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Economic feasibility of a biogas system in a small Palestinian poultry farm
No full textRecent Advances in Environmental Science from the Euro-Mediterranean and Surrounding RegionsThis study aims to assess the economic feasibility of the biogas system in a small Palestinian poultry farm under realistic conditions by analyzing actual data which based on the primary data of the system. The results show great potential for making profit on the capital investment. The NPV, BCR, IRR, and PBP are 4,088$, 2.53, 31.1 %, and 3 years respectively. The most profitable levels were determined through cost- benefit and break-even analysis. The results of the study could be used to analyze or further develop feasibility studies of biogas systems at other farms in Palestine and neighboring countries that share similar climatic characteristics and economic factors.This research study was funded by Birzeit Universit
Dynamics of a higher order rational difference equation ....
No full textThe main goal of this paper is to investigate the periodic character, invariant intervals, oscillation
and global stability and other new results of all positive solutions of the equation
xn+1 =
α + βxn
A + Bxn + Cxn−k
, n = 0, 1, 2, . . . ,
where the parameters α, β, A, B and C are positive, and the initial conditions x−k, x−k+1, . . . , x−1, x0
are positive real numbers and k ∈ {1, 2, 3, . . .}. We give a detailed description of the semi-cycles of
solutions and determine conditions under which the equilibrium points are globally asymptotically
stable. In particular, our paper is a generalization of the rational difference equation that was
investigated by Kulenovic et al. [The Dynamics of xn+1 =
α+βxn
A+Bxn+Cxn−1
, Facts and Conjectures,
Comput. Math. Appl. 45 (2003) 1087–1099]
الانفتاح الدلالي في مفهوم الصفة عند الأصوليين: دراسة بلاغية تحليلية
No full textهذه دراسة لغویة زاوجت فیها بین علمي: العربیة وأصول الفقه، وقد بنیتها على مقدمة وسمتها: بالمهاد والتأسیس،
ومن ثم، فبعد المقدمة، شرحت في َتسعة مطالب، ومجموعة من المسائل شرحت في التمهيد مكونات العنوان لجمعه بین مصطلحات شرعیة وأخرى لغویة، فمبنى الدراسة و عصبها الصفة القائم على إثبات نقیض حكم المنطوق للمسكوت، وقد درست في ظلاله صورا من المشتقات، والتعریف والتنكیر، والظرف، والاستثناء والحصر، والشرط، والعلة والحال واللقب محللا ومعلقا، ومن بعد سجلت اهم النتائج التي توصلت اليه
Radon in harvested rainwater at the household level, Palestine
No full textThe main objective of this study was to assess Radon concentration in the harvested rainwater (HRW) at the household level in Yatta area, Palestine. HRW is mainly used for drinking as it is the major source of water for domestic uses due to water scarcity. Ninety HRW samples from the household cisterns were
collected from six localities (a town and five villages) and Radon concentrations were measured. The
samples were randomly collected from different households to represent the Yatta area. Fifteen samples
were collected from each locality at the same day. RAD7 device was used for analysis and each sample
was measured in duplicate. Radon concentrations ranged from 0.037 to 0.26 Bq/L with a
mean ± standard deviation of 0.14 ± 0.06 Bq/L. The estimated annual effective radiation doses for babies, children and adults were all far below the maximum limit of 5 mSvy 1 set by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measuremen
Factors affecting the sustainability of solid waste management system - the case of Palestine
No full textUnderstanding the predictors of sustainability in solid waste management (SWM) systems can significantly contribute to eliminate many waste management problems. In this paper, the sustainability elements of SWM systems of interest are (1) attitudes toward separation at the source, (2) behaviour regarding reuse and/or recycling and (3) willingness to pay for an improved service of SWM. The predictors affecting these three elements were studied in two Palestinian cities: Ramallah
and Jericho. The data were collected via structured questionnaires and direct interviews with the respondents, and the analysis utilized a logistic regression model. The results showed that the place of residence and dwelling premises are the significant factors influencing attitudes toward separation at the source; the place of residence and age are the significant factors explaining behaviour regarding
reuse and/or recycling; while the dwelling premises, gender, level of education and being received education on waste management are the significant factors affecting willingness to pay for an improved service of SW
The influence of industrial sector on economic growth in Palestine : a Kaldorian approach
No full textThe paper aims to test the Kaldor’s laws in Palestine, by explaining and analyzing the Kaldor’s first law and second law. This approach is considered one of the endogenous growth theories for making policies that will stimulate openness, competition, and efficiency. The laws formulated in terms of Co-integration and Granger causality analysis in order to examine the relation among growth in industrial output and growth in GDP in the long and short- run.
The study examines the contribution of industrial sector to the growth of Palestinian economy by via quarterly time series data from 2000 to 2015, and formulates the laws in term of co- integration and Granger causality between industrial output and GDP ( the first law) and manufacturing output and labor productivity (Verdoons law/ second law) . Secondary data is obtained from Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Due to the recent establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), data was limited for short period from 2000 to 2015. The study is based on both the descriptive analysis to describe the variables of the study, and statistical analysis to study the long run and short run relationship between the growth in the industrial sector and GDP and also to examine the relation among the industrial growth and the growth of productivity in industrial sector.
Three models are used in this study based on first and second Kaldor’s growth laws. The first, real gross domestic product forms the dependent variable while industrial output is the independent variable. In the second, labor productivity in industrial sector forms the dependent variable while growth of industrial production is the independent variable. In the third, growth in the number of employees in manufacturing sector forms the dependent variable while growth in manufacturing output is the independent variable.
(ADF), Augmented Dickey Fuller Unit Root Test, show that the data is stationary at first difference, as most of the financial and economic variables are characterized by instability (non-stationary) over time. Then, the co-integration analysis using Johansen co-integration test, to examine the presence of steady linear relation among non -stationary variables in the long run. this test indicates that industrial sector has significant and positive linear long run relationship with economic growth. Then vector auto-regression, the Granger Causality Test also used to capture causality among the variables in order to scrutinize the direction of the causal relation among the industrial output and growth of the economy in the short run. Finally, (VECM) the vector error correction model also used to scrutinize the long and short run equilibrium relationships among the variables.
The results of the data analysis through using various analytical models indicated an insignificant impact of growth in industrial sector on growth in real GDP in long run in Palestine, and there are no long run relation among the industrial output growth and the increase of labor productivity in manufacturing, and there are no long run relation among growth in industrial output and the growth of number of manufacturing employees. On the other side this empirical study also found the unidirectional Granger causality from growth in GDP to the growth in manufacturing sector , as GDP growth stimulates the development of the industrial sector in Palestine in the short run, despite this results opposed what Kaldor’s proposed that the direction of causality should be from manufacturing sector to economic GDP growth, but the growth in GDP in Palestine in essential for the sake of development the industrial sector in short run. This empirical study also found short run unidirectional Granger causality from growth in manufacturing sector to growth in the number of employees in manufacturing, and also found that growth in manufacturing and growth of productivity do not cause each other in short run.
But there is a short run causal relationship, run in one direction from real gross domestic product to the industrial sector, which indicates that growth in real GDP causing the development of industrial sector over the short term. While it was not there a long-run causal relationship from GDP growth to the growth in the manufacturing output, this may explain that the level of economic growth in Palestine is not enough to stimulate high growth rates in the Industrial sector in the long run. This study gives the guideline to the policy makers. In order to achieve high growth rate
Clustering Arabic tweets for sentiment analysis
No full textThe focus of this study is to evaluate the impact of
linguistic preprocessing and similarity functions for
clustering Arabic Twitter tweets. The experiments apply
an optimized version of the standard K-Means algorithm
to assign tweets into positive and negative categories. The
results show that root-based stemming has a significant
advantage over light stemming in all settings. The
Averaged Kullback-Leibler Divergence similarity function
clearly outperforms the Cosine, Pearson Correlation,
Jaccard Coefficient and Euclidean functions. The
combination of the Averaged Kullback-Leibler
Divergence and root-based stemming achieved the highest
purity of 0.764 while the second-best purity was 0.719.
These results are of importance as it is contrary to normalsized
documents where, in many information retrieval
applications, light stemming performs better than rootbased
stemming and the Cosine function is commonly
use
أثر استخدام إستراتيجيات التعليم التبادلي على تحصيل الطلبة في فهم المقروء و استخدام الإستراتيجيات و على إتجاهاتهم نحوها
No full textPrediction of asphaltic overlay thickness for rehabilitating flexible pavement using Empirical-Markovian approach
No full textThis paper presents a simplified Empirical-Markovian approach for estimating the asphaltic overlay thickness used in rehabilitating flexible pavement at the project level. The main element of the proposed Empirical-Markovian approach is the prediction of the future pavement conditions which are estimated using the heterogeneous discrete-time Markov model. The required heterogeneous transition probabilities are predicted for an original pavement structure by mainly relying on the first-year transition probabilities. The empirical overlay design model is developed assuming both original and overlaid pavements will exhibit similar performance trends over time as represented by the corresponding performances curves. This has been accomplished by requiring the deterioration transition probabilities associated with both pavements to be equal in values. The overlay model developed is mainly a function of the annual traffic growth rate, rehabilitation scheduling time, initial structural capacity associated with original pavement, and two calibration constants. The two calibration constants are the same ones obtained from the development of the empirical model used to estimate the heterogeneous transition probabilities associated with original pavement. A sample problem is presented to illustrate the use of the proposed overlay design model. The sample overlay design thicknesses predicted for variable rehabilitation scheduling time appear to be reasonable and consistent with the general practice
