Qurban Distribution System: A New Dimension Towards A Fair And Equitable Distribution

Qurban is a form of special Islamic ritual which is performed by slaughtering sacrificial animals and distributing the meat to the specified categories of recipients. In Malaysia, it is a common practice that mosques organised qurban on behalf of third parties and handled the entire process of qurban including its distribution. In the absence of a formal internal control system, the qurban distribution might be subject to mishandling. For instance, there is a risk that the distribution might not be made to the poor and needy at the appropriate rate, thus creating substantial doubt on whether the ritual performed has met the religious requirements or not. In order to mitigate the overall risks in qurban distribution, a group of researchers from UiTM Melaka has proposed a Qurban Distribution System (QurDiS). QurDiS is a documented internal control system consisting of policies, procedures and guidelines for qurban distribution in order to achieve a fair and equitable distribution. The system consists of various internal control activities including adequate segregation of duties among committee members, the use of specially labelled containers for meat distribution, policy of distribution over the counter only, maintenance of a computerised database of qurban recipients, acknowledgement of receipts of the distribution and reconciliation of the distribution through the preparation of distribution reports. The application of QurDiS has many advantages such as to promote transparency and accountability and to reduce the risk of unfair and forbidden distribution. QurDiS may be applied suitably by mosques and other managers of qurban

IIUM Kuantan Campus COVID-19 Guidelines

COVID-19 has brought substantial morbidity and mortality to the world, Malaysia and the state of Pahang. The recent surge in the number of brought-in-dead cases and overburdened healthcare has made the condition worse. The current spread of the variant of concern, the delta variant, has become a threat to the campus. Thus, the IIUM Kuantan Campus Operation Room (OpRoom) has been continued in service since the previous tenure. The main function of OpRoom is to become the coordination centre of matters related to COVID-19 in IIUM Kuantan community and to communicate with Kuantan District Health Office on regular basis. With the establishment of Kulliyyah Taskforce (KTF), the handling of issues pertaining to COVID-19 can become smoother through the process of empowerment. This guideline is published to facilitate the management of COVID-19 in IIUM Kuantan Campus

Motivating Factors for Sustainable Accountant Potentials in Malaysia

Economic Transformation Plan (ETP) emphasizes that the country has a pool of resources to steer towards Malaysia’s aspirations to become a developed and high-income nation. The ETP Roadmap highlights accountancy, an integral function in all businesses as part of the significant ETP driver. However, Malaysia still lacks the required number of qualified accountants by the year 2020. This challenges higher learning institutions to produce suitable accounting graduates. Despite taking an accounting subject in schools, not all these students later opt to enrol accounting in higher learning institutions as many factors influence their career choices. This study aims to explore these motivating factors. A quantitative approach was applied whereby primary data were collected through a questionnaire survey. Respondents were students from seven elite schools in Melaka. The study found eight motivating factors; family members in the accounting profession, public accountant as a career choice, students’ interest in receiving relevant information, choosing private accountants as a career, parents, school counsellor and career talk. However, only four of these factors were significant to students’ decisions to pursue professional accounting courses. In addition, parents’ influence plays a greater role in motivating students to opt for professional accounting courses as compared to an accounting degree

Goods and Services Tax (GST): The Importance of Comprehension Towards Achieving the Desired Awareness Among Malaysian

In line with the implementation of value added tax (VAT) by 160 countries, Malaysia has taken its own path with the introduction of goods and services tax (GST) starting from 1 April 2015 to replace its previous tax system. This new tax system has been announced on 25 October 2013, which has given about 17 months for businesses and people in Malaysia to make a complete preparation for GST. GST is proven to be the fairer tax system to overcome the previous one which was not only limited in scope, but also came with a number of inherent weaknesses. Therefore, in order to achieve the desired awareness regarding GST, it is essential that all Malaysians have the required level of understanding in terms of its concepts, scopes, charges and mechanisms. This paper discusses the benefits of GST for the nation in the long run as well as the negative perceptions from the public. This should reveal the additional steps to be taken by the regulators in ensuring a better comprehension of this new tax system among the citizens as a support for the government’s tax reform, which has been programmed for Malaysia to move towards a high-income nation

Erosion risk index: Correlation of ROM-scale and Mackintosh Probe at Sungai Langat tributary

The assessment of soil erosion risk has been widely studied, and various methods have been established. However, most of the methods require extensive field and laboratory works that are time-consuming. The previous literature mainly focused on utilizing the existed empirical models like USLE and its derivatives. The establishment of empirical correlation can increase the efficiency to estimate the potential of soil erosion in a shorter time. This study was performed to develop an empirical correlation between the number of blows per unit penetration (M-value) obtained from Mackintosh Probe test and ROM-scale number from soil particle size distribution analysis. Both tests were conducted at three different points at one of Sg. Langat tributary riverbank nearby Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi. The soil at each location was analyzed at three different layers, from 0 m to 1.5 m with intervals of 0.3 m and 0.5 m for Mackintosh Probe test and ROM-scale, respectively. The result indicates that ROM-scale umber is inversely proportional to M-value with a coefficient of determination of 0.5885

Antimicrobial activities of Bacillus velezensis strains isolated from stingless bee products against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have reached epidemic proportions globally. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a continuous supply of antibiotics to combat the problem. In this study, bacteria initially identified as species belonging to the Bacillus amyloliquefaciens operational group were re-identified based on the housekeeping gene, gyrB. Cell-free supernatants (CFS) from the strains were used for antimicrobial tests using the agar well diffusion assay against MRSA and various types of pathogenic bacteria. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) and physicochemical characteristics of the CFS were determined. Based on gyrB sequence analysis, five strains (PD9, B7, PU1, BP1 and L9) were identified as Bacillus velezensis. The CFS of all B. velezensis strains showed broad inhibitory activities against Gram-negative and -positive as well as MRSA strains. Strain PD9 against MRSA ATCC 33742 was chosen for further analysis as it showed the biggest zone of inhibition (21.0 ± 0.4 mm). The MIC and MBC values obtained were 125 μl/ml. The crude antimicrobial extract showed bactericidal activity and was stable at various temperatures (40-80°C), pH (4-12), surfactants (Tween 20, Tween 80, SDS and Triton X-100) and metal ions (MgCI2, NaCI2, ZnNO3 and CuSO4) when tested. However, the crude extract was not stable when treated with proteinase K. All these properties resembled the characteristics of peptides. The antimicrobial compound from the selected strain was purified by using solvent extraction method and silica gel column chromatography. The purified compound was subjected to High Performance Liquid Chromatography which resulted in a single peak of the anti-MRSA compound being detected. The molecular weight of the anti-MRSA compound was determined by using SDS-PAGE and zymogram. The size of the purified antimicrobial peptide was approximately ~ 5 kDa. The antimicrobial peptide produced from B. velezensis strain PD9 is a promising alternative to combat the spread of MRSA infections in the future

A review on the potential biotechnological applications of the operational group Bacillus amyloliquefaciens

Bacteria under the operational group Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (OGBa) are all Gram-positive, endospore-forming, and rod-shaped. Taxonomically, the OGBa belongs to the Bacillus subtilis species complex, family Bacillaceae, class Bacilli, and phylum Firmicutes. To date, the OGBa comprises four bacterial species: Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, Bacillus siamensis, Bacillus velezensis and Bacillus nakamurai. They are widely distributed in various niches including soil, plants, food, and water. A resurgence in genome mining has caused an increased focus on the biotechnological applications of bacterial species belonging to the OGBa. The members of OGBa are known as plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) due to their abilities to fix nitrogen, solubilize phosphate, and produce siderophore and phytohormones, as well as antimicrobial compounds. Moreover, they are also reported to produce various enzymes including α-amylase, protease, lipase, cellulase, xylanase, pectinase, aminotransferase, barnase, peroxidase, and laccase. Antimicrobial compounds that able to inhibit the growth of pathogens including non-ribosomal peptides and polyketides are also produced by these bacteria. Within the OGBa, various B. velezensis strains are promising for use as probiotics for animals and fishes. Genome mining has revealed the potential applications of members of OGBa for removing organophosphorus (OPs) pesticides. Thus, this review focused on the applicability of members of OGBa as plant growth promoters, biocontrol agents, probiotics, bioremediation agents, as well as producers of commercial enzymes and antibiotics. Here, the bioformulations and commercial products available based on these bacteria are also highlighted. This review will better facilitate understandings of members of OGBa and their biotechnological applications

Design and implementation of fast spoken foul language recognition with different end-to-end deep neural network architectures

Given the excessive foul language identified in audio and video files and the detrimental consequences to an individual’s character and behaviour, content censorship is crucial to filter profanities from young viewers with higher exposure to uncensored content. Although manual detection and censorship were implemented, the methods proved tedious. Inevitably, misidentifications involving foul language owing to human weariness and the low performance in human visual systems concerning long screening time occurred. As such, this paper proposed an intelligent system for foul language censorship through a mechanized and strong detection method using advanced deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) through Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) cells. Data on foul language were collected, annotated, augmented, and analysed for the development and evaluation of both CNN and RNN configurations. Hence, the results indicated the feasibility of the suggested systems by reporting a high volume of curse word identifications with only 2.53% to 5.92% of False Negative Rate (FNR). The proposed system outperformed state-of-the-art pre-trained neural networks on the novel foul language dataset and proved to reduce the computational cost with minimal trainable parameters