Modular eco-class: an approach towards a sustainable innovative learning environment in Egypt

Today, Egypt suffers from deterioration of education quality as a result of deficient learning spaces, insufficient governmental expenditure and funding, and lack of proper research in education developmental strategies. Additionally, 21st century learning requires innovative spaces that connect school, home, and community. Therefore, new learning spaces should increase flexibility, support hands-on and outside-class learning activities in order to motivate learners. Furthermore, they intend to encourage extra-curricular activities beyond conventional learning times. Undoubtedly, comfortable, safe and creative learning spaces can inspire and motivate users, while ugly/unsafe spaces can depress. Therefore, welldesigned learning spaces are able to support creative, productive and efficient learning processes on one hand. On the other hand, ecological design measures became an increasingly major keystone for modern sustainable learning-spaces. Thus, learning-spaces’ design process, form, components, materials, features, and energy-saving technologies can yield well-educated, environmentally-literate, energy-conscious, and innovative future-generations. This paper represents a preliminary phase of an ongoing research project that aims to create a framework for an Innovative Sustainable Learning Environment (ISLE) in developing countries, the Middle East region, and Egypt in particular. This project aims at encouraging constructive relationships between users, buildings, ecosystems and to improve quality of learning through intelligent and ecologically well designed learning-spaces. The paper proposes the concept of modular Eco-Class as a framework of learning spaces and a stepforward in the direction of ISLE. Moreover, this Eco-Class aims to educate and provide balance between building’s environmental sensitivity, high performance, initial cost, and lifecycle costs without harming the surrounding ecology. The Eco-Class not only intends to promote a positive environmental impact to improve indoor air quality and energy efficiency, it also provides on its own an environment that educates learners and elevates environmentalawareness between future generations. Finally, the study and the ongoing research project of Eco-Class aim to provide validated design-guidelines for sustainable educational buildings, and to achieve the optimum innovative and sustainable learning environment in Egypt for effective and creative future-generation learners, parents, staff, and communities

Environmentally Friendly Wastewater Treatment in Egypt: Opportunities and Challenges

The uncontrolled and untreated discharge of significant amounts of wastewater into water bodies, including lakes, rivers, and streams, as a result of population growth, has resulted in a number of environmental and health problems. At the local and municipal levels, many processes are traditionally used for wastewater treatment. It is essential to comprehend all accessible methods and assess their effectiveness because of the growing demand for and development of newer technology. Reusing various agricultural, municipal, and industrial wastes is a workable solution to Egypt\u27s water needs due to the country\u27s limited water supply and gradually rising water demand. The Egyptian irrigation system is regarded as a closed system and a mixed system, with various water losses returning to the drainage system. This caused the drainage water to become more polluted, which makes its reuse a significant issue. In the present review, all the important methods involved in the treatment of wastewater and its monitoring have been comprehensively discussed and compared along with their advantages and disadvantages. Information will not only help in understanding the treatment of wastewater but it will also help in developing procedures for the reuse of treated water for various alternative purposes. Wetland is a strong candidate to address this issue. The technique was applied in Egypt on two different scales. While some subsidiary drains (in-stream wetlands) were utilized on a smaller scale, the northern lakes were utilized on a bigger scale. In-stream wetland development is a practical solution to Egypt\u27s water quality problems

Environmentally Friendly Wastewater Treatment in Egypt: Opportunities and Challenges

The uncontrolled and untreated discharge of significant amounts of wastewater into water bodies, including lakes, rivers, and streams, as a result of population growth, has resulted in a number of environmental and health problems. At the local and municipal levels, many processes are traditionally used for wastewater treatment. It is essential to comprehend all accessible methods and assess their effectiveness because of the growing demand for and development of newer technology. Reusing various agricultural, municipal, and industrial wastes is a workable solution to Egypt\u27s water needs due to the country\u27s limited water supply and gradually rising water demand. The Egyptian irrigation system is regarded as a closed system and a mixed system, with various water losses returning to the drainage system. This caused the drainage water to become more polluted, which makes its reuse a significant issue. In the present review, all the important methods involved in the treatment of wastewater and its monitoring have been comprehensively discussed and compared along with their advantages and disadvantages. Information will not only help in understanding the treatment of wastewater but it will also help in developing procedures for the reuse of treated water for various alternative purposes. Wetland is a strong candidate to address this issue. The technique was applied in Egypt on two different scales. While some subsidiary drains (in-stream wetlands) were utilized on a smaller scale, the northern lakes were utilized on a bigger scale. In-stream wetland development is a practical solution to Egypt\u27s water quality problems

Is American power declining?

According to popular understanding, America rose to the forefront of the international system when the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) marked the end of the Cold War era singling America out as the world\u27s only superpower. However, America\u27s share of the global economy actually reached its peak during the 1950s in the midst of the Cold War and shortly following the end of the Second World War. Ever since then, it is a matter of fact that America\u27s share of the global economy has been gradually declining, as confirmed by a multitude of indicators. In the 1970s, in the wake of the abandonment of the Gold Standard (1971), the oil crisis and ensuing stagflation that followed in the American economy (1973), and America\u27s failure in the Vietnam War (1975), numerous scholars argued that America has entered a phase of hegemonic decline. Throughout the 1980s and thereafter, those views on American decline have been shared by various scholars from different backgrounds, while other scholars refuted this assertion claiming, albeit for different reasons, that American power is actually stable if not increasing

Landscape brief for Egyptian desert new towns

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D79953 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Develop Accreditation Standards for Nursing Departments at Mansoura University Hospital.

Accreditation has gained worldwide attention as an effective quality evaluation and management tool. Accreditation has been defined as a system of external peer review for determining compliance with a set of standards. Accreditation standards are written to reflect current practice and expectations for the specific functions the nurses perform. Accreditation systems provided better quality results in nursing care; positive changes in leadership, commitment and support, use of data, staff involvement, and quality management; impact or effectiveness of health sector accreditation. Accreditation has recently gained great importance in Egypt, but nursing departments still lack accreditation standards and criteria. Hence, the present study aims to develop and validate a set of relevant, feasible, and reliable standards that needs for accrediting nursing departments at Mansoura University Hospital. The study subjects includes a jury group includes 12 academic staff from Faculty of Nursing and 10 nurse managers from Mansoura University Hospital. All head nurses (n=46) works in all inpatient departments at Mansoura University Hospital were included in the study. Three tools were used for data collection, namely; a validity form, interview questionnaire sheet, and an audit form. The study findings indicated that the proposed accreditation standards for nursing departments at Mansoura University Hospital are valid. A most proposed accreditation standard was met in less than a half of the cases. It is recommended that the developed accreditation standards could be used in Mansoura University Hospital

Biomechanics of Porcine Renal Artery and the Development of A Replacment Vessel

Mechanical characterization of biological soft tissues is essential in the field of biomedical engineering. In this study several loading experiments have been performed to efficiently characterize the passive mechanical response of both native porcine renal arteries and newly developed tissue constructs. The first aim of these studies is to determine whether there is a difference in mechanical response between the main renal artery and its first branch. After fitting the bi-axial data to a Holzapfel-type constitutive model, the results show that there is no statistical difference between the model parameters for renal artery and the first branch. The only significant differences between these two vessels were the geometric parameters. The second aim is to characterize the response of newly developed tissue constructs during their development, since recent studies [3] have shown that they vary in strength over time during the culture process. Specifically, mechanical characterization tests for the tissue constructs used in these studies show a significant increase in elastic modulus and failure strength as culture time is increased from 7 days to 17 days. The uniaxial mechanical test data was fitted to a simple single invariant constitutive model to determine appropriate material parameters that could be used in future studies to predict the 3-D response of tubular constructs. The test data was also used to obtain the low and high strain elastic modulus for elastin dominant and collagen dominant phases. The incremental elastic modulus data is useful for comparison to published values for other tissues

Evaluation of Microtensile Bond Strength of Universal Self-etch Adhesive System to Wet and Dry Dentin

BACKGROUND: The durability of dentin-resin interfaces with the universal adhesive system is a crucial characteristic with chemical interactions between the exposed collagen and the adhesive monomers, but it is still compromised with wet and dry mode. AIM: The present study evaluated the effect of dentin wetness and solvents containing of one-step self-etch adhesives on the microtensile bond strength (μTBS) of dentin at different storage times. METHODS: Occlusal dentin of 54 extracted human molars was exposed. Each adhesive agent was applied according to manufacturer instructions to wet and dry dentin surfaces. Composite resin was incrementally built up. Bond strengths to dentin were determined using the μTBS test after water storage for 24 h, 1 month, and 6 months. One-way ANOVA was used to compare between more than two non-related samples. The significance level was set at p ≤ 0.05. RESULTS: Dryness of dentin increases the μTBS with solvent-containing adhesives while decrease the μTBS with solvent-free adhesive. There was an increase in microtensile bond strength values in the case of ethanol water-based self-etch adhesive over time. No statistically significant difference was found among different storage times regarding μTBS for solvent-free adhesive, while a statistically significant difference was found among different storage times in μTBS for solvent-containing adhesives. CONCLUSION: Universal adhesive systems improve the durability and stability of dentin bond strength

High Performance Work Systems that Promote Nurses' Job Performance at Main Mansoura University Hospital

Today, health care organizations live in a dynamic, ambiguous, and changeable environment. Due to these dynamics new challenges faces organizations to improve their performance through applying High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) and removing the obstacles in the direction of organizational effectiveness. However, on high-performance work systems define work environment as being comprised of a bundle of practices to engaged employees and positive individual, unit, and organizational outcomes. This bundle includes but extends beyond sufficient material resources and support for the work itself. It also encompasses managerial practices, such as an emphasis on worker discretion and participation in decision making; facilitation of communication and information sharing; and human resource management practices focused on developing workers’ skills and recruiting and retaining qualified workers. Hence, the present explore the relationship between nurses' perception of high-performance work systems and  their job performance in surgical units at Main Mansura University Hospital. The study subjects include 57nurses working in all inpatient surgical departments at Mansoura University Hospital. Three tools were used for data collection, namely; Observation Checklist of Nurses, Performance, High Performance Work Systems Scale, and Opinion Questionnaire Sheet. The study findings indicated there were significant relationship between high performance work systems and nurses’ job performance. Furthermore, the hypothesis that there is some variable that effect on nurses performance which perceived by study subjects as physical working condition, workload, job security, nurses' job autonomy and role clarity. It is recommended to the developed high performance work system imposed by organizations should be included employment security; selective hiring; extensive training; self-managed teams and decentralized decision making; information sharing; transformational leadership; high-quality work and reduced status distinctions to improve nurses’ job performance and organizational outcomes. Keywords: High Performance Work Systems (HPWS), High Performance Work Practices (HPWPs), Human Resource Management (HRM), High Performance Work Environment, Nurses’ job performance, Task performance and Contextual performanc