ASTRA ZENECA VACCINE

 by: Nia Amira Najwa binti Azmi

 

Is it safe?

Two versions of the vaccine – produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India – have been listed for emergency use by WHO. When the vaccine underwent SAGE consideration, it had undergone review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

The EMA has thoroughly assessed the data on the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine and has recommended granting a conditional marketing authorisation for people aged 18 and above. 

The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety, a group of experts that provides independent and authoritative guidance to the WHO on the topic of safe vaccine use, receives and assesses reports of suspected safety events of potentially international impact. 

How efficacious is the vaccine?

The AZD1222 vaccine against COVID-19 has an efficacy of 63.09% against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. Longer dose intervals within the 8 to 12 weeks range are associated with greater vaccine efficacy.

Does it work against new variants?

SAGE has reviewed all available data on the performance of the vaccine in the settings of variants of concern. SAGE currently recommends the use of AZD1222 vaccine according to the WHO Prioritization Roadmap, even if virus variants are present in a country. Countries should assess the risks and benefits taking into consideration their epidemiological situation.

Preliminary findings highlight the urgent need for a coordinated approach for surveillance and evaluation of variants and their potential impact on vaccine effectiveness. As new data become available, WHO will update recommendations accordingly. 

Does it prevent infection and transmission?

No substantive data are available related to impact of AZD1222 on transmission or viral shedding. In the meantime, we must maintain and strengthen public health measures that work: masking, physical distancing, handwashing, respiratory and cough hygiene, avoiding crowds, and ensuring good ventilation.

As of 19 April 2021, the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective at protecting people from the extremely serious risks of COVID-19, including death, hospitalization and severe disease. Read the 16 April 2021 statement of the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety on AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which covers reports of very rare side effects. The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences classifies rates of adverse events or medicines and vaccines as follows:

• Very common > 1/10 

• Common (frequent) > 1/100 and < 1/10 

• Uncommon (infrequent) >1/1000 and < 1/100 

• Rare> 1/10000 and <1/1000 

• Very rare < 1/10000 

Read More

Cendol is Malaysia’s iconic dessert

 By: Megat Harris 

Cendol is a traditional dessert originating from Malaysia and is also very popular in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, Cambodia and Thailand. Cendol is a simple and delicious shaved ice dessert. Its basic ingredients include coconut milk, jelly noodles, shaved ice and gula Melaka. Other ingredients that can be included, such as red beans, glutinous rice, jelly and cream corn. The ingredients used in cendol are based on different variations of cendol to suit personal tastes and preferences. Cendol is very common throughout Malaysia and is usually sold by roadside vendors, hawker stalls and food courts.

The original cendol did not add ice. Only after the introduction of refrigeration technology in the UK, did the shaved ice cendol become popular and popular. Cendol is so loved by Malaysians that the National Heritage Administration of Malaysia declared cendol as a Malaysian heritage food. The best part of cendol is that it is so cheap and affordable. The current market valuation is based on the supplier who sells the product.

Read More

How To Start A YouTube Channel For Your Business

 by: Hanis Sophia 

YouTube is wildly popular and a great place to showcase your business and digital products. With over one billion hours watched daily, YouTube is now the 2nd most visited website and 2nd biggest search engine after Google. With so much to gain by sharing your videos with the world on YouTube, why not start now?

 

1. Know Your Channel's Purpose 

 First, you need to know your YouTube channel’s purpose. This is one of the most important YouTube tips for beginners. Do you want to share your passion with the world? Is YouTube part of your video content marketing strategy to promote your business? Are you looking to integrate social media and video marketing strategies? Are you trying to make your YouTube channel your business? Defining a purpose will help guide you while you start creating content.

If you are starting a YouTube channel to promote your business, you’re probably going to want to brand it with your company’s name. You can also link your channel to your company’s website and other social media accounts. Having a strong grasp on the purpose can also help you seed ideas for the types of video content that will most likely resonate with your audience. If you go into your YouTube channel blindly, you may suffer from having unfocused content that lacks cohesiveness and drives would-be subscribers away.‍

 

2. Create Your Channel 

Now you’re ready to create your YouTube channel. Here’s a high-level walkthrough to help guide you through setting up your first YouTube channel. 

If you don’t already have a Google account, you’ll need to sign up for one. After creating a username and password you’ll be asked to provide your phone number for account verification. 

Once you have created, and can access, your Google account, head over to YouTube and sign in with your username.

Next, take any action that requires you to have a YouTube channel. These include leaving a comment on a video, or creating a playlist. We recommend the ‘upload video’ action as it will give you prompts to guide you through creating your own channel

You will be asked if you want to create your channel using the name associated with your Google account, or with a brand account. The advantage of using a brand account is that you’ll be able to give channel management access to multiple people. Once you choose which option you’d like to use, YouTube will set up your channel. It’s as simple as that.  

 

3. Verify Your Account

After you create your YouTube channel, you’ll need to verify it. This will enable certain features that you will not have access to without verification. This includes things like the ability to customize your video thumbnails. Having an engaging thumbnail can be the difference between people clicking to watch your video, or completely ignoring it.

To verify your account, you need to navigate to “Channel status and features” in the YouTube settings. Once you are redirected, click on the blue “Verify” button towards the top of the page. In the end, you will be prompted to give your phone number, at which point you can select between getting a verification code via text or voice call. This verification code should arrive quickly.

 

4. Create A Banner 

We all know how important first impressions are. They can set the tone for your entire interaction with any given person in any given circumstance. Your YouTube channel banner will likely be the first thing your viewers and possible subscribers will see when visiting your channel. It’s big and sits right atop your channel’s main page.This is your chance to make that good first impression. An effective banner will let the viewer know where they are, entice the viewer to stay and check out some videos, and may even get them to trust you a little. 

Creating YouTube channel artwork should be no problem if you have design skills. If you’re not as confident in your craft, there are several tools and templates online that will make the whole process much easier. Canva is one easy-to-use graphic design platform with several YouTube channel art templates that can help you get a jump start on designing your own banner.

There are some size restrictions for banners to consider:

• Minimum size for the banner is 2048 x 1152 pixels
• Maximum file size is 6MB
• Your banner will look different depending on whether you are viewing it on a mobile or a desktop device
• Place your logo and critical text in the center 1540 x 427 area of the banner to minimize the risk of getting content cut off. This area is considered the ‘safe zone’.

Once you have your design finalized, go to your channel and hover over the area where your banner would be. You’ll see a camera icon flash up on the top right of the banner area. Click on the icon and upload away!

If you have yet to upload any videos, you will need to click on “Customize Channel” towards the top right of the page. Here you will see a preview of your channel’s home page. Click on “Add channel art” where the banner would be, which will prompt you to upload your banner. Nice and easy.‍

 

5. Know Your Niche 

 
Focused content is important. Try to find your niche and stick to it. Discover the area/subject matter/topic you want to speak about and who you want to speak to. Audiences are more likely to trust and engage with content creators who hold authority and proficiency. Be sure to direct your video content strategy toward your area of expertise.

If you are building a video content marketing strategy to promote an existing business, there’s a good chance you already know what services/products you have to offer and to whom you are offering them. But if you are getting into YouTube with hopes of making it your business, you might have a harder time finding your niche. Focus on things you are already proficient in or have established credibility for. Think of a subject you are passionate about and want to share with others.

Can your niche be too specific? Sure. Creating content solely around how to change your guitar strings is probably a little too focused. But a video on how to change your guitar strings could be an excellent candidate for your guitar repair and maintenance channel. It is easier to build authority and trustworthiness around a specific niche than for a variety of quasi-related subjects, so be sure to align this with your area of expertise.

 

6. Just Start Recording

“Practice makes perfect” might be a cheesy saying, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Watch enough professional YouTubers and you’ll find a similar sentiment. While it might be easy to critique the quality or consistency of your early work, you should be proud of the effort it took to get there. Plus, early work can still generate subscribers!

Just press record. Start making your videos as soon as possible. Learning how to start a YouTube channel as a beginner is largely about pointing that camera and shooting.

Play around with camera angles. Search for your voice. Figure out how to light your shots. Dabble with editing. This is your time to start gaining experience. Just start filming.‍

 

7. Don't Forget SEO 

YouTube is not only a video platform, it’s a search engine for videos. YouTube videos are often some of the first results you see when searching on Google. It’s important to familiarize yourself with SEO best practices for YouTube.

One important strategy is putting targeted keywords in the name of the video file, video title, and video description. If appropriate, you might even put targeted keywords in your channel’s brand name. You can also tag your videos with the relevant keywords you want to show up for.

Much of basic SEO transfers over to SEO for YouTube. Build a foundation with solid keyword research. Find out what terms are being searched for in your niche and target them. While you’re getting your bearings, shoot for keywords with less competition but substantial search volume.

Don’t forget competitor research. See who is ranking for your target keywords and terms and try to pinpoint the things they are doing well. This will give you inspiration for what you should be doing and, most importantly, seed ideas for how to do it better.‍

 

8. Get To Know YouTube Analytics 

Data is the key to understanding if your videos are performing and if your SEO efforts are working. YouTube analytics will provide several key points of data, including how many views your videos get, where those viewers are coming from, and how many subscribers you have. Views and subscribers can serve as a good pulse point for initial audience engagement.

As you continue to grow your YouTube channel, one of the most important data points you’ll find is Watch Time. This is the amount of time people have spent watching your videos.

This is important because YouTube tends to rank videos with longer watch times higher. YouTube is also more likely to feature videos with high watch times. But this doesn’t necessarily mean you should create super long videos.

YouTube also factors in average duration time (how long people spend on a video on average) and average percentage viewed (how much of the video people actually watched). Both metrics can be accessed through YouTube analytics.

These are the three metrics YouTube uses to measure how engaging your videos you are. The more engaging, the greater the chance your video will be ranked high and/or featured by YouTube.

 

9. Don't Worry Much About Camera 

A common concern people have when looking into how to start a YouTube channel for beginners is their camera set up. Some YouTubers might be afraid of looking like a rookie with bad equipment, while others might just be excited for a new toy.

Either way, getting the best camera should not be a top priority. Your smartphone could probably do the job for now. Instead of getting a new camera right away, look into getting tools that might make it easier to shoot with your phone such as a tripod or stand.

Eventually you’ll want to upgrade your camera and a solid DSLR should suffice when the time does come.‍

 

10. Do Worry About Audio 

One of the most common mistakes new YouTubers make is concentrating too much on video quality and not enough on audio. It should actually be the other way around because nothing ruins a video faster than poor audio. If your audio is not clear, your background music is too loud, or you speak too softly, you’re sure to see complaints in the comments.

Make sure that what needs to be heard is heard. The best and most immediate way to do this is by having strong mics. An often overlooked YouTube tip for beginners is to invest in a good microphone before a good camera.‍

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read More

Deep in the Ocean

 Written by Nanthini Suresh

Before you get in the water this summer, remember there's a lot going on under the sea we don't yet know about.

The ocean floor

Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is below the ocean, yet 95 percent of it remains unexplored to the human eye. Although the oft-heard statistic is that we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the ocean seabed, scientists have been able to map the entire ocean floor—but the resolution is incredibly poor, so we can only visualize features larger than three miles. Ongoing research like Seabed 2030 aims to bring the ocean floor into greater focus, so we can better see and understand what’s really down there. For now, we can just marvel at the most stunning deep-sea sights in the world.

Milky sea phenomenon

For hundreds of years, sailors have reported randomly encountering a strange “milky” cast to the sea as far as the eye can see, but scientists have been unable to explain it—or even know for sure if it was real. In 2006, researchers were actually able to capture a satellite image of a milky sea, and several years later, experiments discovered the glow was likely from bioluminescent bacteria that attract fish in order to be eaten and survive in their guts. But, scientists still aren’t sure how or why the bacteria gather in such huge numbers as to be able to be seen from space. In addition, their glow is continuous, unlike the more commonly seen “dinoflagellate” organisms that produce brief flashes of light.

Purple orb

In 2016, researchers from Ocean Exploration Trust (founded by oceanographer and Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard) aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus found a strange purple blob on the ocean floor off California. Stumped as to what it could be, the scientists joked about it being a spider egg sac or a “tiny momma octopus,” and nicknamed it Blobus purpilis before battling with a crab to retrieve the specimen. It looks kind of like a strange and mesmerizing jellyfish. Research is ongoing as to what the orb is, but it’s hypothesized to be a new species of velutinids, a type of snails. Here are more of the most stunningly beautiful underwater photos ever taken.

Baltic Sea anomaly

Could there be an alien spaceship on the ocean floor? In 2011, ocean explorers found an oval-shaped object with strange markings on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The resulting “images”—which were really created by a graphic artist—of the otherworldly discovery quickly made the rounds on the Internet (the only real visualization is a grainy sonar image). Scientists think the anomaly is actually a glacial deposit or some other natural formation, but its origins are uncertain pending further exploration. Who knows? Of course, whether intelligent alien life exists at all is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries about the universe.

Giant squid

This huge animal could be the mythical kraken featured in Pirates of the Caribbean and Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Although it’s unlikely that the giant squid actually attacked ships, very little is known about this mysterious creature of the deep. It wasn’t even photographed alive until 2004 and not filmed until several years later, when it was caught at the surface. Underwater video was not accomplished until 2012. Scientists have learned virtually nothing about the lives of these deep-sea giants, not even how big they get, although some estimates predict they grow up to 66 feet. Only their cousin the colossal squid might be bigger in weight, although probably not length—but even less is known about them. In real life, many sea creatures are adorable, rather than horrifying; these photos of manatees prove it. 

Undersea geology

We might not know much about the terrain of the ocean, but we have seen is just as stunning as what’s on land—and in fact, may be strikingly similar. “Brine pools,” where the salt water concentration is greater than the surrounding ocean, create lake-like surfaces and shorelines. Earth’s largest waterfall is actually underwater in the Denmark Strait, where colder water tumbles over a huge drop in the ocean floor, falling 11,500 feet (the largest land waterfall is only 3,212 feet). Underwater volcanoes erupt—the largest one ever recently happened, and scientists almost missed it. Although researchers know all of these things exist, their exact mechanisms are still being investigated, making them one of the perplexing science mysteries no one has figured out.

Blue whales

These mysterious giants of the sea are the largest animal to live on Earth—ever. But partially due to the whaling trade hunting them nearly to extinction, plus their slow reproduction, there just aren’t many of them out there to study. As a result little is known about these elusive creatures, including how long they live, when they reach sexual maturity, or the specifics of their reproduction. The animals’ shyness also makes them hard to observe. In 2017, a video of never-before-seen blue whale behavior off Sri Lanka caused controversy among experts as to whether or not the rolling and racing caught on camera was a mating ritual. The researchers plan to return this summer to see if they can learn more.

Bloop sound

Nothing like the mysterious “bloop” sound recorded in the South Pacific in 1997 had ever been heard before. It was very loud, low-frequency, and had a unique pattern that made some think it was a newly discovered creature lurking in the depths. (It didn’t help that the sound came from near the location of HP Lovecraft’s fictional sunken city of R’yleh, where a creature called Cthulhu is imprisoned.) Researchers continued to look for the origin of the noise for years, until in 2005 they announced it had been an “icequake,” which occurs when icebergs break off of glaciers. Although that reasoning has been generally accepted, some conspiracy theorists still feel the explanation is a little thin. Check out some less mysterious, but still fascinating, facts you never knew about our oceans.

“Immortal” jellyfish

Could this tiny jelly hold the secret to curing cancer? Smaller than a pinky nail, this sea creature has the Benjamin Button-like ability to revert back to a polyp stage when threatened with starvation or injury, earning it the nickname “immortal jellyfish” for how it outsmarts death. Although the species had been known about for a hundred years, it wasn’t until the 1990s that this incredible phenomenon was discovered. Scientists still are unsure exactly how its cells are able to regress and regrow, but the immortal jellyfish could hold promise for fighting diseases like cancer in humans. Check out more rare photos of our ocean’s invertebrates like you’ve never seen them before.

The Bermuda Triangle

The points of the so-called Bermuda Triangle are Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda—but don’t worry if you’ve booked a trip to any of those destinations. Despite the area being known for the unexplained disappearances of ships and planes, there really isn’t any evidence that it’s more dangerous than anywhere else in the world, or that there’s any supernatural phenomenon at work. But, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) does admit there could be scientific reasons for the disappearances, such as the likelihood of hurricanes, rapid changes in weather due to the Gulf Stream, and the numerous islands in the Caribbean that make for tricky navigation. NOAA also acknowledges that the area could possibly mess with navigational tools, making them point true north as opposed to magnetic north; or that “oceanic flatulence,” a burst of methane gas from the sea, could somehow have affected the vessels and planes.

 Giant oarfish

Could these be the sea monsters of yore? This snake-like creature is the longest bony fish on Earth, and can grow up to 56 feet and weigh 600 pounds. But because they live at depths around 3,300 feet, not much is known about the rarely-seen-alive creature. Two dead oarfish were found on California shores in 2013, prompting scientists to wonder if ominous forces were at work to beach the normally deep-sea animals, as they have been rumored to wash up before earthquakes. But instead the incident turned out to be a boon for scientists to be able to study the specimens—since they don’t even know how many species of the fish exist, DNA samples could help researchers figure that out.

Read More

HOW DO YOU EAT JACKFRUIT?

By : Husna Hysham 

There are many ways to eat jackfruit. To break it down and eat the fruit fresh, you will need to coat your hands and knife in oil. It is quite the endeavor, but it’s worth it as the fresh fruit is quite different than the canned.

Cut the fruit in half and then in fourths. Trim the white core off and pull out the segmented pieces of flesh, and remove the seed from inside. If working with the sweet variety, you can eat it the fleshy pods fresh, although it is very common to boil both varieties for 30-45 minutes and eat the cooked jackfruit. Breaking down the fruit can be quite difficult, as it releases a lot of sticky sap.

Unripe jackfruit has a mild flavor and meat-like texture and is used in curry dishes with spices in many cuisines. It goes by the name green, young, or tender on labels. Moreover, you can also find it canned, frozen, made into noodles, chips, or packed in sugary syrup.

The seeds are edible as well, but it is recommended to cook or roast them before eating for better taste.

Read More