A review of nanotechnology development in the Arab World

A growing number of nanotechnology research, education and industry initiatives have been recently launched by several Arab Gulf States to quickly build scientific capacity and track the worldwide developments in nanotechnology. This comprehensive commitment is intended to serve national interests in energy, water and food supply, medicine, and local industry. This study assesses current status of nanotechnology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, State of Kuwait, State of Qatar, Sultanate of Oman, and United Arab Emirates.

In this paper, a web-based disease surveillance platform known as HealthMap is used to retrieve and analyze data pertaining to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) within the geographical confinements of the Arab World and North African countries. An account was opened with HealthMap to gain access to data related to MERS for the time-period 9 September 2015 to 7 March 2015. HealthMap accumulates and assesses outbreak data from a range of sources, this includes news media (Google News (Arabic)), validated official alerts (WHO) and expert-curated accounts (ProMED). Search terms "MERS" and "Coronavirus" were used to search HealthMap for relevant alerts pertaining to MERS. The search terms were geographically limited to the Arab World and North African countries. Our results show that the prevalence of MERS still remains to be the highest in Saudi Arabia, however, between 9 September 2015 and 7 March 2015 there has been a slight overall trend in decreasing number of MERS related alerts within Saudi Arabia and the Arab world. All countries other than Saudi Arabia such as, UAE, Tunisia, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt together amounted for only 25.6% (n=214) of total MERS alerts (n=837). Our findings show that the rise in the aggregated contribution of internet based participatory surveillance systems for tracking non-communicable diseases such as MERS has aided in improving the accuracy, sensitivity and timeliness for monitoring disease outbreaks. Use of resources such as HealthMap can aid in the timely assessment of risk factors, vaccination development initiatives, prevention strategies and measured allocation of healthcare resources while running at a low cost with greater flexibility and increased scalability compared to isolated diseases surveillance systems.

Advanced democracies, including the United States, have been championing democratic promotion around the world. In the past, American policy towards the Arab Middle East, however, had been mainly based on just paying lip-service to democracy sans concrete measures for promoting a democratic culture in the region. The events of 9/11 marked a watershed in the history of US foreign policy towards the region. Facing calls for a democratic Arab World from home and abroad in the wake of 9/11 the US government raised the ante for pushing democracy in the Arab Middle East. The rhetoric and emphasis laid on 'democracy in the Arab World' by the American leadership over the years after 9/11 was unprecedented. This study deals with the visible shift in US foreign policy vis-A -vis democracy in the region, focusing on the six GCC states, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition to American approach and strategy, practical measures taken in the areas of politics, economy, education, media, civil society, and human rights is also furnished. An effort is made to understand and highlight the methods and tools employed by the foreign democracy promoters, both at the levels of state and society. However, a large part of the study appertains to the activities conducted at the grass-roots level. The study is comparative in its nature, based on empirical analysis.

Abstract. The study focused on the effect exports and imports on economic growth in the Arab countries during the period 1995 to 2013. The study used panel data approach in 17 countries: (Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt, Djibouti, Mauritania, Morocco, Yemen and Palestine). The study used panel data approach by E views program. The study found that the effect exports and imports have positive effect of economic growth in the Arab countries during the period 1995 to 2013. The study recommended it is important indicator for measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the work element in achieving a certain level of the output in the production process. There is need to increase the imports of technology for increasing labor productivity which can directly promote economic growth, and thus improve the standards of living in the Arab countries. Keywords. Panel Data Approach, Housman, Exports, Imports. JEL. E62, H54, O40.

Although the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were lagging behind in the 2010s in terms of various cybersecurity indices, they have been among the leaders in this sphere since 2020 among the Arab states as well as globally. They hold the 2nd and the 5th position accordingly in the global cybersecurity index of 2020 of the International Telecommunication Union. The approach of the states of the Arab region to the definition of cybercrimes is non-standard and arouses interest of researchers. The members of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf are the KSA, the State of Kuwait, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Qatar, the Sultanate of Oman and the UAE. The authors have analyzed the conceptual framework selected by the legislators and law enforcers of these states in the Arab and English languages, singled out the characteristic traits of this group of acts and described their specifics based on the constituent elements of a crime, taking into account the features of the Islamic legal thought. The subject of the study is not only the national legal framework of the states under consideration but also regional documents on the level of the GCC and the League of Arab States. The authors single out the main problems in the studied subject and propose solutions.

Origin. Also referred to as the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (CCASG), the Council was established on 25 May 1981 on signature of the Charter by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

For the past few decades, there have been large infrastructure developments in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries consisting of the main oil and gas exporting countries that include Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar. This rapid growth has attracted international construction organizations and the workforce to the region. At the same time, occupational safety and health remained one of the key issues of the industry in the region. The aim of this research was, therefore, to find the solutions, develop toolkits and guidelines which could help construction organizations in the region to improve their safety performance. This study has considered the key areas of safety that include causes of accidents, costs of accidents, heat stress, occupational safety and health regulations, worker's health factors, and safety climate. There are some studies which considered these areas related to safety and health, but most of these studies are carried out in developed countries which have different environmental and social variables as compared to GCC in general and Oman in specific. For instance, the temperature in Oman in summer reaches 50° C. A toolkit developed for construction workers working in mild temperatures would not be effective for workers working in extreme hot and humid climatic conditions. To achieve the aims of the research associated with these areas, a mixed research method which includes both quantitative and qualitative research methods was adopted.
\nThe accident tracing model developed in this thesis was applied to 623 different types of accidents that took placed in two main construction organizations. The results show that “workers” were the cause of 42% of the total accidents under consideration. Construction organizations will be in a better position when they know the root causes of accidents in their projects. This will help them to develop strategies that encounter such accident causes.
\nImproved safety performance cannot be achieved without investment in safety. Construction organizations are normally reluctant to spend on safety as they don’t properly understand the financial consequences. It was therefore attempted in this research to estimate the cost of accidents in the GCC construction industry. While there have been some issues in estimating the costs of accidents; however the total costs of an accident in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are estimated at US$ 415,620, US$ 91,940 and US$ 205,526 respectively.
\nGCC region is well known for its hot and humid environment which could heavily affect the workers’ performance related to safety and productivity. The interviews held with 20 construction workers involved in different accidents confirm that a hot and humid environment was one of the reasons for the accident in which they were involved. In order to protect workers from heat stress; guidelines have been prepared considering GCC region climatic conditions.
\nOne of the key aspects which can guarantee improved safety performance is the presence of robust occupational safety and health regulations and its implementation. The existing GCC occupational safety and health regulations were compared with the regulations applicable in the USA, UK, AUS, and SA. The discussion revealed that the current regulations in GCC countries related to the (a) Fall from height, (b) Hazard communication standard related to chemicals, (c) Scaffolding, (d) Respiratory protection (e) Control of hazardous energy, (f) Ladders, (g) Powered industrial trucks, (h) Training, (i) Machinery and machine guarding, and (j) Eye and face protection, needs to be updated considering latest industrial requirements and standards.
\nIt is a universal fact that healthy worker's acts will not only make workers safer but such workers will be more productive as well. The results of this study show that the majority of construction workers in the region, based on the results of BMI and BP are not healthy. Similarly, the majority of them reported musculoskeletal pain. Such pain was confirmed to be affecting the worker's productivity. A balanced diet, healthy lifestyle, improved accommodation, workplace facilities and control on tobacco product are some of the key areas which could be considered to improve the workers’ health.
\nFinally, a study has been carried out in the area of safety climate which resulted in a new safety climate assessment tool suitable for the GCC construction industry. The newly developed tool has a total of seven main dimensions including (i) Aligning and Integrating Safety as Value, (ii) Training At all Level, (iii) Improving Site Safety Leadership (iv) Management commitment, (v) Empowering and Involving Workers, (vi) Ensuring Accountability, and (vii) Improving Communication. Brief guidelines have been provided on how to use this assessment tool and how to interpret the results to make plans to achieve the required level of maturity.
\nThe key tools/guidelines developed in this research project were, a) tracing model for the root causes of accidents, b) guidelines for protecting workers from heat stress, c)recommendations for revising occupational safety and health regulations, and d) the safety climate assessment tool. Although, the safety climate assessment tool developed in this research was validated through email interviews, however, longitudinal studies are still recommended to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed tool.

For the last three decades, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Sultanate of Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have relied heavily on doctors, nurses and allied health professionals recruited from other countries. Globally, there is a persistent shortage of doctors and nurses and the GCC countries are no longer able to meet their human resource requirements through international recruitment. They have thus pursued policies that aim to increase the supply of qualified indigenous health-care professionals - indigenization. This study aims to understand and examine why and how an indigenization policy has been formulated and implemented in a purposively selected sample of three Gulf States. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman have many commonalities and the structures of their health-care services, labour force and indigenization policies confront similar broad issues and challenges. However, they were selected to represent different social, cultural and policy environments in the region and different levels of success in creating an indigenous nursing workforce. This study employs a qualitative research approach to generate an in-depth understanding of the factors that facilitate or inhibit the implementation of indigenization policies in nursing. This includes semi-structured interviews with 78 stakeholders comprising current and former policy-makers, human resource managers, religious leaders and nursing officials living and working in one of the three Gulf States. Document analysis provided the historical and technical background for understanding the mechanism of the indigenization policy process and practices. Findings reveal that cultural, economic and political issues play important roles, as do society's views on education, the role of women and the image of nursing. The recommendations to address these issues, particularly in respect of increasing women's participation in the workforce, may contribute to the development of nursing in the Gulf.

This piece of work is framed by the set of initiatives rolled out by the Global Opportunities for Sustainable Development Goals (GO4SDGs) in West Asia to enhance the knowledge and capacity of policymakers. It is the first attempt at a regional level to translate the “Global Resources Outlook 2019” (GRO 2019) approach and to test the potential of this analytical capability to inform regional and country consultations. The aim of the report is therefore to: • provide information on the regional environmental impacts of natural resource use; • set out the potential outlook for natural resource use and GHG emissions from 2015 to 2060, which includes a “Historical Trends” and a “Towards Sustainability” pathway for using natural resources and the prospects of future use; and therefore • supply the background information for undertaking regional consultations to shape relevant and targeted policies in the region aimed at the sustainable use of resources. This report marks also the first attempt of translating at regional level the methodology underlying the ‘Global Resources Outlook 2019’ (GRO 2019), to amplify the regional perspectives from the insights of the global projections. In order to do that, the study covers the 12 countries served by the UNEP Regional Office for West Asia: Kingdom of Bahrain, Republic of Iraq, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, State of Kuwait, Republic of Lebanon, State of Palestine, State of Qatar, Sultanate of Oman, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Syrian Arab Republic, United Arab Emirates and the Republic of Yemen.

[Purpose] For the time being, one of the most cyber resilient countries not only in the Middle East, but worldwide is Kingdom of Saudi Arabia alongside with the United Arab Emirates that pioneered the criminalization of computer-related offences. The question is what country has evolved enough thought years and may set an example in order to reform other Arab legislation. [Methodology/Approach/Design] This study is a description investigation of cybercrimes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar and the State of Kuwait mainly based on genetic, systematic-functional and systematization methods. Data on features of translation, as well as legal framework of GCC members and comparison of provisions of the Budapest convention on cybercrime and the Arab convention on combatting information technology offences summarized in Tables. [Findings] Not only does the terminology in Arab states vary from conventional approach, but the structure and categories are atypical in contrast to international documents such as the Budapest convention on cybercrime. Since there is no unity within even 6 members of Gulf Cooperation Council, it calls for harmonization and either update of the Arab Convention on combating information technology offences or implementing the GCC Model Law (Riyad Document).

This chapter provides an overview of the financial systems of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. It covers the development of individual GCC countries’ banking systems and financial markets, an analysis of the performance of Gulf banks, and briefly outlines recent moves to create a GCC economic and financial union. In general these countries have experienced various financial reforms aimed at strengthening their financial systems. These have mainly included moves to deregulate as well as to improve prudential standards. Stock markets have been upgraded and they have begun to play a wider role in financing various economic sectors within their respective countries, although their importance remains limited. Commercial banks still dominate GCC financial systems and banking systems are highly concentrated. Gulf banking systems show favourable improvement in terms of their asset quality, capital adequacy and profitability during the 1990s. Such indicators reflect an enhanced role for financial intermediaries in the process of economic growth and exhibit the positive impact of economic and financial reforms undertaken in these countries. Furthermore, from earlier analysis we know that financial systems have deepened in these countries and the proportion of credit allocated to the private sector as a percentage of GDP has increased, suggesting that banks have become more efficient in allocating financial resources within the respective countries.

The paper deals with the efforts made by American private sector and civil society actors after 2000 to popularize democratic values and norms in the six Gulf states, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The study is focused on areas including politics, education, culture, media, human rights, and women empowerment. The paper also deals with approaches adopted, goals and objectives set and strategies devised and employed by the American NGOs regarding democracy promotion in the Gulf region.

The Kuwait University Anxiety Scale (KUAS) was administered to a select sample of undergraduate students from ten Arab countries, namely, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, UAE, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq ( n = 296, 340, 300, 203, 280, 290, 303, 285, 253 and 254 respectively). The coefficient alpha was computed for male and female respondents from the participating countries, and the combined values for males and females determined. The study showed that the scale, by and large, was viable in the Arabic context, and its use in cross-cultural research, though feasible, merits further exploration.

The paper reviews the arguments for and against monetary union among the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council—the United Arab Emirates, the State of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar and the State of Kuwait. Both technical economic arguments and political economy considerations are discussed. I conclude that there is an economic case for GCC monetary union, but that it is not overwhelming. The lack of economic integration among the GCC members is striking. Without anything approaching the free movement of goods, services, capital and persons among the six GCC member countries, the case for monetary union is mainly based on the small size of all GCC members other than Saudi Arabia, and their high degree of openness. Indeed, even without the creation of a monetary union, there could be significant advantages to all GCC members, from both an economic and a security perspective, from greater economic integration, through the creation of a true common market for goods, services, capital and labour, and from deeper political integration. The political arguments against monetary union at this juncture appear overwhelming, however. The absence of effective supranational political institutions encompassing the six GCC members means that there could be no effective political accountability of the GCC central bank. The surrender of political sovereignty inherent in joining a monetary union would therefore not be perceived as legitimate by an increasingly politically sophisticated citizenry. I believe that monetary union among the GCC members will occur only as part of a broad and broadly based movement towards far-reaching political integration. And there is little evidence of that as yet.

The paper reviews the arguments for and against monetary union among the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council - the United Arab Emirates, the State of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar and the State of Kuwait. Both technical economic arguments and political economy considerations are discussed. I conclude that there is an economic case for GCC monetary union, but that it is not overwhelming. The lack of economic integration among the GCC members is striking. Without anything approaching the free movement of goods, services, capital and persons among the six GCC member countries, the case for monetary union is mainly based on the small size of all GCC members other than Saudi Arabia, and their high degree of openness. Indeed, even without the creation of a monetary union, there could be significant advantages to all GCC members, from both an economic and a security perspective, from greater economic integration, through the creation of a true common market for goods, services, capital and labour, and from deeper political integration. The political arguments against monetary union at this juncture appear overwhelming, however. The absence of effective supranational political institutions encompassing the six GCC members means that there could be no effective political accountability of the GCC central bank. The surrender of political sovereignty inherent in joining a monetary union would therefore not be perceived as legitimate by an increasingly politically sophisticated citizenry. I believe that monetary union among the GCC members will occur only as part of a broad and broadly-based movement towards far-reaching political integration. And there is little evidence of that as yet.