: Ecological Modernization theory emerged during the 1980s inresponse to other environmental sociology theories that mostly denunciateindustrialization and modernization as culprits of environmental degradation.The basic view of Ecological Modernization is to find a balance betweendevelopment of society and nation as well as environmental protection.Some scholars believe that this is the best module to develop a country, whileothers criticize it as a pro-capitalist concept. As Malaysia is now pushingits status towards becoming a developed and high-income nation, people’swellbeing as well as environmental (...) protection needs to be highly considered.Taking Ecological Modernization as fresh perspective to view the country’sdevelopment plan, this paper aims to understand whether the essence ofEcological Modernization was embedded in Pakatan Harapan’s politicalmanifesto during the 14th general election. As political manifesto serves asinitial policy making guidelines, it is imperative to understand the PakatanHarapan future plans for the country. (shrink)

The general relationship between a bank and customer is contractualin nature. For conventional banks, the banker-customer relationship is basedon the debtor-creditor relationship with the bank earning a profit from a spreadmade between interest charged on the borrower of funds and interest paid tothe depositors. In Islamic banking, due to the different contractual transactionsof Islamic banking operation, it is based on a multi-contractual relationships.However, bank consumers perceive that banks enhance their profits by treatingconsumers unfairly and failing to take responsibility when things (...) go wrong.This study examines the duty of care of conventional and Islamic banks towardsbank consumers. It also focuses on the Islamic banks’ duty of care from theperspective of maqāṣid al-Sharī‛ah, to those who use their services. Adoptingthe doctrinal analysis method, this study analyses and compares the duty ofcare of both conventional and Islamic banks. Findings of this study includethat misconduct by banking industries remains rife and that unfair treatment ofcustomers are frequent. As for Islamic banks, the maqāṣid al-Sharī‛ah basedduty of care is found missing in their Islamic banking operation. This studysuggests that the duty of care for both banks should be reformed to improvebank consumers’ experience. For Islamic banks, an improved standard is usefulin performing their duties based on Islamic values. (shrink)

This paper describes maslahah, a fundamental concept in Islam and its application in deliberating permissibility of human germline gene editing from an Islamic perspective. This paper refers to He Jiankui’s research that led to the birth of the world’s first gene edited babies, who were edited to be protected from HIV. The objective, procedure, and output of the research were assessed against the conditions of maslahah. It can be concluded that the experiment did not meet the conditions; it is inconsistent (...) with the objectives of shariah and some fundamental Islamic teachings that it did not preserve greater benefit, hence it could be considered impermissible. (shrink)

Radiography images are widely utilized in the health sector to recognize the patient health condition. The noise and irrelevant region information minimize the entire disease detection accuracy and computation complexity. Therefore, in this study, statistical Kolmogorov–Smirnov test has been integrated with wavelet transform to overcome the de-noising issues. Then the cat swarm-optimized deep belief network is applied to extract the features from the affected region. The optimized deep learning model reduces the feature training cost and time and improves the overall (...) disease detection accuracy. The network learning process is enhanced according to the AdaDelta learning process, which replaces the learning parameter with a delta value. This process minimizes the error rate while recognizing the disease. The efficiency of the system evaluated using image retrieval in medical application dataset. This process helps to determine the various diseases such as breast, lung, and pediatric studies. (shrink)

Advancements in science and technology have not only brought hope to humankind to produce disease-free offspring, but also offer possibilities to genetically enhance the next generation’s traits and capacities. Human genetic enhancement, however, raises complex ethical questions, such as to what extent should it be allowed? It has been a great challenge for humankind to develop robust ethical guidelines for human genetic enhancement that address both public concerns and needs. We believe that research about public concerns is necessary prior to (...) developing such guidelines, yet the issues have not been thoroughly investigated in many countries, including Malaysia. Since the novel often functions as a medium for the public to express their concerns, this paper explores ethical concerns about human genetic enhancement expressed in four Malay science fiction novels namely Klon, Leksikon Ledang, Transgenesis Bisikan Rimba and Transgenik Sifar. Religion has a strong influence on the worldview of the Malays therefore some concerns such as playing God are obviously religious. Association of the negative image of scientists as well as the private research companies with the research on human genetic enhancement reflects the authors’ concerns about the main motivations for conducting such research and the extent to which such research will benefit society. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that Corporate Environmental Performance enables businesses to build strong corporate image and reputation, thus leading to improved firm financial performance. However, studies relating to the relationship between CEP and firm risk are scarce. This research intends to bridge the gap in the literature by examining whether CEP helps firms to reduce their financial risk. Results of the Ordinary Least Squares regression with fixed effects provide strong evidence that environmental performance is negatively associated with firm volatility and firm (...) downside risk. The results are robust after controlling for moderating effects such as financial, institutional and environmental management. (shrink)

Today, the business world has embraced increasing uncertainty and abrupt changes. The concern for business owners is business sustainability, which is crucial for their business to remain relevant and flexible in unpredictable business environments. The process of change forces business owners to be ready for any consequences that affect their business. Due to overwhelming tasks and responsibilities, single mothers may need help to succeed in business. The present research offers a comprehensive review of business continuity from the perspective of single (...) mothers. Within the scope of this research is an exhaustive and methodical investigation of the business acumen of single mothers as entrepreneurs. A literature review was conducted, and the findings may offer a comprehensive discussion of several dimensions of entrepreneurial competency. The findings contribute new information to the existing body of knowledge regarding entrepreneurial competency, which has been a recurrent topic of discussion among earlier academics who have explored the subject matter to investigate. At the end of this paper, practising entrepreneurial competency with single-mother entrepreneurs has several implications. These findings can be applied and utilized by single-mother entrepreneurs, as well as by the government, industry, and the community. (shrink)

The rise in ethical and social responsibility awareness in contemporary businesses has led to assumptions that the associated behaviours would enable competitive advantage to be attained as a firm distinguishes itself from its competitors through such practices. This paper reports on a study conducted on the prevalence of such practices among entrepreneurial ventures in an emerging economy (Malaysia), and the effect of such practices on both financial and non-financial performance. A sequential inter-method mixing design was employed in which during stage (...) 1, a series of semi-structured interviews with ten Malaysian SME founder-owners were conducted. Stage 2 involved a survey in which a total of 212 usable questionnaires were received. The results of the first phase of the research (qualitative) found evidence that entrepreneurial ventures in Malaysia do generally engage in both ethical and socially responsible practices. The subsequent model testing using SEM, however, revealed that while ethical practices were positively associated with venture performance, socially responsible practices were not. This may indicate that while entrepreneurial ventures in emerging economies like Malaysia become quickly aware of the more serious consequences of not adopting ethical practices, the concern for social issues may still be lacking, i.e., in terms of motivations, they may be closer to the profitable end of the philanthropy versus profitability spectrum. While the findings may be equivocal, we believe that the paper makes the following two significant contributions: (1) it provides an empirical test of the importance of ethical and socially responsible practices to entrepreneurial venture performance and (2) it furthers understanding of how and why this may be different in an emerging economy context. (shrink)

A contemporary to Thomas Aquinas in Latin Catholic Italy, and with a parallel motivation to stabilize each his own civilization in its flux and storm, 'Abd Allah Baydawi of Ilkhan Persia wrote a compact and memorable Arabic Summation of Islamic Natural and Traditional Theology. With the same strokes of his pen he presented the Islamic version of the Science of Theological Statement, bafflingly called "Kalam" while familiarly embracing "Theology". Baydawi's Tawali'al-Anwar min Matal'al-Anzar (Rays of Dawnlight Outstreaming from Far Horizons of (...) Logical Reasoning), with Mahmud Isfahani's commentary, is a formidably clear logical and mental vision of mankind's final completion as a spiritual structure in Islam. Reality - in nature's Possible mode, in an apodictic Divine mode, and in humanity's heroic Prophetic mode - comprises man's Worldview and is the Theme of the Baydawi/Isfahani discourse. The Edifice of Man and Humanity's evanescent Evidence within it are both hugely arresting and moving. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004121027). (shrink)

Background: Nurse managers have the burden of experiencing frequent ethical issues related to both their managerial and nursing care duties, according to previous international studies. However, no such study was published in Malaysia. The purpose of this study was to explore nurse managers' experience with ethical issues in six government hospitals in Malaysia including learning about the way they dealt with the issues. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in August-September, 2010 involving 417 (69.2%) of total 603 nurse managers in (...) the six Malaysian government hospitals. Data were collected using three-part self-administered questionnaire. Part I was regarding participants' demographics. Part II was about the frequency and areas of management where ethical issues were experienced, and scoring of the importance of 11 pre-identified ethical issues. Part III asked how they dealt with ethical issues in general; ways to deal with the 11 pre-identified ethical issues, and perceived stress level. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and Pearson's Chi-square. Results: A total of 397 (95.2%) participants experienced ethical issues and 47.2% experienced them on weekly to daily basis. Experiencing ethical issues were not associated with areas of practice. Top area of management where ethical issues were encountered was "staff management", but "patient care" related ethical issues were rated as most important. Majority would "discuss with other nurses" in dealing generally with the issues. For pre-identified ethical issues regarding "patient care", "discuss with doctors" was preferred. Only 18.1% referred issues to "ethics committees" and 53.0% to the code of ethics. Conclusions: Nurse managers, regardless of their areas of practice, frequently experienced ethical issues. For dealing with these, team-approach needs to be emphasized. Proper understanding of the code of ethics is needed to provide basis for reasoning. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a descriptive literature review and a classification scheme for studies on sustainable development, e-learning and Web 3.0 that contribute toward sustainable e-learning. The aims are to discover and highlight some ideas on developing a sustainable learning in higher education in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the elements of e-learning, technology, application, sustainable development and teaching and learning principles that contribute toward a sustainable e-learning through a descriptive literature review approach (...) and a classification scheme. Findings – The findings show that even though sustainable e-learning research is still limited, contributions to sustainable e-learning were recognized and some ideas and perspectives for the development of a sustainable e-learning framework were identified. Furthermore, this paper identified the gaps in the findings; therefore, this paper will try to minimize these gaps through the initial sustainable e-learning framework. Originality/value – The paper is expected to provide further ideas of developing a sustainable e-learning framework, as well as the importance of a sustainable e-learning to provide quality learning through technology, application, sustainable development and teaching and learning principles perspectives. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; Muslim theology; Islam; doctrines.

This study presents the circuitous route taken in an attempt to identify an assessment mechanism for evaluating the impact of STS courses. After initially developing a survey that faculty felt only allowed for the measurement of student opinions about the impact of required STS general education courses, the faculty at Clemson University identified Aikenhead and Ryan's Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) as an instrument that, when used with the scoring guide created in this project, might be able to assess the sophistication (...) of students views about science and technology in society. The results from administering the pre- and post-VOSTS surveys in one STS course revealed no significant differences when comparing the sophistication of students' views about STS before and after the course. These findings demonstrate that, among other considerations discussed in the manuscript, it will be difficult to find a way of assessing STS courses that can be used for the diverse courses meeting the requirement. (shrink)

The smart wearable device is a new breed of mobile device that offers diversified utilities for health, sport, and finance for consumers worldwide. The current study aims to investigate the provocation of the intention to use smart wearable payment devices among Malaysian consumers. The unified theory of technology acceptance and use of technology was employed with the cross-sectional survey-based data to explain the adoption of the smart wearable payment device. Furthermore, the UTAUT model was extended with trust and lifestyle compatibility (...) factors to investigate smart wearable payment device adoption. The survey-based data were collected through the online survey and analyzed through the symmetrical modeling approach of partial least squares structural education modeling to evaluate theoretical associations between the study constructs. The fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis was employed as an asymmetrical approach. As a result, it was found that the ease of use, lifestyle compatibility, and trust significantly impacted the intention to adopt smart wearable payment devices. However, social influence and facilitating conditions did not support the intention of adopting smart wearable payment devices. Adopting these devices requires policy and infrastructure development to harness the adoption of smart wearable payment devices. This paper is concluded with study limitations and future research suggestions. (shrink)

In early modern Europe, blue textile dye was principally obtained from two dye plants, woad and indigo. Of these two dye sources, woad was native in the temperate climes of Europe, while tropical indigo became widely available only after Europe established commercial oceanic trade routes with India and the Americas. Indigo soon became a highly valued import, undermining woad production by unsettling traditional patterns of wealth circulation. Well-established woad producers took powerful steps to protect their industry, but in spite of (...) their efforts, it ultimately succumbed in the face of indigo imports. In this paper, I examine the ways in which the long lasting conflict between the dyestuffs woad and indigo in early modern Europe evokes the tensions between imported and home-grown commodities. (shrink)

With the development of wireless technology, two basic wireless network models that are commonly used, known as infrastructure and wireless ad hoc networks, have been developed. In the literature, it has been observed that channel contention is one of the main reasons for packet drop in WANETs. To handle this problem, this paper presents a routing protocol named CCBR. CCBR tries to determine a least contended path between the endpoints to increase packet delivery ratio and to reduce packet delay and (...) normalized routing overhead. Moreover, throughout the active data section, each intermediate node computes its channel contention value. If an intermediate node detects an increase in channel contention, it notifies the source node. Then the source node determines another least contended route for transmission. The advantages of CCBR are verified in our NS2-based performance study, and the results show that CCBR outperforms ad hoc on-demand distance vector in terms of packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and routing overhead by 4% to 9%. (shrink)