Birzeit University

Around the world, idiopathic scoliosis accounts for the majority of occurrences of adolescent scoliosis. The absence of underlying congenital or neuromuscular problems distinguishes adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), which affects children ages 13 to 18, from other kinds of scoliosis. The prevalence of AIS is influenced by a number of variables, such as physical activity, gender, backpacks, body mass index, and others. AIS has an impact on the child’s development not just physically but also psychologically, emotionally, and mentally. This study used nationwide databases to describe the prevalence of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis and associated risk variables. The current review analysis showed that AIS was significant worldwide and that adolescent gender, physical activity, body mass index, backpack carrying and backpack weight were all significant risk factors for developing AIS.

This chapter explores the lives of immigrant entrepreneurs. The authors seek to comprehend whether the small business enterprises of immigrant entrepreneurs possess emancipatory potential. The chapter focuses on Gujaratis who are one of the prominent immigrant communities in Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Australia, Singapore, and the United States. A largely entrepreneurial group from India, Gujaratis are actively involved in operating business establishments from small starts-ups to large corporations. The highs and lows of this immigrant group in terms of their entrepreneurial careers are traced using critical hermeneutics and life histories narrative method to capture their past, present, and future outlooks. The authors reflect whether entrepreneurship has been, and will continue being economically and socially liberating for these immigrant entrepreneurs. Issues such as why entrepreneurship, challenges faced and overcome, whether it is a legacy worth leaving to their children are explored. Both regrets and successes are examined in a story-telling format to emphasize typical real-life incidents and episodes.

United States is a country rich in a history of slavery, civil rights movement, oppression, and subjugation of African Americans. Lack of opportunities, be it in education, recruitment, and further career advancements, has relegated African Americans to an unequal and inequitable societal environment. This inequity has led to the emergence of entrepreneurship as a mechanism to overcome poverty by creating substantial opportunities for African Americans. This chapter captures the voices of Black entrepreneurs, their struggles for equality, and the outcome of their entrepreneurships to understand whether this is the right choice for them and why in terms of social and economic emancipation.

The chapter regenerates the enactment of entrepreneuring as emancipation and as acts of everyday resistance against the political domination exercised in occupied Palestine as an extreme context. Empirical evidence is sought using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and James C. Scott’s conception of “everyday resistance” (as weapons of the weak) where material and symbolic facets of entrepreneuring are revealed. It critically examines the lived experiences of seven Palestinian entrepreneurs operating within politically suppressed economic and social domains such as the farming and the music sectors. Entrepreneuring emerges as (a) individual and collective economic acts of self-help, (b) everyday resistances effective in undermining political domination, and (c) as an emancipation project where entrepreneurs are empowered through their everyday acts of self-sacrifice and struggle to withstand the onslaught of domination. The chapter contributes by reconceptualizing entrepreneuring as a socio-political activity instead of a mere economic activity.

This chapter critically examines social entrepreneurship in Palestine, an occupied country that would be best described as an extreme context. The chapter builds on a political understanding of social entrepreneurship using Foucault’s power and resistance frameworks and a qualitative inquiry which integrates a multiple case study design. Themes revolving around power, resistance, and emancipation are used to portray the living realities of Palestinian social entrepreneurs. We also reconceptualize social entrepreneurship as an act of emancipation or more specifically an act of ‘breaking free’ from the existing power strategies either at the entrepreneurial self, or at a social enterprise level.

This chapter focuses on a minority group of entrepreneurs, that of women entrepreneurs. It revolves around entrepreneurship and its ability to emancipate and empower women allowing them to envisage better socio-economic conditions. The theoretical framework of patriarchy is integrated to comprehend factors behind the historical subjugation and oppression of women within societies. Entrepreneurship without seeking to confront age-old traditions, values, and assumptions, in a subtle manner, enables women to become independent and self-reliant and, in the process, discover their own identity. In-depth interviews with Black and Palestinian entrepreneurs conducted at two different countries, the occupied territory of Palestine in the Middle East and the Southwest region of Georgia in the USA provide the empirically based evidence to support all the arguments raised within this chapter. The insights and experiences of women entrepreneurs from these two dispersed contexts, culturally, economically, and socially diverse are deconstructed to understand the factors influencing gendered entrepreneurs, women empowerment, and emancipation.

This last chapter consists of concluding thoughts and perspective on this book which compiless thought-provoking episodes from entrepreneurs’ lives: of entrepreneurs who are marginalized, subjugated, dominated, belong to the minority section of the population, entrepreneurs residing in conflicted regions, poverty-stricken communities, and patriarchal societies. We, thus, reiterate a few of the main arguments focusing on the important contributions of the qualitative empirical studies to critically reflect whether entrepreneurship is truly emancipatory in nature. We identify limitations existing in different research projects which can be treated as beginning points for other researchers interested in emancipation and entrepreneurship. We believe that our book is a small step in ensuring this journey of critical exploration into different aspects of entrepreneurship through effective integration of theory, praxis, empirical evidence, and reflection.

Entrepreneurship despite its best intentions, and emancipatory potential possesses a dark side. To allow a holistic portrayal of entrepreneurship, it is necessary to expose its destructive and hidden side. This chapter seeks to explore, deconstruct, and expose the negativity embedded within the entrepreneurship phenomenon to ensure it remains steadfast and does not deviate from its emancipatory intents. The chapter integrates a critical realism paradigm and dialectic phenomenology to reconsider 19 qualitative interviews undertaken with entrepreneurs in the southeast region of the USA and the Palestinian region located in the Middle East. The three domains of CR construct: empirical, actual, and real effectively provide insights about the positive and negative aspects of entrepreneurship and the plausible reasons behind these factors.

In this chapter, we consider several theoretical paradigms which have emancipation of the suppressed and subjugated as their focal agenda. We follow-up our discussion of these diverse theoretical paradigms with an evaluation of their usefulness in deconstructing, examining, and comprehending entrepreneurship as a socio-economic emancipation strategy. Additionally, we also address methodological concerns which might arise in emancipatory underlined entrepreneurship projects and identify appropriate research methods. The objective of the chapter is to provide the readers with several theoretical and methodological alternatives when considering entrepreneurship projects with emancipatory connotations.

Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is known for its effects on the respiratory system. Three years after the pandemic morbid and mortal consequences, growing evidence is showing that the disease also has adverse outcomes and complications on additional organs including the kidneys. This study aims at investigating the effects of COVID-19 on hemodialysis patients receiving services at Palestine Medical Complex (PMC) kidney dialysis department, and to identify mortality related risk factors. Methods In April 2022, data was collected using the electronic medical records system for the dialysis department at PMC. The study included all PMC hemodialysis patients that were infected with COVID-19 between January 2020–April 2022. The collected data included patient demographics, clinical features, laboratory tests, dialysis frequency and the disease outcome. Results The results showed that the patients’ outcomes and dialysis frequency were impacted by their blood urea nitrogen (BUN), serum creatinine (SCr) and calcium levels. About one third of the study population died after being infected with COVID-19. The frequency of dialysis was also affected by the presence of comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM) and myocardial infarction (MI). Conclusion This study found that there was a high mortality rate within the hemodialysis patients infected with COVID-19. Having comorbidities affected the frequency of dialysis following COVID-19 infection. Dialysis patients should be protected from infections such as COVID-19 and their comorbidities should be monitored and kept under control as much as possible.

This exploratory meta-analysis aims to investigate the current trends in Arab communication research by studying a sample of media and communication articles published in Arab academic journals between 2000 and 2021. The results reveal an increase in the number of published articles after 2011, with a more significant surge after 2016. Egyptian journals exhibited the highest publication rate among all journals. Arab researchers predominantly focused on journalism, followed by mass communication and media studies. Most of the articles analysed lacked a theoretical foundation, and quantitative methods and surveys were frequently employed for data analysis while qualitative methods, particularly personal interviews, were less common. Traditional media, such as television and newspapers, were the most discussed media platforms, followed by social media networks such as Facebook. Geographically, African Arab countries, notably Egypt and Algeria, dominated in terms of published articles and discussions related to these countries, surpassing Asian Arabic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

The increasing demand for spontaneity, comfort, and efficiency leads to the increasing complexity of dual-clutch transmissions and their shift controls. Friction modeling of piston seals plays an essential role in achieving a better understanding of the determinant factors of energy losses and, consequently, the realization of more efficient transmission hydraulic actuators. This paper studies the performance of a dual-clutch transmission during the gear-shifting process of a vehicle power train model. The Modified Generalized Maxwell-Slip friction model with Genetic Algorithm (MGMS-GA) parameters identification is used to include the effect of seal types. The gear shift comfort analysis and evaluation, with four different seal types, has been performed based on objectification. Simulations with O-Ring, D-Ring, Bonded, and Total Control System - Polytetrafluoroethylene piston seals were performed to show the validity of the model in practical scenarios. The study shows the superiority of the MGMS-GA in representing the experimental data and enhancing gearshift control and comfort. Moreover, it showed that the Total Control System-Polytetrafluoroethylene piston seal presented the highest performance among all seal types.

The emergence of topological magnetism in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) magnetic materials promoted 2D heterostructures as key building-blocks of devices for information technology based on topological concepts. Here, we demonstrate the all-electric switching of the topological nature of individual magnetic objects emerging in 2D vdW heterobilayers. We show from the first principles that an external electric field modifies the vdW gap between CrTe 2 and (Rh, Ti)Te 2 layers and alters the underlying magnetic interactions. This enables switching between ferromagnetic skyrmions and meron pairs in the CrTe 2 /RhTe 2 heterobilayer while it enhances the stability of frustrated antiferromagnetic merons in the CrTe 2 /TiTe 2 heterobilayer. We envision that the electrical engineering of distinct topological magnetic solitons in a single device could pave the way for novel energy-efficient mechanisms to store and transmit information with applications in spintronics.

Objective The main aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument to assess levels of knowledge and perceptions of predatory journals. Methods The current study employed successive methods framework including (1) item generation through a literature review and theoretical framework development, (2) validity testing in terms of face, content, and construct validity for perceptions construct as well as item analysis for knowledge scale, and (3) reliability testing in terms of Cronbach's alpha, Kuder-Richardson (KR-20), item-to-total correlations, corrected item-to-total correlations, Cronbach's alpha if item deleted, and test-retest reliability. A total of 304 participants were recruited from King Fahad Medical City (KFMC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to evaluate its construct validity and reliability. This was established using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with principal axis factoring (PFA) and varimax rotation as well as confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for perception construct. Results An instrument was developed from this study called the “Predatory Journals KP Assessment Questionnaire”. The results of EFA and CFA confirmed the construct validity of the perception construct. Item analysis confirmed the construct validity of the knowledge scale. The internal consistency and test-retest reliability were achieved for the knowledge scale items, consisting of 13 items. The results of EFA confirmed the measured constructs of perceptions toward predatory journals. The results of EFA and CFA for perception construct resulted in only one factor with 9 items. Conclusion This study has successfully developed a valid and reliable questionnaire to measure knowledge and perceptions of predatory journals among researchers in the clinical and health disciplines. This instrument serves as a valuable guide for future studies that aim to assess researcher's knowledge and perceptions about predatory journals and examine the differences in these measured constructs according to their demographic and professional characteristics.

This study delves into online assessments, focusing on their numerous advantages, including reducing paper usage and alleviating concerns surrounding the security of traditional examinations. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a model delineating the interplay between factors influencing the continuance intention to use online assessments and the influence on individual performance. A quantitative approach using an online survey was used to collect data from 222 graduate students from three major Palestinian universities. The research instrument was developed based on the finding of previous studies. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to construct and validate the proposed model. The findings of this study revealed that perceived usefulness has a significant influence on the intention to continue using online assessment. The proposed model indicated that there is no direct or indirect relationship between perceived ease of use and the continuance intention to use online assessment. The main limitation of this study was its reliance on a purely quantitative approach. Therefore, a sequentional mixed methods approach van be a suggestion for future research and include all the higher education institutions in the Palestinian context.

This paper presents design and testing of a highly efficient single phase sine wave inverter, tailored for photovoltaic (PV) applications, to yield a 50 Hz pure sine wave output signal of. PIC 18F4550 microcontroller is utilized for generating pulse width modulated (PWM) pulses, integrated with a high-speed CMOS logic quad 2-input multiplexer to produce an alternating signal at the H Bridge load. By employing closed-loop control, output waveform distortion is minimized for inductive as well as capacitive loads. Proteus software-based simulations are carried out to evaluate the design performance. Notably, in contrast to the conventional inverters, the inverter module is designed for lower harmonic distortion and built through a simple and practical design. The proposed inverter is practically tested for different AC loads focusing on sensitive devices that require pure and efficient sine waves.