Qatar Foundation Annual Research Forum Volume 2013 Issue 1

As many Gulf cities Qatar's capital city Doha has undergone rapid transformation processes socio-economically as well as spatially since the end of the 20th century. Large-scale public investments in local developments that were intended to establish Doha as a regional and international service hub ushered in a new evolutionary phase in the city's urbanism. An increasing number of international “Advanced Producer Service” (AP Read More

Many people associate the medieval Arabic lands with a flourishing of science. However, when people think of the contemporary Arab world, they are more likely to think of political and religious conflicts than of scientific discoveries. In contrast to these common associations, however, the oil-rich Gulf monarchies in particular have made enormous investments in research and higher education in recent years and decades. The Read More

“This project is a trans-­disciplinary and cross-­organizational analysis between Northwestern University in Qatar and Qatar Museum Authority into the viable and effective use of motion-­sensing technologies in museums and cultural spaces for dissemination of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). We will explore alternative opportunities for knowledge transfer of ICH content that manifest with playfulness in order to elicit a deeper Read More

This paper presents the findings of an Undergraduate Research Experience Program (UREP) research project funded by Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF). This interdisciplinary research project brings together architecture and sociolinguistics students and faculty members to develop a socio-cultural understanding and interpretation of the structures, designs, and physical dimensions of traditional elements employed by Read More

In order to evaluate the quality of its survey data, SESRI implemented since 2010 a system of re-interviewing a sub-sample of respondents. These re-interviews usually take place not more than six days from the date of the first interview for the original survey production. Results from these interviews are used as an instrument to analyze non-sampling error and to estimate response inconsistencies, to identify reasons for dis Read More

Precedents Precedents in the fields of architecture, interior design, and allied disciplines indicate that the built environments that we design and in which we inhabit, work, and entertain have been designed with subjective design orientations with minimal or total negligence of emerging neuroscience contributions. Emerging neuroscience research shows that environmental-related activities such as wayfinding, perception Read More

Globalisation of business, research and education is posing a number of challenges to senior management in both education establishment (Knight, 2004; Bogotch and Maslin-Ostrowski, 2010) as well as related ministries (Ka Ho Mok, 2007; Chen, Yat Wai Lo, 2013). The attempts of the Bologna process to set the foundations for degrees mapping (and potentially reciprocal recognition), is way far from solving the problems presen Read More

Recent research suggests a diverse range of motivational influences are involved in the decision to gamble and in the maintenance of gambling behaviour. However, to date, much of the existing research is cross sectional which prevents the temporal nature of gambling motivations and behaviour to be examined. To address this gap, the current longitudinal study surveyed 895 members from a community sample about t Read More

The purpose of this study is to develop a decision making model based on the grey relational analysis for auditing firm selection. The auditing firm selection is a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem that is affected by quantitative and qualitative factors, some of which may conflict with each other. Since most of the input information is not known accurately, selecting the right auditing firm becomes more difficult. Gr Read More

ملخص تتناول الدراسة طبيعة عقود الخيارات المالية (Options Financial) في الأسواق المالية والتجارية العالمية المنظمة، والطريقة التقليدية التي يتم تداول الأصول المالية والحقيقية بها، كما تتناول آراء الباحثين والإقتصاديين الإسلاميين حولها، وهي آراء تتلخص بعدم موافقة الخيارات في واقعها العملي مع أدبيات الإقتصاد الإسلامي، لكن بالنظر إلى وظائف هذه الخيارات وما تقدمه من منافع للدول ومؤسساتها، مثل: (الإستثمار، والمضاربة، والتحوط)، فليس في هذه الوظائف ما يخالف أدبيات الإقتصاد الإسلامي من حيث المبدأ، بل Read More

Museums are increasingly placing digital images of portions of their collections online. Weblogs of visits to these online 'digital museums' can then analysed to give the collection curators a sense of what portions of the digital collections are attracting the greatest degree of interest (as coarsely measured by 'hits' on images). Some sites support commenting by viewers, and these comments also can be useful in gaining insight int Read More

In this interactive poster (a set of public web demos) we present insights into the socio-cultural activity in Qatar as seen on Twitter. Our starting point is the identification of around 70,000 active Twitter users that are, either permanently or temporarily, based in Qatar. This identification is done using a number of features such as (i) the self-stated location, (ii) the geo-tagged position of tweets from geo-enabled mobile devi Read More

Traditionally countries looked at measuring well-being in terms of income growth. But size and growth of GDP reflects aggregate economic performance and is not necessarily a good measure of individual or national well-being ― low income groups may not always benefit ― and increasing GDP growth is unsustainable if depleting the natural resource base. International policy focus now shifting to measuring well- Read More

Many regions in the Middle East are currently implementing bilingual-type programmes in their national education. The abundance of initiatives in the region (e.g. Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain) suggest that this represents more than just a quantitative increase of second language provision in schools. This marks a shift from bilingual education being for the elite only towards encapsulating forms of bilingual education within pu Read More

In multilingual context of the present Iran, recent years have witnessed a significant tendency among families in indigenous communities to undermine the mother tongue and speak the official language of Persian to young children. Therefore, the present study aimed at finding out the main reasons for language shift from native to official among Dehloran families in Ilam, Iran. A questionnaire consisted of 46 items to id Read More

D-Loop of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is widely used to investigate the chicken populations history, origin, migration or evolution. No previous genetic data is available on the chicken from the Arabian Peninsula. In this study, a 420 bp fragment of D-Loop of Mitochondrial (mtDNA) was used to estimate the genetic diversity and origins of local chickens in Arabian Peninsula (including the isle of Socotra) and Somalia. From 207 Read More

Entrepreneurial Learning in a Multi-generational Family Business: Evidence from Nigeria Abstract Although a long-standing phenomenon, family business as an economic and social phenomenon has started to receive greater attention and focus from the academic research body, mainly due to the widespread of this type of businesses worldwide and their impact on economy. The subject of entrepreneurship has long been stu Read More

This QNRF-funded project features a cross-national investigation of the influence of higher education development and science capacity-building on scientific knowledge production. Measuring science on the basis of published papers in selected STEM disciplines, we identify factors behind national differences and global similarities. How does variation in national models and strategies to develop higher education and resear Read More

Languages are passed down through generations from parents to children by communication. Yet linguists find that languages (and varieties of languages) change over time - but at different rates. This study mainly aims at investigating semantic and word changes that took place in the Qatari colloquial Arabic over a period of thirty years. The research began by interviewing forty Qatari locals. The participants came from Read More

Student Notes to Foster Teaching Enhancements in Learning the Qur'an: From the Lens of Non-Arabic Speakers Background Proper recitation of the Qur'an requires learning the correct ma-kha-rij (exit: the point of articulation of each letter) of the Arabic letters. For adult non-Arabic students, this requires methodologies that suit their various attitude and learning styles. In usual practice, lessons are prepared by the teachers. They Read More