Acquisitions and mergers in Saudi Arabia : reasons and effects

The high scale of acquisition and merger's activity has produced great interest among academic and policy makers alike, resulting in the development of a considerable amount of research on the advantages and disadvantages of A&Ms. Previous literature however, focused on the A&Ms' activity in advanced capitalist countries, specifically the USA and UK. Studies of A&Ms in developing countries are rare; this research attempts to fill part of this gap by investigating reasons for and effects of A&Ms in Saudi Arabia. Three main causes are behind the transfers of corporate assets within industry in the Anglo-American nations and some developed countries; managerial, disciplinary and economical. This study, however, suggests that the only group of causes behind A&Ms in S.A., among these three groups, is economical. Recently, the literature described A&Ms' decisions not as comprehensively rational choices but as outcomes of processes governed by several influences. This group of reasons was also tested in this study and gained its support. With regard to A&Ms' effects on firms' profitability as well as on the economic conditions, the research finds that A&Ms in S.A. are expected to improve merging firms' abilities to compete and to improve their profitability. Moreover, favourable effects on economic welfare was accepted. A reasonable step in A&Ms activity is to determine whether there are particular characteristics of A&Ms which are systematically linked to positive or negative effects on the performance. The current research finds that determinants of success could be predictive if analysed with a relationship to the type and cause of A&Ms. This study suggests that the type of A&M (consolidation or acquisition) and causes for A&Ms (synergy or assets stripping) affects the factors of A&Ms' success and failure. These findings were based on a survey of the top 500 Saudi Arabian companies, of whom 124 companies responded to the questionnaire as well as on seven personal interviews with seven executives, who experienced A&Ms before and who answered the questionnaire and accepted to meet the researcher

How Saudi Arabian newspapers depicted the September 11 attacks

This study aims to measure the degree of diplomatic and political concern expressed by Saudi journalists and writers concerning the September eleventh event. The Thesis will also examine the influence the newspaper reports had on changes in opinion. These changes will be analysed, and this analysis will identify any changes that may have taken place in attitudes towards the United States of America and American culture. This study spans the three-month period that followed 911. It examines relevant articles that appeared in Saudi newspapers. To explore and analyse the writers' viewpoints, eight newspapers were selected for content analysis and these yielded four hundred and thirty one relevant articles. The results reported indicate that the findings of this thesis show that many factors can be attributed to the literature of the Saudi Press. The thesis provides an indication of the importance that the September attacks had on Saudi newspapers, not only the influence on the newspapers themselves but also the journalists and writers of the selected newspapers. It is clear that when the events were published that the events had been reported in a consistent and objective manner, which had direct correlation to the gender and nationality of writers

Proactive detection of DDOS attacks in Publish-Subscribe networks

Information centric networking (ICN) using architectures such as Publish-Subscribe Internet Routing Paradigm (PSIRP) or Publish-Subscribe Internet Technology (PURSUIT) has been proposed as an important candidate for the Internet of the future. ICN is an emerging research area that proposes a transformation of the current host centric Internet architecture into an architecture where information items are of primary importance. This change allows network functions such as routing and locating to be optimized based on the information items themselves. The Bloom filter based content delivery is a source routing scheme that is used in the PSIRP/PURSUIT architectures. Although this mechanism solves many issues of today’s Internet such as the growth of the routing table and the scalability problems, it is vulnerable to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In this paper, we present a new content delivery scheme that has the advantages of Bloom filter based approach while at the same time being able to prevent DDoS attacks on the forwarding mechanism. Our security analysis suggests that with the proposed approach, the forwarding plane is able to resist attacks such as DDoS with very high probabilit

The Effect of Teaching Method on Academic Achievement and Some Psychological Factors Among the Gifted Girls Middle School Students

The aim of this study is to study some teaching methods and measure their effects in some sets of variables: ("academic achievement", "self-confidence", "student's attitudes toward courses or their motivation") from their viewpoint as gifted girls student. The qualitative approach and focus group tool was used to collect data from sample of 7 gifted girls’ middle school students in Al-Ahsa city in the eastern region in Saudi Arabia. The study concluded that: The diversity in teaching methods consider as a factor that influences the student’s academic achievement, increases the student’s self-confidence and the student's attitudes toward courses or their motivation.We find that teaching method affects several factors (academic achievement, the student's self-confidence, and the student's attitudes toward courses or their motivation) and in different degree levels: First: Academic Achievement is greatly affected by teaching methods by 63.3%. Second: The teaching method affects the student's attitudes toward courses or their motivation by 24.2%. Third: teaching methods affect the student's self-confidence in herself by 12.5% which is the lowest degree compared to other factors in this research. The affecting practices and teaching methods were arranged according to the student's point of view after giving each method a degree level of importance on the scale.Keywords: Qualitative research, Focus groups, Teaching methods. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-3-15 Publication date: January 31st 2021

Changes made to the teaching of linear algebra and calculus courses in the UK in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, university mathematics departments in the UK adapted their teaching for 2020-21, with some courses being delivered digitally and others through a mixture of on-campus and digital delivery. A survey of linear algebra and calculus lecturers was carried out in the spring of 2021 to investigate what changes were made to courses, as well as lecturers’ perceptions of institutional decision making and support. This survey found that a majority of the 41 participants were satisfied that the choice of delivery mode was correct, although views about the importance of offering on-campus classes were mixed. There was a significant increase in the use of video clips made by the lecturer, video-conferencing software, discussion forums, electronic submission of written work and on-screen marking tools. Most lecturers reported a reduction in the amount of time that students were expected to be taking part in live teaching activities and an increase in the amount of time they were expected to be working on asynchronous activities. While some were keen to return to their previous practice, others were enthusiastic about retaining features introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Energy Management and Demand Response of Industrial Systems

Energy management is an important concept that has come to the forefront in recent years under the smart grid paradigm. Energy conservation and management can help defer some capacity addition requirements in the long-term, which is very significant in the context of continuously growing demand for energy. It can also alleviate the adverse environmental impacts of commissioning new generation plants. Therefore, there is a continuous need for the development of appropriate tools to ensure efficient energy usage by existing and new loads and the efficient integration of distributed energy resources (DER). There is a need for energy conservation in the industrial sector as it accounts for the largest share of energy consumption among all customer sectors. Also considering their high energy density, industrial facilities have significant potential for participating in demand side management (DSM) programs and help in reducing the system peak demand by reducing or shifting their load in response to energy price signals. However industrial demand response (DR) is typically constrained by the operational requirements such as process interdependencies and material flow management. An EMS framework is proposed in this thesis for optimal load management of industrial loads which includes improved load estimation technique and uncertainty mitigation using MPC. The framework has been applied to a water pumping system (WPS) where an equipment level load modeling is implemented using a NN-based model. Another EMS framework is proposed for an oil refinery process. The refinery EMS is developed based on power demand modeling of the oil refinery process, considering an on-site cogeneration facility. A joint electrical-thermal model is proposed for the cogeneration units to account for the electricity and steam production costs. In addition to load management, DR for industrial loads is investigated as another energy management application. However since DR requires interaction between the energy supplier and the customer, this thesis considers DR from both the local distribution company's (LDC) and industrial customer's perspectives. From the LDC's perspective, the objective is to reduce the network operational costs by minimizing peak demand and flattening the load profile for better utilization of system resources. From the industrial customer's perspective, the objective is to minimize the energy cost using both load management decisions and DR signals sent by the LDC. While the developed EMS models are used to represent the industrial customer's operations, a distribution optimal power flow (DOPF) model is developed to represent distribution system operations. The DR strategy proposed in this thesis is based on effective communication between the customer's EMS and the LDC's operations using a day-ahead contractual mechanism between the two parties, and a real-time operational scheme to mitigate the uncertainties through improved forecasts for energy prices and power demand. Two types of DR signals are proposed; a desired demand profile signal and a retail price signal, which are developed by the LDC and sent to the customer to achieve the desired DR in a collaborative manner. In the retail price based control approach, the signal is produced by a retail pricing model which is designed based on customer's historical data collected by the LDC

The Reality of Practicing Differentiated Learning in Gifted Classes from the Perspective of a Gifted Student and Her Associates

The study aims to identify the reality of practicing and applying differentiated learning for gifted students through adopting the following: a survey descriptive approach in which a set of qualitative instruments such as interviewing a gifted student, a quantitative instrument, a questionnaire for teachers of the gifted, an observation instrument and the document analysis instrument to check what female teachers present with regard to professional practice of differentiated learning in gifted classes.             From the perspective of the gifted student, practicing differentiated learning in gifted classes was not as expected. Contrary to that, teachers’ responses, according to the questionnaire, showed that they did. The use of the observation instrument was to perceive the practice from another perspective. The study concluded that practicing differentiated learning by teachers was lacking, as they continued to use traditional methods of teaching. To ensure teachers’ understanding of the concept of differentiated learning, the document analysis instrument was used. It was clear that the professional training offered by the school and training office was relatively good, but the real practice didn’t cope with its quality.&nbsp

A Case Study of Fractional-Order Control

This thesis concerns fractional-order (non-integer) methods for control system design. Although fractional-order calculus has a long history in mathematics and engineering, the uptake of relevant fractional-order concepts in control systems research has been relatively slow, and interest in the topic remains comparatively low—albeit with some important exceptions, as highlighted by the literature review of this thesis. The first part of the thesis considers fractional-order methods for modelling and control in quite broad terms, before later focusing on one particular approach from the control systems literature, namely Fractional-order Generalised Predictive Control (FGPC). The FGPC approach is of particular interest here because of its relationship with the well-known, conventional control algorithm, namely Generalised Predictive Control (GPC). Both algorithms have a relatively straightforward implementation form, making them attractive to practitioners. Hence, one contribution of the thesis is to use worked examples in MATLAB as an introduction to GPC and FGPC design methods, in part for tutorial reasons. More significantly, the thesis demonstrates how fractional-order methods are utilised to increase control design flexibility. In this regard, the thesis investigates both conventional GPC and FGPC methods using various simulation examples. The robustness of control systems is investigated via Monte Carlo simulation, with consideration of model mismatch and unmeasured disturbances. These results Abstract II are utilised to develop recommendations for how to optimise the extra design coefficients introduced in the fractional-order case. The comparative study is extended to a laboratory example, namely the control of airflow in a 1 m by 2 m by 2 m forced ventilation environmental test chamber. To facilitate further uptake of FGPC methods in the future, the algorithms developed are prepared as a MATLAB toolbox, i.e. a collection of functions that calculate and implement the FGPC approach and subsequently measure the performance of the controller

Entity finding in a document collection using adaptive window sizes

Traditional search engines work by returning a list of documents in response to queries. However, such engines are often inadequate when the information need of the user involves entities. This issue has led to the development of entity-search, which unlike normal web search does not aim at returning documents but names of people, products, organisations, etc. Some of the most successful methods for identifying relevant entities were built around the idea of a proximity search. In this thesis, we present an adaptive, well-founded, general-purpose entity finding model. In contrast to the work of other researchers, where the size of the targeted part of the document (i.e., the window size) is fixed across the collection, our method uses a number of document features to calculate an adaptive window size for each document in the collection. We construct a new entity finding test collection called the ESSEX test collection for use in evaluating our method. This collection represents a university setting as the data was collected from the publicly accessible webpages of the University of Essex. We test our method on five different datasets including the W3C Dataset, CERC Dataset, UvT/TU Datasets, ESSEX dataset and the ClueWeb09 entity finding collection. Our method provides a considerable improvement over various baseline models on all of these datasets. We also find that the document features considered for the calculation of the window size have differing impacts on the performance of the search. These impacts depend on the structure of the documents and the document language. As users may have a variety of search requirements, we show that our method is adaptable to different applications, environments, types of named entities and document collections

A COMPARISON OF NARROW-PLATFORM (3.0-3.6mm) vs WIDER PLATFORM (3.7-6mm) DENTAL IMPLANTS

Retrospective research accessing the Electronic Health Record (EHR) of the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine [axiUm database and software, Exan Group, Las Vegas, Nevada]. The research compared the success (survival) of narrow-platform dental implants (3.0-3.6mm) vs. wider-platform dental implants (3.7-6mm) in the posterior maxilla and mandible (molars and premolars), and, using axiUm measuring tools, evaluated marginal bone loss in each tooth/implant investigated. Datapoints from standard oral radiographs (periapical x-rays) existing in the Electronic Health Record were measured and recorded. Analysis of the data from the Electronic Health Record shows that both narrow and wider-diameter implants will present statistically significant marginal bone loss post-placement and restoration, averaging 0.7mm initial bone loss for the narrow diameter implants and 0.5mm initial bone loss for the wider-diameter implants. These results, from analysis of this existing University of Pittsburgh Electronic Health Record data, may not reflect the success rate anticipated clinically, nor that expected from anecdotal experience