Advanced Time-of-Flight Diamond Detection Systems

The radiation detection field has been rapidly growing in the recent three decades due to the Special Nuclear Materials (SNM) proliferation hazards. Monitoring and detecting SNM with high resolution has been a practical issue. Recently, Neutron Scatter Camera (NSC) addressed this issue by identifying the different SNM with high efficiency. However, the huge size of the detection system beside the poor resolution requires developing an alternative NSC. Two Diamond-based Neutron Scatter Camera (DNSC) systems were investigated. The two-diamond array demonstrated good energy resolution of reconstructing spectrum of multiple neutron sources. Moreover, the spectrum of 239PuBe source was reconstructed experimentally via the two-diamond array NSC. The measured spectrum agreed well with the peak of 3 and 10 MeV. On the other hand, the diamond array, in addition to its capability of spectroscopy, pinpointed several neutron sources. For instance, the simulated system could locate and identify a highly active 252Cf source ( 2.3*1010 n/s) placed 1 meter away within 6 hours.The Chi-Nu measurements started back in 2012 at Los Alamos National Lab to obtain more accurate data of fission neutrons. In this dissertation, a novel Double Time-of-Flight (DToF) detection system was utilized to investigate the capability of reconstructing the prompt fission neutrons spectra that were produced by the fast neutron irradiation of two fissile materials which coated a diamond detector. Unlike the Chi-Nu, DToF simulation measurements used only one type of detector (diamond detectors) for all neutron energy range. The simulation results represented good resolution but more accurate correction factors are needed for the low detection efficiency (~3%) of the system.Protecting astronauts for future space missions from galactic cosmic rays (GCR) is an issue for NASA. Identifying the light ions that strike through the spaceship craft is the first goal to design a shielding material. To address this issue, a ΔE/ΔE detector was explored for the measurement of Minimum Ionizing Particles (MIPs) using the beam-line at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL). The measurements were analyzed by Geant4 simulation, which showed promising results in using a ΔE/ΔE detector to define interacted isotopes

Gestational and Newborn Screening Markers of Cystic Fibrosis

Newborn Screening for Cystic Fibrosis Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive disorder that results in a shortened lifespan if appropriate treatment is not initiated sufficiently early. Approximately one in every 2,000 to one in every 3,500 Caucasians bom in Europe is affected by CF, which manifests itself in severe disorders of the lungs and the digestive system. Newborn screening for CF based on the analysis of bloodspot immunoreactive trypsinogen (IRT) has recently been introduced in a number of countries, including the UK. Also, it has been reported that pancreatitis associated protein (PAP) is elevated in bloodspots from neonates with CF and a strategy involving a combination of IRT and PAP may offer enhanced specificity. The study aims to develop an algorithm based on universal IRT measurements and subsequent PAP measurements in newborns with elevated IRT levels which will allow high detection rates to be maintained while at the same time decreasing the number of cases referred for DNA analysis and the accompanying detection of CF carriers. Prenatal Screening The aim of antenatal screening programmes is to offer couples reproductive choice, for example, termination of the pregnancy if the foetus is found to have a serious disorder such as CF. In this study, the physiological effects on women pregnant with a baby affected by CF were investigated. Several maternal serum markers were tested in this project in blood samples from women carrying a CF foetus. These markers are known to be associated with a number of adverse outcomes in pregnancy such as low birth weight, pre-term birth, pre-eclampsia, and stillbirth. The markers tested were alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), pregnancy-associated plasma protein (PAPP-A), human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), free beta subunit of hCG (FBhCG), unconjugated estriol (UE3) and Inhibin-A. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)

Pharmacy Students’ Perceptions and Attitudes towards Online Education during COVID-19 Lockdown in Saudi Arabia

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/In March 2020, a national lockdown in Saudi Arabia due to the pandemic forced all educational institutions to complete their academic year via online education. This study aims to explore pharmacy students’ perceptions and assess their attitude towards online education during the lockdown. A cross-sectional self-administered survey was designed to collect responses of pharmacy students (from one college of pharmacy in Saudi Arabia) from December 2020 through January 2021. A total of 241 students completed the survey. Students’ responses indicated that they had easy access to the technology, online skills, motivation and overall favorable acceptance for online learning and examinations. There was a significant difference in the mean scores between the students from different years of study (p = 0.013) related to technology access, and the male students were in significantly more favor of online examinations than female students (p = 0.009). The majority of the students indicated that the lockdown had no or negative impact on their learning and training. Students have general acceptance for online education delivery due to more technology access and online skills. More research should explore the factors affecting and the extent of the impact of online education on student learning and training.Peer reviewe

Investigation into Earnings Management Practices and the Role of Corporate Governance and External Audit in Emerging Markets: Empirical Evidence from Saudi Listed Companies

Agency theory predicts that corporate governance mechanisms and external audit play an important role in enhancing financial reporting, while institutional theory views these mechanisms as practices or regulations which result from coercion by legislators who impose certain practices in order to improve organizational effectiveness, or as a result of imitation. In terms of earnings management practices, both theories provide an appropriate theoretical framework. Taking agency theory and institutional theory as points of departure, the primary purpose of this study is to: (1) investigate the motivations and techniques of earnings management and; (2) to what extent corporate governance and external audit can affect earnings management practices in Saudi Arabia. To achieve this aim, the questionnaire survey is mainly used to explore the motivations and techniques of earnings management in Saudi Arabia by obtaining the different perceptions of respondents. In terms of the role of corporate governance and external audit in reducing earnings management practices, two models are constructed and a set of hypotheses are formulated. These models are examined, by a logistic regression, using a sample consisting of all companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange with the exception of financial and insurance companies which have different practices. In addition, semi-structured interviews are employed in order to provide a better understanding of the research questions, confirming and elaborating on the questionnaire survey and models’ findings and supporting the development of the hypotheses. They were subsequently undertaken, after the questionnaire survey, with 15 individuals including board members, audit committee members, external auditors and academic staff. Although there were significant differences among respondents, the findings reveal that the four main incentives for Saudi managers to manage earnings are ‘to increase the amount of remuneration’, ‘to report a reasonable profit and avoid loss’, ‘to obtain a bank loan’ and ‘to increase share prices’. The findings also indicate that only seven statements relating to earnings management that received support from respondents were techniques of earnings management in Saudi companies. Agency and institutional theory may provide a sensible explanation for previous earnings management practices in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the expectation of beneficial corporate governance practices and external audit constraining opportunistic earnings management activities was, to a large extent, found to be inaccurate in Saudi Arabia. That is, no internal corporate governance variables, apart from outside director, board size and board meetings, examined in this research are shown to have any significant effect on earnings management. With the exception of auditor opinion, none of the external audit factors and ownership structure affects earnings management. Moreover, the interview survey shows many issues and interesting findings related to previous investigation such as nepotism, illegal competition, and lack of independence. Generally, the findings are not consistent with agency theory that ownership concentration, audit committee, and external audit might mitigate agency problems leading to reduced agency cost by aligning the interests of controlling owners with those of the company. However, previous finding can be interpreted by Institutional theory which views these mechanisms as practices or regulations resulting from coercion by legislators who impose certain practices in order to improve organizational effectiveness, or as a result of imitation. It should be noted that the findings established in this study could be useful to external auditors and regulators and legislators in their attempts to constrain the incidence of earnings management and enhance the quality of monitoring mechanisms

Use of Gray Water in Cooling Air Conditioning Condenser

Arid and semi-arid countries experience challenges especially in the use of air conditioning units which tend to consume more electricity in the summer due to the effect of the heat on the compressor. The solution to this problem is the use of spray cooling with the spray targeting the compressor to cool it through evaporation as a result of the absorption of the latent heat of vaporization. However, a problem still exists in these countries mainly because they lack adequate water and have to resort to the use of gray water. This paper, therefore, investigates the use of gray water as a spray coolant and its effects on nozzles of various sizes.Gray water contains minerals and chemicals which are bound to accumulate at the tip of the nozzle in a process called scaling. Scaling results in the narrowing of the nozzle affecting the spread diameter, nozzle diameter and the cone angle of the resultant spray. The experiment highlighted in this paper will use tap water and gray water both of which are tested using two nozzles. The diameter of the nozzles is measured with the utilization of a microscope while the cone angle of the resultant spray is measured with the use of images taken from a high-resolution camera.It is observed that both tap water and gray water produce a certain amount of scaling at the tip of the nozzles. The scaling affects the cone angles and the spread diameters. While tap water has a small reduction in the cone angle, the gray water results in a larger reduction. The tap water also results in an increase in the effective spread diameter while the gray water results in its decrease. However, because water is scarce in the arid countries, gray water is the most suitable with the solution to the problem being the constant replacement of the nozzles after a particular period

The Role of Market Knowledge in the Adoption of the Blue Ocean Strategy and its Impact on Achieving Competitive Advantage: a Study Conducted in the Saudi Telecom Company (STC)

This study deals with an important and vital subject that focuses on determining the role of market knowledge and Blue Ocean Strategy in achieving competitive advantage, and that is because of the scarcity of  management studies in general, and marketing studies in particular, which addressed the nature of the relationship and impact between these three concepts .The study problem was represented by the question: what is the state of the Blue Ocean Strategy in Saudi Arabian organizations, how is it affected by market knowledge and what is its impact on achieving competitive advantage. This study aims to reveal the extent of the realization of the organization under study of market knowledge and Blue Ocean Strategy. It also aims to determine the relationship and impact between market knowledge dimensions and the dimensions of the Blue Ocean Strategy, determining the relationship and impact between the Blue Ocean and the dimensions of the competitive advantage strategy, the relationship and impact between market knowledge dimensions and competitive advantage dimensions and determining the relationship and the indirect impact of market knowledge on achieving competitive advantage through the Blue Ocean Strategy. The study was conducted on employees who occupy supervisory positions in Marketing department of Saudi Telecom Company. The number of valid questionnaires for analysis amounted to (64), which were analyzed using statistical software (SPSS). The study reached several conclusions, including: There is a high degree of acknowledgement among participants in the study about: market knowledge dimension, Blue Ocean Strategy and competitive advantage; there is a relationship and impact between market knowledge dimension and Blue Ocean Strategy dimension; there is a relationship and impact between Blue Ocean Strategy dimension and competitive advantage dimension; there is a relationship and impact between market knowledge dimension and competitive advantage dimension, there is a relationship and an indirect impact of market knowledge on achieving competitive advantage, and that is through the Blue Ocean Strategy

Understanding the change processes resulting from accreditation of colleges in Saudi Arabia

Change is inevitable in the life of any organisation, including higher education institutions, in order for it to survive and compete. In Saudi Arabia, the process of accreditation has involved many higher education institutions in order to improve the quality of education provided to students. However, accreditation has been problematic for many Saudi colleges and the change processes resulting from it is not well understood, nor reported on in any depth, from the perspective of those actively involved. Therefore, the present study aims to develop an understanding of the change processes resulting from accreditation by investigating the perceptions of faculty members in the College of Education and College of Arts at King Saud University which have undertaken the accreditation process and been successfully accredited by international accreditation bodies. Three research questions were developed to guide this study: 1) What are the perceptions of faculty members about the process of accreditation?; 2) How have education faculty policies and procedures changed as a result of accreditation?; and 3) What are the challenges and benefits for a faculty seeking accreditation? A case study methodology was used to gain an in-depth understanding of the accreditation process as experienced by the participants in the two colleges. This study employed various methods to collect data from multiple sources, including a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. The participants were purposively chosen from among the faculty members who had been actively involved in the accreditation process in the two colleges. The major finding of this study was consistent with the existing literature that claims that change is a complex and multidimensional process. A nuanced understanding of the change processes in Saudi Arabia requires a combination of models of change based primarily on the teleological model with additional influences from the political, social cognitive and cultural models of change. The accreditation process was perceived by respondents as an opportunity to critically examine their programs and policies and identify their strengths and weaknesses. It also enabled the development of the conceptual framework of the CoE, strategic plan of the CoA, and the core proficiencies that each student in both colleges is expected to demonstrate upon graduation. Moreover, the process helped in the development of a systematic assessment approach for data gathering and analysis to assess program performance. It also increased collaboration among male and female faculty members, increased female members’ participation in the decision-making process, and improved cooperation between the colleges and their relevant stakeholders. Furthermore, the accreditation process in both colleges was facilitated by a number of factors, such as the strong level of commitment from senior leaders, the creation of a new organisational structure and the establishment of the position of Vice Dean of Development and Quality, and greater communication. However, the process in both colleges was also inhibited by a number of factors including faculty members’ resistance to change and identification of insufficient resources. The main implication of this study is that leaders in Saudi higher education context should be aware of the complexity of change and not focus solely on one model for change, but instead give great considerations to multiple models of change. Learning and applying more than one model may provide change leaders a larger set of tools to effectively work with the process of accreditation

Cloud-Based Retrieval Information System Using Concept for Multi-Format Data

The need of effective and efficient method to retrieving non-Web-enabled and Web-enabled information entities is essential, due to the fact of inaccuracy of the existing search engines that still use traditional term-based indexing for text documents and annotation text for images, audio and video files. Previous works showed that incorporating the knowledge in the form of concepts into an information retrieval system may increase the effectiveness of the retrieving method. Unfortunately, most of the works that implemented the concept-based information retrieval system still focused on one information format. This paper proposes a multi-format (text, image, video and, audio) concept-based information retrieval method for Cloud environment. The proposed method is implemented in a laboratory-scale heterogeneous cloud environment using Eucalyptus middleware.  755 multi-format information is experimented and the performance of the proposed method is measured