Transformational leadership has two salient characteristics: intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Recent studies in this area reveal that the effect of such leadership characteristics on job performance is indirectly affected by empowerment. The nature of this relationship is interesting, but little is known about the mediating effect of empowerment in leadership management models. Therefore, this study was conducted to measure the effect of transformational leadership characteristics and empowerment on service quality by using 110 usable questionnaires gathered from employees working in a city based local authority (CBLAUTHORITY) in Sarawak, Malaysia. Outcomes of a stepwise regression analysis showed that the relationship between empowerment and selected transformational leadership characteristics (i.e. intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration) is positively and significantly correlated with service quality. The result confirms that empowerment does act as a full mediating variable in the leadership model of the organization under study. This paper also discusses implications and limitations, as well as directions for future research.

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The world has suffered a critical shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the pandemic of COVID19 for medical staffs, the front liners. Like the whole world, Malaysia also imposed the stay-at-home and Movement Control Order (MCO) to break the chain of infections and flatten the curve of cases. The supply of PPE became a challenge during the lock down. There have been joined efforts from various parties stepping up, with different ways to help the production process of these key equipment but mostly focus on PPTs for male. Another challenge was face mask for Muslims leady health workers who wear hijab.  This paper is about how to overcome these challenges and designed a novel face mask clip for hijab, using 3D printing.  The clips were tested in a local hospital. The results show that the clips are very effective and easy to use.  Keywords: Covid-19; Personal protective equipment; Pandemic; Movement Control Order; 3D Face mask

Interactive Virtual Academic System Prototype (InVesa) is a conceptual automated system dedicated to students where a theory of personality test, Holland Code (RIASEC) is integrated to aid students in selecting the ideal elective subjects for their Cognitive Science course. With InVesa, rather than giving alerts to academic advisors, students are assigned personalized advice by the system on the recommended elective subjects based on their RIASEC result. A student may choose to accept a list of subjects' recommendations from the system or to retake the RIASEC test until they are satisfied with the suggested subjects provided by the system. In addition, students with less time meeting their academic advisors to consult on their subject enrolment may avoid general issues that are common in the standard appointment registration system, such as multiple registrations and long queues when scheduling an appointment. It can be concluded that the proposed application meets the requirements. The proposed application provides a convenient and efficient solution to gain the required information and will benefit the targeted users, which achieves and fulfills the forth of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of Quality Education for better education quality for all in terms of gender, age and status.