Studies show that the COVID-19 crisis may threaten to attain sustainable development goals connected with shelter in developing countries, including Malaysia. Low-cost housing provision has been identified as one tool for achieving sustainability goals via synergistic operations. However, studies about post-COVID-19 housing and sustainable development goals integration are scarce in Malaysia. The study investigated the state of post-COVID-19 housing and developed a framework to integrate Goals in housing provision in Malaysia. The study covered four major cities in Malaysia via qualitative research to achieve the study’s objectives. The researchers engaged forty participants via semi-structured virtual interviews, and saturation was achieved. The study utilized a thematic analysis for the collated data and honed them with secondary sources. Findings show that COVID-19 reduced the possibility of low-income earners becoming homeowners. This is because the low-income groups were real losers of COVID-19 economic changes. Also, findings reveal that achieving four Goals from the 17 Goals will improve housing provision in Malaysia’s post-COVID-19 era. The study encourages key housing stakeholders to improve housing delivery, especially for the low-income earners across Malaysia in the post-COVID-19 era. This will imply contributing to achieving four Goals because of the correlation, as part of the study’s implications.

The study investigates the impact of corporate gender diversity on dividend payouts in Asia-Pacific countries. The study used the data of 610 listed firms in the Asian Pacific region over eleven years, from 2006 to 2016, with 6710 observations. The regression results revealed that the representation of women on board and at least 30% on board positively relates to dividend payout. Board size and board independence have a significant negative relationship with dividend payouts. Overall, results suggest that gender diversity on corporate boards has a greater propensity to pay dividends in the mix of ownership structure, strong and weak corporate governance compliance, and horizontal agency conflict.

Bangladesh’s coastal regions are rich in saline water resources. The majority of these resources are still not being used to their full potential. In the southern Bangladeshi region of Patuakhali, research was conducted to investigate the effects of mulching and drip irrigation on tomato yield, quality, and blossom-end rot (BER) at different soil salinity thresholds. There were four distinct treatments applied: T₁= drip irrigation with polythene mulch, T₂ = drip irrigation with straw mulch, T₃ = drip irrigation without mulch, and T₄ = standard procedure. While soil salinity was much greater in treatment T₃ (1.19–8.42 dS/m) fallowed by T₄ (1.23–8.63 dS/m), T1 treatments had the lowest level of salinity and the highest moisture retention during every development stage of the crops, ranging from 1.28–4.29 dS/m. Treatment T₃ exhibited the highest soil salinity levels (ranging from 1.19 to 8.42 dS/m), followed by T₄ with a range of 1.23 to 8.63 dS/m. In contrast, T₁ treatments consistently maintained the lowest salinity levels (ranging from 1.28 to 4.29 dS/m) and the highest moisture retention throughout all stages of crop development. In terms of yield, drip irrigation with no mulch treatment (T₃) provided the lowest output (13.37 t/ha), whereas polyethylene mulching treatment (T₁) produced the maximum yield (46.04 t/ha). According to the study, conserving moisture in tomato fields and reducing soil salinity may both be achieved with drip irrigation combined with polythene mulch. The research suggests that employing drip irrigation in conjunction with polythene mulch could effectively preserve moisture in tomato fields and concurrently decrease soil salinity.

This systematic literature review examines the convergence of entrepreneurship and information technology between 2005 and 2024. It investigates how the emergence of information technologies such as social networks, smart devices, big data, and cloud computing have transformed business operations and entrepreneurial approaches. The study use technologies such as Bibliometrix to analyze academic literature and identify research trends, knowledge structures, and their evolutionary routes. During the specified time frame, a grand total of 292 articles were published by 777 writers. These publications have played a key role in redirecting academic focus from traditional entrepreneurship to the field of digital entrepreneurship and the applications of information technology. A thematic analysis uncovers a shift from theoretical investigation to practical implementations and multidisciplinary research, while a co-citation analysis highlights important contributors and influential works. This study emphasizes the crucial importance of information technology in influencing entrepreneurial behaviors and strategic business decisions. It also offers valuable insights for future research and entrepreneurial practice in the information age.

The porous carbon/Ni nanoparticle composite was prepared by a freeze-drying method using NaCl as the template. It was applied in the effect of the concentration, adsorption time, and temperature of adsorption on the adsorption behavior. The kinetic model and the adsorption isothermic fitting results show that the adsorption behavior fits with the pseudo-secondary dynamics and the Langmuir isothermal model, indicating that the adsorption process is monolayer adsorption. Thermodynamic results indicate that the adsorption process is spontaneous physicochemical adsorption. The fitting showed that the porous carbon/Ni nanoparticle composites reach 217.17 mg·g^-1, at 313 K indicates good adsorption for Congo red.

In this study, the effect of porogenic solvents on pore size distribution of the polycaprolactone (PCL) thin films was investigated. Five thin PCL films were prepared using the solvent-casting method. Chloroform, Methylene Chloride (MC) and three different compositions of MC/ Dimethylformamide (DMF) (80/20, 50/50 and 20/80) were used as solvents. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) investigations were employed to study morphology and consequently the pore size distribution of the prepared films. The PCL films made by chloroform and MC as a solvent were completely non-porous. Whereas the other films (made by a combination of MC and DMF) showed both uni-modal and bi-modal pore size distributions.