\u3cb\u3ePersonal Reflection:\u3c/b\u3e SoTL and Don\u27t Perish!

This reflection describes my early encounters with SoTL as I went through a critical period questioning my role and responsibilities as an academic and my journey with a cohort of students who made me realise that there is indeed a dire need for SoTL to bridge the nexus between a university academic’s teaching responsibilities as well as the global ‘publish or perish’ pressure most academics experience toda

Electronic Commerce In Malaysia: A Case Study On The Adoption Of Internet Banking Among ,- Malaysian Professionals

kini, memang tidak dapat dinafiKan bahawa ianya adalah penting bagi organisasi-organisasi tempatan untuk menggunakan e-perdagangan untuk memperolehi kebolehan untuk berdaya saing. Salah satu jenis e-perdagangan yang mendapat perhatian orang ramai di ialah perbankan Internet. Perbankan Internet mempunyai potensi untuk menambahbaik mutu dan kebolehan bank-bank tempatan. It is becoming widely accepted that it is important for businesses to embrace electronic·commerce to gain competitive advantage. One form of electronic commerce that has attracted significant attention in Malaysia is Internet banking. Internet banking has the potential of the capability and improving the profit margins of the local banks in addition to providing a convenient delivery channel to consumers

Effect of N and K fertilizers on nutrient leaching and groundwater quality under mature oil palm in Sabah during the monsoon period

Problem statement: The oil palms are mainly grown in the humid tropics with high rainfall. Soluble Nitrogen (N) and Potassium (K) fertilizers are commonly required by the oil palm plantations to maximize palm productivity due to the highly weathered soils with low fertility. Thus, leaching losses of N and K nutrients may be unavoidable and these nutrients may move further downward and eventually cause groundwater pollution. This study reports the leaching of N and K nutrients in a mature oil palm field as affected by fertilizer rates and soil depths and its effect on groundwater quality during the monsoon period in Tawau, Sabah. Approach: The sources of N and K fertilizer were Ammonium Chloride (AC) and Muriate Of Potash (MOP), respectively. Soil water samplers were installed at depths of 30, 60 and 120 cm in four fertilizer treatments, namely, N0P0K0 (Control plot, no N and K), N0P2K1 (K1 = 4.5 kg MOP palm-1 year-1), N1P2K1 (N1 = 3.75 AC kg palm-1 year-1) and N1P2K0. Three replications were used in the experiment. Monitoring wells were installed in the above treatment plots and in another treatment, N2P2K1 (N2 = 7.5 kg AC palm-1 year-1) to investigate the effect of excessive N rate on groundwater quality. Samplings were done at 15 day intervals for duration of 150 days from October 2008-February 2009 to cover the entire monsoon period in North Borneo. Water samples were analyzed for NH4-N by automated phenate method, NO3-N + NO2-N and NO2-N by automated hydrazine reduction method on Auto Analyzer 3 and K by flame photometric method using flame photometer. Results: The mean NH4-N concentration of N1P2K1 at 33.69 mg L-1 was significantly higher than N1P2K0 at 8.15 mg L-1. In the presence of K, NH4-N concentrations increased 4.1 fold when N fertilizer was applied and 3.5 times in the absence of N application. The mean NH4-N concentration was 17.89 mg L-1 at 30 cm depth declining to 12.19 and 6.52 mg L-1 at soil depths of 60 and 120 cm, respectively. The transformation of NH4-N to NO3-N was not a major process during the monsoon period. The leaching losses of inorganic N were 1.0 and 1.6% of the applied fertilizer for N1P2K0 and N1P2K1 respectively. For K, the leaching losses were 5.3 and 2.4% for N0P2K1 and N1P2K1 respectively. The concentrations of NH4-N, NO3-N and K in groundwater ranged from 0.23-2.7, 0.07-0.25 and 0.63-9.54 mg L-1, respectively. Conclusion/Recommendations: N and K concentrations in the soil solution decreased with soil depth and their leaching losses were related to rainfall pattern, fertilizer treatment and nutrient uptake by roots. Groundwater quality was not affected by the applications of N and K fertilizers at the optimum rates for mature oil palms

The Influences of Economic Indicators on Environmental Pollution in Malaysia

This study aims to investigate the relationship between environmental degradation (ecological footprint) and economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), financial liberalisation, energy consumption, urbanisation, and trade openness in Malaysia. The use of financial liberalisation is driven by the factor that majority of the previous studies focused on financial development that has a narrow definition. Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (ARDL) and Granger causality test has been used to identify the relationship between the variables from 1978 to 2013. The result shows that EKC (Environmental Kuznets curve) model does not apply in Malaysia due to the U-shape relationship between financial liberalisation and ecological footprint. Positive relationships are identified between GDP, trade openness, energy consumption and ecological footprint. The results of the study suggest that Malaysia should improve its energy efficiency and focus more on its environmental well-being while increasing its GDP. Keywords: Financial liberalisation, Ecological Footprint, Malaysia JEL Classifications: Q5, P28, O16, G18, P34, P43 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.748

Shifting patterns of genomic variation in the somatic evolution of papillary thyroid carcinoma

Shows Single Nucleotide Substitutions in the MAPK Pathway. (XLSX 43 kb

Increased levels of macrophage inflammatory proteins result in resistance to R5-tropic HIV-1 in a subset of elite controllers

Elite controllers (ECs) are a rare group of HIV seropositive individuals who are able to control viral replication without antiretroviral therapy. The mechanisms responsible for this phenotype, however, have not been fully elucidated. In this study, we examined CD4+ T cell resistance to HIV in a cohort of elite controllers and explored transcriptional signatures associated with cellular resistance. We demonstrate that a subgroup of elite controllers possess CD4+ T cells that are specifically resistant to R5-tropic HIV while remaining fully susceptible to X4-tropic and vesicular stomatitis virus G (VSV-G)-pseudotyped viruses. Transcriptome analysis revealed 17 genes that were differentially regulated in resistant elite controllers relative to healthy controls. Notably, the genes encoding macrophage inflammatory protein 1α (MIP-1α), CCL3 and CCL3L1, were found to be upregulated. The MIP-1α, MIP-1β, and RANTES chemokines are natural ligands of CCR5 and are known to interfere with HIV replication. For three elite controllers, we observed increased production of MIP-1α and/or MIP-1β at the protein level. The supernatant from resistant EC cells contained MIP-1α and MIP-1β and was sufficient to confer R5-tropic resistance to susceptible CD4+ T cells. Additionally, this effect was reversed by using inhibitory anti-MIP antibodies. These results suggest that the T cells of these particular elite controllers may be naturally resistant to HIV infection by blocking R5-tropic viral entr

Association and Mutation Analyses of 16p11.2 Autism Candidate Genes

Background: Autism is a complex childhood neurodevelopmental disorder with a strong genetic basis. Microdeletion or duplication of a ∼500–700-kb genomic rearrangement on 16p11.2 that contains 24 genes represents the second most frequent chromosomal disorder associated with autism. The role of common and rare 16p11.2 sequence variants in autism etiology is unknown.Methodology/Principal Findings: To identify common 16p11.2 variants with a potential role in autism, we performed association studies using existing data generated from three microarray platforms: Affymetrix 5.0 (777 families), Illumina 550 K (943 families), and Affymetrix 500 K (60 families). No common variants were identified that were significantly associated with autism. To look for rare variants, we performed resequencing of coding and promoter regions for eight candidate genes selected based on their known expression patterns and functions. In total, we identified 26 novel variants in autism: 13 exonic (nine non-synonymous, three synonymous, and one untranslated region) and 13 promoter variants. We found a significant association between autism and a coding variant in the seizure-related gene SEZ6L2 (12/1106 autism vs. 3/1161 controls; p = 0.018). Sez6l2 expression in mouse embryos was restricted to the spinal cord and brain. SEZ6L2 expression in human fetal brain was highest in post-mitotic cortical layers, hippocampus, amygdala, and thalamus. Association analysis of SEZ6L2 in an independent sample set failed to replicate our initial findings.Conclusions/Significance: We have identified sequence variation in at least one candidate gene in 16p11.2 that may represent a novel genetic risk factor for autism. However, further studies are required to substantiate these preliminary findings.</p

Prevention and early detection of prostate cancer

This Review was sponsored and funded by the International Society of Cancer Prevention (ISCaP), the European Association of Urology (EAU), the National Cancer Institute, USA (NCI) (grant number 1R13CA171707-01), Prostate Cancer UK, Cancer Research UK (CRUK) (grant number C569/A16477), and the Association for International Cancer Research (AICR

Factors associated with nursing home placement of all patients admitted for inpatient rehabilitation in Singapore community hospitals from 1996 to 2005: A disease stratified analysis

10.1371/journal.pone.0082697PLoS ONE812-POLN

Effector CD4+ T Cell Expression Signatures and Immune-Mediated Disease Associated Genes

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in immune-mediated diseases have identified over 150 associated genomic loci. Many of these loci play a role in T cell responses, and regulation of T cell differentiation plays a critical role in immune-mediated diseases; however, the relationship between implicated disease loci and T cell differentiation is incompletely understood. To further address this relationship, we examined differential gene expression in naïve human CD4+ T cells, as well as in in vitro differentiated Th1, memory Th17-negative and Th17-enriched CD4+ T cells subsets using microarray and RNASeq. We observed a marked enrichment for increased expression in memory CD4+ compared to naïve CD4+ T cells of genes contained among immune–mediated disease loci. Within memory T cells, expression of disease-associated genes was typically increased in Th17-enriched compared to Th17-negative cells. Utilizing RNASeq and promoter methylation studies, we identified a differential regulation pattern for genes solely expressed in Th17 cells (IL17A and CCL20) compared to genes expressed in both Th17 and Th1 cells (IL23R and IL12RB2), where high levels of promoter methylation are correlated to near zero RNASeq levels for IL17A and CCL20. These findings have implications for human Th17 celI plasticity and for the regulation of Th17-Th1 expression signatures. Importantly, utilizing RNASeq we found an abundant isoform of IL23R terminating before the transmembrane domain that was enriched in Th17 cells. In addition to molecular resolution, we find that RNASeq provides significantly improved power to define differential gene expression and identify alternative gene variants relative to microarray analysis. The comprehensive integration of differential gene expression between cell subsets with disease-association signals, and functional pathways provides insight into disease pathogenesis