Al-Quds University

About: Al-Quds University is a education organization based out in East Jerusalem, Palestinian Territory. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Microemulsion. The organization has 956 authors who have published 1491 publications receiving 34293 citations.

The future of prodrugs - design by quantum mechanics methods.

Abstract: Introduction: The revolution in computational chemistry greatly impacted the drug design and delivery fields, in general, and recently the utilization of the prodrug approach in particular. The use of ab initio, semiempirical and molecular mechanics methods to understand organic reaction mechanisms of certain processes, especially intramolecular reactions, has opened the door to design and to rapidly produce safe and efficacious delivery of a wide range of active small molecule and biotherapeutics such as prodrugs. Areas covered: This article provides the readers with a concise overview of this modern approach to prodrug design. The use of computational approaches, such as density functional theory (DFT), semiempirical and ab initio molecular orbital methods, in modern prodrugs design will be discussed. The novel prodrug approach to be reported in this review implies prodrug design based on enzyme model (mimicking enzyme catalysis) that has been utilized to understand how enzymes work. The tool used in th...

The relationship between grade 11 palestinian attitudes toward biology and their perceptions of the biology learning environment

Abstract: The aims of the study were to investigate (a) the relationship between the attitudes toward biology and perceptions of the biology learning environment among grade 11 students in Tulkarm District, Palestine and (b) the effect of gender and residence of these students on their attitudes toward biology and on their perceptions of the biology learning environment. The study used a 30-item Attitudes Toward Biology Questionnaire and a 32-item Learning Environment Questionnaire. The association between attitudes toward biology and the biology learning environment were significant, with a correlation coefficient of 0.366. The results of the study indicated that there were significant gender differences in attitudes toward biology and in perceptions of the learning environment, favoring females; however, there were no significant residence differences in attitudes toward biology and in perceptions of the learning environment.

An entrepreneurial key competencies’ model

Abstract: The paper has twofold goals. The paper reviews the culture of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial competencies in Palestine. It is characterized by donor-supported and non-governmental-initiated trainings. This demands an urgent active involvement of universities in the field of entrepreneurship that is shaped in the form of Research and Development as well as offering entrepreneurship academic programs. This comes in line with the emerging trend of offering courses and programs at universities worldwide. Furthermore, the paper proposes a softcomputing-based entrepreneurial key competencies’ model (SKECM). This tool is capable of predicting/judging the overall quality of entrepreneurial competencies. SKECM is based on the three-cluster, ten key entrepreneurial competencies developed and used by Empretec. A three-stage, 14 different models have been developed and validated by hundreds of randomly generated datasets. Measures were used to validate the adequacy of these models including, the mean average percentage errors and the maximum percentage errors. The best achieved values for these measures are 0.8511 and 6.3175, respectively. However, although the preliminary findings of the proposed SKECM model are promising, more testing is still required before stating the adequacy of applying the softcomputing modeling approach in the entrepreneurship field (This is to state that there are no financial competing interests (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial, or any other) to declare in relation to this manuscript).

The Prevalence of Psychological Morbidity in West Bank Palestinian Children

Abstract: Methods: We undertook a descriptive study using the Rutter A2 (parent) Scale to determine psychological morbidity. This questionnaire comprises 31 questions that were answered by a parent of the 206 subject children (ages 6 to 13 years). We selected subjects based on a multistage, randomized selection of 8 Palestinian villages and their households in the southern region of Bethlehem, West Bank. We used the Gaza Socioeconomic Adversities Questionnaire to determine differences in economic status among families. Results: For all families interviewed, the father was employed, none were receiving financial assistance, and all but 1 owned their own house. The results of the Rutter A2 Scale revealed a rate of psychological morbidity (“caseness”) of 42.3% among Palestinian children. The rate for boys was 46.3% and for girls, 37.8%. Conclusions: The prevalence of psychological morbidity among Palestinian children in the West Bank was significantly higher (factor of 2; 2 = 23.26, df 1, P < 0.001), relative to the level of psychological morbidity determined independently for children in Gaza during 2000. We predict that these rates will have increased substantially owing to the escalated violence that began in this region 2 months after we conducted our study. We further predict that children in Israeli settlements in the West Bank will also exhibit elevated levels of psychological morbidity, relative to their counterparts in Israel. (Can J Psychiatry 2004;49:60–63)

Effects of Social Media Use on Psychological Well-Being: A Mediated Model.

Abstract: The growth in social media use has given rise to concerns about the impacts it may have on users' psychological well-being. This paper's main objective is to shed light on the effect of social media use on psychological well-being. Building on contributions from various fields in the literature, it provides a more comprehensive study of the phenomenon by considering a set of mediators, including social capital types (i.e., bonding social capital and bridging social capital), social isolation, and smartphone addiction. The paper includes a quantitative study of 940 social media users from Mexico, using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings point to an overall positive indirect impact of social media usage on psychological well-being, mainly due to the positive effect of bonding and bridging social capital. The empirical model's explanatory power is 45.1%. This paper provides empirical evidence and robust statistical analysis that demonstrates both positive and negative effects coexist, helping to reconcile the inconsistencies found so far in the literature.