Solar plane makes return flight to Rabat:The giant high-tech aircraft, which has the wingspan of a jumbo jet but weighs no more than a medium-sized car, is fitted with 12,000 solar cells feeding four electric motors driving propellors. Last month, the solar-powered plane made the 2,500-kilometre (1,550-mile) journey from Madrid to Rabat, its longest to date and its first between continents, after an inaugural flight to Paris and Brussels last year.

From Research to out reach: Biologist need to do more research on wildlife and then we can have effectively convince public for conservation.

May be the professors need to be closer to top leaders to express their opinion and exchange ideas. In new challenging world we need ideas and concrete research findings to be infront. Therefore Professors are needed. MAAC is relavent!

Sometime we need to see the minister and talk to him and make him happy.... but in many occasion we fail to express what we want from the minister. We ask something, he think of something else and he give some other thing. may be some time we did not get what we want or asked but what we deal.

Milky Storks (Burung Upeh) in Utusan Malaysia 25 Jun 2012

PCG-MNS Ecocare Centre at Kertih Terengganu.

 Sometime Ecology Professor need to lead in the building/construction of environmental education centre to make sure everything in order. Not that an easy task when dealing with contractors, workers, sponsors, local authority and environmental parameters.

Why professor's picture is small compared to artists pictures? probably the media think more to write about professor's ideas rather than to show the picture and people will follow their thinking rather their style, fashion and appearance compared to artists who will be followed through their apperance and behaviour?!!

Another ceremonial or reallly educational activity to promote environmental awareness among youth involving NGO like MNS and sponsored by corporate body such as TM and advise by the professor.

MNS-TM Earth Camp 2012,  MIRI SARAWAK 22-24 JUNE 2012

Big companies involvement in the environmental education activities: Shell, Esso, Petronas, MK Land (through Pulau Banding Foundation), Puncak Niaga & Syabas (through Briged Penyelamat Sungai), Bayer, Denso, Coca cola...and many more.

How far the involvement and contribution were assessed or audited for their performance and effectiveness?

wildlife need to be protected and can be a good bio-indicator for the equilibrium of the forest and forest health. Wildlife can ensure the sustainability of the forests

Future of our forests: who will determine them? business man, politition, gangsters, young generation?......or need advice from scientists.

Research culture among postgraduates students in the local universities: Do we need to import postdoctoral candidates from well established research laboratories? We need grants, monitoring them or..... Local graduates need to be supervised by good professors!

Identify GOOD professors!!!!
Hunt for them, give grants and ask them to develop culture, future scientists and create scientific communities in their areas.
Get good head to lead not a dreamer or NATO

What Malaysian Scientists can do to promote consistent supply of banana in the country instead of Malaysian eating chemical treated imported banana and insect infected banana from local.

Whar are popular banana in Malaysia.

How and where to grow them

What are the diseases problems

marketing problems?

harvesting, storing and transporting them? .......

Understanding Malaysian culture: respect, ceremonial and harmony.

Enviromental or Nature Education is a continuous activities and should be run across the country. Big government agencies companies should support this programme as their corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Get ready to face the society's culture of your destination by looking at how they behave at the check in counter,departure gate and putting luggage at the ovehead compartment.......... and after aeroplane landed.

How to Email a Professor

NEVER begin with "Hey" or similar. Spell your professor's name correctly. Generally speaking you should use "Dear Professor Last-name." Do not use "Mr. Last-name", especially when the professor has a PhD, where the only alternative honorific is "Dr.". If he or she signs the reply with a first name it is still best to address her/him as "Professor" in an email. Do not use the professor's first name unless you have been explicitly invited to do so.

Functional Graduates, Intelect and employablity

All universities want their graduates employed by the employer, become entrepreneurs or creating their own jobs. But looking at the quality and attitude of students when they enter the university, the way they behave during study, their attitude as a university's students and the outcomes they show in the examination, in general the quality of students are questionable.
We have to look seriously on the students qualification, attitude, culture, lectures quality, teaching attitude, system in the university, environment and demanding from the employer for status and compete for glamour.
Who should thing about this and take action?

Education Policy: Dialog, debate, ..... no action??

To day I have the opportunity to discuss with many politicians to advice the government on the education policy. Whats wrong with the current policy and the implementation of the policy. Unfortunately many are talking about simple things and very superficial such as "menghasilkan insan yang kamil, etc..." but how to do it and what kind of expectation, no body touch. I suggested to them just do it the old policy, make the teacher efficient, know what to teach, how to teach, to whom they suppose to teach and what are their expectation, the outcomes.
Teachers need to be trained. The government was wrong when the teachers were given allowance instead of training then to be a good teachers teaching mathematics and science in English.
Many more need to be done in order to translate the curriculum effectively.

I think public concern on environment still low in Malaysia. Look at haze issues, how we responded, still traffic jam in Kuala Lumpur, still not efficient services in public transport, open burning, etc. Similar thing to rubbish, domestic waste, recycle campaign, etc. Need Agressive education, planning, laws and enforcement.

May be we need effective modules for environmental education programmes. OR more research to convince the public and politician

RIO+20, Kyoto protocol, many more agreement: Forest fire and haze continues!

Rio+20: How far developed countries committed and support decision made in Rio 20 years a go. How India and China responded to the agreement. How about USA, Japan and Europe? Malaysia or Indonesia?

ISO: Procedures, Efficiencies or bureaucracies, delay, burden and wasting time, money and papers?

Water Business: If public do not know a bout water, how to save water and how to get water. Water is every where but a lot of water is stored in the forest. Maountain forests keep more water and flowing to low land where human live. Think about where is water and how to keep it and how we can get clean water.

Coastal mangrove ecosystems belong to public, country and probably to the world. Therefore damages made by individual or companies must be given serious attention by the authorities and always refer to the scientist or all experts related to mangrove ecosystems.

Survey and identify specific area for protection, conservation, replanting, tourism attraction places, recreation, fisheries inportance, integrated use of mangrove ecosystems for fisheries, ecotourism, recreation, wildlife conservation, sustainability, security and other benefit in economy, tourism, fisheries and conservation.

although when they growing older they may not like science, nature and environment, early exposure is very important and neccessary.

 mangrove ecosystem need to be monitored by the experts regularly and provide data and advice for the authority and local fisherman, tourist operators and others.

 Not all places are suitable for replanting. need detail studies on the ecological changes and natural transformation of sediment, water flow, human activities.

 

Imagine how many school children involved in this mangrove seedling planting activities including international participants, a lot of money involve in transportation, food, accommodations and seed supply, etc.. The programme was well covered by media, etc. But now they looked like this. Why? definitely need experts supervision, not just ceremonial and popularity and perhaps business opportunity.

Forest fire, haze, water, air soil pollution, excess of CO2 and big scale algae culture for biofuel and food will help in reducing forest fire and biodiversity problems

Air Hitam Forest Reserve: A sanctuary for research and education. Public must understand AHFR not just for the forest protection and conservation for future generation, green lungs for Klang Valley, and green areas BUT more than that where we can make it as a centre of international research and education, out door laboratories for school children and research for forestry, biology, ecology and nature based interest among students and public.

Blood cockles: important fisheries products in Malaysia and exported a lot to our neighbours. But how far we protected this fisheries products? Research and development of cockles culture, how many experts on cockles we have in Malaysia? How about sedimentation rate, surface sediments texture, water quality, pollution, harvesting techniques, and many more biology and ecological factors need to be studied.

May be we need more than 10 PhDs in blood cockles and continuous research in order to sustain our blood cockles production and leading in exporting to the worlds consumption.

mangrove planting for conservation, coastal protection, fisheries, education, business or just ceremonial?

Scientists, Biologist, ecologist need to help them so that the mangrove planting activities will be the success one. Otherwise just a ceremonial or publicity. Type of mangrove, zonation, niche, salinity, sedimentation, ecological changes and many more can be a reasons why mangrove replanting failed.

Sometimes politician need to guided by the local community leaders. Their thought usually just to gain public support not to provide what public need. Local community leader is volunteers jobs. They are truely think about what public want and the public problems.

Ban Ki-moon: not just the future we want and the future we share. we need clean air to breath and safe water to drink. together we have the power to make the different, together we have a power to change the world

We never learned the lesson, Our neighbour never care about haze effect and the world do not care about it. Are we weak? or no idea to solve the haze problems or we too dont care?

UPM-Cocacola Recycle to cycle programme: another education, motivation, application and sustainability activities on conserving the environment.

Rio+20. What we have done? Knowledge, education, awareness, application, culture, lifestyle, regulation, laws, enforcement, technology, finance, business,........ More grants needed for scientists for Rio, Kyoto, Stolkhom, Copenhagen, Langkawi, ......

Why the mammoths really vanished; Mammoths Wiped Out By Multiple Killers: Foreign scientists are very keen to study about extinct animals. may be Malaysian scientists too can do similar thing such as in Royal Belum Forest. We claimed it is old forest but what was the history.

Promoting Panda Conservation to the World: Regulation and agreement, support and contribution, research and education, business and politic. Publicity on panda conservation, research and education now attracted public and become one of tourism attraction. Why in Malaysia cannot do the same thing on Orang Utan, Probosis Monkey, Rhinocerous, Tapir, Milky Storks and others.

Policy said science:arts ratio in education is 60:40 since many years a go. But why government still talking about this ratio. May be we have to look at all aspects from curriculum, implementation of the curriculum, teachers, career, pay/salary and many more to attract young in to science.

Science interest among the students is an international issues. Developed countries are very lucky because they are already in front. We cannot follow them. We need to detect earlier and overcome the issues of lack of interest in science among the students. We need more scientists. Perhaps more scholarships, research grants, better pay, review the curriculum so that more easier and attractive, etc

The issue of environmental degradation and a rise of new and old infectious diseases is causing concern among scientists and public health specialists: An integrated approaches are needed

Why we do not listen to our boss? May be because he do not pay our salary?

Checklist For Effective Jobs: Everyone must have daily checklist then we know what we are doing for the day and we do not miss anything.

Delivering Effective Lectures: Lecture Skills Checklist

Lecture Skills Checklist

Presentation Skills

Preparation Skills

1.      Selected lecture methods in advance.  

2.      Prepared lecture notes in advance. 

3.      Prepared audiovisuals in advance.

4.       Planned effective techniques to introduce the lecture.

5.       Arranged room appropriately.

Verbal Presentation Skills

1.       Projected voice (changed pitch, tone and volume).

2.        Avoided fillers (e.g., “um,” “er,” “you know,” etc.).

3.        Used many examples.

4.        Provided praise and reinforcement.

5.       Accepted student ideas and suggestions.

6.       Used appropriate humor.

 Nonverbal Presentation Skills 

1.       Maintained eye contact. 

2.       Maintained positive facial expressions.

3.       Gestured with hands and arms.

4.       Maintained good posture.

5.       Moved around the room with energy.

6.       Followed lecture notes.

  Questioning Skills

1.       Asked questions at varying levels of difficulty

2.       Asked questions to group.

3.       Asked questions to individual students.

4.       Involved all students (if possible).

5.       Repeated student responses and questions.

6.       Provided positive reinforcement.

  Audiovisual Skills

Used presentation media correctly.

 Summarizing Skills 

1.       Asked for questions.

2.       Asked questions.

3.        Used media to review main points.

Society, Religion, Harmony and Politic

Social issues: is there any correlation between number of temples or mosques and number of population? for example look at Selangor state in Malaysia where high number of Muslim population have less number of mosque compared to Hindus and Buddhist and their temples.  This definitely involve a lot of issues such as territorial, racial, space, education, politic, understanding, environment, nature and future societies. Need some studies and analysis immediately.

World Class University (WCU): 1. University's leaders know what is world class university? 2. Is it enough by visiting top university in the world and come back telling people and condemn their own staff? 3. or they should come back and plan towards WCU? 4. What conflict do we have? Conflicts between professors who have WCU ideas and administrators, low quality students, inefficient and low skills supporting staff, lacking in basic facilities, leadership, public and politics?

Alumni contribution to the university is very imporant. At least develop confidence among good students to come to the university beside donation or fund raising.

Think of Effective Ways How to Deliver your Work daily.

Jobs Market and Employability of University's Graduates: The training direction should look forwards 5 to 10 years a head in terms of public life styles, technologies, services and trends. The graduates must aware what will be needed by the societies, industries and countries.

"Generation Y": generation gaps or the "X Generation" failed to follow the technology changes and development? Leaders must far ahead from the current technologies. cannot be newspaper culture (yesterdays news). Experts must be involved in the advisory team. Professors are always important!