Social anxiety and quality of life in adolescents: cognitive aspect, social interaction and cultural tendency

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyAim: In recent years, research has concluded that social anxiety plays a key role in quality of life. The overall aim of this research was to evaluate social anxiety in adolescents with respect to determining how social anxiety affects quality of life. Method: This study was a cross-sectional study. A pilot study was conducted to cross-culturally adapt all scales by the recommended translated and back-translated method. The correlations of socio-demographic parameters with the SAS-A scores were examined. Data from a sample of 564 students (273 boys 48.4%, 291 girls 51.6%) were analysed. Adolescents from Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom were screened and compared. Confirmatory factor analysis was utilised to build the proposed model based on prior research and theoretical findings. Finding: No significant sex difference in the SAS-A total score, fear of negative evaluation and social avoidance were found. Comparing the boys and girls on SPIN scores, Fear, Avoidance and Authority Problems, the results showed that boys reported higher in SPIN total, fear and avoidance (except authority problem subscale score) than did girls. SAS-A scores were higher in those with a low socio-economic level. Moreover, social anxiety symptoms among Saudi adolescents were more severe in boys. Results showed that adolescents without social anxiety scored higher on quality of life and its subscales than adolescents with social anxiety as measured by ASA-A. No significant difference was found in psychical health. Adolescents without social anxiety scored higher on quality of life and its subscales than adolescents with social anxiety as measured by SIAS. Adolescents without social anxiety scored on Positive Individualism more than adolescents with social anxiety. No significant difference was found in Positive Relatedness. In the cross-cultural study, the results showed no significant difference on SIAS scores for Saudi adolescents and British adolescents. However, a marginally significant differences was found on BAI scores, where Saudi adolescents reported higher level of anxiety than British adolescents. The British sample reported higher on the fear of negative evaluation than the Saudi sample. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was utilised to test hypotheses on the links between scores on the study scales. The findings indicate that the overall fit of the SAS-A model was acceptable. Direct effects between the study variables and significant positive correlation between cognitive factors and social anxiety were found. Mediation effects of SAS-A and SPIN were investigated by reporting direct effects, indirect effects and total effects. Results indicte that social anxiety significantly mediated the relationships between subjective anxiety, positive individualism, and cognitive and environmental health. Conclusion: It is therefore imperative that socially anxious students be provided with appropriate consultations and treatment so that they can improve their quality of life through integrating better with social institutions. If untreated, the impairment caused by social phobia could lead to poor academic and professional outcomes, as well as poor psychosocial outcomes

Utilization Of A Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Network For Intrusion Detection And Border Surveillance

To control the border more effectively, countries may deploy a detection system that enables real-time surveillance of border integrity. Events such as border crossings need to be monitored in real time so that any border entries can be noted by border security forces and destinations marked for apprehension. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are promising for border security surveillance because they enable enforcement teams to monitor events in the physical environment. In this work, probabilistic models have been presented to investigate senor development schemes while considering the environmental factors that affect the sensor performance. Simulation studies have been carried out using the OPNET to verify the theoretical analysis and to find an optimal node deployment scheme that is robust and efficient by incorporating geographical coordination in the design. Measures such as adding camera and range-extended antenna to each node have been investigated to improve the system performance. A prototype WSN based surveillance system has been developed to verify the proposed approach

Investigating Supply Parts Delivery Delay from Supply Depot to King Khaled Air Base in Royal Saudi Air Force

Aircraft supply parts is an important factor in preparing the aircraft to do its mission. Due to delayed delivery of parts or inefficient delivery process, time may be lost waiting for aircraft supply parts, causing mission delay or failure. By tackling the delivery delay causes we can insure improvement on delivery process. In order to gather data for this thesis two different tools were used, aircraft parts data and an interview. Data was gathered from the F15 maintenance and supply squadrons in the Royal Saudi Air Force. Results of this research showed diverting in the main duty of supply depot and forecasting mismanagement which resulted in insufficient parts stock. The study finally concluded with recommendations to improve current process by performing better and dynamic forecasting in order to achieve timely replenishment of parts by supply depot

EXAMINATION OF THE CORRELATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS AND DELAY FACTORS IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA

EXAMINATION OF THE CORROLATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS AND DELAY FACTORS IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIAMohammed M Alkhathami, PhDUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2004The goal of all parties involved in a construction project - owners, contractors, or consultants, in either the private or public sector - is to successfully complete it on schedule, within a planned budget, with the highest quality, and in the safest manner. Construction projects are frequently influenced by either success factors that help project parties reach their goal as planned, or delay factors, that stifle or postpone project completion. Accurately identifying success and delay factors can help project parties reach their intended goals with greater efficiency. This study extracted seven of the most important success and delay factors according to the literature (14 total success and delay factors), and then examined correlations between them to determine which were the most influential in preventing project delays. Two surveys were distributed throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The first examined how project owners and contractors that collaborated on the same project perceived success and delay factors, while the second examined the perceptions of engineers in general. Data was collected and evaluated by statistical methods to measure the strength and direction of the relationship between critical success and delay factors, to examine owners' and contractors' evaluations of projects' critical success and delay factors, and to evaluate the influence of critical success factors on critical delay factors. Additionally, one and two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been used to examine how the group or groups evaluated the influence of the critical success factors in avoiding or preventing each of the delay factors, and which success factors were perceived as most influential in avoiding or preventing critical delay factors. The research found that sound organization planning efforts and a competent and experienced project manager helped to avoid many critical delay factors, while adherence to safety precautions and procedures and a project team's motivation and goal orientation were the least influential among the seven success factors

Assessment of Saudi Public Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Mental Health Disorders and Its Demographic Correlation

Objectives: To assess Saudi citizen’s level of knowledge, attitude and stigma toward mental disorders and its demographic correlations. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study carried out in 15 PHC centers in Hail City, Saudi Arabia; among 403 participants from Jan to May 2020 by using a questionnaire includes the MH Knowledge Scale (MAKS) to assess the levels of MH literacy and the perceived devaluation and discrimination scale (PDD) to evaluate the levels of MH stigma and among the Saudi populations attended the Primary health Care centers. Results: The findings revealed that only 16% of the participants had a high level of knowledge, and only 22 % had low stigma attitude toward MH illnesses. They expressed high familiarity and recognition of schizophrenia and depression. The higher level of MH knowledge was associated with young age, males, students, and those who had experience with mental disorders or had a relationship with MH patients. High stigma attitude was associated with older participants, those with only primary level education, and housewives. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between high MH knowledge and a positive stigma attitude. Conclusion: working on enhancing community awareness, promoting education, and developing anti-stigma interventions are highly recommended to ameliorate the level of MH knowledge and attitude to improve MH care. Keywords: mental health knowledge, stigma, mental disorders, MAKS, PDD, attitude, PHC, Saudi Arabia. DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/107-01 Publication date: April 30th 202

Modeling of a Dielectric Elastomer

Dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) is a key element for the soft robots, which has received increasing attention. However, the main difficulties in modeling soft actuators such as dielectric elastomer actuators are time-dependent viscoelasticity and their material nonlinearity. It is important to consider the viscoelasticity of the dielectric elastomer (DE) to fully understand its mechanical behavior. However, so far only a few works have been presented considering the viscoelasticity of the DE material together with the effect of temperature and deformation. In this thesis, a dynamic electromechanical-coupled model for a rectangle dielectric elastomer a commonly used material (the acrylic elastomer VHB 4910) has been proposed, with taking into consideration of the influence of temperature, voltage, and frequency on the DE. The proposed model is based on the free energy physical-based principle, where the general Kelvin-Voigt model is applied to describe the viscoelasticity of the DE, and the Maxwell force together with the Electrostrictive force are considered. The influence of temperature and deformation on the DE is included in this model. The model in this study is a dynamic electromechanical model of a DE actuator, and can effectively describe the dynamic characteristics of the DE. By using the Differential Evolution, the model parameters were identified. The model was implemented and simulated in MATLAB, and the simulation and the actual experiment agrees to a great extent. The experimental test conducted in this study matches with the simulations results, which means that the proposed model can be practical to predict and describe DEAs electromechanical and viscoelastic behavior. Predicting the electromechanical and viscoelastic behavior of the DE is extremely useful for controlling a viscoelastic DEA and paving the way to improve the control performance, and also develops applications in soft robotics

Watermarking techniques for genuine fingerprint authentication.

Fingerprints have been used to authenticate people remotely and allow them access to a system. However, the fingerprint-capture sensor is cracked easily using false fingerprint features constructed from a glass surface. Fake fingerprints, which can be easily obtained by attackers, could cheat the system and this issue remains a challenge in fingerprint-based authentication systems. Thus, a mechanism that can validate the originality of fingerprint samples is desired. Watermarking techniques have been used to enhance the fingerprint-based authentication process, however, none of them have been found to satisfy genuine person verification requirements. This thesis focuses on improving the verification of the genuine fingerprint owner using watermarking techniques. Four research issues are being addressed to achieve the main aim of this thesis. The first research task was to embed watermark into fingerprint images collected from different angles. In verification systems, an acquired fingerprint image is compared with another image, which was stored in the database at the time of enrolment. The displacements and rotations of fingerprint images collected from different angles lead to different sets of minutiae. In this case, the fingerprint-based authentication system operates on the ‘close enough’ matching principle between samples and template. A rejection of genuine samples can occur erroneously in such cases. The process of embedding watermarks into fingerprint samples could make this worse by adding spurious minutiae or corrupting correct minutiae. Therefore, a watermarking method for fingerprint images collected from different angles is proposed. Second, embedding high payload of watermark into fingerprint image and preserving the features of the fingerprint from being affected by the embedded watermark is challenging. In this scenario, embedding multiple watermarks that can be used with fingerprint to authenticate the person is proposed. In the developed multi-watermarks schema, two watermark images of high payloads are embedded into fingerprints without significantly affecting minutiae. Third, the robustness of the watermarking approach against image processing operations is important. The implemented fingerprint watermarking algorithms have been proposed to verify the origin of the fingerprint image; however, they are vulnerable to several modes of image operations that can affect the security level of the authentication system. The embedded watermarks, and the fingerprint features that are used subsequently for authentication purposes, can be damaged. Therefore, the current study has evaluated in detail the robustness of the proposed watermarking methods to the most common image operations. Fourth, mobile biometrics are expected to link the genuine user to a claimed identity in ubiquitous applications, which is a great challenge. Touch-based sensors for capturing fingerprints have been incorporated into mobile phones for user identity authentication. However, an individual fake fingerprint cracking the sensor on the iPhone 5S is a warning that biometrics are only a representation of a person, and are not secure. To make thing worse, the ubiquity of mobile devices leaves much room for adversaries to clone, impersonate or fabricate fake biometric identities and/or mobile devices to defraud systems. Therefore, the integration of multiple identifiers for both the capturing device and its owner into one unique entity is proposed

Reaction kinetics in biomass gasification (chemical engineering)

This thesis is concerned with the catalytic fluid-bed gasification of agricultural residue from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The analysis contained herein examined the physical behaviour of this material in a lab-scale gasification reactor and the extrapolation of this behaviour to the potential use of a nation-wide initiative to deploy date crop residues for the generation of renewable energy. Fluidised bed gasification is an interesting concept for renewable energy due to the availability and sustainability of agricultural waste around the world. Fossil fuels remain a major player in the international energy market which leads to further challenges in deployment of renewable energy, especially across the Middle East, where fossil fuels dominate the energy market. The desert nature of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a driver for the government to cultivate the desert and to make use of agricultural waste as a source of energy. Due to the abundance of date palms in the Kingdom, the utilization of palm waste (date stone) as biomass has been studied within this thesis. Using a thermogravimetric analyser (TGA) the pyrolysis kinetics of date stone was studied. A variety of metal bearing catalysts (dolomite, olive, limestone) were tested in the fluidised bed reactor under similar conditions to the TGA using the same percentage of catalyst (10%) to study the activation energy using the Coats Redfern method (results were 44.8, 95.12, 76.19 kJ/mol respectively),. Experiments were conducted for four samples of date stone with dolomite in the following proportions (0%, 5%, 10%, 15%) by using Coats Redfern method and the Activation Energy values were 73.84, 64.94, 44.89, and 50.93kJ/mol respectively. To study the impact of different ratio of catalyst on gasification performance, gasification experiments were performed on “as received date stone” in a noval lab-scale gasification fluidised bed. The effect of equivalence ratio (0.15-0.35) and bed temperature (450-650°C) on gasification performance was investigated. Based on thermogravimetric measurements using a mass balance model, the activation energy of date stone was found to be 84 kJ/mole. Using a case study in the Riyadh region of Saudi Arabia, the use of biomass from date palm was investigated. It was demonstrated that this material may provide a feasible sustainable energy supply in Saudi Arabia. The total quantity of potential biomass generated from the residues of date palm in the Riyadh region to produce energy would be 865 x 106 tonnes per year. The overall potential to recover energy from the residues of date palm was forecasted to be 15.63 PJ per year

Utilizing Compassion-Focused Therapy Integrated with Mobile Technology: A Therapeutic Approach to Improve Sense of Coherence in Visually Impaired Students

In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of compassion-focused Techniques integrated Mobile Technology implemented to improve the sense of coherence among visually impaired students. The study sample comprised six students (three males and three females) with an average age of 14.30 years and a standard deviation of 1.06. study tools included a sense of coherence scale developed by Al Sadiq and Abbady (2020) and a compassion-focused therapy program specifically designed by the researchers. The results showed statistically significant differences in the average ranks of visually impaired students in the experimental group between pre-measurement and post-measurement on the Sense of Coherence Scale, favoring the post-measurement after the implementation of the therapeutic program. No statistically significant differences were found in the average scores of visually impaired students in the experimental group between post-measurement and follow-up measurements on the Sense of Coherence Scale after implementing the therapeutic program