Shedding New Light on Cancer with Non-Linear Optical Microscopy

Oesophageal cancer, one of the most aggressive cancer types is considered the seventh most common cancer in terms of incidence and the sixth most common cause of cancer deaths worldwide due to late diagnosis. In the UK, the oesophageal cancer incidence rate has increased by approximately 10% since the 1990s. At present, histopathology is the gold standard method for the diagnosis of oesophageal cancer, which rely on biopsy collection using an endoscopy procedure followed by the histological sample’s preparation. This method is invasive, time-consuming, and largely based on the pathologist's experience of diagnosis. Therefore, new diagnostic techniques are required to provide non-invasive methods for early and rapid diagnosis. Raman scattering has the potential to replace histopathology as the gold standard for diagnosis for a wide range of diseases. Raman scattering provides stain-free imaging with chemical-specificity derived from the intrinsic vibrational signatures of biomolecules. However, the low scattering cross-section severely limits the image acquisition speeds and like conventional histopathology, requires tissue sectioning to provide morphological imaging below the surface of tissue biopsies. Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) has recently appeared as a powerful technique for (near)real-time Raman imaging in intact tissue samples. Thework in this thesis aimed to develop the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) for rapid wavelength tuning and chemical imaging of clinical samples, such as cancer biopsies. This was achieved by making modification to a laser cavity to reduce the time of the wavelength tuning by approximately 35 times compared to the original cavity design. Furthermore, the cavity modification led to the spectra being separated efficiently and the wavelength tuning controlled by cavity length changes only. The improved design was applied to image frozen oesophageal tissues, which have four major pathology groups, normal, inflammation, columnar-lined (Barrett's) oesophagus (CLO) and low-grade dysplasia. A large area imaging was performed using the SRS technique at 2930 cm-1 for four different oesophageal tissues, which presented the morphological and structural information. However, histopathological diagnosis depends on the visualisation of the cell nucleus in the tissue. This component was not highlighted until the stimulated Raman histology approach was developed for small regions of interest in the CLO and the low-grade dysplasia sample, which required two different frequencies at 2840 cm-1 and 2930 cm-1. All SRS images were compared to haematoxlin and eosin (H&E) stained sections. Further comparisons were made between SRS and Raman imaging techniques, with SRS offering faster acquisition times and a higher spatial resolution. The spectral signature for the different pathological groups in the oesophageal tissues were explored in the high wavenumber (2800 – 2930 cm-1) region using hyperspectral SRS and compared with the spectra from the Raman. K-means clustering analysis was used to explore the morphochemical information using the CLO and low-grade dysplasia sections. Both techniques were able to demonstrate unique information such as the epithelial cells that form the oesophagus glands and surrounding connective tissue. It is concluded that SRS has the power to be one of the ideal imaging modalities to gather the molecular information in biological samples. However, it still needs more development due to the complexity of the system

Human Computer Interaction and Web-Based Learning Platforms: e-Learning Website Features vis-à-vis Student Perception

The utilisation of web-based e-learning platforms is increasing throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The majority of these platforms were developed initially by institutions in the West; only later were menus and icons translated into Arabic to assist Arabic-speaking students. Users have observed that during the development, adaptation, and implementation (adoption) stages, insufficient attention was directed toward usability. Within the industry it is common practice to apply Nielsen’ heuristics, as a measure of usability, to designs intended for business or commercial uses, these heuristics are considered a standard measure. This study focuses on the application of Nielsen’s heuristics to web based learning platforms to evaluate usability. The aim is to understand and evaluate the usability of these applications from the perspective of students and to compare and contrast these with the findings of a Heuristic evaluation of these platforms by groups of professionals. The study includes the development of a usability guideline framework and an extensive set of criteria to be applied to evaluate web based learning platforms (WBLP). The analysis of the data collected and applying the heuristic evaluation of experts demonstrate that a high correspondence with previous sources. The research concludes that a heuristic evaluation, based on Nielsen’s model, is an effective, appropriate and sufficient usability evaluation method, as well as a relatively easy tool. It also identified a high percentage of usability problems in the target WBLP, Arabic version of Blackboard, which contributes to part of research conclusions

Challenges of continuing medical education in Saudi Arabia's hospitals

Phd ThesisBackground Health care professionals are responsible for maintaining their proficiency throughout their careers. Continuing medical education (CME) is an integral part of the medical profession that aims to enhance physicians’ knowledge and skills. Health care services in Saudi Arabia are expanding rapidly. However, the country is struggling to cope with a shortage of competent health professionals. CME in the Kingdom is facing some challenges that are preventing learning programmes from responding appropriately to professionals’ demands and needs, and to the complexity of health care. Research questions The research questions addressed in this thesis are: 1. What is the current status of continuing medical education in Saudi Arabian governmental hospitals? 2. What are the barriers preventing continuing medical education from implementing competitive learning programmes? 3. How might Saudi culture be influencing the health context and how does this impact upon the field of CME? Methodology This study adopted a mixed methods approach supplemented by ethnography. Two forms of individual, semi-structured interviews targeted two groups of respondents; the interviews were followed up by a questionnaire (sent by email) listing all the challenges to CME identified by the interviewees, and asking the participants to rank them in order of importance. In addition, observation was conducted throughout the fieldwork. Sampling Three public hospitals were selected from different geographical areas (N=3). Judgemental approach resulted in the selection of 33 medical education representatives from different medical and paramedical departments (N=33). Purposive sampling resulted in the selection of 11 medical librarians (N=11). Results The major CME challenges were identified and grouped into four themes: 1. Management, including the lack of knowledge on the part of decision makers about the importance of lifelong learning, and their influence over learning programmes. 2. Poor status of medical libraries, in terms of location, space and services provided. 3. Lack of transparency in the CME budget, which leads to a too close relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and physicians. 4. Diversity of staff, including their different training backgrounds, and their resistance to making changes in their performance after training. Discussion and conclusions The study found a strong correlation between health stakeholders’ lack of managerial skills and knowledge of the significance of CME and the learning programme limitations in Saudi Arabia; this factor also received the highest ranking by the participants in the study. 3 Hospital officials lack the necessary knowledge about the importance of CME, and lifelong learning has become complex. Their negative attitude towards learning has resulted in several challenges: some of these have been identified in this study, including a lack of support for the learning process in hospitals, an inability to motivate staff to continue developing their skills, and a lack of transparency when allocating budgets to learning elements, including CME and library services. This ambiguity has resulted in poor libraries and a heavy reliance on pharmaceutical industry sponsorship for CME events and medical professionals’ trips, which can affect the quality of the events and/or cause bias. The study has also clarified the issue of staff diversity. Although the majority of health care professionals are foreigners, the concern is that health care stakeholders are recruiting professionals from developing countries where the quality of health care and training might be low. Despite the varied training and educational backgrounds among the staff, no efforts have been made to design learning programmes that meet their actual and wide-ranging needs. Rather, current activities are based on desires and wishes of chiefs of medical departments.The Government of Saudi Arabia

Incidence rate of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas among males in Saudi Arabia: an observational descriptive epidemiological analysis of data from the Saudi cancer registry, 2001-2008

Background: This study describes epidemiological data of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) diagnosed from 2001 to 2008 among Saudi men. Materials and methods: Retrospective data from all NHL cancer cases among Saudi men recorded in the Saudi Cancer Registry (SCR) between January 2001 and December 2008 were used. Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, Poisson regression, and simple linear regression were also used. Results: In total, 2,555 new cases of NHL were recorded between January 2001 and December 2008. The region of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia had the highest overall age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) at 7.8, followed by the Eastern region at 6.8, and Makkah at 6.1 per 100,000 men; however, Jazan, Hail, and Baha had the lowest average ASIRs at 2.5, 3.7, and 3.9 per 100,000 men, respectively. The incidence-rate ratio for the number of NHL cases was significantly higher in Riyadh (4.68, 95 confidence interval CI 4.11-5.32), followed by Makkah (4.47, 95% CI 3.94-5.07), and the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia (3.27, 95% CI 2.90-3.69) than that in the reference region of Jazan. Jouf had the highest changes in the ASIRs of NHL among Saudi men from 2001 and 2008 (5.0 per 100,000 men). Conclusion: A significant increase in the crude incidence rate and ASIR for NHL in Saudi Arabia between 2001 and 2008 was found. Riyadh, the Eastern region, and Makkah had the highest overall ASIR in Saudi Arabia. Jazan, Hail, and Baha had the lowest rates. Additionally, Riyadh, Makkah, and the Eastern region had the highest incidence-rate ratio for the number of NHL cases. Finally, Jouf had the highest changes in crude incidence rate and ASIR from 2001 to 2008. Further analytical studies are needed to determine the potential risk factors of NHL among Saudi men. © 2014 Alghamidi et al

Hybrid ACO and TOFA feature selection approach for text classification

With the highly increasing availability of text data on the Internet, the process of selecting an appropriate set of features for text classification becomes more important, for not only reducing the dimensionality of the feature space, but also for improving the classification performance. This paper proposes a novel feature selection approach to improve the performance of text classifier based on an integration of Ant Colony Optimization algorithm (ACO) and Trace Oriented Feature Analysis (TOFA). ACO is metaheuristic search algorithm derived by the study of foraging behavior of real ants, specifically the pheromone communication to find the shortest path to the food source. TOFA is a unified optimization framework developed to integrate and unify several state-of-the-art dimension reduction algorithms through optimization framework. It has been shown in previous research that ACO is one of the promising approaches for optimization and feature selection problems. TOFA is capable of dealing with large scale text data and can be applied to several text analysis applications such as text classification, clustering and retrieval. For classification performance yet effective, the proposed approach makes use of TOFA and classifier performance as heuristic information of ACO. The results on Reuters and Brown public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. © 2012 IEEE

Multi-Cultural Factors in the Crew Resource Management Environment: Promoting Aviation Safety for Airline Operations

There are many reasons why Multi-cultural flight crews fail to work together effectively. This research provides a review of the history of Crew Resource Management (CRM), the CRM training classes, and the communication barriers among the flight crews. The national, organizational, and professional cultures of crew members influence flight safety. While the primary focus is on Saudi Arabian Airline, the findings can be generalized to any multicultural airline. CRM training has been shown to be efficient for both pilots and flight attendants when viewed separately, especially those flying in foreign countries. The authors address accidents which were caused as a result of the lack of communication between pilots and flight attendants. A survey was conducted of 30 pilots and 30 flight attendants employed by Saudi Arabian Airlines. The results indicated the population was aware of the importance of mixed cultural differences as useful aspects of training in areas of safety and the cooperation of crew members. Furthermore, it was revealed that good communication has significant effects on teamwork effectiveness and safety. The authors recommend that the airline should establish a joint annual CRM training class for both groups

HIGH PERFORMANCE LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHIC DETERMINATION OF GLIMEPIRIDE AND TIMOLOL IN PHARMACEUTICAL FORMULATIONS USING BRITTON -ROBINSON BUFFER IN MOBILE PHASES

Actually, Glimepiride (GLI) and Timolol (TIM) are analysed by several analytical techniques such as HPLC, Uv Vis and electrochemical methods, but in this study these compounds were determined by use Britton-Robinson (B-R) buffer pH3 in mobile phases as a new work. B-R pH3 : Acetonitrile : Water : Methanol (10 : 30 : 10 : 50 % v/v/v/v) and B-R pH3 : Acetonitrile : Methanol (30 : 15 : 55 % v/v/v), were used as mobile phases for chromatographic studies of GLI and TIM respectively. 1´10-3 mol L-1 of GLI and TIM were prepared  by dissolving the suitable weight of analyte in methanol and distilled water respectively, in 50 ml volumetric flask. GLI and TIM were HPLC separated from interferences and analytical determined using C-18 (5µm) with UV detector at 254 nm and 1.00 mL min-1 flow rate by 10 µL injection volume. The calibration curves for GLI and TIM  were studied over the range 1×10-4 to 1×10-3 mol L-1 (correlation coefficient = 0.994, n=6) for GLI and (correlation coefficient = 0.996, n=6) for TIM. The HPLC reproducibility and stability were evaluated for 5×10-4 mol L-1 of GLI and TIM , yielded good results for ten HPLC measurements with relative standard deviations RSD% were 0.43 and 1.1%, and good stability observed. The developed HPLC was applied to determine of GLI and TIM in pharmaceutical formulations with mean recoveries 103% ±0.71 and 99% ±1.0, respectively.  

"Training ANFIS Using Genetic Algorithm for Dynamic Systems Identification

In this study, the premise and consequent parameters of ANFIS are optimized using Genetic Algorithm (GA) based on a population algorithm. The proposed approach is applied to the nonlinear dynamic system identification problem. The simulation results of the method are compared with the Backpropagation (BP) algorithm and the results of other methods that are available in the literature. With this study it was observed that the optimisation of ANFIS parameters using GA is more successful than the other method