An investigation of the use of compliments by Saudi Arabian students

This study investigates, from a sociolinguistic comparative perspective, the use of compliments by a group of twenty Saudi English speakers, twenty Saudi Arabic speakers and twenty native English speakers. The aim of the research is to identify evidence of the discourse features that suggest that language transfer is occurring. Finally, the research attempts to determine how religiosity affects the form of compliments for Saudi English speakers. A discourse completion test was used comprising six situations to collect data from the participants. The comparative analysis of the compliments from the three groups identified that transfer was not occurring in respect to the use of unbound formulas as this is not a culturally specific semantic form. Transfer was identified as occurring for bound semantic formulas. Two further findings are worthy of mention. The first is that learning English appears to be increasing the assertiveness of Saudi Arabian women as evidenced by a decline in the use of implicit compliments. The second is that there is a decline in the frequency of religious inclusions in the compliments of Saudi English speakers

A critically systemic approach for understanding information systems failure in the UK public sector

In the United Kingdom, the implementation of large-scale Information System (IS) projects has led to multifarious problems over the last few decades, and this seems to be an ongoing situation. As a result, within the public sector organisations, a number of information systems have failed to meet their pre-specified goals in spite of the large amount money and effort spent on IS projects. Information system projects are highly complex and the complexity is varied based on the different aspects involved including technical, organisational, and social, while the traditional concepts have less of an effect when aiming to achieve considerable improvement to cope with the increasing complexity of the situation. This was apparent in the study of two examples of large-scale IS failures in the UK public sector, whereas the attention was on examining discrete elements without considering the potential relationships between the elements. The current study, therefore, proposes a system approach as an alternative to understanding the nature of large-scale IS failures in the UK public sector. The systems approach, as an advanced movement in management science, seeks to identify social context and organizational issues and to use a combination of methodologies, methods, tools, and techniques to help problem solvers better control problematic situations. Thus, the Systems Approach is privileged because it offers a holistic approach to look at the problematic situation rather than being focused solely on a particular aspect instead of the interconnected relationships among its parts. The alternative approach benefits from the new problem solving and practical intervention strategies toward a better understanding of the complexity, diversity, and change of the problematic situations, while providing a comprehensive insight into the real-world problem of IS failure. This extends to identifying the contradictory issues related to power, conflict, and culture affecting the situation. Within the Systems Approach the researcher employed critical pluralism to the current study, which is theoretically built upon a combination of methodologies and methods designed for a particular intervention.Some findings of the research disclose that large-scale IS failure in the UK public sector is treated inadequately, and solutions proposed to reduce the rate of failure ignore this complexity. The findings also reveal that there are four factors affecting large-scale IS failure in the UK public sector: political factors; organisational factors; technical factors; and human factors. The founding related to the methodology, the researcher found that critical pluralism appears able to capture a set of systemic processes: appreciation; analysis; assessment; and action. All these processes were conducted collectively and supported by a particular type of collected data activities in the way of identifying the natures of the IS system and its associated sub-systems. Finally, by conducting a particular Systems Approach technique to assess the IS failure problem in the UK public sector context, it cannot be claimed that the solution is applicable to other situations in another context because the approach itself views any problematic situation as unique and hard to be generalised. Nevertheless, the discovery of such solutions leads to the accumulation of knowledge that contributes to reductions in the rates of IS failure in general

Surface-enhanced raman detection of glucose on several novel substrates for biosensing applications

The small normal Raman cross-section of glucose is considered to be a major challenge for its detection by Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) for medical applications. These applications include blood glucose level monitoring of diabetic patients and evaluation of patients with other medical conditions, since glucose is a marker for many human diseases. This dissertation focuses on Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering primarily for the detection of glucose. Some experiments also are carried out for the detection of the corresponding enzyme glucose oxidase that is used in electrochemical glucose sensors and in biofuel cells. This project explores the possibility of utilizing Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) with a variety of substrates (e.g., commercial gold substrates, nanocrystalline silver and gold nanoparticles, which are chemically assembled by citrate reduction on graphene-like sheets, silver nanoparticles on a commercial graphite sheet, and on electrochemically deposited polypyrrole conducting polymer) for glucose, rhodamine 6G (R6G) dye and glucose oxidase detection. These newly fabricated substrates can also be used for biosensing applications. The results of our study demonstrate that SERS is capable of detecting the molecules with high enhancement factor. This work reports the use of commercial multilayer graphene sheets as substrates on which gold nanoparticles are chemically assembled by citrate reduction. The results show that these substrates are capable of providing SERS enhancement factors of up to 1010 with a detection limit to 10-8 M in aqueous solutions of glucose. The SERS performance on graphene substrates are many orders of magnitude higher compared with results on gold-coated chemically etched Klarite® commercial silicon substrates. Also, drop-coated Ag on Toray® graphite microfiber sheets with partition layers exhibit the best results; they yield an excellent enhancement for R6G and glucose detection limit to 10-16 M and 10-12 M of the dye and glucose molecules, respectively. Also, the results show for the first-time enhancement for glucose from a SERS substrate that consist of electrochemically fabricated polypyrolle (PP) on Toray® graphite microfiber sheets

مراجعة كتاب الكتابة التحليلية

This work addresses a review of a book Writing Analytically. The book presents a number of issues related to improving the writing of scientific research and academic work in light of the requirements of academic stages and various fields of scientific publishing. This book is primarily concerned with providing rich material for academic writing in English.في هذه المراجعة يتم استعراض كتاب الكتابة التحليلية، الكتاب من تأليف ديفيد روزن واسر وجيل استيفن من كلية مولن بيرج، تم نشره بواسطة مؤسسة وادسورث عام ٢٠١٢، وهذا هو الإصدار السادس للكتاب. في هذه الورقة سيتم مراجعة الكتاب في ضوء مبادئ الكتابة التحليلية المذكورة في جميع أنحاء الكتاب نفسه. الكلمات الدلالية: الكتابة التحليلية، تعليم الكتاب

The effect of therapy on arousal from sleep in patients with respiratory sleep disorders

Vibrotactile positional therapy (PT) is a relatively new treatment for positional obstructive sleep apnoea (POSA). It uses vibrotactile stimulus to encourage the sleeper to change position when supine. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate the efficacy of vibrotactile PT as a clinical treatment for patients with POSA. To achieve this, different experimental approaches were used, including a systematic review and meta-analysis, a clinical trial, and a physiological study. The systematic review was carried out to evaluate the effect of vibrotactile PT on apnoea hypopnoea index (AHI), percentage of time spent in supine (%Tsupine), and patient-centred outcomes in patients with POSA compared to baseline. The results showed that vibrotactile PT was effective in reducing both AHI and %Tsupine. Although the Epworth Sleepiness Scale and the Functional Outcomes of Sleep Questionnaire minimally improved, these changes did not reach clinically important differences; however, limited data were found on quality of life (SF-36) vitality score. A prospective, three-month, multicentre, randomised, parallel, double-blind trial (The POSA Trial, ISRCTN51740863) was developed to investigate the effect of vibrotactile PT on AHI, quality of life and daytime functioning at follow-up, adjusted for the baseline, in patients with POSA compared to sham-vibrotactile PT. Baseline data (AHI, quality of life and daytime functioning) obtained from the participants recruited at the Royal Brompton Hospital are presented in the thesis. The mean baseline AHI for RBH participants was in the mild OSA category compared to the patients in the systematic review; however, a higher baseline %Tsupine was found. The baseline patient-centred outcomes were also comparable to those found in the systematic review. A physiological study in healthy participants (n=27) was carried out to investigate the effect of vibrotactile stimulus on arousability from sleep. A novel analysis method was developed to measure arousability. This included the duration from the vibrotactile stimulus to the position change using polysomnography. The results of this study showed heterogenous arousability responses to the vibrotactile stimulus with different phenotypes. Compared to males, healthy females took longer to respond to the vibrotactile stimulus and, therefore, were more resilient to arousability. In summary, the findings of this thesis have shown that vibrotactile PT devices are effective in treating patients with POSA. However, limited data on sensitive patient-centred outcomes exist. The POSA trial will provide data to address this evidence gap. Furthermore, the physiological findings in people without OSA showed that males are more arousable than females. This information may be of value when considering personalisation of clinical treatment. Future research of POSA will need to consider the arousability phenotype when planning treatment options.Open Acces

Applying corpus pattern analysis to learner corpora: investigating the pedagogical potential of the pattern dictionary of English verbs

This thesis contributes to research in learner corpora by offering a novel approach to their analysis. Specifically, it uses the concepts in the Pattern Dictionary of English Verbs (PDEV), that is, corpus pattern analysis (CPA), to describe selected learner corpora. The thesis analyses and compares the use of 16 verbs in two sections of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE; ICLE-Swedish and ICLE-Chinese) and in the native-speaker Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS) using the descriptions of those verbs presented in PDEV. The thesis demonstrates that the concepts in PDEV can be used successfully to describe the association between the patterns and meanings of verbs in both learner and native-speaker corpora to a degree that is not possible with other models. It argues that teachers can use PDEV to identify divergent patterns of verbs produced by their learners, and thus employ it as a tool for raising learners’ awareness, in the classroom, of conventional and divergent verb patterns. In addition, verb patterns that are under- or over-represented in the learner corpora when compared with the native-speaker corpus are identified and reasons for these phenomena are offered. Overall, the thesis concludes that the approach to verb patterning articulated in corpus pattern analysis is of value to teachers and learners because of the detailed attention it pays to meaning, but that some adjustments to PDEV will need to be made for it to be maximally useful to learners

Effect of Surface Polishing on Nano-Hardness and Elastic Modulus of Different Resin Composites after Immersion in Alcoholic Medium

There has been a great tendency toward using resin composite in dentistry and exploring nano-hardness, elastic modulus, and effect of polishing on its mechanical properties after its artificial ageing. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of surface polishing of four different resin composites on their nano-hardness and elastic modulus. This effect was tested right after light curing of composite resin and after its artificial ageing (immersion in alcoholic medium). Nanoindentation test preparations, surface roughness, surface hardness, and scanning electron microscope were conducted across the four different resin composites: Clearfil AP-X (APX), Estelite Sigma Quick (ESQ), Beautifil II (BE2), and FiltekTM Supreme Ultra Universal restorative (FSU). We found that difference in fillers load and particle size are amongst the factors influencing hardness and modulus of elasticity. The APX is the highest in term of hardness due to fillers load and size while the ESQ is the lowest because all fillers in nano size and distributed homogenously. The significance of surface polishing of the studied resin composite restorations was highlighted. Future research may focus on exploring survival rate of polished and non-polished composite surfaces with emphasis on measuring degree of conversion and impacts of polished and non-polished surfaces on the individuals’ oral health quality of life

Modeling and validation of drug release kinetics using hybrid method for prediction of drug efficiency and novel formulations

This paper presents a thorough examination for drug release from a polymeric matrix to improve understanding of drug release behavior for tissue regeneration. A comprehensive model was developed utilizing mass transfer and machine learning (ML). In the machine learning section, three distinct regression models, namely, Decision Tree Regression (DTR), Passive Aggressive Regression (PAR), and Quadratic Polynomial Regression (QPR) applied to a comprehensive dataset of drug release. The dataset includes r(m) and z(m) inputs, with corresponding concentration of solute in the matrix (C) as response. The primary objective is to assess and compare the predictive performance of these models in finding the correlation between input parameters and chemical concentrations. The hyper-parameter optimization process is executed using Sequential Model-Based Optimization (SMBO), ensuring the robustness of the models in handling the complexity of the controlled drug release. The Decision Tree Regression model exhibits outstanding predictive accuracy, with an R2 score of 0.99887, RMSE of 9.0092E-06, MAE of 3.51486E-06, and a Max Error of 6.87000E-05. This exceptional performance underscores the model’s capability to discern intricate patterns within the drug release dataset. The Passive Aggressive Regression model, while displaying a slightly lower R2 score of 0.94652, demonstrates commendable predictive capabilities with an RMSE of 6.0438E-05, MAE of 4.82782E-05, and a Max Error of 2.36600E-04. The model’s effectiveness in capturing non-linear relationships within the dataset is evident. The Quadratic Polynomial Regression model, designed to accommodate quadratic relationships, yields a noteworthy R2 score of 0.95382, along with an RMSE of 5.6655E-05, MAE of 4.49198E-05, and a Max Error of 1.86375E-04. These results affirm the model’s proficiency in capturing the inherent complexities of the drug release system

Knowledge, attitudes and practice among high school teachers toward students with mental disorders in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background: Mental disorders are highly prevalent among adolescents, and they correlate negatively with students’ achievement, performance, and leadless school engagement and participation. School Teachers can contribute significantly to the early detection and intervention strategies for mental disorders among adolescents. This study estimates high school teachers’ knowledge, attitude, and practice toward mental disorders and determines the association between selected demographic factors.Methods: The ethical committee of King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, approved this cross-sectional study. Multistage random sampling was done, which included 62 male and 48 female high schools in Riyadh between August and December 2021. An Anonymous self-administered questionnaire consisting of 39-item was used for data collection.Results: A total 487 responses were received from the high school teachers, on a scale of 10 maximum score, only (60.4%) showed adequate knowledge regarding mental disorders. Even though, Majority of teachers (76.2%) show a favorable attitude toward mental disorders on a scale of 24 maximum scores. Furthermore, approximately one-third of study participants (34.4%) on a scale of 4 points maximum show good practice toward mental disorders.     Conclusions: This study revealed teachers’ lack of knowledge about mental disorders with poor practice. Even though school teachers have shown favourable attitudes in most aspects toward mental disorders, implantation of the mental health literacy program is recommended to enhance the essential role of school staff in providing the needed support for promoting student mental health

Attitudes and knowledge about contraceptive use of saudi married women: a cross-sectional study approach

The speedy change in the Saudi Arabian community\u27s socio-demographic pattern will significantly influence reproductive attitudes and practices with increasing preferences toward family planning because of the use of contraceptives. The current study was conducted to determine the attitudes and knowledge of married women in the Aseer region of Saudi Arabia regarding contraceptives use. Saudi married women from the Aseer region were the participants of this cross-sectional study. The study\u27s objectives were covered via a standardized questionnaire, and the study comprised of 412 married women. A 100 % participant’s response was demonstrated, while 31.8 % of the respondents were 31-40 years old. Most of the participants have a great awareness and knowledge about contraceptives, while (n=324; 78.6%) had previously used contraceptives. Additionally, 297 (72.1%) have intention to use contraceptive methods in the future. Majority of the participants (n=297; 91.6%) considered the economic and family planning as a reason for using the contraceptives, while natural family planning was mostly preferred (n=202; 49%). Logistic regression analysis exhibited significant correlation between the age, education, employment, monthly income and children number. The findings show that Saudi married women have high perceptions and knowledge of contraception. However, more effort is required to raise awareness regarding family planning and contraceptives, whereas the policy makers must exclude the obstacles to women from using contraceptives