Science Heritage Journal | Galeri Warisan Sains (GWS)

Curcuma mangga and Bosenbergia rotunda which belongs to Zingiberaceae family are largely distributed in South East Asian countries including Malaysia. These plants have been traditionally used for treatment of various diseases. In this research we focused on determining the antioxidant and cytotoxic activity of C. mangga and B. rotunda ethanolic extracts. Initially, in this study, ethanolic extracts from rhizomes of C. mangga and B. rotunda were obtained through Soxhlet extraction method. 12.6% and 3.5% of crude extract were obtained from C. mangga and B. rotunda respectively. For MTT assay, the IC50 values are 207µg/ml and 31.96µg/ml for C. mangga and B. rotunda respectively. Meanwhile for the antioxidant activity using DPPH assay, C. mangga showed higher antioxidant activity with IC50 values of 1073µg/ml compared to B. rotunda with IC50 values of 578µg/ml. It can be concluded both extracts showed low inhibitory effect on MCF-7 cancer cells growth and DPPH free radical activity.

The quality of marketed vegetables cannot be guaranteed as many of them has been contaminated with heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and arsenic. These heavy metals can act as either growth supporter or threat depending on their types and amount absorbed by the plants. The consumption of an excessive amount of heavy metals in vegetable may cause several diseases such as renal dysfunction and bone depletion. There are few methods used to detect heavy metal contamination such as Atomic Absorption Analysis (AAS), Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA), X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (XRF) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Spectrometry (ICPMS). This paper discusses all these methods to compare their efficiency, advantages and disadvantages to select the best method for heavy metal detection in vegetables.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina there are many architectonic heritage objects that represent the history of the population of different places with different degree of deterioration and conservation, so their study and survey were necessary to avoid the complete loss of it. During the study of heritage assets in towns, villages, and cities of Buenos Aires that the LEMIT makes more than 20 years ago, numerous architectonic heritage assets were found with different degree of deterioration and conservation. As result of some surveys, important restoration and conservation interventions were done preserving province heritage. Thus, the aim of this paper was the study of the materials deterioration state from the first ranch built by the settlement of the Jewish settlers in 1891, in Algarrobos city, Carlos Casares, Buenos Aires. This ranch was the first houses of Jews when they arrived from Russia. The material analysis here presented allowed to recognize its state of deterioration and conservation through discerning if these materials were from the mentioned age and consequently, providing fundamental information to know part of settlement history formation. On the other hand, its study allowed generating a plan of interventions and conservation in short – and medium- term.

This study examined the mangrove degradation in Pahang River Estuary, Pekan sub-district, Pahang between 1990 and 2017 using supervised classification. Landsat 8 OLI and Landsat 5 TM images of Pahang River Estuary have been analyzed using supervised classification and field survey. Based on the accuracy assessment, the confusion matrix for supervised classifications ranged from 77% to 81%. Kappa coefficient (K) for supervised classification ranged between the value of 0.67 and 0.72. The total mangrove covers in 2017 was 1,535.40 ha, decreased by 43.7% or 670.80 ha from its total area of 2,206.20 ha in 1990. The expansion of development area was observed in the past 27 years. Several other causes of mangrove degradation were identified during field survey, including sand mining activities along riverbank, mangrove clearing for aquaculture and agriculture. The rapid development within the coastal area and estuary had suppressed the mangroves propagation over the years. Long term monitoring of mangrove distribution is crucial to ensure the sustainability of the mangrove ecosystem.

This paper proposes an improved virtual view image synthesis algorithm to overcome the drawbacks of conventional virtual view synthesis technologies in dealing with holes and artifacts. First, conduct edge detection and preparation operation on obtained depth images to reduce the holes caused by the step change of pixel value; second, use the Euclidean distance between pixels and the depth information of image to roughly integrate images; finally, conduct morphological swelling treatment on the obtained virtual images to fill the rest holes and remove artifacts. According to results of simulation experiment, the improved algorithm outperforms those applied in other papers in filling holes and removing artifacts in in the course of virtual view image synthesis.

In recent years, with the people’s awareness of the changes in the fitness movement, aerobics has become one of the most popular sports. Although it is only a moderate intensity of sports items, but there are still likely to be injured in aerobics, therefore, the study of different materials for the special purpose of the shock absorption properties of aerobics has a very important significance. Selected rubber, EVA, TPU these three different materials made of Aerobics special shoes for shock absorption loss prevention test, the structural design of three kinds of shoes. Through the analysis of parameters in the process of the experiment can be seen, TPU materials damping loss prevention effect is the most ideal rubber anti vibration effect of the worst.

Herb Phyllanthus niruri (P. niruri) is known to have various pharmacological functions including anti-diabetic properties. In this research, protein extracts from different plant parts (leave, fruit and stem) of P. niruri were investigated for their anti-diabetic potential through α-amylase and α-glucosidase enzyme inhibition assays. For the enzyme inhibition assay, fruit was found to have the highest inhibition percentage (90.0%) against α-glucosidase followed by leave (62.6%) and stem (38.4%). The similar patterns were also recorded for the α-amylase enzyme inhibition assay, in which, fruit showed the highest inhibition percentage (64.1%) followed by leave (33.3%) and stem (18.2%). The findings of this research suggest that fruit of P. niruri is a potential plant part with regards to anti-diabetic properties since it exhibits the highest inhibition activity against both α-amylase and α-glucosidase enzyme compared to leave and stem.

Slaughtering is an unavoidably sensitive issue among Muslim and Jews. This paper gives an outlook on possible detection methods in resolving the dilemma of religious slaughtering status. It will be rather easier to differentiate meat of different animal origins due to the exclusive genetic blueprint. However, in the case of adulteration in slaughtering procedure, the meat was taken from a similar source, thus, complicating the detection process. Therefore, an alternative approach employing proteomics were developed to identify protein expression patterns after external stimulation with electrical treatment. In the slaughtering process, the pain which is triggered by an external stimulus is expected to influence the protein profiles. Therefore, variations in stunning treatments which result in different patterns of protein profiles will pinpoint the specific biomarker for over stunned animals. This will inevitably help to detect adulterations in slaughtering procedure.

Orthosiphon stamineus or known as Misai kucing is a popular herbal tea plant that helps in treating the ailments of kidney and bladder, diabetes mellitus and gout. Due to high demand of this medicinal plant, a large propagation of this plant is recommended. In this study, a protocol for regeneration of Orthosiphon stamineus using axillary bud as explant was established. Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with various concentrations of 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) were evaluated for their effects on shoot induction. Results obtained revealed that the best shooting ability was observed when explants were cultured on MS medium supplemented with 0.2 ppm of BAP. Subsequently, shoot elongation of established shoot was obtained in medium containing gibberelic acid (GA3) with concentration of 0.5 ppm and 1.0 ppm. The best shoot elongation was achieved with medium supplemented with 0.5 ppm of GA3. Subsequently, the elongated explants were transformed to root induction medium with the addition of either 0.2 ppm of 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) or 0.5 ppm NAA. The explants showed positive response in medium supplemented with 0.2 ppm of NAA. From this study it could be confirmed that suitable concentration of plant growth regulators could be used in the regeneration of Orthosiphon stamineus through tissue culture technique.

Antioxidants are believed to play a very important role in the body defence system against reactive oxygen species (ROS), the harmful by-products that are generated during normal aerobic cell respiration. The objective of this study was to determine the antioxidant capacity in green leafy vegetables using ORAC, ABTS, and DPPH assays of different polyphenol fractions (free phenolic, alkaline hydrolysate, acidic hydrolysate). The antioxidant capacity of the identified free and bound phenolic acid content was measured using different assays including ORAC, ABTS, and DPPH assay (end-point assay and kinetic assay). Only hydrophilic antioxidant activities of all selected samples were examined using ORAC assay. Strong correlations were observed in acidic and alkaline hydrolysate fractions (p<0.01) as determined by ORAC and ABTS assays, respectively. In the free phenolic acid extracts, the O. basilicum (Sweet basil) ranked first, had highest antioxidant capacities of 521804±4243 µmol TE/100g DW, 329.8±0.4mg TE/g DW and 9.0±1.8 µg GAE/g DW as determined by ORAC, ABTS and DPPH, respectively. . The A. occidentale (Cashew shoot) in the alkaline hydrolysate extract showed a greatest antioxidant capacity in all three assays: 889126±7193 µmol TE/100g DW, 466.5±7.9 mg TE/g DW and 3.5±0.4 µg GAE/g DW as measured by ORAC, ABTS and DPPH, separately. While, in acidic hydrolysate, the A. occidentale (Cashew shoot) extract also dominated the antioxidant capacity with (560504±5785 µmol TE/100g DW, 387±0.7 mg TE/g DW and 5.9±0.5 µg GAE/g DW) as determined by ORAC, ABTS and DPPH assays, respectively. The acidic and basic hydrolysis yielded higher antioxidant capacities in the present study. It suggests that hydrolysis with alkaline and acidic play significant roles in liberating more phenolic acids and flavonoids and generating high antioxidant capacity in the extracts.