EFL Teachers’ Epistemological Beliefs and Their Assessment Orientations

Epistemological beliefs—beliefs about the nature of knowledge, where it resides, and how knowledge is constructed and evaluated—have been the target of increased research interest lately. Heretofore, emphasis has been directed to language teaching/learning aspects and strategies. Language assessment practices have not yet received due attention in epistemic research literature. The current study examined the relationship between pre-service EFL teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their assessment orientations. Dimensions of epistemological beliefs were assessed via a questionnaire designed and validated by the researcher based on Schommer’s work. Two assessment orientations were examined including: (a) transmissive surface- processing orientation and (b) constructive deep-processing orientation. The study involved 114 preservice EFL teachers enrolled in the Professional Diploma in Teaching Program in the Abu Dhabi University, the United Arab Emirates. Results of the study showed that EFL teachers’ epistemological beliefs have a direct bearing on their assessment orientations and practices. EFL teachers with naive epistemological beliefs tended more to adopt surface-level assessment orientations whereas those with sophisticated epistemological beliefs showed more tendency to adopt deeper level approaches to assessment in language settings. Results are discussed in terms of backwash effects on foreign language instruction, curriculum development, and teacher education. Suggestions for further research are also discussed

Waqf: the implementation of waqf in higher education in UiTM Puncak Alam / Muhammad Ammar Abdullah Zawawi.

Muslims around the world are exposed to the practice of waqf, but the extent of their knowledge on the practice is difficult to measure. In general, the awareness of the requirement in practicing waqf among Muslims society are important since it is useful to the Muslims and concurrently can help certain those in need. There is a growing number of waqf properties provided from time to time by the Muslims in Malaysia. For educational purposes, some of the waqf assets were reserved because of such scenario, it is important to track the growth of waqf education in Malaysia in order to maintain the good practice and management of waqf property as well as the development of waqf education. The objectives of this research is to identify the waqf according to Islamic perspective and to analyse the implementation of waqf in higher education in UITM Puncak Alam. The problem statement is the people do not know or do not understand the concept of waqf education. It is because it just mainly focuses on education at the lowest level such as school level and covers only religious areas. This is because they lack knowledge and awareness about the waqf. Other than that, the problems faced by society today are that they want a shortcut for success. They just want to know the results and just relax, they do not want to know how the waqf are invested. The research has used data collection methods through interviews and observations with officials working at University of Technology Mara (UiTM) where an interview session was made with a respondent to obtain accurate information. The purpose of this interview is to seek and obtain accurate data from UiTM waqf centers on prohibited elements or conceptual concepts or other types of waqf education. Through this study, waqf education may hopefully be proposed to enhance the growth of the education system and economic development in Malaysia, in particular UITM Puncak Alam

A design of reconfigurable filtering-antenna for ultra-wideband applications

Antenna is a main element in the UWB systems to transmit and receive signals. However, there are challenges to meet the requirements for a suitable UWB antenna compare to other narrowband antennas such as high data rate, omnidirectional radiation pattern and wide frequency bandwidth. Since the UWB technology is facing the interference problem with other narrow band signals such as WiMAX, WLAN and HiperLAN, which severely degrade the performance of the receiver in the UWB system, thus the conventional UWB system is integrated with bandstop filter in separated model from the antenna, which leads to increase complexity, cost, weight and loss. Therefore, researchers tend to integrate resonant structure in the antenna design to produce band notch characteristics and filter out unwanted signals using different techniques such as defected ground structure (DGS), defected patch structure (DPS) and resonant structure beside the feedline of the antenna design. However, the disadvantages of these techniques are the excessive band rejection, which rejects needed frequencies, and the fixed band notch whether the interfering signal exists or not, which may reduce the performance of the UWB system, thus producing sufficient and switchable band notch is a challenging issue to improve the performance of the UWB system. Therefore, in this research, a modified monopole antenna is designed to produce UWB bandwidth using microstrip transition in the feedline and block with triangular slot on each side of the circular patch. The modified monopole antenna is integrated with resonant structures to produce band notch characteristics and filter out unwanted signals. Two techniques based on defected microstrip structure (DMS) and two double split ring resonator (DSRR) are integrated with the antenna design individually. The DMS is embedded in the feedline of the antenna design to produce single band notch. The two DSRR are loaded above the ground plane of the antenna design to produce dual band notches. A PIN diode is employed in the resonant structure to achieve frequency reconfiguration. The results show that the modified monopole antenna exhibits wide bandwidth (129.5%) with a return loss better than -15 dB, high frequency skirt selectivity ranging from 3 to 14 GHz, which covers the entire UWB frequency band (3.1-10.6 GHz), peak gain of 5.3 dB and omnidirectional radiation pattern. The new integrations of filtering-antenna using DMS and DSRR provide stable omnidirectional azimuth pattern and sharp band notches, which are sufficient to remove unwanted signals and keep wanted signals. The simulated and measured results show a good agreement, where the proposed filtering-antenna using DMS exhibits wide bandwidth with switchable band notch at 5.5 GHz (WLAN), and the filtering-antenna using two DSRR exhibits wide bandwidth with switchable sharp band notches at 3.5 GHz (WiMAX) and 5.55 GHz (HiperLAN2)

"Inbetweeners" : dialogic strategies and practices for writing Arab migration through intercultural theatre : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

This thesis deploys both critical and creative methodologies to address the research question ‘How can playwriting contribute to an understanding of intercultural experiences, identities, and differences between the Middle East and the West?’ When I began this research journey, as a Jordanian-born Muslim playwright now living in Aotearoa New Zealand, I wanted to write a ‘great Arab theatre’ to capture the potentials and positive outcomes of the immigration experiences of Middle Easterners and Muslims and their transnational movements, re-settlements, and inbetweenness, as well as acknowledge the suffering of a region that has been subjected to generations of colonial trauma and is little understood and deeply stereotyped by the West. I wanted to creatively investigate the ways in which migration, and now a global pandemic that has rewritten our understanding of borders, have both fractured and expanded my viewpoints on myself, my culture, and my birthplace. As I explored scholarly models of trauma, I discovered that they, too, have been characterised by colonial thinking and often deploy limited cultural stereotypes as metaphors to explain and address trauma. None of these models fit my experiences. There are uniquely Arab models of storytelling and performance but, looking at many of the key playwrights from the region showed a deep interweaving of Western playwriting traditions in their work as well. Again, these Western-influenced elements seemed to me in part useful yet ultimately inadequate containers to hold my experiences or grasp the wider backdrop of my region’s complex and contested histories. My goal became to find new, expanded, theatrical forms to initiate a dialogue between concepts of diasporic identity, trauma, conflict, and colonial history in the context of the Middle East and its relationships with its Others - including through the specific trajectory of my own journey and how my subjectivity has been shattered and reformed by multiple transnational relocations. I found it helpful to draw on scholarship about intercultural theatre, but I also developed new models of structure and characterisation that depart from and explicitly reject Western models in novel ways, to try to capture the uniqueness of ‘inbetweenness’ that is symptomatic of my region, myself, and my culture. Linear temporality, fixed characterisation, discrete scene plotting, causal action sequences, character hierarchies, and monolingual, unequivocally purposeful dialogue are all rejected in my playwriting, in favour of forms that I found, through the experiment of writing, better reflected the exploded and shapeshifting terms of identity and experience that I know to be true for myself and many others who have, like me, spanned their lives across continents, cultures, languages, religions, traditions, and histories, then ended up finding it difficult to know what is real. In my playwriting, I wanted to recreate that hybridity of both peaceful and contentious cross-cultural exchange and so I developed a kaleidoscopic metaphor to express a blend of different elements that change perpetually and move disorientingly, yet emerge anew, creatively and beautifully. Deploying my kaleidoscopic model of playwriting both thematically and structurally, I wrote a script that conveyed at least some partial sense of what it might mean to be ‘Arab’ in today’s world, and especially, what it might feel like to be ‘Arab’ in Aotearoa. The research was conducted, and the thesis is submitted, in the discipline of creative writing. It is the playwriting itself that constitutes the research experiment, along with the exegetic material that observes and analyses the act of creation including the aesthetic techniques, sources, and motivations. The thesis thus begins with four critical chapters that set out the background to and rationale for the creative work, then concludes with “Aragoze”, a trilogy of plays that embodies the aims of the research to contribute through both its form and its content to an understanding of intercultural experiences and identities situated in between the Middle East and the West

Criteria of Integrative Conservation for the Reconstruction of the ‎Historic Urban Fabric

يواجه النسيج الحضري في المدن التاريخية تحديات هائلة في مجال الحفاظ العمراني وإعادة الإعمار، يعود ذلك الى أصالة عناصره ومكوناته متعددة القيم غير القابلة للتعويض في حال إندثارها. إن تنوع أساليب وتوجهات الحفاظ العمراني يجعل من تبني أحداها وجه من أوجه التحدي إضافة الى الضرر المركب الذي تخلفه الكوارث، مما يفرض على الخبراء أجراء عمليات تحليل مركزة لواقع حال التراث العمراني مقارنة مع الإمكانات المتوفرة سواء كانت اقتصادية أو اجتماعية أو غيرها. يمثل توجه الحفاظ التكاملي أحد التوجهات أو التيارات المتبعة عالميا في مجال الحفاظ العمراني، إلا أن غياب الدراسات السابقة التي تبين وتصنف معاييره ومؤشراته تزيد من صعوبة إعتماده كتوجه للحفاظ العمراني في المدن التاريخية. يهدف البحث الحالي الى تعيين وتحديد متطلبات وقيود توجه الحفاظ التكاملي وتعريف جوانبه ومعاييره، بهدف توظيفها ومؤشراتها كإرشادات وموجهات لوضع خطة لإعادة اعمار النسيج الحضري التاريخي. يفترض البحث أنه من الممكن تحديد المعايير الأكثر أهمية للحفاظ التكاملي وتوصيف مؤشراتها التي تمكن من توظيف الحفاظ التكاملي في عملية الحفاظ على النسيج الحضري التاريخي. إعتمد البحث منهج التحليل المقارن لتوجهات الحفاظ وآليات التدخل وتحليل الدراسات السابقة والمواثيق العالمية ذات العلاقة للوصول إلى معايير ومؤشرات الحفاظ التكاملي، ومن ثم تحليل عدد من التجارب العالمية التي تبنت هذا التوجه كحالة دراسية لبيان مدى تحقيقها لهذه المعايير. توصل البحث الى تحديد مجموعة من معايير ومؤشرات الحفاظ التكاملي وجوانبه الإجتماعية والوظيفية والبصرية الفاعلة، والتي يمكن توظيفها كتعليمات وإرشادات ضمن خطط وسيناريوهات إعادة الإعمار والحفاظ على المدن التاريخية.The urban fabric in historical cities faces enormous challenges in the field of urban conservation and reconstruction, due to the authenticity of its elements and components with multiple values ​​that are irreplaceable in the event of their disappearance. The diversity of urban conservation methods and trends makes adopting one of them a challenge in addition to the compound damage caused by disasters, which requires experts to conduct focused analyzes of the reality of the urban heritage in comparison with the available capabilities, whether economic, social or other. The integrative conservation approach represents one of the trends followed globally in the field of urban conservation, but the absence of previous studies that show and classify its criteria and indicators increases the difficulty of adopting it as a trend for urban conservation in historical cities. The current research aims to identify and define the requirements and limitations of the integrative Conservation approach and define its aspects and standards, with the aim of employing them and their indicators as guidelines and directives to develop a plan for the reconstruction of the historical urban fabric. The research adopted the approach of comparative analysis of conservation trends and intervention mechanisms and analysis of the relevant charters to reach the standards of integrative conservation, and then an analysis of a number of international experiences that adopted this approach as a case study to show the extent to which they achieve these standards. The research found a set of criteria for integrative conservation and its effective social, functional and visual indicators, which can be employed as instructions and guidelines within plans and scenarios for the reconstruction and conservation of historical cities

Requirements for Functional Integration in the Design of Train Stations

تمثل محطات القطارات جزءاً هاماً من التاريخ الحضري الحديث، إذ ساعدت المحطات الكبيرة على تكوين الصورة العامة للمدينة التي تقع فيها، وتعد محطات القطارات مناطق توزيع هامة وأماكن تبادل حيث ترتبط أنواع مختلفة من وسائل النقل، وهي مناطق إلتقاء للناس ومراكز تجارية وترفيهية وثقافية، وبسبب الأهمال والتدهور الذي تعانيه المحطات المحلية وخصوصا فيما يتعلق بالجوانب الوظيفية من حيث توفير وسائل الراحة والحركة وأماكن الأنتظار المناسبة، وضعف في تحقيق جوانب الأستدامة في تصميم تلك المحطات،  والذي يؤدي الى ضمور فعاليتها. وجاءت أهمية البحث بالعمل على تطوير تلك المحطات وإنعاشها لتسهم في أداء فعاليتها بشكل متكامل ولتلبي حاجات المسافرين المختلفة وتشجيعهم على أستخدام النقل العام ، لذا فقد تم مناقشة العديد من الدراسات التي تناولت الجوانب الوظيفية في تصميم محطات القطارات بصورة ضمنية أو رئيسية، إلا ان هذه الدراسات اتسمت بالتعددية وعدم الشمولية في طرح المعالجات التصميمية وبذلك تحددت مشكلة البحث المتمثلة بـ " الحاجة الى ايجاد تصور نظري شامل لمتطلبات التكامل الوظيفي في تصميم محطات القطارات المحلية" ليبرز هدف البحث في "بلورة تصور نظري شامل لمتطلبات التكامل الوظيفي في تصميم محطات القطارات المحلية".Train stations are an important part of modern urban history. Large stations have helped to form the public image of the city in which they are located. Train stations are important distribution areas and exchanges where different types of transport are connected. It is a meeting place for people, commercial, recreational and cultural centers, due to the neglect and deterioration of local stations, especially with regard to the functional aspects in terms of providing the necessary amenities, movement and waiting, and weak in achieving the aspects of sustainability in the design of these stations, which leads to the atrophy of their effectiveness. The importance of research to work on the development of these stations and revitalization to contribute to the performance of its effectiveness in an integrated manner and to meet the needs of different travelers and encourage them to use public transport, Therefore, many studies have been discussed that dealt with the functional aspects of the design of train stations implicitly or majorly, Therefore, many studies have been discussed that dealt with the functional aspects of the design of train stations implicitly or majorly, but these studies were characterized by plurality and inclusiveness in the introduction of design treatments. Thus, the research problem of "the need to find a comprehensive theoretical concept of functional integration requirements in the design of local train stations" The aim of the research is to "develop a comprehensive theoretical conception of the requirements of functional integration in the design of local train stations.

Another D in MUDPILES? A Review of Diet-Associated Nondiabetic Ketoacidosis.

Ketogenic diet or very-low-carbohydrate diet gained widespread popularity in the 1990s due to their favorable effects on weight loss and diabetes among others with good short-term safety data. People on ketogenic diets exist in a state of dietary ketosis in which the body production of ketone is equal to consumption and no harmful effects of ketonemia occur. However, in face of stress, the harmless dietary ketosis can lead to profound acid-base disturbances due to massive overproduction of ketone bodies that overwhelms the acid buffer system of the body. A handful of case reports have been published on this topic calling the safety of ketogenic diet into question. In this article, we chronicle a unique case of ketogenic (Atkins) diet-associated ketoacidosis, and we present a comprehensive literature review on the etiology of ketoacidosis

Internal And External Radiation Exposure Evaluation Amongst Selected Workers And Locations In Iraq

There are many changes that have affected badly the environment and people’s life in Iraq during the last two decades as a result of wars and suspected used of prohibited weapons and what ways these reveal dangerous diseases. The objectives of the present work was to measure the uranium concentration in urine taken from workers in factories and hospitals by using Fission Track Analysis (FTA) technique, analyze the specific activities of radionuclides analysis in soil using high purity germanium (HPGe) detector, and determining radon concentration in air using Nuclear Track Detectors (NTDs) LR-115 type II. Also, Alphaguard water borne radon detector was used to determine radon concentration in water samples. Air, water and soil samples were taken from factories and hospitals in selected regions of Iraq after the 2003 Gulf war. The results shown that the highest uranium concentration was 3.39±0.43 μg/L for urine samples of workers from the Phosphate factory and the lowest uranium concentration was 1.31±0.24 μg/L for X-ray workers in hospitals. The uranium concentration in the urine samples increases with number of working years. The uranium concentration in urine samples of male, sick, addicted and smoking workers are higher than female, healthy, non addicted and non smoking workers, respectively. Soil samples from the Phosphate factory have the maximum values of Raeq, Hin, Hex, ADRA, and the annual effective indoor and outdoor doses were 744.71 Bq/kg, 4.07, 2.06, 353.39 nGy/h, 1.734 and 0.433, respectively compared to other factories and hospitals

The influence of the six domains of entrepreneurial ecosystem on the Malaysian small and medium enterprises performance

The government of Malaysia has ensured Small, Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Entrepreneurial Ecosystem is able to increase entrepreneurial activities. Blueprints such as the Malaysian SME Masterplan 2012-2020 are among the notable efforts to aid the development, sustainability, and growth of SMEs. However, the SMEs are still entangled with issues and challenges which is reflected in the high failure rate, close to 60 percent and on a constant rise. Therefore, this study focuses on exploring and examining the SME Entrepreneurial Ecosystem to present a framework and to examine the influence of the domains of the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem on the SME Performance. Mixed-method research design was employed. For qualitative method, a total of 131 entrepreneurs were interviewed, and for quantitative design a total of 877 entrepreneurs were surveyed. The qualitative finding resulted in a detailed framework with the discovery of a new domain called Entrepreneurial Networking, and 6 other domains with 23 sub-categories respectively. The quantitative finding indicated the ecosystem is positively correlated to performance, with Pearson correlation coefficient of r = 0.682. And the other variables indicated r = 0.593 (Policy), r = 0.475 (Finance), r = 0.550 (Culture), r = 0.556 (Support), r = 0.651 (Human Capital) and r = 0.572 (Market). Human capital (0.651) was identified to have a strong positive correlation towards the performance. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis indicated that the model explained 51% of the variance (R2 = 0.509, F (6.870) = 150.373, p < 0.001). Human Capital had strongest (β = 0.345, p< .001). Hence, the study revealed that the domains have substantial contribution to the success of SMEs. This study discovered the framework for Malaysian entrepreneurial ecosystem, discovered a new domain, and its influence on performance