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The decline of the motoric and cognitive functions of the elderly and the high risk of changes in their vital signs lead to some disabilities that inconvenience them. This paper aims to assist the elderly in their daily lives through personalized and seamless technologies.

The authors developed a personalized adaptive system for elderly care in a smart home using a fuzzy inference system (FIS), which consists of a predictive positioning system, reflexive alert system and adaptive conditioning system. Reflexive sensing is obtained from a body sensor and environmental sensor networks. Three methods comprising the FIS generation algorithm – fuzzy subtractive clustering (FSC), grid partitioning and fuzzy c-means clustering (FCM) – were compared to obtain the best prediction accuracy.

The results of the experiment showed that FSC produced the best F₁-score (96 per cent positioning accuracy, 94 per cent reflexive alert accuracy, 96 per cent air conditioning accuracy and 95 per cent lighting conditioning accuracy), whereas others failed to predict some classes and had lower validation accuracy results. Therefore, it is concluded that FSC is the best FIS generation method for our proposed system.

Personalized and seamless technologies for elderly implies life-share awareness, stakeholder awareness and community awareness.

This paper presents a model of personalized adaptive system based on their preferences and medical reference, which consists of a predictive positioning system, reflexive alert system and adaptive conditioning system.

The study aims to introduce a cloud-based virtual reality (VR) approach and investigate its applicability and performance in aiding the remote design evaluation process by assessing the clients' convenience perception toward cloud-based VR-aided design evaluation (Cloud-based VR Approach) compared to 3D model-aided design evaluation (3D Model Approach) and rendering images-aided design evaluation (Image Approach).

A multicriteria comparative study was conducted with 26 university students using the “analytic hierarchy process” technique to compare the three approaches applied to home finishing material selection tasks based on the five “service convenience” dimensions, consisting of access convenience, decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience and post-benefit convenience.

The results indicated that the “Cloud-based VR Approach” was perceived to be more convenient than the “3D Model Approach” and the “Image Approach” based on the aspects of “decision convenience”, “transaction convenience”, “benefit convenience” and “post-benefit convenience”. The only aspect that the Cloud-based VR Approach was comparatively less convenient than the 3D Model Approach and Image Approach for the user was “access convenience”. Overall, the findings showed that the developed Cloud-based VR Approach had more potential than the conventional approaches in aiding the design evaluation process under ongoing social distancing measures requiring designers and clients to work remotely.

The disastrous impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on logistical systems have resulted in massive disruptions to the construction industry worldwide. Various construction activities have been halted and most meetings moved online. Design evaluation conducted between clients and designers is one of the important activities affected by such an impact. Thus, this study presents the Cloud-based VR Approach as an innovative means to maintain essential ongoing activities and meeting of the current design evaluation approach with respect to the social distancing measures.

This paper aims to raise awareness on current shifting of R&D activities from agricultural-based Agriculture and agriculture-related Natural Sciences (ANS) to industrial-based Engineering, Computer, and Industry-related Sciences (ECI) in Southeast Asian (SEA) economies. This trend might cause stiffer challenges on effort to sustain food security in the region.

Five SEA countries were selected, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. R&D data were collected over the years 2001-2014. Collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics and correlation.

Malaysia has been in the process of shifting from ANS to ECI cluster, whereas Vietnam and Indonesia followed the trend but about a decade behind; meanwhile, the Philippines and Thailand kept their focus on ANS clusters. Within the ANS cluster, Malaysia and Thailand leaned towards Modern Biosciences and Modelling (MBM) sub-clusters. The Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia were more focused on Agriculture and Conventional Biosciences (ACB) sub-cluster. ACB is more relevant and affordable to smallholder farmers. Shifting of R&D priority correlated with GDP per capita of SEA countries. Within ANS cluster, R&D activity in MBM increased but ACB decreased as GDP per capita increased.

Data used in this study were limited to accessible 2001-2014 data in five selected SEA economies. Therefore, there is an open possibility for future research on extended timeline using more sophisticated data analysis.

Agricultural technology development should be relevant to needs of and affordable to smallholder farmers, as they are the primary food producers in developing economies.

If the R&D activities continue to drift away from farmer’s needs, there will be a possible drawback of widening gap between developed agricultural technologies and absorptive capacity of smallholder farmers. Government institutions should revisit their R&D priority as the current trend could cause a serious obstacle in maintaining food security in the SEA region.

This frontier study provides an early warning for government in SEA economies and other developing countries for balancing between R&D for supporting smallholder farmers in food production and for enhancing national economic growth.

This study aims to explore the motivators of mothers’ experience on their engagement behavior in the case of baby care toiletries. Additionally, the role of Brand trust and commitment have also been evaluated.

The conceptual model was empirically tested based on the data collected through a survey using 320 samples from India and 431 samples from Sri Lanka. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Sensory and behavioral dimensions of brand experience can be considered as key drivers of brand trust and brand commitment among millennial mothers in the context of baby care toiletries. It was observed that brand trust had a significant positive impact on brand commitment. There was a significant relationship between brand trust, brand commitment and customer engagement. It was also inferred that brand loyalty is the consequence of customer engagement.

Marketers should gear up initiatives targeting new mothers through healthy aspects and genuine packaging to strengthen the mother’s trust through periodic uses of the product.

The present study is one of the unique empirical investigations that examine the antecedents of consumer engagement in the less researched context of high inherent risk products like baby toiletries.

The lovemarks theory (love and respect) is fairly new to the marketing literature and is now gaining much attention among marketing scholars. The study examined how brand love and brand respect moderate the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR), trust (TRUS), satisfaction (SAT) and loyalty (LOY) among bank customers in an emerging/and or a developing country's context.

A quantitative survey approach was used. Data from a total of 769 banking customers, containing demographic and psychographic measures were used.

This study tested six (6) hypotheses. The results confirmed the moderating role of brand respect on the relationship between CSR and TRUS in the banking sector. Also, our results reveal that BLOV moderates the relationship between SAT and LOY. The rest of our hypotheses did not confirm any significant relationship between them.

Like any academic exercise, this study also has some limitations. The hypotheses tested for brand love on bank customers' perceptions of CSR were based on a country study. The implication of brand love for CSR may be the same or vary in different country contexts.

The study provides managers of banks and managers of financial institutions a better understanding of how love and respect could play a role in their loyalty program and how to incorporate these new constructs into the already known constructs such as satisfaction, trust and loyalty.

This study is unique because it quantitatively examined the relationships between well-researched constructs corporate social responsibility (CSR), trust (TRUS), satisfaction (SAT) on loyalty (LOY) as well as examining these constructs with a fairly new constructs brand love (BLOV) and respect (BRES) in a single study.