• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.212-220
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• 2021

The objectives of this research were to identify the digital competencies required for information science specialists at Saudi universities and to examine whether there existed conspicuous differences in the standpoint of these specialists due to years of work experience with regard to the importance of these competencies. A descriptive analytical method was used to accomplish these objectives while extracting the required digital competency list and ascertaining its importance. The research sample comprised 24 experts in the field of information science from several universities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The participants in the sample were asked to complete a questionnaire prepared to acquire the pertinent data in the period between January 5, 2021 and January 20, 2021. The results reveal that the digital competencies required for information science specialists at Saudi universities encompass general features such as the ability to use computer, Internet, Web2, Web3, and smartphone applications, digital learning resource development, data processing (big data) and its sharing via the Internet, system analysis, dealing with multiple electronic indexing applications and learning management systems and its features, using electronic bibliographic control tools, artificial intelligence tools, cybersecurity system maintenance, ability to comprehend and use different programming languages, simulation, and augmented reality applications, and knowledge and skills for 3D printing. Furthermore, no statistically significant differences were observed between the mean ranks of scores of specialists with less than 10 years of practical experience and those with practical experience of 10 years or more with regard to conferring importance to digital competencies.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.1047-1054
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• 2021

University academicians are playing a significant role in nation building and striving hard to impart quality education to students and also instill moral and ethical values in them. The current study aims to determine the relationship between work-life balance (WLB) and satisfaction among academicians. For the study purpose, 154 academicians from different universities with varied designations were selected randomly from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Pareek et al. (2011) constructed and validated a scale to gather responses from respondents with the aim of understanding WLB in relation to satisfaction. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to interpret the results to make the study more authentic and valuable. The study's findings revealed that (i) all facets of WLB have positive relationships with one another, resulting in workplace satisfaction; (ii) the result also reflects that male faculty members have a lot of pressure and responsibility in the universities than the female faculty members which reflect that male are more prone to dissatisfaction in comparison to the dfemale faculty members (iii) the factor personal needs is having the high degree of correlation followed by the social needs. Results indicate that WLB plays a crucial role to provide satisfaction and surely ignite new information in the contemporary knowledge of work life balance among the Saudi Arabian Universities.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.73-87
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• 2016

Combining power generation and water production by desalination is economically advantageous. Most desalination projects use fossil fuels as an energy source, and thus contribute to increased levels of greenhouse gases. Environmental concerns have spurred researchers to find new sources of energy for desalination plants. The coupling of nuclear power production with desalination is one of the best options to achieve growth with lower environmental impact. In this paper, we will per-form a sensitivity study of coupling nuclear power to various combinations of desalination technology: {1} thermal (MSF [Multi-Stage Flashing], MED [Multi-Effect Distillation], and MED-TVC [Multi-Effect Distillation with Thermal Vapour Compression]); {2} membrane RO [Reverse Osmosis]; and {3} hybrid (MSF-RO [Multi-Stage Flashing & Reverse Osmosis] and MED-RO [Multi-Effect Distillation & Reverse Osmosis]). The Korean designed reactor plant, the APR1400 will be modeled as the energy production facility. The economical evaluation will then be executed using the computer program DEEP (Desalination Economic Evaluation Program) as developed by the IAEA. The program has capabilities to model several types of nuclear and fossil power plants, nuclear and fossil heat sources, and thermal distillation and membrane desalination technologies. The output of DEEP includes levelized water and power costs, breakdowns of cost components, energy consumption, and net saleable power for any selected option. In this study, we will examine the APR1400 coupled with a desalination power plant in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as a prototypical example. The KSA currently has approximately 20% of the installed worldwide capacity for seawater desalination. Utilities such as power and water are constructed and run by the government. Per state practice, economic evaluation for these utilities do not consider or apply interest or carrying cost. Therefore, in this paper the evaluation results will be based on two scenarios. The first one assumes the water utility is under direct government control and in this case the interest and discount rate will be set to zero. The second scenario will assume that the water utility is controlled by a private enterprise and in this case we will consider different values of interest and discount rates (4%, 8%, & 12%).

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.221-227
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• 2014

Background: Aberrant phenotypes in acute leukemia have variable frequency and their prognostic and predictive relevance is controversial, despite several reports of clinical significance. Aims: To determine the prevalence of aberrant antigen expression in acute leukemia, assess clinical relevance and demonstrate immunophenotype-karyotype correlations. Materials and Methods: A total of 73 (40 AML and 33 ALL) newly diagnosed acute leukemia cases presenting to KAMC, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, were included. Diagnosis was based on WHO criteria and FAB classification. Immunophenotyping by flow cytometry, conventional karyotyping and fluorescence in situ hybridization for gene rearrangements were performed. Results: Aberrant antigens were detected in 27/40 (67.5%) of AML and in 14/33 (42.4%) in ALL cases. There were statistically significant higher TLC in Ly+ AML than in Ly-AML (p=0.05) and significant higher blast count in ALL with aberrant antigens at presentation and day 14 (p=0.005, 0.046). There was no significant relation to clinical response, relapse free survival (RFS) or overall survival (p>0.05), but AML cases expressing ${\geq}2$ Ly antigens showed a lower median RFS than those expressing a single Ly antigen. In AML, CD 56 was expressed in 11/40. CD7 was expressed in 7/40, having a significant relation with an unfavorable cytogenetic pattern (p=0.046). CD4 was expressed in 5/40. CD19 was detected in 4/40 AML associated with M2 and t (8; 21). In ALL cases, CD33 was expressed in 7/33 and CD13 in 5/33. Regarding T Ag in B-ALL CD2 was expressed in 2 cases and CD56 in 3 cases. Conclusions: Aberrant antigen expression may be associated with adverse clinical data at presentation. AML cases expressing ${\geq}2$ Ly antigens may have shorter median RFS. No specific cytogenetic pattern is associated with aberrant antigen expression but individual antigens may be related to particular cytogenetic patterns. Immunophenotype-karyotype correlations need larger studies for confirmation.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.3313-3332
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• 2022

This study is an investigation into the factors affecting patient dissatisfaction among Saudi hospitals. The selected factors considered for analysis are security of information sharing, operational practices, disruptive technologies, and the ease of use of EHR patient information management systems. From the literature review section, it was clear that hardly any other studies have embraced these concepts in one as was intended by this study. The theories that the study heavily draws from are the service dominant logic and the feature integration theory. The study surveyed 350 respondents from three large major hospitals in three different metropolitan cities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This sample came from members of the three hospitals that were willing to participate in the study. The number 350 represents those that successfully completed the online questionnaire or the limited physical questionnaires in time. The study employed the structural equation modelling technique to analyze the associations. Findings suggested that security of information sharing had a significant direct effect on patient satisfaction. Operational practice positively mediated the effect of security of information sharing on patient dissatisfaction. However, ease of use failed to significant impact this association. The study concluded that to improve patient satisfaction, Saudi hospitals must work on their systems to reinforce them against the active threats on the privacy of patients' data by leveraging disruptive technology. They should also improve their operational practices by embracing quality management techniques relevant to the healthcare sector.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.327-338
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• 2016

This technical paper presents a detailed review of the stack effect phenomenon and of the associated implications pertaining to the design and construction of high-rise buildings in regions of extreme climatic conditions. The present review is focused on both the classical 'chimney' effect as well as on the reverse stack effect, which are respectively related to cold and hot climates. For the purposed of the work here presented, the ASHRAE (2013) design conditions of Astana (Kazakhstan) and Riyadh (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) were selected. A 230 m tall residential building of rectangular floor plan was numerically modelled in the context of the climatic conditions of the two abovementioned cities and a number of sensitivity analyses were performed, covering parametric changes of: temperature, façade air tightness, site wind speeds and wind directions.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.2904-2926
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• 2022

Currently, diabetes is the most common chronic disease in the world, affecting 23.7% of the population in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Diabetes may be the cause of lower-limb amputations, kidney failure and blindness among adults. Therefore, diagnosing the disease in its early stages is essential in order to save human lives. With the revolution in technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) could play a central role in the early prediction of diabetes by employing Machine Learning (ML) technology. In this paper, we developed a diagnosis system using machine learning models for the detection of type 2 diabetes among adults, through the adoption of two different diabetes datasets: one for training and the other for the testing, to analyze and enhance the prediction accuracy. This work offers an enhanced classification accuracy as a result of employing several pre-processing methods before applying the ML models. According to the obtained results, the implemented Random Forest (RF) classifier offers the best classification accuracy with a classification score of 98.95%.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.25-32
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• 2023

Decision-making refers to identifying the best alternative among a set of alternatives. When a set of criteria are involved, the decision-making is called multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). In some cases, the involved criteria may be prioritized by the human decision-maker, which determines the importance degree for each criterion; hence, the decision-making becomes prioritized multi-criteria decision-making. The essence of prioritized MCDM is raking the different alternatives concerning the criteria and selecting best one(s) from the ranked list. This paper introduces a generic multi-level algorithm for ranking multiple alternatives in prioritized MCDM problems. The proposed algorithm is implemented by a decision support system for selecting the most critical short-road requests presented to the transportation ministry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The ranking results show that the proposed ranking algorithm achieves a good balance between the importance degrees determined by the human decision maker and the score value of the alternatives concerning the different criteria.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.159-168
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• 2022

No one denies the importance of online courses, which provide a very important alternative, especially for students who have jobs that prevent them from attending face-to-face in traditional classes; Engagement is one of the most important fundamental variables that indicate the course's success in achieving its objectives. Therefore, the current study aims to build a model using machine learning to predict student engagement in online courses. An online questionnaire was prepared and applied to the students of Jouf University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and data was obtained from the input variables in the questionnaire, which are: specialization, gender, academic year, skills, emotional aspects, participation, performance, and engagement in the online course as a dependent variable. Multiple regression was used to analyze the data using SPSS. Kegel was used to build the model as a machine learning technique. The results indicated that there is a positive correlation between the four variables (skills, emotional aspects, participation, and performance) and engagement in online courses. The model accuracy was very high 99.99%, This shows the model's ability to predict engagement in the light of the input variables.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.497-503
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• 2020

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the shallower depth of the earth's crust is composed of loose dune or beach sand with soluble salts. The expansive behavior of salt bearing soil, fluctuation of ground water table and extreme environmental conditions offer a variety of geotechnical problems affecting safety and serviceability of the infrastructure built on it. Despite spending money, time and other resources on repair and rehabilitation, no significant attention is paid to explore the root causes of excessive differential settlement and cracking to these facilities. The scientific solution required to ensure safety and serviceability of the constructed infrastructure is to improve the strength and durability properties of the supporting ground. In this study, shredded plastic is employed as a low cost and locally available additive to improve strength characteristics of the desert sand. The study shows a remarkable increase in the shear strength and normal settlement of the soil. A seven (07) degree increase in angle of internal friction is achieved by adding 0.4 percent of the shredded plastic additive. The effect of different proportions and sizes of the plastic strips is also investigated to obtain optimum values. Such a long-lived solution will seek to reduce maintenance and repair costs of the infrastructure facilities laid on problematic soil along with reduction of environmental pollutants.