The field of online pharmacies is expanding rapidly and has become a crucial component in delivering pharmaceutical services across Saudi Arabia. This study aims to explore the factors influencing the adoption of online pharmacies by the Saudi population, utilizing an enhanced version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) framework. This study employed a cross-sectional design, utilizing an online questionnaire that was pre-validated and shared via social media channels between August 2024 and October 2024. The study focused on Arabic-speaking individuals aged >18 years. The gathered data were examined through structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS software (v.22.0). The study found that the UTAUT model demonstrates strong applicability in explaining the adoption of online pharmacies, accounting for 62.4% (R² = 0.624) of the variance in behavioral intention. Among the key factors, effort expectancy (p < 0.001) emerges as the most influential predictor of behavioral intention, followed by facilitating conditions (p 0.05) do not have a statistically significant impact on behavioral intention. The study results would help formulate more effective strategies for establishing online pharmacy operations in developing nations like Saudi Arabia. This study contributes to enhancing the traditional UTAUT model through the integration of additional factors such as health literacy, personal innovativeness, perceived risk, and perceived trust. These variables introduce new dimensions to the existing literature on online pharmacies.

This paper introduces the problem of scheduling jobs on parallel plastic extrusion lines where each line is composed of one or more than one extruder. Although there are some similarities between the introduced problem and the non-identical parallel machines scheduling problems with sequence-dependent setup times, limited additional resources and machine eligibility restrictions, the problem considered in this paper is a generalization of the parallel machine scheduling problem. This is because in parallel machines scheduling each job requires only one machine but in our case some jobs require more than one machine. Thus, our problem reduces to the parallel machine scheduling problem if all jobs require only one machine. This paper describes the problem of scheduling parallel extrusion lines, its industrial context, and develops a mixed-linear formulation to model the problem. This formulation allowed solving instances of up to 15 jobs. In addition, we developed four metaheuristics: a simulated annealing algorithm, a tabu search heuristic, a genetic algorithm, and a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure. These metaheuristics can be used to solve real-life instances of the problem. A numerical experiment shows that the proposed metaheuristics produce excellent solutions. Some of the proposed simulated annealing adaptations and of the tabu search heuristics obtained solutions with less than 2% deviation from the optimum.

The Pakistani banking sector has shown tremendous growth in the last two decades and witnessed strategic reforms including the implementation of Basel regulations. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of Basel capital regulations on the various proxies of the financial performance of the Pakistani commercial banks. This study uses three different proxies to assess the effectiveness of the Basel capital regulations on the financial performance of Pakistani commercial banks from 2006 to 2018 and quantifies the effect of different Basel accords on the banking sector of Pakistan using the dynamic panel data estimation technique. In addition, the effect of the Global Financial Crisis (2008) on the financial performance of Pakistani banks has also been evaluated. The results indicate that Basel II and Basel III capital regulations have affected the banks’ profitability differently. Capital regulations of Basel II have increased the performance while capital requirements of Basel III have not affected the financial performance of Pakistani banks, pointing towards the ineffectiveness of Basel III capital regulations. Besides, there has been no change observed in the financial performance of Pakistani banks during the Global Financial Crisis (2008). Overall, the results of the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) technique show that Basel capital regulations enhance the financial performance of the Pakistani banking sector.

This paper presents the results of an empirical study on the relationship between service recovery quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty in Vietnam’s e-retailing. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is applied to analyze the data collected from experienced customers in online shopping in Vietnam from November 2018 to March 2019. The results of statistical analysis indicate that interactive fairness, outcome fairness, procedural fairness significantly impact on customer satisfaction which then increases customer loyalty. This study suggests that customer’s ability to locate and interact with technical support on a website and how a company treats the customer would significantly decide satisfaction and loyalty from customer. E-retailers in developing economies should consider service recovery process as the opportunity to gain customers’ purchase intentions.

In this paper, free vibrations of the tapered shear deformable column are studied. The column is clamped at the bottom and is free or hinged or clamped at the top. The column has a tapered cross-section, square and circular, under the condition of constant volume. The axial compressive load is acted to the top. The differential equations of such column were derived, in which the effects of the rotary inertia and shear deformation were included. For computing natural frequencies with mode shapes, the differential equations were solved numerically. The effects of column parameters of the frequencies and mode shapes were performed, and its results were extensively discussed.

Construction emissions have become a major concern that has risen extensively in the last few decades. This paper introduces a building information modeling (BIM)-based model to evaluate the environmental and economic consequences of different project alternatives. The model calculates direct, indirect emissions and primary energy for the overall project life cycle. A hybrid fuzzy multi-objective non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) problem is designed to model the uncertainties associated with the quantification of the judging attributes, and consequently to find the most sustainable materials by minimizing the objective functions; project duration, project life cycle cost, project overall emissions and total project primary energy. Finally, TOPSIS is applied to select the most sustainable material for each construction component among the set of Pareto optimal solutions. A case study of an academic building in Saudi Arabia is presented in order to exemplify the practical features of the proposed model.

A series of novel 10-phenylsulfonyl-2-substituted-4,10 dihydrobenzo[4,5]imidazo[1,2-a]pyrimidin-4-one derivatives obtained from N-sulfonation of 2-substituted-pyrimido[1,2-a]benzimidazol-4(10H)-ones and screened for for their in vitro anti-tuberculosis activities against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv by Microplate Alamar Blue Assay (MABA) method. The structures were established on the basis of their IR, ¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR, ESI-MS data and also the compound with 3f were crystallized and analysed by single crystal X-ray diffraction studies.

The six GCC states share similar economic, geographic and socio-cultural characteristics and also face with similar challenges in terms of energy perspective. This study plans to focus on the eco-nomic and energy efficiency of the six GCC states. In the process, the study ranks the GCC states in terms of their efficiency scores. These efficiencies are computed through Data Envelopment Analysis. The economic efficiency is calculated for all six GCC states. Capital and labor are the inputs and GDP is the output. In this survey, Saudi Arabia maintains the highest efficiency score of 0.94, closely followed by Qatar (0.92), Kuwait (0.89), Bahrain (0.83), Oman (0.81) and UAE (0.67). There is a huge gap between the economic efficiency scores of Saudi Arabia and UAE. The environmental efficiency scores are calculated using CO2 emissions as output and electric power consumption and energy as input. Again, the highest efficiency score is for Saudi Arabia (0.91) followed by Oman (0.87), Kuwait and Bahrain have a tie for the 3rd position with a score of 0.74. Finally, the laggards are UAE (0.65) and Qatar (0.62). Again, there is a huge gap between the best and the worst performers. The case of two countries is worth mentioning. Qatar is ranked second in terms of economic efficiency while it was ranked sixth in terms of economic efficiency. Oman was ranked fifth in terms of economic efficiency while it was ranked second in terms of environmental efficiency. Finally, an average of economic and environmental efficiency are taken to compute the composite index. Saudi Arabia has the first place followed by Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE.

Nowadays, process optimization has been an interest in engineering design for improving the performance and reducing cost. In practice, in addition to uncertainty or noise parameters, a comprehensive optimization model must be able to attend other circumstances which might be imposed in problems under real operational conditions such as dynamic objectives, multi-responses, various probabilistic distribution, discrete and continuous data, physical constraints to design parameters, performance cost, computational complexity and multi-process environment. The main goal of this paper is to give a general overview on topics with brief systematic review and concise discussions about the recent development on comprehensive robust design optimization methods under hybrid aforesaid circumstances. Both optimization methods of mathematical programming based on Taguchi approach and robust optimization based on scenario sets are briefly described. Metamodels hybrid robust design is discussed as an appropriate methodology to decrease computational complexity in problems under uncertainty. In this context, the authors’ policy is to choose important topics for giving a systematic picture to those who wish to be more familiar with recent studies about robust design optimization hybrid metamodels, also by attending real circumstances in practice. In particular, production and project management are considered as two important methodologies that could be improved by applications of advanced robust design combining with metamodel methods.

The purpose of this study was to analyse the effects of profit volatility (X1), income smoothing (X2), corporate governance (X3), and non-performing financing (X4) on profit quality (Y) of sharia banks in Indonesia. The samples of this study were 10 sharia commercial banks in the period of 2012-2018 with 66 panel data that had been tested for outliers and normality. This study used a purposive sampling method, and it used the classical assumption tests, namely multicollinearity, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, and normality tests. This study used panel data regression analysis. The results of the study showed that profit volatility was detrimental to profit quality as evidenced by a beta coefficient of 0.0929 and the significance level of 0.1100, income smoothing was detrimental to profit quality as evidenced by a beta coefficient of -0.015 and the significance level of 0.1009, corporate governance had a negative influence on profit quality as evidenced by a beta coefficient of 0.0468 and the significance level of 0.293, non-performing financing was detrimental to profit quality as evidenced by a beta coefficient of -0.0096 and the significance level of 0.9139. The predictive ability of the four variables on profit quality was 16.34% while the remaining 83.66% was influenced by other factors not included in the research model.