Evaluating International Sources and Environmental Public Policy in Egypt: The Case of Solid Waste Management

This paper seeks to answer the question of what are the main actors and institutions that contribute to environmental public policy change in Egypt? By examining the case of solid waste management in Egypt, the paper will discuss how environmental public policies are influenced by various organizations. The paper will also analyse various related variables: local, regional and international legal agreements; international donors, national environmental policy plans; and sustainable development strategies, environmental ministries and agencies, as well as the role of public awareness.The study uses the partnership and institutional approaches as the main theoretical approaches to the research. Thus, this study examines how partners interact in shaping the perception of society regarding the importance of environmental issues in general and solid waste management in particular in achieving sustainable development. Keywords: Environmental Public Policy, Sustainable Development, International Donors, Solid Waste Management

Sustained Growth and Anti-Corruption Policies in Egypt

The paper draws attention to the Arab Republic of Egypt’s efforts to confront both administrative and financial corruption as it demonstrates an obstacle to developmental policies. On World Anti-Corruption Day, this was initiated in 2014, when Egypt launched its first national anti-corruption strategy. This strategy was characterized by being in two phases. The first phase was from 2014-2019 and the second phase was from 2019-2022. The research problem centers around the global doubts about the Egyptian role and efforts in combating corruption, thus the research paper aims to measure the extent of administrative corruption before and during the two phases and display the Egyptian role in that matter. The methodology of the research paper is the descriptive-analytical approach, where it analyzes the numbers and ratios related to anti-corruption policies during the two phases. Also, the role of the National Anti-Corruption Academy will be observed by examining the practical cases and assessing its effectiveness and whether it is influential or not. The paper concludes that progress has been made with regard to Egyptian efforts to combat corruption, however, better cooperation and coordination between all concerned bodies and institutions is a must to ensure the sustainability of such improvement

Egypt's 2015 Parliamentary Elections: Assessing the New Electoral System

After investigating the New Egyptian Mixed (Parallel) Electoral System using both qualitative and quantitative analysis, it was concluded that the system applied for the first time in 2015 has its advantages but needs amendments.These amendments are necessary due to four factors: shortcomings within the within the electoral list, shortcomings within the constituency divisions, shortcomings within the Egyptian legal framework and shortcomings related to the single-member district (individual candidate) system. Keywords: Egyptian Electoral System, Two Round System, Party Block vote, quot

Women Representation in the Egyptian Parliament: Representation or Misrepresentation?

Egyptian women who played a pivotal role in both, January 25th and June 30th revolutions were rewarded by achieving the highest female representation in Egypt’s parliamentary history in the last 2015 elections (89-14.9%). This paper accesses women's representation/mis-representation in light of this increase in numbers .Results show that the implementation of a one-time quota, that not only seeks to include women but several unprotected sectors of the society, guaranteed positive outcomes but warns from a decline if not implemented for at least one more time ensuring the continuance of women empowerment. Keywords:-Women Representation – Egyptian 2015 parliamentary elections – Empowerment – Quota

Machine learning for improved detection and segmentation of building boundary

The first step in rescuing and mitigating the losses from natural or man-made disasters is to assess damaged assets, including services, utilities and infrastructure, such as buildings. However, manual visual analysis of the affected buildings can be time consuming and labour intensive. Automatic detection of buildings, on the other hand, has the potential to overcome the limitations of conventional approaches. This thesis reviews the existing methods for the automated detection of objects using multi-source geospatial data and presents two novel post processing techniques. Effective building segmentation and recognition techniques are also investigated. Artificial intelligence techniques have been used to identify building boundaries in automated building-detection applications. Compared with other neural network models, the convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures based on supervised and unsupervised approaches provide better results by looking at the image details as spatial information of the entity in the frame. This research incorporates the improved semantic detection ability of Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Mask R-CNN) and the segmentation refining capability of the conditional random field (CRF)s. Mask R-CNN uses a pre-trained network to recognise the boundary boxes around buildings. It also provides contour key points around buildings that are masked in satellite images. This thesis proposes two novel post-processing techniques that operate by modifying and detecting the building’s relative orientation properties and combining the key points predicted by the two head neural networks to modify the predicted contour with the help of the proposed novel snap algorithms. The results show significant improvements in the accuracy of boundary detection compared with the state-ofthe-art techniques of 2.5%, 4.6% and 1% for F1-Score, Intersection over Union also known as Jacard coefficient (IoU), and overall pixel accuracy, respectively. CNNs have proven to be powerful tools for a wide range of image processing tasks where they can be used to automatically learn mid-level and high-level concepts from raw data, such as images. Finally, the results highlight the potential of further approaches to these applications, such as the planning of infrastructure

Comparison of Saudi child versus parent‑report of child tooth‑brushing practices

Objective: This cross‑sectional study compared Saudi children’s tooth‑brushing practices as reported by children and parents and then matched the agreement of reports.Materials and Methods: A sample of 100 Saudi parents and their children of ages 8–12 years participated in this cross‑sectional investigation. A self‑administered structured questionnaire regarding the current tooth‑brushing practice and habits at home was filled by the child. The same questionnaire was filled independently by parents.Results: Mothers were more likely to teach children about tooth‑brushing and fathers were minimally helping children during tooth‑brushing. Mothers were the first to teach the children and approximately 33% of the children started brushing their teeth by age 5. Children and parents reported that children clean their teeth using a tooth‑brush (73.74% and 76.77%), miswak (5.05% and 5.05%), or both (21.21% and 18.18%), respectively.Conclusions: There was some agreement between reported tooth‑brushing practice of children and their parents. It is important to question both the child and parent regarding oral hygiene practice and compare their answers to get more broad knowledge about their practices. Approximately, one‑third of the children started brushing their teeth by age 5, which differs from recommended oral hygiene practices.Keywords: Dental plaque, oral health education, oral hygiene, patient education, tooth‑brushin

Advances in the Treatment of Status Epilepticus

The management of status epilepticus (SE) emphasizes early identification, support of vital functions, quick implementation of pharmacotherapy, and recognition of acute etiologies. Prompt administration of a benzodiazepine, often followed by an intravenous antiseizure medication, has been supported by multiple high-quality studies. SE evolving into a refractory stage may require the initiation of anesthetic agents, such as midazolam or propofol. The contribution of autoimmune encephalitis to the burden of refractory SE cases has led to the introduction of immune-modulatory agents, such as steroids and IVIG, in the treatment protocols for refractory SE appearing de novo without prior history of epilepsy. This chapter summarizes the pharmacological agents proposed in the treatment of SE and the stepped approach to their implementation