MONDAY, 27 AUGUST - A total of 32 Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) lecturers recently attended a comprehensive three-day Training of Trainers (TOT) Global Online Workforce at the Klagan Regency Hotel.

The training was organised by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) in collaboration with UMS.

This training program was aimed to train the participants with the knowledge and skills about working online through global crowdsourcing platforms.

Global Online Workforce (GLOW) is an initiative by MDEC, which aims to create a community of competitive digital workers among Malaysians who can earn jobs or projects from global crowdsourcing platforms, in order to generate alternative incomes.

This program also provides support programs, mentorship and coaching to Malaysian freelancers.

In the recent three-day training program, the TOT was facilitated by Noranifa Muhamad, the Project Leader of GLOW, and MDEC strategic partners, who included experienced and specialist trainers who are digital workers as well.

The Dean of the Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning (PPIB), Associate Professor Dr. Jualang @ Azlan Abdullah Gansau was also present to provide his support to all of the 32 UMS lecturers and TOT trainers.

In this program, the lecturers were trained to create personal profile and were given tips and tricks to bid for jobs on one of the largest global crowdsourcing platforms, freelancer.com.

Consequently, the lectures will be able to guide undergraduates to gain the skills and experience to work on crowdsourcing platforms through an elective course, which will be introduced in the coming semester.

Through the collaboration between MDEC and UMS, three UMS faculties namely the Faculty of Business, Economics and Accountancy, the Faculty of Computing and Informatics, and the Labuan Faculty of International Finance will introduce Digital Workforce as an elective course to students.

Professor Dr. Rasid Mail, the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and International) of UMS highly supports and acknowledges the benefits of the Digital Workforce elective course and the TOT Global Online Workforce program to UMS, as it is specifically in line with the current working trend, which would lead UMS to achieve the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0).

Source: PPIB

TUESDAY, 21 AUGUST - The team from the Endangered Marine Species Research Unit (UEMS), Borneo Marine Research Institute of the Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) continued with its awareness programme in marine conservation, in its sustained effort to highlight the importance of protecting sharks.

Recently (9 August 2018), the team reached out to students, parents and teachers of Sekolah Kebangsaan Limau-limauan, a remote primary school along the coast of the 60-km-long Marudu Bay within the Tun Mustapha Park.

Due to the proximity of the school and the village (Kampung Limau Limauan) to the sea, families have a long and close relationship with the seas.

A total of forty students, 11 parents and 13 teachers, including the school headmaster, Matsaleh Muhammad participated in the half-day Shark Awareness Program.

In his speech supporting the program, Muhammad lauded the Program as an important extracurricular activity for his school.

“These programs not only give benefit to the students but also to parents and teachers in this school.

“So I want to express my gratitude to UMS for choosing our school for this fun learning awareness event,” he said.

The program was made possible with funding from the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) awarded to Dr. Mabel Manjaji Matsumoto, Project Leader of the Sabah Elasmobranch Biodiversity project (2017-2019), and Head of UEMS. 

MONDAY, 20 AUGUST -  414 students forming 138 teams from 34 secondary schools in Sabah and 4 from Labuan gathered at Universiti Malaysia Sabah on Saturday to compete in the Young Innovators Challenge Program, a concerted effort between the University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Digital Maker Hub and Centre for Industry and Community Network, the Ministry of Education (MOE), the Hap Seng Group, Yayasan Sime Darby, the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation, and Chumbaka, a pertinent training provider in technology industries. 

This competition is the largest state level competition in Malaysia and the winners will be sent on to the national level competition.

The competition, which was previously known as the Young Innovate Competition, was held for the third time in Sabah. 

In 2016, the top 3 teams that won the competition went on to the National competition, where SM St Michael emerged as the national champions with their egg incubator invention “Chick It Out”. 

As part of their championship award, they won a trip to the Singapore Maker Fair. 

In 2017, the state level winning team from SMK Tun Fuad Stephen Kiulu went on to win the Gold Medal in the MDEC Innovation. 

This year there were 8 Gold Award winners, 8 Silver Award winners, and 16 Bronze Award Winners. 

The Gold Award winners were from SMK Tambunan, SMK Bandaraya Kota Kinabalu, SMK Bingkor, SMJK Chung Hwa, Tenom, Sabah Tshung Tsin Secondary School, SMK Kemabong Tenom, SMK Rancha-Rancha, Labuan, SM St Michael, Penampang, Sabah. 

15 teams nationwide will be selected for the YIC nationals in September. The Gold Award winners will stand a chance to be shortlisted to represent Sabah in this national event.

This Young Innovators Challenge competition encourages high school students to use an embedded system such as Arduino, to solve a community problem. 

These students were mentored by UMS students or teachers trained by the Hap Seng Group.  During the competition, the students come up with many conceptual ideas and produced numerous prototype projects. 

They also develop programming, design, and engineering skills.  This competition falls under the Digital Maker Hub @ UMS Sabah, which is responsible for running programs on computational thinking and programming for teachers and students. 

The objectives of this program are to inspire passion in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), to develop living skills such as problem solving, design thinking, persistence, and collaboration, to inspire life-long learning through the use of open-source materials.

The key funding raised by the UMS students and organisers for the Arduino kits as well as the competition were raised through generous contributions of the community donors, the Hap Seng Group, Chumbaka, the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation, and the Centre for Industry and Community Network, Universiti Malaysia Sabah.

FRIDAY, 17 AUGUST - Prof. Dr Chua Tock Hing and his research team of Department of Pathobiology and Medical Diagnostics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia will publish in the next issue of PlosOne, a paper entitled, ”Mitochondrial variation in subpopulations of Anopheles balabacensis Baisas in Sabah, Malaysia (Diptera: Culicidae)”.

The coauthors are Benny Manin (Ph.D student at UMS) and Prof. Chris Drakeley (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine).

This paper is based on the research done for the past five years on the primary vector (Anopheles balabacensis) of the monkey malaria (caused by Plasmodium knowlesi), in Sabah which has recorded the highest incidence of monkey malaria in the world with most of the cases occurring in the interior areas.

A survey conducted in Kudat and Kota Marudu districts also showed that 9.8% of the collected blood samples were positive for Plasmodium knowlesi with most of the infected individuals not having a history of fever.

There are strong linkages between landscape change, disease ecology and human health which help to explain the emergence of the monkey malaria.

These anthropogenic changes to the landscape in Sabah are influencing the dynamics between mosquito vectors, macaques, and humans.

Other results also suggest that Plasmodium knowlesi is adapting to the changes in the distribution and vectorial capacity of its vectors in Malaysian Borneo.

This mosquito feeds on both macaque monkeys as well as humans, preferring to bite humans outdoors and during the early evening.

It is the dominant Anopheles species found in Kudat Division where it is responsible for all the cases of Plasmodium knowlesi.

However, there is limited basic biological and ecological information on this vector.

Prof Chua and his team sequenced 71 Anopheles balabacensis individuals collected from 14 sites of seven districts in Sabah, constituting 14 subpopulations.

The cox1, cox2 genes of the mitochondria were sequenced and analysed to investigate the genetic relationship between the specimens from the various sites.

A total of 17 and 10 haplotypes (a haplotype is a group of genes within an organism that is inherited together from a single parent) were detected in the subpopulations using the cox1, cox2 sequences respectively.

Some of the haplotypes were common among the subpopulations resulting from high gene flow occurring between them, and the variation detected between subpopulations was not due to the geographical distance between them.

Further analysis showed that Anopheles balabacensis in Sabah is experiencing population expansion and growth.

More importantly the high gene flow between populations could help to spread insecticide resistance which may hamper vector control effort.