Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Malaysia’s herbal leadership the result of government support:Government financing and promotion of herbal ingredients research has helped Malaysia to become one of the world leaders in the field. BUT we need to enhance research on biodiversity first. We like to do window shopping rather making the products. More money should be given to biodiversity research for more commercial products in the future and Please do not depending too much on one person. Recruit more experts.

This is what people in Harvard say: "Detailed inventories of species diversity at the Harvard Forest provide core data to guide studies of physiological ecology, population dynamics, and community ecology. In short, if we don't know what species we have, we have no way to assess their role in ecosystem dynamics. Species inventories also provide benchmarks for determining the impacts of climate change on distributions of and interactions among species. Experimental manipulations complement observational studies to allow rapid assessment of environmental change on plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria in our forests". HOW ABOUT AIR HITAM FOREST. WE CANNOT WAIT UNTIL MANY MORE PROFESSORS RETIRED THAN WE GIVE NEW IDEAS. DO IT NOW FOR MODEL OF BIODIVERSITY IN MALAYSIA.

Taxonomy and ecology, two fundamental sciences that generate the knowledge about biodiversity, are associated with a number of limitations that prevent them from providing the information needed to fully understand the relevance of biodiversity in its entirety for human sustainability: (1) biodiversity conservation strategies that tend to be overly focused on research and policy on a global scale with little impact on local biodiversity; (2) the small knowledge base of extant global biodiversity; (3) a lack of much-needed site-specific data on the species composition of communities in human-dominated landscapes, which hinders ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation; (4) biodiversity studies with a lack of taxonomic precision; (5) a lack of taxonomic expertise and trained taxonomists; (6) a taxonomic bottleneck in biodiversity inventory and assessment; and (7) neglect of taxonomic resources and a lack of taxonomic service infrastructure for biodiversity science. YES! Dear Panel research proposal, please consider the missing agenda in biotechnology!!

http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.springer-ebe54ad5-235d-307f-ad83-214b2961bbd9

Why we need biodiversity centre especially to train teachers in schools? The Center for Biological Diversity works through science, law and creative media to secure a future for all species, great or small, hovering on the brink of extinction.The Biodiversity data centre (BDC) provides access to data and information on species, habitat types and sites of interest and to related products for biodiversity indicators and assessments.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Insects are a remarkable group of animals. They occur virtually everywhere and make up more than half of all living things on earth. Collecting insects can be a fun, inexpensive, and fascinating hobby.Collecting and Preserving Insects. School children must be taught to understand insect and colection of insect. Insects taught us a lot about life, transformation, society and science & technology. Before that all teachers must ready to teach their students. May be a special CENTRE for NATURE or BIODIVERSITY EDUCATION under Ministry of Education need to be established.

http://www1.extension.umn.edu/youth/mn4-H/projects/environment/entomology/collecting-and-preserving-insects/

Everyone is eating insects nowadays, even expensive restaurants (US, Thai, Japanese) but the old traditions of collecting & cooking insects haven't changed much.Eating insects: Sudden popularity. Do we need to study insects and having one centre of understanding insects, about the benefit of insect and the pest.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/352836/eating-insects-sudden-popularity

Top Natural History Museums in the United States: The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is astonishingly the size of 18 football fields, with 325,000 square feet of exhibitions and public space. That means a game plan is in order. The museum’s Web site is a great planning tool with family guides you can download before you visit, to help get kids excited. The American Museum of Natural History has 45 halls to explore, but the museum’s fossil halls are by far the most popular attraction. Housing the world’s largest collection of vertebrate fossils, the museum showcases nearly one million specimens. How Malaysia want to encorage theie children interested into science. we need to include nature education among children aggressively.

http://www.travelmuse.com/articles/general-features/top-natural-history-museums

Malaysia came in second behind Russia among 26 nations with resource and efficiency-driven economies in the Connectivity Scorecard 2013. Malaysia surpassed Asean countries including Thailand (13), Vietnam(14), Philippines (18) and Indonesia (20) in broadband penetration.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2013/10/28/broadband-penetration-muhyiddin-yassin.aspx

2012 World’s Top 10 Science Centers: Malaysia still arguing on the National History Museum under whos administration. Without considering Malaysia is top 12 megabiodiversity in the world. Perhaps when we have National History Museum we will be top 10.

Scientific freedom is the idea of freedom (in the sense of Freedom of thought and Freedom of the press) applied to natural science, in particular the practices of scientific research and discourse, mainly by publication. The ideal is promoted by many organizations of scientists, and is the subject of article 15 ¶ 3 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Do you think Enstine and Kopernicus waiting for reseach grants to do their research? I think what they need may be more freedom of thinking. We need to look again the professors duties.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/life-sciences/index.html

Friday, October 25, 2013

The very first Budget speech was delivered on Dec 4, 1955 by then-Malaya's father of independence, Tunku Abdul Rahman and the country's first Prime Minister.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2013/10/25/Budget-facts.aspxhere are some facts about the national budget.




1) The very first Budget speech was delivered on Dec 4, 1955 by then-Malaya's father of independence, Tunku Abdul Rahman and the country's first Prime Minister.



Education was stressed upon in that inaugural budget. Tunku wrote in his As I See It column with The Star, titled "Life before and after Merdeka": "Government has decided to establish a number of residential schools to absorb a number of education-starved boys and give them five years' secondary education. The Government is also doing all it can to assist in the legitimate expansion of the Chinese and Tamil schools, and granting aid to these schools by providing in the estimates of 1956." (Oct 15, 1984)



2) Including Budget 2014, a total of 56 Budgets have been tabled in Parliament since Independence.



3) The previous Budget was tabled in Parliament on Sept 28, 2012.



4) Budget 2014 will be Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's sixth tabling of the Government budget since holding office of the Finance Minister in 2008.



5) The first Alternative National Budget was launched on Sept 5, 2007 for the year 2008 by the DAP. As for the Opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat, its first Shadow Budget was on Oct 4, 2011.



6) Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad ended his 22-year-old tenure with a bang by delivering a three-hour budget speech in Parliament on Sept 12, 2003. It was reportedly the longest budget address in the august house's then 44-year-old history.



7) The biggest - Budget 2013 tops the list with a total allocation of RM251.6bil ringgit for "the implementation of development projects, programmes and measures, with focus on the well-being of the rakyat and national development."

The Goods and Services Tax (GST), abolition of sugar subsidy, 1Malaysia People's Aid (BR1M) and higher property taxes - these were the highlights of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's Budget 2014: How about out standard of living? salary scheme? Professors and teachers, Engineers and technician, Doctors and nurses or better doing business or direct selling?

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2013/10/25/Budget-2014-GST-sugar-subsidy.aspx http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/Dalam_Negeri/20131025/dn_28/Bajet-2014-Pendapatan-perkapita-meningkat-37

Look at what smart people do. Usually they have their target in their life, plan their achievement and live within their limit.

http://my.news.yahoo.com/7-habits-of-smart-people-050117346.html
What do smart people do? Read on:




1. They set their goals. Smart people don’t have a haphazard way of approaching life. They always set a benchmark and this is what everyone should follow. Only if we know what it is we want to achieve can we take the first step towards it. And the goal setting has to be done at an early age.



2. They have a step-by-step plan to achieve their goals. Setting your goals is not enough. Sometimes we set such ambitious goals for ourselves that we unconsciously start considering them impossible to achieve and lose our interest. And this happens because we want to achieve too much in too little time. This is where smart people think ahead. They realize that though setting highly ambitious goals is practical, but expecting groundbreaking results at the blink of an eye is not. Only when you break your goals into several mini-goals and work towards achieving each of those mini-goals, you can start climbing up the ladder, maybe not vertically but always upwards.



3. They control their impulses. Smart people don’t jump-skip the reasons before taking decision. The deliberateness in their actions is what makes them stand apart from the crowd. A proper thought goes behind every action and even if the decision proves to be wrong, they don’t start regretting and whining over it. ‘Learn from our mistakes’ is what we read and that is what they practice.



4. They know their limits. People burning out to achieve something that is way too far-fetched is a common sight. It is not that successful people restrict their abilities or skills, but they do know the boundaries they can push their abilities to.



5. They don't do anything half-halfheartedly. Starting something with huge enthusiasm and then losing steam mid-way is a trait many suffer. Smart people set their minds on something and endeavour to achieve that with absolute determination.



6. They're good listeners. This is something that doesn’t come easily to many. Listening to others might just be our dose of wisdom that we so crucially need. It gives us a different insight into our personalities and helps us to identify certain mistakes and make amends for the same.



7. They're not discouraged by failure. How many of us know how to deal with failure? Very few. We all have plans to cope with the most despairing of situations, but when those situations do arise; all those plans go out of the window. This is where smart people serve a lesson for us. They do fail, but they know how to create new beginnings.



Thursday, October 10, 2013

May be weather can discipline us to be to be hard working, well prepared, proactive, creative and productive persons.


Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad warned that Malays will be left behind in the acquisition of knowledge if the government continues to neglect the teaching of science and mathematics in the English language: Why we are still talking about something already well discussed many years ago. I am in Poland now and we are discussed in english. Many books in Polish, original or translated. How many books are translated to Bahasa Malaysia and how many books on science in Bahasa Malaysia. We still use old pantun "Pisang Emas Di Bawa Belayar, Masak sebiji di atas peti. Hutang Emas boleh diBayar, Hutang Budi dibawa Mati".

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2013/10/09/Dr-M-english-knowledge-language.aspx
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Very excited today because I found this animals near road side while I was driving, two of them. This picture from internet. Tomorrow I will hunt for them again in the largest marshland in Poland


I have the opportunity to visit Poland under European Union Social Development Programme "Enhancing Education Potential".

The Biebrza Marshes (Biebrza Valley) are a complex series of habitats, located on the Biebrza river valley, in Suwałki, Łomża in the northeast of Poland. The area encompasses river channels, lakes, extensive marshes with wooded areas on higher ground and well-preserved peat bogs that occupy around 1,000 km2. The area shows a clear succession of habitats from riverside fen through to raised bogs, grading into wet woodland. Because of this unique succession, the area supports vast numbers of wildlife with many birds and mammals common.

Another campaingn by Malaysian Nature Society (MNS)


In Poland too they are struggling in maintaining their National Parks. Always have conflict between scientists, park managers, politician and business people. But may be they are more systematic especially when European Union involve.

Photo: Salam dari Poland