The influence of diglossia in Arabic on narrative ability: evidence from analysis of the linguistic and narrative structure of discourse among pre-school children

The aim of the present study is to examine the influence of diglossia on linguistic and narrative structures in Arab kindergarten children by testing performance in production and comprehension. The 30 children who participated in our study were asked to retell one narrative text that was read aloud to them in Literary Arabic and another narrative text that was retold to them in Spoken Arabic. Then they were given a comprehension test that included questions pertaining to each of the two stories. In addition, two questionnaires were filled in by their parents, for collecting personal data and evaluating the level of the children’s exposure to Literary Arabic at home. The findings show a significant advantage in the retold spoken text over the retold literary text and in understanding the narrative-discourse. In addition, the findings show that the linguistic gap between Literary and Spoken Arabic seems to impact the level of mastery over linguistic structures in both forms of Arabic. Both of these findings indicate that, despite the fact that the exposure to Literary Arabic at a young age is informal and indirect, pre-school children are able to use linguistic structures from the literary language and to comprehend narrative texts. These results, with a particular emphasis on spoken and literary linguistic knowledge in pre-school children, are discussed herein in light of previous behavioral findings and models of development of narrative abilities in the Arabic language.     

Factors Influencing Schoolchildren's Responses to a Questionnaire in Wildlife Conservation Education

Questionnaires are important tools for assessing attitudes regarding conservation issues. However, they are not easily comparable and their reliability has been insufficiently assessed. We examined factors influencing responses to open- and closed-ended questions about animal conservation to more than 600 schoolchildren (9 years old on average). We analysed the level of understanding, controllable (e.g. sample size) and less controllable factors (e.g. affectivity). Most children responded appropriately to the questions, but subtle changes in the phrasing influenced the answers. Affectivity towards endearing species and spontaneity also influenced the responses whereas small sample sizes (～50 children) provided relatively stable patterns. Overall, we suggest that standardization of questionnaires administered over large spatial and time scales is needed to accurately assess children's attitudes towards conservation issues.     

Relationship between free iron and glycated hemoglobin in uncontrolled type 2 diabetes patients associated with complications

Free iron in serum has been found in several disease conditions including diabetes. In the present work, we studied the relationship between free iron, fasting blood glucose (FBG) and glycated haemoglobin (HbA_1c). Study was carried out on 50 type 2 diabetes cases under poor glycemic control associated with complications, 53 type 2 diabetes cases under good glycemic control and 40 healthy controls. We estimated free iron, both ferrous (Fe⁺²) and ferric (Fe⁺³) form, protein thiols, lipid hydroperoxides, FBG, HbA1c and serum ferritin levels in serum. There was a significant increase in free iron in Fe⁺³ state (p <0.01), HbA_1c (p<0.01), serum ferritin (p<0.01), lipid hydroperoxides (p<0.01) and significant decrease in protein thiols (<0.01) in diabetes cases under poor glycemic control compared to diabetes cases under good glycemic control and healthy controls. Free iron correlated positively with HbA_1c (p<0.01). Poor glycemic control and increase in glycation of haemoglobin is contributing to the increase in free iron pool which is known to increase oxidant generation.     

Writer identification approach based on bag of words with OBI features

Handwriter identification aims to simplify the task of forensic experts by providing them with semi-automated tools in order to enable them to narrow down the search to determine the final identification of an unknown handwritten sample. An identification algorithm aims to produce a list of predicted writers of the unknown handwritten sample ranked in terms of confidence measure metrics for use by the forensic expert will make the final decision.Most existing handwriter identification systems use either statistical or model-based approaches. To further improve the performances this paper proposes to deploy a combination of both approaches using Oriented Basic Image features and the concept of graphemes codebook. To reduce the resulting high dimensionality of the feature vector a Kernel Principal Component Analysis has been used. To gauge the effectiveness of the proposed method a performance analysis, using IAM dataset for English handwriting and ICFHR 2012 dataset for Arabic handwriting, has been carried out. The results obtained achieved an accuracy of 96% thus demonstrating its superiority when compared against similar techniques.     

Factors affecting attitudes and intentions towards knowledge sharing in the Dubai Police Force

This study contributes to the limited research base on knowledge sharing in public sector organisations, specifically police forces, and organisations in the Middle East through a case study investigation into the factors that affect knowledge sharing in the Dubai Police Force. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted with staff in key departments in the Dubai Police Force. Informed by the literature and by interviews conducted in a previous phase, the core of the questionnaire was a bank of Likert-style questions covering the dependent variables intention to knowledge share, and attitude towards knowledge sharing, and the independent variables, trust, organisational structure, leadership, reward, time, and information technology. Data was analysed using structured equation modelling, in order to test the measurement model using confirmatory factor analysis, and to test the structural model. The structural model suggests a strong relationship between attitude to knowledge sharing, and intention to share knowledge. Hypotheses regarding the influence of leadership, trust, organisational structure, time, and information technology on attitude to knowledge sharing were upheld. Rewards did not to influence attitude to knowledge sharing. Recommendations are offered for practice and further research.     

Flatness-based adaptive fuzzy output tracking excitation control for power system generators

In this paper, a novel approach for the design of an indirect adaptive fuzzy output tracking excitation control of power system generators is proposed. The method is developed based on the concept of differentially flat systems through which the nonlinear system can be written in canonical form. The flatness-based adaptive fuzzy control methodology is used to design the excitation control signal of a single machine power system in order to track a reference trajectory for the generator angle. The considered power system can be written in the canonical form and the resulting excitation control signal is shown to be nonlinear. In case of unknown power system parameters due to abnormalities, the nonlinear functions appearing in the control signal are approximated using adaptive fuzzy systems. Simulation results show that the proposed controller can enhance the transient stability of the power system under a three-phase to ground fault occurring near the generator terminals.     

Service learning in higher education: a systematic literature review

Asia Pacific Education Review - In the last few years, adoption of service learning in higher educational institutions has emerged as a modern teaching and learning strategy. This study is aimed to...     

A “research” into international student-related research: (Re)Visualising our stand?

This paper uses Tight (High Educ Res Dev 23(4):395–411, 2004; High Educ Res Dev 31(5):723–740, 2012; High Educ Res Dev 32(1):136–151, 2013)’s journal analysis and review framework to review a sample of 497 journal articles on researches concerning international students over the past 30 years. It was found that a majority of the articles focus on the students’ in-campus, academic and social experience. Even with different conceptualisation of the terms “international student” and “international student mobility”, international students undergo similar challenges throughout their sojourn duration, and much of the responsibilities in managing international students fall on universities and respective faculty members within the institutions. It might seem as if we are going in circles in terms of the issues and concerns in managing international students, but the silver lining out of this observation is the increased ethnical awareness among countries and higher education institutions in hosting and safeguarding the students throughout their international higher education experience, albeit rather slowly. The analysis brings to attention how much have we achieved in internationalisation of higher education in general and international student-related research in particular, and the potential for greater expansion and focus on managing the student population within a comprehensive “life cycle” approach.     

The Effectiveness of the Responsive Teaching Parent-mediated Developmental Intervention Programme in Turkey: A pilot study

The case study was conducted to examine the feasibility of an early intervention curriculum called Responsive Teaching with two five-year-old children from Turkey who had significant developmental delays. This study determined whether Turkish mothers might be successful in learning to become more responsive to their children, and whether this would result in significant improvements in their children’s development. Both dyads received 28 individual parent–child intervention sessions which were conducted over a four-month period of time. Pre-, mid-, and post-assessments indicated improvements in the mothers’ responsiveness to their children and the children’s levels of engagement with their parents. There were also improvements in the children’s language and personal social development. Mothers reported that Responsive Teaching helped them learn to interact more effectively with their children and that this resulted in longer and more enjoyable interactions with them. Results from this investigation are discussed in terms of their implications for providing developmental services to preschool-aged children with disabilities in Turkey.     

Perception of spiritual health: A qualitative content analysis in Iranian older adults

The present study was performed with the aim to explain older people’s perceptions of spiritual health. It was conducted using the conventional content analysis method. Twelve individuals aged 60 years or older with normal cognition participated in the study using purposive sampling. Data were collected by in-depth interviews. Data analysis performed using standard method of thematic analysis.The average age of the study participants was 71.25 ± 9.48. The data analysis resulted in three main categories of spiritual insight, spiritual function, and spiritual affection. The spiritual insight included cognition of God and belief in Him, understanding of the divine religions and belief in them, self-cognition, cognition of the creation, and belief in the hereafter. This category included the two subcategories of spiritual cognition and spiritual belief. Spiritual function represented the interactions that the older people experienced in relations with God, themselves, and others. This category consisted of the subcategories of relationship with God, relationship with others, and self-cultivation. The spiritual affection included loving God and other humans and consisted of the three subcategories of spiritual affections to God, others, and oneself. This study presents in-depth data on the concept of spiritual health from older people’s viewpoints. These findings would help healthcare teams in designing appropriate interventions for older people’s health promotion. Also, by using the results of this research, health researchers design more appropriate tools for measuring spiritual health based on older people’s perception of the concept of spiritual health.