244 research outputs found
Corporate governance and diversification issues in listed Gulf commercial banks - by Danielle Robert Asaad
No full textProject (M.B.A.)--American University of Beirut, Suliman S. Olayan School of Business, 2006.Bibliography: leaves 31-33.This paper examines the corporate governance characteristics and diversification strategies of 41 listed commercial banks within the Gulf Cooperative Council (G CC). Corporate governance characteristics include the effect of combined expert ise from an i
Retraction notice to “Rechargeable Batteries for Energy Storage: A review” [e-Prime - Advances in Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Energy 8 (2024) 100510]
No full textThis article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal).Suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper were discovered.The paper was originally submitted by Ehsan Kianfar as single author. Co-authors Chou-Yi Hsu, Yathrib Ajaj, Ghadir Kamil Ghadir, Hayder Musaad Al-Tmimi, Zaid Khalid Alani, Ausama A. Almulla, Mustafa Asaad Hussein, Ahmed Read Al-Tameemi, Zaid H. Mahmoud, Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa, Farshid Kianfar, and Sajjad Habibzadehwere were added to the revised paper without explanation and without exceptional approval by the journal editor, which is a violation of the journal's policies. The publisher reached out to the authors for an explanation, but they failed to provide a satisfactory explanation to these changes.The Editor has determined that the authorship and the findings of the article cannot be relied upon and has decided to retract the article
Mourid Barghouti’s <i>I Saw Ramallah</i>: The Impossible Return of the Displaced Autobiographer
No full textThis article examines and problematizes the idea of return in the autobiography of Mourid Barghouti’s Ra’aytu Ram Allah (I Saw Ramallah). After thirty years of living in Egypt and Budapest, Barghouti returned to his hometown Ramallah in 1996 for a short visit that composes the core of his text. I investigate how Barghouti’s text unveils the Palestinian exile as a permanent state, but also as a challenged, resisted, or accepted the process of shifting people and places over time. By re-examining this autobiography within the frame of reading it as a displaced text, (or “displaced autobiography„) I show how I Saw Ramallah seeks to move beyond the state of exile and expose its aftermath, especially when the displaced person is back in his or her homeland. I also explore how the author’s return to his original place invokes the memory of a remote past, inviting a buried or forgotten selfhood. I argue that by recalling this past, which occurred before displacement, a displaced autobiographer like Barghouti attempts to “fix„ Palestine as a land for the people who have memories and history in it
Speaking for Voiceless Women: A Comparative Study of Nizar Qabbani’s and Zhai Yongming’s Poetry
No full textThesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, 2022This dissertation is an investigation of three primary issues in the writing of the Syrian male poet Nizar Qabbani and the Chinese female poet Zhai Yongming: the relationship between the author and reader, the combination of life writing with poetry, and the articulation of a feminine voice from a marginalized space. While I rely on some of their prose works to better understand their views of gender and poetry, my primary focus for comparison are the two poetry collections: Qabbani’s The Journal of an Indifferent Woman (1968) and Zhai’s Jing’an Village (1985). During his diplomatic stay in Beijing, Qabbani wrote The Journal in the form of a diary depicting the voice of a frustrated, rebelling Arab woman condemning the suppression of women’s rights in the Arab tradition. On the other hand, Zhai’s Jing’an Village contains twelve poems named after the twelve lunar year months and is the epitome of her two-year life as a rusticated youth. Thematically, The Journal and Jing’an embody the authors’ misplaced personal experiences as an outsider in a foreign country or a strange village. In form, these two collections are both poems disguised in the format of life writing. This innovative form combines two less studied genres, i.e., poetic diary and verse biography. With an interdisciplinary and cross-genre methodology, I use Arabic, Chinese, and Western literary theories, such as psychoanalytic criticism and Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic judgment, to demonstrate the transportability of the feminine voice in the text. My purpose is to use Qabbani’s and Zhai’s poems, as well as related theories, to testify that a feminine text is not necessarily written by a female author. The scarce differences in the texts due to the gender differences between Qabbani and Zhai are overcome by their same ambition to produce a feminine text that best illustrates women’s sufferings in a patriarchal society
Assessment of the Variations of Local Parameters of Wetspass Model: Case Study Nile Delta Aquifer
No full textAbstractAssessment the variation of WetSpass model parameters in the Nile Delta aquifer, Egypt is very significance before applying it to estimate the variations of groundwater recharge from rainfall. The input WetSpass model parameters are investigated based on the soil type, crop classification, and the previous studies. The input model paramters are crop height (hc), root depth (rd), Interception percentage (I), leaf area index (LAI), bulk resistance (rs), roughness length (z) and zero plane displacement (d). The investigation results of this paper indicate that the local model parameters have a great variation. The WetSpass model was calibrated for crop height hc in a range between 0.4 m to 1.0m. The RMSE between the simulated WetSpass value and the calculated one increased with the increase of hc. The minimum RMSE equals 8.13mm/winter season at hc equals 0.4m. An extensive sensitivity analysis is required for all WetSpass parameters for the accurate determination of the model parameters
Evaluating the Role of Requirements Engineering Practices in the Sustainability of Electronic Government Solutions
No full textThe efficacy of electronic government (E-Government) initiatives relies significantly on requirements engineering (RE). Every government wants sustainable solutions in the implementation of E-Government projects. The current research has adopted a mix of research methods. After conducting a comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR), the author conducted a case study to evaluate the proposed model. This research conducts an SLR of the contemporary literature on the success and failure factors of E-Government projects. Additionally, there is an association between the failure factors and the utilization of RE practices. A comprehensive search of electronic databases yielded a total of 71 pertinent articles. After meticulous screening and quality assessment, the data were extracted for analysis. A total of 62 papers were eventually selected. The SLR addressed the distinct hurdles encountered by government bodies. The findings indicated a positive relationship between the utilization of RE practices and the attainment of project success. Various aspects, such as project management practices, stakeholder engagement, and effective communication, were identified as factors that can reduce failures in E-Government projects. The deficiencies observed in E-Government initiatives were linked to inadequacies in implementing RE practices. The other issues identified were insufficient requirement elicitation, limited stakeholder involvement, and inadequate validation and verification of requirements. This study also presented a conceptual framework illustrating the difficulties in E-Government and the practices of RE. Statistical data analysis techniques were employed to examine this conceptual framework. This study suggests that managers examine and evaluate their E-Government project failure reasons and factors on a periodic basis to sustain and continuously enhance E-Government project success
Symmetrical Designs of High Selectivity Metamaterialized LPFs
No full textAbstractThis paper introduces several miniaturized symmetrical designs of high selectivity metamaterialized low-pass filters (LPFs) based on a stepped-impedance (SI) 3rd order Type-I Chebyshev LPF prototype. The pass-band interval of the prototype design manifests a nearly constant group delay (GD) ranging between 0.4–0.45ns with lower level of ripples. It further exhibits voltage standing wave ratios (VSWRs) starting at value 1 and keeping on a reasonable level of impedance matching. To ensure for considerable metamaterialized LPFs designs, the methodology behind this work has resorted to exploit: split ring resonators (SRRs), complementary split ring resonators (CSRRs), besides open stubs (OSs). Qualities such as sharp cutoff, high selectivity, substantial size reduction, and low insertion loss, have all been achieved. The designs were applied on the Roger substrate material (RO3210) with dielectric constant of 10.2, substrate thickness of 1.27mm, thickness of microstrip conductor of 0.035mm, then simulated using the package Ansoft High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS). The applications field of these filters involves most microwave (MW) communication systems in diverse civil and military horizons
Food sources of sodium, saturated fat and added sugar in the Physical Activity and Nutrition for Diabetes in Alberta (PANDA) Trial
No full textDiabetic patients may find it difficult to achieve recommended nutrient intakes embedded within dietary guidelines. The objective of this analysis was to document total sodium, saturated fat and added sugar intake as well as the main food sources of these nutrients in Canadian adults with type 2 diabetes before and after an intervention focused on healthy eating. Participants were enrolled in a single-arm dietary intervention trial designed to improve glycemic control and adherence to dietary recommendations. A 4-week menu plan and recipes was provided for participants along with a 6-week educational curriculum. Three repeated 24-hour dietary recalls were collected at baseline and 3 months. Food sources of sodium, saturated fat and added sugar were a secondary outcome derived from the dietary recalls. After 3 months, there was a reduction (pThe accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author
Phonological Development and Phonological Processes in the Speech of an English-Arabic Bilin-gual Child
No full textThis research traces the phonological development and the phonological processes in the speech of a bilingual child acquiring Jordanian Arabic and English. This trace is carried out through a thorough description of the phonological development of segments in Jordanian Arabic and English. It is also carried out through discussing the phonological processes resorted to by the child in order to simplify the production of segments in both languages. This study is the first of its kind to compare and contrast phonological processes in the speech of a bilingual child whose two first languages descend from two different linguistic families. The study also scrutinizes evidence of any influence of one language over the other. Evidence for either the Separate Development Hypothesis or the Fusion Hypothesis is also investigated. The data used in this paper are collected by the author from her own child acquiring Arabic and English simultaneously between the ages of 7 and 20 months. The child’s sound segment development showed consistency with universal trends. Phonological processes such as regressive and progressive assimilation, substitution and metathesis were found in the child’s production of English and Arabic sounds. The study provides limited evidence for the occurrence of interlanguage interference. On the other hand, the study provides strong supportive evidence for the Separate Development Hypothesis
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