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

SADSLyC: A Corpus for Saudi Arabian Multi-dialect Identification through Song Lyrics

This paper presents the Saudi Arabian Dialects Song Lyrics Corpus (SADSLyC), the first dataset featuring song lyrics from the five major Saudi dialects: Najdi (Central Region), Hijazi (Western Region), Shamali (Northern Region), Janoubi (Southern Region), and Shargawi (Eastern Region). The dataset consists of 31,358 sentences, with each sentence representing a self-contained verse in a song, totaling 151,841 words. Additionally, we present a baseline experiment using the SaudiBERT model to classify the fine-grained dialects in the SADSLyC Corpus. The model achieved an overall accuracy of 73% on the test dataset

Radiation Protection in an Interventional Laboratory: A Comparative Study of Australian and Saudi Arabian Hospitals

This study aimed to investigate whether the use of protection devices and attitudes of interventional professionals (including radiologists, cardiologists, vascular surgeons, medical imaging technicians and nurses) towards radiation protection will differ between Saudi Arabian and Australian hospitals. Hard copies of an anonymous survey were distributed to 10 and 6 clinical departments in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and metropolitan hospitals in Western Australia, respectively. The overall response rate was 43 % comprising 110 Australian participants and 63 % comprising 147 Saudi participants. Analysis showed that Australian respondents differed significantly from Saudi respondents with respect to their usages of leaded glasses (p < 0.001), ceiling-suspended lead screen (p < 0.001) and lead drape suspended from the table (p < 0.001). This study indicates that the trained interventional professionals in Australia tend to adhere to benefit from having an array of tools for personal radiation protection than the corresponding group in Saudi Arabi

Prevalence of Stroke in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - Through a Physiotherapist Diary

In Saudi Arabia, according to statistics, cardiovascular disease amounts to a major cause of deaths each year. Current data on stroke in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are lacking. This study is a national survey to inform decision-makers on the current magnitude of the epidemic. The data obtained for this study is from the nationwide physiotherapy departments that provide rehabilitative treatments to stroke patients. The study also tries to systematically analyze the published prevalence of many international countries and have tried to compare it with the available data of stroke prevalence in Saudi Arabia. The results shown in this study do make us understand that it is still not late to bring in preventive actions against stroke in Saudi Arabia. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n1s1p22

Interpersonal Hardiness as a Critical Contributing Factor to Persistence among International Women in Doctoral Programs: A Trioethnographic Study

Women in PhD programs, in particular minority and international women, are especially at risk for drop-out (Castro, Garcia, Cavazos, & Castro, 2011; Haynes et al., 2012). This initial part of a longitudinal trioethnography captures the experiences of three international women in a doctoral program, highlighting the challenges, support systems, and coping mechanisms they engage with in the process of completing their degrees. Discoveries include the identification of “Interpersonal Hardiness” as the potential vehicle which could ensure our success

Sirius_Translators at OSACT6 2024 Shared Task: Fin-tuning Ara-T5 Models for Translating Arabic Dialectal Text to Modern Standard Arabic

This paper presents the findings from our participation in the 6th Workshop on Open-Source Arabic Corpora and Processing Tools (OSACT6) in 2024. Our specific focus was on the second task (Task 2), which involved translating text at the sentence level from five distinct Dialectal Arabic (DA) (Gulf, Egyptian, Levantine, Iraqi, and Maghrebi) into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Our team, Sirius_Translators, fine-tuned four AraT5 models namely; AraT5 base, AraT5v2-base-1024, AraT5-MSA-Small, and AraT5-MSA-Base for the Arabic machine translation (MT) task. These models were fine-tuned using a variety of parallel corpora containing Dialectal Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. Based on the evaluation results of OSACT6 2024 Shared Task2, our fine-tuned AraT5v2-base-1024 model achieved an overall BLEU score of 21.0 on the development (Dev) set and 9.57 on the test set, respectively

Diode laser photoacoustic spectroscopy of CO2, H2S and O2 in a differential Helmholtz resonator for trace gas analysis in the biosciences and petrochemistry

Photoacoustic spectroscopy in a differential Helmholtz resonator has been employed with near-IR and red diode lasers for the detection of CO2, H2S and O2 in 1 bar of air/N2 and natural gas, in static and flow cell measurements. With the red distributed feedback (DFB) diode laser, O2 can be detected at 764.3 nm with a noise equivalent detection limit of 0.60 mbar (600 ppmv) in 1 bar of air (35-mW laser, 1-s integration), corresponding to a normalised absorption coefficient α = 2.2 × 10−8 cm−1 W s1/2. Within the tuning range of the near-IR DFB diode laser (6357–6378 cm−1), CO2 and H2S absorption features can be accessed, with a noise equivalent detection limit of 0.160 mbar (160 ppmv) CO2 in 1 bar N2 (30-mW laser, 1-s integration), corresponding to a normalised absorption coefficient α = 8.3 × 10−9 cm−1 W s1/2. Due to stronger absorptions, the noise equivalent detection limit of H2S in 1 bar N2 is 0.022 mbar (22 ppmv) at 1-s integration time. Similar detection limits apply to trace impurities in 1 bar natural gas. Detection limits scale linearly with laser power and with the square root of integration time. At 16-s total measurement time to obtain a spectrum, a noise equivalent detection limit of 40 ppmv CO2 is obtained after a spectral line fitting procedure, for example. Possible interferences due to weak water and methane absorptions have been discussed and shown to be either negligible or easy to correct. The setup has been used for simultaneous in situ monitoring of O2, CO2 and H2S in the cysteine metabolism of microbes (E. coli), and for the analysis of CO2 and H2S impurities in natural gas. Due to the inherent signal amplification and noise cancellation, photoacoustic spectroscopy in a differential Helmholtz resonator has a great potential for trace gas analysis, with possible applications including safety monitoring of toxic gases and applications in the biosciences and for natural gas analysis in petrochemistry

Clinical Practice and Barriers of Ventilatory Support Management in COVID-19 Patients in Saudi Arabia: A Survey of Respiratory Therapists

OBJECTIVE: This study was conducted to determine the clinical practice and barriers of ventilatory support management in COVID-19 patients in Saudi Arabia among respiratory therapists. METHODS: A validated questionnaire comprising three parts was distributed to all critical care respiratory therapists registered with the Saudi Society for Respiratory Care through the official social networks. RESULTS: A total of 74 respiratory therapists completed the survey. The mean (±standard deviation) of intensive care unit beds was 67 ± 79. Clinical presentation (54%) and arterial blood gas (38%) were the two main diagnostic tools used to initiate ventilatory support. While protocols for the initiation of invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV; 81%) were widely available, participants had limited availability of protocols for the use of non-invasive ventilation (NIV; 34%) and high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC; 34%). In mild cases of COVID-19, most respondents used HFNC (57%), while IMV was mostly used in moderate (43%) and severe (93%) cases. Regular ventilator check was mostly done every 4 h (57%). BiPAP (47.3%) and full-face masks (45.9%) were the most used mode and interface, respectively, while pressure-regulated volume control (55.4%) and pressure control (27%) were the most used mechanical ventilation modes for COVID-19 patients. In terms of use of proning, 62% used it on IMV, while 26% reported using awake proning. Staff shortage (51.4%), personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage (51.4%), increased workload (45.9%), inadequate training (43.2%) and lack of available protocols and policies (37.8%) were the main barriers. CONCLUSION: Ventilatory support management of COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia was inconsistent with the global practice, lacked uniformity, and there was limited use of standard protocols/treatment guidelines. Shortage of staff and PPE, increased workload and insufficient training were the most prevalent barriers