23 research outputs found
Women’s experiences of sexual harassment in hospitals in Riyadh: an exploratory study
No full textThis study, the first of its kind, explores women’s experiences of sexual harassment in hospitals in Saudi Arabia. Mixed methods were employed: a questionnaire distributed in three public hospitals and completed by 262 women, and semi-structured interviews with 25 women. The study found that that incidents of sexual harassment in Saudi Arabian hospitals are strikingly common, although there are ambiguities around the definition of this term. Sexual harassment was disproportionately experienced by women working at the administration level, as their occupations required frequent interactions with men. Other important factors were age, education level, marital status, job grade, the gender of supervisors and patients, and gender ratios and hierarchies in the workplace, as well as times of working. Sexual harassment in all its forms had a devastating impact on women’s quality of life in both personal and professional terms, and contributed to widening the gap between men and women in the Saudi community. The interview data gave an insight into the cultural and institutional factors shaping sexual harassment and responses to it. These include the gender-segregated and male dominated nature of Saudi society and a culture of honour and shame which produces prevalent victim-blaming. Also significant were a lack of institutional policies which meant that the size and community of the hospital became extremely relevant as a preventative factor: in smaller hospitals sexual harassment was more difficult to conceal, whereas in larger institutions men were harassing with impunity. The findings of this study suggest there is a need for more research into this phenomenon and an attempt to develop better institutional policies and procedures
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Women’s experiences of sexual harassment in hospitals in Riyadh: an exploratory study
No full textThis study, the first of its kind, explores women’s experiences of sexual harassment in hospitals in Saudi Arabia. Mixed methods were employed: a questionnaire distributed in three public hospitals and completed by 262 women, and semi-structured interviews with 25 women. The study found that that incidents of sexual harassment in Saudi Arabian hospitals are strikingly common, although there are ambiguities around the definition of this term. Sexual harassment was disproportionately experienced by women working at the administration level, as their occupations required frequent interactions with men. Other important factors were age, education level, marital status, job grade, the gender of supervisors and patients, and gender ratios and hierarchies in the workplace, as well as times of working. Sexual harassment in all its forms had a devastating impact on women’s quality of life in both personal and professional terms, and contributed to widening the gap between men and women in the Saudi community. The interview data gave an insight into the cultural and institutional factors shaping sexual harassment and responses to it. These include the gender-segregated and male dominated nature of Saudi society and a culture of honour and shame which produces prevalent victim-blaming. Also significant were a lack of institutional policies which meant that the size and community of the hospital became extremely relevant as a preventative factor: in smaller hospitals sexual harassment was more difficult to conceal, whereas in larger institutions men were harassing with impunity. The findings of this study suggest there is a need for more research into this phenomenon and an attempt to develop better institutional policies and procedures
F.Al-Rashed Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta (PPARδ): a key modulator in the pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus and mycobacterium tuberculosis co-morbidity
No full textOriginal WB immunoblots imagesTHIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV
THE PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION OF EMPHASIS IN QASSIMI ARABIC
No full textThis work is embargoed by the author and will not be publicly available until December 2025.This dissertation explores emphasis effects (EE) in Qassimi Arabic (QA), examining whether EE functions as a phonetic or phonological process. EE is a well-documented phenomenon in Arabic linguistics, involving the influence of emphatic consonants on neighboring segments (Ghazali, 1977; Card, 1983; Davis, 1995; among others). The study also investigates emphasis perception in QA, specifically whether EE cues assist native QA listeners in identifying preceding or following consonants as emphatic or plain.As prior research exploring EE in various Arabic varieties has revealed variation among them, and limited research exists on emphasis perception by native Arabic listeners, this dissertation addresses these gaps by examining EE production and emphasis perception in the understudied variety of QA. In the production experiment, dynamic aspects of leftward and rightward EE on QA vowels were examined by analyzing second formants (F2) at 11 temporal points. Results indicate that leftward EE had a categorical effect on non-high vowels [a] and [aː], as well as the high front vowel [i], impacting them throughout their duration, providing evidence for it being a phonological process in QA. In contrast, rightward EE primarily affected the vowel onset, suggesting it as a gradual phonetic process rather than a categorical phonological one. In the perception experiments, the perceptual correlates of emphasis in QA were investigated using the gating paradigm (Grosjean, 1980). Native QA listeners accurately identified the following consonant using leftward EE cues, even within the shortest gate containing one-third of the vowel, indicating proficiency in using leftward EE cues throughout the vowel. However, for rightward EE cues, accuracy in identifying the preceding consonant as emphatic or plain improved significantly only when the entire vowel duration was audible. These findings align with the production experiment, confirming leftward EE as a phonological process and rightward EE as a phonetic process. The dissertation’s results have implications for understanding EE and emphasis perception in QA, emphasizing the importance of considering both phonological and phonetic processes when investigating EE and highlighting the significance of coarticulatory information in rightward emphasis perception. This nuanced understanding advances research into emphasis across Arabic varieties and Semitic languages.2025-12-1
Extending a Reactive Expression Language with Data Update Actions for End-User Application Authoring
No full textMavo is a small extension to the HTML language that empowers non-programmers to create simple web applications. Authors can mark up any normal HTML document with attributes that specify data elements that Mavo makes editable and persists. But while applications authored with Mavo allow users to edit individual data items, they do not offer any programmatic data actions that can act in customizable ways on large collections of data simultaneously or that modify data according to a computation. We explore an extension to the Mavo language that enables non-programmers to author these richer data update actions. We show that it lets authors create a more powerful set of applications than they could previously, while adding little additional complexity to the authoring process. Through user evaluations, we assess how closely our data update syntax matches how novice authors would instinctively express such actions, and how well they are able to use the syntax we provided
ScrAPIr: Making Web Data APIs Accessible to End Users
No full textUsers have long struggled to extract and repurpose data from websites by laboriously copying or scraping content from web pages. An alternative is to write scripts that pull data through APIs. This provides a cleaner way to access data than scraping; however, APIs are effortful for programmers and nigh-impossible for non-programmers to use. In this work, we empower users to access APIs without programming. We evolve a schema for declaratively specifying how to interact with a data API. We then develop ScrAPIr: a standard query GUI that enables users to fetch data through any API for which a specification exists, and a second GUI that lets users author and share the specification for a given API. From a lab evaluation, we find that even non-programmers can access APIs using ScrAPIr, while programmers can access APIs 3.8 times faster on average using ScrAPIr than using programming
Argument Structure in Arabic: Lexicon or Syntax?
No full textabstract: A question that has driven much of the current research in formal syntax is whether it is the lexicon or the syntax that determines the argument structure of a verb. This dissertation attempts to answer this question with a focus on Arabic, a language that has received little attention in the literature of argument structure. In this dissertation, argument structure realization is examined in relation to three different components, namely the root, the CV-skeleton and the structure around the verb. I argue that argument structure is not determined on a root level in Arabic. I also show that only few CV-skeletons (verb patterns) are associated with certain argument structures. Instead, the burden of determining argument structure lies on elements around the structure of VP. The determinants of inner aspect in Arabic and the relation between eventuality types and argument structure are also examined. A cartographic model is provided to show how elements around the VP play a role in determining the inner aspect. This model also represents a relationship between argument structure and eventuality types. The question of what determines argument structure is further addressed through the investigation of the causative/inchoative alternation in Arabic in light of recent semantic and syntactic accounts. I argue that most Arabic verbs that undergo the alternation are non-agentive change-of-state verbs. Although certain lexical characteristics may account for which verbs alternate and which do not, exceptions within a language and/or across languages do exist. I point to a range of phenomena that can be only explained from syntactic points of view.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. English 201
Synthesis of carbon microspheres via hydrothermal carbonization of Sabal palms (<em>Sabal palmetto</em>) biomass for adsorption of methylene blue
No full text\ua9 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. In this paper, we report new findings on the synthesis of carbon microspheres from a biomass precursor (Sabal palmetto) using one-step hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process. The carbonization process involved predominantly dehydration process with partial occurrence of decarboxylation. The microspheres were analyzed using elemental analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The produced microspheres were applied as adsorbents for sorption of an industrial dye (methylene blue) in which the data showed good fitting to the Langmuir model. The sub-micron-sized microspheres exhibited interesting textural characteristics—relatively low surface areas and porosities with presence of oxgenated functional groups (total = 0.4 to 0.5 mmol/g) on the surface. The work presented in this contribution involves themes on sustainable usage of resources (i.e., biomass), production of useful industrial microparticles, and direct application in wastewater purification
