Hiving Method Of Stingless Bee Domestication For Sustainable Meliponiculture

The stingless bee rearing is emergent agriculture activity in Malaysia. The stingless bee products including honey and bee bread, which are stored in propolis-rich pots. The activities of stingless bee rearing are referred to as meliponiculture and it is a crucial activity that encourages the conservation of stingless bees and helping to reduce deforestation due to feral stingless bee colony hunting. Here, we studied direct and indirect hiving method of the feral stingless bee colony into a newly innovative hive called Mustafa-Hive. In the hive, the brood was placed into a split-able throne as a brood chamber and inserted into an air-jacketed palace as an insulation chamber. The honey cassette was used on the hive to induce a monolayer honey pot formation. Findings have shown that all broods in an indirect hiving module provide cleaner broods from the sawdust compared to the direct hiving process. Indiriect hiving gave 100% colony viability and supported by noteworthy yield pot formations in the honeycassette. Findings also showed an average of 4.5ml honey were extracted from each pot to produce an average of 99ml and 256.5ml honey at week 2 and week 4 for every hive, respectively. As conclusion, the indirect hiving method and the use of Mustafa-hive ensures colony survival and induced formation of monolayer honey pots. Thus this hiving module encourage for sustainable meliponiculture, enables for absolute and hygienic honey extractions from honey cassette which could indirectly promote the development of the stingless bee industr

In vitro and preclinical evaluation of newcastle disease virus strain V4UPM as an oncolytic virus candidate for novel human malignant glioma theraphy

Virus pemusnah kanser merupakan virus aktif yang digunakan untuk menjangkiti sel kanser dan telah dikaji dengan meluas bagi tujuan rawatan kanser. Virus pemusnah kanser menjangkiti sel kanser secara spesifik kerana virus ini mampu mengeksploitasi mutasi yang merangsang pembiakan sel kanser tanpa menjejaskan sel yang normal. Kanser otak adalah malignan pembunuh didalam otak dan glioma merupakan kanser otak manusia yang bertumbuh dari sel glia dan ianya paling kerap dijumpai. Glioma tahap IV dikenali sebagai glioblastoma multiform (GBM) dimana pembiakan dan perebakan GBM ini dikaitkan dengan peningkatan ekspresi protin Rac1. Virus sampar ayam (NDV) adalah virus avian didalam keluarga paramyxovirus, dan merupakan salah satu virus pemusnah kanser yang mewarisi seleksi terpilih terhadap sel kanser. NDV dilaporkan menjadi pencetus kepada pembentukkan sel syncytia dan mengaruh bagi kematian sel didalam pelbagai jenis kanser, tetapi dilaporkan selamat untuk suntikan klinikal pada manusia. Oncolytic viruses are replicating viruses that have been used to infect neoplastic cells and are widely studied as a form of antitumor therapy. Oncolytic viruses specifically target tumorigenic cells because they are able to exploit the aberrations on the cellular level that promote tumor growth and the viruses preferentially infect cancer cells without interfering with normal cells. Brain cancer is a malignant growth within the skull and glioma is the most common human brain cancer arising from glial cells. Grade IV glioma is known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) where the proliferation and invasive behavior in GBM was associates with upregulation of Rac1 protein. Newcastle disease virus (NDV), an avian virus in the Paramyxovirus family, is one of the oncolytic viruses that inherit natural selectivity towards cancer. It is reported to robustly induce syncytium and apoptosis in multiple types of cancer cells but found to be safe for clinical injection into human

The influence of flexible work arrangement and remuneration on employees’ job satisfaction in private higher education institutions / Abdul Kadir Othman … [et al.]

Job satisfaction is the most common topic of research, but it is still relevant as most problems in the workplace are related to employees’ job satisfaction. The same problem is also prevalent those working in higher educational institutions. Due to this concern, the present study was conducted among 163 academics in private colleges in Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia. Based on the result of factor analysis, it was found that job satisfaction of academics can be divided into four dimensions; career and salary satisfaction, creativity satisfaction, administration satisfaction and attitudinal satisfaction. Factors that significantly influence the dimensions of job satisfaction are flexible work arrangement, salary and promotion. All these three factors significantly influence career and salary satisfaction and administration satisfaction. Promotion on the other hand leads to creativity satisfaction. And, salary contributes to attitudinal satisfaction. The findings of the study indicate the importance of flexible work arrangement and compensation on academics’ satisfaction, thus, the management should consider these aspects when planning for the work schedule and career development of the academics in the institutions of higher learning

IGF-1 enhances cell proliferation and survival during early differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells to neural progenitor-like cells

BACKGROUND: There has been increasing interest recently in the plasticity of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and their potential to differentiate into neural lineages. To unravel the roles and effects of different growth factors in the differentiation of MSCs into neural lineages, we have differentiated MSCs into neural lineages using different combinations of growth factors. Based on previous studies of the roles of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in neural stem cell isolation in the laboratory, we hypothesized that IGF-1 can enhance proliferation and reduce apoptosis in neural progenitor-like cells (NPCs) during differentiation of MSCs into NCPs. We induced MSCs differentiation under four different combinations of growth factors: (A) EGF + bFGF, (B) EGF + bFGF + IGF-1, (C) EGF + bFGF + LIF, (D) EGF + bFGF + BDNF, and (E) without growth factors, as a negative control. The neurospheres formed were characterized by immunofluorescence staining against nestin, and the expression was measured by flow cytometry. Cell proliferation and apoptosis were also studied by MTS and Annexin V assay, respectively, at three different time intervals (24 hr, 3 days, and 5 days). The neurospheres formed in the four groups were then terminally differentiated into neuron and glial cells. RESULTS: The four derived NPCs showed a significantly higher expression of nestin than was shown by the negative control. Among the groups treated with growth factors, NPCs treated with IGF-1 showed the highest expression of nestin. Furthermore, NPCs derived using IGF-1 exhibited the highest cell proliferation and cell survival among the treated groups. The NPCs derived from IGF-1 treatment also resulted in a better yield after the terminal differentiation into neurons and glial cells than that of the other treated groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggested that IGF-1 has a crucial role in the differentiation of MSCs into neuronal lineage by enhancing the proliferation and reducing the apoptosis in the NPCs. This information will be beneficial in the long run for improving both cell-based and cell-free therapy for neurodegenerative diseases

The influence of flexible work arrangement and remuneration on employees’ job satisfaction in private higher education institutions / Abdul Kadir Othman... [et al].]

Job satisfaction is the most common topic of research, but it is still relevant as most problems in the workplace are related to employees’ job satisfaction. The same problem is also prevalent those working in higher educational institutions. Due to this concern, the present study was conducted among 163 academics in private colleges in Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia. Based on the result of factor analysis, it was found that job satisfaction of academics can be divided into four dimensions; career and salary satisfaction, creativity satisfaction, administration satisfaction and attitudinal satisfaction. Factors that significantly influence the dimensions of job satisfaction are flexible work arrangement, salary and promotion. All these three factors significantly influence career and salary satisfaction and administration satisfaction. Promotion on the other hand leads to creativity satisfaction. And, salary contributes to attitudinal satisfaction. The findings of the study indicate the importance of flexible work arrangement and compensation on academics’ satisfaction, thus, the management should consider these aspects when planning for the work schedule and career development of the academics in the institutions of higher learning

Effective phenanthrene and pyrene biodegradation using Enterobacter sp. MM087 (KT933254) isolated from used engine oil contaminated soil

Phenanthrene and pyrene are low and high molecular weights polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (pahs) being classified as priority organic pollutants in the environment. this study was aimed to optimizing pahs biodegradation conditions and then identifying intermediate metabolites using effective enterobacter sp. mm087 (kt933254). biodegradation quantitative experiments were carried out using colorimetric assay and the intermediate metabolites were identified based on gas chromatography mass spectrophotometer (gc–ms). enterobacter sp. mm087 initially degraded 80.2% phenanthrene (500 mg/l) and 59.7% pyrene (250 mg/l) within 24 h. further enhancement of the culture conditions involving agitation, temperature, ph, inoculums volume and salinity was carried out using response surface methodology (rsm) based on central composite design (ccd). the ccd optimizations allowed the interactions among the culture conditions which eventually resulted in 100% degradation in each of the phenanthrene and pyrene thereby released non-hazardous metabolites. correlation between the predicted and actual results further validated the ccd optimization. the phenanthrene metabolites identified were 3,4-dihydroxyphenathrene, phthalate, pyruvic acid and acetic acid. pyrene metabolites identified involved pyrene cis-4,5-dihydrodiol, 3,4-dihydroxyphenathrene, phthalate, pyruvic acid, acetic acid and formic acid. the biodegradation experiments were finally validated using numerical optimizations. enterobacter sp. mm087 was found to rapidly degrade 500 mg/l phenanthrene and 250 mg/L pyrene within 24 h which makes it a very efficient and rapid PAHs degrader

Characteristic properties of ceramic membrane derived from fly ash with different loadings and sintering temperature

Nowadays, ceramic membrane developed from wastes has gained attention, especially towards water separation applications. With abundant and high silica content of fly ash, low cost ceramic membrane was successfully prepared via phase inversion and sintering technique. Prior to both phase inversion and sintering process, ceramic suspension was prepared at different loadings, ranging from 40wt% to 50 wt% fly ash and subsequently sintered at temperature ranging from 1150°C to 1350°C. By varying fly ash content and sintering temperature, the morphology, mechanical strength and phase transformation characteristics of the prepared membrane were affected. The characterisation of prepared membrane were investigated by using scanning electron microscopy, three-point bending test, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The mechanical strength of the membrane increased with increasing fly ash loading (up to 45 %), however too much fly ash loading resulted in decrease of its mechanical strength probably due the presence of unburnt at higher fly ash contents. This unburnt carbon contributed to the vacant space during sintering process and had the tendency to increase formation of pores, simultaneously reduced its mechanical strength. In addition, the SEM results also illustrated a cross-sectional image of the membrane which had become more elastic with increasing fly ash loading and denser as sintering temperature gradually increased. In addition, increasing the fly ash loading likely discouraged the formation of desired finger-like structure. The XRD results however showed continuous presence of mullite with the increasing sintering temperature which contributed higher mechanical strength. The preliminary performance tests indicated that the optimum conditions to produce hollow fibre ceramic membrane from fly ash were at 45 wt % fly ash loading sintered at 1350°C and has a pure water flux of 131 L/m2h