KDU University College

Abstract This study focuses on optimizing Direct Laser Metal Deposition (DLMD) process parameters to enhance microhardness across deposition regions using Ti-6Al-4V materials for powder and substrate. DLMD, a prominent additive manufacturing method, is valued for its precision in creating complex 3D geometries; however, achieving consistent and high microhardness remains challenging. Through the application of the Taguchi method and ANOVA, the research identifies optimal oscillation parameters with an overlap value, OL of 70% and a travel rate, RV of 800 mm/min significantly improve microhardness. Signal-to-noise ratio analysis highlights the travel rate as the most influential factor, particularly affecting the top and middle deposition layers. Microscopic analysis reveals distinct microstructures, including equiaxed grains at the top, cellular structures in the middle, and columnar grains near the substrate, attributed to varying cooling rates and thermal gradients. Regression models further clarify the relationship between process parameters and microhardness. The findings present a robust framework for optimizing DLMD processes, ensuring improved material properties, stability, and manufacturing precision.

Online food delivery applications (OFD apps) have existed in Malaysia for more than a decade. It has received a wide range of customer acceptance among the young and adults in Malaysia. However, the paradigm of customer satisfaction in the OFD apps has shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world. There were several recent research conducted to identify the factors that affected Malaysian tertiary students' satisfaction towards OFD apps. However, past research did not study the aspect of OFD apps' content and user interface (UI) design from a mobile application's usability study perspective. Moreover, past research also did not classify or cluster the customers to understand them from a deeper perspective. This research attempted to explore the factors affecting Malaysia tertiary students' satisfaction with OFD apps with two data mining methods namely the multiple regression analysis (MRA) and K-means clustering analysis, by using questionnaire data collected from 156 Malaysia tertiary students. The output of the analysis will help the OFD service providers to understand their customers better and be able to plan the right resources to manage the app's quality and services.

The article emphasizes the significance of attendance monitoring for safety during the COVID-19 pandemic and proposes an RFID-based solution coupled with face mask detection systems to address attendance challenges. The project aims to create a contactless monitoring system that ensures face mask compliance and provides real-time attendance data for data-driven decision-making. The article also covers various technology-related topics, including the historical usage of face masks, the development of attendance systems using biometric identification and electronic methods, and facial recognition technology's applications in surveillance and finance. It introduces XAMPP, a user-friendly web application development and testing tool, and presents an overview of the IC7408 chip used in digital electronics. The study's key findings show that increasing sample size and optimizing epochs and batch size improve face mask detection accuracy, while RFID scanner distance affects scanning delay and accuracy. The research provides valuable insights into the performance of the proposed attendance monitoring system.

Given the current economic challenges facing many developing countries across the globe, entrepreneurship has become the main goal to drive economic development. Thus, governments need to cultivate more future entrepreneurs and develop existing entrepreneurs' abilities to drive job opportunities. This study aims to investigate the entrepreneurial intention–behaviour gap. It further examines the moderating effects of COVID-19 perception, entrepreneurial motivation, and prior entrepreneurial exposure on the moderated relationship between entrepreneurial intention and behaviour (action). Entrepreneurship has been widely studied to boost job creation and stimulate the domestic economy. Most studies have focused on entrepreneurial behaviour and new venture creation, drawing on widely tested Ajzen's (2020) theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Entrepreneurial action is widely viewed as an intentionally planned behaviour. The formation of entrepreneurial intention can trigger entrepreneurial behaviour of actually starting up processes. The extant literature reveals that academic researchers consider the studies on the intention-behaviour link as an under-researched area (Alam, Kousar and Rehman, 2019). Hence, examining the link and testing whether the expanded TPB model holds for the Malaysia case makes sense. Although this model is widely tested empirically, new research regarding moderation effects may be valuable (Sabah, 2016). The most important three moderators are COVID-19 perception, entrepreneurial motivation, and prior entrepreneurial exposure, which will be tested to see if their presence moderates the relationship. This study is expected to support three moderators' intention–behaviour link and moderation of this link (Kong, Zhao and Tsai, 2020). This will confirm (or disconfirm) the conventional wisdom that explains why some graduates with entrepreneurial intentions act when others do not. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The types of pharmaceutical products include cosmetics and drugs. Some of the pharmaceutical products comprise a mix of drugs and herbs without considering their interaction effects. Drug-herb interactions (DHIs) refer to the interactions between conventional drugs and herb medicines. However, the available information on DHIs are scattered because it has heterogeneous databases and website resources, apart from some of the paid or subscribed databases. Easy access to information on DHIs would allow researchers to explore more. Therefore, this study proposes improvements in the focus web crawler to collect DHIs information from the heterogeneous resources on the Internet, present priority levels of a resource link through anchor text and URLs, and traversing the link with the aid of depth. The improved focused crawler was tested on two algorithms namely the Breadth-First Search (BFS) and PageRank. Information of DHIs crawled 4,744 herbals from the focus web crawler. The accuracy values for Chinese Med Digital Projects and MedlinePlus were 98% for PageRank and 71% for BFS. Additionally, a focused web crawler may gather more relevant web pages in the same amount of time as a wide crawler. Hence, the proposed crawler may successfully gather DHIs on the web in response to the user queries.

Present paper addresses the formulation of delamination-fretting wear failure predictive equation in HAp-Ti-6Al-4V interface of hip arthroplasty femoral stem component using multiple linear regression model. A finite element computational model utilising adaptive meshing algorithm via ABAQUS/Standard user subroutine UMESHMOTION is developed. The developed FE model is employed to examine effect of different HAp-Ti-6Al-4V interface mechanical and tribological properties on delamination-fretting wear behaviour. The FE result is utilised to formulate predictive equations for different stress ratio conditions using multiple linear regression analysis. Delamination-fretting wear predictive equations are successfully formulated with significant goodness of fit and reliability as a fast failure prediction tool in HAp coated hip arthroplasty. The robustness of predictive equations is validated as good agreement is noted with actual delamination-fretting wear results. The influence of different mechanical and tribological properties such as delamination length, normal loading, fatigue loading, bone elastic modulus and cycle number under different stress ratio on delamination-fretting wear failure is analysed to formulate failure predictive equations. The formulated predictive equation can serve as a fast delamination-fretting wear failure prediction tool in hip arthroplasty femoral stem component. Limited attempt is done to explore the potential of utilizing multiple linear regression model to predict failures in hip arthroplasty. Thus, present study attempt to formulate delamination-fretting wear failure predictive equation in HAp -Ti-6Al-4V interface of hip arthroplasty femoral stem component using multiple linear regression model.

PurposeTrade-offs are unavoidable in a competitive and difficult economic environment, causing a challenge for those wanting to provide consistently high-quality service across all touchpoints in the service delivery ecosystem, included in which is the higher education (HE) sector. This study aims to explore the key factors influencing service trade-offs related to the efforts of academics in Malaysia’s HE sector.Design/methodology/approachA self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 400 full-time academics from several higher learning institutions in Malaysia. Data were analysed using the partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.FindingsThe results reveal that service trade-offs in the HE sector were heavily influenced by service priorities. Customisation of services, meeting individual student needs, working under immense pressure within tight timeframes and focusing on teaching and research jointly contribute to academics’ service trade-offs in the HE sector. Indeed, the nature of the job necessitates such trade-offs by default, as academics are unable to cancel or postpone classes due to scheduling constraints and the requirement to be physically present during class sessions.Practical implicationsHE administrators and managers should provide academics with adequate resources, effective work allocation and optimal timeframes for task completion, as service priorities are the key factors influencing service trade-offs in Malaysia’s HE sector. The satisfaction of these needs would enable academics’ service priorities and trade-offs to be better balanced, thereby contributing to better operational efficiency, boosting organisational performance and maintaining business sustainability.Originality/valueThe empirical results serve to clarify the key factors influencing service trade-offs in the HE sector, thus expanding the extant literature, which has mostly concentrated on describing the same phenomena in the manufacturing sector. The proposed service trade-offs model would serve as a guideline for operational efficiencies in the HE sector to prevent future recurrence and reduce the potential risk of service disruption, thus mitigating the risk of dissatisfaction.