Attitudes Of Jordanian Students Toward Managers' Leadership Styles And Their Relationship To The National Culture

This study explores the attitudes of a group of university students about managers' leadership styles and the cultural characteristics of the Jordanian society. The amount of research on the topic of leadership styles in Jordan is rare, particularly when associated with national culture. The outcomes demonstrated that the surveyed students were more disposed to portray the proposed leadership styles of managers as Team management style followed by Country Club style. On the other hand, when these students were asked to describe their national culture, they described it in a way similar to the Arab Group culture presented by Hofstede. Furthermore, the surveyed students gave power distance then muscularity the first confirmation. No significant relation observed between students' attitudes of leadership styles and characteristics of the Jordanian culture. Reasons for this outcome together with a few recommendations are incorporated into this study.

Information Content and Interrelationships of Multiple Performance Measures

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A Finite Element and Experimental Study of Reinforced Concrete in Torsion

This thesis describes a study into the torsional behaviour of reinforced concrete members, in particular solid Lsections under pure torsion. It consists of three distinct but linked phases: (1) development, assessment and application of a three dimensional nonlinear finite element model for short-term behaviour of reinforced concrete, (2) an experimental programme and (3) a numerical parametric study. Nonlinear behaviour takes into account concrete cracking, nonlinear triaxial stress-strain relations of concrete, concrete crushing and yielding of steel reinforcement. Cracking behaviour is modelled by a fixed orthotropic smeared crack approach, allowing up to three cracks to occur at any sampling point. Modelling of post-cracking behaviour allows for shear transfer and tension stiffening effects. Concrete behaviour under all multiaxial stress states is governed by a short-term constitutive law and a peak stress failure criterion. A bilinear uniaxial stress-strain law allowing for isotropic strain hardening is used for steel reinforcement. 20-noded isoparametric brick element is used to represent concrete, with single bars embedded within the concrete elements to simulate reinforcement. A modified Newton-Raphson approach was used for solving the nonlinear problem, based on the evaluation of a secantial elasticity matrix. The program was assessed by studying the behaviour of deep beams, shallow beams simulating beam-column behaviour, rectangular beams subject to pure and combined torsion and L-sections under pure torsion. Through systematic study, the influence of some of the major nonlinear material and solution parameters was established for these applications and limits on their values were set. The experimental programme involved testing a series of solid reinforced concrete models of L-shaped cross sections under pure torsion in a specially designed and built test-rig. The tests were devised to: (1) assess the current British Code design procedure for torsion of solid L-sections, (2) obtain an insight into the torsional behaviour of these types of sections and (3) provide detailed results to assess the reliability of the finite element model in the analysis of torsion of fully reinforced flanged sections. A dual approach of complementing the experimental results with a numerical parametric study, using the developed finite element model, is adopted where more variables not included in the experimental programme were investigated. The current British Code design procedure for torsion was found to be too conservative for solid flanged sections, and it is concluded that the code's rules can be less stringent. Some recommendations that might help bring the code's torsion design procedure in line with other major codes of practice are given

Binding studies of E-Cadherin peptides to the EC1 domain of E-Cadherin

The blood brain barrier (BBB) is a key role in delivering medication to the brain; if the drug molecules can overcome this obstacle, many brain diseases (i.e., Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and brain tumor) can be effectively treated. E-cadherin is important in forming cell-cell adhesion in intercellular junctions of the biological barriers (i.e., intestinal mucosa and BBB). Cadherin peptides (HAV6 and ADTC5) have been shown to modulate the BBB in the cell culture and in in-situ rat brain perfusion models. The hypothesis is that cadherin peptides modulate the tight junctions of the BBB by binding to the EC1 domain of E-cadherin. Thus, the objective of this project is to determine the dissociation constants (Kds) of linear and cyclic cadherin peptides (i.e., HAV- and ADT-peptides) to the expressed EC1 domain of E-cadherin using circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. The data show that the cyclic HAVc3 peptide (Kd = 66.7±18.0 nM) has better binding property to the EC1 domain than the linear HAV6 peptide (Kd = 120.1±11.9 nM). Cyclic ADTC5 (Kd = 50.2± 11 nM) has lower dissociation constant than ADTC1 (Kd = 119.7± 16 nM). Mutation of the valine residue in ADTC5 to glutamic acid (ADTC7; Kd = 0.43± 0.050 nM) and threonine (ADTC8; Kd = 0.45±0.012) makes the peptides to have 100-fold tighter binding compared to the EC1 domain. Mutation of the valine residue in ADTC5 to a tyrosine residue (ADTC9; Kd = 0.038± 0.009) increases binding to the EC1 domain by 1000-fold. Finally, mutation of the valine residue to arginine demolishes the activity of ADTC10. In the future, the activity of ADTC9 to modulate the BBB will be compared to ADTC5 in in vitro and in vivo models of the BBB

The Role of Leadership in the Development of the Creative School in Palestine

The world faces a great developmental revolution in all scientific fields which in its turn affects different aspects of life, such as: the medical, engineering and educational fields, etc. The educational school’s aspect in particular will be the topic of this research. It tries to assist in developing the different aspects of the educational leader’s character in order to be capable to work, conduct research, create and innovate through developing how to think and how to be a creative leader of a creative school. This study aims at recognizing the role of educational leadership in developing the creative school in Palestine. Two focus groups, each of which consists of 15 members, were met. According to their responses, a list of opinions and suggestions, that had been given to explain the educational role in developing a creative school, was applied to a small sample of 116 school’s male and female leaders. Results showed high percentage in the role of educational leader of average 4.43 and a standard deviation of 0.29. The highest percent was for the role of school’s administration and class’ environment followed by teacher’s role and extra class activities respectively

Mosque Without Dome: Conserving Traditional-designed Mosque in Melaka, Malaysia

Jasin is one of the area in the state of Malacca in Malaysia, known for its long winding history. Located in the middle seat of government of the Empire of the famous Melaka Sultanate, Jasin district does have a number of quality historic buildings. One of the old buildings found in one the villages located quite close to the town of Jasin is the unique domeless Air Barok Village Mosque. Its location is situated along the main road, easy to reach. In a study stated in this paper, it shows how the unique architecture of this mosque of Air Baroque Village can be appreciated. This paper presents a study of the design elements and architectural features that are unique to the mosque around this region. This paper stated on the approach in creating this structure is different compared to most of the existing mosque currently and previously being built around the state. The concept of neo-archipelago idea to have the Chinese Buddha features in a Muslim mosque was unique found on this religious building located at the side of the world. Expectations for this study to reveal the noble efforts of the Government bodies involved in restoring old buildings such as this mosque can indirectly maintain the cultural arts of the local Malays who are the largest race in Malaysia. Efforts should also be given to maintain old buildings; not only religious buildings but also other building types; in the effort to ensure local arts and culture still exist and can be appreciated by future generations

Effect of Vacuum Intrusion Compaction on the Mechanical Properties of Mortar

The Vacuum Intrusion Compaction Method (VICM) can be defined as a mortar or cement based material compaction method which applies the principle of air pressure in extracting air bubbles trapped in mortar in order to achieve the objective of compaction. This alternative compaction method is able to prevent segregation from happening in mortar and other cement based materials. It also provides better control over the orientation of the elements inside the mortar. Laboratory tests on the physical and mechanical properties of mortars were conducted to study bulk density, porosity, compressive strength, and flexural strength in the early stages of strength development of different mortars. Through such testing, the effectiveness of the vacuum intrusion method on the effect of compaction could be observed. The outcome of this research shows that the VICM is capable of compacting mortar and extracting macro pores, thereby providing a relatively similar compressive strength and flexural strength to that of the standard compaction method. However, it is not efficient in extracting micro pores, therefore, leading to high porosity of the mortar specimens. As a conclusion, the vibration compaction method is still considered a good compaction method when compared to VICM

Antagonistic, biofilm-forming rhizospheric Pseudomonas spp. isolated from Hail province

Background: The objectives of this study were to characterize Pseudomonas rhizospheric strains, that have a biocontrol activity, in rhizosphere soil in Hail province and study their ability to form biofilm.Methods: Rhizosphere soil samples were collected from rhizosphere of soil plantation areas, to be used for bacteria isolation. The identified bacteria were qualitatively tested for their ability to produce slime and subsequently develop biofilm.Results: The cultural and biochemical identification techniques, including morphological, biochemical and molecular methods revealed that the antagonistic bacteria- from the distinctive rhizosphere soil samples belong to Pseudomonas genus in particular, P. aeruginosa (PF1a, pf2a, PF-8) and P. putida (PF-7). These identified isolates inhibited Aspergillus niger development with percentage of parasitic growth inhibition greater than (48.095 ± 2.182)% for P. aeruginosa (pf-8). In addition, these identified isolates were significantly shown to be able to produce exopolysaccharide and subsequently develop biofilm on polystyrene and glass surfaces.Conclusion: Superior strains of these bio-control and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria will enable for better biological control of fungal and bacterial plant diseases and may reduce chemical pesticide usage. The indigenous strains isolated could potentially have a great impact on controlling plant diseases, in particular, those caused by microorganisms, and could be used as an alternative bio control agents instead of harmful chemical pesticides. Most of the tried microbes produced exopolysaccharides as well as formed biofilm on polystyrene and glass surfaces.Keywords: Biological control, Rhizosphere; Biofilm; Pseudomonas; Antimicrobial