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The purpose of this paper is to improve the performance of control loop suffering from control valve stiction. Control valve stiction is considered as of one of the main causes of oscillation in process variables, which require performing costly unplanned maintenance and process shutdown. An adaptive solution to handle valve stiction while maintaining safety and quality until next planned maintenance is highly desirable to save considerable cost and effort.

This paper implements a new stiction compensation method built using adaptive inverse model techniques and intelligent control theories. Finite impulse response (FIR) model, which is known to be robust, as a compensator for stiction. The parameters of FIR model are tuned in an adaptive way using differential evolution (DE) technique. The performance of proposed method is compared with other two compensation techniques.

The new method showed excellent performance of the DE–FIR compensator compared to other dynamic inversion methods in terms of minimizing process variability, energy saving and valve stem aggressiveness.

The compensation ability for all compensators reduces with the increase of stiction severity, thus the over shoot case always shows the worst result. In future works, other optimization techniques will be explored to find the appropriate technique that can extend the FIR model size with smallest computation time that can improve the performance of the compensator in over shoot case. In addition, the estimation of the valve residual life based on the level of stiction and effort required by the controller should be considered.

The presented approach represents an original contribution to the literature. It performs stiction compensation without a need for a prior knowledge on the process or the valve models and guarantees a smooth control of the stem movement with a low control effort. The proposed approach differs from previous adaptive methods as it uses stable FIR models and DE to find the appropriate parameters of the inverse model and handle nonlinear behavior of stiction.

The purpose of the study is to measure the impact of user adaptation of enterprise resources planning (ERP) post implementation through an appreciation of the benefits ERP provides to its users in Saudi Arabia (SA). The study will also measure the moderation effect of user experience with ERP on the relationship between user adaptation of ERP and user benefits from ERP.

The authors conducted a survey questionnaire study of 253 ERP users and tested the research model through the application of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

The findings show that user adaptation of ERP has a strong positive impact on ERP user benefits. In addition, it is found that the level of user experience with ERP has no significant moderation effect on the relationship between user adaptation of ERP and ERP user benefits.

The study findings suggest that functional management should develop appropriate strategies to effectively manage user adaptation of ERP. An equally important implication is for the ERP vendors to consider making their ERP systems as flexible and maintainable as possible by offering effective tools to easily accommodate changes in user requirements with minimum effort and cost.

This study provides insights into the inter-relationships between the motivation for improving user adaptation of ERP and gaining more benefits from ERP systems. It will also extend our understanding of the moderation effect of user experience with ERP on the relationship between user adaptation of ERP and ERP user benefits in developing countries.

Customer privacy and security are major concerns. Online firms worldwide collect customer data for various reasons. This study aims to investigate factors that motivate and hinder a customer’s willingness to disclose personal information (WTD) to online firms on e-commerce websites.

Based on an extensive literature review, three sets of factors have been identified. These sets of factors are privacy concern, perceived disclosure benefits and privacy assurances. It is hypothesized that privacy concerns negatively affect the disclosure of personal information, while the perceived benefits of disclosure have positive effects. Privacy assurances would positively affect information disclosure and attenuate the negative effect of privacy concerns on the disclosure of personal information. The authors gathered data from 253 online customers in Saudi Arabia.

The results indicate that perceived disclosure benefits and privacy concerns have a significant positive and negative relationship, respectively, with WTD online. Privacy assurances had neither a direct nor a moderating effect on information disclosure.

The findings will inform online firms about the factors that prevent or motivate customers to disclose personal information.

The effect of privacy concerns and benefits on personal information disclosure are not fully understood in Saudi Arabia. This study reveals more insights into the specific factors that make online customers reluctant or motivated to disclose their personal information.

The purpose of this study is to develop and thereafter validate a Sharīʿah-based FinTech Money Creation Free [SFMCF] model for Islamic banking.

The study has adopted a qualitative research methodology, using three approaches, namely, a survey of the literature to identify the research gap and the variables needed for developing the model, content analysis to construct the variables into a model and semi-structured interview with 10 experts in banking, Sharīʿah and Financial Technology (FinTech) to validate the SFMCF model.

The major findings of the study lie in developing the SFMCF model for Islamic banking, empirical validation of the model’s viability and acceptability and the implications for the main stakeholders of Islamic banks.

The SFMCF model is specific to Islamic banking and its validation is based on the views of 10 experts.

The SFMCF would necessitate changes to the central bank regulatory framework, convince Islamic banks to forego their powers and advantages of creating money and enhance their abilities to fully adopt Sharīʿah-compliant FinTech.

The proposed model if implemented would change positively the perception of the society particularly the stakeholders of Islamic banks and restore their trust and confidence about the direction of the institution toward achieving the Sharīʿah objectives.

The novelty of this work lies in developing and validating the viability and acceptability of the SFMCF model for Islamic banking.

Following a crucial COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the coronavirus has affected every academic institution, particularly libraries and information centres. To address this unprecedented scenario, libraries’ staff has decided to provide their services via digital access while staying close to the users. To predict users’ intention to use digital libraries after COVID-19, the authors combined the technology acceptance model (TAM), the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and perceived risk.

Data were collected via a paper-based questionnaire using a convenient sampling method which was distributed at two major libraries; Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University and Dr Zakir Husain Library, Jamia Millia Islamia in India.

Empirical findings suggested that all the proposed hypotheses were supported, and the integrated model had strong explanation power as the proposed model explained a 74.5% variance in users’ intention to use digital libraries after COVID-19.

This study offers substantial information to librarians, digital libraries, universities, institutes and other stakeholders and sheds light on the potential for a developing nation to transition to an economy with a strong digital infrastructure. The scope of the study is constrained to the users in India only, hence, leading to the possibility that it may be challenging to generalize the findings.

According to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is one of the few studies to predict users’ intentions for using digital libraries after COVID-19 by applying the integrated model of TPB and TAM in an emerging economy. It helped understand the users’ attitudes towards using the digital services and resources available at the respective libraries. It also contributed considerably to the argument that users have grown accustomed to harnessing digital libraries during the post-COVID-19 period.

Innovation is defined as the creation and adoption of changes that are new to an organisation or industry. The high probability of failure and the lack of innovation in the construction industry have highlighted the importance of innovation (both creation and adoption) as a business orientation. Although they are related to the construction industry, architectural firms receive little attention from an innovation perspective despite being perceived as important drivers of innovation. Thus, this paper aims to examine the distinctive characteristics of various innovation orientations and determine the state of innovation among architectural firms.

A postal survey was sent to 1,004 registered architectural firms in Malaysia. The data were processed using descriptive analysis. A factor analysis was conducted to categorise innovation creation and adoption, and a paired samples t-test was performed to examine the innovation orientations of architectural firms.

Innovation creation and innovation adoption are two distinct orientations with different characteristics. Architectural firms in Malaysia are oriented towards innovation creation, which intersects with innovation adoption.

This study used a questionnaire survey that generated only statistical results. Future research should conduct interviews or focus group discussions to obtain comprehensive findings.

The innovation concept is expanded in terms of its orientations.

This study illustrates significant differences between innovation creation and innovation adoption in the architectural firms of a developing country, i.e. Malaysia.

This study aims to examine the role of teachers’ emotional intelligence (EI) and emotional labour (EL) strategies in their affective and physical well-being.

The quantitative data were collected from 436 primary school teachers. Likert-type scales were used to measure the variables. Confirmatory factor analyses were performed for the construct validity of the scales, and path analysis was used to test the hypothesised model.

The final structural equation model suggests that teachers' EI levels and display of appropriate EL strategies significantly reduce their stress, anxiety, burnout and psychosomatic complaints (PSCs). The final model shows that the deep acting strategy, which includes more adaptive emotion regulation strategies, improves teachers’ affective and physical well-being, while the surface acting strategy has a detrimental effect on their well-being.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first in the literature to highlight the importance of school teachers’ EI and EL strategies in managing stress, anxiety, burnout (affective well-being),and alleviating PSCs (physical well-being) within a single structural equation model. The findings have implications for educational leaders in fostering teachers’ emotional competencies and resources.

This paper aims to synthesize new benzimidazole dyes aiming to study the solvent effects on their absorption in Ultraviolet-visible spectra.

Ureido/thioureido hydrazonamide benzimidazoles (U/THB) are prepared by condensation of N-aryl-1H-benzo[d]imidazole-2-carbohydrazonoyl bromides with ureido and/ or thioureido reagents. The target products are fully characterized for structural elucidation by means of their spectral and elemental methods. Solvatochromic behavior of U/THB dyes has been studied in different polar protic solvents at room temperature.

The absorption spectra distinguish two main bands at (350 nm–442 nm) and (308 nm–382 nm) referring to n-π* and π- π* transitions of the azo groups. Dimethyl formamide induces an extremely bathochromic transition comparing to the other protic solvents. The observed bathochromic shifts indicate strong interaction with solvents in the excited state. Most dyes show one absorbance in all solvents used, so they may exist in a single tautomeric form (hydrazo form).

In the present paper, the synthesis of U/THB dyes was achieved by a simple and convenient pathway. In addition, the variations in substituents attached to the chromophoric moiety could also be studied.

The new U/THB dyes are accountable for providing good knowledge about their solvation and spectral properties of an order acceptable for industrial utilization.

Synthesis of these new benzimidazole derivatives and study of their solvation and spectral properties provides good knowledge, which is very useful in many industrial applications (e.g. dye-sensitized solar cell, etc.).

The synthesized mono azo U/THB dyes are novel members in the benzimidazole family, where no details regarding the synthesis of such dyes are reported before in the literature. They are superior in terms of preparation, multiple applications and spectral properties.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Malaysian HR professionals emotions regulation strategy mediates the relationship between their personality and burnout. To date few studies have examined such issues, especially among emerging Asian economies such as Malaysia.

A model linking the Big Five personality to emotions regulation (deep and surface acting (SA)) and burnout was tested using data from 136 employees from a large Malaysian financial institution.

Results indicate that the Big Five had different effects on burnout and emotion regulation. Only SA mediated the relationship between extroversion, emotional stability and openness on personal-related burnout and between extroversion and openness on work-related burnout.

The study represents one of the first attempts in the literature to explore how individual differences and emotions influence burnout among HR professionals. The study also addresses calls in the literature to further explore the role of emotions in the workplace in non-Western contexts.

University research and academic laboratory facilities are key elements in the support of a successful education and research experience. World-class universities consider the functionality of these facilities as a matter of high priority. The functionality of research and academic laboratory facilities is strongly linked to the productivity of students, teachers and researchers who use these facilities. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functional performance of eight university laboratories using the space syntax approach.

The methodology involved the measurements and drawing of as-built floor plans of selected academic and research laboratories. The main benchmarks involved in measuring the functional efficiency, such as mean depth (MD) of space and real relative asymmetry (RRA), were analyzed using the A-graph software and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

The results show that “Type D” (chemistry teaching laboratory) and “Type C” (concrete teaching/research laboratory) laboratories have the tendency to be more accessible, efficient and flexible compared to the other laboratory layouts with MD and RRA values of 5.947 and 3.472, and 4.287 and 1.674, respectively.

This study shows that the functional efficiency of academic and research laboratories can be influenced by the spatial configuration of the space, as presented by the space syntax theory. Space syntax benchmark elements, such as MD, RRA, R and H*, can be used to compare various spatial arrangements, and the results can inform decisions on ways to re-arrange the space for optimum efficiency.

It is hoped that the idea of space syntax theory in the evaluation of the functional efficiency of laboratory facilities, illustrated in this research, is of significant contribution to the enhancement of the research and educational experience of concerned stakeholders in teaching and research environments.