Assessment of the types of public building maintenance contracts in Saudi Arabia

The study revealed that Fixed Price, Cost Plus and Purchased Labour contracts are the top three maintenance contracts adopted whilst Unit Price, Cost Plus A Percentage Fee contracts are alternatives used in the Kingdom. Some other types of maintenance contract were thought to be inappropriate by ministry departments.     

Comparative evaluation of text classification techniques using a large diverse Arabic dataset

A vast amount of valuable human knowledge is recorded in documents. The rapid growth in the number of machine-readable documents for public or private access necessitates the use of automatic text classification. While a lot of effort has been put into Western languages—mostly English—minimal experimentation has been done with Arabic. This paper presents, first, an up-to-date review of the work done in the field of Arabic text classification and, second, a large and diverse dataset that can be used for benchmarking Arabic text classification algorithms. The different techniques derived from the literature review are illustrated by their application to the proposed dataset. The results of various feature selections, weighting methods, and classification algorithms show, on average, the superiority of support vector machine, followed by the decision tree algorithm (C4.5) and Naïve Bayes. The best classification accuracy was 97 % for the Islamic Topics dataset, and the least accurate was 61 % for the Arabic Poems dataset.     

Common Interface Problems among Various Construction Parties

The objectives of this paper are to identify and assess the interface problems among the various construction parties. The methodology used in this research consists of two phases. In the first phase, a literature review and interviews with various construction professionals were conducted in order to identify the interface problems among them. This resulted in the identification of 19 common interface problems, which were classified into four categories: financial problems, inadequate contract and specification, environmental problems, and other common problems. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed that included the identified interface problems obtained from the first phase. This survey was then randomly distributed to selected samples of 102 various construction professions consisting of owners, designers, general contractors, subcontractors, and maintenance contractors from Saudi Arabia to evaluate the severity of the 19 identified interface problems. The relative severity of the categories and their related problems were determined and then ranked according to a severity index. Three categories were found to have a “severe” effect, while the remaining category was rated “moderately severe.” Fourteen of the detailed common problems were evaluated as “severe,” while the remaining five were evaluated as “moderately severe.” Furthermore, this study presents additional common problems obtained from the survey.     

STOPE‐based approach for e‐readiness assessment case studies

The STOPE‐based approach is used here for practical e‐readiness assessment case studies. The approach integrates and evaluates the various e‐readiness assessment issues, over its well‐structured domains: strategy, technology, organization, people, and environment. The case studies considered concern three Saudi organizations: a government organization, a bank, and a private sector company. The results obtained provide e‐readiness indicators that illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of each organization with regard to e‐readiness strategic development issues, information and communication technology (ICT) issues, management and organization issues, people issues, and environment issues within which the organization operates. The work shows how the approach can be practically used, and it also provides practical results that direct the organizations concerned toward enhancing their e‐readiness in response to the current trend of globalizing e‐business. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Unified Decision-Making Technique for Analysing Treatments inPandemicContext

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a global humanitarian disaster that has never been seen before. Medical experts, on the other hand, are undecided on the most valuable treatments of therapy because people ill with this infection exhibit a wide range of illness indications at different phases of infection. Further, this project aims to undertake an experimental investigation to determine which treatments for COVID-19 disease is the most effective and preferable. The research analysis is based on vast data gathered from professionals and research journals, making this study a comprehensive reference. To solve this challenging task, the researchers used the HF AHP-TOPSIS Methodology, which is a well-known and highly effective Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique. The technique assesses the many treatment options identified through various research papers and guidelines proposed by various countries, based on the recommendations of medical practitioners and professionals. The review process begins with a ranking of different treatments based on their effectiveness using the HF-AHP approach and then evaluates the results in five different hospitals chosen by the authors as alternatives. We also perform robustness analysis to validate the conclusions of our analysis. As a result, we obtained highly corroborative results that can be used as a reference. The results suggest that convalescent plasma has the greatest rank and priority in terms of effectiveness and demand, implying that convalescent plasma is the most effective treatment for SARS-CoV-2 in our opinion. Peepli also has the lowest priority in the estimation.     

Integrating Blockchain Technology into Healthcare Through an Intelligent Computing Technique

The blockchain technology plays a significant role in the present era of information technology. In the last few years, this technology has been used effectively in several domains. It has already made significant differences in human life, as well as is intended to have noticeable impact in many other domains in the forthcoming years. The rapid growth in blockchain technology has created numerous new possibilities for use, especially for healthcare applications. The digital healthcare services require highly effective security methodologies that can integrate data security with the available management strategies. To test and understand this goal of security management in Saudi Arabian perspective, the authors performed a numerical analysis and simulation through a multi criteria decision making approach in this study. The authors adopted the fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for evaluating the effectiveness and then applied the fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) technique to simulate the validation of results. For eliciting highly corroborative and conclusive results, the study referred to a real time project of diabetes patients’ management application of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The results discussed in this paper are scientifically proven and validated through various analysis approaches. Hence the present study can be a credible basis for other similar endeavours being undertaken in the domain of blockchain research.     

Constructing Co@TiO2 Nanoarray Heterostructure with Schottky Contact for Selective Electrocatalytic Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia

Electrochemical nitrate (NO₃⁻) reduction reaction (NO₃⁻RR) is a potential sustainable route for large-scale ambient ammonia (NH₃) synthesis and regulating the nitrogen cycle. However, as this reaction involves multi-electron transfer steps, it urgently needs efficient electrocatalysts on promoting NH₃ selectivity. Herein, a rational design of Co nanoparticles anchored on TiO₂ nanobelt array on titanium plate (Co@TiO₂/TP) is presented as a high-efficiency electrocatalyst for NO₃⁻RR. Density theory calculations demonstrate that the constructed Schottky heterostructures coupling metallic Co with semiconductor TiO₂ develop a built-in electric field, which can accelerate the rate determining step and facilitate NO₃⁻ adsorption, ensuring the selective conversion to NH₃. Expectantly, the Co@TiO₂/TP electrocatalyst attains an excellent Faradaic efficiency of 96.7% and a high NH₃ yield of 800.0 µmol h⁻¹ cm⁻² under neutral solution. More importantly, Co@TiO₂/TP heterostructure catalyst also presents a remarkable stability in 50-h electrolysis test.     

Improving the intrinsic electronic conductivity of NiMoO4 anodes by phosphorous doping for high lithium storage

Heteroatom doping is one of the most promising strategies toward regulating intrinsically sluggish electronic conductivity and kinetic reaction of transition me...     

Ambient ammonia production via electrocatalytic nitrite reduction catalyzed by a CoP nanoarray

Industrial-scale ammonia(NH₃)production mainly relies on the energy-intensive and environmentally unfriendly Haber-Bosch process.Such issue can be avoided by electrocatalytic N₂ reduction which however suffers from limited current efficiency and NH3 yield.Herein,we demonstrate ambient NH₃ production via electrochemical nitrite(NO₂^-)reduction catalyzed by a CoP nanoarray on titanium mesh(CoP NA/TM).When tested in 0.1 M PBS(pH=7)containing 500 ppm N0₂^-,such CoP NA/TM is capable of affording a large NH₃ yield of 2,260.7±51.5μg·h^-1·cm^-2 and a high Faradaic efficiency of 90.0±2.3%at-0.2 V vs.a reversible hydrogen electrode.Density functional theory calculations reveal that the potential-determining step for NO₂^-reduction over CoP(112)is*NO2→*NO₂H.     

Factors affecting the relationship between contractors and their sub-contractors in Saudi Arabia

Delay in contract progress payment, lack of construction quality, errors and delay in shop drawings and/or approval of sample materials were ranked highest as interface problems, whilst legal disputes, scheduling conflicts amongst sub-contractors, geological problems and weather conditions were ranked lowest.