After almost fifty years of operation, government through a number of announcements declared that FELDA (Federal Land Development) schemes need to be revitalized so that it could play its role more effectively as a vehicle that would accelerate the country’s economic growth. Having raised this point, the major aim of this study is to examine the major socio-economic issues and the current socio-economic status of FELDA settlers.Information was gathered through face-to-face interview with the Mata Air FELDA settlers and the Rimba (...) Mas FELDA settlers in Perlis. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and percentages were employed to describe the socio-economic problems and issues studied. The findings of the study indicate the implication of the ageing phenomenon of the FELDA settlers in Perlis to some extent affect the settlers’ ability to work effectively on their plantation. It is also found that the second generation issue has become the most significant factor contributing to the productivity and income increment of the FELDA settlers in Perlis as compared to other selected socio-economic variables. The result also suggested that, the ageing phenomenon, second generation issue and entrepreneurship problem must be seriously taken into consideration in order to accelerate the FELDA’s growth specifically and the country’s growth generally. (shrink)

Research in the globalization era has emphasized the importance of global competence and its integration into language teaching and learning. This article discussed the current focus of global education through the integration of global competence in English as a Second Language in Malaysia. The country’s global competence development among ESL teachers and students, along with its integration into English lessons, were identified, satisfying the need to achieve quality education. The global competence integration of ESL teachers will meet the fourth United (...) Nations Sustainable Development Goal, which strives for quality education. The global education goals form a critical starting point of this article, which articulates the connection to the targets in SDG 4. Hence, this article investigated the significance of global competence in language teaching and learning in Malaysia. Overall, the integration of global competence among ESL teachers can provide life-long learning, enhancing the quality of education. (shrink)

Due to the implementation of global education and global citizenship education in the 21st century, more focus is given to developing teachers’ global competence in English language teaching. This study aims to examine the perceptions of English as a Second Language teachers of global competence integration in English teaching and the professional development programs organized by the Ministry of Education for their global competence development. A web-survey questionnaire was distributed to 172 Malaysian ESL teachers based on selected criteria. The data (...) collected were analyzed descriptively. The main findings indicated that most ESL teachers showed positive perceptions regarding the importance of global competence and integration in English lessons. Although 83.1% of the 172 participants agreed to have attended 10 or more programs related to developing global competence, the descriptive analysis found the ESL teachers’ moderate knowledge and understanding of what constitutes global competence. In contrast, a high agreement was found regarding their perceptions of the importance of global competence in ESL lessons. Also, most respondents revealed the lack of support from the MOE through professional development programs specifically structured to develop ESL teachers’ global competence. The findings served as a template for a larger-scale study that focuses on implementing global competence in the local non-western context. (shrink)

Volume 34, Issue 2-3, June - September 2024.

Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) have been practiced in Islamic societies within married couples since their introduction. However, there are divergent views over the issue of third-party donation among Sunni and Shia scholars. This paper illustrates the different perspectives of Shia Muslims surrounding, sperm, egg, and embryo donation and ethical aspects thereof. The study reveals that there are different views regarding sperm, egg, and embryo donation among the Shia religious leaders around the world. Many Shia religious scholars, including the Iranian supreme (...) religious leader Ali Hussein Khamenei allow sperm, egg, and embryo donation with certain conditions. However, the conditions stipulated by Shia religious scholars contradict the ethical and legal practices of sperm, egg, and embryo donation. Regarding sperm and egg donation, they declared that the donor child would inherit from a third-party donor and the commissioning parents would be adoptive parents. Thus, according to them, donor anonymity is impossible. Moreover, the Iranian act on embryo donation did not stipulate the right and responsibilities of the donor child and recipient couples and did not clarify the nature and number of embryos that can be donated and implanted. The paper argues that the lack of laws and guidelines on sperm, egg, and embryo donation raises many ethical problems. Based only on religious rulings, third-party donation has been practiced without foreseeing the well-being and safety of donor children, donors, and recipient couples. (shrink)

The stipulation of living organ transplantation policy and practice in Bangladesh is family-oriented, with relatives being the only people legally eligible to donate organs. There have been very few transplantations of bone marrows, liver lobes, and kidneys from related-living donors in Bangladesh. The major question addressed in this study is why Bangladesh is not getting adequate organs for transplantation. In this study, I examin the stipulations of the policy and practice of living organ donation through the lens of 32 key (...) stakeholders including physicians and nurses, a health administrator, organ donors and recipients, and their family members, as they can shed light on the realities and problems of organ donation for transplantation in Bangladesh. My ethnography reveals that the family members are always encouraged to donate organs for transplantation, and saving the lives of relatives through organ donation is seen as a moral obligation. Many view saving the life of a relative by donating one’s organs as equivalent to saving one’s own life. An assessment of the dynamics of biomedicine, religion, and culture leads to the conclusion that the family-oriented organ donation policy and practice have been widely endorsed and accepted in Bangladesh, and Islamic ethical principles and collective family ethos undergird that policy and practice. However, the unavailability of medical resources, lack of post-operative coverage for organ donors, religious misconceptions and unawareness of the general public, and the absence of posthumously donated vital organs for transplantation are perceived to be the most common barriers to a successful living donor-recipient pair organ transplantation. By overcoming these obstacles, Bangladesh can develop a successful living donor-recipient pair organ transplantation program that will ensure improved healthcare outcomes, promote altruism and solidarity among Bangladeshi families, and protect the poor from having their organs sold to wealthy patients. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to the legal epistemology that is advocated within Twelver Shi'ite usul al-fiqh (legal theory). It critically surveys the epistemological underpinnings upheld by post-19th century Uṣūlīclerics that impel them to mainly deduce and interpret Sharia using scripture and literalist hermeneutical methods. An evaluation of these underpinnings uncovers the important juxtaposition that exists between the seminarian discourses of usul al-fiqh and philosophy. The book hypothesises that usul al-fiqh has both space and historical precedence to accept alternative epistemological theories (...) that may enable orthodox Shi'ite clerics to display greater dynamism in deducing and interpreting Sharia. (shrink)

Organ transplantation from living related donors in Bangladesh first began in October 1982, and became commonplace in 1988. Cornea transplantation from posthumous donors began in 1984 and living related liver and bone marrow donor transplantation began in 2010 and 2014 respectively. The Human Organ Transplantation Act officially came into effect in Bangladesh on 13th April 1999, allowing organ donation from both brain-dead and related living donors for transplantation. Before the legislation, religious leaders issued fatwa, or religious rulings, in favor of (...) organ transplantation. The Act was amended by the Parliament on 8th January, 2018 with the changes coming into effect shortly afterwards on 28th January. However, aside from a few posthumous corneal donations, transplantation of vital organs, such as the kidney, liver, heart, pancreas, and other body parts or organs from deceased donors, has remained absent in Bangladesh. The major question addressed in this article is why the transplantation of vital organs from deceased donors is absent in Bangladesh. In addition to the collection of secondary documents, interviews were conducted with senior transplant physicians, patients and their relatives, and the public, to learn about posthumous organ donation for transplantation. Interviews were also conducted with a medical student and two grief counselors to understand the process of counseling the families and obtaining consent to obtain posthumous cornea donations from brain-dead patients. An interview was conducted with a professional anatomist to understand the processes behind body donation for the purposes of medical study and research. Their narrative reveals that transplant physicians may be reticent to declare brain death as the stipulations of the 1999 act were unclear and vague. This study finds that Bangladeshis have strong family ties and experience anxiety around permitting separating body parts of dead relatives for organ donation for transplantation, or donating the dead body for medical study and research purposes. Posthumous organ donation for transplantation is commonly viewed as a wrong deed from a religious point of view. Religious scholars who have been consulted by the government have approved posthumous organ donation for transplantation on the grounds of necessity to save lives even though violating the human body is generally forbidden in Islam. An assessment of the dynamics of biomedicine, religion and culture leads to the conclusion that barriers to posthumous organ donation for transplantation that are perceived to be religious may actually stem from cultural attitudes. The interplay of faith, belief, religion, social norms, rituals and wider cultural attitudes with biomedicine and posthumous organ donation and transplantation is very complex. Although overcoming the barriers to organ donation for transplantation is challenging, initiation of transplantation of vital organs from deceased donors is necessary within Bangladesh. This will ensure improved healthcare outcomes, prevent poor people from being coerced into selling their organs to rich recipients, and protect the solidarity and progeny of Bangladeshi families. (shrink)

IPA is now a widely recognised qualitative approach within psychology. Drawing on its hermeneutic underwriting, enabled by hermeneutic philosophers (Aristotle, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur), this paper proposes eight Hermeneutic Themes ubiquitous within presentation of these philosophers’ writing. Research participant experiential narrative, accounts of understanding-in-practice, can be allocated structurally to these Hermeneutic Ubiquitous Themes (HUTs). For Gadamer, a hermeneutic consideration of practices was initiated by Aristotle’s early writing on phronesis or a situated understanding-in-practice. The present thematic analysis recognises such a Greek source. (...) Exemplars of potential participants’ experiential narratives are provided within their respective HUTs prior to positioning Malaysian women viewers’ ethical ‘watching competencies’. Keywords: ethics, hermeneutic ubiquitous themes, Malaysia, phenomenolgy, phronesis. (shrink)

There is a substantial shortage of organs available for transplantation in Bangladesh. This has resulted in the commodification of organs. This study analyzes the religious, cultural, and legal barriers to organ donation in Bangladesh. It is based on the examination of available literature and primary sources i.e. religious decrees and opinions of religious leaders of faith traditions, and the Bangladesh Organ Donation Act, 1999. The literature was retrieved from databases, such as PubMed, BioMed, and Google Scholar using the key words: (...) organ donation in Islam, organ donation in Bangladesh, organ donation and religions. The study found that although many Islamic scholars accept organ donation, both living and cadaveric, under some conditions, some Bangladeshi Muslim clerics oppose donation. They argue that organ retrieval violates the sanctity of the human body and retrieval of organs may harm a living donor or lead to death, and organ donation may encourage the commercialization of body parts. Both commercialization and harming oneself are considered sins. Thus, the divergent views of Muslim clerics are a major barrier to organ donation among the Bangladeshi Muslims. Cultural and social factors also have a negative impact. Most people desire to be buried with their bodies intact. Although the Bangladesh government promulgated the Bangladesh Organ Donation Act, 1999, and amended it in 2018, it restricted donors and recipients to members of the extended family, which also reduced the donor pool. This study argues that the Muslim Orthodox clerics’ stand against organ donation and other cultural and legal issues are the major obstacles to organ donation in Bangladesh. (shrink)

Collecting data using an appropriate sampling technique is a challenging task for a researcher to do. The researchers will be unable to collect data from all possible situations, which will preclude them from answering the study’s research questions in their current form. In light of the enormous number and variety of sampling techniques/methods available, the researcher must be knowledgeable about the differences to select the most appropriate sampling technique/method for the specific study under consideration. In this context, this study also (...) looks into the basic concepts in probability sampling, kinds of probability sampling techniques with their advantages and disadvantages. Social science researchers will benefit from this study since it will assist them in choosing the most suitable probability sampling technique for completing their research smoothly and successfully. (shrink)

Background Advocates for a regulated system to facilitate kidney donation between unrelated donor-recipient pairs argue that monetary compensation encourages people to donate vital organs that save the lives of patients with end-stage organ failure. Scholars support compensating donors as a form of reciprocity. This study aims to assess the compensation system for the unrelated kidney donation program in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a particular focus on the implications of Islam on organ donation and organ sales. Methods This study (...) reviews secondary documents for philosophical argumentation and ethical analysis of human organ donation and sale for transplantation. Results and discussion According to Islamic law, organ donation is an act of _sadaqatul jariyah,_ and individuals are permitted to donate organs with the intention of saving lives. The commercialization of humans as organ sellers and buyers is contrary to the Islamic legal maxim _eethaar_, undermining donors of ‘selfless’ or ‘altruistic’ motivations. Such an act should be considered immoral, and the practice should not be introduced into other countries for the sake of protecting human dignity, integrity, solidarity, and respect. I, therefore, argue that Iran’s unrelated kidney donation program not only disregards the position of the Islamic religion with respect to the provision or receipt of monetary benefits for human kidneys for transplantation but that it also misinterprets the Islamic legal proscription of the sale of human organs. I also argue that the implementation of Iran’s unrelated kidney donor transplantation program is unethical and immoral in that potential donors and recipients engage in a bargaining process akin to that which sellers and buyers regularly face in regulated commodity exchange markets. Conversely, I suggest that a modest fixed monetary remuneration as a gift be provided to a donor as a reward for their altruistic organ donation, which is permissible by Islamic scholars. This may remove the need to bargain for increased or decreased values of payment in exchange for the organ, as well as the transactional nature of ‘buyer and seller’, ensuring the philosophy of ‘donor and recipient’ is maintained. Conclusions Offering a fixed modest monetary incentive to organ donors would serve to increase organ supply while protecting donors’ health and reducing human suffering without legalizing the human organ trade. (shrink)

The present study aims to examine the context of academic dishonesty of research students in a public university setting in Bangladesh. In this regard, the researchers conducted interviews with the concerned authorities of the university, i.e., Chairpersons of the Departments, Deans of the Faculties, Proctor of the University, and Director of Students Guidance and Counselling Cell in order to get an impression about the current practice of academic dishonesty by the students of that university; factors influencing these activities and recommendations (...) to uphold academic integrity among the students. The results showed that though there were several instances of academic integrity violation, negligible actions were taken against them due to the absence of an established policy on academic dishonesty. At the same time, the nonexistence of a course on academic integrity and research ethics in the curriculum is also responsible for this scenario. To mitigate this issue, all the concerned authorities strongly recommended formulating a central policy on academic dishonesty for promoting academic integrity and achieving university ranking success in global competitiveness. (shrink)

This article examined the effect of culture and religiosity on perceptions of business ethics among students in a tertiary institution in Malaysia. A structured questionnaire was developed with scenarios on various aspects of business ethics, and self-administered to the students in the business studies program. The results from 767 respondents showed that there were significant differences among the Malays, Chinese, and Indian students on seven scenarios namely selling hazardous products, misleading instructions, selling defective products, padding expense account, taking sick to (...) take a day off, keeping quiet on defective products, and respond to supplier's take good care of clients attitude. There was also an association between culture and religiosity. The MANOVA results also showed that culture and religiosity have an effect on perceptions of business ethics. (shrink)

The Infectious Diseases Act entered into force officially on 14 November 2018 in Bangladesh. The Act is designed to raise awareness of, prevent, control, and eradicate infectious or communicable diseases to address public health emergencies and reduce health risks. A novel coronavirus disease was first identified in Bangladesh on 8 March 2020, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a gazette on 23 March, listing COVID-19 as an infectious disease and addressing COVID-19 as a public health emergency. The (...) gazette empowers the government to monitor the spread of infection. Despite there being an infrastructure of research ethics committees in almost all hospitals in Bangladesh, a lack of such committees in the clinical setting often forces healthcare professionals to allocate scarce healthcare resources to the task. These personnel are often either influenced by materialistic matters or guided by the emergency policies, without reaching a consensus on how to allocate scarce resources in times of need, especially in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethical dilemmas often arise when a number of patients with COVID-19, especially in poor and middle-class areas, are denied care while elites are prioritized to receive such scarce resources. Resource allocation in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh appears to be unethical and in direct conflict with the biomedical principles of non-maleficence and procedural justice. The findings of this study suggest that the Act needs substantive changes in the stipulation of policy directing hospitals in the provision of resource allocation framework. Furthermore, parliament should produce guidance outlining how to successfully implement the law with the aim of protecting public health in times of emergency, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The Human Organ Transplantation Act came into officially force in Bangladesh on April 13, 1999, allowing organ donations from both living and brain-dead donors. The Act was amended by the Parliament on January 8, 2018, with the changes coming into effect shortly afterwards on January 28. The Act was revised to extend a living donor pool from close relatives to include certain other relatives such as grandparents, grandchildren, and first cousins. The Act was also revised to allow individuals to prioritize (...) family members in receiving their organs after their death. The aim of this paper is not to carry out an ethical analysis of the Act as a whole but only to focus on aspects relating to priority access for family members to organs. Despite Islam encouraging Muslims to be sympathetic, and to save the life of any member of humankind, saving the life of a relative through organ donation is even more highly valued. The collective and extended structure of the family impacts on the provisions of the Act that only allows Bangladeshis to legally donate their organs to save the lives of relatives and allows individuals to prioritize family members. Recent progress in the practice of organ transplantation raises a number of ethical dilemmas around the allocation of available organs in the context of organ scarcity. A key purpose of introducing incentive into the system of organ allocation is to increase the number of donations from living relatives and initiation of vital organ donations from brain-dead donors. However, allocation criteria based on a living organ donation incentive system would appear to be unethical because there is no provision in the Act with regard to financial compensation for a distant relative donor’s post-operative care in the absence of healthcare coverage. Receiving organs from a distant relative without giving financial compensation for post-operative care places them in a grave health condition and violates the biomedical principle of non-maleficence. An incentive system around brain-dead donors would appear to be ethical as the amended Act allows individuals to prioritize relatives in receiving their organs after death. This provision is intended to initiate the transplantation of vital organs from brain-dead donors as families might bear the cost of keeping the organs alive for transplantation. Regular reassessment of the impact of the Act is necessary to maximize the donation rate of transplantable organs using ethical means. (shrink)

From Curriculum Vitae parsing to web search and recommendation systems, Word2Vec and other word embedding techniques have an increasing presence in everyday interactions in human society. Biases, such as gender bias, have been thoroughly researched and evidenced to be present in word embeddings. Most of the research focuses on discovering and mitigating gender bias within the frames of the vector space itself. Nevertheless, whose bias is reflected in word embeddings has not yet been investigated. Besides discovering and mitigating gender bias, (...) it is also important to examine whether a feminine or a masculine-centric view is represented in the biases of word embeddings. This way, we will not only gain more insight into the origins of the before mentioned biases, but also present a novel approach to investigating biases in Natural Language Processing systems. Based on previous research in the social sciences and gender studies, we hypothesize that masculine-centric, otherwise known as androcentric, biases are dominant in word embeddings. To test this hypothesis we used the largest English word association test data set publicly available. We compare the distance of the responses of male and female participants to cue words in a word embedding vector space. We found that the word embedding is biased towards a masculine-centric viewpoint, predominantly reflecting the worldviews of the male participants in the word association test data set. Therefore, by conducting this research, we aimed to unravel another layer of bias to be considered when examining fairness in algorithms. (shrink)

In Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: A Fresh Interpretation, Mohammad Kamali considers problems associated with and proposals for reform of the hudud punishments prescribed by Islamic criminal law, and other topics related to crime and punishment in Shariah.

The rapid increase in COVID-19 cases has become the symbol of fear, anxiety, and panic among people around the globe. Mass media has played an active role in community education by addressing the health information of this pandemic. People interact by sharing their ideas and feelings through social media platforms. There is a considerable need to implement different measures and better perceive COVID-19 pertinent facts and information by demystifying public sentiments. In this study, the Quarantine Life dataset of thousand tweets (...) is based on #Quarantine, #Quarantine Days, #Quarantine Life, #My Pandemic Plan, and #Quarantine and Chill from January to September 2020 has been collected from Twitter. The extracted data have been scrubbed through preprocessing techniques. The sentiments and topics extracted from tweets have been analyzed through the TEXT BLOB, VADER, and AFFIN approach. Results show that people were distressed and fearful due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, most people enjoyed by playing games, watching movies, and reading books during the lockdown period. According to the present meta-analysis, physical activity interventions are beneficial for patients with dementia in terms of cognition. The proposed framework illustrates the insight impact of COVID-19 on human physiological and mainly focuses on the evaluation of sentiment dynamics at the topical level. (shrink)

Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country, has a national organ donation law that was passed in 1999 and revised in 2018. The law allows living-related and brain-dead donor organ transplantation. There are no legal barriers to these two types of organ donations, but there is no legislation providing necessary costs and incentive measures associated with successful organ transplants. However, many governments across the globe provide different types of incentives for motivating living donors and families of deceased donors. This study assesses the merits (...) and demerits of incentive measures already in use around the world and proposes ethical measures that can promote organ donation in Bangladesh. The primary focus of this paper is to present an ethical analysis of the comparison of incentive measures on organ donation between Bangladesh and the Islamic Republic of Iran as two Muslim countries that operate organ donation for transplantation practices according to Islamic principles. In this paper, I mainly argue that providing a fixed bare minimum financial incentive measure to distantly related living donors and families of deceased donors will encourage Bangladeshis to donate organs in a manner that is ethically justifiable, morally permissible, and socio-economically appropriate. The government of Bangladesh should revise the existing biomedical law to include a provision related to incentive measures and set a strict policy to properly regulate these measures as key stewardship that can ethically promote organ donation for transplantation. (shrink)

There has been a lot of discussion and debate on the issue of Islamization of Contemporary Knowledge among Muslim intellectuals. Two Muslim thinkers, namely al-Attas and al-Fārūqī were foremost in the attempt to conceptualise the problem of the Muslim Ummah and the issue of Islamization of knowledge as an epistemological and socio-political solution. This article aims to examine, compare and analyse the ideas of both scholars with respect to the various interpretations of the concept of Islamization of knowledge their definition (...) of the concept, their philosophical framework, and their methodology for achieving the goals of Islamization. It aims at understanding the similarities and differences and the strengths and weaknesses of their conceptions, philosophical framework and methodology. This paper also explores the possibility of reconciliation between their ideas in the hope of further advancing the cause of Islamization of knowledge. (shrink)

This research drew on the authors’ long experience in the implementation of the “_Hikmah_ Pedagogy” which is based on the Philosophy for Children’s teaching method. Specifically, the study examined the influence of the pedagogy on the participants’ perceptions of and feelings about their thinking and reasoning skills. The sample comprised 188 Malaysian and international students from an international secondary school in Malaysia. This consisted of students in four Grade levels, ranging from Grades 7 to 10. An instrument named “_Hikmah_ Feedback (...) Survey - HFS” was employed for data collection. The findings were supportive of the positive influence of the pedagogy on students’ abilities to think and reason better after experiencing the programme. Furthermore, the participants demonstrated a considerable improvement in their cognitive and social-communicative skills, as evidenced in the scores obtained for the post-programme’s test. This affirms the fact that the _ḥikmah_ pedagogy is highly recommended in Malaysia’s march towards its Vision 2020 developmental goals. Implications of the study were discussed and suggestions were proposed to educators and stakeholders in secondary school education. (shrink)

This article reports the macro-organizational structure of research articles in mathematics, based on an analysis of 30 published pure and applied mathematics articles. Math RAs eschew the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion structure for an Introduction-Results model that enables researchers to present new knowledge as clearly and succinctly as possible. Notable omissions from the mathematics RA structure are Method and Discussion sections, which mathematicians do not need because of the well-established methodology used in the field and the relative absence of extended discussion required to (...) interpret research findings. We contextualize the macrostructure of RAs in mathematics within the discourse conventions and disciplinary assumptions about knowledge in the field to suggest the value of such a strategy to teachers and students of academic writing. (shrink)

The development of the third wave of Information and Communication Technology is accompanied by the growing concern on the decline of an individual’s ability to think sharply and wisely. In Malaysia, this concern has brought to fore the prominence of teaching thinking skills within the school system and teachers were expected to be the agents of this change. Are teachers aware of the importance of this thinking ability? Have they been adequately prepared for this paradigm shift? Do they personally feel (...) competent teaching for thinking in the classrooms? This survey attempts to answer these questions and investigates the relationship between teachers’ attitudes and practices. It also examines if there exists any significant differences in teachers’ beliefs and their practices with respect to gender, course attendance and teaching experience. Finally, it explores some of the problems faced by teachers in teaching for thinking. (shrink)

This paper discusses the pragmatic world view and philosophy of education. It argues that it is possible to integrate certain elements of pragmatic education which are actually Islam’s pragmatism into Muslim education as a tool for the development of the Muslim community. The Islamic world view would not object topragmatic aims of education for understanding and helping the child to think, for preparation for life in society, and education as a scientific and experimental enterprise. It argues that these pragmatic aims (...) which are urgently needed in Muslim education today, are coherent with the Islamic world view but has beenneglected. Hence, they should be revived and integrated to complement the traditional aims of Islamic education and to enhance the development of the Muslims for the present century. (shrink)

The continuous development of information communication technology facilitates the conventional grid in transforming into an automated modern system. Internet-of-Things solutions are used along with the evolving services of end-users to the electricity service provider for smart grid applications. In terms of various devices and machine integration, adequate authentication is the key to an accurate source and destination in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). Various protocols are deployed to lead the identification between two parties, which require high computation time and communicational bit (...) operations for system development. Therefore, Kerberos-based authentication protocols were designed in this study with the assistance of elliptic curve cryptography to manage the mutual authentication between two parties and reduce the time and bit operations. The protocols were evaluated in a widely adopted tool, AVISPA, which builds an understanding of the proposed protocol and ensures mutual authentication without unauthorized knowledge. In addition, upon comparing security and performance assessments to the current schemes, it was found that the protocol in this study required less time and bits to transmit information. Consequently, it effectively provides multiple security features making it suitable for resource constraint smart meters in AMI. (shrink)

Social media is a prominent communication platform. Its active usage permeates all generations and it is imperative that the platform be fully optimized for knowledge transfer and innovation diffusion. However, there are several considerations regarding platform usage, including media affordances. Social media affordances enable users to interact with the world around them through features of modality, agency, interactivity, and navigation. Previous studies have indicated that social media affordances significantly influence user behavior and usage. However, research exploring the effect of social (...) media affordances on knowledge acquisition and the reduction of decision-making complexities is limited. Therefore, focusing on 179 paddy farmers in Malaysia, this study examined the effect of social media affordances on information quality, knowledge acquisition, and complexity reduction regarding innovation adoption decisions using a quantitative approach. This study’s findings reveal that social media affordances have a significant effect on perceived information quality, knowledge acquisition, and complexity reduction. (shrink)

In 1999, the Bangladesh government introduced the Human Organ Transplantation Act allowing organ transplants from both brain-dead and living-related donors. This Act approved organ donation within family networks, which included immediate family members such as parents, adult children, siblings, uncles, aunts, and spouses. Subsequently, in January 2018, the government amended the 1999 Act to include certain distant relatives, such as grandparents, grandchildren, and first cousins, in the donor lists, addressing the scarcity of donors. Nobody, without these relatives, is legally permitted (...) to donate organs for transplantation in Bangladesh. The focus of this study was to investigate who should donate organs for transplantation in Bangladesh. The ethnographic fieldwork revealed that potential donors are not always available to immediate family members, and even when they are, they might be medically unsuitable for transplants. These considerations influenced the government in the revision of the Act. Secondly, the findings of the study suggest maintaining the current family-based regulations for living organ donation in Bangladesh. Furthermore, the study highlighted a potential consequence: amending the regulation to permit donations to unrelated recipients could significantly amplify the issue of organ selling and buying. While Islam advises Muslims to be compassionate towards all humankind, it also encourages Muslims to prioritize saving the lives of family members. This religious belief limits Muslims from donating organs to family members. (shrink)