Malaysian universities out of the World top 200 list

The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) - Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings are really taken seriously by a lot of people. Thus the dropping of Malaysian Universities from the top 200 Universities list for the first time since it was first published in 2004, is indeed a big issue, especially among the Malaysian academic community.

The results are based on scores on 6 variables, namely, peer review (40%), employer review (10%), staff- student ratio (5%), citations per staff (20%), international staff (5%) and international students (5%).

Though I am not sure about the other variables, I am totally sure of two where Malaysian Universities will always have low scores: international staff and international student ratios. I guess it is related to the education policy there. Unlike universities in the US, UK or even Australia, majority of the Malaysian Universities are not profit orientated. They do not target foreign students for the undergraduate programmes. Most of the foreign students there are not in the Universities but rather in the various private colleges (many of them now with a unique Malaysian terminology - College Universities) scattered across the Klang Valley of Malaysia.

As for foreign academics, Malaysia is not exactly an attractive destination due to uncompetitive salaries and tough immigration laws. I know of some highly qualified academicians who had worked for more than 10 years in the country but were not given the permanent resident status, don't even talk about citizenship. Totally opposite of policies in the developed countries including Singapore.

Of course the most important factors are peer review followed by citations per staff. The universities definitely need to look at what's keeping the Malaysian academicians from publishing in top rated journals. However, I have no idea how they calculated the peer review thing, so I can't comment.

The report does mention a possible reason behind the fall:

But we suspect that some Malaysian and Singaporean institutions have lost out because of our increased rigour over voting for one’s own university, and there are no Malaysian universities in this top 200.

According to Ben Sowter, QS head of research, “nowhere has keener interest been taken than in Malaysia”.

"National shame" cries the opposition. It has become a political issue and I am sure that some heads will roll.

Read The Star's report: Whither rankings?

Removal of spider and varicose vein

Two cosmetic problems that affect a number of women are spider veins and varicose veins especially during and right after pregnancy. Spider veins are small dilated blood vessels near the surface of the skin, usually on the face. On the other hand Varicose veins are veins that have become enlarged and twisted. They usually occur on the legs. The later can be a serious problem as they are often painful. These veins can be removed through surgical or non-surgical means.

Removing these veins are considered harmless and may be necessary for medical reasons, for patients suffering from extreme discomfort or pain. However, most of the removals are for cosmetic reasons. Among the various available techniques and procedures for removing these veins, two of the most popular treatments options are the laser vein treatment and intense pulsed light therapy (IPL).

In case you are considering having such a treatment, do check out HealthySkinPortal.com which offers a list of pre-screened consumer rated medical spas and laser clinics.  I found out that the average cost of Vein Removal is around $300 per session, depending on the type of treatment and size of the treated area.

The site has been helping consumers find qualified medical spas and laser skin clinics since 1998. They have various skin treatments ranging from light skin refreshers to anti-aging treatments. The featured skin care procedures include BOTOX cosmetic treatment, cellulite removal, laser hair removal, lipodissolve, mesotherapy, restylane and stretch mark removal.

Cabbage and caterpillars

Haven't been posting any pictures for Green Thumb Sunday. The reason is that I don't have any new plants in my garden. Not really sure whether this is suitable but posting it up anyway.

Anyway, I have this huge cabbage in my garden:


One day I noticed that it had like hundreds of small caterpillars everywhere. My first thought was to kill them all but I changed my mind. I decided to leave them alone and see whether they turn to butterflies. My wife says I am crazy.

Well it's been about a month now and they haven't turned to butterflies yet but they are really huge now.






Join

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Cheaper broadband deals with BT

Regular visitors to my blog might recall that a few days back, I had blogged about BT broadband with wifi. One of my friends commented that even though the features listed were amazing, the prices were a bit too steep for his liking. What I forgot to mention was that they have cheap broadband deals as well.

The lowest is option 1, which still comes with 8Mb download speeds. With this, you get a standard wired router, 250 Wi-Fi minutes per month and 5GB of free secure online storage with BT Digital Vault. All this for £8.95 per month for 6 months followed by £17.99 thereafter on an 18 month contract.

I am on a budget as well and this deal looks quite attractive.

Just engraving a pen

We wanted to have two pens we bought for a friend, engraved with her name. So yesterday I drove down to a shop near the university offering engraving services.

Found out that engraving four letters on each pen would cost me around five pounds. I agreed but the guy (the engraver) told me that it won't show up that well on the metallic silver surface of the pen. I was OK with that as well. He then told me that it would take around an hour to do it.

One bloody hour to engrave 8 letters. "Shakes head"

That was it. I told him I couldn't wait that long and left the shop.

As I was walking to my car, I was thinking about the numerous places in Kuala Lumpur, where I could have a whole sentence engraved on almost ANYTHING (including metallic silver surfaces) for less than RM 20 (FYI, £1 = RM6.94 approx.) and it would take them less than 10 minutes.

Making email interactive

Can email be interactive? If you said "No!" then you are wrong.

Leading email marketing company, iContact has launched a unique feature around email content, called the iContact Community. It allows visitors to comment, rank, and discuss email newsletters with their subscribers which opt in.

It works by allowing email marketers to create a public profile, publicly archive their newsletters and blog posts, tag and categorize their newsletters and blog posts in categories like Automotive, Business, Entertainment, shopping and more.

At first glance, it looks very much like Digg and it's not surprising as the community employs a similar model - more interesting and relevant the content published, the higher the chances for it to get votes.

This should definitely interest those publishers who are looking to get more visitors and subscribers, as the community profile will be indexed by Google and the major search engines.

When I last checked, the Community had already 213,458 Articles, 120,876 Members and 119,016 Publishers just a few days after launch.

iContact certainly has one of the best features and one of the best prices in the market. Their user-interface is quite intuitive and streamlined. You don't have to take my word for it as you can try it out for free. Use their service to create, send and track Email Newsletters, Surveys, and RSS Feeds. They have different pricing packages from 500 to 100,000 subscribers. Anyone can join as a iContact publisher by paying $9.95 per month. This is for 500 subscribers. However, you have to contact them directly for a quote if you have a huge number of subscribers, exceeding 100,000 contacts.

If you are a non-profit organization, you are in luck as iContact is now offering a 20% discount, provided you can prove your non-profit status.

Do check out the iContact Blog as well. They have a number of tips for improving email marketing campaigns and of course updates on iContact and informations about the Broadwick Corporation.

When PhDs party

Just got back from a party at a friends house near the University. It was nice, quiet party. Was thinking how different it was during our undergraduate university days, when parties meant smoky rooms (sometimes with a hint of cannabis), lot of booze, loud music, etc.

Here someone actually turned the music volume down and nobody complained. Ended up talking about intellectual and philosophical stuff - what do you expect when you have too many PhD students in a room.

Some might say, "that's not a bloody party!"

The odd part is that, it was still fun.

I am getting old.