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A three-species ecological model is proposed that comprises one prey and two predators (low predator and top predator) to understand the persistence and/or extinction of prey and predators under a suitable environment. The realistic ecological system is typically inhomogeneous in terms of spatiotemporal variations of population density. With this motivation, white noise is introduced to the system to conceive the impact of environmental heterogeneity on the interaction of prey and predators. The boundedness of solutions of the system is presented. The condition for the local stability of the deterministic model is established. The stochastic analysis of the system suggests the impression of the environmental noise on the dynamical behaviour of solutions. Numerical results reveal that the proposed system exhibits an oscillatory pattern of solutions. It is shown that the white noise in the low predator has a dominating role in comparison with other noises to keep the oscillation in order. Moreover, to investigate the spatial dependency of the population density, diffusion term is introduced to the system that also displays oscillatory behaviour of the solutions. The results also confirm that the population density of prey, low predator, and top predator have a biological control in the oscillatory behaviour. In the presence of diffusion and white noise, numerical simulation illustrates the sensitivity of the diffusion coefficients and the amplitude of noises. Numerical results lead to a reasonable agreement with the analytical findings in both non-spatial and spatial systems.

Mobile Financial Services (MFS) has become the new frontier in many countries. Since 2013, MFS in Bangladesh has risen steeply. The study aims to examine the MFS adoption behavior through the lens of modified Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) utilizing Randomized Conjoint Experiment for establishing a causal relationship between the attributes and adoption behavior. This study is the first attempt to encompass the causal relationship while investigating adoption behavior. Data were collected through a structured survey questionnaire at two districts in Bangladesh, including 2400 responses from 240 respondents. It was found that distance and cost per transaction has a significant impact, while ease of use has a moderately significant influence on customer's adoption behavior. However, the findings also concluded that social influence and trust have no significant influence. To both regulators and service providers, the findings will provide insights into the customer's point of view and industry demand as well. The study also included some suggestions for future investigations.

PurposeDubai Quality Award (DQA) is one of the quality awards that has been implemented in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the purpose of improving organisational performance. The objective of this study is to determine whether receiving the DQA has positive impacts on Human Resource Development Practices (HRDP) and organisational performance (OP) of the award-winning companies.Design/methodology/approachSecondary data relating to DQA scores were collected from the Department of Economic Development archive of UAE and primary data relating to HRDP and OP were collected from the individual DQA recipients. Data elicited were subjected to statistical analyses by using the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. This was to identify the nature of relationships existing between DQA criteria and organisational performance outcomes through the mediating effect of HRDP.FindingsThe results indicated that winning of DQA significantly enhances organisational performance and that HRDP is a statistically significant mediator between DQA and OP. Based on the findings of this study, a model has been developed by linking the DQA criteria, HRDP and organisational performance.Originality/valueDespite few of its limitations, this study is first of a kind in UAE that investigated the relationships among DQA criteria, HRDP and OP. The findings are expected to help the UAE companies to adjust their management policies and practices for enhancing their organisational performance. The findings can also be applicable to companies in other countries, especially Gulf countries that have similar awards such as DQA.

Purpose The aim of this study is to develop a spiritual intelligence scale from an Islamic perspective. In addition, this research explores the relationship of spiritual intelligence from an Islamic perspective with emotional intelligence among the students of higher learning institutions in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 250 students from different higher learning institutions in Malaysia. Findings The findings of the study show the relationships of spiritual intelligence from an Islamic perspective and emotional intelligence. Statistically significant relationships were found between four dimensions of spiritual intelligence from an Islamic perspective (e.g. transcendental awareness, meaning of life, patience and forgiveness) and emotional intelligence. Originality/value The contribution of human intelligence in the development higher learning institution is remarkable. Most research found on spiritual intelligence is from traditional and Western perspective with very limited studies found from an Islamic perspective. The purpose of the current study is to construct a spiritual intelligence from an Islamic perspective and empirically validate the items. The study also looks for relationships of spiritual intelligence from an Islamic perspective and emotional intelligence among the students of higher learning institutions.

Purpose: To investigate best practices pertaining to tourism resilience and develop a tourism resilience framework for post-COVID-19 Bangladesh from the tourism destination management perspective. Methodology: A qualitative research approach involving an integrative literature review was used in this research. Thirty-two scholarly works were considered in a thematic data analysis conducted to inform the development of a framework for post-COVID-19 Bangladesh. Findings: Tourism resilience will be imperative, particularly in the areas of ecology, society, economy, and engineering, on institutional and individual levels. The proposed framework includes government, organization, social, and individual level resilience as the specific measures for Bangladesh. The particular nature of COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh, resulting in a relatively low death toll amidst a high-density population, works as a supportive ground in favor of resilience in the post-COVID-19 reality. Practical Implications: The integrated framework is a theoretical contribution to post-COVID-19 tourism resilience literature on Bangladesh. It will operate as a policy guideline for key stakeholders when implementing initiatives to revive the tourism sector in the changed reality of Bangladesh after the pandemic. Originality: The framework presented in this paper is the first attempt of its kind and can facilitate effective economic rebuilding in the changed postpandemic reality. The framework can be generalized to apply to other developing countries as well. Paper Type: Theoretical framework development.

With the pervasive use of smartphones, which contain numerous sensors, data for modeling human activity is readily available. Human activity recognition is an important area of research because it can be used in context-aware applications. It has significant influence in many other research areas and applications including healthcare, assisted living, personal fitness, and entertainment. There has been a widespread use of machine learning techniques in wearable and smartphone based human activity recognition. Despite being an active area of research for more than a decade, most of the existing approaches require extensive computation to extract feature, train model, and recognize activities. This study presents a computationally efficient smartphone based human activity recognizer, based on dynamical systems and chaos theory. A reconstructed phase space is formed from the accelerometer sensor data using time-delay embedding. A single accelerometer axis is used to reduce memory and computational complexity. A Gaussian mixture model is learned on the reconstructed phase space. A maximum likelihood classifier uses the Gaussian mixture model to classify ten different human activities and a baseline. One public and one collected dataset were used to validate the proposed approach. Data was collected from ten subjects. The public dataset contains data from 30 subjects. Out-of-sample experimental results show that the proposed approach is able to recognize human activities from smartphones’ one-axis raw accelerometer sensor data. The proposed approach achieved 100% accuracy for individual models across all activities and datasets. The proposed research requires 3 to 7 times less amount of data than the existing approaches to classify activities. It also requires 3 to 4 times less amount of time to build reconstructed phase space compare to time and frequency domain features. A comparative evaluation is also presented to compare proposed approach with the state-of-the-art works.

Herbs orchestrate resurgence and vegetal awakening is supervened everywhere in the world. Medicinal plants always played an important role in the health development of mankind. Piper longum provides us new lead molecules for the development of drugs against various pharmacological targets. Plants included in this family are annual and persistent herbs or shrubs, indigenous to northern moderate stretch of the world. Piper longum is well known for its medicinal and pharmaceutical importance. In this review studies we will want to explore the various pharmacological properties of Piper longum in Unani system of medicine. Evidence suggests that various listed of Unani Medicine formulated with the Piper longum among these few are tablet, capsule, syrup and semi-solid etc. The primary constituents isolated from various parts of P. longum are piperine, piperlongumine, sylvatin, sesamin, diaeudesmin piperlonguminine, pipermonaline, and piperundecalidine. It is most commonly used to treat chronic bronchitis, asthma, constipation, gonorrhea, paralysis of the tongue, diarrhea, cholera, chronic malaria, viral hepatitis, respiratory infections, stomachache, bronchitis, diseases of the spleen, cough, and tumors. This study provides detailed information about the P. longum fruit, including phytochemistry, pharmacological profile and safety profile. Asian J. Med. Biol. Res. March 2019, 5(1): 1-7

Background & objective: To see the relationship between preeclampsia and iron parameters (serum iron, serum ferritin and total iron binding capacity). Methods: The present case-control study was carried out in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), Dhaka in collaboration with the Department of Biochemistry, BSMMU, Dhaka over a period of 1 year from July 2012 to June 2013 Pregnant women with preeclampsia admitted in the above-mentioned hospital were considered as case, while the pregnant women without preeclampsia were included as control. A total of 60 women-31 cases and 29 controls were purposively included in the study. The exposure variables were serum ferritin, serum iron and total iron binding capacity (TIBC), while the outcome variable was preeclampsia. The serum iron level > 100 μg/L was considered as hyperferritenemia. Result: Nearly two-thirds of the women were in their 2nd decades of life belonged to lower socioeconomic class. The body mass index was also fairly comparable between the groups with most women having normal BMI. No significant difference was observed between the groups with respect to obstetric variables as well. Level of haemoglobin and hematocrit were also identically distributed between groups. The result showed that a significantly higher proportion (35.5%) preeclamptic women had elevated serum ferritin (> 100 μg/L) as opposed to 10.3% of the control group (p = 0.021). The risk of developing raised serum ferritin in women with preeclampsia was estimated to be 4-fold (95% CI =1.2 – 19.4) higher than that in the normal pregnant women. Analyses also revealed that women with severe preeclampsia had a higher mean serum ferritin (207.3 ± 44.1 ng/ml) than the women with mild preeclampsia (41.7 ± 2.7) and an even higher level compared with the normal pregnant women (21.7 ± 1.4 μg/ml) (p = 0.001). Similar result was observed in serum iron with greater the severity, higher is the level of serum iron (p = 0.067). Conversely, the serum total iron binding capacity (TIBC) was decreased with severity of preeclampsia (p = 0.058). Conclusion: The study concluded that women with preeclamsia might be associated with higher serum ferritin, higher serum iron and lower serum TIBC although it is not known whether the rise in serum ferritin and serum iron precedes or contributes to the clinical manifestations of preeclampsia. Ibrahim Card Med J 2017; 7 (1&2): 64-69

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to investigate the significant antecedents that influence students’ awareness of occupational hazards (AOHs) in their respective institutions. The researchers proposed a theoretical model consisting of three dimensions: knowledge sharing behavior (KSB), sense of spirituality (SS) and awareness of occupational hazards (AOHs).Design/methodology/approachThis study targets students of different public and private higher learning institutions in Bangladesh with a total of 260 respondents, utilizing a survey questionnaire as the data collection instrument to test the proposed conceptual model. The structural equation modeling approach was used to test the proposed model.FindingsThe results show that SS has a mediating effect on KSB and AOHs at higher learning institutions.Originality/valueThe study contributes for first time to the theoretical novelty of the body of the existing literature in the domains of students’ KSB, SS and AOHs. The study also provides insight on future research directions by helping in identifying gaps in literature in this field and higher learning institutions in Bangladesh.

By providing information about the objects that are non-line of sight and/or beyond the detection range of the local sensors, inter-vehicle communication compensates for the limitations of vehicle tracking subsystem in automated driving systems that relies on on-board sensing devices. Tracking capability in such systems can further be improved by making optimal use of the communication channel through sharing of locally created map data instead of transmitting only beacon messages. Message length adaptation, together with transmit rate control can address the scalability issue inherent in the vehicular network. The content of the exchanged information is another important aspect that has significant impact on the map accuracy in cooperative driving systems. In this paper, we study different congestion and content control schemes for a communication architecture aimed at map sharing, and evaluate their performance in terms of a situational awareness metric, namely position tracking error. This paper determines that message content should be concentrated on mapped objects that are located farther away from the sender, but near the edge of local sensor range. This paper also finds that optimized combination of message length and transmit rate ensures the optimal channel utilization for cooperative vehicular communication, which in turn improves the situational awareness of the whole system.

Self-bottomed mussel beds are dominant feature of ecosystem-scale self-organization. Regular spatial patterns of mussel beds in inter-tidal zone are typical, aligned perpendicular to the average incoming tidal flow. In this paper, we consider a two-variable partial differential equations model of young mussel beds. Our aim is to study the existence and stability of periodic traveling waves in a one-parameter family of solutions. We consider a parameter regime to show pattern existence in the model of young mussel beds. In addition, it is found that the periodic traveling waves changes their stability by two ways: Hopf type and Eckhaus type. We explain this stability by the calculation of essential spectra at different grid points in the two-dimensional parameter plane. GANIT J. Bangladesh Math. Soc.Vol. 38 (2018) 1-10

Self-organized and spatially periodic banded vegetation patterns have been observed in many semi-arid ecosystems. In order to understand the mechanism of these patterns, we consider a system of reaction-advection-diffusion equations in a two-variable model of desertification. This work deals with the investigation of the existence of periodic traveling waves in a one-parameter family of solutions. In addition, we investigate the existence of periodic traveling waves as a function of water transport parameter in the model. GANIT J. Bangladesh Math. Soc.Vol. 38 (2018) 27-46

Channel modeling is essential for design and performance evaluation of numerous protocols in vehicular networks. In this paper, we study and provide results for large- and small-scale modeling of communication channel in dense vehicular networks. We first propose an approach to remove the effect of fading on deterministic part of the large-scale model and verify its accuracy using a single transmitter-receiver scenario. Two-ray model is then utilized for path-loss characterization and its parameters are derived from the empirical data based on a newly proposed method. Afterward, we use α -μ distribution to model the fading behavior of vehicular networks for the first time, and validate its precision by Kolmogorov-Smirnov(K-S) goodness-of-fit test. To this end, the significantly better performance of utilizing α - μ distribution over the most adopted fading distribution in the vehicular channels literature, i.e., Nakagami-m, in terms of passing K-S test has been investigated and statistically verified in this paper. A large received signal strength indicator (RSSI) data set from a measurement campaign is used to evaluate our claims. Moreover, the whole model is implemented in a reliable discrete event network simulator which is widely used in the academic and industrial research for network analysis, i.e., network simulator-3 (ns-3), to show the outcome of the proposed model in the presence of upper layer network protocols.

В основу статті покладено гіпотезу, що протягом останніх декількох років брендинг відіграє значну роль у діяльності не лише компаній, а й закладів вищої освіти (ЗВО). Зміна середовища, включаючи соціальні, правові та економічні умови, зумовлює необхідність постійних змін у способах діяльності університету, що забезпечить їх функціонування в довгостроковій перспективі. У статті систематизовано та охарактеризовано сучасні концепції брендингу університетів Бангладеш державної та приватної форми власності, які сприяють їх популяризації. У рамках даного дослідження автори зазначають, що брендинг ЗВО Бангладеш є складним процесом, що пояснюється його безсистемністю та розгалуженістю основних стейкхолдерів ЗВО. Об’єктом дослідження обрано десять провідних ЗВО Бангладеш різних форм власності. Базу даних для аналізу склали результати опитування 400 респондентів (200 студентів, які наразі навчаються та 200 потенційних студентів ЗВО). При цьому вибірку сформовано методом випадкового відбору. У статті визначено силу та статистичну значимість впливу семи змінних (імідж університету, якість освіти, рейтинг ЗВО, репутація, місце розташування, політична ситуація та якість підготовки викладачів) на суб’єктивну думку респондентів. Результати даного дослідження свідчать про наявність широкого спектру критеріїв, згідно яких студенти обирають між приватними та державними університетами Бангладеш. При цьому отримані результати засвідчили невідповідність вибору респондентами ЗВО для навчання та очікуваними особистісним критеріями відбору. Аналіз результатів опитування підтвердив гіпотезу, що студенти обирають університети за якістю освіти та рівнем популярності його бренду. Окрім цього, автори встановили, що роботодавці зацікавленні у рекрутингу випускників топ-брендових ЗВО з метою підвищення ефективності діяльності своїх компаній. У майбутньому отримані емпіричні результати дослідження можуть бути корисними для науковців та менеджменту ЗВО державної та приватної форми власності. Branding is a very common issue for Higher Educational Institutions like other profitable organizations over the last few years. This study illustrates the present branding scenarios of different public and private universities of Bangladesh which will help to provide a vivid knowledge about the regional universities of Bangladesh. Addressing to the present branding challenges and issues, it was observed that the process of branding initiative is very complex due to multiple reasons, i.e. lack of consistency, accuracy, and commitment from the different stakeholders. For the purpose of the study, the top ten leading public and private universities have been selected for collecting data on brand initiatives. For the objective of the research, 200 existing students along with 200 potential students were selected. Students, qualified or eligible for university admission were taken randomly as the sample of the study. Several variables including images of the university, education quality, rank, reputation, location, political situation or influence and teachers’ quality have been measured through a seven-point measurement scale to evaluate the branding initiative. This study reveals that regarding the selection of the public and private universities in Bangladesh, students have a wide range of consideration; and their evaluation about the institution is in paradox, because the institutions they have intended to attend may not be going to fulfil their desired expectations in terms of different dimensions. Branding initiatives of the selected universities are not enough in these circumstances for branding Bangladeshi universities at an international level. Findings of the study have revealed that students are going to target the branded and reputed universities comparing to the quality of education. It has also been observed that employers also recruit graduates from the top-ranking branded universities for their organizational performance. The academics and the marketing policy makers of public and private universities will be assisted by the findings of this study regarding their branding issues in future. Lastly, the study highlights some limitations and future direction in this context.

This study explores the relationship between foreign market knowledge, institutional networks, and export performance and argues that it is insufficient for exporting firms to rely only on market knowledge to improve their performance. Foreign market knowledge must be supported by institutional networks to have a positive impact on export performance. This study is based on a survey of 206 apparel exporters from Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest apparel exporter. We used regression analysis to examine the links between foreign market knowledge and export performance and the moderating influence of institutional networks. We found that of three dimensions of foreign market knowledge (institutional, business, and internationalization), only foreign business knowledge directly and positively affected export performance. Foreign internationalization knowledge significantly affected export performance only when moderated by institutional networks. This research makes significant contributions to the knowledge-based view and institutional network theory in internationalization and provides several managerial and academic implications. Post-print / Final draft

In this chapter, we examine the impact of Japan’s government-led initiatives on developing women’s leadership in all fields of Japanese society from business, academia to politics. Our major research strategies include an in-depth integrative literature review; analyses of governmental reports, and some case studies that highlight women’s successful career stories. Data have been collected from archives, journals, and published reports. This work highlights the major findings of the analysis of current situation in Japanese government-led policies and development initiatives surrounding Japan’s womenomics, designed to create more gender equality in the Japanese workplace, national economy, and in the society. While the major focus was on domestically initiated programs, collaboration with external partners including joint programs with public–private partnerships and the international community, were also examined.

The current innovation of marketing embraces digital platforms. Digital marketing has become the successor to the economic development of many countries. This chapter intends to depict how to harness the power of digital marketing strategies as a driver of marketing activities. This chapter will navigate and provide an overview on search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), web analytics, social media marketing platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WeChat, Line, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.), e-mail marketing, mobile marketing, and display advertising and discuss the consequences of different digital marketing platforms. This chapter will navigate and thrive on how the fast-growing world of marketing develops strategy and content for communication.

Object detection in natural scenes can be a challenging task. In many real-life situations, the visible spectrum is not suitable for traditional computer vision tasks. Moving outside the visible spectrum range, such as the thermal spectrum or the near-infrared (NIR) images, is much more beneficial in low visibility conditions, NIR images are very helpful for understanding the object's material quality. In this work, we have taken images with both the Thermal and NIR spectrum for the object detection task. As multi-spectral data with both Thermal and NIR is not available for the detection task, we needed to collect data ourselves. Data collection is a time-consuming process, and we faced many obstacles that we had to overcome. We train the YOLO v3 network from scratch to detect an object from multi-spectral images. Also, to avoid overfitting, we have done data augmentation and tune hyperparameters.

Model-aided understanding of the mechanism of vegetation patterns and desertification is one of the burning issues in the management of sustainable ecosystems. A pioneering model of vegetation patterns was proposed by C. A. Klausmeier in 1999 (Klausmeier, 1999) that involves a downhill flow of water. In this paper, we study the diffusive Klausmeier model that can describe the flow of water in flat terrain incorporating a diffusive flow of water. It consists of a two-component reaction-diffusion system for water and plant biomass. The paper presents a numerical bifurcation analysis of stationary solutions of the diffusive Klausmeier model extensively. We numerically investigate the occurrence of diffusion-driven instability and how this depends on the parameters of the model. Finally, the model predicts some field observed vegetation patterns in a semiarid environment, e.g. spot, stripe (labyrinth), and gap patterns in the transitions from bare soil at low precipitation to homogeneous vegetation at high precipitation. Furthermore, we introduce a two-component reaction-diffusion model considering a bilinear interaction of plant and water instead of their cubic interaction. It is inspected that no diffusion-driven instability occurs as if vegetation patterns can be generated. This confirms that the diffusive Klausmeier model is the minimal reaction-diffusion model for the occurrence of vegetation patterns from the viewpoint of a two-component reaction-diffusion system.

Virtual trade show (VTS) marketing has been growing as a major issue of interest from the last decade, attracting the businessperson and researcher. However, this body of research has not been subject to systematic review. Accordingly, the purpose of the study is to highlight past assessment, present trends, and to direct future research agenda within the VTS domain. The approach is taken as a literature review format. For this purpose, multiple databases were searched, and ten VTS articles were extracted. The extracted articles were carefully analyzed from the broader perspective, and only four empirical studies were found in this field. The paper was aggregated into the following themes: (1) preliminary discussion on VTS and comparison with physical trade show based on participation mode; activity stage; subject area; and performance and (2) from the empirical findings, three categories of antecedents are identified, namely, website factors; market-orientation factors; and firms’ motives. Also, direct as well as indirect consequences through mediators and with moderators are identified. All these are presented as an integrated framework. (3) Based on the compendium of the antecedents and consequences of VTS literature, the research focused on the limitations, implications, and extends future research avenue that can be utilized by trade show attending firms for their better performance in the future. The findings suggest that future VTS research can exploit from the application of concepts and theories used in the physical trade show literature and offered by other disciplines that traditionally have not been examined in VTS. Future researchers could also focus on the development of a technological aspect of VTS systems to overcome the limitation of unavailability of modern technology, low-quality website design, lack of timeliness and accuracy of information content, inability to measure effectiveness, virtual rudeness, lack of after service initiative, and lack of synergies between human and electronic elements. Managers of VTS firm can identify the important technologies related to VTS on different stages (preshow, at-show, and post–post) and can imply a convenient way to establish human interaction along with technological issues.

In this paper, we propose a four compartmental model to understand the dynamics of infectious disease COVID-19. We show the boundedness and non-negativity of solutions of the model. We analytically calculate the basic reproduction number of the model and perform the stability analysis at the equilibrium points to understand the epidemic and endemic cases based on the basic reproduction number. Our analytical results show that disease free equilibrium point is asymptotically stable (unstable) and endemic equilibrium point is unstable (asymptotically stable) if the basic reproduction number is less than (greater than) unity. The dispersal rate of the infected population and the social awareness control parameter are the main focus of this study. In our model, these parameters play a vital role to control the spread of COVID-19. Our results reveal that regional lockdown and social awareness (e.g., wearing a face mask, washing hands, social distancing) can reduce the pandemic of the current outbreak of novel coronavirus in a most densely populated country like Bangladesh.

We consider a two-variable partial differential equations model of cardiac excitation and study spiral wave instability in a one-parameter family of solutions. We investigate numerically the existence of periodic traveling wave solution and show the front and the back interaction far away from the bifurcation point in one dimension. In two dimensions, we show the emergence of a stable spiral pattern before the bifurcation point. The most complex spatiotemporal pattern is called ventricular fibrillation when the breakup of one spiral wave makes another wave and the medium becomes chaotic. We show spiral wave instability and periodic traveling wave instability in the same computational settings. It is found that the pattern of the front–back interaction in two dimensions is similar with that of in the one dimension.

The formation of spatiotemporal patterns is one of the most important part in the prey–predator dynamical system. In this paper, we investigate the local dynamics as well as the Turing structure through diffusion-driven instability by taking more general Crowley–Martin response function in the prey–predator system with the effect of linear harvesting of prey and predator. All the feasible equilibrium points are extracted. Boundedness, persistence, local and global stability, and Hopf bifurcation are established for some suitable parametric conditions. The parametric space for which the Turing spatial structure takes place is found out. Different kinds of patterns are demonstrated depending on the ecological parameters of the local system and diffusion coefficients.

Purpose The purpose of this research is to empirically examine the critical factors that are influencing international students’ perception in the selection of a destination for education tourism. Design/methodology/approach This research seeks to develop a comprehensive framework embedded with service quality, destination image and spirituality behavior. The data were collected by administering a self-administered questionnaire to a sample of 220 respondents who were studying at the universities in Peninsular Malaysia. The constructs and items used in the questionnaire were adapted from the literature review. This research applied confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The outcome of this research indicated that there is a substantial relationship between service quality and the choice of a destination for education tourism. This research also explored that destination brand image significantly relates to the selection of a destination for education, tourism when the destination loyalty variable plays a strong mediation role. Interestingly, the direct relationship between spirituality behavior and selection of destination was not significant. On the other hand, a significant relationship was discovered between spirituality behavior and choice of destination when the tourists’ intention plays as a mediating function. Research limitations/implications First, the limitation is in the scope of this study, as only five constructs were examined. Future research may include other types of variables in exploring the antecedents of destination selection for education tourism. Second, the sample size was only 220 and respondents were restricted to only a few universities. Future research should be done on a bigger sample size and on more diverse sample. Practical implications Managers of the respective higher learning institutions need to focus on tourists’ satisfaction by providing a memorable experience. International students who have satisfactory experience with the respective higher learning institutions will spread a positive word of mouth about the destinations to other prospective foreign students. Today, tourists have a strong urge to see the spiritual side of their liveliness. Policymakers need to offer services with the comportment of the spiritual settings in their respective educational environment to extend the spiritual experience toward international students. Social implications There is a need for more research on how to build a comprehensive model for selection of a destination in educational tourism. The results of this empirical research are of particular significance to policymakers, as it better informs them as to how best to use the antecedents in designing the destination choice for education tourism to establish it as more practical regardless of the diverse spiritual beliefs. Originality/value This research is one of the initial attempts on part of the researchers in Malaysian education tourism context where spirituality has been taken into consideration.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual model that takes into account both edu-tourists’ perception and perceived service quality in explaining purchase intention of academic degrees from the foreign universities. Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on an empirical examination with applying multivariate data analysis. The data were collected through survey questionnaires and analysed by using structural equation modelling procedure. FindingsThe survey result discovered that the relationship between perceived service quality and edu-tourist’s satisfaction was significant and positive. The relationship between edu-tourist’s satisfaction and intention to purchase was also significant and positive. Meanwhile, edu-tourist’s satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between their perceived service quality and intention to purchase. Nevertheless, this research also explored that the edu-tourist’s satisfaction plays a significant mediating effect in between the relationship of perception and intention to purchase. Research limitations/implicationsThis empirical study will contribute in understanding the behaviour of international students to construct the theoretical knowledge on the edu-tourism industry, which has been neglected in tourism research. Originality/valueThe paper will be of use to the management and policymakers in the higher education sector in understanding the customer’s expectation for the edu-tourism destination. This study contributes to the growing literature on education travel destination, where the researchers investigated the role of tourist’s satisfaction by using perception and perceived service quality towards their intention to visit a destination for education tourism. In addition, understanding the role satisfaction on the relationship between perception and perceived service quality towards the purchase intention will make both scientific and practical contributions for the decision-makers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationships of the dimensions of emotional intelligence (EI) with organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). EI is the capacity to recognise and articulate emotions among the individuals and others in the workplace. Emotional capabilities can be used to enhance a person’s ability in this particular field who can exhibit better OCB. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates the relationships of EI and its components with OCB among the employees who are working in the commercial banks of Malaysia. Data were collected from 293 employees from ten commercial banks operating in Peninsular Malaysia. Findings Structural equation modelling approach was applied to this study and identified that employee EI plays a major role for enhancing their citizenship behaviour in the organization. The three components of EI, namely, use of emotion, others emotion appraisal, and regulation of emotion are having great effect on OCB. Research limitations/implications Scholars can develop new research agenda to identify the nature of effects it might have on employee’s performance that can boost the ultimate goal of the organization. Practical implications The empirical evidences from the findings of this study can contribute to advancing the current knowledge in the fields of organizational management and industrial sector by showing the differentiating effects of the dimensions of EI on OCB. Social implications This study has the capacity to enhance management awareness concerning recruiting people in terms of EI. People from different culture with high level of citizenship behaviour can able to get the job. Originality/value Findings from this study may create awareness and interests about the significance of conducting more research on EI and OCB by incorporating other variables/constructs of interests. Through the findings of this empirical study, it is confirmed that this research has provided some assessment and developed new knowledge about the effects of employees’ EI and how they relate this to their OCB.

Crowd analysis and monitoring in large congregations is an important problem related to public safety and planning. Researchers have long been using image and video for effective crowd analysis. However, with the advent of more sophisticated technologies, crowd monitoring has been attempted using GPS, RFID as well as Bluetooth based systems. Indoor crowd monitoring in public buildings, such as, airport, museum, theaters, etc. has not been widely studied with regards to systems that are not integrated with the indoor environment, such as Wi-Fi access points. In this paper, we propose a non-invasive Wi-Fi based approach for indoor crowd analysis which works by passively monitoring the probe packets generated by smartphones. Since smartphones, and other smart devices, nowadays can be unequivocally associated with a human user, counting unique MAC addresses of smartphones can generate a fairly close estimate of number of users in the indoor space and their movement patterns. In this paper, we have developed the MiamiMapper system, from COTS hardware and software, for crowd analysis in indoor environment using passive monitoring of probe packets emitted by wireless devices. Our system can localize users and thereby detect crowd movement using probe counts with an average accuracy of 7.28 meters.

In order to provide individuals with restricted mobility the opportunity to travel more efficiently, various systems have proposed modeling techniques and routing algorithms that handle accessible navigation through the built environment which is otherwise dotted with mobility barriers. Such systems use data gathered from smartphone sensors or crowd-sourcing to pinpoint the location of the barriers as well as the facilities, such as crosswalks with traffic signals or access ramps to curbs. Though the previous works have identified the type of surface and incline to be important features to determine accessibility, no extensive empirical research exists on how these parameters affect navigation. In order to address this problem, we propose to build a novel system called WheelShare, which uses machine learning to classify surfaces into accessible or otherwise and uses that knowledge to generate accessible routes for wheelchair users. We have trained our system with accelerometer and gyroscope data obtained from 26 different surfaces found frequently in indoor and outdoor environments across Europe and USA. More data is collected by the system through crowd-sourcing based contribution from interested users. Our evaluation shows that WheelShare can achieve an accuracy of up to 96% in identifying surfaces in one of the 5 different accessibility classes. Overall, WheelShare is a novel, scalable and data-centric approach to objectively identify the accessible features of a surface and can generate end-to-end routes for wheelchair users using frequently updated crowd-sourced information.

Use of mobile health (mHealth) systems has increased with the advancement and proliferation of mobile computing and related technologies. It has improved efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare services. Non-invasive pain level detection from facial images is one of the promising mHealth applications. Effective pain treatment requires regular and continuous pain assessment. Most of the pain research tools are study or disease specific while some are pain (lumbar pain, cancer pain, etc.) and patient group specific (neonatal, adult, woman, etc.). This results in recurrent but potentially avoidable costs such as time, money, and workforce to develop similar services or software research tools for each research study. In this study, we have proposed, designed, and implemented a customizable personalized pain study platform that offers real-time data collection, research participant management, role-based access control, research data anonymization etc. It is also used to investigate pain level detection accuracy using evidence-based continuous learning from the facial expression data, collected from Bangladesh, Nepal and USA, which yielded about 71% classification accuracy.

The growing popularity of shared transportation enables researchers to explore a wide range of competing solutions. These propositions, in turn, uncover new challenges. Continuous research is done to design systems that are easy to scale and sustain. This survey categorizes ride sharing systems broadly into static and dynamic models. It also presents the system architectures for dynamic ride sharing systems such as central, distributed and hybrid design. This paper outlines the various algorithm designs adopted by the researchers over the years as well as provides an insight into the recent research conducted in this field. It also serves as a guide for potential future research directions towards identified open challenges.

Due to the advancement of embedded sensing and wireless communication technologies, in recent times, there is a sharp rise in the number of smart personal and home (multi-user) specific devices. Sensors embedded in these devices collect significant amount of personal data including raw sensor data and derived data, such as, motion, location, heart rate, oxygen saturation, step counts. This user generated data can be helpful to understand their behavior, activity, health, and quality of life and can help healthcare providers (if shared with users' consent), to get a better insight about patients and their everyday life. The lack of control over these personal data and their flow makes the user vulnerable to external attacks and data abuse. Also, most of the devices do not allow the users to access and share their self-produced raw sensor data. In this study, we investigate the accessibility of the user generated data for a wide range of currently available devices. We also present an overview of the type of data that popular home and wearable devices collect from their users. Finally, we propose a more accessible data platform where users can store and manage their data with other stakeholders in an access-controlled manner.

Travelling is not always fun for wheelchair users in the built environment (both indoor and outdoor) in presence of various unknown barriers, such as, uneven sidewalks, curb heights, stairs, ramps, cobbled streets, etc. Also, elderly individuals are more likely to require assistance while using self-propelled and non-motorized wheelchairs. However, along with barriers there are also various wheelchair-friendly facilities, such as, supervised crosswalks and elevators, which improve accessibility of environments and facilities. In this project, we plan to develop a Campus-wide Accessible Route Estimation (CARE) System which works through a large-scale vibration data analysis (created by wheelchair movement) from different built or natural surfaces and aims to classify the surfaces into accessible and inaccessible. The goal is to find accessible routes for wheelchair users.