MONDAY, 13 AUGUST – The Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Heritage (FKSW), Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) in collaboration with a private company, Epal Handicraft Training Centre recently initiated an EcoCampus project held in conjunction with the National Day 2018 themed, “Sayangi Malaysiaku” (Love My Malaysia).

The activity dubbed, ‘Eco-Bag Project’ saw some 30 bags sewn by administration staff of FKSW using discarded banners found at the campus.

In her remarks, Deputy Registrar of FKSW, Molly Donna Awang Sham lauded the move which was organised in support of UMS being an EcoCampus.

“We hope to spread awareness amongst UMS staff and students to recycle, reuse, reduce or repurpose,” she said.

More than 10 administration staff of FKSW helped sew the eco-bag which was quickly snapped up by staff of the faculty and other faculties. - FL

FRIDAY, 10 AUGUST - The Research Unit for Languages & Linguistics of Sabah (RULLS), Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language (PPIB) continues to lead in its promotion of research on languages and linguistics of Sabah at UMS.

The unit recently held its third Brown Bag Seminar for Languages & Linguistics at Bilik Mesyuarat Utama, PPIB with the title ‘Numeral Systems of World’s languages focusing on the Austronesian languages in the Pacific’ delivered by Dr. Eugene SL Chan from Hong Kong.

Dr. Chan is an independent anthropological linguistics researcher based in Hong Kong. He has conducted a collaborative project on documenting the world’s languages with the Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany from 2006 to 2015. This collaboration has resulted in a website that contains data of numeral systems from over 4300 languages around the world (https://mpi-lingweb.shh.mpg.de/numeral/).

Currently Dr. Chan continues to work with, and host the website at, the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.

At the Brown Bag seminar, as mentioned in his abstract, Dr. Chan talked of “… the different bases of numeral systems used by some selected Austronesian languages in the Pacific Ocean: decimal system, incomplete decimal systems, quinary system (based on 5), quaternary systems (based on 4), and binary system (based on 2)”.

It is important to document the numeral systems, according to Dr. Chan, because not all of the existing 7000 or so languages will survive in the next century. Languages are “cultural treasures of humanity” and the phenomena of numeral systems in languages “reflect the diversity and different development steps of human counting concepts”.

At the end of the Brown Bag seminar, Dr. Chan had a discussion with audience who were interested to collaborate with him further. The Brown Bag was attended by academic staff, students, and members of the public, as well as related organisations such as SIL Sabah.

The Brown Bag Seminar Series features local and international speakers sharing and highlighting their research in the fields of languages and linguistics - two very rich sources of research data on Sabah's indigenous communities.

Individuals or organizations interested to give a talk at the Brown Bag Seminar session may contact Dr. Jeannet Stephen (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or Dr. Jane Wong (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) for further details. js/bbssll-3-2018

WEDNESDAY, 08 AUGUST - 32 lecturers from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) recently participated in a six day digital entrepreneurship Training of Trainers (TOT) on campus.

The training, which was organised by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) in collaboration with UMS, was designed to strengthen the lecturers’ skill in digital entrepreneurship, such as how to use the digital platform, how to boost sales, and how to utilise the existing free tool website.

The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and International) of UMS, Professor Dr. Rasid Mail, supported the training.

He recognised the benefit of the training for both UMS students and lecturers, as well as for UMS itself.

The training enabled lecturers to gain knowledge-based technology and, and this would help UMS progress towards achieving Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0).

The programme aims to provide exposure on digital entrepreneurship among local youths and micro-entrepreneurs, in order to help them generate lucrative income through digital platforms.

In addition to gain knowledge on digital entrepreneurship, UMS lecturers also integrated the MDEC programme module into the existing curriculum (i.e., Fundamentals of Entrepreneurial Acculturation curriculum) with the purpose of providing UMS students with practical knowledge and skills to conduct online business via different digital platforms, namely Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The training was facilitated by three master trainers from MDEC and managed by two lecturers from the Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning at UMS.

Also present at the training was the Project Leader of eUsahawan Muda MDEC, Suhaina Yaakub

For the record, MDEC has launched the “eUsahawan” programme at colleges, polytechnics, and universities in Malaysia since 2015.

The “eUsahawan” programme is divided into the “eUsahawan Muda” for entrepreneurs who are studying at institutions of higher learning  and Technical and Vocational Education and Training centres, and the “eUsahawan Mikro” for micro-entrepreneurs.

Source: PPIB

TUESDAY, 07 AUGUST - Our ocean is not a dumping site for people’s debris. Surplus human activities have severely affected the marine life in the oceans by releasing harmful substances such as plastic, industrial and agricultural waste, and chemical particles into the ocean.

It is a disturbing fact to know that even though people are aware of the state of marine pollution we are facing, they still continue to use plastic; the most common man-made element found in the ocean.

A recent beach clean-up programme under a joint marine conservation project between the Borneo Marine Research Institute, UMS and Sutera Harbour Resort; found that the biggest source of pollution in the ocean came directly from the land based sources.

“Based on the rubbish collected, most of the trashes are produced locally. Rubbish were thrown into the river and carried out to the ocean.

“Some rubbish will sink to the bottom of the sea, and some will be taken by the tides to the beaches or mangrove areas,” said Associate Professor Dr. Juanita Joseph during her presentation of the Beach Combing survey findings for the Sustaining Kota Kinabalu’s Marine Heritage project, here on Friday.

She also pointed out that some of the rubbish was suspected to be dumped directly into the ocean or on the beach.

“In fact, thousands of tonnes of waste and rubbish are dumped into the ocean on a daily basis,” she added.

She revealed that from the survey, for every 100-metre of the beach clean-up namely Pulau Sulug, Kampung Kibagu, Sepanggar and the public beach near Sutera Harbour Resort; the most common waste was plastic. 

“There were 6,500 plastic mineral water bottles and 8,000 pieces of styrofoams collected during the beach clean-up. We even collected 100 diapers. Plastic bottles and diapers take up to 450 years to biodegrade and styrofoams appears to last forever; it is a non- biodegradable product.

“What is really disturbing to me is that most of the plastic wastes were single-use plastics. This is something that we can change by reducing the usage of single-use plastic into more environmentally friendly reusable alternatives,” she said.

More than 130 volunteers from Jebsen & Jessen (SEA), Trash Hero Borneo, Kota Kinabalu City Hall, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and the public took part in this beach clean-up. The effort managed to remove at least 1,000 kg of litter from 3 beaches.

Meanwhile, according to Dr. Chen Cheng Ann, the Head of Marine Science Programme in Universiti Malaysia Sabah; “the earth is covered with 70% water and it is common for people to assume that all rubbish and debris will be diluted or dissolved in the water.

“But in reality that is not the case; especially with plastic, it never disappears.

“It is imperative for people to know that plastic is a significant threat to the entire marine life,” he said.

He stressed that even though the debris and rubbish dumped into the ocean are released kilometers away from land, they are washed up to beaches and coastal areas, which affect the marine biodiversity.

“Plastic pollution is one of the most serious threats to the ocean. It is harmful to the environment as it does not decompose easily and is often perceived as food by marine animals.

“Change is inevitable and we need to take action now. We need to be responsible human beings by working together to protect our oceans by beating plastic pollution,” he said.