Evaluation of King Abdullah Scholarship Program

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the King Abdullah Scholarship Program. Three research questions were addressed by this study. The questions were how Saudi students perceive the King Abdullah Scholarship Program. Was there a difference between male and female Saudi students regarding their King Abdullah Scholarship Program. Were there differences in Saudi students based on the level of education regarding their King Abdullah Scholarship Program. Interpretation of the study was subject to the following limitations. The study was limited to Saudi students in Saint Louis University and analyzed king Abdullah scholarship program. The study was limited to only Saudi students in Fall 2012. There were 46 Saudi students in the different gender and educational levels. The survey had 25 questioners about the Saudi student experiences with this program. The survey consisted of three sections. There were quality program, service and student needs. For the quality program, the king Abdullah scholarship program should promote partnerships with Saudi and American universities. It should help prepare students for their new job and to be part of a knowledge-based economy. To enhance the quality of service from SACM, the overall quality of telephone support should be improved. The staff must be effective in the service they provide. The time required to resolve issues must be reasonable. The quality of service should be improved. To improve the students’ skill, this scholarship monthly stipend should be adequate for students need. This program should not only be for graduate students but also for undergraduate students. This program must help students to find good jobs when they complete their program. Since all the data above showed only a 0.05, there was not a significant difference in evaluation of king Abdullah scholarship program between male and female Saudi students, and between the overall educational levels. Keywords: king Abdullah -scholarship program- Saudi Arabi

Electrically Small Probe for Near-field Detection Applications

The microwave near-field detection technique is of interest to many researchers for characterizing materials because of its high sensitivity. It is based on sensing buried objects by producing an evanescent field.The advantage of evanescent fields is their capability to interrogate electrically small objects. In the past, near-field probes have been designed to sense magnetic materials. For dielectric materials, a near-field probe that senses the permittivity of the materials is important. This work presents a novel design of a near-field probe that generates a dominant electric eld. The probe is an electrically small dipole measuring approximately 0.07λ in length operating at 216.3 MHz. The antenna is matched to a 50Ω system using two chip inductors distributed symmetrically on the dipole. The numerical and measurement results show that the proposed design is highly sensitive and capable of sensing subsurface object. The proposed design is compact, lightweight and applicable for microwave applications

Saudi Parents’ Needs in Deaf Education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This dissertation was conducted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to investigate the needs and perceptions of parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) in regard to the support and services provided in Saudi Arabia. Fiftyeight parents of children who are DHH were surveyed. Participants were asked to complete the survey considering the support and services provided to their children who are DHH in KSA. The survey questions were related to parent perception in five areas of services: early identification services, hearing technology services, communication services, educational services, and social support services. In the course of the investigation, five main research questions guided the study: Q1 What types of services are being received and would like to receive by Saudi parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Q2 How satisfied are the Saudi parents of children who are DHH regarding the services received? Q3 What are the most needed services perceived by parents with children who are DHH in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Q4 Is there any relationship between the child’s characteristics and parents’ level of satisfaction in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Q5 Is there any relationship between the child’s characteristics and the importance of services to parents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? The results indicated that all types of services are available and being received by some Saudi parents of children who are DHH in KSA. The results also demonstrated that parents showed an average level of satisfaction towards services and support regarding the services received for their children who are DHH. The majority of parents recognized all aspects of services listed as the most needed services for children who are DHH and their parents in KSA. The results also indicated that children’s gender and hearing status were not significantly related with parents’ satisfaction and the importance of services to parents in the KSA. Additionally, parents in the open-ended question section expressed some problems and offered some solutions in order to improve the services and support for children who are DHH. Conclusions of this dissertation study are that more research regarding the support and services provided for children who are DHH in KSA is needed in order to obtain a better understanding of parents’ needs and perceptions. Finally, the survey designed for this study needs further development because it does not include all aspects of services and support for parents and children who are DHH

Optimizing operation and design of aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) wellfields

2019 Fall.Includes bibliographical references.Sustained production of groundwater from wells in wellfields can lead to declining water levels at production wells and concerns regarding the sustainability of groundwater resources. Furthermore, minimizing energy consumption associated with pumping groundwater is a growing concern. Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) is a promising approach for maintaining water levels in wells, increasing the sustainability of groundwater resources, and minimize energy consumption during groundwater pumping. Therefore, studying the importance of ASR in sustaining water levels and minimizing energy consumption is critical. In the first part of this dissertation, an analytical model relying on superposition of the Theis equation is used to resolve water levels in 40 wells in three vertically stacked ASR wellfields. Fifteen years of dynamic recovery/recharge data are used to obtain aquifer and well properties. Estimated aquifer and well properties are used to predict water levels at production well. Close agreement between modeled and observed water levels support the validity of the analytical model for estimating water levels at ASR wells. During the study period, 45 million m³ of groundwater is produced and 11 million m3 is recharged leading to a net withdrawal of 34 million m³ of groundwater. Rates of changes in recoverable water levels in wells in the Denver, Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hill Aquifers are 0.20, -0.91, and -3.48 m per year, respectively. To quantify the benefits of recharge, the analytical model is applied to predicting water levels at wells absent the historical recharge. Results indicate that during recovery and no-flow periods, recharge has increased water levels at wells up to 60 m compared to the no-recharge scenario. On average, the recharge increased water levels at wells during the study period by 3, 4, and 11 m in the Denver, Arapahoe, and Laramie Fox-Hills Aquifers, respectively. Overall, the analytical model is a promising tool for advancing ASR wellfields and ASR can be a viable approach to sustaining water levels in wells in wellfields. In the second part of this dissertation, a simulation-optimization model (ASRSOM) is developed to optimize ASR wellfield operations. ASRSOM combines an analytical hydraulic model and a numerical optimization model to optimize wellfield operations. The objective function used to minimize energy consumption φ (L⁴) is the temporal integral of the products of temporally varying total dynamic head values and pumping rates. Comparison of ASRSOM results to work by others for idealized aquifer operations supports the validity of ASRSOM. Four scenarios were simulated to evaluate the role that optimization of operations and aquifer recharge play in reducing the energy required to lift groundwater out of aquifer. A 10-year study period is considered using data from a municipal ASR wellfield. Optimization decreased φ by 19.6%, which yields an estimated reduction of 2,179 MW hours of power and 1,541 metric tons of atmospheric carbon. For the condition considered, recharge reduced power by 1%. The limited benefit of recharge is attributed to the small recharge volume in the case study and the short duration of the analysis. Additional opportunities to address economic and environmental impacts associated with lifting groundwater out aquifer include optimizing the position of wells and factors controlling total pumping head. In the third part of this dissertation, the sensitivity of well-spacing in ASR wellfields to critical parameters is studied. The parameters studied are aquifer transmissivity and storativity, wells flowrate and the frequency of recharge and recovery. It has been found that larger well-spacing are appropriate for lower transmissivity and storativity, and larger wells flowrate and frequency. More work is needed to fully understand the optimal well-spacing of wells in ASR wellfields associated with more realistic storage and recovery schedules, and more complex wellfields. Overall, work supported the possibility that wells in ASR wellfields can be spread more closely than wells in conventional production wellfields

Comparing the Vertical Misfit of Casts Produced By Two Verification Jigs

Purpose: To compare the dimensional accuracy between master casts fabricated with verification jigs made of acrylic resin and light cure Triad. Materials and Methods: 10 GC Pattern resin Pattern verifications jigs and 10 Triad gel verification jigs fabricated of a master cast of a mandibular model of 4 internal hex implants. A stone base was fabricated for each verification jig. One screw test was used to evaluate the vertical gap at the terminal abutment using a digital micrometer with an accuracy of 1μm to record the vertical gap for each sample. Results: Triad Gel group has the lowest average distortion value which is 27.8 μm and GC Pattern Resin group has an average value of 29.71 μm. There was no statistical significance difference between the two groups (p=.42)Conclusions: The Triad gel jigs did not produce superior fit compared to GC Pattern resin pattern in a master cast with four implants and with an internal connection

A rare telson anomaly in \u3cem\u3eParabuthus liosoma\u3c/em\u3e (Ehrenberg, 1828) (Scorpiones: Buthidae)

A rare anomaly of telson vesicle with two functional aculei is observed and discussed in a Parabuthus liosoma (Ehrenberg, 1828) specimen collected from Jizan, Saudi Arabia

On the block Lanczos and block Golub–Kahan reduction methods applied to discrete ill‐posed problems

The reduction of a large-scale symmetric linear discrete ill-posed problem with multiple right-hand sides to a smaller problem with a symmetric block tridiagonal matrix can easily be carried out by the application of a small number of steps of the symmetric block Lanczos method. We show that the subdiagonal blocks of the reduced problem converge to zero fairly rapidly with increasing block number. This quick convergence indicates that there is little advantage in expressing the solutions of discrete ill-posed problems in terms of eigenvectors of the coefficient matrix when compared with using a basis of block Lanczos vectors, which are simpler and cheaper to compute. Similarly, for nonsymmetric linear discrete ill-posed problems with multiple right-hand sides, we show that the solution subspace defined by a few steps of the block Golub–Kahan bidiagonalization method usually can be applied instead of the solution subspace determined by the singular value decomposition of the coefficient matrix without significant, if any, reduction of the quality of the computed solution

An Exploratory Study of HRM Practices in the Hospitality Sector of Saudi Arabia

Effective human resource management practices are considered to be very important for the overall success of an organization. We have investigated the prevailing human resource management practices in the hospitality sector of Saudi Arabia. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews from the human resource managers and general managers of hotels operating in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Finding of the study shows that proper human resource management practices are not adopted, especially very little attention is given to employees training and development and their performance appraisals. Mangers are confronted with a number of challenges due to ineffective human resource management practices. Limitations of the study and future research directions are given Keywords: HRM practices, Hospitality sector and Saudi Arabia

Prevalence and predictors of seizure in patients with Alzheimer’s disease at a tertiary care center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Purpose: To assess the prevalence and predictors of seizures in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at a Saudi tertiary hospital.Methods: A retrospective, matched case-control study was conducted using the electronic medical records of patients with AD who had an unprovoked seizure, from October 2015 to May 2018.Results: Nineteen cases and 195 controls were identified. Statistically significant risk factors for an unprovoked seizure in patients diagnosed with AD were hypertension (p = 0.001), autoimmune disease, stroke and TIA (p = 0.001). The multivariate logistic regression analysis identified hypertension (OR = 2.89; p = 0.009) and autoimmune disease (OR = 19.6; p = 0.045) as predictors of unprovoked seizure in AD patients.Conclusion: The occurrence of unprovoked seizures is more likely in severe cases of AD. In addition, the risk of seizure in patients with AD increases with two co-morbid conditions, hypertension, and autoimmune disease. However, further studies are required to determine the underlying mechanism of the association between the two risk factors and AD