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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of every business organisation across the world. It is a system designed to mimic human attributes such as speech, learning and problem-solving. It promotes cognitive functioning and can supplement and replace human workers in social, intellectual and professional contexts. AI serves as a versatile toolbox encompassing a range of technologies, including machine learning (ML), natural language processing, expert systems, neural networks, deep learning, robots and automation. These tools transform the business and marketing landscapes and infuse entertainment with innovation to boost consumer engagement. The growth of AI has set a new standard for what customers expect from businesses. AI provides companies with powerful tools to comprehend and meet customer expectations effectively. AI has given rise to diverse technologies, including robots, avatars, virtual bots and narrowcasting. The advent of AI-driven chatbots is revolutionising customer service by delivering instant responses, efficiently addressing queries and slashing wait times. This blend of AI and a customer-centric approach establishes the foundation for sustainable growth and enduring customer loyalty. This chapter will shed light on the present state of awareness regarding AI and ML and their impact on consumer engagement. We aim to illustrate how AI is utilised and its effects on the marketing landscape.

While extensive research exists on how positive life circumstances and positive personality traits promote entrepreneurship, there is little research focusing on how negative personal circumstances may potentially breed entrepreneurship. This study aims to build upon the theory of underdog entrepreneurship to examine the effect of challenging life circumstances such as poverty on the development of entrepreneurial traits in underdog entrepreneurs. This research analyzed the effect of risk-taking (RT) on the entrepreneurial success (ES) of underdog entrepreneurs and the role of optimism (OPM) and persistence (P) as mediating variables and poverty as a moderator variable.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect data from 400 micro-finance borrowers of Akhuwat Foundation Pakistan. Akhuwat provides interest-free small loans to the poor segment of society. Preliminary testing of the survey questionnaire with a sample of 35 borrowers of Akhuwat Foundation in Lahore city was conducted before data collection. Data was collected from four randomly selected branches in Lahore city.

The authors found that OPM and P significantly mediate the relationship between RT and ES. In addition, the authors analyzed the moderating effect of poverty on the relationship between OPM and ES and found a negative moderating effect. A strong positive moderating effect of poverty was found on the relationship between P and ES. The results of multi-group analysis show that successful and unsuccessful underdog entrepreneurs differ in their RT propensity, which is significantly mediated by OPM and P.

This study provides empirical evidence on entrepreneurial traits and success of poor entrepreneur in an emerging economy. This work is original and has not been submitted elsewhere.

This research aims at investigating how business process management capabilities (BPMC) impact the effectiveness of sustainable digital transformation (ESDT). Furthermore, it delves into the mediation of dynamic decision-making (DDM) in the relationship between BPMC and ESDT.

This research employed the hypothetico-deductive technique. The statistical database was generated from sample of 712 respondents from small and medium companies (SMEs) in Vietnam, utilizing convenience and snowball sampling methods. The two-step process utilizing structural equation modeling, supported by SmartPLS version 4.1.0.9 and AMOS 28, was employed to assess the measurement model, while SmartPLS version 4.1.0.9 was used to evaluate the structural model.

The results of the analysis emphasize significant and positive correlations between the proposed constructs related to significance and effect size. The statistical results indicated that BPMC had a significant and beneficial effect on ESDT. This relationship was partially mediated by DMM.

The salient point emphasized that practitioners should prioritize enhancing focus on BPMC and DDM, as this would significantly facilitate more comprehensive solutions, enabling SMEs to achieve optimal success in sustainable digital transformation. Policymakers and government influencers are urged to concentrate on innovative attributes and ensure a conducive environment for the implementation of innovation by enacting regulations that promote the application of digital technology.

The findings of this study will broaden scholars’ understanding of the influence of BPMC on ESDT. The originality of the research is to provide research directions for advancing studies on the role of DDM in the context of sustainable digital transformation.

The traditional information phase of value engineering (VE) workshops often involves face-to-face meetings and physical site visits, which can be time-consuming, costly and impractical due to various constraints. This paper introduces a web-based platform integrating BIM and GIS to streamline this phase by systematically gathering, processing and visualizing multi-format information in a virtual environment.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to analyze the potential of BIM and GIS integration in the VE context. A three-step information structure generation method was employed to outline the information gathering needs during the VE workshops, incorporating a review of multi-source references. A framework including information gathering, processing and visualization was proposed to streamline the information phase with BIM and GIS integration as the core. Subsequently, a web-based prototype platform was developed utilizing the three-layer architecture, with the case study to demonstrate its application. A comprehensive evaluation involving black box testing, user interface testing and focus group discussion was conducted to validate the functionality, usability, potential and limitations.

The platform can support the systematic collection, processing, organization and visualization of multi-format information during the information phase, enable virtual meetings and virtual site visits and facilitate VE participants’ review, understanding and analysis of such information and the documentation of their comments and suggestions. The black box testing validated its functionality, with necessity, effectiveness and convenience confirmed by VE practitioners. Its potential was approved due to clear information structure, web-based virtual review and logical multi-format information organization.

The generalized four-category information structure and proposed three-layer framework streamline the information phase of VE practices. The developed platform allows the VE team to review multi-format information virtually, simultaneously, freely and as many times as necessary.

This study aims to explore how the seal face structure affects the gas flow and film performance, focusing on compliant foil face gas seal with an upstream pumping spiral gap. The research is done to reveal the leakage control mechanism and obtain the optimal parameters of structure.

A gas-elastic coupling lubrication model for compliant foil face gas seal is developed using gas lubrication and elastic mechanics theories. The finite difference method is applied to calculate film pressure, deformation and flow rate variations under varying gap spiral angles. What’s more, the impacts of equilibrium film thickness, rotational speed and medium pressure on sealing performances are researched, and the flexibility coefficients α₁ (dynamic pressure area) and α₂ (sealing area) are optimized.

This design significantly reduces leakage rates while maintaining the adaptive operation capability of compliant foil face gas seals. When α₁ takes values from 0.10 to 0.15, α₂ takes values from 0.5 to 0.6 and φ (gap spiral angle) is equal to 30°, the comprehensive performance of sealing in steady and transient states is better.

Integrating the design concept of upstream pumping dry gas seals and the adaptive structure of compliant foil face gas seals, a novel foil face gas seal structure with upstream pumping function is proposed.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-11-2024-0434/

When handling small-sized shafts and holes, achieving optimal safety, size compatibility and shape adaptability using rigid grippers presents significant problems. Recent advancements have introduced soft end-effectors that offer enhanced safety and adaptability for gripping parts. However, these soft end-effectors often struggle to maintain the necessary gripping positional accuracy. The purpose of this paper is to design a soft end-effector specifically engineered to address these problems, combining precise gripping capabilities with improved safety, positional accuracy and adaptability to the size and shape of fragile, small-sized components.

A soft finger with multilayer decreasing drive air chambers is designed to achieve the finger bending increasing from the root to the tip of the finger to improve the flexibility of the fingertip. Additionally, a three-finger self-centering configuration is employed, coupled with an expandable structure to increase the gripping range. Furthermore, a theoretical mathematical model of the finger is established. The physical prototype is manufactured and subjected to experimental testing, including gripping tests on small-sized, fragile shaft holes, to validate its operational performance.

The grasping experiments confirm that the designed end-effector can maintain coaxial positioning and meet adaptability requirements when handling fragile components with small-sized shaft holes. Furthermore, the addition of expanding palm structure increases the gripping attitude and enriches the application scene and gripping space.

The design of multilayer decreasing air chamber structure to solve the problem of poor gripping stability and low positional accuracy of soft manipulator; the expandable palm design is introduced to enhance gripping space; and solved the problem of gripping accuracy in the assembly of fragile parts with small-size shafts and holes.

This study’s aim is to introduce a high-performance sorbent for the removal of both anionic (Congo red; CR) and cationic (methylene blue; MB) dyes from aqueous solutions.

Sodium silicate is adopted as a substrate for GO and AgNPs with positive charge are used as modifiers. The synthesized nanocomposite is characterized by FTIR, FESEM, EDS, BET and XRD techniques. Then, some of the most effective parameters on the removal of CR and MB dyes such as solution pH, sorbent dose, adsorption equilibrium time, primary dye concentration and salt effect are optimized using the spectrophotometry technique.

The authors successfully achieved notable maximum adsorption capacities (Qmax) of CR and MB, which were 41.15 and 37.04 mg g⁻¹, respectively. The required equilibrium times for maximum efficiency of the developed sorbent were 10 and 15 min for CR and MB dyes, respectively. Adsorption equilibrium data present a good correlation with Langmuir isotherm, with a correlation coefficient of R2 = 0.9924 for CR and R2 = 0.9904 for MB, and kinetic studies prove that the dye adsorption process follows pseudo second-order models (CR R2 = 0.9986 and MB R2 = 0.9967).

The results showed that the proposed mechanism for the function of the developed sorbent in dye adsorption was based on physical and multilayer adsorption for both dyes onto the active sites of non-homogeneous sorbent.

The as-prepared nano-adsorbent has a high ability to remove both cationic and anionic dyes; moreover, to the high efficiency of the adsorbent, it has been tried to make its synthesis steps as simple as possible using inexpensive and available materials.

This paper aims to address the issue of privacy leakage indirectly caused by non-private data shared by travellers on location-based social media (LBSM) in data mining.

This paper proposes a privacy-preserving location data collection approach based on local differential privacy (LDP) and validates the feasibility of the approach through experiments on three real-world public check-in datasets.

The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach, which preserves privacy while retaining over 90% of the data utility.

This research has the potential to assist tourism practitioners in establishing improved collaborations with trusted third parties, enabling the exploration of user location data insights without undue concerns regarding indirect privacy breaches during data mining, thereby enhancing travellers’ experience and aiding businesses’ decision-making.

This paper is likely to be the first to represent a promising solution for addressing privacy leakage concerns related to non-sensitive data in data mining. It provides a location data collection technology that strikes a balance between user privacy and data utility for tourism practitioners.

This study aimed to investigate the determinants of healthy lifestyle behavior in married people. It also sought to propose an integrative model that incorporates variables from two theoretical models, namely, the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the health belief model (HBM), as well as two additional variables, namely habit and body image dissatisfaction.

Questionnaires were used to gather data, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied for statistical analysis. Data were collected from 404 respondents using several assessment tools, including the Health Belief Model Scale, the Theory of Planned Behavior Scale, the Healthy Lifestyle Belief Scale, the Body Area Scale, and the Creature of Habit Scale.

The findings showed that perceived severity is the predictor of a healthy lifestyle attitude, followed by subjective norm, perceived behavior control, and healthy lifestyle attitude as the primary attendants of intention. Meanwhile, it was found that a healthy lifestyle attitude is a significant mediator in the perceived severity and healthy lifestyle intention relationship. The suggested model outperforms the original TPB and HBM models in predictive ability, proving its utility and efficacy in describing healthy lifestyle behavior.

Adding constructs in the TPB and HBM models contributed considerably to improving the understanding of healthy lifestyle behavior among married people. Governments and policymakers might utilize the findings to design and execute a new program or a sustained healthy lifestyle for married people.

This paper aims to investigate the lubrication characteristics of siliconized graphite with a wavy-tilt-dam (WTD) pattern applied to the hydrodynamic face seals.

It focuses on two friction pairs, carbon graphite versus tungsten carbide (CG-TC) and siliconized graphite versus siliconized graphite (SG-SG), through a three-dimensional elastic hydrodynamic lubrication numerical model that integrates finite difference method and finite element method. The consequence of axial elastic deformation of sealing pair materials on film thickness, film pressure, cavitation and sealing performance for a WTD mechanical face seal under full working conditions of ΔP = 0.8, 5.3 and 15.8 MPa are analyzed theoretically.

The nuclear hydrodynamic WTD face seal generates a convergent gap and exhibits a dual-characteristic behavior of hydrodynamic and hydrostatic effects under various ΔP. Compared to the CG-TC, the SG-SG shows a lower minimum film thickness, decreasing by 3.9%, 17.3% and 35.1%. The flow leakage rate decreases by 47.8%, 52.1% and 75.4%. In addition, the film stiffness increases by 46.8%, 49.8% and 97.8%. Thus, the SG-SG better deals with the dynamic tracking problem, and the sealing performance is stable. The strength and hardness of siliconized graphite enhance WTD sealing performance and improve cavitation control in high-pressure applications.

The lubrication characteristics of the siliconized graphite with a WTD pattern could inform the future design of hydrodynamic shallow groove wavy seals in boiler feedwater engineering implements under high-pressure conditions for the nuclear power industry.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-10-2024-0382/