Omega and eta meson production in p+p reactions at E_{kin} = 3.5 GeV

We report on the exclusive production of omega and eta mesons in p+p reactions at 3.5 GeV beam kinetic energy. Production cross sections, angular distributions and Dalitz plots of both mesons were determined. Moreover, the relative contribution of the N(1535) resonance in eta production at this energy was evaluated. We conclude that eta mesons produced via N(1535) exihibit an isotropic angular distribution, whereas those produced directly show a strong anisotropic distribition. omega mesons show a slightly anisotropic angular distribition.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Meson Production, Properties and Interaction, Krak\'ow, Poland, 10 - 15 June 201

Total Quality Management and Construction Project Management in Libya

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/647 on 14.03.2017 by CS (TIS)This thesis sought to explore Total quality management (TQM) implementation and barriers that need to be overcome due to differences between societal cultures, which have become a subject of intense discussion in the wake of the globalisation of the world economy. lnter-societal cultural barriers to TQM implementation were contrasted against the accepted organisational cultural barriers, which are well documented in established literature on this topic. A case study for the analysis was taken from the Libyan construction sector, where TQM is increasingly being reported as being adopted by companies keen to solve quality problems in their industry. This research explored the barriers that exist and that have acted to hinder the adoption of TQM practices using an in-depth survey of two Libyan construction companies (A&B). The findings of this research are presented as a conceptual framework upon which proactive measure may be planned to improve TQM adoption and which may also act as a guide for further research. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to obtain primary and secondary data for the research and the TQM model framework was successfully used in a self assessment case study of companies (A&B) in Libya. The survey was able to identify critical barriers that were assessed in relation to other published data on inter-societal and intra-organisational barriers so as to identity a number of barriers unique to the Libyan case study. The overall results indicated that the case study companies were in the early stages of TQM initiatives and that there were large areas for improvement to overcome the barriers

Did Islamic Banks Benefit from the Financial Crisis of 2008? The Jordanian Case (2008 – 2014)

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 has meant that the investors flight to safety, and the conventional banks have tighter lending patterns, this paper is trying to find out whether Islamic banks in Jordan have taken this opportunity and have grown more than their peers of conventional banks. To make an appropriate comparative study, a simple model has been developed to establish full coherence and consistency of selected variables to measure the growth rate for both Islamic and conventional banks, those variables are customers’ deposits, net credit facilities, total assets and shareholders’ equity covering the period of (2008-2014).Trend analysis and T-test were utilized to test out data. Although, the simple average shows higher growth rate related to all of our selected variables in Islamic banks against conventional banks, but statistically insignificant for all of the selected variables. Keywords: Islamic Banks, Financial Crisis, Growth Rate, Deposits, Credit Facilities, Equity, Assets

Time-Domain Analysis of Sensor-to-Sensor Transmissibility Operators with Application to Fault Detection.

In some applications, multiple measurements are available, but the driving input that gives rise to those outputs may be unknown. This raises the question as to whether it is possible to model the response of a subset of sensors based on the response of the remaining sensors without knowledge of the driving input. To address this issue, we develop time-domain sensor-to-sensor models that account for nonzero initial conditions. The sensor-to-sensor model is in the form of a transmissibility operator, that is, a rational function of the differentiation operator. What is essential in defining the transmissibility operator is that it must be independent of both the initial condition and inputs of the underlying system, which is assumed to be time-invariant. The development is carried out for both single-input, single-output and multi-input, multi-output transmissibility operators. These time-domain sensor-to-sensor models can be used for diagnostics and output prediction. We show that transmissibility operators may be unstable, noncausal, and of unknown order. Therefore, to facilitate system identification, we consider a class of models that can approximate transmissibility operators with these properties. This class of models consists of noncausal finite impulse response models based on a truncated Laurent expansion. These models are shown to approximate the Laurent expansion inside the annulus between the asymptotically stable pole of largest modulus and the unstable pole of smallest modulus. By delaying the measured pseudo output relative to the measured pseudo input, the identified finite impulse response model is a noncausal approximation of the transmissibility operator. The causal (backward-shift) part of the Laurent expansion is asymptotically stable since all of its poles are zero, while the noncausal (forward-shift) part of the Laurent expansion captures the unstable and noncausal components of the transmissibility operator. This dissertation also develops a time-domain framework for both single-input, single-output and multi-input, multi-output transmissibilities that account for nonzero initial conditions for both force-driven and displacement-driven structures. We show that motion transmissibilities in force-driven and displacement-driven structures are equal when the locations of the forces and prescribed displacements are identical.PhDAerospace EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113623/1/khaledfj_1.pd

On the Integration of Emerging Stock Markets in the Middle East

Results from the Johansen-Juselius test suggest that the Middle East emerging stock markets are segmented globally, but appear highly integrated within the region. Moreover, the Gonzalo- Granger test, in conjunction with error-correction models, indicates that the market in Egypt is a dominant force driving other markets in the region. The apparent segmentation of the markets in the Middle East from the global market implies that these emerging markets provide international investors with potential diversification gains.

Perceptions of Jordanian Secondary Schools Teachers towardsCritical Thinking

The purpose of this study was to discover themes or concepts, generated from the collected data, that formed building blocks of grounded theory in the study of secondary school social studies teachers’ perspectives. This research study was conducted in Jordan, where secondary school social studies teachers were interviewed regarding their perspectives of teaching critical thinking skills in their classrooms. All interviews were audio-taped in Arabic and later translated into English. Data, including the translation of the audio, video tapes, the Ministry of Education guidelines, and textbook teacher manuals were analyzed qualitatively. The study results indicated that Jordanian secondary school social studies teachers are not familiar with the definition and teaching strategies of critical thinking; the Jordan Ministry of Education Guidelines did not require teachers to teach critical thinking. In addition, teacher manuals for the state-required textbooks provide only detailed content information, with only minor references to teaching critical thinking. Previous research, conducted by the author on middle and high school students in Jordanian public schools, supports the finding that students do not acquire critical thinking skills from their public school education in Jordan

Efficient Poisson Image Editing

Image composition refers to the process of composing two or more images to create a natural output image. It is one of the important techniques in image processing. In this paper, two efficient methods for composing color images are proposed. In the proposed methods, the Poisson equation is solved using image pyramid and divide-and-conquer methods. The proposed methods are more efficient than other existing image composition methods. They reduce the time taken in the composition process while achieving almost identical results using the previous image composition methods. In the proposed methods, the Poisson equation is solved after converting it to a linear system using different methods. The results show that the time for composing color images is decreased using the proposed methods

Aircraft Sensor Health Monitoring Based on Transmissibility Operators

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140655/1/1.g001125.pd

Field trials of a NASA-developed mobile satellite terminal

Various field trials have been performed to validate and optimize the technologies developed by the Mobile Satellite Experiment (MSAT-X). For each of the field experiments performed, a brief description of the experiment is provided, followed by a summary of the experimental results. Emphasis is placed on the two full scale land mobile and aeronautical mobile experiments. Experiments planned for the near future are also presented