With the help of an intelligent agent, a cloud service provider (CSP) offers various services and resources to their customers over the internet. Consumers and CSPs in the cloud market are in a constant state of negotiation over their individual needs. Competition among CSPs is fierce because of the enormous number of CSPs in the market. Intelligent negotiation agents are highly demanding as a timesaving and success rate-enhancing tool. While negotiating, multiple attributes such as price, resources, reliability, CSP performance, utility value, and many more are considered. Theres increased false negotiations, faulty servers, and exorbitant fees are all issues arising because of the forever changing CSP market. An intelligent and automated negotiation agent (IANA) understands the conduct of the opponent and the needs of both parties. This need of users and CSP information is utilized in negotiations to find the best possible delivery of services between the customer and the CSP. As a r.....

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Extensive studies related to womens entrepreneurial motivation are available in the western context, however, only a few studies are found focused on factors that motivate Egyptian women to engage in entrepreneurial activities. The study explores in-depth the motivations behind female entrepreneurs efforts to establish business ventures in Egypt. It analyses the influence of macrosocial realities and cultural values on the motivation for entrepreneurship. The finding demonstrates how post materialism factors motivate Egyptian women to embrace entrepreneurial activity as a way to maintaining personal freedom. The results demonstrate the impact of the Arab patriarchal culture on shaping the Egyptian women motivation. The qualitative research approach is adopted in this study to explore the entrepreneurial motivations of Egyptian women entrepreneurs. Through purposeful sampling, 20 women entrepreneurs were selected from five Egyptian governorates to administer a semi structured interview .....

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Today, suicide is a significant, urgent and serious issue in public health. Studies on suicide ideation in Malaysian young adults were rarely conducted for the public due to cultural and religious factors. Numerous studies on depression and suicide among young people in Malaysia have often been conducted in developed and high-population densities such as Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Pulau Pinang, Sabah, and Sarawak. In contrast, states on the East Coast of Malaysia recorded fewer studies on suicide and depression by researchers. Thus, this study investigates the relationships and predictive effects of depression and self-esteem on suicide ideation among undergraduate students. Data were gathered from a sample of 439 (18.5% male; 81.5% female) undergraduate students aged 19-26 with an average age of 22 (SD=1.33) who completed measures on depression, self-esteem, suicide ideation and socio-demographic profiles. In addition to descriptive statistics, quantitative data employed correlation and .....

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Since year 2020, researchers have conducted research on challenges and perceptions of emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL) during the COVID-19 pandemic on students. Many studies were conducted on the effectiveness of online learning, but there is a lack of studies on ERTL where online learning differs from ERTL. Thus, this study aims to identify the challenges and perceptions of students on ERTL during the early COVID-19. The methodology employed in this study are systematic literature review which used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA), synthesis analysis and quality appraisal to review 51 selected articles. These articles are from two publishers (ScienceDirect and IEEE) and two databases (ERIC and Scopus). This study revealed that students experienced four types of challenges during the early period of ERTL namely technological, pedagogical, personal, and social issues. However, students have positive perceptions toward ERTL to pursu.....

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A computer-aided language translation using a Machine translation (MT) is an application performed by computers (machines) that translates one natural language to another. There are many online language translation tools, but thus far none offers a sequence of text translations for the under-resourced Kadazandusun language. Although there are web-based and mobile applications of Kadazandusun dictionaries available, the systems do not translate more than one word. Hence, this paper aims to present the discussion of the preliminary translation of Malay to Kadazandusun. The basic word-to-word with dictionary alignment translation based on Direct Machine Translation (DMT) is selected to begin the exploration of the translation domain where DMT is one of the earliest translation methods which relies on the word-to-word approach (sequence-to-sequence model). This paper aims to investigate the under-resourced language and the task of translating from the Malay language to the Kadazandusun lan.....

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Plant-derived natural products are an important source of potential medicines and continue to have a major impact on the drug discovery process. Natural product discovery assignments provide an opportunity to present various experimental techniques to undergraduate students in introductory medicinal chemistry. This assignment was developed to serve as a meaningful hands-on exercise to introduce undergraduate Chemistry students to the common procedure in the early phase of drug discovery using inexpensive corn silk, in which the final year undergraduate student used Recycling Preparative High-Performance Liquid Chromatography to separate and purify steroids from corn silk. The student used advanced spectroscopic methods such as UV, IR, and one- and two-dimensional NMR to elucidate the structures of these steroids. The cytotoxic activity of these steroids was also evaluated and found to be non-cytotoxic to normal human MRC-5 cells at 60 ?g/mL via 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl.....

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The fabrication of a zinc hydroxide nitrate-sodium dodecylsulfate bispyribac modified with multi-walled carbon nanotube (ZHN-SDS-BP/MWCNT) paste electrode for uric acid and bisphenol A detection was presented in this study. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, chronocoulometry, square-wave voltammetry, and cyclic voltammetry were all used to examine the electrocatalytic activities of modified paste electrodes. The modified electrode's sensitivity and selectivity have been considered in terms of the composition of the modifier in percentages, the types of supporting electrolytes used, the pH of the electrolyte, and square-wave voltammetry parameters like frequency, pulse size, and step increment. Square-wave voltammetry is performed by applying a small amplitude square-wave voltage to a scanning potential from -0.3 V to +1.0 V, demonstrating a quick response time and high sensitivity. The ZHN-SDS-BP/MWCNT sensor demonstrated a linear range for uric acid and bisphenol A from 5.0 M to .....

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This study aims to develop a reliable instrument measuring the assessment literacy of ESL teachers through Exploratory Factor Analysis based on five constructs. A survey was administered to 200 secondary school ESL teachers. The study revealed that only 78 items with a cut-off point of above .60 from the factor loading are retained. Cronbachs Alpha showed that the items retained are reliable. This study developed and validated an instrument to measure ESL teachers assessment literacy in the Malaysian context. An assessment literacy framework can be developed based on this research which will benefit the education field in Malaysia. 2023, North American Business Press. All rights reserved...

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Assessment for Learning (AfL) and Assessment as Learning (AaL) are gaining increasing prominence especially in university EFL writing lessons. This study sheds light on the practices and values of Indonesian EFL writing teachers towards AfL and AaL strategies during the constrained context of online learning setting because of the COVID-19 pandemic. By using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis, explanatory sequential mixed method was used in conjunction with a case study research design. Quantitative data were obtained from 54 teachers who responded to the AfL and AaL Strategy Questionnaire (AfL-AaLSQ), indicating their practices and values of AfL-AaL strategies. Meanwhile, the qualitative data were the results of interview sessions with seven selected participants, who described their practices and values in details. The findings show that all respondents accorded high importance to all AfL-AaL strategies and rated themselves as frequently implementing the AfL-AaL strategies......

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Background and Study Aim Material and Methods In the physically demanding combat sport of Silat, strength and power dominate. Consequently, applying various stance widths during barbell hip thrusts may tailor athletes lower-body exercises to individual needs. This has the potential to optimize performance. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact on performance of power, speed, and stance width among Silat combat athletes. Participants performed 10RM tests in three stance widths: wider than shoulder width (WSW), normal shoulder width (NSW), and narrower than shoulder width (NRW). This was done using a 72-hour counterbalance cross-over study design. Power and velocity were measured and analyzed using a mixed ANOVA design. Results The results indicated a significant main effect of stance width on power (F(2,56) = 3.086, p < 0.05) and velocity (F(2,56) = 3.683, p < 0.03) output. Both males and females demonstrated the highest power in NRW (M = 413.26, SD = 131.76; M = 239.53, SD.....

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