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Embedding and global stability in periodic 2-dimensional maps of mixed monotonicity
No full textIn this paper, we consider nonautonomous second order difference equations of the form xn+1 = F(n, xn, xn−1), where F is p-periodic in its first component, non-decreasing in its second component and non-increasing in its third component. The map F is referred to as periodic of mixed monotonicity, which broadens the notion of maps of mixed monotonicity. We introduce the concept of artificial cycles, and we develop the embedding technique to tackle periodicity and globally attracting cycles in periodic 2-dimensional maps of mixed monotonicity. We present a result on globally attracting cycles and demonstrate its application to periodic systems. The first application is a periodic rational difference equation of second order, and the second application is a population model with periodic stocking. In both cases, we prove the existence of a globally attracting cycle.American University of Sharja
Redox-Responsive Drug Delivery Systems: A Chemical Perspective
No full textWith the widespread global impact of cancer on humans and the extensive side effects associated with current cancer treatments, a novel, effective, and safe treatment is needed. Redoxresponsive drug delivery systems (DDSs) have emerged as a potential cancer treatment with minimal side effects and enhanced site-specific targeted delivery. This paper explores the physiological and biochemical nature of tumors that allow for redox-responsive drug delivery systems and reviews recent advances in the chemical composition and design of such systems. The five main redoxresponsive chemical entities that are the focus of this paper are disulfide bonds, diselenide bonds, succinimide–thioether linkages, tetrasulfide bonds, and platin conjugates. Moreover, as disulfide bonds are the most commonly used entities, the review explored disulfide-containing liposomes, polymeric micelles, and nanogels. While various systems have been devised, further research is needed to advance redox-responsive drug delivery systems for cancer treatment clinical applications.Dana Gas Endowed Chair for Chemical EngineeringAmerican University of SharjahSheikh Hamdan Award for Medical SciencesFriends of Cancer Patient
Insight into Faculty Open Access Perceptions: A Quantitative Analysis among UAE Faculty
No full textOpen access (OA) publishing presents university librarians, administrators, and faculty researchers with a paradox of both opportunities and challenges. For faculty researchers in particular, the decision of whether to pursue OA publication of their scholarship is driven by their perceptions of the credibility and quality of OA publishing. While there is a variety of extant literature broaching these perceptions, there are few quantitative analyses with an n greater than 100 respondents, and a notable lack of research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study mitigates this gap in scholarship regarding OA publishing, offering a quantitative analysis of a survey sample of 134 UAE faculty researchers. We find statistically significant findings regarding the relationship between one’s position on OA and length of publishing career and professorial rank. Similarly, we find that those with favourable views of OA publishing are more likely to believe that OA journals are peer reviewed, increase likelihood of being cited, allow authors to repost content, and are a more principled alternative to traditional publishers. Those who believe that their research should be freely available to all readers or that OA publishing broadens their research impact were also highly likely to hold favourable views of OA publishing. Finally, our findings suggest that support for OA publishing at the departmental and institutional level remains ambiguous, with findings yielding contradicting results on the matter. The study contributes to content regarding scholarship, library science, and university administration.American University of Sharja
Al Ghathami’s الثقافة التلفزیونیة - Television Culture (2005): Translation and a Skoposbased Commentary
No full textA Master of Arts thesis in English/Arabic/English Translation and Interpreting (MATI) by Hamad M. Al-Ali entitled, “Al Ghathami’s الثقافة التلفزیونیة - Television Culture (2005): Translation and a Skoposbased Commentary”, submitted in April 2022. Thesis advisor is Dr. David Wilmsen. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).College of Arts and SciencesDepartment of Arabic and Translation StudiesMaster of Arts in English/Arabic/English Translation and Interpreting (MATI
The shift from face-to-face to online teaching due to COVID-19: Its impact on higher education faculty’s professional identity
No full textWith the COVID-19 emergency shift to online teaching, it is timely to investigate the impact of online teaching on teachers’ professional identity, namely their beliefs and roles. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect qualitative data from four faculty members working at different UAE universities, aiming to incorporate teachers' voices and practices in the research process. Findings showed teachers' professional identity underwent some phases of instability as tensions arose between the way they viewed themselves, their beliefs, and their practices in the online environment. Teachers experienced changes related to their pedagogical, managerial, and social roles and practices
Buckling Analysis of Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) Thin Plates with Various Circular Cutout Arrangements
No full textIn this paper, several analyses were conducted to investigate the buckling behavior of Functionally Graded Material (FGM) thin plates with various circular cutout arrangements. The computer model was simulated using the Finite Element (FE) software ABAQUS. The developed model was validated by the authors in previous research. A parametric analysis was employed to investigate the effect of plate thickness and circular cutout diameter on the buckling behavior of the FGM thin plates. The normalized buckling load was also calculated to compare the buckling performance of FGM plates with various dimensions. Moreover, von Mises stress analysis was examined to understand the yield capability of the FGM plates in addition to the buckling modes that show the stress distribution of the critical buckling stress. Hence, this research provides a comprehensive analysis to display the relation between the critical buckling load and the arrangement of the circular cutouts. The results show that the critical buckling load heavily depends on the dimension of the plate and the cutout size. For instance, an increase in the plate thickness and a decrease in the cutout diameter increase the critical buckling load. Moreover, the circular cutout in a horizontal arrangement exhibited the best buckling performance, and as the arrangement shifts to a vertical arrangement, the buckling performance deteriorates
CNN and HEVC Video Coding Features for Static Video Summarization
No full textThis study proposes a novel solution for the detection of keyframes for static video summarization. We preprocessed the well-known video datasets by coding them using the HEVC video coding standard. During coding, 64 proposed features were generated from the coder for each frame. Additionally, we converted the original YUVs of the raw videos into RGB images and fed them into pretrained CNN networks for feature extraction. These include GoogleNet, AlexNet, Inception-ResNet-v2, and VGG16. The modified datasets are made publicly available to the research community. Before detecting keyframes in a video, it is important to identify and eliminate duplicate or similar video frames. A subset of the proposed HEVC feature set was used to identify these frames and eliminate them from the video. We also propose an elimination solution based on the sum of the absolute differences between a frame and its motion-compensated predecessor. The proposed solutions are compared with existing works based on an SIFT flow algorithm that uses CNN features. Subsequently, an optional dimensionality reduction based on stepwise regression was applied to the feature vectors prior to detecting key frames. The proposed solution is compared with existing studies that use sparse autoencoders with CNN features for dimensionality reduction. The accuracy of the proposed key-frame detection system was assessed using the positive predictive values, sensitivity, and F-scores. Combining the proposed solution with Multi-CNN features and using a random forest classifier, it was shown that the proposed solution achieved an average F-score of 0.98.American University of Sharja
Arabic Multimodal Emotion Recognition Using Deep Learning
No full textA Master of Science thesis in Computer Engineering by Noora Mohammed Abdulla Al Roken entitled, “Arabic Multimodal Emotion Recognition Using Deep Learning”, submitted in May 2022. Thesis advisors are Dr. Gerassimos Barlas and Dr. Osameh Mahmoud Al-Kofahi. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).Emotions are an essential part of human communication since it shapes how information is received. As part of human-computer interaction, researchers are extending Emotion Recognition (ER) to machines. ER can contribute to many fields such as business, education, psychology, and psychiatry due to the importance of emotional insights. ER has been an active area for decades due to the complexity of the problem. Some methods use speech to extract emotions, and others use facial expressions or text. Recently, works began to combine multiple inputs, or modalities, to extract valuable and accurate insights since different emotions might be presented better in different modalities. Many datasets were made available, especially for the speech modality. Different dataset types were used that include the acted, elicited, and natural, and they were built using different languages, including Arabic. However, works utilizing multiple modalities were mainly focused on western and south Asian countries, and none included Arabic. The classifiers built were all trained on acted datasets that include exaggerated reactions, which cannot be reliable. Therefore, in this thesis we present our Arabic audio-visual emotion dataset built on five basic emotions using natural responses. We implement three existing multimodal classifiers and our proposed classifier on our dataset using five-fold cross-validation. Finally, we evaluated the ER performance based on the visual dataset size, joint and disjoint training, and the single and multimodal networks. The performance of the proposed classifier gave the highest average F1-score of 0.504 and an accuracy of 54.88% for natural emotion recognition.College of EngineeringDepartment of Computer Science and EngineeringMaster of Science in Computer Engineering (MSCoE
Fraud Risk Implications of Celebrity SPACs
No full textA Master of Science thesis in Finance by Reem Zaabalawi entitled, “Fraud Risk Implications of Celebrity SPACs”, submitted in August 2022. Thesis advisor is Dr. Kimberly Gleason. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Approval Signatures, Completion Certificate, and AUS Archives Consent Form).The 2012 Jumpstart Our Businesses Act (JOBS) was passed arguably to facilitate greater access to capital by startup firms and to lower the costs of being public in an effort to make American listings more competitive with low cost exchanges abroad, such as London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM). However, the JOBS Act established a number of exemptions for a new class of firms called Emerging Growth Act (EGC) companies, which lowered the governance and disclosure requirements. This opportunity for firms to access the public capital markets at low cost spawned a resurgence of vehicles known as Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs), whose only purpose in going public is to raise capital to do an acquisition that yields a formerly private company going public through a Reverse Takeover (RT). As all post-JOBS Act SPACs are incorporated as EGCs, they pose an additional fraud risk to the public, yet very little academic research has addressed this issue. In this thesis, I examine three research questions related specifically to celebrity SPACs. First, using a proprietary, hand collected data set consisting of Celebrity SPACs from 2015 to 2021, I examine the characteristics of post-JOBS Act Celebrity SPACs in terms of their underpricing, post IPO returns, institutional structures, and acquisition patterns. Secondly, I examine the governance characteristics of sample Celebrity SPACs. Third, I link the features of Celebrity SPACs to Fraud Diamond Theory risk factors. I anticipate that my findings will be of interest to regulators, practitioners, the academic literature on alternative investments, and to auditors.School of Business AdministrationDepartment of FinanceMaster of Science in Finance (MSF
A Numerical Investigation of the Buckling of Doubly Clamped Nano-Actuators Governed by an Integro-Differential Equation
No full textIn this article, a fixed point iterative scheme involving Green's function is applied to reach a solution for the buckling of nano-actuators under nonlinear forces. Our solution is convergent. The nano-actuators problem under consideration is governed by a general type equation that contains nonlinear forces and integro-differential terms. The equation, we adopted and which governs the nano-actuators, is a nonlinear integro-differential BVP of fourth order. Our scheme enjoys important features such as high accuracy, robustness, and fast convergence. Numerical tests are performed and compared with other results that exist in the current literature