QScience Connect - Volume 2019, Issue 1

Background: Although obesity is an increasing public health problem throughout the Arabian Peninsula, only a few comprehensive population-based studies have been published in Qatar. In particular, there is a dearth of published information on the increasing body mass index (BMI) of the most vulnerable Qatari sub-population – adolescents. This paper partially addresses this omission by documenting the BMI status of Qatari youth in 2008/2009; it also highlights the changes in BMI that occurred during the first decade of this century, when local risk factors were significantly increasing. Methods: Using a simple random sampling approach, adolescents were selected from a pool of Qatari children attending government schools in Qatar. This resulted in a comprehensive dataset of height and BMI for 705 boys and girls aged 12–17 years. Results: The overall prevalence of Qatari adolescents who were overweight/obese in 2008–2009 was 19.9%/26.7% (boys) and 23.2%/17.2% (girls). This represents a change in the prevalence of overweight/obesity of − 8.7%/+18.8 (boys) and +4.3%/+12.1% (girls) during the time between these studies. Conclusions: BMI increased substantially during the last decade, leading to a corresponding increase in the prevalence of adolescent obesity. These results demonstrate that regular monitoring of the BMI status of the Qatari adolescent population provides valuable predictors for adults.

Background: Across the world, people with mental health disorders experience various levels of stigma. Service users can provide valuable insight into the nature and extent of this stigma. In Qatar, mental health stigma was not well studied previously. Methods: This study was part of mixed-methodology research. The research team conducted interviews in English or Arabic with outpatient mental health clinic attendees who participated in a quantitative survey in Qatar. For the qualitative part of the study, the interview guide was developed after the results were analyzed for the pilot phase of a national quantitative survey that engaged nurses, physicians, patients, and family members in discussions about mental health stigma. All interviews were recorded and transcribed for coding and thematic analysis. Arabic-language interviews were translated into English by a certified translation service. A framework was developed, which eventually included eight main themes and five sub-themes relating to perceptions of mental illness, stigma, and avoidance of stigma. Results: Seven people, all with previous mental health diagnoses, were included in the qualitative study. The participants described instances of stigma. Most of them did not disclose their mental health diagnoses to others. Stigma among the participants was often experienced by proxy. Stigma towards mental disorders in Qatar was believed to be caused by poor understanding of these diagnoses, media portrayals of persons with mental disorders, and perceptions arising from cultural/religious beliefs. Modifying lifestyles and concealing diagnosis helped the participants to avoid stigma within Qatar. Conclusions: All the participants believed that mental illness diagnoses carried social stigma. Most of them described efforts to avoid disclosing mental health diagnoses to others based on a fear of negative social consequences. These findings offer insight into the perceptions of service users in Qatar towards stigma and self-stigma.

Information on genetic relatedness can be used to control the rate of inbreeding by applying the sib-avoidance mating strategy. Estimation of genetic relatedness based on molecular markers is a potential technique to infer the degree of genetic relationships among individuals identified as parent–offspring, full-sib, half-sib, and unrelated pairs. The objectives of the study were to assess the genetic variation, the population structure, and the level of inbreeding and relatedness in seven different collections of Oryx leucoryx based on the analysis of 13 polymorphic microsatellite loci, in order to provide information about the impact of captive breeding management. The analysis revealed that the mean number of alleles per locus, the polymorphic information content, and the observed and expected heterozygosity across the loci were 6.46 ± 0.95, 0.523 ± 0.028, 0.391 ± 0.032, and 0.583 ± 0.031, respectively. The inbreeding coefficient was found to be significant in five of the seven collections. The structure analysis identified two groups among the 96 individuals. The pairwise relatedness (rXYW) in the combined sample followed the distributions expected under the unrelated category. A low level of heterozygosity and a high level of inbreeding and relatedness were found in the samples of O. leucoryx collected from Qatar. As individual animals can be identified by tags, this relatedness information can be used to control the rate of inbreeding by avoiding mating between close relatives.

In this article, we present a hands-on example to create a commercially relevant product using mainly local resources. Therefore, we wish to inspire young entrepreneurs to use local infrastructure for product development. In Qatar, strong institutional support comes from the angle of administration and intellectual property. However, the assistance needed in solving practical problems seems to be limited at first glance. When it comes to hardcore prototyping, entrepreneurs sometimes rely on personal networking that may be insufficient. In an ongoing project in HBKU CSE (Hamad Bin Khalifa University, College of Science and Engineering), we were challenged with the task of developing a line of garden furniture that could accommodate sensors for monitoring plant vegetation. This article describes our experience with this process. We believe that this work may become an important reference for startupers who are experiencing similar manufacturing challenges, and serves as a didactic piece to familiarize students with the basic structural elements of scientific articles using minimal terminology.

Dividend policy refers to the policy pertaining to the amount paid to shareholders of a company from the total financial budget as a return on their investment. This amount varies depending on the interest of shareholders, cash flow requirements of the company, and many other factors. Dividend policy can affect firm value due to its impact on the cash flow of the company. In this study, the first of its kind in Qatar, we investigated the effect of dividend policy on the firm value of Qatari banks in Qatar Stock Exchange. For this purpose, five banks (Qatar National Bank (QNB), Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), Masraf Al-Rayan Bank (MARB), International Bank of Qatar (IBQ), and Commercial Bank of Qatar (CBQ)) were selected to find the significance of the correlation between dividend policy and firm value. The study was conducted in three distinct phases. The first phase included the quantitative analysis of the financial parameters of the five selected Qatari banks in which information about their recent five-year (2013–2017) dividend payments and firm values was obtained from their annual financial reports. Then, regression analysis was conducted in SPSS Statistics software. The second phase included the qualitative assessment of the results obtained from the first phase. To support this phase with expertise feedback, a director and a senior official were invited from two banks that showed a significant correlation in their financial parameters of dividend payments and firm values. They were asked about their policies to strengthen the firm value while keeping the interest of shareholders. The third phase included a detailed investigation of the results obtained from both the quantitative and qualitative studies, and the findings were compared with those reported previously in the literature. The research findings suggest that dividend policy has a very strong positive correlation for MARB, a strong positive correlation for QIB, a negative correlation for CBQ, and an irrelevant correlation for QNB and IBQ.

Background: Over the last several decades, obesity and asthma prevalence have risen among children. The increase in overweight and obesity has been associated with an increased risk of asthma in children. Most epidemiological studies have proposed that a high body mass index (BMI) at infancy and early childhood increases the risk of asthma in children. A recently adopted electronic recording system for health service encounters in Primary Health Care Corporation of Qatar has provided a convenient opportunity to assess the possible link between asthma and obesity in children aged 5–12 years.

Objectives:

1. To calculate the prevalence rate of overweight and obesity among asthmatic children aged 5–12 years using primary health care centers during 2016–2017.
2. To measure the strength of the association between BMI and asthma in children aged 5–12 years after adjusting for age, gender, and nationality.

Methodology: This was a case–control study on the electronic health records of children aged 5–12 years who visited one of the primary health care centers during the two-year study period (2016–2017). A total of 9889 children with a diagnosis of asthma and valid BMI measurements were included in the case group, and an identical number of children who visited the health care centers for other reasons and had valid BMI measurements were randomly enrolled in the control group.

Results: The prevalence of obesity (BMI-for-age Z-score >2) was significantly higher among asthmatics (24.9%) compared with non-asthmatic controls (17.7%). Asthma significantly increased the risk of being obese by 41% in bivariate analysis. The calculated risk estimate for the association between asthma and obesity increased to 70% after adjusting for the confounding effect of age, gender, and nationality.

Conclusions: The present observational study based on a large sample of 5 to 12-year-old children documented a strong association between asthma and obesity (BMI-for-age Z-score 2 or above). This positive association between asthma and high BMI was stronger among older children, females, and Qatari nationals.