The Use of Medicinal Plant Species by the Temuan Tribe of Ayer Hitam Forest, Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia

Preliminary results of a study on the use of medicinal plant species by the indigenous people from the Temuan tribe at Ayer Hitam Forest are presented. Although this forest is surrounded by rapid socio-economic development, it is ironically a substantial pharmacopoeia for the Temuans. A total of 98 plant species with 140 different uses were recorded and they were grouped into seven methods of application namely drink, eat, chew, poultice, rub, bath and shampoo

A flying success @ CAMAR

22 May 2010. CMLHS extended its remarkable contribution to the society by organising a Let’s Read (Jom Membaca) programme which had taken place at Permata Camar Orphanage (CAMAR), Sungai Soi, Kuantan

Comparison on performance of adaptive algorithms for eye blinks removal in electroencephalogram

The interference of eye blink artifacts can cause serious distortion to electroencephalogram (EEG) which could bias the signal interpretation and reduce the classification accuracy in a brain-computer interface (BCI) application. To overcome this problem, an algorithm to automatically detect and remove the artifacts from EEG signals is highly desirable. One of the methods that can be applied for automatic artifacts removal is adaptive filtering through an adaptive noise cancellation (ANC) system. In this paper, we compare the performance of three adaptive algorithms; namely LMS, RLS, and ANFIS, in removing the eye blink from EEG signals. To evaluate the results, the SNR, MSE and correlation coefficient values are calculated based on the results obtained by using one of the widely used methods for blinks removal, independent component analysis (ICA). The results show that RLS algorithm provides the best performance when comparing with the ICA method

Halophenol Rearrangement in Lewis Acid-Catalyzed Friedel–Crafts Conditions: Evidence of Competitive Initial Protonation and Acylation

Halogen rearrangement was observed during the Lewis acid-catalyzed Friedel–Crafts reaction of phthalic anhydride with bromophenols or bromoanisole. Further investigation revealed that 2-, 3-, and 4-bromophenols undergo rearrangement into other isomers under these reaction conditions. Product distribution from these reactions suggested that halogen rearrangement takes place during the s-complex intermediate of the condensation step. Furthermore, iodophenol undergoes hydrodeiodination rapidly rather than rearrangement, whereas chlorophenol does not undergo rearrangement at all

Conceptualizing Muslim Consumer Ethical Behaviour and its Antecedents

Businesses are gradually realizing the importance of corporate social responsibility in securing greater returns in their operations. This approach is intended to create good image for the company subsequently to attract consumers to purchase products or services from that company. The issue now is whether the consumers are ethical or not in their decision to purchase products or services from the company. Ethical consumers will think twice before making their decision to purchase. Within the western world, pertinent issues like human rights, environmental concern, sustainability, intellectual property rights and others are recognized as the major concern for the consumers before making purchase decision. In other parts of the world especially in developing countries, Muslim community is a steadily growing consumer group that should not be rightfully ignored. Studies in the areas of Muslim consumer ethics and purchasing behaviour have still remained relatively unexplored, thus, calling for this research to lessen the gap. The objective of this study is to conceptualize, develop and validate a Muslim consumer ethical model. The expected result of the study is the development of the Muslim consumer ethical model that can be used to identify the determinants of this behaviour. The results will provide deep insights on the right strategies that could be devised by companies based on the model

An Optimized Back Propagation Learning Algorithm with Adaptive Learning Rate

Back Propagation (BP) is commonly used algorithm that optimize the performance of network for training multilayer feed-forward artificial neural networks. However, BP is inherently slow in learning and it sometimes gets trapped at local minima. These problems occur mailnly due to a constant and non-optimum learning rate (a fixed step size) in which the fixed value of learning rate is set to an initial starting value before training patterns for an input layer and an output layer. This fixed learning rate often leads the BP network towrds failure during steepest descent. Therefore to overcome the limitations of BP, this paper introduces an improvement to back propagation gradient descent with adapative learning rate (BPGD-AL) by changing the values of learning rate locally during the learning process. The simulation results on selected benchmark datasets show that the adaptive learning rate significantly improves the learning efficiency of the Back Propagation Algorith

Phenolic content and α–glucosidase inhibitory activity of herbal mixture: effect of processing technique and honey ratio

Introduction: Preparation of herbal mixtures from the traditional knowledge has been used for over centuries to improve and maintain health condition. Nonetheless, lack of scientific evaluations on regard to their bioactive metabolites as a mixture and their pharmacological effects have yet to be reported. Therefore, the objectives of this study are 1) to determine the effect of processing techniques (blending and juicing) on extracting polyphenols and 2) to determine the effect ratio of honey in herbal mixture (containing ginger, garlic, honey, apple cider vinegar, and lemon juice). Methods: Raw ingredients such as garlic, ginger, lemon and apple cider (1:1:1:1) were used as the base for this herbal mixture. The base was either blended using a blender or juiced using a juicer. The mixture was simmered (85oC - 100oC) until reduced to half of the initial volume and cooled down before being added with honey in 1:1 (rA) or 1:3 (rB) ratio. The mixtures were tested for pH, total phenolic, total flavonoid content and alpha glucosidase inhibitory activities. Results: Both of juiced samples in both honey ratio (rA and rB) have lower acidity compared to blended samples. Total phenolic content (TPC) and total flavonoid content (TFC) also showed significantly higher levels (p <0.05) in juiced samples than blended samples especially in Juicer rB. The insignificant differences in α-glucosidase inhibitory activities among mixtures indicate both extraction and ratio did not influence α-glucosidase inhibitory activities of the mixtures. Conclusion: All of the results indicate that processing techniques and ratio can affect the pH and phenolic recovery

The changes in endogenous metabolites in hyperlipidemic rats treated with herbal mixture containing lemon, apple cider, garlic, ginger, and honey

An herbal mixture composed of lemon, apple cider, garlic, ginger and honey as a polyphenolrich mixture (PRM) has been reported to contain hypolipidemic activity on human subjects and hyperlipidemic rats. However, the therapeutic effects of PRM on metabolites are not clearly understood. Therefore, this study aimed to provide new information on the causal impact of PRM on the endogenous metabolites, pathways and serum biochemistry. Serum samples of hyperlipidemic rats treated with PRM were subjected to biochemistry (lipid and liver profile) and hydroxymethylglutaryl- CoA enzyme reductase (HMG-CoA reductase) analyses. In contrast, the urine samples were subjected to urine metabolomics using 1H NMR. The serum biochemistry revealed that PRM at 500 mg/kg (PRM-H) managed to lower the total cholesterol level and low-density lipoprotein (LDL-C) (p < 0.05) and reduce the HMG-CoA reductase activity. The pathway analysis from urine metabolomics reveals that PRM-H altered 17 pathways, with the TCA cycle having the highest impact (0.26). Results also showed the relationship between the serum biochemistry of LDL-C and HMG-CoA reductase and urine metabolites (trimethylamine-N-oxide, dimethylglycine, allantoin and succinate). The study’s findings demonstrated the potential of PRM at 500 mg/kg as an anti hyperlipidemic by altering the TCA cycle, inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase and lowering the LDL-C in high cholesterol rats

Recovery of lowland dipterocarp forests under the Malayan uniform system

Recovery assessment of the logged lowland dipterocarp forests based on phytosociological studies conducted in the state of Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia, showed that the recovery rate of the logged areas depends on the state and degree of harvesting carried out on the stands. The stands that were harvested from 1963 to 1973 under the Malayan Uniform System (MUS) have shown a relatively slow recovery rate. The sites have small average coverage by emergent (ST) trees, ranging from 8% to 14%, and only a few dipterocarps occupy this layer. On the other hand, the stands harvested in the 1950s have recovered towards their original state prior to harvest. The stands recorded an average ST-layer coverage of 24%, T1 layer (57%) and T2 layer (45%). The analysis of species composition recovery and species abundance showed similar trends, with F50 stands appearing similar to the primary forest. The study shows that it takes at least approximately 40 years for the logged-over stands under the MUS to recover to their original state