Investigating grammatical complexity in Gulf Arabic speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI)

This is the first investigation of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in Gulf-Arabic (GA) speaking children. The thesis consists of two main sections, in the first one, I discuss the definitions of SLI and the various theories put forward to account for the deficits seen in this population. I also discuss the importance of cross-linguistic investigations of SLI and why studying SLI in GA may prove useful in testing the accounts of SLI that argue for a general processing deficit vs. those that argue for a domain specific account of SLI. The remaining section of the first part is dedicated to describing the various language tests developed to identify children with SLI in GA. These tests were conducted with approximately 88 typically developing children and 26 children with SLI between the age of 4;6 and 9;4 years old. In the second part of the thesis, I report on two experiments investigating syntactic and phonological complexity in GA speaking children with SLI. The first experiment investigates the comprehension of three types of word orders: a canonical SVO, and two word orders that involve fronting of the direct object (OSV and OVS). Results showed that children with SLI differed from the TD groups on the sentences with fronted NP's, but not on the canonical word order. The second experiment involves a nonword repetition test where syllable length and consonant clusters are systematically controlled to contrast the influence of both phonological short-term memory and phonological complexity. The results are consistent with accounts that argue for a significant role of phonological complexity in NWR and question the “centrality” of phonological capacity in nonword repetition. The final chapter summarises the findings of the thesis and its contribution to theories of SLI in general, and to the study of SLI in Arabic in particular

Conceptualizing corporate identity in a dynamic environment

Purpose – The study revisits the meaning of Corporate Identity (CI) in practice to identify its key dimensions and the interrelationships between them, and to provide insights on how to operationalize the construct. Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a comprehensive literature review and qualitative research consisting of 22 semi-structured interviews with senior managers from 11 UK-leading companies, and three in-depth interviews with corporate brand consultants who worked closely with these firms in cognate areas. Findings – The study identifies six key dimensions of CI in UK industry: communication, visual identity, behavior, organizational culture, stakeholder management, and founder value-based leadership. Research limitations/implications – The focus on UK leading companies limits the generalizability of the results. Further studies should be conducted in other sectors and country settings to examine the relationships identified in the current study. Originality/value – This study identifies the salient dimensions of CI and, for the first time, the role of founder transformational leadership, employee identification and top management behavioral leadership as key dimensions and sub-dimensions of CI. The study also provides novel insights about the measurements for these dimensions. Additionally, this study introduces a model for the interrelationships between CI dimensions and their influence on corporate image, based on rigorous theoretical underpinnings, which lays the foundation for future empirical testing

PROTECTIVE EFFECT OF L-CARNITINE AND BAKER YEAST SACCHAROMYCES CEREVISIAE AGAINST HEPATIC TOXICITY INDUCED BY VALPROATE AS ANTIEPILEPTIC DRUG IN RATS

Objective: The aim of this work was to investigate the protective role of L-carnitine and baker yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) against the effect of sodium valproate (VPA) induced toxicity and oxidative stress in the liver.Methods: Chronic administration of sodium valproate was studied by oral administration of VPA for six months. The protective effect was conducted by an administration of L-carnitine or/and baker yeast for one month before chronic administration of VPA. Some biochemical parameters, lipid profile, oxidative stress and histopathological studies were analyzed.Results: Chronic administration of VPA for six months caused a significant increase in serum amino transferases (AST, ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), bilirubin, total lipids, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein (LDL) as well as oxidative stress; malodialdehyde (MDA) and nitric oxide. While decreased total protein, albumin, and globulin in addition to glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase (SOD). The administration of L-carnitine and baker yeast cause significant decreases in the activities of AST, ALT, bilirubin, lipid peroxidation, LDL level and MDA levels and return the levels of total protein, albumin, globulin, glutathione peroxidase and SOD to the normal levels. Histopathological results revealed improvement of the liver structure.Conclusion: L-carnitine and baker yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) offer protection to the liver by preserving the structural integrity of hepatocellular membrane against sodium valproate induced hepatotoxicity and oxidative stress.Â

Agent Productivity Modeling in a Call Center Domain Using Attentive Convolutional Neural Networks

Article numbre 5489Measuring the productivity of an agent in a call center domain is a challenging task. Subjective measures are commonly used for evaluation in the current systems. In this paper, we propose an objective framework for modeling agent productivity for real estate call centers based on speech signal processing. The problem is formulated as a binary classification task using deep learning methods. We explore several designs for the classifier based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), long-short-term memory networks (LSTMs), and an attention layer. The corpus consists of seven hours collected and annotated from three different call centers. The result shows that the speech-based approach can lead to significant improvements (1.57% absolute improvements) over a robust text baseline system

Preparation, spectral characterization, structural study, and evaluation of antibacterial activity of Schiff base complexes for VOII, CrIII, MnII, ZnII,CdII and CeIII

A new series of metal ions complexes of VO(II), Cr(III), Mn(II), Zn(II), Cd(II) and Ce(III) have been synthesized from the Schiff bases (4-chlorobenzylidene)-urea amine (L1) and (4-bromobenzylidene)-urea amine (L2). Structural features were obtained from their elemental microanalyses, magnetic susceptibility, molar conductance, FT-IR, UV–Vis, LC-Mass and 1HNMR spectral studies. The UV–Vis, magnetic susceptibility and molar conductance data of the complexes suggest a tetrahedral geometry around the central metal ion except, VOII complexes that has square pyramidal geometry, but CrIII and CeIII octahedral geometry. The biological activity for the ligand (L1) and its Vanadium and Cadmium complexes were studied. Structural geometries of compounds also were suggested in gas phase by using theoretical treatments, using Hyper Chem-6 program for the molecular mechanics and semi-empirical calculations. The heat of formation (?Hf ?) and binding energy (?Eb) in the temperature of 298K for the free ligand (L1) and their metal complexes were calculated by PM3 and ZINDO/I methods. The electrostatic potential of the free ligands were calculated to investigate the reactive sites of the molecules.Bacteriological evaluation of considerable number of these compounds were maintained using organisms Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus,and they were found to exhibit the high effect of activity. This may be attributed to the impact of both the Schiff bases and the metal present in these complexes

The impact of eLearning as a knowledge management tool in organizational performance

This paper aims to understand the impact of eLearning capabilities on organizational performance. It also addresses the obstacles of organizational learning using eLearning methods and highlighting some emerging trends and technologies that will impact the eLearning experience in organizations. It examines a brief history of knowledge management and how it is related to learning, organizational learning, and performance. It also explores different eLearning technologies and trends. A systematic literature review was used to examine previous papers between 2016–2020. Results show eLearning can impact organizational performance in many ways, and human factors can be one of the most challenging obstacles in deploying eLearning solutions in organizations, and many emerging eLearning trends were explored including open educational resources, gamification, flipped classrooms, and many others

Phishing email detection using Natural Language Processing techniques : a literature survey

Phishing is the most prevalent method of cybercrime that convinces people to provide sensitive information; for instance, account IDs, passwords, and bank details. Emails, instant messages, and phone calls are widely used to launch such cyber-attacks. Despite constant updating of the methods of avoiding such cyber-attacks, the ultimate outcome is currently inadequate. On the other hand, phishing emails have increased exponentially in recent years, which suggests a need for more effective and advanced methods to counter them. Numerous methods have been established to filter phishing emails, but the problem still needs a complete solution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey that focuses on using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to detect phishing emails. This study provides an analysis of the numerous state-of-the-art NLP strategies currently in use to identify phishing emails at various stages of the attack, with an emphasis on ML strategies. These approaches are subjected to a comparative assessment and analysis. This gives a sense of the problem, its immediate solution space, and the expected future research directions

The Effect of Some Chemical Contaminants on Chloride Pollutant in Tigris River in Maysan Province

     تناولت هذه الـدراسة مشكلة التلوث الكيميائي والفيزيائي للمياه وكيفية معالجتها من خـلال تحليل البيانات التي تم الحصول عليها أحصائياً، وبنـاء معادلات تربط بين تراكيز الملوثات الكيميائية فـي مياه نهر دجلـة من خلال تقدير العـلاقة بين نسبة ملوث الكلوريدات Cl , وبعض الملوثات الكيميائية الأخرى , مما يـوفر لنـا إشارات سريعة تحدد صلاحية ماء نهر دجلة للاستعمالات اليومية لـه في محافظة ميسان، حيث استعملت طريقة المربعات الصغرى الاعتيادية لـتقدير العلاقة الخطية  بين كل ملوّث كـدالة من الملوثات الأخرى وبالنظر لـوجود عناصر بيئية ضعيفة الارتباط أو عديمة التأثير بالمتغير المعتمد استعملت طـريقة اختيار أفضل معادلـة انحدار تقديرية بـأسلوب الحذف الـعكسي (Backward Elimination) لاختيار العناصر ذات التأثير المعنوي فقط بغية بناء جداول للمؤشرات الإحصائية يمكن الرجوع إليها بسرعة لبيان مدى صلاحية الماء للاستعمالات اليومية. ومن اجل بناء أنموذج يمكننا من تفسير تركيز ايون الكلورايد Cl في مياه نهر دجلة تم أيجاد مصفوفة الارتباط البسيط التي تحدد قوة العلاقة الخطية بين ايون الكلوريدات  Clوبقية العناصر البيئية وفي نفس الوقت إيجاد معاملات الارتباط البسيط بين العناصر البيئية الأخرى لمعرفة مدى وجود تداخل في التأثير يؤدي إلى تضليل المستفيد من المعادلات التقديرية المستعملة لتقدير نسبة تركيز ايونات الكلوريدات  Clفي المياه، والتنبه إلى وجود مخاطر نتيجة استعمال هذه المياه، وتوصلت الدراسة إلى وجود فروق معنوية بين متوسط الكلوريدات Cl تبعاً لزمن تسجيل البيانات، كما تجاوز ملوث الكلوريدات Cl  المعدلات العالمية والعراقية المسموح بها وعدت المياه ملوثة.Abstract    This study deals with the problem of chemical and physical pollution of water and how to treat it by analyzing the data obtained statistically, and build statistical models linking the concentrations of chemical pollutants in the Tigris River water by estimating the correlation between the percentage of chloride contaminant and some other chemical pollutants, which provides us quick references. The validity of the Tigris River water is determined for its daily use in Maysan governorate. The method used to select the best estimated regression equation using (Backward Elimination) method , to select only those elements of significant effect in order to construct tables of statistical indicators that can be consulted quickly to indicate the suitability of water for daily use. In order to construct a model, we can explain the concentration of chloride ion in the Tigris River. The beneficiary of the estimated equations used to estimate the concentration of chloride ions in water, and to note the risks of the use of this water, the study found significant differences between the average chlorides according to the time of data recording, and exceeded the chloride contaminant International and Iraqi rates are allowed and water is contaminated