ARE OPTIMISTS HAPPIER AND MORE SATISFIED WITH THEIR LIFE?هل المتفائلون أكثر سعادة ورضا عن حياتهم؟

استهدفت هذه الدراسة استكشاف العلاقة بين التفاؤل وكل من السعادة، والرضا عن الحياة، فضلاً عن فحص العلاقة بين التشاؤم والسعادة، والرضا عن الحياة. أجابت عينة متاحة (ن = 225) من طلبة جامعة الإسكندرية وطالباتها عن: القائمة العربية للتفاؤل والتشاؤم، ومقياسي التقدير الذاتي لكل من السعادة، والرضا عن الحياة، ولم تكشف النتائج عن فروق دالة إحصائيًا بين الجنسين في كل متغيرات الدراسة، في حين استخرجت ارتباطات دالة إحصائيًا بين التفاؤل وكل من السعادة، والرضا عن الحياة (موجبة)، وبين التشاؤم وكل من السعادة، والرضا عن الحياة (سالبة). وكشف تحليل المكونات الأساسية عن عامل ثنائي القطب لدى الجنسين، سمي: الحياة الطيبة في مقابل التشاؤم . وخلصت هذه الدراسة، إلى أن التفاؤل أحد المتغيرات المهة في الحياة النفسية الطيبة، وهو الموضوع الأساسي في علم النفس الإيجابي

Predicting Performance Measurement of Residential Buildings Using an Artificial Neural Network

Application Earned Value Management (EVM) as a construction project control technique is not very common in the Republic of Iraq, in spite of the benefit from EVA to the schedule control and cost control of construction projects. One of the goals of the present study is the employment machine intelligence techniques in the estimation of earned value; also this study contributes to extend the cognitive content of study fields associated with the earned value, and the results of this study are considered a robust incentive to try and do complementary studies, or to simulate a similar study in alternative new technologies. This paper is aiming at introducing a novel and alternative method of applying Artificial Intelligence Techniques (AIT) for earned value management of the construction projects through using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to build mathematical models to be used to estimate the Schedule Performance Index (SPI), Cost Performance Index (CPI) and to Complete Cost Performance Indicator (TCPI) in Iraqi residential buildings before and at execution stage through using web-based software to perform the calculations in the estimation quickly, accurately and without effort. ANN technique was utilized to produce new prediction models by applying the Backpropagation algorithm through Neuframe software. Finally, the results showed that the ANN technique shows excellent results of estimation when it is compared with MLR techniques. The results were interpreted in terms of Average Accuracy (AA%) equal to 83.09, 90.83, and 82.88%, also, correlation coefficient (R) equal to 90.95, 93.00, and 92.30% for SPI, CPI and TCPI respectively. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091666 Full Text: PD

Death depression in Egyptian clinical and non-clinical groups

Aim: The main aims of this study were to explore the differences between seven Egyptian clinical and non-clinical samples in death depression, as well as to estimate gender-related differences. Design: A cross-sectional study. Methods: The Death Depression Scale (DDS) was administered to seven groups (N = 765) of Egyptian normal (non-clinical) patients, anxiety outpatients, schizophrenic inpatients (men and women) and addicts (men only) in individual sessions. Results: Anxiety outpatients of both sexes obtained significantly and greatly higher death depression scores than did the other five groups, whereas the male schizophrenics, the male addicts, and the male and female non-clinical groups had the lowest death depression scores. Female schizophrenics obtained a significantly higher death depression scores than did male schizophrenics, addicts and non-clinical participants. Female anxiety outpatients and schizophrenics had higher death depression mean scores than did their male counterparts. Discussion: The present finding is consistent, in general, with previous studies on death anxiety and death obsession. What applied to death anxiety was consistent also with death depression and death obsession. That is, the death distress concept. © 2020 The Authors. Nursing Open published by John Wiley & Sons Lt

Validation of the Farsi version of the Death Obsession Scale among nurses

Objectives: Obsession is one of the important aspects in death distress. The objective of this study was to estimate the reliability, validity, and factorial structure of the Farsi version of the Death Obsession Scale (DOS). Methods: A convenience sample of 106 Iranian nurses from two hospitals at Tehran city, Iran was recruited. They completed the DOS, Death Concern Scale, Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale, Death Anxiety Scale, Reasons for Death Fear Scale, and Death Depression Scale. Results: Cronbach's α for the DOS was 0.95, and 2-week test-retest reliability was 0.74. The DOS correlated 0.48, 0.46, 0.47, 0.39 and 0.44 with the last mentioned scales, respectively (P < 0.01), indicating good construct and criterion-related validity. Principle components analysis of the DOS identified three factors accounted for 74.82 of the variance. Factor 1 labeled �Death rumination� (34.78 of the variance), Factor 2 labeled �Death dominance� (29.65 of the variance), and Factor 3 labeled �Death idea repetition� (10.38 of the variance). Conclusions: The DOS has good validity and reliability, and it could be recommended for use in clinical and research settings to assess the death obsession in Iranian nurses. © 2018 Chinese Nursing Associatio

Validation of the Farsi version of the Death Obsession Scale among nurses

Objectives: Obsession is one of the important aspects in death distress. The objective of this study was to estimate the reliability, validity, and factorial structure of the Farsi version of the Death Obsession Scale (DOS). Methods: A convenience sample of 106 Iranian nurses from two hospitals at Tehran city, Iran was recruited. They completed the DOS, Death Concern Scale, Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale, Death Anxiety Scale, Reasons for Death Fear Scale, and Death Depression Scale. Results: Cronbach's α for the DOS was 0.95, and 2-week test-retest reliability was 0.74. The DOS correlated 0.48, 0.46, 0.47, 0.39 and 0.44 with the last mentioned scales, respectively (P < 0.01), indicating good construct and criterion-related validity. Principle components analysis of the DOS identified three factors accounted for 74.82 of the variance. Factor 1 labeled �Death rumination� (34.78 of the variance), Factor 2 labeled �Death dominance� (29.65 of the variance), and Factor 3 labeled �Death idea repetition� (10.38 of the variance). Conclusions: The DOS has good validity and reliability, and it could be recommended for use in clinical and research settings to assess the death obsession in Iranian nurses. © 2018 Chinese Nursing Associatio

Refractive Errors among Primary Schools Children in Assiut District, Egypt

BACKGROUND: Uncorrected refractive errors are a public health problem especially among school children. It has a direct effect on learning and academic performance. AIMS OF THE STUDY: This study aims to assess the refractive errors among a representative sample of school children under ten in Assiut City, Egypt and to manage the discovered cases early. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Descriptive cross sectional study design was used. The students of primary schools in the first, second and third grades under ten years old were the focus of the study and they were selected by stratified random sampling technique.  The calculated sample size was 196. Two tools were used in the study; the first one was a self administered questionnaire to collect sociodemographic data as child age, birth order, father's and mother's education and occupation, family history of wearing glasses, watching TV or using computer etc. The second tool was the eye examination by a Portable Auto-refractometer which has the advantages of accuracy, easy examination, being movable everywhere and provide printable eye status report. An eye examination record was used to register data about student's name, age. Data collection started from the first of March 2012 until the end of April 2012. Data were analyzed using SPSS soft program version 16. RESULTS: 241 students (107 males and 134 females) participated in the study but 142 only agreed to perform eye examination with 59% response rate. Ninety-five children (66.9%) had a significant refractive error of ±0.50 or worse in one or both eyes. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Significant refractive errors occur among primary school children aged 6 to 10 years. Therefore, there is a need to have regular and simple vision testing in primary school children to screen for refractive errors. This will enable to start corrective measures at the early stage and decrease visual disability. Key words: refractive errors- children- primary schools- Egypt

The psychometric parameters of the Spanish Form of the Arabic Obsessive Compulsive Scale (S-AOCS)

The aim of this study was to describe the psychometric properties of the Spanish version ofthe Arabic Obsessive Compulsive Scale (S-AOCS). The original scale was first translated into Spanish by language experts using the back translation procedure, and then administered to a total of 312 Spanish university students from Barcelona. Four-week test-retest was 0.88 indicating its high temporal stability. Cronbach's alpha value of the S-AOCS reached 0.82 indicating its good internal consistency. The S-AOCS correlated 0.72 with the Maudsley Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory and 0.56 with the Kuwait University. Anxiety Scale indicating good criterion-related validity. Finally, a principal axis analysis with Oblimin rotation was carried out. Five factors were extracted, accounting for 37.88% of the total variance. These factors were labeled: Obsessive thoughts and rumination (16.61%), Meticulousness and perfectionism (6.48%), Indecision and doubts (5.59%), Ritualism (4.74%) and Checking (4.45%). The results indicate that the S-AOCS administered to this Spanish sample yields good internal consistency, temporal stability, criterion-related validity and a five-factor structure reflecting important features of obsessive compulsive disorder. In general, the S-AOCS could be recommended in research on obsession-compulsion among Spanish college students

New Algorithm for Drawings of 3-Planar Graphs

Graphs arise in a natural way in many applications, together with the need to be drawn. Except for very small instances, drawing a graph by hand becomes a very complex task, which must be performed by automatic tools. The field of graph drawing is concerned with finding algorithms to draw graph in an aesthetically pleasant way, based upon a certain number of aesthetic criteria that define what a good drawing, (synonyms: diagrams, pictures, layouts), of a graph should be. This problem can be found in many such as in the computer networks, data networks, class inter-relationship diagrams in object oriented databases and object oriented programs, visual programming interfaces, database design systems, software engineering…etc. Given a plane graph G, we wish to find a drawing of G in the plane such that the vertices of G are represented as grid points, and the edges are represented as straight-line segments between their endpoints without any edge-intersection. Such drawings are called planar straight-line drawings of G. An additional objective is to minimize the area of the rectangular grid in which G is drawn. In this paper we introduce a new algorithms that finds an embedding of 3-planar graph. Keywords: 3- Planar Graph; Graph Drawing; drawing on grid

Effect of different microencapsulation materials on stability of Lactobacillus plantarum DSM 20174

The aim of this work was to investigate the effect of different microencapsulation materials on the stability of probiotic bacterium (Lactobacillus plantarum DSM 20174). Microencapsulation methods with alginates were carried out using sodium chloride, canola oil, olive oil, and chitosan. The recorded data showed that the encapsulated probiotic bacterium was more stable compared with free cells. Olive oil capsules recorded the highest stability at pH 2 after incubation period of 24h with stability up to 0.00004%. Olive oil and chitosan capsules showed stability with high concentration of bile salts (0.5%) with stability percent of 82 and 65% respectively, after 2 h of incubation. Sodium chloride and chitosan capsules gave the best stability percent of 0.026 and 0.00005%, respectively, at heat treatment up to 65°C for 30 min. Storage treatment at 4°C for 17 days reduced the stability of all capsule types, whereas sodium chloride and chitosan capsule showed stability percent up to 59 and 56%, respectively.Keywords: Microencapsulation, Lactobacillus plantarum, olive oil and alginat