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The results of the corrosion of metals and alloys with the use of solvent mixtures covering a wide range of compositions are limited in the literature. These mixed solvent systems possess a wide range of viscosity, dielectric constant and acid‐base properties. With this view, a kinetic study on the corrosion of metals in different aquo‐organic solvent systems has been undertaken. The corrosion of metals and alloys is strongly affected by the presence of water, the latter being found to have a passivating effect and sometimes a passivity breakdown effect. It is therefore of much interest to study the influence of varying water concentration on the corrosion and electrochemical behaviour of metal and alloys. The present work is a continuation of our studies on the kinetic of corrosion of metals in mixed aqueous‐organic solvents. Also, the corrosion rates are correlated to the dielectric constant and the total number of moles (n1 + n2) of water and ethylene glycol. This latter new correlation is described by El‐Shazly et al. for calculating the chemical potential (Δμ*) from kinetic data and molar thermodynamic excess functions for binary mixtures.

Purpose – Urban and suburban arterials carry a large share of urban traffic and contend with a relatively large proportion of transport network crashes. Road crashes and their consequent societal costs diminish the sustainability of transportation systems, highlighting the need to identify road safety problems and their corresponding solutions. This chapter briefly outlines problems and solutions associated with crash risk on urban and suburban arterials. In addition, this chapter studies and discusses several safety countermeasures – ranging from local treatments to integral frameworks – and their effectiveness on improving traffic safety of urban and suburban arterials.

Approach – Crash occurrence on urban and suburban arterials is affected by numerous contributing factors. This chapter pays attention primarily to the effects of traffic characteristics and road design features. In this regard, several pertinent variables which have been extensively examined in the literature are reviewed and their contributions to the safety of urban and suburban arterials are discussed.

Findings – A review of the literature identifies a number of variables as influential factors of crashes on urban and suburban arterials. Although the associations of some variables (e.g., traffic volume) are consistent with expectations, others (e.g., lane width and speed) show mixed and sometimes counterintuitive results. These findings signify that additional research is needed to reveal the correct functional form and magnitude of these relationships.

Practical implications – The results show that while the general direction and magnitude of effects of some engineering and management-related treatments are known, additional research is needed to consolidate the impact and effectiveness of integrated approaches.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)’s expenses in the health and social fields and the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) 1 (elimination of poverty) and 3 (good health and well-being). This paper also examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on these expenses and goals.

This paper observes the public expenses and the targets of the SDGs of KSA during 1981–2022. This paper tests the stationarity of the variables and then uses the ordinary least square model or the autoregressive distributed lag model, depending on the unit root test results. This paper also observes the change in target goals between the two years of the pandemic and the two preceding years.

The results show the influence of social expenditure on the progress of SDG-1, whereas the impact of health expenditure on SDG-3 is not significant. This paper also proves the impact of the pandemic on public expenses and social SDGs.

This paper attracts the attention of policymakers to the importance of assessing their SDG initiatives and the consequent outcomes. Additionally, this paper documents the initiatives for sustainable development in KSA, an important emerging country. Given the universal nature of the SDGs and the importance of KSA as an economic power with a large youth human capital potential, the findings offer insights applicable beyond KSA and provide valuable lessons for governments worldwide regarding the optimization of public spending for SDG achievement. Moreover, monitoring SDG advancement in this important country helps assess the progress of the the United Nations (UN)’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Therefore, This paper helps boost the completion of this agenda and contributes to the bottom-up approach of the UN 2030 Vision, implicating all categories of stakeholders, including the academic community.

This paper furthers the literature on SDG achievement by analyzing the relationship between public expenses and SDGs. This paper contributes to the debate concerning the best methodology suitable for SDG valuation and adds to the few studies using autoregressive tests. Moreover, this paper enriches the scarce studies dealing with emerging countries and reviews the assessment of SDGs in KSA. Additionally, this paper investigates the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the assigned resources for SDGs and, consequently, on the related indicator scores.

This paper aims to answer the question: To what extent should neurodiverse students experience improved access to public universities in Egypt and why?

A systematic qualitative research method was used with data collected through semi-structured interviews with 44 educators in four universities in Egypt. A thematic approach was implemented to analyze the collected data.

The addressed educators believe that greater representation of neurodiverse students in their schools should be a priority for the following four reasons: first, neurodiverse students represent a promising new market segment schools could benefit from; second, recruiting more neurodiverse students represents a chance for schools and faculties to prove the social role they can undertake; third, schools can benefit from the unique skills many neurodiverse students have, particularly in mathematical and computational skills; and fourth, the greater the representation of neurodiverse students, the more research projects and funding opportunities educators can obtain.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in diversity management, higher education and human resources management in which empirical studies on the representation of neurodiverse individuals in public universities have been limited so far.

This chapter examines the determinants of accountability practices disclosure on the websites of Malaysian local authorities, from the institutional isomorphism perspective.

A content analysis was employed to examine the websites of all local authorities in Malaysia. A modified accountability disclosure index was used to examine the extent of accountability practices disclosure on websites. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the significant impact of institutional factors on the accountability practices disclosure.

The results suggest that, on average, Malaysian local authorities have disclosed 42 items (or 42%) of the accountability practices disclosure on the websites. The implementation of innovation activities, political competition and press visibility has statistically influenced the extent of accountability practices disclosure of Malaysian local authorities on the websites on the premise of coercive isomorphism.

This chapter highlights the institutional factors that influence the extent of online accountability practices disclosure of local authorities in developing countries. The findings therefore enable local authorities to explore the best possible approaches to effectively discharge accountability and to promote greater transparency through the dissemination of information on the website.

This chapter contributes to the public sector accounting literature by introducing new institutional factors that influence the disclosure practice of local authorities in Malaysia i.e. the establishment of the Integrity Unit and implementation of innovation activities under the public sector reform agenda.

This study aims to investigate the association between the presence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) disclosure, as well as the moderating role of gender diversity in this relation.

The sample consists of 897 annual observations from 238 firms from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru for 2018–2020. The data were collected from the Refinitiv database. The proposed model and hypotheses were tested using the feasible generalized least squares estimation technique with heteroscedasticity and panel-specific AR1 autocorrelation.

The results reveal that the presence of CSR committees positively influences the SDGs. Gender diversity positively moderates the relationship between CSR committees and SDGs. Leverage and firm size also positively impact the SDGs. On the other hand, board size and CEO duality negatively affect SDGs disclosure.

This study extends the scope of stakeholder theory by suggesting that CSR committees and gender diversity enable a better relationship for the firm with its stakeholders.

The findings support policymakers and managers in improving sustainability disclosure. In addition, the results demonstrate the importance of CSR committees and gender diversity to meet the stakeholders' demands.

This study demonstrates how firms can improve sustainability issues through gender diversity and CSR committees.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study complements previous literature by being the first to examine the moderating effect of gender diversity on the association between CSR committees and SDGs disclosure in the Latin American context.

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the leading cancer in the world, BC risk has been there for women of the middle age also, it is the malignant tumor. However, identifying BC in the early stage will save most of the women’s life. As there is an advancement in the technology research used Machine Learning (ML) algorithm Random Forest for ranking the feature, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Naïve Bayes (NB) supervised classifiers for selection of best optimized features and prediction of BC accuracy. The estimation of prediction accuracy has been done by using the dataset Wisconsin Breast Cancer Data from University of California Irvine (UCI) ML repository. To perform all these operation, Anaconda one of the open source distribution of Python has been used. The proposed work resulted in extemporize improvement in the NB and SVM classifier accuracy. The performance evaluation of the proposed model is estimated by using classification accuracy, confusion matrix, mean, standard deviation, variance, and root mean-squared error.

The experimental results shows that 70-30 data split will result in best accuracy. SVM acts as a feature optimizer of 12 best features with the result of 97.66% accuracy and improvement of 1.17% after feature reduction. NB results with feature optimizer 17 of best features with the result of 96.49% accuracy and improvement of 1.17% after feature reduction.

The study shows that proposal model works very effectively as compare to the existing models with respect to accuracy measures.

This study aims to explore how the structure of the board of directors is influenced by national informal culture values and the strength of formal institutional environments, as measured through legal regulations, market conditions and investor protection regulations.

This study analyzes data from 432 companies listed in the S&P Global 1200 index using structural equation modeling. National cultural dimensions from Hofstede’s (2011) framework capture informal cultural aspects, while the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators assess formal institutions. This study examines board structure in terms of leadership style, board size, board independence, board committee structure and board diversity.

The results reveal that national cultural values are negatively associated with rule of law institutions, indicating that culture can substitute for legal institutions, acting as “soft” regulation. Cultural values establish social norms and accountability when legal frameworks are weak. In addition, national culture positively relates to open market institutions, enhancing transparency, fairness and competition in strong markets. The findings also show that national culture and formal institutions significantly shape managerial perceptions of the board’s role and structure, impacting how firms prioritize monitoring versus resource provision.

The findings offer valuable insights for managers in diverse institutional contexts, enabling them to adjust board structures according to cultural and institutional factors.

The research advocates for tailored governance practices that fit specific institutional and cultural contexts. Multinational corporations can benefit from customizing their governance structures according to the cultural and institutional environments of the countries in which they operate.

This paper contributes to existing literature by focusing on complementarity as well as substitution mechanisms between national cultural characteristics and formal institutions in shaping board structure.

This paper aims to explore the opinions and recommendations of various experts on the integrated cash waqf micro enterprise investment (ICWME-I) model, particularly in terms of its suitability, applicability and prospects in the market.

The research involves primary data which are collected from semi-structured interviews conducted with experts from various backgrounds. Thematic analysis was used to examine the data.

The experts support the suitability of the ICWME-I model in providing financial services to micro enterprises. They highlight the importance of establishing, managing and operating ICWME-I model under the aegis of the State Islamic Religious Council in Malaysia or the corporate sector. They further emphasize that the characteristics of micro enterprises, the element of sustainable funding, the importance of proper management and administration, legal matters and public awareness are key factors that influence the sustainability of the ICWME-I model.

This paper adds to the literature on waqf and micro enterprises especially from the Malaysian context. The paper validates the ICWME-I model in terms of its suitability, applicability and prospects in the market by interviewing experts from various backgrounds.

This paper aims to evaluate the effects of fraud risk elements and integrity on asset misappropriation in the Royal Malaysian Police (RMP). In addition, this research also examines whether integrity moderates the relationship between fraud risk elements and asset misappropriation.

Data are gathered from the responses of the questionnaires distributed to the RMP. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed based on simple random selection from five RMP centres in the capital city. Out of 200 questionnaires distributed, only 189 were returned.

The findings indicate that the existence of fraud risk elements significantly affects the incident of asset misappropriation. An interesting finding was made that integrity is negatively related to asset misappropriation. This implies that integrity is an important value in minimising the occurrence of asset misappropriation. The results also indicate that minimising fraud risk elements is crucial in reducing the incident of asset misappropriation.

This present paper contributes to the literature by investigating a commonly proposed but underexplored elements of integrity in mitigating fraud. Incorporating integrity and fraud risk elements simultaneously in a single framework in context of RMP would enhance the understanding and will be able to provide a framework for practitioners on how to mitigate the incident of fraud.