Arabic cross-dialectal communication: A missing element in the Teaching of Arabic as a Second Language

This study was initiated by an ambition of contributing to the field of Teaching Arabic as a Second Language (TASL) through further examination of the issue of the variability in the Arabic language. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has been the main variety taught in Higher Education (HE) institutions in the UK with the majority of them encouraging the students to learn a dialect either by exposure or by seeking instruction during their year abroad (Dickins & Watson, 2006). In recent years, more institutions —especially in the USA— are giving attention to the importance of teaching the dialects alongside MSA and, therefore, some programmes started teaching at least one dialect at different stages of the degrees while others started the integrative approach by teaching both MSA and a dialect concurrently (Younes, 1995). This appreciation of the equal importance of MSA and the dialect is an achievement to be valued; however, the question of which dialect to be taught is still taking the attention of the TASL professionals. Some institutions take a practical approach in answering this question by choosing the dialect taught in their partner institutions in the Arab countries, or the dialect spoken by their appointed staff members, while others choose the dialects that they believe to be the most comprehensible to the rest of the Arabic speakers. This question of which form to teach originates from a continuous focus on the language itself and trying to find a specific form to teach as in the situation of teaching non-diglossic languages. As Giolfo & Sinatora indicate, there is a need to deviate from the dichotomous concept of Arabic having distinct forms to the acceptance of these varieties being used by the native speaker (NS) as facets of one language (Giolfo & Sinatora, 2011:104). Therefore, this paper proposes that the shift should divert from focusing on a specific form to focusing on the language use by the NS including the cross-dialectal communication. Whether an institution chooses to teach a Levantine, Egyptian or another dialect, more concern should be given to how the speakers of these dialects cope with such variability

The evaluation of human collaboration and its supporting technologies

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering.The various research on collaboration extends to text-based chat, audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, forums, code inspections, 3D virtual worlds, tangible interfaces, the automation of link establishment and disestablishment, group decision support systems, and brainstorming. Moreover, this list is by no means exhaustive! The eight essential ingredients are formulated to draw together these disparate contexts, approaches, and implementations by describing the constants and commonalities of collaboration. The ingredients, then, which are common to all collaboration sessions regardless of the underlying technology are: people; a shared space; time; a common objective; focus on the objective; common language; knowledge in the area of the objective; and interaction. There may be other aspects which affect collaboration, but these ultimately will be expressed in either one, or a combination of these ingredients. Additionally, there is little consensus on the evaluation of collaboration and its supporting technologies. It seems that many researchers focus on their application without much thought on its accompanying evaluation method or how their evaluation fits with other approaches. The various approaches to evaluation fit into a layered understanding of collaboration, through the comparison of one layer’s affects on another and/or through the examination of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of a particular layer. Furthermore, the analysis of various approaches are placed in a matrix, which can lead to the identification of ‘gaps’ in the evaluation research field and help to identify where an evaluation approach fits in. In addition, a new method of evaluation is introduced on the basis of the eight essential ingredients, thus rendering it applicable to any collaboration session. Its technological independence and numerical results provide it with strong potential for improving collaboration and its supporting technologies. To demonstrate the operation of the measure, a pilot study was conducted. The measure was found to be useful, but potentially quite expensive to implement. The expense, however, can be reduced through the automation of some of the aspects of the measure

Impact of the structural adjustment program on agricultural production and resource use in Egypt:

This paper uses an agricultural sector model to evaluate the effects of an ambitious and ongoing policy reform program on agricultural production and resource use in Egypt. The results show that Egypt has already gained from the policy reforms, but that much larger gains depend on increased exports of high value crops. Water is found to be emerging as an important constraint on agriculture, and it will be essential to establish more effective institutional and pricing mechanisms to encourage greater water use efficiency in the future. Because many of the new lands compete with the more productive lands of the Nile delta for water, the economic return to the development of new lands is also found to be low. The policy reforms are not likely to lead to substantial increases in agricultural employment, even if exports of high value crops could be increased. However, the model results also show that more employment intensive strategies could be designed that would involve little sacrifice in economic efficiency.Agricultural productivity Egypt., Exports Egypt., Water use Management., Agriculture Environmental aspects. ,

COSMOS 2044. Experiment K-7-19. Pineal physiology in microgravity: Relation to rat gonadal function

It is now known that the pineal organ can interact with many endocrine and nonendocrine tissues in a regulatory fashion. Given its key role in the regulation of melatonin synthesis, its high concentration, and that its levels may persist longer than the more rapidly changing melatonin, it was felt that serotonin might give a more accurate assessment of the effects of microgravity on pineal function following recovery of animals from flight. Five-hydroxyindole acetic acid (5-HIAA), a major metabolite of serotonin metabolism, was also measured. One of the most interesting concomitants to spaceflight and exposure to microgravity has been the disturbing alteration in calcium metabolism and resulting skeletal effects. Given the link between exposure to microgravity and perturbation of calcium metabolism and the fact that the pineal is apparently one of the only soft tissues to calcify, pineal calcium content was examined following spaceflight

PREM-Based Optimal Task Segmentation Under Fixed Priority Scheduling

Recently, a large number of works have discussed scheduling tasks consisting of a sequence of memory phases, where code and data are moved between main memory and local memory, and computation phases, where the task executes based on the content of local memory only; the key idea is to prevent main memory contention by scheduling the memory phase of one task in parallel with computation phases of tasks running on other cores. This paper provides two main contributions: (1) we present a compiler-level tool, based on the LLVM intermediate representation, that automatically converts a program into a conditional sequence of segments comprising memory and computation phases; (2) we propose an algorithm to find optimal segmentation decisions for a task set scheduled according to a fixed-priority partitioned scheme. Our evaluation shows that the proposed framework can be feasibly applied to realistic programs, and vastly overperforms a baseline greedy approach

Estimating the viral loads of SARS-CoV-2 in the oral cavity when complicated with periapical lesions

Background: The oral cavity represents a main entrance of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2), neuropilin-1 (NRP-1), and transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2) are essential for the entry of SARS-CoV-2 to the host cells. Both ACE-2 and NRP-1 receptors and TMPRSS2 have been identified in the oral cavity. However, there is limited knowledge about the impact of periapical lesions and their metabolites on the expression of these critical genes. This study aims to measure the impact of periapical lesions and their unique fatty acids (FAs) metabolites on the expression of the aforementioned genes, in addition to interleukin 6 (IL-6) gene and hence SARS-CoV-2 infection loads can be estimated. Methods: Gene expression of ACE-2, NRP-1, TMPRSS2, and IL-6 was performed in periapical lesions in comparison to healthy oral cavity. Since FAs are important immunomodulators required for the lipid synthesis essential for receptors synthesis and viral replication, comparative FAs profiling was determined in oral lesions and healthy pulp tissues using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The effect of major identified and unique FAs was tested on mammalian cells known to express ACE-2, NRP-1, and TMPRSS2 genes. Results: Gene expression analysis indicated that ACE-2, NRP-1, and TMPRSS2 were significantly upregulated in healthy clinical samples compared to oral lesions, while the reverse was true with IL-6 gene expression. Saturated and monounsaturated FAs were the major identified shared and unique FAs, respectively. Major shared FAs included palmitic, stearic and myristic acids with the highest percentage in the healthy oral cavity, while unique FAs included 17-octadecynoic acid in periapical abscess, petroselinic acid and l-lactic acid in periapical granuloma, and 1-nonadecene in the radicular cyst. Computational prediction showed that the binding affinity of identified FAs to ACE-2, TMPRSS2 and S protein were insignificant. Further, FA-treated mammalian cells showed significant overexpression of ACE-2, NRP-1 and TMPRSS2 genes except with l-lactic acid and oleic acid caused downregulation of NRP-1 gene, while 17-octadecynoic acid caused insignificant effect. Conclusion: Collectively, a healthy oral cavity is more susceptible to viral infection when compared to that complicated with periapical lesions. FAs play important role in viral infection and their balance can affect the viral loads. Shifting the balance towards higher levels of palmitic, stearic and 1-nonadecene caused significant upregulation of the aforementioned genes and hence higher viral loads. On the other hand, there is a reverse correlation between inflammation and expression of SARS-CoV-2 receptors. Therefore, a mouth preparation that can reduce the levels of palmitic, stearic and 1-nonadecene, while maintaining an immunomodulatory effect can be employed as a future protection strategy against viral infection

Improving a Curriculum Through Incremental Changes Based on Programmatic Assessment Results

Objectives: To describe implementation of incremental curriculum changes aimed at addressing identified gaps via subjective and objective programmatic assessment in a 2 + 2 curriculum. Method: After low first-time NAPLEX pass rates for two consecutive class years, subjective and objective assessment of a 2 + 2 curriculum was conducted. The curriculum was benchmarked to the other existing 2 + 2 program. Other assessments that occurred include: intensive course content review, course credit number versus instructional time audit, vertical and horizontal topical sequence revision in the clinical, basic sciences and social and behavioral course sequences, faculty/student feedback and focus groups; outside experts and best practice consulting. Results: Instructional time was increased from 15 to 19 weeks to mirror the only successful 2 + 2 Pharm.D program. Discrepancies in instructional time versus credit hours were identified in four courses resulting in increased instructional times. Laboratory courses increased from sporadic lab meeting times to once weekly meetings times (three courses) resulting in further strengthening of the compounding curriculum. Nine new therapeutic topics introduced during years 3 and 4 were reinstated in the first two years.Topical clinical sequence was revised to integrate and harmoniously match the basic science curriculum.Social and behavioral course sequence was benchmarked to other pharmacy programs and resequenced and adjusted accordingly. Implications: Curricular assessment is valuable in addressing gaps and strengthening a curriculum. Further study is necessary to determine if the changes implemented are valuable and positively impact performance on first-time NAPLEX pass rates

Changes in Driving Behavior Across Age Cohorts in an Arab Culture: The Case of State of Qatar

In this investigation, we aimed to examine the structure of the Driving Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) across age cohorts spanning 14 to 55 years in the State of Qatar. In addition, we aimed to examine variations in driving behavior across age cohorts. Participants were divided by age (in years) into five groups: not yet old enough to drive (under age), 18 to 25; 26 to 35; 36 to 45, and 46 to 55. The DBQ was administered to a sample of 1126 drivers, 50.30% of whom were female. Results are contrary to previous studies: factor analysis showed three pure factors rather than the four factors previously identified. Results also indicate that Qatari drivers share in their approach to driving even though there is great cultural diversity as well as varied language skills and educational levels. Significantly fewer driving aberrations were reported by female participants compared to those who were male. Furthermore, young men (<25 years old) with low levels of education and those who use 4-wheel-drive vehicles had the worst driving errors, violations, and lapses. 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar FoundationScopu