CALL FOR PAPER - Vol 10 - Issue 1

Digital transformation is reshaping petrochemical value creation as producers seek higher reliability, lower energy intensity, safer operations, and stronger environmental performance under increasingly volatile market conditions. Within this shift, digital twins and artificial intelligence have moved from isolated pilots to an integrated capability that can synchronize plant data, process models, asset histories, and optimization logic across the full operating lifecycle. This review examines how digital twin architectures, AI techniques, and industrial connectivity can be combined into an optimization framework for smart petrochemical operations aligned with Saudi Vision 2030. The study has three objectives: to synthesize the technological foundations of digital twins for petrochemical plants; to assess how AI supports prediction, diagnosis, control, maintenance, and decision optimization; and to develop an implementation framework tailored to Saudi industrial priorities, including productivity, localization, sustainability, and workforce capability. A structured review methodology inspired by recent review designs in chemical engineering and future industrial systems was used to organize evidence published between 2020 and 2025. The analysis indicates that the strongest operational value emerges when physics-based process knowledge is fused with machine learning, historian data, IIoT streams, and enterprise systems rather than when AI or digital twins are deployed as stand-alone tools. Across the literature, high-value applications include soft sensing, abnormal situation detection, energy optimization, predictive maintenance, production scheduling, emissions monitoring, and operator decision support. Yet the review also finds persistent barriers in model governance, cyber risk, data quality, semantic interoperability, and organizational readiness. To address these gaps, the paper proposes a layered framework linking sensing, contextualization, hybrid modelling, AI analytics, prescriptive optimization, and human-in-the-loop governance. The framework is discussed in relation to petrochemical complexes in Saudi Arabia, where integration with process simulation, SAP-like enterprise workflows, reliability systems, and sustainability reporting can accelerate both operational excellence and Vision 2030 outcomes.

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have advanced from a 2.2% proof-of-concept in 2006 to certified single-junction efficiencies exceeding 27% and perovskite/silicon tandem efficiencies reaching 35.0% by early 2026. This short communication compiles the structural, deposition, and stability foundations established in our earlier review on vacuum and non-vacuum grown perovskite thin films, and extends it with developments reported between 2024 and 2026. Emphasis is placed on all-vacuum-deposited, solvent-free perovskite absorbers, commercial-scale tandem module shipments, lead-free absorber progress, and scalable green-synthesis routes, and their implications for vacuum-based fabrication strategies for perovskite and perovskite/silicon heterojunction devices.

This study examined the effect of audit quality on shareholders’ confidence in Nigerian deposit money banks, using First Bank of Nigeria PLC, Lokoja as a case study. The study was anchored on Agency Theory and Stakeholder Theory, which emphasize the importance of accountability, transparency, and credible financial reporting in enhancing investor trust. The study adopted an ex-post facto research design and relied exclusively on secondary data obtained from the published annual reports and audited financial statements of First Bank PLC covering the period 2015–2024. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The findings revealed that auditor independence has a significant effect on shareholders’ confidence (F = 7.91, p = 0.018). The study also found that audit fees significantly affect shareholders’ confidence (F = 9.32, p = 0.009). Furthermore, audit report timeliness was found to have a significant effect on shareholders’ confidence (F = 12.44, p = 0.002). The results indicate that improvements in audit quality contribute significantly to increased shareholders’ confidence through enhanced credibility, transparency, and reliability of financial reporting. The study concluded that audit quality is a critical determinant of shareholders’ confidence in Nigerian deposit money banks. The study recommends that regulatory authorities should strengthen auditor independence requirements, banks should ensure adequate audit remuneration to support effective audit processes, and management should promote timely release of audited financial statements to enhance investor confidence.

Dina Mehta's Brides Are Not for Burning (1979) stands as a searing indictment of dowry-related violence and the patriarchal structures that sustain it in Indian society. This paper examines the play through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis, exploring how language functions simultaneously as an instrument of ideological control and a site of resistance. The analysis reveals how Mehta's linguistic choices—in dialogue, characterization, and dramatic structure—expose the power dynamics that reduce women to commodities while simultaneously carving out spaces for critique and subversion. The play demonstrates that language is never neutral; it carries within it the weight of social hierarchies, gendered expectations, and the quiet violence of everyday speech. Through its unflinching portrayal of dowry-related deaths and the complicity of families in perpetuating such violence, Brides Are Not for Burning continues to resonate as a vital work of feminist theatre that challenges audiences to confront uncomfortable truths about the relationship between language, ideology, and social power.

This review examines the circular use of mining raw materials through recovery of valuable minerals from tailings and fine particles in Saudi Arabia. The paper follows recent review-paper conventions by combining structured literature selection, technology comparison, and Saudi-specific interpretation. Tailings are no longer treated only as liabilities; they are secondary resource bodies containing residual phosphates, base metals, rare earth elements, gold-associated minerals, barite, manganese, and other value carriers that may support Vision 2030 industrial diversification. Drawing on studies published between 2020 and 2025, the review evaluates fine-particle beneficiation, flotation re-cleaning, gravity and magnetic pre-concentration, hydrometallurgical leaching, bioleaching, solvent extraction, precipitation, dewatering, and residue valorisation. The aim is to propose a practical, staged framework for Saudi mines, where mineralogical characterization is linked to water-efficient processing, environmental risk reduction, and downstream industrial use. The paper argues that the strongest opportunity is not a single recovery technology, but an integrated geometallurgical pathway that grades tailings, identifies recoverable mineral phases, selects low-water separation options, and converts final residues into safer construction, backfill, or rehabilitation materials. The review concludes with research priorities for pilot testing, digital tailings inventories, life-cycle assessment, and investment decision rules.

The rollout of Competency Based Education (CBE) in Kenya’s senior secondary schools has created a need for objective, data-driven tools to monitor school readiness for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) pathway. School preparedness is multidimensional, yet most evaluation schemes treat its indicators as equally important, which overweights indicators that carry little discriminating information and underweights those that separate schools most sharply. This paper derives objective weights for twelve STEM–CBE preparedness indicators using Shannon entropy, as a preliminary step to entropy-weighted clustering. Data were collected from 112 public senior secondary schools across the nine sub-counties of Bungoma County through structured questionnaires and facility observation checklists under stratified random sampling. After min–max normalisation, the informational contribution of each indicator was quantified through its normalised Shannon entropy, converted to a degree of diversification, and normalised to a unit-sum weight vector. The derived weights ranged from 0.022 to 0.141—a spread of roughly six-fold—and summed to unity. ICT device provision (weight 0.141) and ICT-integrated lesson frequency (0.119) were the two sharpest markers of preparedness, and together with stakeholder engagement (0.112) and the presence of a STEM strategic plan and budget (0.104) the ICT and institutional-leadership indicators carried about 47.6 percent of the total informational value. Student competency in STEM tasks (0.022), practical lesson frequency (0.041) and STEM teacher density (0.052) were least informative, reflecting limited variation across schools rather than low substantive importance. The ranking identifies the digital divide and governance capacity as the conditions that most sharply differentiate senior-school readiness in the county and supplies a defensible, reproducible weight vector for downstream profiling.