TOWARDS GOOD GOVERNANCE IN UPGRADING DEPRIVED AREAS: AN APPROACH TO EMPOWER PARTICIPATORY MANAGEMENT IN EGYPT

Slums are a problem facing the whole world as a result of poor housing policies and rapid urbanization. Previous Egyptian housing policies created the problem of slums from scratch. The Egyptian government tries to eliminate slums with centralized policies, but it does not succeed. Egypt recently recognized the need to participate in slum upgrading through community partnership. Previous upgrading policies did not perform as required due to their distance from a participatory and fair representation of stakeholders. The independent participatory intermediary model achieves great results if it has decentralized decision-making. The problem is the relation between the governing parties in Egypt. The gap between them causes resolutions haphazard because of non-participation in decision-making. As a result, the objectives are not achieved as hoped in upgrading slums. This paper aims to draw a framework between governance parties to achieve the objectives through literature reviews and the availability of applying it in Egypt

An Intelligent Tutoring System for Teaching Grammar English Tenses

The evolution of Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is the result of the amount of research in the field of education and artificial intelligence in recent years. English is the third most common languages in the world and also is the internationally dominant in the telecommunications, science and trade, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomatic language as most of the areas of work now taught in English. Therefore, the demand for learning English has increased. In this paper, we describe the design of an Intelligent Tutoring System for teaching English language grammar to help students learn English grammar easily and smoothly. The system provides all topics of English grammar and generates a series of questions automatically for each topic for the students to solve. The system adapts with all the individual differences of students and begins gradually with students from easier to harder level. The intelligent tutoring system was given to a group of students of all age groups to try it and to see the impact of the system on students. The results showed a good satisfaction of the students toward the system

Awareness and knowledge of radiation protection in interventional laboratory: a comparative study between Australian and Saudi Arabian hospitals

This research project aims to investigate the attitudes and practices of medical staff engaged in interventional procedures regarding personal radiation protection, as well as the relationship between their uses of protective devices and training in radiation protection. Research findings of this study show the necessity and efficacy of radiation protection training for providing a safer environment when utilising the fluoroscopic image-guided machines in clinical practice

A Business Processes Reference Model for Course Document Management for Supporting Accreditation

A reference model is a fundamental starting point for the development of new information systems. Reference models are also called universal models, generic models, or model patterns. In order to obtain a higher learning programme accreditation, most of the educational institutions such as private and public universities have to clearly demonstrate that the programmes offered by them meet the quality standards established by the accreditation body. However, there is no complete and effective reference model for the business process of managing courses' document in order to support accreditation. Therefore, this master's thesis is an attempting to design a reference model, which will be as a general reference model for the business processes of managing document of courses in higher educational institutions and universities in order to obtain accreditation. As the processes to obtain the accreditation is almost similar in most universities and higher educational institutions around world, this study tries to design general business processes reference model to these process that can be as a reference for any education institutions to model its own model since the specific model is a partial model of the reference model. Moreover based on this reference model, the requirements model for Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)was designed and implemented as web-based system for Courses' document management supporting Accreditation. In addition to this, the purposed reference model covers all processes that are used in most universities and higher educational institutions to store, retrieve and organise the information of the courses. The methodology of this study is the general design research methodology that contained; awareness of problem, suggestion, development, evaluation, and conclusion. To evaluate the system that was designed and implemented based on the reference model, two methods was used. The first one is black box testing to ensure that the functionality specified in the requirement specification works. The other method is the questionnaire to evaluate the usability of the systems in terms of usefulness. The summary of evaluation results emphasises that this system provides an enhancement and improvement to the performance of the users to accomplish their tasks, and enables the users to complete their tasks quickly

Spectroscopy Characterization of Ethylene Vinyl Acetate Degradation by Different Kinds of Accelerated Aging

يقدم البحث رؤية حول التشوه الحاصل في التركيب الكيمياوي للبوليمر المشترك المتحلل  اثلين فنيل الخلات EVA وذلك بحسب تغير نسبة قيم ثوابت المعدل المستحصلة من منحنيات الحركية الطيفية للعينات المتحللة. اذ تم تحديد  تضبيط رسم منحنيات الحركية الطيفية للفلورة ولمجالين مميزين من الاطوال الموجية لشدات الفلورة. حيث أظهرت الاطوال الموجية القصيرة (320-400 nm) تداخلا في الاطياف, بينما عند الاطوال الموجية الطويلة (400-800 nm) بدت الاطياف منتظمة وحسب أزمنة التعتيق المعجل. أن النسبة لثابت معدل سرعة التفاعل  عند الاطوال الموجية الطويلة الى ثابت معدل سرعة التفاعل للاطوال الموجية القصيرة هو المعيار لدرجة التشوه في البنية الكيمياوية. حيث يعتمد المعامل المولاري الخارجي على البنية الكيمياوية. من خلال قياس الامتصاصية, تم تصنيف نماذج EVA الى مجموعتين. اذ ان وجود اضافات Cyasorb هي النقطة الرئيسية في التصنيف. تم دراسة تأثير الأنواع المختلفة للتعتيق المعجل وهي, تسخين جاف عند 115 ℃و تسخين رطب عند رطوبة نسبية مقدارها 85% ودرجة حرارة 85 ℃ وتعتيق التشعيع بالاشعة فوق البنفسجية عند درجة حرارة 65 ℃ وعند ازمنة تعتيق مختلفة لكل مجموعة. وقد تم مناقشة نتائج اطياف الامتصاص والفلورة للعينات. اجمالا, فان اضافة Cyasorb تسبب تشوه اعلى في التركيب الكيمياوي عند تحلل. EVA  أن العامل الاكثر تأثيرا هو التعتيق الرطب بينما الاقل يحصل بواسطة التشعيع بالاشعة فوق البنفسجية. بينما تغير التركيب الكيمياوي الاكبر يحدث للعينة الخالية من اضافة Cyasorb , حيث ينتج من التعتيق الرطب أما التغير الاقل فينتج بواسطة التسخين الجاف.            This paper presents a sight about the chemical structure deformation of poly (ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) (EVA) samples according to the change ratio of rate constant values. Spectroscopy kinetics fluorescence curves are fitted for two characteristic wavelength domains of fluorescent intensities. The short wavelengths (320-400 nm) domain show spectra overlapping, while at long wavelengths (400-800 nm) domain spectra are arranged in regular for each specific accelerated aging time. The ratio of kinetics rate constant at long wavelengths to kinetics rate constant of short wavelengths is the criterion of the degree chemical structure deformation. Molar extrinsic coefficient relies on the chemical structure change. Through absorbance measurement, EVA samples have been classified into two groups. Presence of Cyasorb additive is the key point of the ranking. The effect of three different accelerated aging of dry (115 oC), damp (85% moisture, 85 oC), and irradiated (UV, 65 oC) aging have been considered for two samples of each group over different aging time. Spectroscopy of absorbance and fluorescent for aged samples have been discussed. In general, Cyasorb adding causes higher chemical structure deformation for the EVA sample. The most effective factor is the damp aging and the less one is the UV irradiation aging, while the biggest chemical structure change of Cyasorb-free sample is produced by damp aging and the less by dry heat.  &nbsp

Superdiffusive heat conduction in semiconductor alloys -- II. Truncated L\'evy formalism for experimental analysis

Nearly all experimental observations of quasi-ballistic heat flow are interpreted using Fourier theory with modified thermal conductivity. Detailed Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) analysis, however, reveals that the quasi-ballistic motion of thermal energy in semiconductor alloys is no longer Brownian but instead exhibits L\'evy dynamics with fractal dimension $\alpha < 2$. Here, we present a framework that enables full 3D experimental analysis by retaining all essential physics of the quasi-ballistic BTE dynamics phenomenologically. A stochastic process with just two fitting parameters describes the transition from pure L\'evy superdiffusion as short length and time scales to regular Fourier diffusion. The model provides accurate fits to time domain thermoreflectance raw experimental data over the full modulation frequency range without requiring any `effective' thermal parameters and without any a priori knowledge of microscopic phonon scattering mechanisms. Identified $\alpha$ values for InGaAs and SiGe match ab initio BTE predictions within a few percent. Our results provide experimental evidence of fractal L\'evy heat conduction in semiconductor alloys. The formalism additionally indicates that the transient temperature inside the material differs significantly from Fourier theory and can lead to improved thermal characterization of nanoscale devices and material interfaces

Histological Evaluation of A unilateral Critical-Sized Mandibular Defect Reconstruction using human dental pulp stem cells by Light Microscope and Real-Time Quantitative PCR

Objective: To evaluate the osteogenic differentiation potential of human dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) isolated from the dental pulp of third molar teeth in vitro cultures, and to evaluate the bone regenerative capacity of human dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) when transplanted into a unilateral critical-sized bone defect in the mandibular bone in vivo after receiving a hydroxyapatite matrix and polylactic-polyglycolic acid (HA/PLGA) scaffold. Material and methods: A total of 18 mandibular defects were made, and three groups (each n = 6) were created. The first group: the transplanted DPSCs implanted in the critical-sized bone defect after receiving (HA/PLGA) scaffold. The second group received only (HA/PLGA) scaffold. The third group, which served as the control, had a critical-sized defect left empty. After characterization, Von Kossa [VK] and Alizarin red staining were employed to identify differentiated osteoblasts at the 14th and 21st days, and histological analyses, as well as polymerase chain reactions (PCR), were also used. Results: It showed that DPSCs had high proliferation potential and typical fibroblastic shape. Additionally, osteogenic differentiation of DPSCs was validated by morphological alterations, histological examination, and the expression of lineage-specific genes confirmed osteogenic differentiation of DPSCs. Conclusion: High proliferation potential and the capacity to differentiate into osteoblasts are two characteristics of DPSCs taken from impacted third molars

Quantum coherence dynamics of displaced squeezed thermal state in a Non-Markovian environment

The dynamical behavior of quantum coherence of a displaced squeezed thermal state in contact with an external bath is discussed in the present work. We use a Fano-Anderson type of Hamiltonian to model the environment and solve the quantum Langevin equation. From the solution of the quantum Langevin equation we obtain the Green's functions which are used to calculate the expectation value of the quadrature operators which are in turn used to construct the covariance matrix. We use a relative entropy based measure to calculate the quantum coherence of the mode. The single mode squeezed thermal state is studied in the Ohmic, sub-Ohmic and the super-Ohmic limits for different values of the mean photon number. In all these limits, we find that when the coupling between the system and the environment is weak, the coherence decays monotonically and exhibit a Markovian nature. When the system and the environment are strongly coupled, we observe that the evolution is initially Markovian and after some time it becomes non-Markovian. The non-Markovian effect is due to the environmental back action on the system. Finally, we also present the steady state dynamics of the coherence in the long time limit in both low and high temperature regime. We find that the qualitative behavior remains the same in both the low and high temperature limits. But quantitative values differ because the coherence in the system is lower due to thermal decoherence.Comment: 20 page

Strategic and large scale government IT projects management: innovation report

This research focuses on the Implementation of IT systems and public sector and national ID card projects in particular. Such projects have high expectations but low success rates. The study Investigated the factors contributing to IT projects failure through on extensive review of the existing literature. This was enriched and tested by close Involvement with the UAE national ID card project, surveys and In depth interviews with senior managers from other ID card projects and presentations and attendance at over 50 conferences on this subject. Many of the factors leading to either success or failure identified in many practical studies could be addressed through a well designed project management methodology. Based on the literature, practical experience, observations and feedback from practitioners a project management methodology; named PROMOTE - PROject Management Of Technology Endeavours - was developed and tested for the planning and Implementing large scale IT projects mainly In a government context. The US$200+ million dollar national ID programme In the United Arab Emirates was the main test vehicle. Its Innovations include a hybrid systems development/project management customer based philosophy, a number of new tools and techniques and the Introduction of a mentor for the project manager. To help assess the general applicability of the methodology it was also tested In the Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain national ID initiatives. The methodology phases were refined several times (and other phases were added) to address the problems Identified from UAE project, the literature, the experiences reported at GCC committee meetings and from other large scale Implementations around the world (from conferences and study visits to other countries). From the testing conducted, the methodology is believed to add a significant contribution to the field of IT projects Implementation and In Increasing the success chances of such projects. Such success should have a profound Impact on government services. The study also recognises that a better understanding of the new methodology and its contributions Is only possible through further research and application In other large scale IT projects. This should allow the extension of the applicability of this methodology to a much wider spectrum