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The recent Middle East war and the subsequent strengthening of political ties between the United States and Middle Eastern countries have opened the doors to attractive business opportunities and increased the chance for the transferability of Western business practices more than ever before. The objectives of this study were to examine marketing practices among Egyptian firms. The results from 51 firms operating in various sectors of the Egyptian economy indicate a massive neglect and absence of modern marketing practices among the surveyed firms. Foreign firms that adapt their strategies to cultural and structural impediments to marketing in that country will prove most profitable.

Sustainable manufacturing may be defined as the creation of manufactured products that use processes that are non-polluting, conserve energy and natural resources, and are economically sound and safe for employees, communities and consumers. Recently, there have been several industrial and governmental endeavors to launch sustainable manufacturing initiatives. To support such initiatives and to prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers, academic institutions have a responsibility to introduce educational programs and tools in the area of sustainable manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to report on the approach, progress and contributions of a US National Science Foundation-sponsored project titled: “The Sustainable Manufacturing Advances in Research and Technology Coordination Network (SMART CN)”.

The project aims to bridge the gap between the academic knowledge discovery and industrial technology innovation for sustainable manufacturing. Toward this goal, various research and educational activities have been undertaken to introduce Sustainable Manufacturing Case Studies for use by academic instructors to a diverse group of undergraduate, graduate and industry professionals.

In this paper, the need for education on sustainable manufacturing has been focused upon, followed by approaches toward addressing these needs, concluding with examples of case studies developed through the SMART-CN project framework.

This work provides the engineering community with structured modules for introducing the topic of sustainable manufacturing in the curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new conceptual framework for big data analytics (BDA) in the healthcare sector for the European Mediterranean region. The objective of this new conceptual framework is to improve the health conditions in a dynamic region characterized by the appearance of new diseases.

This study presents a new conceptual framework that could be employed in the European Mediterranean healthcare sector. Practically, this study can enhance medical services, taking smart decisions based on accurate data for healthcare and, finally, reducing the medical treatment costs, thanks to data quality control.

This research proposes a new conceptual framework for BDA in the healthcare sector that could be integrated in the European Mediterranean region. This framework introduces the big data quality (BDQ) module to filter and clean data that are provided from different European data sources. The BDQ module acts in a loop mode where bad data are redirected to their data source (e.g. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, university hospitals) to be corrected to improve the overall data quality in the proposed framework. Finally, clean data are directed to the BDA to take quick efficient decisions involving all the concerned stakeholders.

This study proposes a new conceptual framework for executives in the healthcare sector to improve the decision-making process, decrease operational costs, enhance management performance and save human lives.

This study focused on big data management and BDQ in the European Mediterranean healthcare sector as a broadly considered fundamental condition for the quality of medical services and conditions.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) consists mainly of several recyclable materials such as paper and cardboard. Inside the educational institutes, especially universities, MSW is generated from several facilities including offices and cafeterias. Without an effective management program, solid waste can have detrimental impacts on the environment. This paper aims to assess the solid waste management practices followed at the main campus of Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU), Dammam – Saudi Arabia.

The MSW samples were collected from different sources inside the IAU campus such as the college buildings (such as the teaching rooms and staff offices), the administrative buildings and services buildings (e.g. the main library, the photocopying center, the restaurant and cafeteria) at least one time per week during a full academic term (January–May) of the academic year 2017–2018. The collected MSW samples were segregated into seven categories, and the net amount of each category and the overall weight of the MSW were determined once every week. The MSW samples were characterized for physical and chemical properties including moisture, carbon and ash contents. Food product waste (FPW) of the main university restaurant was studied separately.

Data on the composition of MSW samples revealed that 80% of wastes were recyclable, 19% as compostable materials, while only 1% of the materials were a non-recyclable waste. More than 73% of the recyclable materials include paper and plastic warranting dire need of an effective solid waste management program. The highest value of FPW was recorded for the breakfast meal.

Most of the waste generated from the university campus was recyclable type that needs to be handled carefully to avoid its mixing with other types of the waste stream. Waste characterization is an important tool that helps in understanding the amount and pattern of waste generation. It can be used as a decision-making tool for implementing sustainable waste management programs for universities.

The effect of pomegranate whole and inside peels before and after extraction of the tannic acid have been carried out in stimulated media and in gastrointestinal conditions

Adding pomegranate peels with and without tannins at different levels to bio-stirred yoghurt to study its effect as prebiotic, in addition to evaluating the effect on physiochemical, sensorial and rheological properties

The results reveal that pomegranate peels before and after removing tannins had no effect on the viability of a single strain of Lb. acidophilus in stimulated media, while the growth of mixed probiotic culture (Lb.acidophilus and Bifidobacterium bifidum) was enhanced when pomegranate peels (whole and inside part) free from tannins were used. Tannin-free pomegranate peels enhanced the viability of probiotic culture under gastrointestinal conditions. In this study, all probiotic cultures were maintained counts around log 8 cfu /g in stirred bio-yoghurt supplements with pomegranate peels after 21days. Bio-yoghurt supplemented with pomegranate peels at 0.5% gained high scores for overall acceptability.

Pomegranate has been recognized as a good source of antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. Some researchers have utilized pomegranate peel in fermented milk, but most of the studies have found that tannins inhibit the bacterial culture. This study recommended that the supplementation of low-fat bio-yoghurt with tannin-free pomegranate peels enhanced the texture properties, viscosity of the product, as well as the viability of probiotic culture during shelf life. Therefore, the tannin-free pomegranate peel could be used as a prebiotic in functional fermented dairy products.

With less than ten years left to accomplish the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, there is a pressing need to develop innovative sustainable methods and/or techniques that agriculture and food businesses can apply to improve natural resource efficiency. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to review sustainable agriculture in one of the developing Arab countries by presenting a real-life example of a sustainable farm.

The current study aims to showcase a sustainable farm in one of the developing Arab countries, utilizing a case study methodology. The case study methodology is particularly appropriate within the current research context to provide an in-depth and multi-faceted understanding of sustainable agriculture practices.

The findings of the current study delineate the different dimensions of sustainable agriculture which includes water savings, less usage of artificial fertilizers, reduction of pesticides and use of renewable energy. In addition, the current study shows that the application of the different sustainable agriculture practices results in substantial savings on the economic levels as well as the environmental levels.

There are two valuable outcomes from this research. The first is a framework for understanding the different dimensions of sustainable agriculture. The second outcome is highlighting various implications for sustainable entrepreneurs who wish to accelerate the transition to sustainable agriculture.

This paper aims to obtain accurate forecasts of the hourly residential natural gas consumption, in Egypt, taken into consideration the volatile multiple seasonal nature of the gas series. This matter helps in both minimizing the cost of energy and maintaining the reliability of the Egyptian power system as well.

Double seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model is used to obtain accurate forecasts of the hourly Egyptian gas consumption series. This model captures both daily and weekly seasonal patterns apparent in the series as well as the volatility of the series.

Using the mean absolute percentage error to check the forecasting accuracy of the model, it is proved that the produced outcomes are accurate. Therefore, the proposed model could be recommended for forecasting the Egyptian natural gas consumption.

The contribution of this research lies in the ingenuity of using time series models that accommodate both daily and weekly seasonal patterns, which have not been taken into consideration before, in addition to the series volatility to forecast hourly consumption of natural gas in Egypt.

Boussinesq approximation is widely used in solving natural convection problems, but it has severe practical limitations. Using Boussinesq approximation, the temperature difference should be less than 28.6 K. The purpose of this study is to get rid of Boussinesq approximation and simulates the natural convection problems using an unsteady compressible Navier-Stokes solver. The gravity force is included in the source term. Three temperature differences are used namely 20 K, 700 K and 2000 K.

The calculations are carried out on the square and sinusoidal cavities. The results of low temperature difference have good agreement with the experimental and previous calculated data. It is found that, the high temperature difference has a significant effect on the density.

Due to mass conservation, the density variation affects the velocity distribution and its symmetry. On the other hand, the density variation has a negligible effect on the temperature distribution.

The present calculation method has no limitations but its convergence is slow. The current study can be used in fluid flow simulations for nuclear power applications in natural convection flows subjected to large temperature differences.

The term ‘obsolescence’ occurs frequently in the literature of librarianship and information science. In numerous papers we are told how most published literature becomes obsolete within a measurable time, and that an item receives half the uses it will ever receive (‘half‐life’) in a few years. ‘Obsolescence’ is however very rarely defined, and its validity, interest, and practical value are often assumed rather than explained. Before reviewing studies on ‘obsolescence’, therefore, it is necessary to look at the concept and to identify the reasons why it should be of interest.

The main objective of the study is to test a model of e‐learning effectiveness. The data were collected from 125 subjects enrolled in the Institute of Banking Studies (IBS) at the State of Kuwait. The study results indicate that attitudes toward e‐learning systems explained a significant portion of variance in satisfaction with the systems. The results indicate also, that both attitudes toward and satisfaction with the e‐learning systems explain a significant portion of the variance in organization and individual performance. The current results indicate the special potency of the attitude toward the e‐learning systems flexibility and relevance in predicting both satisfaction with the systems and performance. The study indicated the need to test causal models and included a discussion of the implications and directions of future research.