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- PublicationMarket Sentiment And Housing Prices And Policies In Hong Kong High-Rise Residential Properties(2023-07)With skyrocketing prices and rapid episodes of economic booms and busts, standard financial theories could not explain the housing market behaviour in Hong Kong. The significant gap between the explanation of market fundamentals and the actual housing prices, leading to inappropriate predictions and misleading policy implications. This study is divided into two parts: an econometric analysis of the situation and a policy analysis with recommendations.
- PublicationCeos Early Life Experience And Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence From Listed Companies In China(2024-02)Using a sample of 6,008 firm-years observations on public listed companies in China from year 2010 to 2019, this study examines the impact of CEO’s early life experiences on firms’ CSR taking. The regression results show that CEO’s early life experiences have a significant influence on firm’s CSR taking.
- PublicationThe Role Of National Museums Of China In Chinese History In The Post Mao Zedong Era, 1976-2011(2024-02)This study aims to examine the role of the National Museum of China (henceforth CNM) in the development of China's historical process in the post-Mao era (1976-2011), when China's unprecedented Cultural Revolution took place in 1966, putting traditional Chinese culture with a history of more than 5,000 years in jeopardy.
- PublicationCharacterization Of Aerophytic Oxyphototrophs Isolated From Gua Tempurung, Malaysia: Polyphasic And Biochemical Approaches(2024-03)Caves are among the extreme oligotrophic environments with limited nutrients and low light intensity, but some aerophytic microalgae find this environment suitable for their growth and survival. Gua Tempurung is the largest limestone caves in Malaysia, but unfortunately no study was conducted on its algal diversity, taxonomic information, adaptation, physiological, and biochemical composition. This study aimed to assess the characteristics and adaptation of aerophytic oxyphototrophs isolated from Gua Tempurung.
- PublicationThe Transformation Of Artificial Intelligent Art Generation Of New Year Prints In Yangliuqing, North China(2024-02)In the rapid modernization tide, New Year Prints, as an ancient custom, are facing the reality that they will fade out and be discarded from life. Especially in the younger generation, there are very few people who pay attention to or understand New Year Prints. At the same time, in the existing New Year picture design research, the level of designers varies, making the final result difficult to meet the needs. To address these problems, in this study an AI art generative model is trained based on visual communication theory. AI art images with a stable style can be quickly generated by learning from the New Year Prints data set. At the same time, different applications are developed for the AI model and the generated artistic images to attract young people's attention, promote and disseminate New Year Prints culture.
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- ItemAntimicrobial, antioxidant and toxicity studies of cassia species and the potential as anticandidal agent(2009)In this study three Cassia species were subjected to antimicrobial, antioxidant and toxicity studies. Methanol extracts of the leaf, flower, stem and pod of Cassia spectabilis, Cassia surattensis and Cassia fistula were screened for antimicrobial activity by disc diffusion assay against Gram-positive and Gramnegative bacteria, and fungi. It was found that the leaf extract of C. spectabilis possessed a broad-spectrum of antimicrobial properties, hence this extract was evaluated to determine the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) and further detailed to anticandidal activity study. The MIC values against the Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria ranged from 0.195 to 50 mg/mL for the extract. In the anticandidal activity study, the leaf extract showed a favorable activity against Candida albicans with MIC value of 6.25 mg/mL. The effect of the leaf extract on growth profile of C. albicans was examined and results revealed that the extract altered the normal growth of the yeast thus confirming the anticandidal effect on C. albicans. The treated cells of C. albicans by the leaf extract revealed that the biofilm formations have decreased. Imaging using SEM and TEM to determine the major alteration on the microstructure of the outer and inner cells of C. albicans showed distinct main abnormalities. Alterations in morphology and complete collapse of yeast cells were observed after 36 hours of exposure to the leaf extract. Phytochemical screening of the leaf extract of C. spectabilis by GC-MS analysis, showed presence of acetic acid and diglyserol which were reported as antimicrobial agents. Antioxidant activity of C. surattensis flower extract via DPPH assay revealed a remarkable scavenging activity with RSA value of 93.54% and IC50 value of 423.3 μg/mL. In addition, the flower extract also possessed a higher phenolic content 657.24 mg GAE/g extract compared with other parts of the plant. C. surattensis extracts were further evaluated for the xanthine oxidase inhibitory assay. Results showed that the flower extract of C. surattenisis exhibited a high inhibitory activity of xanthine oxidase with value of 76.8% and IC50 value of 11.3 μg/mL. The brine shrimp toxicity assay of C. spectabilis leaf extract showed no significant toxicity with LC50 value of 2.20 mg/mL. Furthermore, the in vivo oral acute toxicity study in mice also revealed that the leaf extract showed no toxicity with LD50 value greater than 2000 mg/kg body weight. There were no toxic signs or symptoms on the treated mice compared with control. Histopathological examinations supported this finding where there were no major alterations observed in the kidney, liver, lungs and spleen. In conclusion, the obtained results suggested that the C. spectabilis leaf extract as an excellent candidate to develop a new anticandidal agent from nature. Additionally, C. surattensis flower may highly provide as a natural source of antioxidant agent in future.
- ItemEstablishment Of In Vitro Plantlets Of Artemisia Annua L. For The Analysis Of Artemisinin Biosynthetic Gene (CYP71AV1) And Trichome Initiation Gene (GL3)(2014-06)Artemisia annua L. is an herb known for its secondary metabolite, artemisinin. Artemisinin is used as antimalarial drug but its availability is limited by low yield in plantation. To produce artemisinin using in vitro technique, a high yielding in vitro cultivar must first be selected. For the establishment of aseptic seedlings of three selected clones of Artemisia annua L., the seeds were surface sterilized with 10% (v/v) Clorox® for five minutes followed by 70% (v/v) ethanol for five minutes. This sterilization protocol enabled the establishment of 96.7 % aseptic seeds for TC1 and TC2 clones, and 86.7 % for the Highland clone. The percentage of seed germinated for all the clones were found to be in the range of 13.3 to 36.7 %. Imbibitions test on the three clones of A. annua L. seeds indicated imbibitions before seed germination was not required. The best substrate combination for seed germination of all the three clones of A. annua L. was sand: black soil (1:2) combination. Effect of in vitro and greenhouse condition on A. annua L. plantlets growth indicated in vitro growth condition produced taller plantlets than greenhouse conditions. There were no differences in number of glandular and non-glandular trichome on in vitro and greenhouse grown leaves of A. annua L. The assembly and analysis of transcriptome library using next generation sequencing technology produced 10, 647 gene sequences. Of the 10, 647 genes identified through BLAST software, 306 unique genes of A. annua L. were classified to be involved in cellular function, biological processes and molecular function. Of the 306 genes, there were 14 unique genes that were identified to be involved in metabolite biosynthesis pathways. CYP71AV1 and GL3 genes that were involved in artemisinin biosynthesis were chosen for expression study of control and mutant plantlets. The mutation density due to ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) treatment using CYP71AV1 promoter gene was 1 in 408 kb of nucleotides compared to sodium azide induced mutation with 1 in 816 kb. The mutation detection rate for EMS-induced was 2.4 whereas for sodium azide-induced was only 1.2 mutations in every 1000 kb of nucleotides. Shoot tips of all the three clones of A. annua L. treated with 1% EMS showed consistently higher expression level for GL3 gene than in control plantlets. The other plantlets treated with sodium azide were not found to have consistently higher expression level than the control plantlets. GL3 gene expression was found to be a suitable marker in indicating artemisinin yield in A. annua L. initiated from treated shoot tips with 1% EMS.
- PublicationMSG488 - Mathematical Algorithms for Computer Graphics February 2021(2021-02)Please check that this examination paper consists of THREE (3) pages of printed material before you begin the examination. Instructions : Answer FIVE (5) questions.
- ItemA Cognitive Linguistic Comparative Analysis Of Physics Terminologies In Arabic And French(Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2016-12)Studies on the misunderstanding of scientific terms in different languages suggest that non-Western students face more difficulties in conceptualising scientific terms than Western students. These problems are generally caused by students’ native language incommensurability with Western languages, their pre-existing knowledge about scientific terms, and the polysemous senses of such terms. The present research investigates this issue in the context of Morocco, where Arabic is the medium of instruction for science subjects at school level and French at the tertiary level. The study set out to identify the similarities as well as differences between Standard Arabic and French terminologies denoting physics concepts. To achieve this objective, 16 Arabic physics terms and 16 French equivalents, selected from Moroccan middle secondary and higher secondary physics textbooks, were analysed with regard to their polysemous meanings, prototypes, and conceptual metaphor as well as metonymy based on Lakoff’s (1987) idealised cognitive models (ICMs). The data for the analysis of ICMs comprised meanings of the selected physics terms in Arabic and French derived from dictionaries and two comparable Arabic and French corpora, the ArabiCorpus and the Concordancier-Corpus Français. The corpora were also employed to generate data on the most frequent collocates of the 16 physics terms to unravel their prototypes in each language. To complement the textual analysis, focus group interviews were conducted to investigate Moroccan students’ conceptualisations of the physics terms and to find out if the change in the medium of instruction from Arabic to French at the university level affects their understanding of the terms. The findings of the present research reveal that there are both similarities and differences between Arabic and French terminologies in terms of meanings, prototypes, and metaphorical as well as metonymic meaning projections. This indicates the universal characteristics and culture specific characteristics of Arabic; the similarities identified support the linguistic universals (in the present study across Arabic and French) while the differences found support the notion of linguistics and cultural relativism. The present research also discovered that Moroccan students’ conceptualisation of physics terminology is not only affected by linguistic differences between Arabic and French, but also by their everyday language which is usually a Moroccan dialect. These findings have important implications for science curriculum design, education and language policy in Morocco in particular, and in other non-Western contexts in general. The current research also contributes to the field of cognitive linguistics with new knowledge on the universal and culture-specific use of conceptual metaphor and metonymy in Arabic as well as French.