Challenges facing students in writing theses at the Jordanian universities

The study examined the challenges facing students in the process of writing theses and identify differences in these challenges in light of gender, qualifications, mental status, career status, type of university. A survey descriptive design was employed as a questionnaire was a administrated to a random sample consisting of (438) master degree students. To achieve the study objectives, a questionnaire was used. The study showed that the level of challenges students face when writing thesis was moderate, and statistically significant differences in the level of challenges students face when writing thesis in light of gender, in favor of females; specialization, in favor of science; marital status, in favor of married; career status; in favor of employed, while there were no statistically significant differences in light of type of university. The main conclusions of the study is that material challenges were the most prevalent in the Jordanian universities. In light of the results, some recommendations were suggested Keywords: Challenges, Writing Thesis, Jordanian Universities, University Students, Jordan.

Public Transport in Rural Roads: Measures to Increase Its Modal Share in Iran

The supply and demand management of rural public transport has gained an important place in Iran, given its decreasing trend over the last decade. Accordingly, an effective approach is to analyze stakeholders’ opinions in this field to identify the effective local solutions for increasing the share of this transport method. The used methodology was to design a mixed questionnaire, a part of which included fuzzy pairwise comparison, while, in its first layer, the variables were classified using rotary analysis. In the other two sections of the questionnaire, the respondents were asked to express their opinions regarding the questions in the form of qualitative and words cloud. According to the inquiries made from the users in 20 selected terminals of Iran providing services to more than 85% of rural passengers, the indicators were weighted and divided into two groups based on the rotary analysis. The weighted results obtained from the users’ opinions revealed that the safety, dynamics of incentive policies, and traffic system performance in the rural transport had the highest effects on the micro- and macro-level indicators. In the second section, based on the qualitative questions, a multivariate linear estimation model of the number of rural passengers was constructed. Moreover, in the third section, the users’ suggested keywords focused on policy-making, travel time optimization, quality of services, and safety. Both the second and third sections had an acceptable agreement with the pairwise comparisons. Given the vast area of Iran and the distance between the population centers in the country, the obtained solutions to increase the share of public rural road transport included reducing the desirability of travel with private cars in short rural distances through interaction with industrial towns around metropolises, along with providing such areas with special services to attract passengers to rural transport with occupational goals.

Determination of Antibacterial Activity of Psidium guajava Leaf Extract against Bacteria Isolated from Mobile Phones of Umaru Musa Yar’adua University, Katsina Community

Mobile phones are increasingly becoming one of the indispensable accessories of professional and social daily life, although constant handling and usage in various environmental conditions makes it fomite. Thus, antibacterial activity of Psidium guajava leaf extract was evaluated against bacteria isolated from mobile phones within Umar Musa Yar’adua University, Katsina community. A total of sixty (60) mobile phones were randomly swabbed, twenty (20) each, from hawkers, students, and staff of the University community. These were used as candidates for isolation of bacterial contaminants using standard protocols. Variable concentrations (500mg/ml, 300mg/ml and 100mg/ml) of aqueous extract of the Psidium guajava were prepared and tested against mobile phones bacterial isolates using agar well diffusion method. Preliminary phytochemical screening revealed the presence of flavonoids, cardiac glycosides, saponins, tannins and terpenoids. Staphylococcus aureus (39.6%), Escherichia coli (29.7%), Klebsiella sp. (18.8%), Proteus sp. (8.3%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (4.2%) were the bacterial contaminants isolated and identified from the mobile phones. Aqueous leaf extract of the plant displayed promising antibacterial activity at 500mg/ml against all the isolates, with average zones of inhibition of 25.0 mm for S. aureus, Proteus sp., P. aeroginosa and 24mm, 6.0mm for E. coli and Klebsiella sp. respectively. The use of Psidium guajava leaf extract as candidate for production of antibacterial agent which can be used to disinfect mobile handsets is suggested. Keywords: Mobile phones, contaminants, Antibacterial activity, Psidium guajava, antibacterial hand wash

Playing it straight: kindergarten children's perspectives on gender in play materials

This study focuses on the perspectives of kindergarten children regarding their perceptions of gender appropriateness of play materials. The theory of gender performativity has been used as a theoretical lens for the study. Six kindergarten children between the ages of four and five were individually interviewed about whether they believed toys to be gender-specific or gender-neutral. Results indicated that children displayed gender-stereotype knowledge as well as an understanding that toys can be gender-neutral, however, they were generally perceived to be gender-specific. Themes found include: perceptions of play materials as gender-neutral, perceptions of play materials as male-appropriate, perceptions of play materials as female-appropriate, notions of gender stereotypes, gender-role flexibility, contingent gender-role flexibility and external knowledge sources. Implications of these results regarding both gender-conforming as well as gender-non conforming children are provided and recommendations for educators are suggested. Keywords: gender performativity; children; masculinity; femininity; heteronormativity; toys; gender stereotypes, gender roles, gender non-conforming behaviour

Playing it straight: kindergarten children's perspectives on gender in play materials

This study focuses on the perspectives of kindergarten children regarding their perceptions of gender appropriateness of play materials. The theory of gender performativity has been used as a theoretical lens for the study. Six kindergarten children between the ages of four and five were individually interviewed about whether they believed toys to be gender-specific or gender-neutral. Results indicated that children displayed gender-stereotype knowledge as well as an understanding that toys can be gender-neutral, however, they were generally perceived to be gender-specific. Themes found include: perceptions of play materials as gender-neutral, perceptions of play materials as male-appropriate, perceptions of play materials as female-appropriate, notions of gender stereotypes, gender-role flexibility, contingent gender-role flexibility and external knowledge sources. Implications of these results regarding both gender-conforming as well as gender-non conforming children are provided and recommendations for educators are suggested. Keywords: gender performativity; children; masculinity; femininity; heteronormativity; toys; gender stereotypes, gender roles, gender non-conforming behaviour

Efficient detection of hacker community based on twitter data using complex networks and machine learning algorithm

Twitter is one of the most popular platforms used to share and post ideas. Hackers and anonymous attackers use these platforms maliciously, and their behavior can be used to predict the risk of future attacks, by gathering and classifying hackers’ tweets using machine-learning techniques. Previous approaches for detecting infected tweets are based on human efforts or text analysis, thus they are limited to capturing the hidden text between tweet lines. The main aim of this research paper is to enhance the efficiency of hacker detection for the Twitter platform using the complex networks technique with adapted machine learning algorithms. This work presents a methodology that collects a list of users with their followers who are sharing their posts that have similar interests from a hackers’ community on Twitter. The list is built based on a set of suggested keywords that are the commonly used terms by hackers in their tweets. After that, a complex network is generated for all users to find relations among them in terms of network centrality, closeness, and betweenness. After extracting these values, a dataset of the most influential users in the hacker community is assembled. Subsequently, tweets belonging to users in the extracted dataset are gathered and classified into positive and negative classes. The output of this process is utilized with a machine learning process by applying different algorithms. This research build and investigate an accurate dataset containing real users who belong to a hackers’ community. Correctly, classified instances were measured for accuracy using the average values of K-nearest neighbor, Naive Bayes, Random Tree, and the support vector machine techniques, demonstrating about 90% and 88% accuracy for cross-validation and percentage split respectively. Consequently, the proposed network cyber Twitter model is able to detect hackers, and determine if tweets pose a risk to future institutions and individuals to provide early warning of possible attacks.

ON WOLVES AND BEES: FACTORS INFLUENCING THE NATURE RELATEDNESS OF THE PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

Biodiversity is the result of long-term evolution. It is one of the fundamental global problems of today as it is declining in space and time. The aim of this research was to determine the relationship of man and nature and to analyze the influence of variables such as gender, age, pet ownership, cultivation of plants, and perception of popular and unpopular animals. A total of 549 respondents took part in the research survey. In addition to the above-mentioned demographic variables, the research also contained 5 items related to the perceived vulnerability of respondents and 37 items focused on the perception of wolves and bees as example of unpopular or popular animals. All variables except gender had a significant influence on man’s relationship to nature. Students who perceived their own vulnerability to a greater extent had a more negative attitude towards nature. Fear of both groups of observed animals had a negative influence on the relationship to nature. Other dimensions correlated positively, age as well as plant growing and pet breeding. In the end, the possibilities of improving the relationship to nature are suggested. Keywords: nature relatedness, popular animals, quantitative approach, university students, unpopular animals

Study of stress-strain state of plate with semi-elliptical and through cracks

The study of the elastic and elastoplastic stress-strain state of a plate with a semi-elliptical crack when changing its geometry has been carried out. The process of transition of a semi-elliptical crack into a through one was considered. Options of the stress-strain state were determined by means of the FEA method. An approximating dependence of the stress intensity factor on geometry of the plate is suggested. Keywords: strength, semi-elliptical crack, K-calibration, stress intensity factor, elastoplastic deformation, stress state intensity.

The children is rights in the textbooks of Social Studies and Citizenship in general education in the light of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child and The Privacy of Saudi Society

The Petrpose of the study was to focus on exploring children is rights that are implicit in Social Studies and Citizenship textbooks in the Saudi general education, in the light of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, as well as to know level of sequence and integration of children is rights, inordbr to build a matrix of the range and sequence of children is rights in the textbooks of Social Studies and Citizenship in the general Saudi education. The study applied the descriptive analytical method and used content analysis Reliability and validity for the tool was a chieved .The results of the study led to a list of 97 items the representing Rights of The Child, it’s number is (97) distributed to (8) domains. In addition, the results of content analysis revealed that children‘s rights were not balanced, insufficient and varies in the books of Social Studies and Citizenship. Also the results showed big varies between child rights domains in sequence level in three books range between (0.72%-10.07%). Also, the results showed there were no integration between child rights and domains in three books, where the Chi-Square Value was (48) not statistically significant at (α ≤ 0,05). In view of this, a model for the matrix of the range and sequence of the rights of child and Privacy of Saudi Society were designed in the books of Social Studies and Citizenship books. Based on the findings of the study, a set of relevant recommendations were suggested. Keywords: Content Analysis, Children Rights, Universal Declaration, Social Studies and Citizenship Textbooks, Saudi General Education.

Legal Issues and Challenges in Managing Kuala Lumpur as a Tourism Destination: A case study of the Silang Street

Kuala Lumpur is a historical city with heritage significance for tourism destination. However, the heritage significance of the city may be challenged by several issues. One of which is the number of immigrants who have manipulated business activities in the busy street which is known as Silang Street. The issue of immigrants at Silang Street is not only on the matter of licence to operate business, but also involved the immigration aspect. This paper highlights the challenges faced by the stakeholders in regulating business activities conducted by the immigrants at Silang Street and possible improvements are suggested. Keywords: heritage; Kuala Lumpur; legal issues; tourism destination. eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v5iSI1.2321