major cause of premature death and disability. METHODS: Here, 384 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the top four CAD risk regions (1p13, 1q41, 9p21, and 10q11) were genotyped in 274 case-control samples from Morocco and Tunisia, with the aim of analyzing for the first time if the associations found in European populations were transferable to North Africans. RESULTS: The results indicate that, as in Europe, these four genetic regions are also important for CAD risk in North Africa. However, the individual SNPs associated with CAD in Africa are different from those identified in Europe in most cases (1p13, 1q41, and 9p21). Moreover, the seven risk variants identified in North Africans are efficient in discriminating between cases and controls in North African populations, but not in European populations. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates a disparity in markers associated to CAD susceptibility between North Africans and Europeans that may be related to population differences in the chromosomal architecture of these risk regions

Analyse qualitative et quantitative des particules lipoproteiques humaines Lp AI, Lp AI:AII et Lp AIV

SIGLEINIST T 71123 / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueFRFranc