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Compulsory education policies supported by the law have been implemented throughout the world for centuries, including in Malaysia. However, the implementation of the law is only limited to 6 years of compulsory education at the primary level as opposed to at the international level, which reaches a period of 8 to 12 years of compulsory schooling. Therefore, this study was conducted to explore the challenges faced by parents if Malaysia intends to implement compulsory education in Malaysia within a period of 12 years, starting from one year in preschool until the end of schooling at the secondary level. This study was conducted using a qualitative approach involving several participants selected through purposive sampling. The exploration results through open-ended questions, focus group discussions, and researcher notes were analysed using a thematic analysis, which then received expert consensus at an excellent level with a Cohen Kappa index value exceeding 0.81. The study discovered four themes of challenges faced by parents in implementing the 12-year compulsory education policy in Malaysia, namely parents' financial issues, schoolrelated issues that are a challenge for parents, parents' difficulty in managing their children, and issues faced by children, all of which have resulted in challenges to parents. In this vein, these challenges should be emphasized because parents are the main implementers of the compulsory education policy, which also determines the success of the intended 12-year compulsory education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cell and gene therapy products (CGTPs) are anticipated to bring many benefits for the treatment of conditions with limited or no satisfactory treatment options. However, they are associated with concerns of potential safety risks because of their high complexity. The National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) of Malaysia took the first step toward the regulation of CGTPs by publishing the Malaysian Guidance Document and Guidelines for CGTPs in 2016. As mandatory registration and enforcement of CGTPs were scheduled to begin January 1, 2021, the aim of this study was to ascertain the industry's readiness for the regulation of CGTPs in terms of awareness of the guidelines, challenges and acceptance of the regulatory requirements. The authors invited 48 CGTP companies to participate in the survey between October 2019 and June 2020, and 30 companies responded. The majority of respondents were aware of the mandatory CGTP regulatory control and the availability of the guidelines. Many CGTPs were in the early development phase, and the most difficult registration barriers were dossier preparation and compliance with the pre-clinical and clinical requirements. These findings represent the current CGTP landscape in Malaysia from the industry's viewpoint, enabling the NPRA to implement initiatives to facilitate registration and enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The excessive energy utilisation worldwide has prompted awareness of finding a new clean energy. Malaysia has large oil palm resources and releases huge amounts of oil palm biomass. Since oil palm biomass is abundantly available in Malaysia, it has the high potential of being utilised as fuel for gasification technology. Although many institutions in Malaysia are undertaking numerous research activities, the gasification technologies are not progressing as expected. The understanding of the potential and challenges faced by Malaysian industries are vital to evaluate the feasibility of gasification technology using oil palm biomass in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers are an important political socialization agent in assisting the process of fostering ethnic unity among students. At primary school level, teachers act as influential political socialization agents in nurturing awareness of students at their early age on the importance of ethnic unity especially in the context of a multi-ethnic society in Malaysia. However, the process of fostering ethnic unity in Malaysia generally, and at the primary school level in particular, is still faced with various challenges and obstacles. Hence, this paper discusses the barriers to the role of teachers as effective political socialization agents from the aspect of school administration practices in shaping ethnic unity at the primary school level. The data collection process for this study was carried out through focus group discussions method involving 16 Malay, Chinese and Indian teachers from National School (SK), The Chinese National Type School (SJKC) and Tamil (SJKT) in Petaling district, Selangor. The results found that there are three factors of administrative practices that hinder teachers in playing a role as agents of ethnic unity that can affect the process of fostering the values of unity in a school. First, teacher separation system throught double-session schooling system; second, grouping of teachers in teacher's office by subject; and thirdly, the focus more on syllabus than other aspects such as ethnic unity in school. This study found that these three factors contribute to the existence of ethnic gaps among teachers, but also at the same time become an obstacle to the role of teachers as effective agents of ethnic unity in schools. Hence, the school should pay attention to this issue and raise awareness of all school members on the importance of ethnic unity in the institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia is one of the signatories member of the Washington Accord as well as the Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC) in the country. The change to an Outcome-Based Learning (OBE) is an entitle transformation mode where students are educated, assessed and graduated. Even though the EAC's 1999 issued guidebook listed 12 graduate attributes, but yet less effort to ensure engineering education appreciate and implement it. In 2000, the Malaysian Engineering Education Model also precede for engineer ing education to adopt OBE but the spirit of MEEM was not entirely comprehended and there was no force to obey to the recommendations. Since 2004, Malaysia Higher Education Ministry has adopted the OBE to emerge with few engineering education providers leading the way. Although many educational institutes have prefer in implementing OBE curriculum to deliver Engineering Education, but yet challenging and tedious tasks to implement it successfully. Hence, the aim of this study is to scrutinize a variety of challenges encountered by instructors in implementing the OBE in conveying technica l subjects in tertiary university. A preliminary test of OBE is conducted in this study. Data are collected from 13 instructors from private university through questionnaire survey as well as interviews. Data collected are analysed and exploiting both descriptive statistic s and statistical tests to delineate the primary challenges. Consequently, the novelty findings established significantly in OBE implementation especially these vital facts should be right direction and aid to unlock frontiers for preparing instructors in facing future challenges which impeded the effective implementation of OBE curriculum in teaching and learning in tertiary university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrialization has brought with it environmental problems and the consequences of pollution, which has been affecting the world for decades. Immediate action is required to raise industry's awareness of its social responsibilities toward the environment. However, experience shows that companies that have obtained International Organization of Standardization (ISO) 14001:2015 certifications in Malaysia occupy but a small niche among the country's businesses. The purpose of this study is to assess the list of barriers and challenges to implementing and obtaining certifications under the ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System (EMS) by Malaysian firms. In addition, this study will rank these factors relative to their importance. This study is aimed at EMS experts at the Scientific and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM QAS International Sdn. Bhd.). The study uses mathematical pairwise comparisons to generate the list of critical challenges and barriers. Therefore, the study is expected to raise environmental awareness among Malaysia's industries regarding the adoption of ISO 14001:2015 standards. Furthermore, the study provides a guideline for Malaysia's industries and policy‐makers to provide them with a better understanding of the barriers and challenges that companies face in implementing ISO 14001:2015 EMS, and at the same time, help them understand the need to eliminate the difficulties of standard implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report presents a review of the Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences' (MJMS) performance status throughout 2017, which covers the submission pattern of original manuscripts by month, the geographical distribution of submitting authors, the types of manuscripts and overall acceptance/rejection rates. As the years progress, MJMS continues to receive an escalating number of manuscript submissions. This contributes to an ever-increasing workload, which makes administrative tasks continually more challenging. Although the manuscript submission platform seeks to minimise the pre-publication workload of the journal administrator, it is still a time-consuming task, particularly when authors seek exclusive attention for their submitted manuscripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the issue of lifelong learning as experienced by a Malaysian female senior citizen in the current era. Data were retrieved from the participant's reflections which had been chronicled during the course of her learning in 2011. A linguistic analysis was applied to detect major issues described in the reflections which were written in English. These were then itemised under specific headings while the contents of the reflections were then categorised according to these headings. The overall findings suggest that lifelong learning was perceived to be a rewarding experience although the advancing age affected some aspects of her health, memory, vision, physical movement and so her attitude towards learning. The outcome of this paper suggests that lifelong learning was undertaken by the senior citizen for personal satisfaction and this learning process can be made more pleasant if some of the challenges identified can be addressed duly and aptly. In this regard, tertiary institutions may want to look into the development of retiree-friendly curriculum design, retiree-friendly course materials, flexible assessments, retiree-friendly locations and infrastructure as well as conducive learning environments. Senior citizens can contribute to the development of a nation because of their rich experiences and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies to date have evaluated dementia care in Malaysia, and the focus of studies has primarily been on epidemiological and laboratory research. In this study, we aimed to identify potential challenges for the delivery of dementia care in Malaysia and priorities for research and enhancing existing dementia care. This study used thematic analysis to evaluate the open and focus group workshop discussions guided by semi-structured questions. Triangulation of the collected data (sticky notes, collated field notes, and transcripts of discussions) was achieved through stakeholder consensus agreement during a workshop held in 2017. Five main themes as priorities for dementia care were identified: (1) availability of a valued multi-disciplinary care service, (2) accessibility of training to provide awareness, (3) the functionality of the governance in establishing regulation and policy to empower care services, (4) perceived availability and accessibility of research data, and (5) influence of cultural uniqueness. The findings of this study seek to enhance existing dementia care in Malaysia but have potential application for other low and middle-income countries with a similar social and health care set up. The constructed relationship between themes also tries to tackle the challenges in a more efficient and effective manner, as none of these aforementioned issues are standalone challenges. In addition, we demonstrated how a carefully constructed workshop with defined aims and objectives can provide a useful analysis tool to evaluate health and social care challenges in a multidisciplinary forum.