Modifying and Translating the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement for Use in Saudi Arabia: The Difficulty of Validation

Student engagement in the first year of university plays a vital role on retention, learning, and persistence in STEM fields. The Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) measures student engagement during their first year of university and was constructed and validated for use in the English language. In Saudi Arabia, the first year of university aims to smooth students’ transition from secondary to higher education. However, many students struggle with this transition and experience challenges to adjust. Therefore, a similar questionnaire to the BCSSE is needed to implement an exploratory study that measures student engagement during their first year of university in Saudi Arabia. To do so, some items of the BCSSE were modified and translated into the Arabic language. The process of providing evidence for validity, utilizing a forward-backward translation technique, is outlined here. Initial translation was done by the author. Face validity was obtained using multiple Arabic and English speakers. A total of 71 Saudi students completed the survey, and the internal consistency was tested using a Cronbach’s α -coefficient. Eight Saudi students participated in cognitive interviews to provide additional information regarding validity of the survey items. This paper discusses some of the problems encountered in each stage of validation. The translated survey was revised to a final Arabic version based on students’ suggestions and will be tested for reliability with a future sample. Keywords: Cultural adaptation of instruments, Validity, Student engagement scales, First-year students. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-17-07 Publication date:June 30th 2021

Parents’ self-directed practices towards the use of antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections in Makkah, Saudi Arabia

Abstract Background Excessive and inappropriate antimicrobial use in the community is one risk factor that can result in the spread of antimicrobial resistance. Upper respiratory tract infections are most frequently reported among children and mainly of viral origin and do not require antibiotics. We have conducted Knowledge, Attitude and Perception (KAP) survey of parents to explore the parent’s knowledge, attitude & perception of Saudi parents. Methods A knowledge attitude perception questioner was adopted from a previous study conducted in Greece by Panagakou et al. Raosoft online sample size calculator calculated the sample size by adding the total estimated Makkah population of 5,979,719 with a response rate of 30%, 5% margin of error and 99% confidence interval. Based on the described criteria five hundred & fifty-eight was the required sample size of the study. Incomplete questioners were excluded from the statistical analysis. SPSS version 21 was used to analyse data and to produce descriptive statistics. Results Most of the mothers (95%) responded among parents. 67% had no health insurance to cover medications costs. Most of them (74%) were related to medium income level. Seventy per cent of the parents believed physicians as a source of information for judicious antibiotics use. Interestingly, only 8% were agreed that most of the upper respiratory tract infections are caused by viral reasons. Majority of Saudi parents (53%) expect pediatricians to prescribe antimicrobials for their children for symptoms like a cough, nose discharge, sore throat and fever. Moreover, most the parents had the poor knowledge to differentiate commonly used OTC medications for URTI and antibiotics like Augmentin (Co-amoxiclav), Ceclor (cefaclor) and Erythrocin (Erythromycin). While comparing males and female’s knowledge level, few males have identified Amoxil (Amoxicillin). Similarly, parents of age 20–30 years have good knowledge about the antibiotics. Conclusions Majority of Saudi parents believe in pediatricians and use antibiotics on physician’s advice. Most of them expect antibiotics from their physicians as a primary treatment for upper respiratory tract infections. There is need for more educational activities to parents by the pharmacists to prevent antibiotics overuse among children

Role of L- glutamine and crizanlizumab in sickle cell anaemia painful crisis reduction

BackgroundPatients with sickle cell disease, frequently ‎ suffer from intense painful episodes. Till recently hydroxyurea was the only available medical therapy that approved for reduction of painful episodes.AimsTo summarize the available data from randomized controlled trials that aim to evaluate the efficacy of newly approved L-‎glutamine‎ (alters redox state of red blood cells ‎‎[RBCs]) ‎and ‎crizanlizumab (‎(anti-P-selectin)‎)‎ ‎on vaso-occlusive episodes in Sickle cell disease ‎ patients.Methods PubMed, ‎Google Scholar, and EBSCO ‎ databases were ‎‎systematically search for relevant articles. The terms ‎ ‎ ‎ L-glutamine, sickle cell disease, sickle cell ‎anaemia,‎ ‎‎crizanlizumab ‎and vaso-occlusive episodes‎ were used.Results Out of Four-hundred seventy-two records, only three fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Two trials were aimed to evaluate the efficacy of L-glutamine therapy on the frequency of painful crises in sickle cell anaemia patients. Both studies showed that L-glutamine therapy significantly reduce the frequency of VOEs. Only one trial examined the ability of crizanlizumab on VOEs reduction, and showed crizanlizumab successful reduce the occurrence of VOEs.‎ConclusionNewer agent ‎with different mechanism of action, such as ‎L-glutamine, ‎and crizanlizumab may consider if ‎hydroxyurea not effective or not ‎tolerable

SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues

Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types

A first update on mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19

peer reviewe

Health self-care using self-quantification : a framework for formalising research and practice

© 2016 Dr Manal AlmalkiThis PhD thesis examines self-quantification using apps and wearable devices –for short, self-quantification systems (SQS) – specifically for health self-care. Health self-quantification (SQ) is a way of working in which, by using SQS, people can collect, manage and reflect on personal health data in order to gain a better understanding of their own body, behaviour, and interaction with the world around them. A literature review found many unknowns about how SQS are used for health self-care, what constructs could describe the use of SQS and related effects on individuals’ health outcomes, and how such effects could be modelled. The key challenge addressed by this thesis is whether the data management and health management activities within health self-quantification and their constructs can be described comprehensively in order to formalise the research and practice of health self-quantification. This thesis has developed a framework called the health SQ activity framework based on activity theory (AT) and patient activation theory (PAT), to address this challenge. Mixed methods were used to build, test and refine the framework. This framework is important because it is the first step to operationalise health SQ fully. This may in turn benefit a variety of stakeholders: biomedical researchers, developers, health informaticians, healthcare professionals, and personal users who seek to study or make changes in health outcomes. Future research using the framework across a range of conditions and contexts will generate more rigorous evidence about health outcomes from SQS use

Enhancing the Security for User Authentication in Open Authorization 2.0 by Using OpenSGX Tool

Recently, technology has spread more than before and become one of the basic necessities in our lives. With the expansion of technology, launching cyberattacks has emerged as a way to eavesdrop, impersonate, and penetrate systems to get sensitive information. In this paper, we aim to enhance the security for user authentication in Open Authorization 2.0 (OAuth 2.0) by using the Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) tool, which helps protect user credentials from malicious attacks. The Intel SGX tool helps systems store and save codes and data inside protected containers called enclaves.There is an open source tool for Intel SGX called OpenSGX, which emulates an Intel SGX hardware component. OAuth 2.0 is a protocol that allows a user to get permission to access an app or website by using the information from another app or website. Such as Facebook, for authentication on another site. OAuth 2.0 has four types of grants. These types depend on how the application uses them to request the authorization. In this paper, we focus on authorization code grants. OAuth 2.0 is not secure enough. It faces many attacks, including cross-site request forgery attack (CSRFs). To improve OAuth 2.0 security, we combined the Intel SGX tool with OAuth 2.0 processes. This approach should ensure that no external program can modify any data or codes inside the enclaves. Moreover, the code runs inside the isolation execution environment that provides the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)

Retracted: A survey on big data stream mining

This article was withdrawn and retracted by the Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences and has been removed from AJOL at the request of the journal Editor in Chief and the organisers of the conference at which the articles were presented (www.iccmit.net). Please address any queries to [email protected]

Retracted: Collaborative knowledge management

This article was withdrawn and retracted by the Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences and has been removed from AJOL at the request of the journal Editor in Chief and the organisers of the conference at which the articles were presented (www.iccmit.net). Please address any queries to [email protected]

Development and Validation of a Taxonomy for Characterizing Measurements in Health Self-Quantification.

The use of wearable tools for health self-quantification (SQ) introduces new ways of thinking about one's body and about how to achieve desired health outcomes. Measurements from individuals, such as heart rate, respiratory volume, skin temperature, sleep, mood, blood pressure, food consumed, and quality of surrounding air can be acquired, quantified, and aggregated in a holistic way that has never been possible before. However, health SQ still lacks a formal common language or taxonomy for describing these kinds of measurements. Establishing such taxonomy is important because it would enable systematic investigations that are needed to advance in the use of wearable tools in health self-care. For a start, a taxonomy would help to improve the accuracy of database searching when doing systematic reviews and meta-analyses in this field. Overall, more systematic research would contribute to build evidence of sufficient quality to determine whether and how health SQ is a worthwhile health care paradigm. The aim of this study was to investigate a sample of SQ tools and services to build and test a taxonomy of measurements in health SQ, titled: the classification of data and activity in self-quantification systems (CDA-SQS). Eight health SQ tools and services were selected to be examined: Zeo Sleep Manager, Fitbit Ultra, Fitlinxx Actipressure, MoodPanda, iBGStar, Sensaris Senspod, 23andMe, and uBiome. An open coding analytical approach was used to find all the themes related to the research aim. This study distinguished three types of measurements in health SQ: body structures and functions, body actions and activities, and around the body. The CDA-SQS classification should be applicable to align health SQ measurement data from people with many different health objectives, health states, and health conditions. CDA-SQS is a critical contribution to a much more consistent way of studying health SQ.This study was supported in part through a PhD scholarship from the University of Melbourne, a PhD scholarship from Jazan University, and a seed funding grant and top-up scholarship from the ..S