Today, the ever-changing technology development is bringing an impact to the Malaysian retail industry. Smart Retail Technology is one of the outcomes of Industry Revolution 4.0 to deepen integration between digital and physical characteristics that can serve extraordinary shopping experiences in brick-and-mortar stores. Smart retail technology is attaining greater attention in the information system literature. In this study, the researchers aimed to investigate the relationships between perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived enjoyment (PE), perceived risk (PR), attitudes (ATD) and behavioral intentions towards smart retail technology (BI). The 170 respondents were collected through an online survey and processed in the PLS-SEM data analysis. The results indicated that perceived ease of use is the main variable influencing people's acceptance of SRT, followed by perceived enjoyment. However, perceived usefulness and perceived risk performed insignificant roles to link with attitudes and behavioral intentions towards SRT. This study provided some insightful implications for both academicians and practitioners to understand the current situation of smart retail technology in developing countries, especially Malaysia.

Recently audio and video material has been used significantly in various online platforms. The audio-video materials enhance the teaching and learning process by facilitating the transformation of the data and providing a richer interactive environment, hence gaining wide intention within the educational realm. However, empirical studies have not examined the acceptance of the audio and video material depending on a conceptual model where acceptance is the key factor. The present study attempts to overcome this gap in the literature review by investigating the effects of media richness, speed and vividness, perceived concentration, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness on the acceptance of audio-video material. What distinguishes the current study is the fact that content richness is considered as a mediator that affects all other factors in the conceptual model. The data is collected by distributing the online survey to college students. The results provide mostly insight and support for students’ intention to use audio-visual resources in a conceptual model. The technology characteristics of speed and vividness as well as TAM constructs were significant predictors of technology acceptance. However, it is concluded that the external factor of the perceived concentration has no impact on the students’ perception and intention to use audio-visual resources. In the recommendation, some theoretical and practical implications are stated along with the focus on technology designers, change managers, and users.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of ease of use, transaction success rate, and technological system capability on trust and to determine the effect of ease of use, transaction success rate, technology system capability and interest in transaction using mobile banking. This research was conducted at PT Bank NIAGA which is located in Denpasar. The data collection technique used a questionnaire to 160 PT Bank NIAGA customers who were selected as samples. Data were analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with AMOS program. Ease of use, transaction success rate, and technology system capability have a positive and significant influence on trust and interest in transacting using mobile banking. This means that the better the ease of use, the success rate of transactions, and the capability of the technology system, the higher the customer trust and interest in transactions using mobile banking.

Bidding price decision is a key issue for the contractors and construction companies. The success/failure of the contractors in competitive biddings is directly dependent on their bidding strategy. This paper aims to develop a hybrid statistical and mathematical modeling approach for determining the optimum bidding price in construction projects. By statistical analysis of historical data, some uncertain parameters like the number of competitors and the cost of the project are estimated. Then, a scenario-based mathematical model for bidding price decision is proposed. In order to present a model in more accordance with the real-world situations, factors like risk, minimum acceptable rate of return (MARR) and opportunistic behavior are taken into account. In order to achieve an insensitive solution to the change in the realization of the input data from the scenarios, a robust mathematical model is used. The performance of the model is evaluated through some numerical problems. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis of the key parameters and robustness evaluation of the model against uncertain parameters are conducted. To evaluate the model's effectiveness in real-world situations, a case study is analyzed by the proposed approach. Numerical results show that the proposed approach reduces the cost estimation errors and increases the average expected profit, which validates the applicability of the model in a real-world situation.

Financial contagion is the act of spreading of a phenomenon within or from the stock markets sector. Stock markets are highly interlinked and happenings on one side of the world are bound to affect the happenings on another side of the world. The contagion can be because of domestic or international factors. The performance of Nairobi Securities exchange (NSE) was measured by the use of the monthly stock prices as provided by the data vendors at the NSE. This research paper used a quantitative research design where econometric models were used in the analysis. The entire population of the listed firms in the NSE was used. Primary data was collected from the licensed market participants at the NSE. Secondary data during the pre-crisis (April 2006 to July 2007) and post crisis periods (August 2007 to December 2008) were collected using data collection sheets. The data entailed NSE 20 Share Index, FTSE 100 and Standard and Poors and was analyzed using excel and SPSS tools. Hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance and the null hypothesis was rejected at both the primary and the secondary data obtained.

Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a relatively new solid state joining technique which is used not only for joining the aluminum and its alloys but also has potential for joining dissimilar materials with very different physical and mechanical properties which are hard to weld using conventional fusion welding processes. Tensile shear testing is used to determine the Mechanical strength of friction stir lap (FSL) welds under static loading, fracture strength (σLap) corresponding to the maximum load in a test over the sample width is widely used as the strength value. During friction stir lap welding (FSLW) of dissimilar metals with large differences in melting temperatures, a metallurgical bond is established through the formation of interfacial intermetallic compounds. However, as these intermetallic compounds are generally believed to be brittle with little ductility, they are generally considered to have detrimental effect on fracture strength. The aim of the present research is to study how the interface structure is affected by FSW parameters and how the formation of interface structure affects fracture of Al-Steel and Al-Ti FSL welds.

In today’s business scenario, organizations are focusing on sustainable growth for performance measurement in supply chain. For this purpose, sustainable flexibility is an important issue to fulfill the environmental, economic and customer’s needs, which is helpful for sustainable growth for an industry. In this paper, different factors related to sustainable flexibility in supply chain management are identified through literature review and experts’ opinions in this domain. Further, an attempt has been made to develop the interactions among these factors using Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (T-ISM) technique. This paper also employs Cross Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classifications (MICMAC) based analysis to create policy to implement for sustainable growth in industries. Findings of this research give valuable decision-making insight and implications about the relative importance and the interdependence of flexibility factors in sustainable supply chain management for academicians and practicing managers in sustainable growth of an industry.

The quantum-chemical modeling mechanism of the [4+2]-cycloaddition reaction of 2,3 dimethylbuta-1,3-diene and methyl acrylate was conducted. Its qualitative aspects were analyzed at the molecular level by the program MOPAC2012 and semiempirical method RM1. The potential energy surfaces of 2,3 dimethylbuta-1,3-diene and methyl acrylate [4+2] cycloaddition possible reaction pathways were constructed by restricted and unrestricted Hartree-Fock approximation. It has been established that the molecule of the final product methyl-3,4-dimethylcyclohex-3-encarboxylate has the half-chair shape, wherein the carboalkoxyl group is in the exo-orientation. Interaction between molecules of 2,3 dimethylbuta-1,3-diene and methyl acrylate occurs by a two-step mechanism more likely than one-step, since the activation parameters of this interaction maximum coincide with the experimental data.

Modeling the simple assembly line balancing (SALB) problem has covered a wide range of real-world applications. The recent advances in optimization problems have created the opportunities to tackle more challenging problems. This paper presents a multi-objective decision making problem to consider two objectives, cost and cycle time, for simple assembly line balancing. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear optimization and the proposed study of this paper uses two metaheuristics to solve the resulted problem on some benchmark problems. The preliminary results have indicated that multi objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) has provided better quality solutions while the hybrid method based on MOPSO and simulated annealing has yielded more non-dominated Pareto solutions.

This research paper is aimed to present a fuzzy Hybrid Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methodology for selecting employees. The present study aspires to present the hybrid approach of Fuzzy multiple MCDM techniques with tactical viewpoint to support the recruitment process of wind turbine service technicians. The methodology is based on the application of Fuzzy ARAS (Additive Ratio Assessment) and Fuzzy MOORA (Multi-Objective Optimization on basis of Ratio Analysis) which are integrated through group decision making (GDM) method in the model for selection of wind turbine service technicians’ ranking. Here a group of experts from different fields of expertise are engaged to finalize the decision. Series of tests are conducted regarding physical fitness, technical written test, practical test along with general interview and medical examination to facilitate the final selection using the above techniques. In contrast to single decision making approaches, the proposed group decision making model efficiently supports the wind turbine service technicians ranking process. The effectiveness of the proposed approach manifest from the case study of service technicians required for the maintenance department of wind power plant using Fuzzy ARAS and Fuzzy MOORA. This set of potential technicians is evaluated based on five main criteria.