Self-efficacy Sources among General Education Teachers in Inclusive Schools: A Cross-Cultural Study

The inclusion of students with special needs in general education classes has become a goal that all educational systems worldwide strive to achieve it. The inclusion of special needs has many benefits, whether for special needs students or regular students. The current study aims to reveal the differences in the self-efficacy among general education teachers in both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Arab Republic of Egypt. It aims also to reveal the sources of this self-efficacy in both countries. The core study sample consisted of (96) Saudi teachers and (88) Egyptian teachers. The researcher used the teachers 'self-efficacy scale and the teachers' self-efficacy sources scale. The results of the study indicated that there is a significant difference between the average scores of the total self-efficacy and its sub-dimensions between the Saudi and Egyptian sample for the outperform of The Egyptian teachers. It indicated that the source of the mastery experience was a significant predictive of the self-efficacy of the Saudi teachers, and   it explained 53% of the variation in self-efficacy. It also indicated that the mastery experience was a significant predictive of the self-efficacy of the Egyptian teachers, and it explained 13% of the variance in self-efficacy

Disability Policy and Wheelchair Users’ Accessibility in Jordan

The main purpose of this article was to evaluate wheelchair users’ access to public buildings in Jordan. The key assumption was that accessibility to public buildings in Jordan did not meet the needs of wheelchair users. Field observation method was applied using the accessibility checklist of Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG) as a tool to collect data from a randomly selected sample of 30 buildings in Amman city. Quantitative analysis was used and results show that the average level of accessibility compliance of the surveyed buildings was too low (23%) to meet the needs of wheelchair users. The study concluded that little progress has actually been achieved in terms of environmental accessibility, which implies that Jordan’s disability policy was not successful in creating accessible environments in which wheelchair users’ equal rights of access to education, employment and basic services is guaranteed. The conclusion also sends a clear message to professionals and decision makers that despite the existence of disability legislation, wheelchair users are still facing physical and social barriers that prohibit their access to public buildings. In other words, law without recognition of the rights of people with disabilities tends to become ineffective

Data on cell growth inhibition induced by anti-VEGF siRNA delivered by Stealth liposomes incorporating G2 PAMAM-cholesterol versus Metafectene® as a function of exposure time and siRNA concentration

AbstractIn this data article, carboxyfluorescein-loaded liposomes were prepared and purified from free carboxyfluorescein using gel filtration chromatography in the first part. In the next part, following preparation of anti-VEGF siRNA loaded liposomes incorporating hydrophobically modified G2 PAMAM dendrimer (G2-Chol40%) (Golkar et al., 2016) [1], the cell growth inhibition induced by the formulations (siRNA/Metafectene complexes and siRNA loaded liposomes incorporating hydrophobic G2) was evaluated at two exposure times through MTT assay in a breast cancer cell (SKBR-3) and compared by two-way ANOVA

Southern Africa crustal anisotropy reveals coupled crust-mantle evolution for over 2 billion years

The long-term stability of Precambrian continental lithosphere depends on the rheology of the lithospheric mantle as well as the coupling between crust and mantle lithosphere, which may be inferred by seismic anisotropy. Anisotropy has never been detected in cratonic crust. Anisotropy in southern Africa, detected by the seismological SKS-splitting method, usually is attributed to the mantle due to asthenospheric flow or frozen-in features of the lithosphere. However, SKS-splitting cannot distinguish between anisotropy in the crust and the mantle. We observe strong seismic anisotropy in the crust of southern African cratons by Receiver Function analysis. Fast axes are uniform within tectonic units and parallel to SKS axes, orogenic strike in the Limpopo and Cape fold belts, and the strike of major dyke swarms. Parallel fast axes in the crust and mantle indicate coupled crust-mantle evolution for more than 2 billion years with implications for strong rheology of the lithosphere

Exploring the Major Trends and Emerging Themes of Artificial Intelligence in the Scientific Leading Journals amidst the COVID-19 Era

Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently become the focus of academia and practitioners, reflecting the substantial evolution of scientific production in this area, particularly during the COVID-19 era. However, there is no known academic work exploring the major trends and the extant and emerging themes of scientific research production of AI leading journals. To this end, this study is to specify the research progress on AI among the top-tier journals by highlighting the development of its trends, topics, and key themes. This article employs an integrated bibliometric analysis using evaluative and relational metrics to analyze, map, and outline the key trends and themes of articles published in the leading AI academic journals, based on the latest CiteScore of Scopus-indexed journals between 2020 and 2021. The findings depict the major trends, conceptual and social structures, and key themes of AI leading journals’ publications during the given period. This paper represents valuable implications for concerned scholars, research centers, higher education institutions, and various organizations within different domains. Limitations and directions for further research are outlined.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

ON THE LOCATION-AWARE COOPERATIVE SPECTRUM SENSING IN URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Spectrum sensing is a key enabling technology for cognitive radio networks (CRNs). The main objective of spectrum sensing is to provide more spectrum access opportunities to cognitive radio users without interfering with the operations of the licensed network. Spectrum sensing decisions can lead to erroneous sensing with low performance due to fading, shadowing and other interferences caused by either terrain inconsistency or dense urban structure. In order to improve spectrum sensing decisions, in this paper a cooperative spectrum sensing scheme is proposed. The propagation conditions such as the variance and intensity of terrain and urban structure between two points with respect to signal propagation are taken into consideration. We have also derived the optimum fusion rule which accounts for location reliability of secondary users (SUs). The analytical results show that the proposed scheme slightly outperforms the conventional cooperative spectrum sensing approaches