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Automatic sprinkler systems are considered as one of the most important facilities for providing building fire safety. Even old high‐rise buildings are required to upgrade the fire safety provisions. Four standards on installing sprinkler systems in high‐rise commercial buildings are briefly reviewed and compared. They are the British Standard 5306, the National Fire Protection Association Standard NFPA‐13, the Australian Standard 2118.1 and the Codes of China. Key areas are discussed by comparing their suitabilities for local use. Designs following the four standards for a typical old high‐rise building (i.e. those built before 1972) will be worked out to illustrate the differences in using the four methods.

Rural Australian patients continue to receive inadequate medical attention. One potential solution to this is to train Indigenous Australians to become medical doctors and return to their community to serve their people. The study aims to examine whether Indigenous medical students have a stronger intention to practice in underserved communities.

A sample of Indigenous (N = 17) and non-Indigenous students (N = 188) from a medical program in Sydney was surveyed about their medical self-concept and motivation. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted, group differences were tested, and correlation patterns were examined.

CFA found seven distinct factors – three medical self-concepts (affective, cognitive, and cultural competence), one motivation factor, and three work-related variables – intention to serve underserved communities (intention), understanding of Indigenous health (understanding), and work-related anxiety (anxiety). Indigenous medical students were higher in cultural competence, intention, and understanding. Both the affective and cognitive components of medical self-concept were more highly correlated with intention and understanding for Indigenous students than for non-Indigenous students.

It is important to examine medical students’ self-concepts as well as their cultural characteristics and strengths that seed success in promoting service to underserved Indigenous communities.

The findings show that Indigenous medical students tended to understand Indigenous health issues better and to be more willing to serve underserved Indigenous communities. By enhancing both the affective and cognitive components of medical self-concepts, the “home-grown” medical education program is more likely to produce medical doctors to serve underserved communities with a good understanding of Indigenous health.

A field survey on 36 old high‐rise buildings in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR, formerly Hong Kong) was conducted to study the problems of the retrofit installation of sprinkler systems in those buildings. The floor plan, occupancy type, number of occupants, fire load distribution, hazard class, number of sprinklers to protection area ratio and the number of sprinkler heads were studied along with the characteristics of the buildings identified. A detailed investigation was carried out in an old high‐rise non‐residential building with sprinkler system installed. It was observed that the retrofit sprinkler systems might not perform satisfactorily in case of fire. Further, water discharged might not reach the ground level because the sprinkler sprays pattern was not considered. Technical and financial difficulties of installing sprinkler systems in old high‐rise buildings were studied. In addition, it was ascertained that problems related to structural loading for the system, variation in the occupancy level, allocating spaces for the sprinkler system components such as water tank, pumps and pipes compound the complexity of installing sprinkler systems in old high‐rise buildings. Finally, the cost for retrofit sprinkler installation has been estimated.

Blockchain technology (BCT) is considered a promising tool to improve the productivity of construction project management. Existing research has studied its potential costs and benefits for the construction industry. However, the potential costs and benefits of BCT failed to be compared as actual costs and benefits of specific applications for stakeholders. To fill this gap, this study seeks to analyze the cost-effectiveness of BCT-based applications in construction project management.

This study is conducted with a customized systematic literature review based on transaction cost theory to enable qualitative comparison. With a deliberately designed structure confining extraneous variables, the costs and benefits of BCT-based applications are identified and compared. The inherent dependent relations of processes and the evolution relations of functions are identified. The cost-effectiveness of blockchain adoption is then analyzed.

Seven functions and six challenges are identified within five processes. The result suggests all identified functions are cost-effective except for manual instruction (coding smart contracts manually). The smart contracts require explicit definition and logic to be effective. However, the construction projects essentially require the institution to be flexible due to unpredictability. The adoption of smart contracts and corresponding additional requirements can increase the transaction cost of bounded rationality.

As manual instruction is fundamental to realize other functions, and its advanced substitute relies on its broad adoption, its cost-effectiveness must be improved for applications to be acceptable to stakeholders. The establishment of a universal smart contract model and a universal, legitimate and efficient database structure are recommended to minimize the cost and maximize the effect of applications.

This study contributes to the knowledge by providing a comprehensive analysis of BCT adoption’s cost-effectiveness in construction project management. The adopted review structure can be extended to analyze the qualitative benefits and challenges of management automation in the early stages.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the combined roles that perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use, perceived security and hedonic motivation play on the adoption of e-banking. It also aims to determine the ability of hedonic motivation to transfer the effect of other determinants of e-banking adoption.

In order to empirically test the conceptual model of this study, data were collected from the users of e-banking in Nigeria. A total of 266 questionnaires were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling.

The empirical results revealed a significant and positive relationship between PU, perceived security and e-banking adoption. The same result was found to be applicable to the relationship between PU, perceived ease of use, perceived security and hedonic motivation. However, support was not found for the relationship between perceived ease of use and adoption of e-banking. Hedonic motivation plays a mediating role between PU, perceived security and e-banking adoption. The study did not find a mediating effect of hedonic motivation between perceived ease of use and e-banking adoption.

The results of this study provide insights for banking practitioners to know which aspect of e-banking to improve and to aid with policies that will increase adoption. Furthermore, improvements in hedonic motivation will also significantly increase adoption of e-banking.

This study is one of the pioneer studies that tests the mediating influence of hedonic motivation.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the current applications of BIM, the integration of related technologies and the tendencies and challenges systematically.

Using quantitative and qualitative bibliometric statistical methods, the current mode of interaction between BIM and other related technologies is summarized.

This paper identified 24 different BIM applications in the life cycle. From two perspectives, the implementation status of BIM applications and integrated technologies are respectively studied. The future industry development framework is drawn comprehensively. We summarized the challenges of BIM applications from the perspectives of management, technology and promotion, and confirmed that most of the challenges come from the two driving factors of promotion and management.

The technical challenges reviewed in this paper are from the collected literature we have extracted, which is only a part of the practical challenges and not comprehensive enough.

We summarized the current mode of interactive use of BIM and sorted out the challenges faced by BIM applications to provide reference for the risks and challenges faced by the future industry.

There is little literature to integrate BIM applications and to establish BIM related challenges and risk frameworks. In this paper, we provide a review of the current implementation level of BIM and the risks and challenges of stakeholders through three aspects of management, technology and promotion.

The impact of COVID-19 on the lives of people and businesses across the globe was devastating. While governments across the world had undertaken a slew of measures to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus within their geography, many of these measures had long and unintended consequences. The restrictions imposed by the governments on the movement of people and goods across the world brought supply chains to a grinding halt. This study identifies the cascading effects of supply chain disruptions (SCDs) on the energy sector and thereby on the security of supply of energy from a European Union perspective. Since these systems are closely integrated and the impact of COVID-19 needs to be analysed at a much broader level, this study uses a systems-thinking approach to study the effect of SCDs on energy services. The study develops a causal loop model to gain further insight into how SCDs caused by COVID-19 affected the coping capabilities of society and how critical services were affected. Furthermore, the study puts forth certain policy recommendations for both businesses and governments to prepare for and protect against a similar situation in the future.

This qualitative study extends jigsaw lesson study (JLS) by focusing specifically on the impact of feedback on teacher candidates’ (TCs') professional knowledge and instructional growth in the teacher-educator classroom.

For this study, JLS took place in two different methods courses and followed the lesson study (LS) framework using the small group rotations of JLS. In each course, the JLS small group teams taught another team before receiving feedback and revising their lessons. Then they would teach another group. After each iteration, teams debriefed and reviewed the feedback to revise their lessons and prepare for reteaching. Following the JLS process, TCs reflected on the impact of feedback in a post-survey that was analyzed, coded and aligned with their lesson iterations and revisions.

Both integrated language arts (ILA) and math TCs reported that receiving peer feedback improved their lessons, instructional materials, revisions and student engagement. Through collaboration, TCs valued peer dialog, multiple perspectives and TCs learned to provide and receive constructive feedback professionally. Overall, feedback and collaboration helped strengthen their lesson planning as they considered multiple perspectives. Feedback helped TCs consider differentiation and the diversity of learners as well as student engagement while building their professional knowledge.

Although a previous study has shown an impact of JLS in ILA teacher-education courses with a broader scope in mathematics courses, this study focused on the JLS process in two teacher-education courses. Furthermore, current research tends to focus on the LS process, but this study focused specifically on TCs’ perceptions of the impact of feedback of their professional and instructional growth.