The Impact of Changes in Oil Prices on the Global and Saudi Arabia Economy

This study aimed to identify the impact of COVID-19 on oil sector which faced the significant challenges, globally and in Saudi Arabia. The study sheds light on the unprecedented crisis that occurred in the decline in demand for oil and the collapse of its prices, and its effects and consequences on world economies and Arab economies, and the extent to which the Saudi economy has been affected by them in light of what markets have witnessed global oil, and opportunities to benefit from this crisis and the study relied on the descriptive and analytical methodology. The study paper will use the NARDL to explain the asymmetric effect of changes in oil price on Government Budget for Saudi Arabia. The study reached that this situation provides a further opportunity for Saudi Arabia to diversify the economy away from a reliance on oil, Government policies seek to facing these challenges by diversifying the economic base and developing and diversifying revenues non-oil products to reduce financial volatility, in addition to enhancing the role of the private sector focusing on supporting non-oil GDP growth rates to enhance the resilience of the economy. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

TRENDS & EDUCATIONAL NEEDS IN POSTGRADUATES PROGRAMMES POST COVID-19

The trends and future needs of postgraduate programmes have recently been widely discussed across various disciplines of studies especially during and post pandemic. During this period, due to the life challenges posed by the pandemic such as unemployment and businesses closing, students have realised the importance of continuing their tertiary studies to a higher level. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between demographic factors such as age, gender with variables such as willingness to study, study mode preferred, and study schedule preferred for the Postgraduate programmes. A total of 200 set of questionnaires were sent out and 139 questionnaires were returned and good for analysis. The data analysis method used was descriptive analysis and linear regression method was employed by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The results demonstrated that age has a significant relationship with the willingness to study postgraduate programmes, study mode preferred, and study schedule. This means that adult students tend to make the decision to continue their tertiary study. Meanwhile, it was found that there was no relationship between gender and the variables. By applying these results in practice, the organisations can plan and roll out strategically their postgraduate programmes strategies in accordance with the respondents' needs. © School of Engineering, Taylor's University.

THE EFFECT OF COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE INVOLVEMENT ON INTENTION TO USE AND WORD OF MOUTH: THE CASE OF ZOOM USERS IN INDONESIA

Introduction/Main Objectives: This study investigates affective and cognitive involvement that reflects psychological ownership and consumer-brand identification in the use of zoom application. Background Problems: The Zoom application was proposed because of its increasing popularity amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The selection of the zoom meeting application is the right way to find out how much the users want to continue this application both for themselves and to promote it to others by word of mouth (WOM). Novelty: This study examines the effect of cognitive and affective involvement on continuance intention to use and WOM by examining the mediating role of consumers' psychological ownership and consumer-brand identification. Research Methods: 200 responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test this study's hypotheses. Finding/Results: The findings support the mediating role of the extent of consumer's psychological ownership in describing the effect of affective involvement and continuance intention to use of a brand. In addition, the results support the mediating role of the extent of consumer-brand identification in describing the relationship between affective involvement and continuance intention to use a brand and engage in WOM promotion. Conclusion: These findings expand and unite existing theory on involvement and a continuing intention to use and engage in WOM.

Does employee empowerment moderate the effect of situational and dispositional variables on emotional exhaustion differently? The COVID-19 crisis context

Purpose: Building on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to investigate employee empowerment's moderation effect on the relationship of situational (job satisfaction, affective commitment) and dispositional (positive affectivity, emotional intelligence) variables toward the emotional exhaustion of service employees amidst the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 288 service employees from various sectors in Indonesia participate as the study's respondents. This study applies a two-stage structural equation modeling approach to test the hypotheses. Findings: The results show that employee empowerment moderates situational and dispositional variables differently. While employee empowerment significantly influences situational variables, a different situation is found on dispositional variables, that employee empowerment does not significantly influence these variables. This study's findings portray the COR theory in practice and clarify the importance of employee empowerment for employees with particular attributions. Research limitations/implications: The present study bears four limitations: the cross-sectional design;no exploration of dispositional and situational variables' antecedents;the findings are limited to the service workers;and lastly, this study only takes Indonesian samples. Practical implications: From a practical perspective, this study reveals which type of service employees are responsive to empowerment policy and which are prone to experience emotional exhaustion, particularly during a crisis. Social implications: By understanding what factors determine employee empowerment's effectiveness, managers could maximize the impacts of their empowerment policies. Subsequently, it will create better service deliveries which might benefit the broader societal scope. Originality/value: This study contributes to both theoretical and practical understanding. Theoretically, this study adds and promotes using a categorical lens to examine the pattern of interactions between organizations and employees. © 2022, Jaya Addin Linando and M. Halim.

Data Protection: Trust to Government and Willingness to Provide Information

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen many countries took their best measures to prevent the spread of the virus. Hence, the use of contact tracing apps to track infection and help to diagnose symptoms has become common. However, digital innovation for public health management has posed some challenges to the government and the society. There are trade-offs between the benefits of health protection and the risks of loss of data privacy. Therefore, the study aims to examine what data protection factors will predict users' trust to the government, and whether the trust will impact on how the users provide data to COVID-19 contact tracing apps. A self-administered survey was conducted, and 497 data was obtained. Analysis on structural equation modeling was done by using SmartPLS. The findings show trust to government is determined by perception of the users on ethics of data collection, regulation by the government, data protection policy, and information disclosure prevalence. Trust affects willingness to provide information in a different manner. The willingness to provide information is determined by cognitive trust. But affective trust increases people's willingness for falsification. The research contributes to data privacy field by demonstrating how different forms of trust to government during the pandemic influence cooperative behavior, and the identification of clear distinction of trust antecedents, which will be useful for the redesign of government relationship with the people. © 2022 IEEE.

Multicommodity Prices Prediction Using Multivariate Data-Driven Modeling: Indonesia Case

One of the problems experienced by micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) during this pandemic is that most MSME actors do not understand plan-making during a crisis. This situation was exacerbated by erratic commodity prices, which resulted in several MSME players choosing to temporarily close because their turnover got a drastic decline. To help MSME actors maintain their business by knowing commodity price predictions, we propose a deep learning model using the long short-term memory (LSTM) method to predict commodity prices in Indonesia. LSTM is a type of recurrent neural network (RNN) with a memory cell to store information and solve the vanishing gradient problem in RNN. Furthermore, multivariate LSTM leverages the model to predict datasets with more than one feature. This study used a dataset collected from the Pusat Informasi Harga Pangan Strategis Nasional (PIHPS Nasional) managed by the Indonesian Ministry of Finance and Bank Indonesia consisting of significantly contributed food commodities to the formation of (strategic) inflation rates in Indonesia. The time range of commodity prices is from August 1, 2017, to July 30, 2021. There are 11 commodity price features in the dataset, namely, rice, chicken meat, eggs, onions, garlic, large red chilies, curly red chilies, red chilies, green chilies, cooking oil, and sugar. The lowest mean absolute error (MAE) on prediction is up to 255.998 obtained by the attention multivariate LSTM model with the Adam optimizer, adding batch normalization (Batchnorm) layer, reducing LSTM layer, hidden size, and grouped features. It makes the prediction more accurate and avoids overfitting and underfitting in this case. IEEE

Does employee empowerment moderate the effect of situational and dispositional variables on emotional exhaustion differently? The COVID-19 crisis context

Purpose: Building on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to investigate employee empowerment's moderation effect on the relationship of situational (job satisfaction, affective commitment) and dispositional (positive affectivity, emotional intelligence) variables toward the emotional exhaustion of service employees amidst the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 288 service employees from various sectors in Indonesia participate as the study's respondents. This study applies a two-stage structural equation modeling approach to test the hypotheses. Findings: The results show that employee empowerment moderates situational and dispositional variables differently. While employee empowerment significantly influences situational variables, a different situation is found on dispositional variables, that employee empowerment does not significantly influence these variables. This study's findings portray the COR theory in practice and clarify the importance of employee empowerment for employees with particular attributions. Research limitations/implications: The present study bears four limitations: the cross-sectional design;no exploration of dispositional and situational variables' antecedents;the findings are limited to the service workers;and lastly, this study only takes Indonesian samples. Practical implications: From a practical perspective, this study reveals which type of service employees are responsive to empowerment policy and which are prone to experience emotional exhaustion, particularly during a crisis. Social implications: By understanding what factors determine employee empowerment's effectiveness, managers could maximize the impacts of their empowerment policies. Subsequently, it will create better service deliveries which might benefit the broader societal scope. Originality/value: This study contributes to both theoretical and practical understanding. Theoretically, this study adds and promotes using a categorical lens to examine the pattern of interactions between organizations and employees. © 2022, Jaya Addin Linando and M. Halim.

[Reverse Takotsubo ou myocardite fulminante ? Succès de VA ECMO chez une patiente ayant une atteinte cardiaque liée COVID 19]. / Reverse TakoTsubo or Fulminant myocarditis ? Life saving VA ECMO in a COVID 19 patient.

A 45 years old female patient was admitted to our facility for COVID -19 infection complicated by fulminant cardiac injury and refractory cardiogemic shock. She had echographic findings of reverse takotsubo cardiomyopathy. She was successfully treated by VA-ECMO allowing complete revocery of the left ventricule function and weaning from support.

Students’ satisfaction on learning calculus using open and distance learning method during COVID-19 pandemic

In early 2020, due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Malaysia, all higher education institutions had to switch from face-to-face learning to open and distance learning (ODL) method. The main purpose was to prevent any further spread of the COVID-19 virus. This study aimed to identify factors carrying impacts on students’ satisfaction in learning calculus using ODL method. The sample consists of 224 students of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Perak Branch, Tapah Campus who took calculus subjects using ODL method during the COVID-19 lockdown in Malaysia. Five factors are found to influence students’ satisfaction towards ODL method: student-lecturer interaction;lecturer performance;ODL course evaluation;design;and technical. By using partial least square (PLS)–SEM method, the results showed that lecturer performance has a large effect size on students’ satisfaction. Technical and design factors have medium effect sizes, while the ODL course evaluation and student-lecturer interaction have small effect sizes. This research provided useful insights for an effective planning of online calculus courses by considering all factors that influence students’ satisfaction. © 2022, Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved.

Work flexibility arrangements for educators: which one is best for whom? Insights from Indonesia

Purpose: Despite all the complications COVID-19 brought to the education sector, the pandemic has indirectly created various work flexibility arrangements for educators. This paper investigates the impact of different work flexibility arrangements on educators' emotional exhaustion while taking educators' backgrounds (gender, tenure and age) into consideration. This paper explores which work flexibility arrangements fit best for particular educators. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs a quantitative approach to investigate the effect of different work flexibility arrangements (low, medium and high) on educators' emotional exhaustion. In total, 462 educators from various educational levels in Indonesia participated as the respondents. Findings: In general, the findings suggest that female educators are more prone to experience emotional exhaustion than their male counterparts. This study also finds that educators' age negatively relates to emotional exhaustion, and the longer-tenured educators might not be suitable for highly flexible work arrangements. In addition, different degrees of work flexibility have various impacts on educators, depending on their gender, tenure and age. These results are potentially helpful for educational institutions to design the best work arrangements for educators. Originality/value: It is crucial for educational administrators to determine how much work flexibility should be given to educators from different backgrounds. This study is among the first to empirically examine the impact of different work flexibilities on educators' well-being. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reverse TakoTsubo or Fulminant myocarditis ? Life saving VA ECMO in a COVID 19 patient Reverse Takotsubo ou myocardite fulminante ? Succès de VA ECMO chez une patiente ayant une atteinte cardiaque liée COVID 19

Résumé Une dame de 45 ans était admise à notre hôpital chock cardiogénique compliquant une infection sévère altération sévère de la fonction ventriculaire gauche. Le diagnostic différentiel est un reverse Takotsubo ou une myocardite fulminante. La patiente a bénéficié d'une implantation d'assistance méchanique transitoire VA ECMO permettant une normalisation du ventricule gauche.

Smart Voice User Interface Office Monitoring System via Internet of Things

This project presents the Smart Voice User Interface (VUI) Office Monitoring System that interacts with the Internet of Things (IoT) to complete task based on user's commands. In order to reduce the spread of Covid-19, touchless switches are vital to be used in practice. The Raspberry Pi is used as a microcontroller in this VUI system with Phyton programming language. The electrical components used, such as LED lights and air conditioners, are connected through the General-Purpose Input Output (GPIO) of Raspberry Pi and relay module. The air conditioner is represented with a fan using a motor while lights using LED lights. The outputs can be controlled by giving commands to the Google Assistant or using the Blynk application that relates to the virtual assistant. The interface of the Blynk application shows buttons as an indicator for turning the lights and air conditioner ON or OFF. An application called If This Then That (IFTTT) is used to trigger the GPIO pins based on the instruction commands made in the Blynk application and Google Assistant. A pair of microphones and speakers are also connected with the Raspberry Pi as input and output voice commands. The outcome of the propose technique is a system which controls the devices using voice recognition and artificial intelligence that result in reducing the spread of covid-19 in an office environment. This will be beneficial for office staff for daily scheduled use and personal usage. As a conclusion, this system is efficient and suitable to be used during this pandemic because it eliminates the need to touch various surfaces in office environment. © 2021 IEEE

Molecular dynamics investigation of ivermectin bound to importin alpha/beta heterodimer

Ivermectin (D1), an FDA-approved drug, is mainly used as an inhibitor for the treatment of parasitic infections. This drug was drawn attention due to its effectiveness in COVID-19 treatment. In this work, we investigated how ivermectin and its analogues are interacted with Imp alpha/beta 1 heterodimer by molecular docking, steered molecular dynamics (SMD), classical molecular dynamics (MD), and MM/PBSA binding free energy analysis. Docking results showed that ivermectin dimer showed the highest binding affinity of -12.2 kcal/mol compared to its monomer. In SMD, the highest acceleration of 600 pm/ps(2) is noticed for D1-Imp alpha/beta 1 complex in the distance from 18.27 to 18.36 angstrom. The pulling force of 1745.86 pN is also detected for D1-Imp alpha/beta 1. To validate the docking and SMD results, 100 ns molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is performed on the D1-Imp alpha/beta 1 complex. The average RMSD value indicates a good structural stability of the complex despite some significant changes at the beginning. It is noted that most of the residues are stable over the simulation time with an average RMSF value of less than 2.65 angstrom. The MM/PBSA free energy of ivermectin also shows strong and spontaneous binding with the Imp alpha/beta 1.

Simulating the Upcoming Trend of Malaysia’s Unemployment Rate Using Multiple Linear Regression

This research paper presents the approach of applying the simulation technique to predict the upcoming trend of Malaysia’s unemployment rate. The recent Malaysia’s unemployment rate has fluctuated at quite a high rate ever since the COVID-19 pandemic occurred. Population growth, Growth Domestic Product (GDP), inflation rate, interest rate, exchange rate, investment, government expenditure and most importantly the number of COVID-19 cases act as the independent variables in this paper. The Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) is used to determine the significance of each variable to be included in the model and also to simulate the upcoming trend of Malaysia’s unemployment rate. The result of the analysis shows that the upcoming five years trend of Malaysia’s unemployment rate will continue to increase in the future based on the average value of the simulations conducted. © 2021, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Technology anxiety and its impact on e-learning system actual use in Jordan public universities during the Coronavirus disease pandemic

During the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, universities were obligated to transform from traditional classroom teaching environments to virtual ones. This sudden transformation highlighted the issue of low e-learning system usage amongst instructors of humanity faculties in Jordan's public universities. This study empirically investigated the moderating impact of technology anxiety on the relationship between the instructor's self-efficacy and the e-learning system's actual use to contribute to solving the problem. A survey was distributed to 468 instructors to test the theoretical framework, which yielded 285 valid and complete instruments analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results showed the positive direct effect of self-efficacy on actual use. Furthermore, the level of technology anxiety moderated the relationship. Instructors with low technology anxiety showed a higher level of e-learning system actual usage than those with a high anxiety level. To improve the use of e-learning systems, top management must understand the fundamental role of compulsory training as the Covid-19 pandemic, and the instructor's confidence must be increased by providing training and support. © 2021 The Author(s). Open Access - This article is under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

COVID-19 Mini-Review: D614G mutation as an independent risk-factor to the expression of ACE2 and DPP4 associated increased severity in COVID-19

The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) has struck more than 99 million people worldwide and had claimed more than 2 million lives as of 23 January 2021, which affecting 221 countries/nations. Until now, the pandemic has not shown signals of slowing down, with no proven vaccine in sight. People are speculating on this unprecedented event. It is well documented that the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the viral spiked S1 glycoprotein directly bind angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and dipeptidyl-peptidase-4 (DPP4) or CD26 (cluster of differentiation 26) receptors lead to their entry. The latest evidence demonstrated that SAR-CoV-2 possesses genetic heterogeneity, lead to the existence of a new SAR-CoV-2 variant, such as D614G encoded the spiked S1. The mutation involved changes in amino acid sequence of D (aspartic acid) into G (guanine) at position 614. D614G was reported to confer high infectivity and became the dominant form of the virus globally. Interestingly, current evidence found that D614G protein increases its infectivity dependent on the ACE2 receptor, and its co-binding receptor, DPP4. This proclaims implied to COVID-19 high-risk groups;the aging population and the people with comorbidities;hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, which constituted the most of lethal cases, that overexpressed ACE2 and DPP4. The review aims to find an association between COVID-19 infectivity and severity relating to D614G mutation with the expression of ACE2 or DPP4 in these groups. We proposed that D614G mutation and expressions of ACE2 and DPP4 were mutually inclusive for increase infectivity, but not severity in COVID-19 s patients. © 2021 Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. All rights reserved.

COVID-19 responses among general people of Bangladesh: Status and individual view toward COVID-19 during lockdown period

This cross-sectional study has evaluated the level of the COVID-19 response among the general people of Bangladesh through their COVID-19 basic knowledge, attitude and practice level to reduce the outbreak. A rapid self-administered online survey was conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown period in Bangladesh. Convenience and snowball sampling technique were followed in this study. The online survey was open for all Bangladeshi general people whether they were infected or not. For this study, total 616 Bangladeshi respondents participated where majority of them were from Dhaka city, one of the worst COVID-19 affected cities in the world. Normality of data was checked before statistical analysis. Majority of the respondents reported moderate safety of their current place from COVID-19 with high concern of their mental health during COVID-19 lockdown period. The total COVID-19 responses among these people were moderate along with the alarming high percentages of low COVID-19 responses. The respondents reported moderate COVID-19 knowledge level and moderate attitude level toward the COVID-19 control. They demonstrated that they followed practices to prevent the COVID-19 infection. Female respondents were identified with better COVID-19 responses compared to their male counterpart. Dhaka city residents had less confidence on their current place being safe from COVID-19. They also had low COVID-19 responses during the lockdown period compared to the residents living outside Dhaka city. © 2021 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.