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The pandemic has intensified issues faced by the journalism community in Malaysia. This study is an attempt to help the media industries upskill themselves in terms of the written discourse. This study describes the rhetorical structures in Malaysian newspaper reports, namely The Star, in terms of the rhetorical moves and steps by using the genre theory, corpus-based discourse analysis and corpus analysis. MyCORONAS (Malaysian Corpus of Online Newspaper Articles) corpus of 90 selected news reports consisting of crime news (TSC), environmental news (TSE) and political news (TSP) was compiled and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively to identify the frequency, functions, and patterns of rhetorical moves. The findings identified a nine-move structure for the newspaper reports. The nine-move structure consists of five optional moves and four obligatory moves. Variations in the use of the steps were observed within the subgenres. Additionally, based on the functions of the moves, it was found that the newspaper report is a hybrid genre with various communicative functions. Based on the patterns of move distribution, the dispersion value shows that the moves are tightly clustered. To conclude, the findings of this study will heighten the awareness of ESP learners on the importance of using appropriate rhetorical moves to write a newspaper report which will help the journalism industries reform themselves during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The current study investigated the effects of stocking density and distances on electroencephalographic changes and cortisol as welfare indicators in Brahman crossbred cattle. The animals were transported by road for either 450 km or 850 km. After transportation by road, the animals were kept in lairage for 8 h. Both distances and stocking density affected various EEG parameters and cortisol results. The objective of the current study was to investigate the effects of stocking density and distances on electroencephalographic changes and cortisol as welfare indicators in Brahman crossbred cattle. Sixty Brahman crossbred heifers were subjected to road transport from a cattle feedlot farm located in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang to a commercial ruminant abattoir in Shah Alam, Selangor. Animals were assigned to long (850 km) and short (450 km) distances and high (600 sqm), medium (400 sqm), and low (200 sqm) stocking densities. Results revealed that the intensity of cortisol responses and EEG parameters (such as alpha <0.001, beta < 0.001, delta < 0.001, theta < 0.001, MF < 0.001 and Ptot < 0.001) increased significantly. Long-distance transport also resulted in significantly more intense (<0.001) responses to nociception during slaughter than animals that had been transported over a shorter distance, as indicated by EEG and cortisol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study's objective was to evaluate the effects of distance and stocking density on physicochemical properties and oxidative stability of meat and acute-phase proteins in Brahman crossbred cattle transported by road under hot and humid tropical conditions. Sixty Brahman crossbred heifers were subjected to road transport from a cattle feedlot farm located in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang, to a commercial ruminant abattoir in Shah Alam, Selangor. Animals were assigned to long and short distances and high, medium, and low stocking densities. The results revealed that the intensity of response significantly increased in meat samples from animals subjected to long-distance transportation and higher stocking density. Alpha-1-acid glycoprotein and serum amyloid-A values increased considerably and were different from the baseline values recorded at preload. In conclusion, the current results revealed that the color, pH, shear force values, water holding capacity (WHC), glycogen level, and malondilaldehyde assay (MDA) concentrations in meat and acute-phase proteins (APP) were affected by both distances and stocking densities, as evidenced by the significant changes recorded from the parameters above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of shackling and halal slaughter with head-only electrical stunning (ES) using water bath or no stunning (NS) on plasma levels of adrenaline (AD), noradrenaline (NAD) and corticosterone (CORT) levels of broiler chickens. Male and female broiler chickens (Cobb 500) 38 days old from a commercial farm in Johore, Malaysia, were placed in plastic crates (0.80 × 0.60 × 0.31 m) at 10 birds per crate, and transported for 2.5 hours in an open truck. The ambient temperature during transportation was 25 to 27 °C. Upon arrival at a commercial processing plant, a total of 50 male broiler chickens (2.2 - 2.5 kg) were randomly selected from the flocks that were delivered, transferred to different five crates (10 birds per crate) and held in a lairage for 2 to 3 h. Blood samples were collected at various points, namely after lairaging (P1) (first sampling point for both ES and NS chickens, regarded as basal values), shackling (P2) (second sampling point for both ES and NS chickens), stunning (P3) (third sampling point for ES chickens), and ventral neck incision in stunned (P4) (fourth sampling point for ES chickens) and no stun (P5) (third sampling point for NS chickens). Ten birds were sampled at each sampling point (50 birds in total). Both stunned and no stun birds were shackled. Results show that shackling (P2) did not significantly affect the AD, NAD and CORT levels. However, electrical stunning elevated both the AD and CORT levels significantly, but not NAD. Neck cut had negligible effect on the AD and NAD in NS and ES broilers, but significantly increased CORT compared with the basal CORT value. In conclusion, the study demonstrated that head-only electrical stunning using a water bath might elevate AD and CORT. The study concluded that, as measured by AD and NAD, slaughter with or without stunning may not induce a physiological stress response in broilers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on developing and testing the concept of entrepreneurial knowledge management (EKM) to view knowledge management (KM) activities in domestic banks. The ability of banks to learn from the explicit and implicit knowledge it possess and turn it into knowledge assets that can generate income stream is a major factor for sustainable competitive advantage. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) to analyse the data gathered, given that SEM has become one of the popular statistical tools to test the relationships proposed in a parsimonious model. The research has empirically determined that the majority of the respondents are aware that knowledge is important in the business of banking. However, it appears some have relegated KM to Management Information Technology (IT) and neglected to cast a wider net to appreciate the importance of EKM for the purpose of creating unique entrepreneurial knowledge asset to enable sustainable differentiation and competitive advantage for generating future income streams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pandanus amaryllifolius is a member of Pandanaceae family and is abundant in south-east Asian countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and India. In this study, Pandanus amaryllifolius fibres were extracted via a water retting extraction process and were investigated as potential fibre reinforcement in polymer composite. Several tests were carried out to investigate the characterization of Pandanus amaryllifolius fibre such as chemical composition analysis which revealed Pandanus amaryllifolius fibre's cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin content of 48.79%, 19.95% and 18.64% respectively. Material functional groups were analysed by using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis confirming the presence of cellulose and amorphous substances in the fibre. The morphology of extracted Pandanus amaryllifolius fibre was studied using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Further mechanical behaviour of fibre was investigated using a single fibre test with 5 kN cell load and tensile strength was found to be 45.61 ± 16.09 MPa for an average fibre diameter of 368.57 ± 50.47 μm. Meanwhile, moisture content analysis indicated a 6.00% moisture absorption rate of Pandanus amaryllifolius fibre. The thermogravimetric analysis justified the thermal stability of Pandanus amaryllifolius fibre up to 210 °C, which is within polymerization process temperature conditions. Overall, the finding shows that Pandanus amaryllifolius fibre may be used as alternative reinforcement particularly for a bio-based polymer matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]