LOXL2 in anabolic response to chondrodysplasia mice progressive TMJ and knee osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease that affects an estimated 9.6 % of men and 18 % of women over 60 years of age. However, there is no chondroprotective agent that is approved for clinical application. We showed that LOXL2 is elevated in the regenerative response during fracture healing in mice and has a critical role in chondrogenic differentiation. Indeed, LOXL2 is an anabolic effector that attenuates pro-inflammatory signaling in OA cartilage of the TMJ and knee joint, induces chondroprotective and regenerative responses. The goal of the present study was to evaluate if LOXL2 adenovirus in vivo promotes protective and anabolic responses in the knee and TMJ-OA cartilage. We employed (Cho/+) OA mouse model to assess knee and TMJ-OA, which is a genetic model that develops progressive TMJ-OA due to a mutation in the Col11a1 gene. Intraperitoneal injection every 2 weeks of Adv-RFP-LOXL2 in four-month-old Cho/+ male and female mice for 16 weeks upregulated Sox9, aggrecan (Acan) and other anabolic genes in the knee and TMJ. Next, to evaluate if LOXL2 expression occurred in degenerative lesions in human clinical TMJ-OA, immunofluorescence and confocal image analysis were performed. LOXL2 has the potential to induce anabolic gene expression in the progressive knee and TMJ-OA mouse model. We showed for the first time that LOXL2-related functions could be useful for anabolic therapies for Cho/+ mice progressive knee and TMJ-OA. Thus, these data show that LOXL2 could have clinical translational applications in the future for OA-related anabolic therapies

The system of arbitration in the U.A.E. : problems and prospects.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D174123 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Promoting social change in the Arab Gulf: two case studies of communication programmes in Kuwait and Bahrain

The thesis presents rich empirical analysis of the role of public relations in facilitating participation in social change in the Arab Gulf. The focus is on what public communication approaches are used and how they are regarded from the perspectives of the key social actors. It presents an historical and sociological background of public communication and media in the Arab Gulf. Moreover, it provides in-depth analysis of two empirical case studies in the Arab Gulf: Ghiras, the national drugs prevention programme in Kuwait, and Be Free, the voluntary anti-child abuse programme in Bahrain. This thesis relates the practice of public communication in the Arab Gulf society to Arabic culture and ethics. The thesis uses a qualitative constructivist paradigm to “re-construct” the multiple realities initially constructed by social actors in the cases to provide original insights on the role of public communication and public relations in social change in the Arab Gulf. It presents a new perspective of 'social change' in the two cases that is tied to Islamic ethics. Besides, it re-constructs original Arabic-oriented understanding of 'relational' and 'persuasion' approaches, which differs from the Western paradigm. One of the key contributions of the thesis is its adaptation of relevant Western communication models to the empirical Arab Gulf cases to identify some of the crucial factors of the practice and role of public communication in the Arab Gulf. The unique contribution of this thesis is that it develops a greater understanding of alternative cultural context that might contribute to the adaptations of existing theory and therefore a first step towards new models. It introduces a theoretical framework for other scholars to develop an Arabic public communication ethics theory and to build up a cultural model of the practice of public communication and public relations in the Arab Gulf. The thesis generates key theoretical implications that contribute to the theoretical discussion on the value and role of media, public relations, social marketing, and public communication in the Arab Gulf society at the age of globalisation

History and Sociology of Public Communication in the Arab Gulf

This research aims to fill the vacuum in the literature on the role of public communication campaigns in the Arab Gulf. It provides detailed qualitative data about the history and sociology of media, public communication and public relations in social change in the Arab Gulf societies. The paper aims to frame a historical and sociological background of media and public communication campaigns that aim at promoting social change and development in the Arab Gulf. It contributes to the global picture of the role of public communication in the Arab Gulf culture. The article begins with a background to the concepts of social change, participation, and social responsibility in the Islamic and Arabic culture. Then, it discusses the challenge of modernisation in the Arab Gulf and the rationales for the launch of public communication campaigns. After that, it provides a brief history of media and its role in promoting social change in the Arab Gulf. Finally, the research provides a historical background of social change campaigns in the Arab Gulf. This is achieved by reviewing literature in two linked areas: a review of the national campaigns in the Arab Gulf, and a discussion of the role of voluntary associations in promoting social change in the Arab Gulf societies

Oil Recovery by Polymer Flooding; Sensitivity Analysis to Technical Parameters

Numerous enhanced oil recovery techniques including miscible gas injection, chemical, thermal and other methods are applied at the third phase of production after both primary and secondary recovery have been exhausted. Polymer flooding is one of the chemical methods that recover more oil by decreasing the mobility of the system; by increasing the viscosity of the injected water that results in an improvement in the volumetric sweep efficiency. The objective of this work is to asses and select the development options using polymer process that maximize oil recovery for a synthetic reservoir model where technical parameters are optimized thoroughly. Reservoir simulation study using ECLIPSE 100 was used to simulate the synthetic model to investigate the different development options of polymer flooding applied and compare them to waterflooding. The development options include continuous polymer injection, water alternating polymer, and polymer slug injection. Through the study, the effect of injection rate, polymer concentration, slug size, and well completion were investigated by setting up a range of sensitivities. According to the sensitivity analysis performed on injection rate when waterflooding is applied; 1500STB/D was considered the most suitable operating injection rate for the study. Results of the study reveal a general trend of improved oil recovery with the implementation of polymer flooding over waterflooding in the range of 3 – 8%. In the continuous polymer injection, the highest field oil efficiency of more than 50% was obtained using polymer concentration of 200 ppm where all the layers were completed. On the other hand employing the water alternating polymer technique, a maximum oil recovery was achieved at 200 ppm polymer concentration, three months of WAP cycle, and using the same completion as in the continuous process. Results also indicated that both continuous and polymer slug injection have the same optimum concentration of 200 ppm. Furthermore, the study recommends using well completion one, two years of polymer slug injection, and polymer concentration of 1000 ppm. The selected system yields an oil recovery of 49.26%. The outcomes of this work should assist the oil industry in planning polymer flooding for heterogeneous reservoirs; keeping in mind that UAE hydrocarbon reservoirs are normally complex with high degree of heterogeneity

The Effect of Continuing Improvement Strategy on Tourist Organization Resources in Accomplishing Total Quality: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities Case Study

The purpose of the present study was to identify the satsifaction level among personnel at the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities regarding the continuing imrpvement of (human, financial, physical, technological, knowledge/information) resources strategy; and to identify the effect of applying the stategy of continuing imprvement of resources on the total quality for the personnel at the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities; and further to identify whether there were statisitically significnat differences in the employee's statisfaction levels regarding the continuing improvement of resources strategy by the demographisc characterisitcs: gender, job level, tenure, and placement at the Minsitry of Tourism & Antiquities (MOT&A). Population (N=150) consisted of all staff memebrs assuming managerial, supervisory, and technical positions at the directorates supervised by the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities (MOT&A) in the four Northern Districts of Jordan. Out of 150 questionnaires sent to participants, only 144 questionnaires were returned back, and four were found unusable for statisitcal analysis. The 140 questionnaires used for statitical analysis accounted for 93 per cent of population. Most salient results from this study were that low satisfaction level among Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities employees regarding the continuing improvement of human resources strategy except for collaboration and breaking the ice between subordinates and subordinates; and regular evaluations for purpose of correction rather than punishing. In addition, the study found positive impact of the continuing improvement strategy of individual resourceson total quality at the Minsitry of Tourism & Antiquities (MOT&A) in Jordan with the knowledge resources were raked top followed by the technological, financial, physical and finally human resources. This study found no statisically signficnat differences of the satsifaction levels among Minsitry of Tourism & Antiquities (MOT&A) employees regarding the continuing improvement of resources strategy by gender, job title, job level, and placement at the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities (MOT&A). Nonetheless, the study found statisically significant differences in the satisfaction levels of Minsitry of Tourism & Antiquities (MOT&A) employees regarding the continuing imof physical improvement of physical resources attributed to service years. Key words: Continuing Improvement, Resources, Total Quality, Jordan Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities

Reality of Applying Tourism Marketing Strategies and its Impact on Jordanian expat Tourists in Arabian Gulf Countries: an Empirical Study

The study aimed at identifying the level of Jordanian tourists expats' satisfaction on reality of applying tourism marketing strategies in Arabian gulf countries. The strategies are including (strategy of tourism productions, strategy of   Prices of tourism products, strategy of promotion of tourism products, strategy of distribution of tourism products, strategy of tourism products employees, strategy of physical environment of service, and operations strategy to provide tourist services) on the different tourist Jordanian locations. In addition to identify the impact of applying these strategies on Jordanian tourism expat's satisfaction. Analytical descriptive approach has been used for population of the study that consisted of Jordanian tourist expats. (845) of questionnaires were distributed depending on snow ball method. (779) of questionnaires were considered retrieval. The results have shown that highest levels of satisfaction on tourism marketing were arranged as following: (strategy of tourism productions, operations strategy to provide tourist services, strategy of tourism products employees, strategy of distribution of tourism products, strategy of physical environment of service, strategy of   Prices of tourism products and strategy of promotion of tourism products). The results have also found that the strongest strategies  due to effecting on satisfaction Jordanian tourist expat is were arranged as following: (operations strategy to provide tourist services, strategy of tourism productions, , strategy of  physical environment of service,  strategy of   Prices of tourism products, strategy of employees efficiency in tourist production and strategy of distribution of tourism products). Keywords: strategies of tourism marketing, tourists' satisfaction, Arabian gulf countries

Oil recovery by flooding; sensitivity analysis to technical parameters

Numerous enhanced oil recovery techniques including miscible gas injection, chemical, thermal and other methods are applied at the third phase of production after both primary and secondary recovery have been exhausted. Polymer flooding is one of the chemical methods that recover more oil by decreasing the mobility of the system; by increasing the viscosity of the injected water that results in an improvement in the volumetric sweep efficiency. The objective of this work is to asses and select the development options using polymer process that maximize oil recovery for a synthetic reservoir model where technical parameters are optimized thoroughly. Reservoir simulation study using ECLIPSE 100 was used to simulate the synthetic model to investigate the different development options of polymer flooding applied and compare them to waterflooding. The development options include continuous polymer injection, water alternating polymer, and polymer slug injection. Through the study, the effect of injection rate, polymer concentration, slug size, and well completion were investigated by setting up a range of sensitivities. According to the sensitivity analysis performed on injection rate when waterflooding is applied; 1500 STB/D was considered the most suitable operating injection rate for the study. Results of the study reveal a general trend of improved oil recovery with the implementation of polymer flooding over waterflooding in the range of 3 - 8%. In the continuous polymer injection, the highest field oil efficiency of more than 50% was obtained using polymer concentration of 200 ppm where all the layers were completed. On the other hand employing the water alternating polymer technique, a maximum oil recovery was achieved at 200 ppm polymer concentration, three months of WAP cycle, and using the same completion as in the continuous process. Results also indicated that both continuous and polymer slug injection have the same optimum concentration of 200 ppm. Furthermore, the study recommends using well completion one, two years of polymer slug injection, and polymer concentration of 1000 ppm. The selected system yields an oil recovery of 49.26%. The outcomes of this work should assist the oil industry in planning polymer flooding for heterogeneous reservoirs; keeping in mind that UAE hydrocarbon reservoirs are normally complex with high degree of heterogeneity

Real-Time Facial Emotion Recognition Using Fast R-CNN

In computer vision and image processing, object detection algorithms are used to detect semantic objects of certain classes of images and videos. Object detector algorithms use deep learning networks to classify detected regions. Unprecedented advancements in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have led to new possibilities and implementations for object detectors. An object detector which uses a deep learning algorithm detect objects through proposed regions, and then classifies the region using a CNN. Object detectors are computationally efficient unlike a typical CNN which is computationally complex and expensive. Object detectors are widely used for face detection, recognition, and object tracking. In this thesis, deep learning based object detection algorithms are implemented to classify facially expressed emotions in real-time captured through a webcam. A typical CNN would classify images without specifying regions within an image, which could be considered as a limitation towards better understanding the network performance which depend on different training options. It would also be more difficult to verify whether a network have converged and is able to generalize, which is the ability to classify unseen data, data which was not part of the training set. Fast Region-based Convolutional Neural Network, an object detection algorithm; used to detect facially expressed emotion in real-time by classifying proposed regions. The Fast R-CNN is trained using a high-quality video database, consisting of 24 actors, facially expressing eight different emotions, obtained from images which were processed from 60 videos per actor. An object detector’s performance is measured using various metrics. Regardless of how an object detector performed with respect to average precision or miss rate, doing well on such metrics would not necessarily mean that the network is correctly classifying regions. This may result from the fact that the network model has been over-trained. In our work we showed that object detector algorithm such as Fast R-CNN performed surprisingly well in classifying facially expressed emotions in real-time, performing better than CNN

Many-Spin Effects and Tunneling Properties of Magnetic Molecules

Spin tunneling in molecular magnets has attracted much attention, however theoretical considerations of this phenomenon up to now have not taken into account the many-spin nature of molecular magnets. We present, to our knowledge, the first successful attempt of a realistic calculation of tunneling splittings for Mn$_{12}$ molecules, thus achieving a quantitatively accurate many-spin description of a real molecular magnet in the energy interval ranging from about 100 K down to 10$^{-12}$ K. Comparison with the results of the standard single-spin model shows that many-spin effects affect the tunneling splittings considerably. The values of ground state splitting given by single-spin and many-spin models differ from each other by a factor of five.Comment: 3REVTeX pages, 2 figure