Measuring the Impact of Higher Education in Promoting Sustainable Development Goals: Analysis of the Arab universities’ performance

Sustainability's global importance has amplified the role of universities in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through research, education, and community engagement. Aim: This study aims to provide valuable insights into the role of Arab universities in promoting sustainability within the context of global higher education. Approach and methods: This study analyzes the performance of 200 universities from 15 Arab countries in the THE IMPACT Rankings. Their performance was compared to 135 universities from three of the leading world-class higher education systems: Canada, UK, and USA. Results: A global demand for sustainable development, Arab universities face challenges in improving their contributions to the SDGs and sustainability rankings. Despite the impressive growth in the participation of Arab universities in THE IMPACT Rankings yet lags in quality and impact of Arab universities contributions towards SDGs. Conclusion: The policy implications underscore the importance of institutional commitment to sustainability in Arab universities, urging the alignment of policies, funding, and curriculum with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Arab universities need to bridge performance gaps, promote green initiatives, and contribute effectively to the achievement of SDGs while recognizing the diverse socio-economic context and priorities of the Arab region.Globalne znaczenie zrównoważonego rozwoju spotęgowało rolę uniwersytetów w realizacji Celów Zrównoważonego Rozwoju (SDG) ONZ poprzez badania, edukację i zaangażowanie społeczności. Cel: Celem tego badania jest dostarczenie cennych spostrzeżeń dotyczących roli uniwersytetów arabskich w promowaniu zrównoważonego rozwoju w kontekście globalnego szkolnictwa wyższego. Podejście i metody: Badanie to analizuje wyniki 200 uniwersytetów z 15 krajów arabskich w rankingach THE IMPACT. Ich wyniki porównano z 135 uniwersytetami z trzech czołowych światowych systemów szkolnictwa wyższego: Kanady, Wielkiej Brytanii i USA. Wyniki: W obliczu globalnego zapotrzebowania na zrównoważony rozwój, uniwersytety arabskie napotykają wyzwania w poprawie swojego wkładu w SDG i rankingi zrównoważoności. Pomimo imponującego wzrostu udziału uniwersytetów arabskich w rankingach THE IMPACT, jest jeszcze wiele do zrobienia w zakresie jakości i wpływu ich wkładu w SDG. Wnioski: Implikacje polityczne podkreślają znaczenie zobowiązania instytucjonalnego do zrównoważonego rozwoju w uniwersytetach arabskich, nawołując do dostosowania polityk, finansowania i programów nauczania do Celów Zrównoważonego Rozwoju (SDG) ONZ. Uniwersytety arabskie muszą zniwelować luki w wynikach, promować inicjatywy zielone i efektywnie przyczyniać się do osiągnięcia SDG, uwzględniając różnorodny kontekst społeczno-ekonomiczny i priorytety regionu arabskiego. &nbsp

Synthesis of Supported Catalysts by Dry Impregnation in Fluidized Bed

The synthesis of catalytic or not composite materials by dry impregnation in fluidized bed is described. This process can be carried out under mild conditions from solutions of organometallic precursors or colloidal solutions of preformed nanoparticles giving rise to reproducible metallic nanoparticles containing composite materials with a high reproducibility. The adequate choice of the reaction conditions makes possible to deposit uniformly the metal precursor within the porous matrix or on the support surface. When the ratio between the drying time and the capillary penetration time (tsec/tcap) is higher than 10, the impregnation under soft drying conditions leads to a homogeneous deposit inside the pores of the particles of support. The efficiency of the metal deposition is close to 100%, and the size of the formed metal nanoparticles is controlled by the pores diameter. Finally, some of the presented composite materials have been tested as catalysts: iron-based materials were used in carbon-nanotubes synthesis, while Pd and Rh composite materials have been investigated in hydrogenation reactions

Effective Vehicle-Based Kangaroo Detection for Collision Warning Systems Using Region-Based Convolutional Networks.

Traffic collisions between kangaroos and motorists are on the rise on Australian roads. According to a recent report, it was estimated that there were more than 20,000 kangaroo vehicle collisions that occurred only during the year 2015 in Australia. In this work, we are proposing a vehicle-based framework for kangaroo detection in urban and highway traffic environment that could be used for collision warning systems. Our proposed framework is based on region-based convolutional neural networks (RCNN). Given the scarcity of labeled data of kangaroos in traffic environments, we utilized our state-of-the-art data generation pipeline to generate 17,000 synthetic depth images of traffic scenes with kangaroo instances annotated in them. We trained our proposed RCNN-based framework on a subset of the generated synthetic depth images dataset. The proposed framework achieved a higher average precision (AP) score of 92% over all the testing synthetic depth image datasets. We compared our proposed framework against other baseline approaches and we outperformed it with more than 37% in AP score over all the testing datasets. Additionally, we evaluated the generalization performance of the proposed framework on real live data and we achieved a resilient detection accuracy without any further fine-tuning of our proposed RCNN-based framework

Association between regional distributions of SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion and out-of-hospital sudden death during the first epidemic outbreak in New York.

Background Increased incidence of out-of-hospital sudden death (OHSD) has been reported during the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. New York City (NYC) represents a unique opportunity to examine the epidemiologic association between the two given the variable regional distribution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in its highly diverse neighborhoods. Objective The purpose of this study was to examine the association between OHSD and SARS-CoV-2 epidemiologic burden during the first COVID-19 pandemic across the highly diverse neighborhoods of NYC. Methods The incidences of OHSD between March 20 and April 22, 2019, and between March 20 and April 22, 2020, as reported by the Fire Department of New York were obtained. As a surrogate for viral epidemiologic burden, we used percentage of positive SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests performed between March 3 and August 20, 2020. Data were reported separately for the 176 zip codes of NYC. Correlation analysis and regression analysis were performed between the 2 measures to examine association. Results Incidence of OHSD per 10,000 inhabitants and percentage of SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion were highly variable across NYC neighborhoods, varying from 0.0 to 22.9 and 12.4% to 50.9%, respectively. Correlation analysis showed a moderate positive correlation between neighborhood data on OHSD and percentage of positive antibody tests to SARS-CoV-2 (Spearman ρ 0.506; P2= 0.645). Conclusion The association in geographic distribution between OHSD and SARS-CoV-2 epidemiologic burden suggests either a causality between the 2 syndromes or the presence of local determinants affecting both measures in a similar fashion

Generation and characterization of pigment mutants of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii CC-124

The induced mutagenesis method for deriving pigment mutants of a green microalga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii CC-124 and their pigment composition as well as ability to assess mutability of contaminated aquatic ecosystems were studied. In the present study, 14086 mutants (colonies) were obtained by exposure of the wild strain, C. reinhardtii CC-124, to 1, 2, 3, 5 min of ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. After screening, these mutants (colonies) revealed four pigmented mutants (124y-1, 124p-1, 124y-2 and 124p- 2). Compared to the wild CC-124, these mutants are characterized by a decrease in chlorophyll a & b content and an increase in carotenoids. The lowest decrease in chlorophyll a was three to four folds, while the highest increase in carotenoids was two to four folds. The result of bio-test, using the resulting pigment mutant of C. reinhardtii 124y-1 showed that mutagenic activity was observed significantly in both Tekeli River and Pavlodar Oil Refinery in Kazakhstan; the waste water of the Pavlodar Oil Refinery had high-toxicity while the water of the Tekeli River had medium-toxicity.Keywords: Ultraviolet (UV) mutagenesis, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, biotesting

Some aspects of the synchronization in coupled maps

Through numerical simulations we analyze the synchronization time and the Lyapunov dimension of a coupled map lattice consisting of a chain of chaotic logistic maps exhibiting power law interactions. From the observed behaviors we find a lower bound for the size $N$ of the lattice, independent of the range and strength of the interaction, which imposes a practical lower bound in numerical simulations for the system to be considered in the thermodynamic limit. We also observe the existence of a strong correlation between the averaged synchronization time and the Lyapunov dimension. This is an interesting result because it allows an analytical estimation of the synchronization time, which otherwise requires numerical simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy using a synthetic bioabsorbable staple line reinforcement material: Post-operative complications and 6 year outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Gastric leak after laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) is a serious complication. Currently, the literature lacks long-term outcomes in LSG and leak rates after reinforcement of the staple line. The aims are two-fold: to present leak rates from using staple line reinforcement and six year outcomes of LSG in relation to resolution of obesity-related comorbidities and long-term weight loss. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a single-institution, retrospectively reviewed study of 204 patient case files. Data from all patients undergoing LSG between December 2007 and May 2013 was collected. RESULTS: The total complication rate was 6.9% (14/204), with no recorded staple line leaks. The mean postoperative Body Mass Index (BMI) at 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, and 6 years was 39.3 ± 8, 38.7 ± 8, 40.4 ± 9, 40.5 ± 10, 43.0 ± 10, and 42.4 ± 7, respectively. The mean % excess weight loss at 1 year, 3 years, and 6 years was 48.4 ± 19, 51.7 ± 28, and 41.0 ± 21, respectively. There were no significant differences between follow-ups at year 1 and 3 (p > 0.05), and between year 3 and 6 (p > 0.05) for the mean % excess weight loss. The resolution rates for all patients were 74%, 61%, 79%, and 90% for hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes mellitus type 2 and obstructive sleep apnea, respectively. CONCLUSION: The synthetic bioabsorbable reinforcement material shows no staple line leaks making it safe to use. LSG as a procedure had a high resolution of obesity-related comorbidities as well as sustainable long-term weight loss

Factors affecting delivery and transient expression of β-glucuronidase gene in Dendrobium Sonia protocorm-like-body

The effect of the biolistic device parameters and other factors affecting delivery and expression of uidA gene in Dendrobium Sonia was investigated. Three week old protocorm like body (PLB) were bombarded with gold microparticles coated with pAHC25 plasmid harbouring the uidA gene which encodes β-glucuronidase. The factors investigated were the helium pressure, target distance, macrocarrier flight distance to stopping screen, distance from stopping screen to target tissues, vacuum pressure, gold microparticles size, spermidine and calcium on DNA precipitation, and the number of bombardments. Two days after bombardment, the PLB were subjected to histochemical GUS assay, and transient GUS activity was recorded as blue spots using a Leica stereomicroscope. All the factors tested showed significant effects (p<0.05) on the delivery of DNA and expression of the uidA gene in Dendrobium PLB except for calcium. Surviving PLBs were able to grow and regenerate normally into plantlets.Keywords: biolistic transformation, orchid, Dendrobium, protocorm like body, -glucuronidase assa

Suitability of viscosity measurement methods for liquid food variety and applicability in food industry - A review.

Although there are several approaches to measure viscosity of liquid foods in the literature, the successful selected technique depends on the specific product and the functional characteristics that need to be analyzed. Accordingly, it is not an easy task for food technologists to determine the suitable approach to be used. Therefore briefing the existing methods, working principles, advantages, limitations and their successful applications for well known published articles, may enable the researchers to choose the optimum approach. The intensive review revealed that the most commonly used viscosity measurement devices are capillary flow viscometers, orifice type viscometers, falling ball viscometers, and rotational viscometers. Glass capillary viscometers are widely used for measuring low to medium viscosity of Newtonian fluids. In order to measure the viscosity of difficult fluids like those having large particles non-conventional geometries such as mixer viscometry method is used. Tube viscometer method which might be considered as a wide-bore capillary viscometer with a special capability to handle suspensions is currently used to determine rheological behaviour of a product after a thermal treatment. Scraped surface heat exchangers (SSHE) are widely used in food industry for thermal treatment of very viscous food products. Mass detecting capillary viscometer is a new technique to measure the viscosity of milk and soymilk products. In order to measure the viscosity of food stabilizers coaxial viscometers are recommended. Also, possibly the best known of the orifice viscometers in the food industry is the dipping-type Zahn viscometer. Finally, it could be inferred that the viscosity ought to be independent on the instrument, so different instruments will yield the same results, but this is a theoretical concept and different instruments rarely yield identical results