ASEAN Young Researchers’ Journal

Meritocracy is foundational to Singapore’s high ranking education system. However, it has its limitations. Unconditional support for meritocratic systems can make it challenging to discuss structural inequities, depriving students from families reporting lower incomes. Understanding the perspectives of students from families reporting lower incomes on meritocracy can enable educators and policy makers to respond to their needs. Thus, this study explores how youths from low socioeconomic backgrounds in Singapore perceive meritocracy and define success within the education system. A mixed-methods approach was employed for this research. Data was collected in two phases. In Phase 1, data were gathered through a survey with 32 respondents, investigating their perceptions of fairness, barriers, and motivation. In Phase 2, data were generated through interviews with four participants. This provided deeper insight into participants’ lived experiences. All participants were students aged 17 to 19, from junior colleges, polytechnics, and institutes of technical education (ITEs). Survey data were summarized using descriptive statistics while interview data were analysed thematically.

In response to the research question, four findings emerged:

• striving to “move up” coexists with emotional fatigue;
• redefining success beyond academics;
• recognising but rarely challenging inequality; and
• the sense of belonging as a “buffer”.

The wider implications of this study are that policies supporting lower income students should focus less on motivational messaging — which may reinforce the self-blame cycle — and more on systemic stress reduction and the provision of high-quality social capital networks.

The Israel-Palestine conflict, while spanning more than seven decades, entered a distinct escalation in 2023. Unlike conflicts from preceding decades, the 2023 Gaza War has remarkably different conditions due to the advent of the social media landscape, which drastically alters how narratives are constructed, disseminated, and consumed by global audiences. Social media wields considerable influence on the understanding and reception of geopolitical conflicts in today’s world. As such, understanding the workings of social media virality is crucial in the construction of public narratives and opinions in times of conflict. The hypotheses are that Humanitarian Framing videos are the most effective and influential, and Emotional Intensity of a post correlates positively with its influence. Categorisation of the frame packages was used with reference to the relevant framing theory frameworks. Zeeschuimer was used for data collection of the Tiktok posts. Z-score normalisation was used to normalise the influence metric. VADER Python library was used for sentiment analysis of the comments. Google Sheets API was used to allow Python to access the Google Sheets data. RStudio was used for the linear regression analysis and the data visualization was done using the ggplot2 library. Humanitarian Framing was found to increase influence score the most consistently. Emotional Intensity metric used in this paper is not a reliable predictor of influence.

This study aims to examine the efficacy of different mouthwash agents and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) extracts in the removal of Streptococcus mutans ATCC 25175 (S. mutans) biofilm and reducing growth of planktonic cells after rinsing. Crystal violet assay, well diffusion assay and MTT assay were utilised to determine the efficacy of the individual mouthwashes and extracts. The data shows that Cetyl Pyridinium Chloride and water extracted Rhizoma coptidis (Huang Lian) and Fructus armeniaca mume (Wu Mei), had the best holistic performance, with it being the most effective mouthwash in both biofilm removal and in the reduction of planktonic cells. Mouthwash containing ethanol as the active ingredient performed the worst with only a 49.8% decrease in biofilm. Water extracted herbs performance was superior to that of organic solvent extracted herbs. No synergistic effects between the different TCM extracts were found, instead, an antagonistic effect between Huang Lian and Wu Mei was observed. We eventually hope to design and test an alternative natural mouthwash incorporating Huang Lian and/or Wu Mei extracts, identifying the specific active compound found in the respective herbs.