Oil Prices Turn-down and its Effects on Global Economy: A Descriptive Study of Saudi Arabia

This paper highlights oil prices turndown and its effect on the global economy in a descriptive study of Saudi Arabia. The reasons, consequences and an adaptation approach for the current oil crisis in Saudi Arabia have been addressed. Oil prices will most likely maintain the current low prices for at least the next two years as OPEC has not succeeded to offset oil supplies.   Reasons of the oil price turndown were found to be merely politically motivated than purely economic. However, both aspects will negatively affect the oil price and the crude oil sales volume. Consequences of oil price turndown manifest itself in reducing the levels of the currency valuation, business survival, and social standards. As a result, governmental subsides in fuel, water, and electricity will be revised. This will lead to several aggressive decision to stall or completely eliminate costly projects. The consequences are that private industries relying heavily on business with the public sector will be badly impacted, leading to significant layoffs.  Unemployment rate will, therefore, sharply increase, affecting the “Saudization” program.  Inflation would in turn increase and the economic growth decreased. To rectify the oil price crisis, a comprehensive approach has to be taken into consideration. The most important of which is to adopt a sustainable economy approach where dependence on oil export be alleviated. Keywords: OPEC, Oil, Turn-down, Global econom

INVESTIGATING THE CONTRIBUTION OF HISTORIC SITE INTERPRETATION CENTERS TO MEANING MAKING: THE CASE OF BAHRAIN

This dissertation investigates the role and contribution of the Historic Site Interpretation Centers in the process of meaning-making from the historic site to the visitors, as well as their visiting experience and attendance at the same settings. The Historic Site Interpretation Centers exhibit a unique museum typology dedicated to sites of historical significance, offering a dual mode of interpretation, labeled as ‘in situ’ and ‘in context’. The objective was to evaluate the physical attributes and applied display strategies in conveying meaning from historic sites to visitors and, to explore the resulting stakeholders’ (i.e. service providers and visitors) perception and emotional experience in these dual settings. Hence, a convergent mixed method of multiple case-study analysis was used to evaluate the given settings’ physical attributes, and multi-ethnographic tools inclusive of archival documents, online survey, semi-structured open-ended interviews, and non-obtrusive observation were used to explore the stakeholders’ perception and emotional experience. Four historical sites in Bahrain were selected: Qal’at Al Bahrain, Shaikh Salman bin Ahmed Al Fateh Fort, Bu Maher Fort and Al Khamis Mosque. The findings suggest that visitation interest and meaning-making are primarily affected by first, a range of different contextual relationships between the Historic Site Interpretation Centers and their historic sites, building physical attributes and display strategies. Second, visitors’ interests and expectations are the main trigger for visitation, while their cultural background and collective memory are recognized as influential factors in the process of meaning-making. The difficulty in creating meaning-making may reside in a single or a combination of factors: a rigid de-contextualization of objects, an architectural design of the interpretive center insensitive to the particularities of the location, presentation strategies ineffective enough to generate a disinterest among visitors. Undoubtedly, the present situation of historic sites in Bahrain affiliates itself to the ever-present debate on the philosophical groundings of Critical Regionalism from its generation in the early 80s of the last century to its present and undeniable actuality and force. This research acknowledges the original reasons and ideological perspective behind its inception and the contemporary critical readings of the same text in the light of new economic, environmental, political concerns and design challenges. While understanding some of the concerns and challenges that drove architectural production since the concept was coined, this research’s intention is to remain close to the essence of Critical Regionalism, which is to effectively understand the importance of a context while designing appropriate structures easily interpreted by visitors, and capable to generate coherent meaning-making within a specific setting. Finally, a new classification of museums is suggested on the basis of contextual relationships to the historic site and the involvement of dual modes of interpretation - ‘in situ’ and ‘in context’ - in order to overcome the existing dichotomy in the contribution and role of such museums. In addition, this study’s ambition is to provide some design and curatorship directions for architects, museographers, and policymakers in Bahrain and beyond

INVESTIGATING THE CONTRIBUTION OF HISTORIC SITE INTERPRETATION CENTERS TO MEANING-MAKING: THE CASE OF BAHRAIN

This dissertation investigates the role and contribution of the Historic Site Interpretation Centers in the process of meaning-making from the historic site to the visitors, as well as their visiting experience and attendance at the same settings. The Historic Site Interpretation Centers exhibit a unique museum typology dedicated to sites of historical significance, offering a dual-mode of interpretation, labeled as ‘in situ’ and ‘in context’. The objective was to evaluate the physical attributes and applied display strategies in conveying meaning from historic sites to visitors and, to explore the resulting stakeholders’ (i.e. service providers and visitors) perception and emotional experience in these dual settings. Hence, a convergent mixed method of multiple case-study analysis was used to evaluate the given settings’ physical attributes, and multi-ethnographic tools inclusive of archival documents, online survey, semi-structured open-ended interviews, and non-obtrusive observation were used to explore the stakeholders’ perception and emotional experience. Four historical sites in Bahrain were selected: Qal’at Al Bahrain, Shaikh Salman bin Ahmed Al Fateh Fort, Bu Maher Fort, and Al Khamis Mosque. The findings suggest that visitation interest and meaning-making are primarily affected by first, a range of different contextual relationships between the Historic Site Interpretation Centers and their historic sites, building physical attributes, and display strategies. Second, visitors’ interests and expectations are the main trigger for visitation, while their cultural background and collective memory are recognized as influential factors in the process of meaning-making. The difficulty in creating meaning-making may reside in a single or a combination of factors: a rigid de-contextualization of objects, an architectural design of the interpretive center insensitive to the particularities of the location, presentation strategies ineffective enough to generate a disinterest among visitors. Undoubtedly, the present situation of historic sites in Bahrain affiliates itself to the ever-present debate on the philosophical groundings of Critical Regionalism from its generation in the early 80s of the last century to its present and undeniable actuality and force. This research acknowledges the original reasons and ideological perspective behind its inception and the contemporary critical readings of the same text in the light of new economic, environmental, political concerns and design challenges. While understanding some of the concerns and challenges that drove architectural production since the concept was coined, this research’s intention is to remain close to the essence of Critical Regionalism, which is to effectively understand the importance of a context while designing appropriate structures easily interpreted by visitors, and capable to generate coherent meaning-making within a specific setting. Finally, a new classification of museums is suggested on the basis of contextual relationships to the historic site and the involvement of dual modes of interpretation - ‘in situ’ and ‘in context’ - in order to overcome the existing dichotomy in the contribution and role of such museums. In addition, this study’s ambition is to provide some design and curatorship directions for architects, museographers, and policymakers in Bahrain and beyond

MICRO-FACTORS INFLUENCING SITE SELECTION FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES (SMES) IN SAUDI ARABIA: ALHASSA AREA USING ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) ANALYSIS

Site selection is a complex task for decision makers. However, this task becomes more complicated with small and medium enterprises. Location selection decision involves selected octal-factors which influence the decision. This paper proposed micro-factors that influence site selection decision with a quantitative tool (AHP analysis) to rank which factor is most significant and vice versa. Outcome of this paper considerably matches perspectives of experts and owners of small businesses in Al- Hassa area who gave an accurate estimation of factors prioritization due to their experience in the region as well as the businesses

Supply Chain with Operational Research (OR) using Simulation: A Case Study Price of Oil and Production Fluctuation in Kingdom Saudi Arabia (KSA)

Present trends in fluctuations of oil price and production have an impact on supply chain (SC). The study concentrates on the computation on the impact on fluctuation of oil price and production in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The study is attractive and interesting because it uses stochastic simulation as the main and last resort of mathematical operational research (OR) technique and tracking signal. Excel was selected as the main candidate visual object event driven programming (VOEDP) for the computation. Keywords: Simulation, Stochastic simulation, Tracking signal, operational research (OR), Supply Chain

Content-aware power saving multimedia adaptation for mobile learning

Due to the tremendous enhancements in the capabilities of mobile devices in recent years and accessibility to higher bandwidth mobile internet, the use of online multimedia learning resources on mobile devices is increasingly becoming popular. Improvements in battery capacity have not matched the same advancements compared to other features of mobile devices. Limited Battery power is introducing a significant challenge in making better use of online educational multimedia resources. Online Multimedia Resources drains more battery power as a result of higher amount of wireless data transfer and therefore limiting learning opportunities on the move. Many power saving multimedia adaptation techniques have been suggested. Majority of these techniques achieve battery efficiency while reducing multimedia quality. So far, however, to the best of our knowledge no previous effort has considered the factor of learning efficacy in multimedia adaptation process. Existing adaptation techniques are susceptible to information loss as a result of quality of reduction. Such loss affects the learning content efficacy and jeopardizes the learning process. In this paper, we recommend a novel power save educational multimedia adaptation approach that considers the learning aspect of multimedia in the adaptation process. Our technique enables learning for extended duration by battery power saving without putting the learning process at risk. Efficacy of entire learning resources is managed by not allowing any part of the learning multimedia to be delivered in a quality that will negatively affect the learning outcome. We also present a framework that guides the implementation of our approach followed by description of our prototype application that uses educational multimedia metadata implemented in semantic web technologies

Behavioral Measurement of Young Generation towards Brand Products in Saudi Arabia: Al- Hassa Case Study

Brand products are rapidly prevailing in developed countries. The behavioral measurement and attitude among young generation is vital to understand in order to make a good marketing plan. This paper highlights the behavioral measurement of young generation towards brand products. It specifically measures  demographic variables ( age, gender, income, social status, education, employment status, friendship effect and price) towards the brand products. Methodology used is the quantitative method which is a self-administrated questionnaire  with 170 responses from the online/paper filling survey participation. SPSS is the software tool used for the statistical analysis to test the suggested hypothesis. Results showed that the price of well-known brand products affects the purchase process negatively. Although young people are interested in purchasing brand products, their low income prevents them from the buying process while they are considered as a major segmentation for brand names. Keywords: Young generation, Brand products, Al-Hass

Energy-Aware Streaming Multimedia Adaptation: An Educational Perspective

As mobile devices are getting more powerful and more affordable the use of online educational multimedia is also getting very prevalent. Limited battery power is nevertheless, a major restricting factor as streaming multimedia drains battery power quickly. Many battery efficient multimedia adaptation techniques have been proposed that achieve battery efficiency by lowering presentation quality of entire multimedia. Adaptation is usually done without considering any impact on the information contents of multimedia. In this paper, based on the results of an experimental study, we argue that without considering any negative impact on information contents of multimedia the adaptation may negatively impact the learning process. Some portions of the multimedia that require a higher visual quality for conveying learning information may lose their learning effectiveness in the adapted lowered quality. We report results of our experimental study that indicate that different parts of the same learning multimedia do not have same minimum acceptable quality. This strengthens the position that power-saving adaptation techniques for educational multimedia must be developed that lower the quality of multimedia based on the needs of its individual fragments for successfully conveying learning informatio