Countering terrorism through religion, culture, legal and ethical values / Mokhtar Muhammad and Haliza Hasan

Terrorism has been widely used as a tool by extremist to achieve their political, religious, and ideological agendas. The most worrying issue about terrorism is that innocent civilians are targeted, and they are considered as soft targets. Terrorists consider themselves above the law and normally do not work within the legal and ethical frame of the common army. The mass destruction committed by terrorists is also monstrous in comparison to normal criminals, usually the cause of a huge number of deaths and devastation of properties. Religion is typically used as a motivation for terrorism act where ignorant people are deceived to commit acts of terrorism in the name of religion. This is done by cunning designed doctrines which are used to instigate the perpetrators. Therefore, a better counter-narrative to overcome such doctrines. The use of legal means has proven worldwide to be one of the most effective ways to overcome terrorism. The inculcation of ethics is also important as ethics were throughout history, observed, even in the worse of wars. It is imperatives that all parties of conflicts to observe ethics despite their differences. A culture might easily be influenced by extremist ideas if left unchecked, thus leading to the flourishing of radical ideas. The best solution is for all these elements to synergize to create a concerted effort to combat terrorism

Terrorism: what the statistics show / Mokhtar Muhammad and Haliza Hasan

Terrorism has been widely used as a tool by extremists to achieve their goals. Terrorists consider themselves as freedom fighters to liberate the socalled "oppressed" people. The destructions caused by terrorists are enormous where many lives perished in this "holy war". How the media cover the acts of terrorism actually differ and varied according to their media policy on how they want to present the terrorist stories in their news reporting especially for the headlines. Like what has been stated earlier, there are two types of media coverage of terrorism namely as pro-terrorist and anti-terrorist. Nowadays, international media especially the Western cable is pro-terrorist press as they believed terrorism news will increase their readership and profit. Without realizing it, they actually trigger and developed the fear of Islam within the world society, as most of them labeled Muslim or Islam as terrorists. This study is based on secondary data to look at the phenomenon of terrorism throughout the world. Descriptive statistics are used to describe and to summarize the acts of terrorism. The statistics on terrorism include the incident information, incident location, attack information, weapon information, target/victim information, perpetrator information, casualties, and consequences. The statistics are summarized using an existing database managed by the University of Maryland, USA, which is named as the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Information on terrorist attacks captured were incidences in the period of 1970 to 2015. The GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as transnational and international terrorist incidents that have occurred during this period and contain more than 140,000 cases. The study uses descriptive information about the incidences of terrorism, to show dominant features on certain variables such as attack information or group information, as well as how these dominant features connect with the rest of the variables in the database

The experience of traditional massage practitioners in supporting breastfeeding practice

Strategies that have been successful in promoting breastfeeding practice and to increase breastfeeding education include mother-to-mother support and close contact with breastfeeding support members through home visits. The objective of this study is to explore the experience of traditional massage practitioners in promoting and supporting breastfeeding practice. A qualitative study using semi structured face-to-face interview was conducted among breastfeeding support group members who are working as traditional massage practitioners. The data was transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Three themes were revealed involving participants real enjoyed the experiences, gaining knowledge on breastfeeding technique and breastfeeding challenges. This study identified that the traditional massage practitioners have shown good support towards breastfeeding practice and recommended the need of massage therapy for continuity of this practice

Avian Influenza virus M2e protein: Epitope mapping, competitive ELISA and phage displayed scFv for DIVA in H5N1 serosurveillance

Within the avian influenza virus (AIV) history, H5N1 subtype is the most alarming in terms of its spread rate throughout the globe with its demonstrated unusual pattern of evolution. Persistency and constant circulation of this subtype in poultry population in a number of countries have resulted its establishment and declaration as enzootic. The affected countries are commonly characterised by high poultry populations and productions. They are also developing countries which have minimal funding allocated for precaution on disease incursion. Past observations showed that a single AIV epizootic is capable of causing significant economic burden throughout the world. Although epizootic, it still resulted sporadic cases of human infection and mortality. Therefore, H5N1 enzootic countries opt for vaccination strategy (usually with inactivated whole virus) to evade AIV incursions. However, this interferes with the AIV surveillance effort. This is due to the lack of diagnostic tool with the ability to differentiate AIV infected animal from vaccinated animal (DIVA). Following this realisation, several options are made available. Diagnostic tool development which is capable of DIVA requires a highly sensitive and specific target which at the same time is economic, and pose ease of application. In recent years, growing interest on the AIV matrix 2 extracellular domain (M2e) protein has propelled its exploration as the target for AIV serosurveillance diagnostic tool development. It has been demonstrated to be highly sensitive and specific in detection for AIV infection in an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) setting. The factor which made it highly interesting is its ability for DIVA application. M2e protein can only be found in low concentration on an AIV particle which is used in an inactivated vaccination strategy, while present in high concentration if cells are AIV infected. Therefore, this study has further explores the AIV M2e protein potential for AIV serosurveillance diagnostic tool development and successfully demonstrated an M2e-based test in a competitive ELISA format for DIVA. This particular ELISA format was of interest as it can be potentially used in multiple species application, as AIV is a multispecies pathogen. To ensure the universality of the competitor antibody, comparative mapping of anti-M2e antibodies from chicken, mouse and rabbit was done. Findings highlighted slight variations in the epitope identified for the M2e antigen by antibodies from different species. Mouse anti-M2e antibodies are more suitable to be used as the competitor antibodies against anti-M2e chicken sera in the M2e-based competitive ELISA test. Consequently, application of the mouse anti-M2e antibodies in the M2e-based competitive ELISA has demonstrated specific and sensitive indication of AIV infection in the H5N1 challenged chicken sera. Biotechnology developments has also introduced the single chain variable fragment (scFv) antibodies as specific and stable bait for antibodies detection against targeted pathogen’s protein (antigen). Taking advantage of this knowledge, this study has also successfully isolated reactive and specific anti-M2e scFv antibodies from avian sources. This is critical as an avian sourced antibodies to be used as bait for the targeted pathogen’s protein is highly relevant in the setting for AIV serosurveillance application in the poultry industry. These findings are significant in the effort to provide a highly sensitive and specific diagnostic tool, which are also cost effective, easy to apply with high throughput ability. Such ideal diagnostic tool for AIV serosurveillance is highly valuable, as this may hold the key to break the AIV continuous circulation.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, 201

The experiences of parents and caregivers of children with disability on community-based rehabilitation (CBR) services in Malaysia: A Qualitative study

Background: The rehabilitation program for disabled children is provided through community-based rehabilitation (CBR) services by an initiative of the Department of Social Welfare Malaysia. This long-term program needs commitment and compliance, which relates to the quality of services experienced by parents and caregivers. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of the parents and caregivers of disabled children on the CBR services. Methods: This qualitative study utilized in-depth interview sessions held from March to May 2015. Fifteen parents and caregivers who had disabled children participating in the CBR program were selected using a purposive sampling method. All recorded conversations were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using Atlas.ti version 8.0. The thematic analysis was used for identifying, analyzing, and reporting the data obtained. The themes that emerged were read, reread, and peer checked until the researcher agreed on the thematic representation of the data. Results: Six major themes emerged from this study, including CBR activity, facilities, environment, communication, program impact, and management system. Conclusion: The majority of the parents and caregivers had good experiences with CBR services. However, several aspects could be given further attention to improve the CBR quality and to sustain its services for disabled children

First description of male worms of Enterobius (Colobenterobius) serratus (Nematoda: Oxyuridae), the pinworm parasite of proboscis monkeys

Males of Enterobius (Colobenterobius) serratus Hasegawa et al., 2003 (Nematoda: Oxyuridae) are described for the first time based on six individuals collected from the feces of proboscis monkeys, Nasalis larvatus, in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. The males show identical cephalic morphology to females, being readily distinguishable from their congeners by the serrated inner margins of the lips. The bicolored esophageal corpus, long thin spicule and developed spicular pouch with paired muscular bands are also remarkable characteristics, presumably shared by other Asian members of the subgenus

The costs of caregivers for children with disabilities that participate in centre-based and home-based community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programmes in the East Coast of Malaysia.

Rehabilitation for disabled children requires long-term programmes which are expensive to the family. This study aimed to estimate the cost incurred by caregivers’ children with disabilities from Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan participating in Community-Based ehabilitation (CBR) (CentreBased and Home-Based) and cost of seeking alternative rehabilitation. Cost analysis using the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) method was used to estimate twelve-months’ expenditure in 2014 institutional year on 297 caregivers of children with disability, aged 0 to 18 years who attended CBR. Data were collected using a self-administered costing questionnaire and presented in median (IQR). Results showed that the median direct and indirect costs, excluding medications and alternative care were nearly four times as high in Home-Based compared to Centre-Based (RM2, 376 (11,228) vs. RM608 (739) (p = <0.001). Both groups of caregivers spent a significant amount of resources on alternative rehabilitation. The high costs incurred for alternative rehabilitation is a major economic burden to the family

The experience of traditional massage practitioners in supporting breastfeeding practice

Strategies that have been successful in promoting breastfeeding practice and to increase breastfeeding education include mother-to-mother support and close contact with breastfeeding support members through home visits. The objective of this study is to explore the experience of traditional massage practitioners in promoting and supporting breastfeeding practice. A qualitative study using semi structured face-to-face interview was conducted among breastfeeding support group members who are working as traditional massage practitioners. The data was transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Three themes were revealed involving participants real enjoyed the experiences, gaining knowledge on breastfeeding technique and breastfeeding challenges. This study identified that the traditional massage practitioners have shown good support towards breastfeeding practice and recommended the need of massage therapy for continuity of this practice