Every Day You Are Improving: How College Students View the Educational Impact of World of Warcraft

The purpose of the study was to explore college students’ experiences with playing World of Warcraft (WoW) and their views on the application of WoW in educational settings. A qualitative case study design was used to interview three participants who were selected purposively from a Midwestern university. Findings revealed that players thought that playing WoW was fun, relaxing, motivating, but sometimes almost to the point of addiction. The findings also support student perceptions of generalization of teamwork, cooperating, socializing, academic skills, and time management skills learned and practiced in playing WoW to academic settings. Playing WoW games can provide an important link between the virtual world and the real world as players develop academic, time management, collaborative, and critical thinking skills

Effect of tooth brushing on color changes of esthetic restorative materials

Background: The major problem of dental restorative material over time is color changes, and this discoloration is caused by either intrinsic or extrinsic factors. Intrinsic factors include the staining of the material itself caused by changes in the resin matrix and the interface between matrix and fillers.Methods: The study was conducted using resin composite material (shade A2), and four solutions (distilled water, strawberry, pomegranate, and red grape juices). The specimens were distributed into four groups for immersion in one of the four solutions. Authors divided each group into brushing and non-brushing subgroups.Results: When immersed in water, shade was changed from A2 to A3.5 and A4 (light to dark) in brushing group and no overall change was noticed in non-brushing group. However, there was statistically significant difference between the two groups.Conclusions: All types of juices caused distinct color change. However, brushing caused more color change as compared to specimens with no brushing

Aspect extraction for sentiment analysis in Arabic dialect

The increase of the user-generated content on the web led to the explosion of opinionated text which facilitated opinion mining research. Despite the popularity of this research field in English text and the large number of Arabic speakers who contribute continuously to the web content, Arabic opinion mining has not received much attention due to the lack of reliable NLP tools and an accepted/comprehensive dataset. While English opinion mining has been studied extensively, Arabic opinion mining hasn’t received as much attention. The work that exists in sentiment analysis is limited to news, blogs written in Modern Standard Arabic and few studies on social media and web reviews written in Arabic dialect. Moreover, most of the work done has been done at the document and sentence level and to best of our knowledge, there is no work on a more fine-grained level. In this work, we take a more fine-grained approach to Arabic opinion mining at the aspect level through experimentation with methods that have been used in English Aspect extraction. Further, we are also contributing a dataset that can be used for further research on Arabic dialect

Comorbidities Associated With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents at a Tertiary Care Setting

Studies have revealed high rates of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric comorbid conditions among individuals diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, research on this topic in the Arab world has been limited. This study evaluates the medical, neurodevelopmental, and psychiatric comorbidities in children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). A total of 428 pediatric patients diagnosed with ADHD were included. Children and adolescents with ADHD had high rates of comorbid disorders. Twenty comorbid conditions were identified. More than 3 quarters of the study sample had at least 1 comorbid disorder. The most common comorbidity among children was autism spectrum disorder, and among adolescents was anxiety disorders. Comprehensive assessments are highly warranted to identify and manage associated comorbid conditions. Further research is needed in exploring the biopsychosocial factors contributing to the elevated rate of comorbidity in children and adolescents with ADHD

The Lancet Psychiatry Commission : a blueprint for protecting physical health in people with mental illness

No abstract available