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The authors designed a science and engineering curricular program that includes design features that promote student interest and motivation and examined teachers' and students' views on meaningfulness, motivation and interest.

The research approach consisted of mixed methods, including content analyses and descriptive statistics.

The curricular program successfully included all four of the US National Academies of Sciences' design features for promoting interest and motivation through scientific investigation and engineering design. During interviews, teachers and students expressed evidence of design features associated with interest and motivation. After experiencing the program, more than 60% of all students scored high on all four science and engineering meaningfulness and interest survey items.

A curricular program that extends science learning through the engineered design of solutions is an innovative approach to foster both conceptual knowledge development and interest and motivation in science and engineering.

Some BIM implementation strategies are critical, while others are insignificant and ineffective in terms of lowering BIM adoption obstacles and promoting widespread acceptance of BIM in projects. The BIM literature has not provided evidence to support this claim or identify the fundamental BIM implementation strategies. This study filled this gap by identifying and investigating the effect of fundamental BIM implementation methodologies on the occurrence of proportional impacts between stages.

The findings indicate a positive and crucial relationship between the stages of the BIM implementation strategies and the reduction of barriers (r = 1.79, z = 2.15), preliminary and sustained BIM adoption barriers (r = 1.53, z = 60.83), BIM adoption on projects and BIM-enabled integration and collaboration (r = 0.7, z = 2.74). This validates the model's hypotheses and demonstrates that the fundamental BIM implementation strategies will accelerate the reduction of BIM adoption hurdles. The impact, however, will be the same for both sustained and preliminary barriers. This implies that lowering the obstacles alone will not secure BIM adoption.

The validation of the model's hypotheses demonstrated that the fundamental BIM implementation strategies will accelerate the reduction of BIM adoption hurdles. The impact, however, will be the same for both sustained and preliminary barriers. This implies that lowering BIM adoption obstacles alone will not secure BIM adoption. This study proposes that BIM deployment tactics be carefully chosen in order to remove preliminary impediments, reduce barriers and energise BIM acceptance.

In line with the findings of this study, BIM adoption must be consistent and long-term before the benefits in project execution become evident and substantiated. The BIM abilities of project participants, the feasibility of BIM conventions and the proficiency of BIM supervisors may all play a role in this.

This research implies a few approaches and tactics for implementing BIM in an efficient and beneficial manner. The study's findings imply that BIM deployment tactics should be carefully chosen in order to remove preliminary impediments, reduce barriers and energise BIM acceptance. It also explains how to structure BIM implementation strategies in developing countries. Another significant practical implication is the model's conclusion on the benefits of BIM adoption.

This study emphasises the significance of understanding the interrelatedness between the stages of the BIM implementation process in order to promote unavoidable and high-quality BIM adoption, as well as identifying the essential strategies that will guide policymakers and industry players in improving and pursuing successful BIM implementation. This study adds to BIM implementation theories by providing new information on the models, stages and interconnections of the BIM implementation process. However, the study could not identify the factors that impede BIM adoption despite the reduction in barriers and use of fundamental BIM implementation strategies.

1982 saw the world aircraft market slip even deeper into recession. Only 33 civil wide‐body aircraft were sold during the year, a mere 10% of 1979's total and 21% of 1980's.

Skewed pricing is a typical tactic used by tenderers in unit price projects to gain additional advantages at the expense of the owner or other competing tenderers. This paper aims to describe the development of a model for detecting skewed pricing in competitive tendering for unit price contracts.

The model evaluates how much the offered unit rates for work items deviate from the reasonable rate identified from the item’s submitted unit rates. Item rate deviations are integrated into a total deviation score for each submitted tender based on the relative weight of the work item to the total project amount. The model allows for assigning higher weights to work items that are more prone to skewed pricing, such as those that are performed early and those that are expected to experience quantity fluctuations.

The paper presents a detection model that uses only the submitted prices of the competing tenderers to perform the needed calculations, which reduces subjectivity in identifying skewed tenders. Two examples are given to demonstrate how the model may be used to detect skewed tenders.

The model supports tendering officials in the challenging task of identifying skewed tenders, which is required by rules and regulations governing public procurement. The model’s ease of use is expected to make it more widely used as a decision-support tool during the tender evaluation stage of real-world projects.

Outlines the evolution of the idea of private property in the West and in early Islamic states; and its practical translation into property rights in land in the UK, Islamic territories and South Asia. Provides a glossary of terms which may be unfamiliar to Western readers and argues that the East India Company’s Permanent Settlement Regulation in South Asia recognized existing rights and did not create new ones. Believes that understanding this is important for any evolutionary theory of the South Asian economy.

For decades, the fast population growth worldwide was interrelated with the adopted rapid lifestyle behavior that relies on the extensive use of fossil fuels. This primary energy source has caused various urban and environmental impacts, such as global warming, air pollution, and so forth. Consequently, the identified circumstance issues have caused many health, social, and economic hindering effects for global citizens. It poses an existential threat to humanity and the global earth's ecosystem. The alarming levels of urban pollution emissions are putting enormous challenges to the related stakeholders (governments, businesses, investors, automakers, and citizens) to admit the need to decarbonize the global economy and reach sustainable development goals (SDGs) for cleaner and smarter cities across borders. As such, a vital part of a smart city is the transport sector. The road transport sector, precisely, is one of the primary consumers of fossil fuels that contribute to high carbon dioxide emissions. Accordingly, it is essential to adopt novel and sustainable urban transport solutions and promote the achievement of the SDG's eleventh goal for sustainable cities and communities. This chapter provides insight into the present global energy situation with particular attention to the road transport sector. Indeed, it highlights different emerging technologies for a sustainable and smart urban mobility future that will mitigate the environmental situation thanks to the development of drive and internet telecommunication technologies. Furthermore, we aim in this chapter to study the international progress of the transition project using the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal (PESTEL) analysis methodology. This study is to pinpoint opportunities for project development and the challenges that set back its evolution.

In recent years, the traditional pastries industry has gained popularity among tourists due to the advantage of the pastries location at UNESCO Heritage city, Penang. However, the little research focussed on this particular industry, and there is lack of evidence of the tourists' experience with the traditional pastries and how these attributes affect their revisit decision.

The study utilizes a qualitative research design to gain in-depth understanding on tourists' thought and their repurchase decision. Secondary data were collected via TripAdvisor with 68 tourists who visited the most popular three pastries shops namely, Him Heang, Ghee Hiang and Min Xiang Tai, which are later analysed using qualitative content analysis.

The findings revealed that tourists generally concerned about the service quality, value, brand image and atmospherics that could affect their repurchasing decision. Particularly, the staff service quality has been viewed as the upmost important attribute to influence the tourists' decision. Therefore, the pastries shops shall ensure that the staff who serve the tourists shall be well trained to satisfy the tourists' enquiry.

The limitation concerning the interpretation of the secondary data based on the feedbacks and comments of the tourists may derive the bias possibility. Future research might consider the large-scale primary data to extend the findings.

Limited research exists on the tourists' experience which affects the repurchasing decision in pastries industry. This study provides valuable information for pastries shops and researchers interested in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the Big Five Model (BFM), the urge to purchase (UP) and urgency (UR) on impulse purchase (IP) in Facebook commerce (F-commerce), with the F-commerce purchase as control variable. It also investigates the influence of BFM and UR on UP and the effects of BFM on UR.

The survey instrument was rigorously validated via content validity index by expert panel, Q-sort procedure for construct validity by practitioners in pre-test, followed by evaluation of construct reliability in the pilot test. Data gathered from 808 usable questionnaires were analyzed using SmartPLS 3.

The study showed that BFM, UP, UR and F-commerce purchase are significant predictors of the F-commerce IP. UP is influenced by BFM and UR. BFM has a significant positive relationship with UR. F-commerce experience has insignificant moderating effect.

This study provides some useful practical implications for the F-commerce administrators, advertisers, dealers and promoters.

Existing studies focus on the antecedents of IP in conventional stores and online businesses; however, IP in F-commerce has been largely overlooked. The study investigates the impacts of personality traits on IP and its effects on UR and UP. The mediating effects of UR and UP were also examined. The study is able to predict 64.4, 68.0 and 49.0 percent variance in IP, UP and UR, respectively.

The rise of the metaverse has brought profound changes to the economic and social operation models and injected new vitality into academic research. Although a large number of studies have emerged, there are few quantitative analyses of development frontiers and trends.

From a bibliometric perspective, this paper selects 183 pieces of metaverse-related literature in the WoS core database since 2000 as the object of analysis. This paper sums up the characteristics of the literature using the methods of descriptive statistical analysis, keywords analysis, thematic evolution analysis and summarizes the core themes and the laws of metaverse development in each stage.

The digital economy vision brought by the metaverse has led to an increasing number of researchers and achievements in this field. But the depth and breadth of research are still insufficient and unevenly distributed in the region, and the cross-fertilization fields need to be expanded. From the industry's point of view, VR games represented by Second Life and My World have contributed to the popularity of the metaverse. As technology progresses, the research hotspots in the field of metaverse gradually develop from conceptual research to artificial intelligence, blockchain, NFT and other technical applications. However, academic research has not yet caught up with the industry's pace and stays more in the concept discussion and preliminary application stage.

A systematic overview of the current status, knowledge structure and hot issues of metaverse research is shown, which provides a thematic axis for this field, enriches and improves the quantitative analysis of its literature and provides a clear picture for researchers to continuously promote the development of this field. At the same time, it is necessary to warn that technological development is a double-edged sword. The process of metaverse development should return to rationality, respect the laws of its development and guarantee the healthy development of the metaverse by strengthening legal regulation and the ethical review of science and technology.

This paper aims to assess COVID-19 (C-19) pandemic influence in the 37 factors identified from extant literature as factors influencing the viability of local construction firms (LCFs).

A sample size of 65 staff of 31 LCFs that were awarded construction projects contracts in institutions in Nigeria was purposefully selected and accessed based on relevant predetermined criteria. Respondents’ views on factors determining the viability of LCFs were obtained. Factors known to be influenced by C-19 are 25 of the 37 factors rated on a five-point Likert scale of importance by the respondents. Mean scores were used to rank the factors and principal component analysis was used to obtain key component factors (CFs) influenced by the C-19 pandemic.

Six of the first ten “extremely important” and “very important” factors are known to be influenced by C-19 pandemic. A total of 8 CFs having 20 variables with factor loadings of more than 0.5 each were known to be influenced by C-19. The C-19 pandemic influenced LCFs’ cash flow and management of construction labour, plant and equipment amidst variables that had above 0.8 factor loading.

A limitation of this study is the inability to conduct close contact interview during this period to obtain personal views on the influence of C-19 on LCFs. However, this does not reduce the quality of findings of this study, as there are valid literature basis hinging this study findings.

The paper recommends that all stakeholders pay prompt attention to the factors adversely affected by the C-19 pandemic to improve or at the least sustain the viability of LCFs.

This paper fulfils a present pertinent need of assessing the influence of the C-19 pandemic on various factors influencing the viability of construction firms.