ASM

Continuing to harness technology’s prevalence in the age of COVID-19, the 26th Annual General Meeting of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia was held on 24 April 2021. The event was attended by 224 Fellows alongside the thought leader’s management team. This number surpassed last year’s attendance, exhibiting that the scientific think tank’s members are embracing the convenience and ease of use offered by the virtual conference platform.

Following the success of the previous webinar, the ASM STDI Discipline Group has organised another webinar on 12 April 2021. The webinar was to discuss the evolution of the space industry or as it is known, New Space. New Space, broadly defined as a field where traditional and non-traditional space players engage to enable the development of space flight, space applications and space activities at a faster and cheaper rate. Despite the many successful and innovative initiatives from this new approach, there are many technological, legal, regulatory and financial issues which persist.

In this Science Café session, Mr Shawn Keng is joined by ChM Dr Fatimah Salim from UiTM, who will be debunking the oft-misunderstood element of flavouring that enriches our tastebuds: monosodium glutamate (MSG). Although we generally know MSG as a common flavour enhancer, but what exactly is it? Dr Fatimah introduced MSG to viewers from a scientific standpoint. It is the sodium salt of glutamic acid, which readily dissolves in solution to sodium and glutamic acid.

In 2017, a Naming Nature workshop gathered some of Malaysia’s most experienced taxonomists with a group of young, enthusiastic researchers. They clamoured for a system to better handle identification, digitisation and communication within the community. However, these issues still remain unresolved. Therefore, a webinar with the same title was held to invite further discussions on crafting a future path to address these problems for Malaysia, including taxonomic challenges, specimen digitisation and data stewardship.