THURSDAY, 16 AUGUST - A delegation from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), led by the Vice Chancellor Prof. Datuk Dr. D Kamarudin D Mudin recently visited Heilongjiang Academy of Sciences (HAS) in Harbin, China.

Discussion were held with Prof. Guo Chunjing, President of HAS, and other senior officials of the academy, as well as with key researchers from Institute of Microbiology, a comprehensive research institute under HAS.

Academic and research collaboration between UMS and HAS have been established since 2012, and both institution are strongly committed to further enhance this collaboration for the next five years.

Among the focus areas are research and cultivation of edible mushrooms, research on soil and crop improvement using microbes and organic amendments, research on functional food, and student and staff mobility.

A new initiative to be pursued in this collaboration is smart partnership with the industries.

Among the delegation from UMS during this visit is Datuk Yap Yun Fook who is an adjunct professor of UMS as well as a prominent agriculture entrepreneur in Sabah.

TUESDAY, 14 AUGUST - An endangered juvenile green turtle has been found dead on the beach near Universiti Malaysia Sabah, here on Sunday night.

According to Associate Professor Dr. Juanita Joseph, the carcass of the 65-centimeter long green turtle was found on the beach near the Borneo Marine Research Institute, UMS at 10.35pm Sunday night and was immediately reported to the Sabah Wildlife Department.

“We suspect that the turtle has been killed after being hit by a boat propeller and this can be seen from the crack on the carapace and injury on its head.

“However, we are still waiting for the official post-mortem result from the Sabah Wildlife Department,” she said.

Classified as endangered, green turtle; scientifically known as Chelonia Mydas is the largest hard-shelled sea turtle in the world.

Based on the statistics from the Department of Marine Park Malaysia, the population of sea turtles worldwide has dropped significantly by 90 percent over the past half century.

“Green turtles are threatened by poaching of their eggs and loss of their nesting beach sites. They are also being caught in fishing gear and harvested from their foraging grounds around Sabah waters by foreign fisherman.

“On top of that, marine debris such as plastics is killing our sea turtles because it is often perceived as food,” she said.

Under the Sabah’s Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997 Section 1 Schedule 1, green turtle is a totally protected species. Individuals who are found guilty of killing/taking/selling/buying/be in possession the species including eggs and its parts, can face imprisonment of up to 5 years or fine of up to RM250,000.

For the record, UMS initiated research on sea turtles in Sabah in 1998, including research on green and hawksbill turtles in Pulau Mabul. A total of 207 green turtles and 21 hawksbill turtles have been tagged since the research began in August 2010.

Source: IPMB

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