National University of Malaysia

About: National University of Malaysia is a education organization based out in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Heat transfer. The organization has 26593 authors who have published 41270 publications receiving 552683 citations. The organization is also known as: NUM & Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Mushroom as a potential source of prebiotics: a review

Abstract: The demand from health conscious consumers has lead to emergence of various functional foods. Trend in food science and technology has shown development of prebiotic, which is able to modulate the human gut microbiota and improve the host health in return. The concept has been introduced for more than a decade with inulin and oligosaccharides being the most established and studied prebiotics. Better understanding on the benefits of prebiotics has urged a need for invention of new sources of prebiotics. This paper reviewed the potential of mushrooms as a source of prebiotic with thorough explanation on its concept and application.

Audit committee characteristics and earnings management: evidence from Malaysia

Abstract: Purpose – Conflicts between managers and outside auditors may exist in choosing alternative accounting procedures. Since auditors are appointed by the firm, they are subject to dismissal if divergent opinions cannot be resolved. To a lesser extent, financial reports are often negotiated. In order to produce unbiased financial reports, audit committee members are appointed to act independently in order to resolve conflicts between the managers and outside auditors. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of some audit committee characteristics, i.e. the independence of members, size, frequency of meeting and knowledge of the members, to monitor management behavior with respect to their incentives to manage earnings.Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses discretionary accruals obtained from the established model as a signal of the presence of earnings management.Findings – The evidence shows that the presence of a fully independent audit committee reduces earnings management practices. It was als...

Antioxidant activity of plants methanolic extracts containing phenolic compounds

Abstract: The presence of natural antioxidant in plants is well known This paper reports the antioxidative activities of some methanolic plant extracts namely ‘ulam raja’ (Cosmos caudatus), ‘kesum’ (Polygonum minus), ‘selom’ (Oenanthe javanica), ‘pegaga’ (Centella asiatica) and ‘curry leaf’ (Murraya koenigii) The analysis carried out was total phenolic content, ferric reducing power, ferric thiocyanate (FTC) and thiobarbituric acid (TBA) tests From the analyses, M koenigii had the highest yield extraction (165%), highest total phenolic content (3860 mg TAE/ 100 g fresh weight) and antioxidant activity (7060%) using FTC method Increasing the concentration of the extracts resulted in increased ferric reducing antioxidant power for all methanolic extracts tested TBA analysis showed that C caudatus extract had the highest antioxidant effect Total phenolic content had positive correlation with antioxidant capacity (r = 0451) This shows that the plants, especially M koeniigi, may be potent source of natural antioxidants