Yakult Trip

   Hi!  

             On last Monday, my classmates and I are given the chance to visit a well-known company of cultured milk which is Yakult in Seremban.It was our second class trip in this semester after the trip to IBS (Institute  of Bio-science).The trip was amazing and awesome.

              It was a one  and a half hour trip, which is from 10 am (arrive) until 11.30 am or so. It was my first time there. The factory looks so nice and clean.It was decorated beautifully.So it was our chance to  take a lot of nice pictures there.When we first arrived, we was given an introduction on the probiotics and the bacteria used in their Yakult milk. The bacteria was Lactobacillus Casei Shirota. Lacto basically means milk, bacillus is the shape of it , Casei means cheese and Shirota is the founder of the bacteria. It is shown that the bacteria can survive gastric juice and helps to enhance our immune system.

              Then, we went for a tour that shows the factory and the process  involves in making the cultured milk.It uses a lot of work power and machinery to produce a single bottle of Yakult. I kinda was amazed with the machines and how systematic it was. It could produce a lot of Yakult in a day to be sell all over Malaysia.Hence, I felt the urge to buy a packet or two of the milk and I did. I was very delightful.After pictures being taken ,we headed back to UPM.  I hope we could to this again since not only was it fun, I also gain a lot of extra knowledge from it.

Microbial Ecology

       Hello!

                     
                This week's classes, we have once again being taught by Dr. Wan on Microbial Ecology. Everyone in class was excited for the lessons since its has been so long that the class was taught by Dr.Wan. All this while, Dr Fairol took over the lessons for Microbiology classes  right after semester break.So, everyone was anticipating this week's class.

                  This week, we have learned about Microbial Ecology. It is not exactly an interesting topic but we managed to pull it through.  During class, we did not have a formal lecture as everyone expected. Instead, we did an information relay on the topic in groups of 6.Each member explained about one subtopic from the topic to another person in other groups. We were given time to discussed the topic within our group member and to find out new information that could be related with the  topic which is Microbial Ecology.It was an interesting way of sharing information with each of our classmates.

                 I learned a lot on these topic and I can understand Ecology more than before. From my understanding,ecology is the relationship of an organism with other organisms and its relationship with its surrounding environment. I learned to differentiate between species, population , community, ecosystem and biosphere.Species is basically a group of the same type of organism, population is a group of species together which when a different type of species is living in the same location it form a community. Ecosystem is the relationship of these biotic and abiotic elements in that environment. Abiotic could be classified as soil, water and environment air.The abiotic factors could affect the distribution of an ecosystem such as temperature, pH and energy sources.

                  Within the relationship, there are some symbiosis that are positive and some are negative.
Positive symbiosis are those relationship that gives benefits either to one of the organism or both, such as commensalism, mutualism  and cooperation.Meanwhile, negative symbiosis are those relationship that gives benefits to one organism yet the other organism gain some loss due to the other such as parasitism and amensalism. There are also competition and prey-predator relationship between the organism which involve producer and consumer in a food web.
              
                    That is most of what I can remember from the lecture. I hope the understanding that I have now could give me benefits later on.