Purpose – This thesis has two objectives. The first one is to test empirically the level of interdependence across major stock markets returns, namely, US, EU, and Asia in terms of return and volatility spillover. The second one is to evaluate the impact of news announcements on their stock market volatility. Design/methodology/approach – To model the volatility of the three above mentioned stock markets we apply a battery of univariate time series models from the GARCH family. Dickey Fuller unit root test is used in order to ensure that the three return series are stationary. The mean equation ...

Background -- Olive oil (OO) has been widely known as a main source of lipid in the Mediterranean diet. Over the years, the interest in virgin olive oil (VOO) consumption boosted due to its sensory properties characterized by its unique taste, flavor and color; and its health properties exerted by its monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), tocopherols, and phenolic compounds. Phenols are minor compounds with antioxidant capacities that contribute positively to OO shelf life and stability to oxidation. Literature data have shown that several agro-industrial factors including harvesting time, ...

Background – Breastfeeding is an effective public health intervention that improves infants and mothers’ health worldwide. Exclusive breastfeeding rates in Lebanon are low. The extent to which gynecologists, pediatricians, and family doctors in Lebanon play a role in women’s breastfeeding practices is not well-understood. Lebanese physicians’ perceived and actual knowledge, beliefs about the benefits of breastfeeding, and self-efficacy in supporting breastfeeding are also not fully investigated. Methods – In this pilot cross-sectional study, we used interview-administered questionnaires to ...

Background – Increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity is a major worldwide problem associated with many metabolic abnormalities. Compliance is poor with lifestyle modifications required for losing weight and maintaining long-term weight loss. There are no highly efficacious and safe therapeutic drugs for weight-loss, and few medications are approved for long-term management of obesity. In recent years, the use of supplements for weight loss has steadily increased among US and European adults. Weight loss supplements are easily available without prescriptions and do not require strict ...

Low-Ionization Nuclear Emission-Line Regions (LINERs) represent the low luminosity end of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). The main power source of LINERs is the subject of considerable debate in the scientific community today, despite the fact that some Liners show features of mass accretion into a super massive black hole (SMBH). Optical line-ratio diagrams are not conclusive diagnostic tools as they can be explained by different mechanisms, including shocks (Dopita et al. 1997[8]) and photoionization accompanied by outflow resembling accretion (Sabra et al. 2003[23]). This dissertation will ...

This thesis examines consumer attitudes and behaviors towards in-app advertising considering the pillar parameters of digital in-app advertising campaigns, namely targeting and frequency. The thesis suggests how these parameters should be strategically dosed for higher advertising campaign success with higher ad click-through rates (CTR) and higher consumer conversions on advertisers’ e-commerce websites. The research method of the study was quantitative with a survey as the main research instrument. The user survey (online from February 2019 till March 2019) was targeted at Lebanese mobile ...

Background: Olive oil is a vital component in the Lebanese diet and Lebanon is known for its contribution to the global production of olive oil. During the process of olive oil extraction, a brownish black effluent is also produced called Olive mill waste water (OMWW). OMWW is disposed into the environment causing serious polluting problems harming the aquatic and terrestrial organisms and reaching the underground water as well. OMWW contains considerable amount of phenolic compounds with antioxidant properties. In Lebanon, no study did extract and assess the levels of these phenolic compounds ...

The aim of this thesis is to study the qualitative behavior of a specific non-linear Volterra integro-differential equation with finite delays by using Lyapunov's second method. The non-linear Volterra integro-differential equation is: $x'(t)=b(t)x(t-r_1)-\int_{t-r_2}^{t}a(t,s)g(x(s))ds,$ where $r_1$, $r_2$ are positive constants representing 2 finite delays, $t \geq 0$ and $a : \ [0,\infty) \times [-\tau, \infty) \rightarrow \R, \qquad \text{and} \qquad b : \ [0, \infty ) \rightarrow \R$ are two continuous functions. In the first part, we study the qualitative behavior of the constant ...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to compare corporate social responsibility practices between five different sectors under the hospitality industry; beverage, nuts and oil, casual dining, hotel and fast casual across rural, urban and secondary areas. Design / methodology / approach – This research is qualitative by nature. A comparative case study methodology was adopted using semi-structured interviews with 32 targeted firms under different sectors of the hospitality industry in different Lebanese areas. The design of the interview guide was derived from the ISO framework of sustainability. ...

The purpose of this paper was to study the effect of various classroom-based brain breaks on elementary students’ on-task behavior. A total of 120 Grade five and Grade six students in a Catholic Lebanese school were assigned according to their sections to two conditions; performing a task without doing a brain break prior to it (control), and performing a task after a brain break (experimental). Moreover, the type of brain break was studied to check which type was the most effective and kept students on task for a longer period of time. A randomized t-test was done and the results showed that ...