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The purpose of this research is to identify and investigate some natural dyes with halochromic properties for potential use as food spoilage indicators to reduce waste and curve the negative effects of food borne diseases.

Exactly 10 potential dye-yielding plants were selected based on their colour (mostly purple, red, maroon and pink). Solvent extraction was used to extract the dyes and pH differential method was used to determine the concentrations of anthocyanin in the extracted dyes. Different concentrations of hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide (0.1 M, 1 M and 2 M) in drops and in excess as acidic and basic solution, respectively, were used to test the halochromicity of the extracted dyes. Methyl red (a synthetic dye) was used as a reference standard/control. The pH of the dyes was recorded before and after addition of both NaOH and HCl solutions.

Five out of the 10 dyes extracted (labelled as dye A–E for Ti plant (green Cordyline fruticosa), coleus (Coleus blumei), paper flower (Bougainvillea glabra), painted nettle (Palisandra coleus) and purple heart (Setcresea purpurea), respectively, were found to be halochromic (even at low doses) by changing its colour when exposed to both acidic and basic solutions. While other dyes labelled F–J for red acalypha (Acalypha wilkesiana), golden shower (Cassia fistula), golden dew drop (Duranta repens), wild sage (Lantana camara var Aculeata) and pink oleander (Apocynaceae Nerium oleander), respectively, were either completely insensitive to the solutions in drops, slightly sensitive at high doses or the colour change is insignificant. Although some dyes were found to be more sensitive than others but in most cases, the colour changes in halochromic dyes were more stable in acidic conditions than in basic making it more sensitive to the basic than the acidic solution with the exception of dye A and E (to some extent) which was sensitive to both acidic and basic solution. The anthocyanin contents of dye A–J were found to be between the range of 2.28–10.35 mg/l with dye E having the lowest and dye J with the highest anthocyanin concentration, respectively. The initial pH of all the dyes falls within the range of 4.8–7.3 with most found within the acidic range.

Halochromic dye research studies are still at the infancy stage in developing world despite the vast available and abundant potential natural halochromic dye-yielding plants. The study explored this area of research and gives an opportunity for the development of smart packaging for pH-sensitive foods using natural dyes as an alternative to conventional synthetic dyes to reduce cost and also curve the negative effect of synthetic dyes as well as food borne diseases.

The study focused on improving stiffness and premature failure, the weaknesses of the other retrofitting techniques and the retrofitted beam. A detailed study regarding the section properties and effective length of the angles was also carried out in this study.

In this article, a comprehensive study was carried out using a finite element method to investigate the behavior and performance of steel angles as a retrofitting technique subjected to flexure. A model was developed in ABAQUS and validated with the available experimental works. The model was then applied to examine the beams retrofitted with the steel angles.

From the investigation, the strengthening technique successfully enhanced the flexural capacity and stiffness of the beam. The stiffness of the retrofitted beam achieved more than 2.5 times of the controlled beam. The thickness and flange width of the angles improved both the load capacity and stiffness whereas, web width, having same flange width, improved the stiffness only. This study also illustrates that a premature failure can be minimized by maintaining L/S (length to span) ratio between 0.7 and 1.0 along with the welding to provide the connections between the angles and stirrups.

The developed model and the findings can be used for designing the retrofitting technique for the damaged as well as beams to be increased their capacity.

The research focused on the implication of a new technique of retrofitting, steel angles to improve the stiffness of beam, which is one of the major drawbacks of traditional techniques. Moreover, the research aimed to improve premature failure by bonding the retrofitting materials with the stirrups of the mother beam through welding.

The purpose of this paper is to report the impact of thermophoresis and Brownian moment on MHD two-dimensional forced convection flow of nanofluid past a permeable stretching sheet in the presence of thermal diffusion.

The flow governing PDEs are reduced to ODEs by utilizing pertinent transmutations and then resolved by employing a fourth-order Runge-Kutta-based shooting technique. The energy and diffusion equations are incorporated with Brownian motion, thermophoresis and Soret parameters. The velocity, thermal and concentration attributes along with skin friction factor, local Nusselt and Sherwood number are discussed under the influence of sundry pertinent parameters and presented with the assistance of graphical and tabular values.

The results infer that Sherwood number is accelerated by Soret parameter but it controls the thermal transport rate. And also, Brownian and thermophoresis play a vital role in enhancing heat conduction process.

Considering the industrial applications of flow of magnetic nanofluid over a stretching surface, this paper presents the solution of the flow problem considering thermophoresis, Brownian motion, magnetic field and thermal diffusion effects. In addition, the aim and objectives of this paper fills a gap in the industry.

In the ever fast-changing modern world, through the use of digital banking services (DBS), the old concept of banking in a traditional way has been completely changed. It was made possible through the use of modern artificial intelligence embedded technologies. It was done to meet the ever-growing demands of customers through more user-friendly and time-saving uses of technologies. This paper aims to uncover and analyse the factors affecting the adoption of digital banking services by rural micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). MSME is one of the most active sectors in India. It plays an important role in the economic development of the country through exports and domestic supplies and by creating employment opportunities.

The study was conducted using a questionnaire survey. In total, 148 rural MSME owners were considered for the analysis in this study. Rural MSMEs in India are way behind in using digital banking services than their urban counterparts. The present study uses IBM SPSS and AMOS to shed light on the prevalent factors that influence the attitude to use digital banking services.

It is found out that convenience (which includes perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use), perceived self-efficacy, demonetization, performance expectancy and pandemic effect have a significant effect on the attitude to adopt DBS. The findings of the study will provide deeper insights for the banks as well as different government agencies to revamp their strategies in changing the financial landscape of the country through a “cashless economy”.

Demonetization, a boom in eCommerce in India, pandemic-related lockdowns or restrictions and the government’s push for the digital economy will aid the use of DBS at a faster pace. The outcome of the study will help both the government and the financial institutions to chalk out strategies to cater to the rural MSMEs in embracing DBS.

The use of digital services for banking in India is in a nascent stage, but the rate of adoption is increasing at a cyclonic speed. Affordable electronic devices, cheap internet and different medium of using DBS are fuelling the rapid increase; yet, limited research focuses on the differences in the rate of acceptance of digital banking services concerning rural MSMEs.

This paper aims to identify various macroeconomic variables that affect the stock market performance of developed and emerging economies. It also investigates the effect of these factors on the stock markets of both economies. The impact of these variables on broad market indices and sectoral indices is investigated and compared too.

The publications for the study were retrieved from databases such as Emerald Insight, EBSCO, ScienceDirect and JSTOR using the keywords “Macroeconomic variables” and “Stock market” or “Stock market performance.” The result demonstrated a growing corpus of scholarly work in the domain of stock market. The study was carried out separately for each macroeconomic indicator. Given a large number of articles under consideration, the authors began by reading the titles and abstracts of all publications to identify those that were relevant. The papers are evaluated in Excel and the articles for review range from 1972 to 2021.

The authors found that gross domestic product (GDP), FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) and FII (Foreign Institutional Investment) have a positive effect on both emerging and developed economies’ stock market while gold price has a negative effect. Interest rates had a negative impact on both economies except for a few developing countries. The relationship with oil prices was positive for oil exporting countries while negative for oil importing countries. Inflation, money supply and GDP are the macroeconomic variables that have the same effect on sectoral indices as they do on broad market indices. The impact was sector-specific for the remaining variables.

This paper gives an overview of relation and effect covering variety of macroeconomic variables and stock market indices. Still, there is a scope for further research to analyze the effect on thematic, strategy and sectoral indices. A longer time horizon with new variables, such as bank deposit growth rate, nonperforming assets of banks, consumer confidence index and investor sentiment, can be studied using high-frequency data. This research may help stakeholders adopt and manage their policies during a crisis or economic slump.

This study will assist investors, researchers and educators in the fields of economics and finance in understanding how macroeconomic factors affect the stock market. Furthermore, this study can guide in portfolio diversification strategy across multiple sectors by examining the impact of macroeconomic factors specific to sectoral indices. This paper provides insight into society and researchers since it integrates a number of macroeconomic variables and their interaction with the stock market. It may also help pension funds and mutual fund firms to hedge their funds and allocate equity portfolios.

With respect to India, this study looked at new macroeconomic variables and sectors. It contrasted the impact of these variables in developed and developing economies. The effect of broad and sectoral stock indexes was also investigated and compared. The authors examined how these variables responded during crisis and economic downturns by using articles from a longer time frame. This research also looked into how changing the frequency of data for the variables altered stock performance. This paper emphasized the need for more research into thematic, strategy and broad market indices, such as small-cap and mid-cap indices.

Islamic finance is an alternative approach of financial intermediation based on risk-sharing and asset-backed operations, which evolved substantially in recent years in academic research raising the need for quantitative studies to address the intellectual development and scientific performance of this field. This study aims to provide quantitative statistics and comprehensive review of the key influential and intellectual structure of Islamic finance literature.

The authors apply the trending and cutting-edge quali-quantitative approach of bibliometric citation analysis. This study reviews 1,940 English studies and review papers published in scientific journals indexed by the Scopus database from 1983 to 2019. RStudio, VOSviewer and Excel’s software are used to analyze the collected data and apply the bibliometric tests.

The results identify the leading academic authors, journals, institutions and countries with relation to Islamic finance. The authors also propose six main research themes in this field, which are as follows: Islamic finance – fundamentals, growth and legitimacy; customer’s attitude and perception toward Islamic finance; accounting and social reporting of Islamic finance; performance and risk management of Islamic finance; Islamic financial markets; and efficiency of Islamic financial institutions. Lastly, the authors identify research gaps in the existing Islamic finance literature and present 24 future research directions.

The data in this study is confined only to the Scopus database of English papers and reviews. It also considers papers directly related to the field of Islamic finance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to address the literature of Islamic finance from a bibliometric aspect. The results of this study along with future research questions will help researchers and practitioners to further explore and stand on firm quantitative bases regarding the scientific development of Islamic finance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of thermal radiation and viscous dissipation on steady natural convection flow of a viscous incompressible fluid along a uniformly moving infinite vertical porous plate with Newtonian heating in the presence of transverse magnetic field. The governing non-linear boundary layer equations are solved by using homotopy analysis method (HAM). The effects of various system parameters on velocity and temperature fields are discussed graphically, and the numerical values for skin friction and Nusselt number are presented in tabular form.

The problem is formulated using the Boussinesq approximation under the effects of thermal radiation and transverse magnetic field. The resulting coupled system of non-linear differential equations is solved using HAM with appropriate boundary conditions for Newtonian heating of the plate. HAM is a powerful method which provides rapidly converging series solution for the velocity and temperature fields. The effects of Prandtl number, Grashof number, suction parameter, magnetic field parameter, radiation parameter and Eckert number on the fluid velocity, temperature, skin friction and Nusselt number have been investigated.

The HAM solution has been successfully applied to find the converging series solution for velocity and temperature fields in terms of pertinent system parameters. Comparison of the exact solution results agree well with the HAM solution results in the absence of Eckert number and this indicates that the HAM solutions are accurate. It is found that the velocity and temperature profiles decreases with the increase of thermal radiation and suction parameters. An increase in the magnetic field parameter leads to a rise in the fluid temperature and fall in the fluid velocity.

The present analysis is limited to steady state laminar natural convection flow only. Unsteady natural- /mixed-convection laminar flow in the presence of thermal radiation, chemical reaction and transverse magnetic field will be investigated in a future work.

The study provides very useful information for heat transfer engineers to understand the heat transfer rate when the moving vertical porous surface temperature is not known a prior. The present results have immediate relevance in the design of nuclear reactors where vertical moving porous plates are using as control rods.

The present research work is relatively original and illustrates the effects of thermal radiation, viscous dissipation and transverse magnetic field on natural convection flow past a uniformly moving infinite vertical porous plate with Newtonian heating.

Cost of construction of residential properties as well as its subsequent rent trends remain a major challenge to stakeholders in the property rental markets of emerging economies. This study examined the relationship between housing construction costs and house rents fluctuations in Osogbo, Nigeria, to provide information for informed investment decisions.

The authors conducted a survey, where three sets of questionnaires were administered on building contractors; estate surveyors and valuers and private residential property owners. The data required comprise the estimated average construction costs and average market rents for two and three-bedroom bungalows in the study area from 2008 to 2018. These data were respectively sourced from all the 15 firms of building contractors and 25 firms of estate surveyors and valuers in Osogbo, Nigeria. Stratified random sampling was employed to select 180 property owners from three medium-density residential districts of Osogbo. Secondary data on macroeconomic variables were sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria. Data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools.

The authors found a significant positive relationship (0.749) between construction costs and house rents trends; both variables maintained ascending trends. Construction costs and house rents inflation rates exhibited random fluctuations with the former having a higher mean inflation rate (10.47%). However, the difference was not statistically significant (p-value = 0.317 > 0.05). Respondents identified consumer price index (CPI) inflation among other macroeconomic variables as the strongest predictor of both construction costs and house rents fluctuations. However, evidence from further analysis of the time series suggested otherwise.

The result confirms construction cost as one of the vital supply factors of the housing market, which is often pass through to house rents. The positive relationship between construction costs and house rents trends should trigger new development which, will, in turn, allow rental housing investments to expand into new areas with prospects for profits that could be earned by domestic and foreign investors.

This study to the best knowledge of the researchers is the first to relate housing construction cost to house rent in Osogbo, Nigeria; thereby adding to the body of knowledge in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to use Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH)-type artificial neural network to model the affecting factors of housing price in Isfahan city housing market.

This paper presents an accurate model based on GMDH approach to describing connection between housing price and considered affecting factors in case study of Isfahan city based on trusted data that have been collected from 1995 to 2017 for every six months. The accuracy of the model has been evaluated by mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) in this case.

Due to the obtained value of MAPE, RMSE and MAE and also their interpretation, accuracy of modelling the factors affecting housing price in Isfahan city housing market using GMDH-type artificial neural network that has been conducted in this paper, is acceptable.

Due to limitation of reliable data availability about affecting factors, selected period is from 1995 to 2017. Accessing to longer periods of reliable data can improve the accuracy of the model.

The key point of this research is reaching to a mathematical formula that accurately shows the relationships between housing price in Isfahan city and effective factors. The simplified formula can help users to use it easily for analysing and describing the status of housing market in Isfahan city of Iran.

Hisbah is one of the distinguished institutions that had emerged since the early days of the Islamic empire. Based on its cardinal duty to enjoin good and prohibit evil, over time, its functions gradually expanded, and its responsibilities increasingly grew. In light of the contemporary trend in establishing institutional framework for consumer protection, entrusting an agency with multifarious tasks may not be the best and effective way in handling consumer protection issues. Thus, this chapter attempts to explore the new paradigm of hisbah as a consumer protection institution in Malaysia with a special reference to the Islamic consumer credit industry. While utilising the doctrinal legal research methodology, relevant sources of law have been examined and analysed. This research finds that the classical hisbah institution provides a good reference point in establishing regulatory agency and dispute management body. Nevertheless, some modifications are required to remain relevant especially in terms of specialisation of role and function. Likewise, it is viewed that adjustment of the hisbah institution is also necessary regarding the characteristic of the muhtasib (ombudsman).