Reflective Practices and Level of Technological Acceptance and their Relationship to Developing Teaching Performance of Arabic Language Teachers in The Light of Digital Transformation

The current research aimed at identifying the reflective practices of Arabic language teachers in the light of digital transformation and estimating the level of technological acceptance and their relationship to developing the teaching performance of Arabic language teachers. This research adopted the analytical descriptive approach. The procedures followed by the two researchers to apply this approach are represented in using the Reflective Practice Scale for Arabic language teachers in the light of digital transformation, and the Technological Acceptance Scale for Arabic language teachers, as well as using the teaching Performance Development Observation Card To identify the relationship of each of the reflective practices and the level of technological acceptance to the development of the teaching performance of Arabic language teachers in the light of the digital transformation, the current research was delimited to selecting a simple random sample of Arabic language teachers (412) who represent 30% of the research group in the city of Dammam. The research concluded that reflective practices apply to Arabic language teachers to a (large) degree. The most reflective practice that applies to Arabic language teachers in the light of digital transformation is to ensure that the information is correct before transmitting it to students . The level of technological acceptance of Arabic language teachers is (medium). The most technologically acceptable level for Arabic language teachers is their confidence in using electronic platforms. There is a positive, statistically significant correlation at the significance level (0.05) of the reflective practices in developing the teaching performance of Arabic language teachers in the light of digital transformation. The most correlative relationship was between reflective practices and evaluation, and the least relationship was between reflective practices and development. There was a positive, statistically significant correlation at the significance level (0.05) of technological acceptance in developing the teaching performance of Arabic language teachers in the light of digital transformation. The most correlative relationship was between the level of technological acceptance and evaluation, while the least relationship was between the level of technological acceptance and development

Utility of the Guy’s Stone Score in predicting different aspects of percutaneous nephrolithotomy

Objective: To evaluate Guy’s scoring system (GSS) as a grading system for complexity of kidney stone before percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) as a predictor for different items of outcome.Patients and methods: Between July 2014 till July 2015, 100 patients with renal stone (s) and candidates for prone PCNL were evaluated and graded by GSS preoperatively. All intraoperative and postoperative data and complications using modified Clavien system were recorded, collected and statistically analyzed in relation to different grades of GSS to evaluate its predictive ability to different items of outcome.Results: Mean age of the patients was 47.38 ± 14.6 years. The patients were distributed in different grades of GSS with no statistically significant difference as mean age, sex, and mean BMI of the patients, stone side and previous renal surgery. There was high statistically significant difference in mean operative time, rate of blood transfusion, and mean number of renal punctures between different Guy’s scores, with all of them showed the highest values at GS IV. There was significant correlation between increase in the grade of GS and the need for re-PCNL and auxiliary procedures. The final stone free rate (SFR) was 93% and complication rate was 27% with significant increase in the immediate success rate, SFR, and complication rate with advancement of the grade of GSS.Conclusion: GSS has a positive correlation with SFR, re-treatment rate, need for auxiliary procedure, and rate of complication

Multi-objective Optimization of Different Management Scenarios to Control Seawater Intrusion in Coastal Aquifers

PublishedThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this record.Seawater intrusion (SWI) is a widespread environmental problem, particularly in arid and semi-arid coastal areas. Therefore, appropriate management strategies should be implemented in coastal aquifers to control SWI with acceptable limits of economic and environmental costs. This paper presents the results of an investigation on the efficiencies of different management scenarios for controlling saltwater intrusion using a simulation-optimization approach. A new methodology is proposed to control SWI in coastal aquifers. The proposed method is based on a combination of abstraction of saline water near shoreline, desalination of the abstracted water for domestic consumption and recharge of the aquifer by deep injection of the treated wastewater to ensure the sustainability of the aquifer. The efficiency of the proposed method is investigated in terms of water quality and capital and maintenance costs in comparison with other scenarios of groundwater management. A multi-objective genetic algorithm based evolutionary optimization model is integrated with the numerical simulation model to search for optimal solution of each scenario of SWI control. The main objective is to minimize both the total cost of management process and the total salinity in aquifer. The results indicate that the proposed method is efficient in controlling SWI as it offers the least cost and least salinity in the aquifer

Assessment of Fences as Noise Barriers: A Case Study in New Cairo, Egypt

Noise levels in Egypt exceed acceptable thresholds due to high population and lack of mandatory sound regulations. According to noise measurements done by “The National Network for Noise Level Measurement in Greater Cairo” most of the areas examined ( main squares, industrial areas, main roads, residential areas, commercial and administrative areas in Cairo governorate)  had shown that noise levels exceeded the standard permissible levels that are identified by the Environmental Law 4/1994 and its executive regulations. Noise levels reached up to 75-85 decibels (dB), which is considered unacceptable as noise levels should not exceed 65 dB during daytime and 55 dB during night due to law number 4/1994. On the other hand, fences are considered a common feature within the Egyptian urban context and are mainly constructed for safety and privacy reasons. This research assesses the effectiveness of existing fences as noise barriers and specifies factors that reduce noise levels. Site measurements and photographs were taken for the fence of a residential compound in new Cairo, where noises arising from surrounding places cause annoyance. MEP services were the main sources of disturbing continuous noise along with social activities and traffic noises. Measurements were performed using TM-102 digital sound level meter. Readings were recorded at various time intervals in front and behind of the fence and noise reduction levels were calculated. Measurements revealed that the fence acts as a good noise barrier and that combined configuration of the fence resulted in the attenuation of noise to acceptable levels

Learning Opinion Dynamics From Social Traces

Opinion dynamics - the research field dealing with how people's opinions form and evolve in a social context - traditionally uses agent-based models to validate the implications of sociological theories. These models encode the causal mechanism that drives the opinion formation process, and have the advantage of being easy to interpret. However, as they do not exploit the availability of data, their predictive power is limited. Moreover, parameter calibration and model selection are manual and difficult tasks. In this work we propose an inference mechanism for fitting a generative, agent-like model of opinion dynamics to real-world social traces. Given a set of observables (e.g., actions and interactions between agents), our model can recover the most-likely latent opinion trajectories that are compatible with the assumptions about the process dynamics. This type of model retains the benefits of agent-based ones (i.e., causal interpretation), while adding the ability to perform model selection and hypothesis testing on real data. We showcase our proposal by translating a classical agent-based model of opinion dynamics into its generative counterpart. We then design an inference algorithm based on online expectation maximization to learn the latent parameters of the model. Such algorithm can recover the latent opinion trajectories from traces generated by the classical agent-based model. In addition, it can identify the most likely set of macro parameters used to generate a data trace, thus allowing testing of sociological hypotheses. Finally, we apply our model to real-world data from Reddit to explore the long-standing question about the impact of backfire effect. Our results suggest a low prominence of the effect in Reddit's political conversation.Comment: Published at KDD202