Impacts of e-business, e-negotiation, and trust building on e-agribusiness performance: a preliminary study on MBA students of Universiti Utara Malaysia / Assem O. Ali Mmar and Abdul Manaf Bohari

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of e-business, e-negotiation and trust building specifically on online e-agribusiness performance. The existing trend of online base e-agribusiness has rise some implication on current and future performance among agribusiness firms especially on the big potential of e-business and e-negotiation to agribusiness sectors. This preliminary study was conducted among fifty Master of Business Administration (MBA) students in University Utara Malaysia where all of them are familiar with agribusiness sector. The finding obtained from this study indicated that there was a significant (2 tailed significant) relationship between independent variables (e-business, e-negotiation, and trust building) and dependent variable (e-agribusiness performance). In sum, the result obtained from this study indicated that four hypotheses tested in this study were accepted

Regulation of haematopoietic stem cycle (CFU-S) proliferation in irradiated mice

It has been suggested that the proliferation of haematopoietic stem cells (CFU-S) in mice is controlled by the balance of inhibitory and stimulatory factors. In normal mice about 10 percent of the CFU-S population are in DNA synthesis. It has been suggested that a high concentration of inhibitor blocks CFU-S from entering into DNA synthesis. Following damage by cytotoxic agents such as drugs or irradiation about 30 - 50 percent of CFU-S were in DNA synthesis and also stimulator was shown to be present. In this study the entry of CFU-S into DNA synthesis following low and sub-lethal doses of whole body X-irradiation has been studied. Furthermore the stimulator producing cells were also characterized. The number of CFU-S in bone marrow was not affected following exposure to a dose of 0.5 Gy. However the number of committed progenitors for the granulocyte/macrophage lineage was significantly reduced. The percentage of CFU-S in DNA synthesis was found to increase to 37.0+/- 7.0 percent at 30 minutes and 43.9+/-11.2 percent at 2 hours from that observed in unirradiated mice. However at 6 hours the percentage was 14.8 8.1 percent. At a sub-lethal dose of 4.5 Gy, the percentage of CFU-S in DNA synthesis increased to 34.0+/-14.0 percent at 6 hours after exposure, however before this time the percentage remained at a similar level to unirradiated control mice. When plugs of bone marrow were irradiated in-vitro at 0.5 Gy and 4.5 Gy doses, the time of CFU-S entering into DNA synthesis was the same as following in-vivo irradiation. The dose response curve of CFU-S entering into DNA synthesis when measured at 2 hours after exposure showed that the percentage was increased as the dose was increased and reached 30-50 percent at a dose of 0.5 Gy. Above this dose the CFU-S population was not stimulated at this time. When the percentage of CFU-S in DNA synthesis was measured at 6 hours after exposure, the values were the same as control for doses less than 0.5 Gy and above this dose the values were 30-50 percent. The presence of stimulator in bone marrow after irradiation was found to parallel the proliferative activity of CFU-S. The CFU-S population obtained 1 hour after 1.5 Gy was shown not' to respond to stimulator as CFU-S from normal bone marrow dia. The conditioned media prepared from bone marrow of mice Irradiated at 9.0 Gy (1 to 5 days post Irradiation) increased the proportion of CFU-S from normal bone marrow in DNA synthesis to 30-50 percent. The depletion of Thy1.2+ cells from regenerating bone marrow did not affect the ability to produce stimulator. However when Fc+ and Ia-2k+ cells were removed the stimulator production was affected. This suggests that the stimulator producing cells were radioresistant, Thy1.2-, Fc+ and Ia-2k+

Solving Troesch's problem by using modified nonlinear shooting method

In this research article, the non - linear shooting method is modified (MNLSM) and is considered to simulate Troesch’s sensitive problem (TSP) numerically. TSP is a 2nd order non - linear BVP with Dirichlet boundary conditions . In M NLSM , classical 4 th order Runge - Kutta method is replaced by Adams - Bashforth - Moulton method, both for systems of ODEs . MNLSM showed to be efficient and is easy for implementation. Numerical results are given to show the performance of MNLSM, compared to the exact solution and to the results by He’s polynomials. Also, discussion of results and the comparison with other applied techniques from the literature are given for TSP

Application of PCR-RFLP technique and direct PCR-sequencing analysis to determine the relationships of Acanthamoeba

The genus of Acanthamoeba comprises of several free-living amoebae and mostly found in environment habitats worldwide. These organisms can infect a variety of mammals, including humans involving brain, eyes, skin, bones and lungs (Armstrong, 2000; Martinez, 1999). The taxonomy of Acanthamoeba is has yet to be established and still under review, although species identification of the genus by cyst morphology has been extensively used (Page, 1967)

Alternative Medicine from Edible Bitter Plants of Besut, Malaysia

In Besut, there were elders who believed the bitter tasted vegetables may provide medicinal benefits. However, discontinuity of their knowledge to young generations leads to its deterioration. Since there still no documentation done on the consumption of edible bitter plants of Besut, this research conducted to reveal their knowledge of consuming edible, bitter and native plants for medicinal purposes. From the field visit and conversation, a list of accessions was made, continued by analysis for frequencies it has been used and dendrogram of linkage between purposes of the studied plants as alternative medicine by using IBM SPSS Statistics 20 software and bar chart plotted by using Microsoft Excel. There were 15 native families comprised of 17 plants species consumed for treating 31 types of diseases. The highest percentage of diseases treated represented by digestion problems, 64.7 %. The species of Syzygium polyanthum (serai kayu) and Nypa fruticans (nipah) found as highest uses among all the studied plants. The value of Pearson correlation, r =0.633, showed positive correlation between the purposes of treating diabetes and digestion problems at the significant level, p =0.01. Based on the dendrogram, there was nearest linkage at the distance of 3/25 in a cluster of 3; Crateva religiosa (dala), Oroxylum indicum (beka) and Tylopilus felleus (kulat gelam) which were used for treating hypertension, diabetes and poor food appetite. Bitter taste from the plants was stimulating positive perception of people to eat them as alternative medicine. Beside the leafy vegetables, mushroom also had been consumed as healing food

Cytolytic effects and apoptosis induction of newcastle disease virus strain AF2240 on anaplastic astrocytoma brain tumor cell line.

Newcastle disease virus (NDV) is a member of genus Avulavirus within the family Paramyxoviridae. Interest of using NDV as an anticancer agent has arisen from its ability to kill tumor cells with limited toxicity to normal cells. In this investigation, the cytotolytic properties of NDV strain AF2240 were evaluated on brain tumor cell line, anaplastic astrocytoma (U-87MG), by using MTT assay. Cytological observations were studied using fluorescence microscopy and transmission electron microscopy to show the apoptogenic features of NDV on U-87MG. DNA laddering in agarose gel electrophoresis and terminal deoxyribonucleotide transferase-mediated dUTP-X nick end-labeling staining assay confirmed that the mode of cell death was by apoptosis. However, analysis of the cellular DNA content by flowcytometery showed that there was a loss of treated U-87MG cells in all cell cycle phases (G1, S and G2/M) accompanied with increasing in sub-G1 region (apoptosis peak). Early apoptosis was observed 6 h post-inoculation by annexin-V flow-cytometry method. It could be concluded that NDV strain AF2240 is a potent antitumor agent that induce apoptosis and its cytotoxicity increasing while increasing of time and virus titer

Genetic relatedness among isolates of Acanthamoeba based on RAPD analysis

Acanthamoeba is a pathogen frequently infecting brain, eyes, skin and lung of human and animal. Seven Acanthamoeba local isolates from various sources, two Acanthamoeba type strains and one strain of Hartmannella vermiformis were characterized for their genetic variability using randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique using four different 10-mer oligonucleotides primers. Electrophoresis of the amplification products generated DNA bands ranging from approximately 0.25 to 7.50 kbp in size. A genetic relatedness among the isolates was examined using Dice similarity coefficient as the genetic distance measured between the strains of Acanthamoeba and H. vermiformis. Three distinct clusters could be separated at genetic distance of approximately 0.330. © 2006 Asian Network for Scientific Information