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Wool fabric is a suitable medium for growing bacteria under favorable temperature and humidity conditions resulting in wool degradation, skin irritation or infections. Carboxylic groups were incorporated in wool polypeptide chains by grafting acrylic acid initiated chemically with hydrogen peroxide and metallic anions of Cu²⁺.The mechanism of grafting is suggested, and post-treatment with two antibiotics, Neomycin (Ne) and Tetracycline hydrochloride (Te), to obtain antibacterial fibers in relation to Gram-positive and Gram-negative microorganisms. This was confirmed by measuring the inhibition zone of treated wool fabric with the above mentioned antibiotic under various conditions. The modified fabrics showed different activities in relation to the microorganisms being dependent on the type and quantity of added biocide. Post-treated wool fabric displayed excellent bacteriostatic durability on fabric after multiple washing. FT-IR spectroscopy confirmed the ionic interaction between wool and the antibiotic due to the appearance of new bands at 1650 cm⁻¹ corresponding to amide I and band at 1520 cm⁻¹ attributed to amide II. Wool treated with the aforementioned method showed improvement in shrinkage. Changes in surface morphology were also observed.

This study aims to the synthesis of some novel 4-arylazo-3-hydroxythiophene analogues containing sulphapyridine and sulphathiazole dyestuffs and studying their application in dyeing polyester fabrics and rendering their antibacterial efficacy.

Simultaneous dyeing and antibacterial finishing for polyester fabric using a new antibacterial disperse dye having a modified chemical structure to thiophene dyes were studied. Construction of the thiophene dyes was carried out by diazo-coupling of diazotized sulphonamide-containing heterocyclic rings sulphapyridine and sulphathiazole with ethyl α-phenylthiocarbamoyl-acetoacetate followed by cyclizing the produced 2-arylazo-thioacetanilide with various α-halogenated reagents. All newly synthesized compounds were characterized by elemental analysis and extensive study of their spectral data (IR and ¹H-NMR). The dyeing characteristics of these thiophene dyestuffs were evaluated at optimum conditions. Antibacterial activities of the obtained thiophene dyes were studied against some Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria.

The synthesized thiophene-containing sulphonamides dyes were applied on polyester fabric. The modified dyes exhibited a good fastness properties and antibacterial efficacy against some Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Synthesized dyes showed higher antibacterial potency than the reference standard drug.

Synthesis of these disperse azo dyes for textile dyeing had never been reported previously.

The dyestuffs derived from thiophene are reasonable azo disperse dyestuffs giving good all-round fastness properties on polyester fabrics.

Thiophene dyes are used for dyeing polyester fabrics with brilliant colour and good fastness properties. The presence of sulphonamides moieties increase their fastness properties and elevate their antibacterial properties. Moreover, they can be used as antimicrobial finish due to their bactericidal properties on dyed textiles. This work afforded a new thiophene colorant that can be used in many different uses like polyester packing, thread Surgery, blends and other uses in medical textile.

This study examines how far female tour guides in Egypt experience sexual harassment and how they cope with it.

A qualitative research method is employed, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 full-time female tour guides working for several travel agencies in Egypt. Thematic analysis was used to extract the main ideas from the transcripts.

The findings show that female tour guides in Egypt would encounter annoying gender harassment mostly from tourists they serve, and they might suffer from irresponsible behavior – gender harassment, unwanted sexual harassment, and sexual coercion – from their local managers. When facing sexual harassment, female tour guides usually tend to adopt one of the following three coping strategies: (a) indifference to sexual harassment they encounter, (b) heroism by taking legal action when exposed to sexual harassment or (c) fatalism by taking inconsequential action such as complaining the harasser to his direct manager or filling in an official complaint inside their workplace. The selection of the coping strategy is usually based on the female victim's personality and the organizational and social context she adapts to.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in tourism, human resources management and gender studies in which empirical studies on the sexual harassment that female tour guides encounter, particularly in non-Western contexts, have been limited so far.

Sudan’s challenges are deeply rooted in a complex web of societal, political, and health-related issues. The nation is currently experiencing a challenging period that is impacting various aspects of human life, including the healthcare system for the youth, who are significantly impacted by this crisis that has persisted for a decade. Sudan, located in northeastern Africa, is an Arab nation and a member of the Greater Horn of Africa, along with Ethiopia and South Sudan. Despite its strategic location near the Nile River – a hub for global oil trade and other merchandise – it does not possess any military equipment. Its history, unfortunately, is marked by prolonged social conflicts. These conflicts have significantly affected essential infrastructures, social services, and the overall well-being of the population. We examine the conflict through humanitarian and socio-economic factors affecting Sudan and its people. This chapter explores the role of global economic forces and international relations in Sudan’s ability to address these challenges. Secondly, we explore the social structures, power dynamics, and interdependencies, examining how institutions and societal functions hinder comprehensive issue resolution through structural functionalism. Lastly, we will analyze the legal recognition and protection as foundational elements for human rights and assess the acknowledgment of rights, its absence influences the endurance of multifaceted challenges like health care and educational system by the Right to have Rights.

The purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual model that takes into account both edu-tourists’ perception and perceived service quality in explaining purchase intention of academic degrees from the foreign universities.

The study is based on an empirical examination with applying multivariate data analysis. The data were collected through survey questionnaires and analysed by using structural equation modelling procedure.

The survey result discovered that the relationship between perceived service quality and edu-tourist’s satisfaction was significant and positive. The relationship between edu-tourist’s satisfaction and intention to purchase was also significant and positive. Meanwhile, edu-tourist’s satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between their perceived service quality and intention to purchase. Nevertheless, this research also explored that the edu-tourist’s satisfaction plays a significant mediating effect in between the relationship of perception and intention to purchase.

This empirical study will contribute in understanding the behaviour of international students to construct the theoretical knowledge on the edu-tourism industry, which has been neglected in tourism research.

The paper will be of use to the management and policymakers in the higher education sector in understanding the customer’s expectation for the edu-tourism destination. This study contributes to the growing literature on education travel destination, where the researchers investigated the role of tourist’s satisfaction by using perception and perceived service quality towards their intention to visit a destination for education tourism. In addition, understanding the role satisfaction on the relationship between perception and perceived service quality towards the purchase intention will make both scientific and practical contributions for the decision-makers.

This paper aims to investigate how students’ attitude (SA), students’ subjective norms (SN), students’ knowledge sharing intentions (KSI) can contribute to the enhancement of knowledge sharing behaviour (KSB) among students at higher education institutes (HEI) in Oman.

This study follows the quantitative methodology and the deductive causal research approach. The data were conveniently collected through a Web-based questionnaire (Google forms) from 285 active students who are affiliated to Omani universities. SPSS was used to statistically analyse the collected data, including partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM V3.3) to draw the results.

The study concluded that SA has both direct and indirect positive impact on SN, KSI and KSB. Moreover, the result revealed that there is a mediation effect between SA and KSB through KSI, SA and KSI when SN is playing as a mediation role.

Although this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge, this study is limited by the scarcity of the related literature in the Omani context. It is recommended that these shortfalls be addressed together while improving the knowledge-sharing behaviour among students and administrative staff. Furthermore, the potential variation between academic staff and students in terms of factors affecting their intentions to share knowledge within HEIs should be explored.

This research provides policymakers in academic fields with the appropriate approaches to leverage the knowledge-sharing behaviour amongst Omani students with the understanding of the main factors affecting individuals’ knowledge-sharing behaviours.

This will help in improving the means of employing and practising knowledge-sharing strategies within HEIs, which can generate competitive advantages amongst students and institutions while benefiting knowledge management strategies and its members.

The importance of the study stems from its context being conducted in Oman as a developing country. In addition, this study is one of the initial attempts to investigate KSB by considering SA, SN and KSI and its applicability on HEI in Oman. The findings of the study can serve as inputs to HEI in developing best practices across KSB dimensions and expanding the knowledge-sharing culture amongst HEI’s students in Oman. One of the developed strategies is the spreading of the knowledge-sharing culture among students by positively directing their attitude towards the practices of knowledge exchange.

This study aims to measure the level of public awareness about the threat of the emerging coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic among the Omani population. It also aims to investigate the mediating effect of the Omanis’ attitudes and behaviors with underlying conditions of COVID-19.

A cross-sectional study was conducted to collect data via an online survey of Omani citizens and residents from various geographic areas in Oman, 305 responses were received. SPSS and partial least square-structural equation modeling were used for data analysis.

The study revealed that public awareness regarding the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly influenced by people’s perceived risk, information source and health-related knowledge. Further, preventive behavior during the disease spread has a significant direct and indirect impact on their awareness. However, an insignificant mediation effect of public attitude was found between the source of information and public awareness.

This study is limited by the scarcity of related literature in the Omani context. It is recommended that future research complete an in-depth study of public awareness regarding COVID-19, using other constructs and/or other data collection techniques.

This research will provide governmental health authorities and policymakers with a guideline to establish more efficient pandemic containment strategies to control public behavior toward the COVID-19 pandemic and curb viral prevalence.

This research will help in improving prevention measures against COVID-19 are recommended to be more educated through a more effective mechanism to raise public attitude regarding pandemic prevalence positively.

The originality of this research can be drawn from key findings that indicate that people overall gained knowledge about how to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and the accuracy of information significantly impacts public awareness.

Few well-documented studies have explained the importance of researching firms' marketing analytics capability (FMAC). In spite of its significance, there is scant attention to conceptualising and empirically investigating FMAC and its consequences in a data-driven business context. Thus, this study aims to develop and test a conceptual model that relates FMAC and its repercussions in the data-rich business environment.

This study analysed the data from 250 managers amongst large and medium-sized manufacturing and service-intensive firms. Furthermore, this research performed an empirical study by using operationalised questionnaire survey method to verify the hypotheses and reach its theoretical and managerial implications. Structural equation modelling with maximum-likelihood estimation method was applied to verify the validity of the proposed research model.

Multivariate analysis results show that FMAC significantly influences firms' competitive marketing performance (FCMP) with the presence of holistic marketing decision-making (HMDM) as a mediator. Moreover, adoption of artificial intelligence (AAI) enhances the relationship of FMAC-HMDM and FMAC-FCMP linkages.

This study analyses how FMAC can enhance FCMP and contributes to resource-based views and technological capability theories. From a managerial perspective, guidelines are provided for marketers to adopt advance technologies, such as AI, to optimise FMAC and HMDM to achieve competitive marketing performance.

Believing that “how to be competitive in marketing performance under data-rich-environment”, this research is the first to use the data of a firm manager to facilitate the understanding of FMAC, which provides a new direction for improving marketing performance. In addition, HMDM and AAI are also proposed for firms to optimise FCMP.

The marketing information system (MkIS) in the data-rich business environment receives all the attention these days, but as essential and perhaps even more essential is the marketing information system management capability (MkISMC). Although many service firms apprehend the return from MkIS, others clearly struggle. It seems that MkIS management capability dynamics and their direct/indirect holistic influence on service firm's competitive performance (SFCP) are unsolved in the current data-driven service economy. This study aims to conceptualize a model and test the antecedents on service firms' competitive performance.

This study utilizes a survey of a sizeable sample of service firms’ managers at the firm level. A total of 250 useable responses were obtained and analyzed through structural equation modeling.

Results reveal that variables under their respective direct influences are positively and significantly related. Interestingly, MkISMC has a relatively large magnitude of positive and direct effects on service firms' competitive performance. The other variables, such as the use of marketing analytics (UMAN), service innovation and management (SINM), partially mediate the effect of MkISMC on the competitive performance of service firms.

The findings inform practitioners that MkISMC, UMAN and SINM play a vital role in attaining service firms' competitive performance in the data-rich environment. Overall, it deepens the understanding of the mediation effect of UMAN and SINM of service firms on competitive performance.

The study advances theoretical understanding of resource-based view (RBV), market orientation and dynamic capability that formulate the relationship of MkISMC, UMAN and SINM in attaining SFCP in the ever-changing data-driven business economy.

The goal of this study is to examine the factors (e.g. enjoyment, skills, challenge, telepresence and flow) that influence players’ purchase intention toward Dota 2 virtual in-game as well as examine the effect of flow toward purchase intention of Dota 2 through the critical mechanism (i.e. continuous intention). Notably, the analysis of the moderating role of enjoyment of buying on the relation of (a) flow and purchase intention of Dota 2 in-game, as well as (b) between flow continuous intention and finally (c) between continuous intention purchase intention of Dota 2.

The data were gained from 331 users using Google Forms and posted to respondents on social media platforms and forums such as Facebook and Reddit, as these websites have the closest reach to gamers.

The study revealed that enjoyment, skill, challenge and telepresence have a positive effect on flow. Also, the flow was significantly related to purchase intention. The continuous intention has significantly mediated the relationship between flow and purchase intention. Importantly, this study found that the moderating role of buying enjoyment increases the relationship between flow and purchase intention (H7a) and between continuous intention and purchase intention (H7c). In contrast, the moderating role of buying enjoyment on the relationship between flow and continuous intention (H7b) was not supported. Hence, this study sheds a new light on the notable Dota 2 in-game and continuous intention purchase intention of the users.

In response, this study's main research question can be highlighted on testing how enjoyment, skills, challenge, telepresence, in-game virtual items influence purchasing intention when the enjoyment of buying moderates the proposed relationship? Therefore, this study aims to examine the significant elements like enjoyment, skills, challenge telepresence toward flow, and subsequently, the effect of flow toward purchase intention of Dota 2 in-game through continuous intention as a key mechanism which is urgently needed to minimize the gap in-game virtual items literature. Significantly, this study also intends to explore the contingent role of enjoyment of buying on the relation of flow and purchase intention of Dota-2 in-game, as well as between flow and continuous intention and finally between continuous intention and purchase intention.