The Perceptions of Academic Leaders for the Twenty-First Century Skills Necessary for Higher Education Students in Light of the Knowledge Society Requirements

The study aimed to identify the perceptions of academic leaders for the twenty-first century skills necessary for higher education students in light of the knowledge society requirements. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher used the descriptive analytical method, and a study tool that was prepared and verified for its validity and reliability. The study sample consisted of (224) academic leaders of Saudi official universities in the Saudi capital Riyadh. The results of the study showed that the perceptions of the study sample for the 21st century skills necessary for higher education students was high. The results of the study also showed that the degree of compatibility of higher education programs and practices with the 21st century skills was medium. The results of the study also indicated that there were no statistically significant differences at (α ≤ 0.05) to estimate the study sample of the twenty-first century skills necessary for higher education students due to the variables (academic specialization, academic rank, job position). The study recommended the need to formulate and adopt a renewable vision of universities based on the reality, needs, and philosophy of the society, and the development of curricula to be compatible with the 21st century skills necessary for higher education students

Trust as an influencer of the intention to use mobile banking smartphone application in Saudi Arabia

The aim of this thesis is to propose and test a trust-based model in the context of mobile banking smartphone application in Saudi Arabia. This research contributes to the limited body of knowledge on trust judgements in mobile banking in the smartphone application era, by highlighting the role of ongoing trust in the customer’s intention to use mobile banking application. Banking has long been an area in which trust between banks and their customers has been regarded as pivotal. Despite this, research on trust in mobile banking smartphone applications has received little attention. Furthermore, distinct from other studies that have measured ongoing trust as a single variable, this study takes as its point of departure a theoretical framework, developed by Gefen et al. (2003) and McKnight et al. (2002), which proposes four dimensions of trust: familiarity with vendor, situational normality, structural assurance, and calculative based trust. In addition, the proposed model also includes technology adoption factors, usefulness, ease of use and information quality. The relationships between the trust dimensions and adoption variables were included in the research model to explain their effect on the customer’s ongoing trust and how the ongoing trust articulated the customer’s intention to use as outcome variable. Mixed method research, including survey and interview, were used to achieve the aim of this study. A survey amongst the customers of two Saudi Arabian banks generated a dataset of 640 questionnaires, which was subjected to structural equation modelling (SEM). In order to gain further insight into the relationships in the research model, interview data was also gathered from Saudi students in the UK who used Saudi mobile banking applications. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data. The findings from the survey show that trust factors such as familiarity with vendor, situational normality, structural assurance, and calculative trust were the statistically significant factors in cultivating participants’ trust, which in turn influenced their intention to use the mobile banking application. In contrast, adoption factors such as usefulness, ease of use and information quality were not statistically significant for customers’ trust, although the ease of use and usefulness had considerable impact on users’ intention to use the mobile banking application. The interview findings confirm that trust dimensions are crucial to the participant’s decision to use the bank application, and offer some insights into how and why this is the case. In addition, the interview findings confirm that usefulness and ease of use are fundamental for the participants’ intention to use the bank application but not for their trust. In contrast with findings from the survey, the interview findings show and explain that information quality is one of the most important factors for the participants’ trust and use of banking application. This study contributes to knowledge by formulating and testing a trust-based model in a new type of mobile banking, the bank app. This study demonstrates the importance of trust types in the smartphone banking environment, and it is one of just two studies that combine the adoption variables and types of trust variables in a study on mobile banking. This study also contributes to the knowledge by exploring the decision-making processes associated with mobile banking through the use of a qualitative approach and examines trust in banking in Saudi Arabia. On the basis of the findings in this study, it is recommended that Saudi banks should consider customer trust as a multidimensional construct and seek to enhance the underlying factors and processes that contribute to the cultivation trust in mobile banking apps. Findings from the interviews are particularly useful in assisting banks to critically examine their clients’ perception of trust dimensions and adoption variable factors when they undertake further developments of their banking app.Banks should pay attention to the customers experience through all the bank’s online channels, as customer experience in one channel can affect the expectations and trust levels for another

Awareness of droplet and airborne isolation precautions among dental health professionals during the outbreak of corona virus infection in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia

Background: This study aimed to determine knowledge, attitude and practice of airborne and droplet isolation precautions among Dental Health Professionals (DHPs) (dental students, interns, practitioners and auxiliaries) during the outbreak of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), corona virus infection in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 406 dental health professionals (DHPs) working in selected dental facilities in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia during the outbreak of MERS (April-June 2013). A structured, close-ended, self-administered questionnaire explored the knowledge, attitude, and practice towards droplet and isolation precautions. Collected data was subjected to descriptive statistics to express demographic information, mean knowledge score, mean attitude score and practice score of DHPs. Inferential statistics (MannWhitney U test and Kruskal Wallis tests, p < 0.05) were used to examine differences between study variables. Spearmanâ s rho correlation was used to identify the association between the knowledge-attitude, knowledge-practice, and attitude-practice. Results: A response rate of rate of 90.22% (406 out of 452) was obtained. The mean scores of knowledge, attitude and practice were 10.61 ± 1.19, 50.54 ± 7.53 and 8.50 ± 2.14 respectively. Spearmanâ s correlation test revealed a significant linear positive correlation between knowledge and attitude (r-0.501, P- 0.01), knowledge and practice (r-0.185, P-0.01) and attitude and practice (r-0.351, P- 0.01) of DHPs about airborne isolation precautions. Conclusions: Dental health professionals considered in the present study showed good knowledge, positive attitude and good practice towards droplet and airborne isolation precautions during outbreak of MERS

Investigation of anti-nociceptive, anti-inflammatory potential and ADMET studies of pure compounds isolated from Isodon rugosus Wall. ex Benth

The strong ethnopharmacological utilization of Isodon rugosus Wall. Ex. Benth is evident in the treatment of several types of pain and inflammation, including toothache, earache, abdominal pain, gastric pain, and generalized body pain and inflammation. Based on this background, the antinociceptive effects of the crude extract, various fractions, and essential oil have been reported previously. In this research work, we isolate and characterize pure bioactive compounds from I. rugosus and evaluate possible mechanisms using various in vivo and in vitro models. The pure compounds were analyzed for analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities through various assays. The column chromatography of the chloroform fraction of I. rugosus led to the identification of two pure compounds, i.e., 1 and 2. Compound 1 demonstrated notable inhibition (62% writhing inhibition, 72.77% COX-2 inhibition, and 76.97% 5-LOX inhibition) and anti-inflammatory potential (&gt;50% paw edema inhibition at various intervals). The possible mechanism involved in antinociception was considered primarily, a concept that has already been elucidated through the application of naloxone (an antagonist of opioid receptors). The involvement of adrenergic receptors was investigated using a hot plate model (an adrenergic receptor antagonist). The strong ethnomedicinal analgesic background of I. rugosus, supported by previous reports and current observations, leads to the conclusion that I. rugosus is a potential source of antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory bioactive compounds. It may be concluded from the results that the isolated analgesic compounds of I. rugosus may be a possible alternative remedy for pain and inflammation management with admirable efficacy and safety profiles

Evidence Based Prediction and Progression Monitoring on Retinal Images from Three Nations.

Purpose: The aim of this work is to demonstrate how a retinal image analysis system, DAPHNE, supports the optimization of diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening programs for grading color fundus photography. Method: Retinal image sets, graded by trained and certified human graders, were acquired from Saudi Arabia, China, and Kenya. Each image was subsequently analyzed by the DAPHNE automated software. The sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values for the detection of referable DR or diabetic macular edema were evaluated, taking human grading or clinical assessment outcomes to be the gold standard. The automated software's ability to identify co-pathology and to correctly label DR lesions was also assessed. Results: In all three datasets the agreement between the automated software and human grading was between 0.84 to 0.88. Sensitivity did not vary significantly between populations (94.28%-97.1%) with specificity ranging between 90.33% to 92.12%. There were excellent negative predictive values above 93% in all image sets. The software was able to monitor DR progression between baseline and follow-up images with the changes visualized. No cases of proliferative DR or DME were missed in the referable recommendations. Conclusions: The DAPHNE automated software demonstrated its ability not only to grade images but also to reliably monitor and visualize progression. Therefore it has the potential to assist timely image analysis in patients with diabetes in varied populations and also help to discover subtle signs of sight-threatening disease onset. Translational Relevance: This article takes research on machine vision and evaluates its readiness for clinical use

The key role of the Lectin Pathway enzyme MASP-3 in the innate immune protection against Neisseria meningitides

Neisseria meningitidis infections pose a worldwide threat to human health being a major cause of morbidity and mortality. The bacterium can often be found to live as a commensal organism in the upper respiratory-tract. However, under disease promoting circumstances it may cause invasive infections such as bacterial meningitis with a mortality rate of up to 10% in patients with sepsis. The complement system plays a vital role in immune protection from Neisseria meningitidis infections and ongoing research in our laboratories has recently observed that the serum of mice deficient in the lectin pathway of complement effector enzyme MASP-2 had a higher bactericidal activity towards Neisseria meningitidis as compared to MASP-2 sufficient serum. This work also revealed a key role of the lectin pathway components MBL and MASP-3 in driving serum bacteriolytic activity against Neisseria meningitidis and has identified a novel link between MASP-3 and the alternative pathway of complement activation. The work described in this thesis highlights the critical role that MASP-3 plays in the innate immune response to this pathogen using in vitro models of serum bactericidal activity and in vivo mouse models of Neisseria meningitidis infection. The failure of MASP-3 deficient non immune serum to lyse Neisseria meningitidis serotype A and serotype B was restored by adding a recombinant enzymatically active MASP-3 fragment to this serum while the therapeutic systemic injection of recombinant murine MASP-3 zymogen convincingly restored the defective alternative pathway functional activity and with that repaired the high susceptibility of MASP-1/3 deficient mice to Neisseria meningitidis infections. In line with the essential role that the alternative pathway plays in driving the innate immune response against Neisseria meningitidis, the early results of my study showed the therapeutic utility of enhancing the alternative pathway functional activity through the addition of recombinant murine properdin to WT mice sera and significantly increased the lytic activity against Neisseria meningitidis

Recurrent Unprovoked Venous Thrombosis (Cerebral Sinus Thrombosis and Mesenteric Vein Thrombosis) in Young Patient with Crohn’s Disease: A Case Report and Review

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients have a higher risk of thrombosis. Most data about thrombosis in inflammatory bowel disease are related mainly to inpatients with disease activity, but in this article, we report one case of inflammatory bowel disease with two different sites of venous thrombosis which happened in a patient with nonactive IBD at an outpatient setting

Identification of Therapeutic Targets in an Emerging Gastrointestinal Pathogen Campylobacter ureolyticus and Possible Intervention through Natural Products

Campylobacter ureolyticus is a Gram-negative, anaerobic, non-spore-forming bacteria that causes gastrointestinal infections. Being the most prevalent cause of bacterial enteritis globally, infection by this bacterium is linked with significant morbidity and mortality in children and immunocompromised patients. No information on pan-therapeutic drug targets for this species is available yet. In the current study, a pan-genome analysis was performed on 13 strains of C. ureolyticus to prioritize potent drug targets from the identified core genome. In total, 26 druggable proteins were identified using subtractive genomics. To the best of the authors&rsquo; knowledge, this is the first report on the mining of drug targets in C. ureolyticus. UDP-3-O-acyl-N-acetylglucosamine deacetylase (LpxC) was selected as a promiscuous pharmacological target for virtual screening of two bacterial-derived natural product libraries, i.e., postbiotics (n = 78) and streptomycin (n = 737) compounds. LpxC inhibitors from the ZINC database (n = 142 compounds) were also studied with reference to LpxC of C. ureolyticus. The top three docked compounds from each library (including ZINC26844580, ZINC13474902, ZINC13474878, Notoginsenoside St-4, Asiaticoside F, Paraherquamide E, Phytoene, Lycopene, and Sparsomycin) were selected based on their binding energies and validated using molecular dynamics simulations. To help identify potential risks associated with the selected compounds, ADMET profiling was also performed and most of the compounds were considered safe. Our findings may serve as baseline information for laboratory studies leading to the discovery of drugs for use against C. ureolyticus infections

Low salinity water and CO2 miscible flooding in Berea and Bentheimer sandstones

Low salinity water (LSW) was combined with CO2 in a miscible water alternating gas (WAG) hybrid scheme to elucidate our understanding on the interrelationships of these enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methodologies. This study focused on sandstones reservoirs using Berea and Bentheimer core samples. Synthetic formation brine simulating Saudi reservoirs’ brine and light Saudi Arabian crude were used as reservoir fluids. The high salinity water (HSW) used was sea water from the Arabian Gulf, while the LSW was the same sea water diluted ten times. Four runs where conducted with various schemes of LSW and HSW in secondary mode and CO2-WAG in tertiary modes at a WAG ratio of 1:1 and 0.2 pore volume slug size. In Berea cores, LSW miscible CO2-WAG in tertiary mode was the most effective scheme with ultimate original oil in place (OOIP) recovery of 82.40%, incremental tertiary recovery was 35.10%, which was 66.20% of the residual oil in place (ROIP) after secondary waterflood. The dual mechanisms of fines migration due to the clay minerals present in Berea and attendant miscible CO2 effect resulted in an improved recovery. This was much higher than what was observed in HSW miscible CO2-WAG in Berea, with an ultimate OOIP recovery of 65.20% and 16.44% incremental tertiary recovery, which is a meager 34.34% of the ROIP after secondary flood. In the Bentheimer cores however, there were no substantive differences in the incremental tertiary recoveries due to LSW miscible CO2-WAG over HSW miscible CO2-WAG in the tertiary mode. The incremental recoveries were 19.23% which is 41.29% ROIP after secondary flood for the LSW CO2-WAG and 20.98% which is 58.62% ROIP after secondary flood for the HSW CO2-WAG. These results reinforces the necessity of conducting experimental studies using representative reservoir core samples before implementing such EOR schemes. It can be inferred that LSW improved recovery should first be applicable in a candidate reservoir before augmenting LSW with miscible CO2-WAG. Keywords: Low salinity waterflood, Miscible CO2 EOR, CO2-WAG, Sandston

Light Deep Model for Pulmonary Nodule Detection from CT Scan Images for Mobile Devices

The emergence of cognitive computing and big data analytics revolutionize the healthcare domain, more specifically in detecting cancer. Lung cancer is one of the major reasons for death worldwide. The pulmonary nodules in the lung can be cancerous after development. Early detection of the pulmonary nodules can lead to early treatment and a significant reduction of death. In this paper, we proposed an end-to-end convolutional neural network- (CNN-) based automatic pulmonary nodule detection and classification system. The proposed CNN architecture has only four convolutional layers and is, therefore, light in nature. Each convolutional layer consists of two consecutive convolutional blocks, a connector convolutional block, nonlinear activation functions after each block, and a pooling block. The experiments are carried out using the Lung Image Database Consortium (LIDC) database. From the LIDC database, 1279 sample images are selected of which 569 are noncancerous, 278 are benign, and the rest are malignant. The proposed system achieved 97.9% accuracy. Compared to other famous CNN architecture, the proposed architecture has much lesser flops and parameters and is thereby suitable for real-time medical image analysis