SACM - United Kingdom
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://drepo.sdl.edu.sa/handle/20.500.14154/9667
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Item Restricted Exploring the Socio-Cultural Factors Influencing the Persistence of Traditional Flood Irrigation in Al Ula, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Arafah, Mohammed Ayman M; Ainslie, AndrewThis dissertation examines the socio-cultural factors that contribute to the continued use of traditional flood irrigation among farmers in Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, despite rising water scarcity and the existence of more effective options (modern irrigation methods), such as drip irrigation and sprinkler irrigation. Al Ula's oasis agriculture is heavily dependent on the non-renewable Saq-Ram aquifer, where unsustainable withdrawals and flood irrigation practices have hastened groundwater depletion, salinity building, and nitrate contamination. While Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 emphasises modern irrigation as a national goal, adoption remains low in Al Ula, indicating that technical and economic explanations are insufficient. This study, guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), utilizes a qualitative, exploratory approach to investigate how social norms, attitudes, perceived behavioural control, and broader cultural traditions influence irrigation decisions. Data were collected through 20 semi-structured interviews with farmers, which were conducted partly through snowball sampling on participants' farms and partly through an opportunistic approach at the Al Ula Fruit Festival, and complemented with direct field observations. Transcripts were analysed thematically. The study found that dependence on flood irrigation is fuelled by cultural continuity, family heritage, and peer influence, as well as practical views of simplicity, price, and crop quality. Partial modernization, such as installing pipelines to convey water while still flooding basins, reflects common misunderstandings and risk aversion. Although farmers realized groundwater depletion, they prioritized immediate output and profit, revealing an awareness-action gap. Notably, participants stated a conditional willingness to implement modern irrigation if financial, technical, and institutional support were offered. This study contributes to theory by expanding TPB to include social reinforcement and cultural identity, as well as to practice by emphasising the importance of culturally sensitive, farmer-centred policy. Addressing Al Ula's irrigation dilemma necessitates solutions that are solved not only by transferring technology but also interacting with the socio-cultural factors that underpin traditional practices.3 0Item Restricted Characterizing Immune and Epithelial Biomarkers in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) Progression Using the KBP Mouse Model.(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Almoteriy, Rimas; Chiara, Gorrini; Erica, WillsonTriple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a heterogeneous and aggressive subtype of breast cancer with limited therapies currently available due to the lack of targeted receptors. Macrophages and epithelial tumor cells, which are key cells present in the tumor microenvironment, have been acknowledged to play a significant role in disease progression and metastasis. The study aims to identify the tumor-immune biomarkers that contribute to cancer aggressiveness in a well-established K14cre; BRCA1^f/f; p53^f/f (KBP) TNBC mouse model that resembles aggressive human TNBC. Histological analysis showed abnormal cellular morphology, and CK14 immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence staining confirmed the basal-like epithelial characteristics across primary, early, and late metastatic sites, whereas CD68 immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence staining demonstrated macrophage infiltration with focal infiltration in early metastasis and widespread macrophage infiltration in late metastasis. Gene expression studies displayed differential expression of the following cytokines: CCL2 and CXCL5, which are involved in macrophage and neutrophil recruitment. Nonetheless, the project’s results illustrate the dynamic role of the immune microenvironment in the progression of TNBC and propose opportunities for developing therapeutics.2 0Item Restricted Divergent Risk Governance in the EU: A Critical Review of the EFSA and EMA Decisions on Titanium Dioxide (TiO₂)(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alzahrani, Muhannad; Lofstedt, RagnarThis paper examines how the European Union banned Titanium dioxide (TiO2) as a food additive due to institutional differences between the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA). Both organizations work within an EU framework of public health, although the two organizations differ vastly in their risk-assessment paradigms. EFSA, with the precautionary principle, suspends authorization in the presence of scientific uncertainty that poses a threat to potential harm, whereas EMA does not, with its risk-benefit logic better suited to pharmacological products, which balances advantages and adverse effects. Beck, Risk Society, Risk Perception by Slovic, Precautionary Principle, and Brussels Effect are used to explain regulatory health outcomes, scientific uncertainty, and communication that goes to the general population.6 0Item Restricted Digital Transformation in Tourism : A Case Study of Holiday Inn Guildford(university of surrey, 2025) ALSULAIMANI, ALANOUD; TOM, LUNTThis study investigates the impact of digital transformation on luxury hotels, focusing on enhancing competitiveness, resilience, and customer experience. Using a qualitative approach, the research explores how digital technologies such as online booking platforms, mobile check-in, and smart services are adopted in the post pandemic hospitality sector. Data were collected through secondary sources, highlighting the strategies luxury hotels employ to maintain operational efficiency and improve guest satisfaction. Findings reveal that digital transformation not only enhances customer experience but also strengthens hotels’ adaptability and market competitiveness. The study provides practical insights for hotel managers aiming to implement effective digital strategies and offers a foundation for future research in hospitality digitalization14 0Item Restricted Navigating the Complex Cloud Manufacturing Landscape: A Multi-Context Framework for Informed Adoption Decision-Making(2025-03-01) Amer Asiri; Zhang, David; He, AllenCloud Manufacturing offers a transformative approach to manufacturing by integrating cloud-based technologies and the sharing economy to enable on-demand access to distributed manufacturing resources and services. Its scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency have attracted growing interest from researchers and organizations. However, adopting such innovation is complex and requires a comprehensive understanding of the decision-making considerations. This study aims to develop a multi-context framework that supports informed adoption decisions by identifying the key enablers and inhibitors across various organizational roles. The research was conducted in three phases: framework development, validation, and field testing. In the first phase, an extensive literature review was conducted to extract relevant considerations from Cloud Manufacturing, Cloud Computing, innovation adoption theories, service-oriented manufacturing, and sharing economy. These considerations were filtered and structured into a five-context framework covering technology, organization, environment, human, and business aspects. The second phase involved validating the framework through a qualitative survey with leading researchers in related fields. Their feedback refined the framework, resulting in 28 adoption considerations. The final phase tested the framework through a multi-case study involving interviews with decision-makers from organizations representing the main Cloud Manufacturing actors: platform providers, resource providers, and users. These interviews explored how adoption decisions are made in practice and revealed distinct patterns, motivators, and concerns. To operationalize the framework, an AHP-based interactive tool was developed to help leaders evaluate adoption suitability based on weighted contextual priorities. This tool translates theoretical insights into practical guidance. The thesis outcomes include a validated multi-context framework, an empirically grounded understanding of adoption practices, and a practical decision-support tool.8 0Item Restricted Reforming Jointly Owned Property in Line with Saudi Vision 2030: Socio- legal Lessons Learned from English Commonhold and South African Sectional Title(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alotaibi, Faisal; Sarah, Singh; John, PictonThis thesis critically examines how Saudi Arabia’s Jointly owned property law and practises can be reformed to support Saudi’s 2030 housing development plan, which aims to increase home ownership in the country. Due to space restrictions and overcrowding in densely populated areas, jointly owned property is key to realising this objective. However, this thesis outlines several challenges, including inadequate legal awareness about JOP, disputes and enforcement issues, currently impede this aim, leading to an increasing demand for reforms. To address these challenges and propose appropriate reforms, this thesis adopts a comparative socio-legal methodology that brings insights from comparative doctrinal analysis into conversation with those insights gained from interviews with owners/lawyers conducted in Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and England. Employing grounded theory for data analysis, themes emerged from the data, highlighting commonalities of best practices across the jurisdictions and also the need for a locally tailored governance framework due to different cultural norms. The analysis highlights gaps in the regulatory framework itself as well as enforcement and awareness for Saudi owners and tenants. To further examine the challenges for local unit owners and tenants, the thesis adopts Saudi-specific case studies. The case studies also highlight the impact of all reform proposals put forward throughout the thesis.5 0Item Restricted Insider Threat Detection in a Hybrid IT Environment Using Unsupervised Anomaly Detection Techniques(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alharbi, Mohammed; Antonio, GouglidisThis dissertation analyses insider threat detection in hybrid IT environments with unsupervised anomaly detection techniques. Insider threats, including those committed by trusted persons with granted access, are considered to be one of the most challenging to alleviate cybersecurity threats because they resemble legal user behavior and do not have labelled datasets to train supervised models. Hybrid infrastructures, an integration of on-premise and cloud resources, also make detection harder as they create large, heterogeneous and fragmented logs. In order to cope with such challenges, this paper presents a detection system that uses isolation forest and local outlier factor algorithms. Multi-source organisational data, such as authentication, file, email, HTTP, device and LDAP logs, were pre-processed and loaded into enriched user profiles, with psychometric attributes added where possible. The framework was assessed by the CERT Insider Threat Dataset v6.2, where the results indicated that both algorithms were effective in detecting anomalous behaviours: Isolation Forest was effective in detecting global outliers, whereas Local Outlier Factor was good in detecting subtle local outliers. It was found through the comparative analysis that the strength of each method was complementary, and they should be used together when stratifying users into high-, medium-, and low-risk groups. Although it still has constraints in terms of synthetic data, real-time implementation, and ecological validity, the study is relevant in the development of anomaly-based detection methods and offers viable information to organisations wishing to be proactive in curbing insider threats18 0Item Restricted Characterising the Metabolic Preferences of Pneumococci Experimentally Adapted to Nasopharynx or Lungs(University of Liverpool, 2025) Monshi, Manal Solayman; Daniel, Neill; Mall, HorsburghStreptococcus pneumoniae is both a commensal of the upper respiratory tract and a leading cause of pneumonia and invasive diseases. Its ability to adapt to the biochemically distinct environments of the nasopharynx and lungs is crucial for persistence and pathogenesis. This thesis investigates how S. pneumoniae metabolically adapts to these niches, with the central hypothesis that local nutrient availability and niche-specific pressures shape the bacterium’s metabolic strategies and evolutionary trajectories. To explore this, pneumococci were subjected to experimental evolution in murine models of nasopharyngeal carriage and lung infection. Twenty lineages were generated through serial in vivo passaging and subsequently characterised using carbon utilisation profiling (Biolog assays), NMR metabolomics, genome sequencing, transcriptional analyses, and in vivo infection models. Metabolomic profiling revealed clear differences in nutrient composition between the nasopharynx and lungs, particularly in the availability of carbohydrates and amino acids. Nasopharyngeal tissues were rich in host-derived glycans, while the lungs were enriched in glucose, branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), and tripeptides. Adapted lineages displayed distinct metabolic phenotypes. Nasopharynx-adapted strains acquired enhanced capacity to utilise N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc), driven by mutations in regulatory genes such as nagR or promoter regions of the nanB operon, leading to increased glycosidase activity and colonisation efficiency. Lung-adapted lineages exhibited broader carbon metabolism, including increased galactose utilisation. A synonymous mutation was identified in the metabolic gene gapN in a lineage that showed long-term persistence in the nasopharynx. Experiments with gapN deletion strains suggested that redox balance plays a role in colonisation. Furthermore, phenylalanine and BCAA metabolism emerged as key adaptive traits, with several nasopharynx-adapted strains showing transcriptional upregulation of BCAA transporters (livJ, brnQ) and the global regulator codY. This work demonstrates that pneumococcal metabolic adaptation is niche-specific, often driven by regulatory rather than structural genetic changes. The findings provide mechanistic insight into host-pathogen metabolic interactions and highlight experimental evolution as a powerful tool to dissect bacterial fitness in vivo. These insights lay the foundation for future therapeutic strategies targeting metabolic pathways involved in colonisation and disease progression.7 0Item Restricted Balancing Profit and Ethics: The Impact of Human Rights Due Diligence Laws on International Business Operations(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alatawi, Baseel; Qingxiu, BuSupply chains have taken centre stage in the discussions on corporate accountability, sustainability, and protection of human rights across the world. Due to a series of alleged labour rights abuses, environmental destruction and systemic failures in governance, jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the European Union, have been responding with the creation of legislative tools to reinforce corporate due diligence and align business practices with international sustainability criteria, including the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the French Duty of Vigilance Law, the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, and a proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). This article will look at the transformation, scope, and effectiveness of compulsory human rights and environmental due diligence frameworks in various jurisdictions. It will help to assess the effect on corporate governance, supply chain transparency, and accountability, and find the major challenges and opportunities to harmonise at the transnational level. Qualitative research design has been used, and it is based on the doctrinal analysis of law, critical comparison of statutes, case law, and secondary literature, and even comparative analysis of regulatory frameworks among jurisdictions. Articles in academic journals, legal commentary, policy papers, and official legislative documents were reviewed systematically to determine the trends in compliance, enforcement, and governing outcomes. Results indicate an increased overlap in legislative initiatives to introduce human rights and environmental due diligence into corporate practice, albeit with wide differences in application and implementation across regulations. The French Duty of Vigilance and the German LkSG are strict examples of corporate responsibility, and the UK Modern Slavery Act has been accused of laxity in enforcement. The future CSDDD is expected to offer a more harmonised approach at the EU level; however, its extraterritorial scope and balancing of the competitiveness of businesses with human-protecting rights measures are still disputed. All in all, companies are feeling the pressure of heightened compliance, and the evidence is mixed on whether this has led to substantive improvements for the workers and communities affected. The introduction of mandatory due diligence laws has changed the paradigm of voluntary corporate social responsibility to a mandatory requirement of the law. Although these frameworks have improved the global management of business and human rights, there are still problems with how to make these systems effective, eliminate the ritualistic nature of compliance, and deal with the power asymmetry of global supply chains. It is concluded in the study that there is a need to further harmonise the legislative measures and enforce them in a robust manner, and incorporate worker-led practices in ensuring legislative reforms yield significant protection of human and environmental rights.5 0Item Restricted Socioeconomic Position and Oral Health: Social gradients in oral health among adults in Scotland: Evidence from the Scottish Health Survey 2021(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alosaimi, Yazeed Mohammed; Heilmann, AnjaBackground: Socioeconomic inequalities in oral health are a persistent public health issue in the UK. Lower socioeconomic position is associated with poorer oral health outcomes, but the evidence for Scottish adults is limited. The pathways through which different dimensions of SEP, such as income, education, and social class, independently relate to oral health, and the extent to which behaviours explain these relationships, are not fully understood. Aim: The aim was to assess the associations between three SEP indicators (household income, education, and social class) and oral health outcomes (functional dentition, dental pain, and oral health-related impact on quality of life) in Scottish adults. The research also aimed to assess whether oral health related behaviours (brushing, dental attendance, and smoking) partly explained these relationships. Methods: This study conducted a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data from the Scottish Health Survey 2021. The analysis sample size was 2,161 adults aged 16 and over. The three binary outcome measures were having fewer than 20 teeth, reporting dental pain, and reporting at least one oral health-related impact on quality of life. Self-reported data on household income, educational qualifications, and social class were the main explanatory variables. A series of binary logistic regression models was constructed to assess the relationships, with initial models adjusted for age and sex, and subsequent models also adjusted for behavioural factors. Results: Using age and sex adjusted models, socioeconomic gradients were observed across all outcomes. The poorest income quintile had over 4 times the odds of having fewer than 20 teeth compared to the richest (OR: 4.40, 95% CI 2.60-7.47). Similarly, adults with no qualifications had almost 5 times the odds compared to those with a degree or higher (OR: 4.96, 95% CI 2.87-8.55). For dental pain, routine/manual workers had twice the odds compared to managerial/professional workers (OR: 2.02, 95% CI 1.43-2.85). After controlling for behavioural factors, these associations attenuated but remained significant. For example, the odds of having fewer than 20 teeth for the poorest vs. the richest income group reduced but were still high (OR: 3.65, 95% CI 2.09-6.38). In mutually adjusted models, education showed an association with having fewer than 20 teeth, income for OHRQoL, and income and social class for dental pain. Further adjustment for behaviours only slightly altered these effects. Conclusions: In this nationally representative sample of Scottish adults, all three SEP indicators were independently associated with poorer oral health outcomes in a graded fashion. The increased odds of adverse oral health in lower SEP groups could not be fully accounted for by behavioural factors. Further research is needed to explore other mediating pathways. These findings suggest that policies must address fundamental socioeconomic determinants in addition to promoting healthy behaviours to reduce oral health inequalities.5 0