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Reflections on Using a Strength-Based Culturally Sensitive Community Psychology Approach to Promoting Sexual Health of Egyptian Women and Girls
Get PDFNavigating the intricate landscape of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) poses considerable challenges, especially within societies where the discourse is shaped by deeply rooted traditions and cultural norms. This paper examines a research project aimed at addressing the critical gap in dialogue surrounding women\u27s SRH in Egypt. Adopting a community psychology framework, this project has two components: a mother-daughter communication guidebook and a comprehensive needs assessment survey. The guidebook was designed to facilitate discussions during the critical transitional phase of puberty, and the needs assessment survey aimed to understand the distinct needs of Egyptian women using a strengths-based approach. By reaching over 1,000 women across 25 Egyptian governorates, the survey highlights their experiences, barriers, and attitudes towards SRH, serving as a foundational resource for both the guidebook and future health promotion campaigns and interventions. The project strives to cultivate a more inclusive dialogue surrounding SRH in Egypt, ultimately contributing to a society that is more informed and supported. This paper offers valuable insights into the effectiveness of community psychology approaches in addressing sensitive topics, emphasizing the significance of understanding and respecting cultural nuances in promoting open dialogue, while also highlighting the importance of building rapport with the target audience and adopting a strengths-based approach
“Perfect Hearts and Pure Pages”: The Transmission and Recitation of the Qur’an in Mamluk Cairo—the Shāṭibiyya as a Case Study
Get PDFThe Ḥirz al-Amānī wa-Wajh al-Tahānī of Abū al-Qāsim b. Fīrruh al-Shāṭibī (d. 590/1193) became one of the most widely studied texts associated with the recitation of the Qur’an. A didactic versification of Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī’s (d. 444/1053) Kitāb al-Taysīr fī al-Qirāʾāt al-Sabaʿ, the Shāṭibiyya was composed in Ayyubid Egypt and transformed the discipline of the variant readings (qirāʾāt). Despite its popularity and acknowledged impact upon the discipline, the Shāṭibiyya remains a relatively untapped resource for understanding the Qur’an in its recited form. This thesis studies the recitation of the Qur’an in Mamluk Cairo through the Shāṭibiyya, using the didactic poem as a methodological fulcrum to analyse the texts, networks, and institutions to which it gave shape. Situating the Shāṭibiyya’s reception in the context of the sonic turn in Qur’anic and Islamic Studies and the debates surrounding an embodied epistemology in Islam, this thesis argues that the Shāṭibiyya and the discipline of the qirāʾāt were vital spheres of meaning-making for premodern Muslims. The highly-technical discourse of the Shāṭibiyya fashioned bearers of the Qur’an able to sonically reproduce the Qur’an in the various spaces and institutions of Mamluk Cairo. By analysing a range of adjacent texts, such as Ibn al-Jazarī’s (d. 833/1429) biographical dictionary of Qur’an reciters and Aḥmad al-Qasṭallānī’s (d. 923/1517) work of manāqib on al-Shāṭibī, combined with the study of waqfiyyas and Qur’anic inscriptions, this thesis presents a novel approach to the study of the Shāṭibiyya, contributing to the growing literature that emphasises the significance of the recited Qur’an
Shrines, Shells, and Symbols: A Study on Fatimid Mihrabs
No full textThis thesis explores the architectural significance of Fatimid mihrabs, examining their stylistic evolution, cultural influences, and spatial contexts. Positioned within the broader framework of Islamic architectural history, this study analyzes the development of mihrab forms in Fatimid Egypt (10th–12th centuries), highlighting their role beyond the conventional function of indicating qibla direction. Through a comparative approach, the thesis investigates the adaptation of pre-Islamic and regional artistic motifs, such as the trilobed arch, shell-shaped semidomes, and epigraphic compositions, often adapted to Fatimid mihrabs.
By analyzing mihrabs in mosques, shrines, and portable forms, this research reveals how these architectural elements were employed as both functional prayer markers and talismanic motifs, which did not necessarily face the qibla. Additionally, the thesis explores the evolution of mihrab ornamentation, including the introduction of vegetal and geometric motifs influenced by Iranian and North African artistic traditions.
Through a detailed assessment of spatial compositions, materiality, and epigraphy, this research challenges traditional readings of Fatimid mihrabs and their decoration as purely sectarian. Instead, it argues that their design and function were shaped by cross-cultural exchanges and the Fatimids’ broader strategies of visual and political legitimization. The study considers the perception interpretations of mihrabs within Fatimid contexts. By examining their relationship to pre-Islamic Roman, Coptic, and Byzantine funerary traditions, and additionally similar to the contemporaneous Ibadite palace in Sedrata, Algeria, I argue that Fatimid mihrabs did not have motifs that could be read as a direct symbol but rather could be understood multivalently by the various sectarian groups in the medieval Mediterranean
Assessing the Impact of Digital Transformation on Regulatory Processes and Systems Compared to Traditional Paper-Based Processes at the Egyptian Drug Authority
No full textIn the past several decades, the rate of scientific and technological advancements in drug development and digital fields have been extraordinary. Internet of Things and block chain technologies are currently viable in the mature cloud computing industry, these transformative examples contrast starkly with the current pharmaceutical regulatory submission, review, and approval process of the EDA. However, with the emergence of initiatives that aim to improve and expedite regulatory decision-making, there is a promising future ahead. These initiatives, if successful, will not only transform the current transactional structure but also leverage scientific and technological advances to deliver patient-centric therapies. This radical transformation will be challenging for regulatory authorities, such as EDA, and corporate sponsors, and progress will be linear. Acknowledging the complexity of these challenges the pressing need for rigorous research to develop effective frameworks that tackle design challenges, legal compliance issues, and technological integration within Egypt’s pharmaceutical regulatory landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent necessity for swift, secure, and efficient communication channels between regulatory agencies and industry stakeholders, facilitating timely decision-making and accelerating global approvals. This reality necessitates a reevaluation of how digital platforms are utilized in the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors.
The evolving regulatory landscape mandates the harmonization of data requirements through integrated digital solutions, backed by adequate resources. It is essential to foster trust through secure information-sharing platforms and harness AI to amplify organizational functions, all while effectively managing the human factors associated with technological change. These concerted efforts are designed to significantly improve efficiency, safety, transparency, and public value across healthcare regulation and public administration.
Research Design Summary
To comprehensively evaluate the impact of digital transformation on regulatory frame work, a mixed-methods approach was employed:
Quantitative Data Collection: Descriptive data have been collected from all applications submitted over the past four years (November 2019 – October 2023), sourced directly from the EDA’s marketing authorization department. This data is critical for analyzing trends in process efficiency over time.
Qualitative Data Collection (Survey): An online survey was meticulously developed by adapting questions from existing validated surveys. Its objective is to assess user experiences among EDA employees and clients engaged with the digital platform.
This robust research methodology enables a thorough understanding of how digitization has decisively impacted the efficiency of regulatory processes and stakeholder satisfaction within the medical device regulation framework governed by EDA regulations.
The analysis highlights strong performance in data security and overall satisfaction but identifies areas for improvement in responsiveness, timeliness, and ease of issue resolution. These areas warrant attention to enhance user experience and maintain customer and employee confidence.
This study has several strengths, including a very high response rate, which was achieved through significant efforts to ensure that participants clearly understood the survey questions. This involved designing the questions to be clear, understandable, and accessible, as well as providing additional explanations and clarifications where necessary. By focusing on participant comprehension, the study minimized confusion and encouraged more accurate and complete responses. This, in turn, contributed to the high response rate and made the results more comprehensive for stakeholders, including both EDA staff and customers. The findings can significantly enhance the EDA\u27s ongoing modernization efforts, increasing the study’s relevance and applicability. The study offers actionable recommendations aimed at improving the EDA’s regulatory processes and aligning them with global best practices. Moreover, it establishes a connection between the fields of digital transformation and regulatory science, offering a multidisciplinary perspective. The study also includes input from key stakeholders, such as regulators and industry representatives, reflecting a comprehensive understanding of the issue from various viewpoints. Furthermore, this research aligns with the international movement towards the digital transformation of regulatory agencies, as seen in the efforts of organizations like the FDA and the EMA. By addressing this relatively new topic, the study opens up opportunities for further research on related subjects, such as the role of artificial intelligence and big data in regulatory reform.
The study has limitations that should be acknowledged. Firstly, the qualitative component could have been more detailed, specifically in investigating the quality of data available post-digitalization and its impact on decision-makers. This exploration could have included sharing experiences with other government departments that underwent digitization before the EDA department or conducting comparative studies to identify overlooked gaps and learn from those experiences.
Additionally, the study may not have fully addressed organizational resistance and cultural challenges associated with digital transformation. It is also important for the study to explain the role of legislative reforms in establishing a more flexible regulatory framework.
Lastly, the influence of broader factors, such as cultural changes and alignment with global regulatory trends, may require further research
Personalized Emoji Prediction Framework Using Personality, Emotion, and User Preferences
Get PDFEmoji prediction plays a vital role in digital communication by enriching text with personality, individual style, and emotional tone. However, existing frameworks primarily rely on user-generated text combined with statistical or language models, often overlooking the importance of individual user traits and contextual information. Recent research highlights that integrating user-specific features, such as historical usage patterns and emotional context, can significantly improve emoji prediction accuracy. Building on these insights, we propose a comprehensive emoji prediction framework that incorporates user history, personality traits, and real-time emotional context. We leverage the Pan17 corpus, which contains a sufficient number of posts per user, to infer users’ emotional states, historical emoji usage patterns, and personality characteristics. These inferred features are then integrated alongside text embeddings to build a personalized emoji prediction model. We start by conducting an analysis to assess the individual contribution of personality, emotion, and usage patterns to the overall performance. By building separate models for each feature and evaluating them across all datasets, we show that each feature independently improves prediction performance over the baseline, with emotion and usage patterns having the most substantial impact. Additionally, We evaluate our personalized model against a traditional text-only baseline across eight datasets extracted from the Pan17 corpus, using different thresholds for the number of emojis (20, 50, 62, 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300 emojis). Our results show that the personalized model consistently outperforms the baseline, achieving improvements of 1.33% in Accuracy. Finally, we introduce a semantic evaluation framework that clusters emoji embeddings to group semantically similar emojis. Evaluation based on these clusters demonstrates that our personalized model also produces more semantically relevant predictions
Fragmentation Functions of Light and Heavy Quarks in Vacuum
No full textHowever, no single quark has been observed in nature since quarks exist in bound states. It is believed that there was a time before the formation of hadronic matter when quarks and gluons were asymptotically free and exhibited a state known as Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Signatures of such a state, like jet quenching and elliptic flow, have been detected in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC experiments. The purpose of this study is to set a baseline for the QGP studies through the study of the fragmentation functions of light quarks -π 0 as an example- and heavy quarks -D0 and D+ - were chosen. PYTHIA8 was used to simulate proton-proton collisions at RHIC center-of-mass energy √sNN = 200 GeV. Results showed strong suppressions in the near-side yields in the case of D mesons compared to π 0. In PYTHIA, no QGP is formed, then our results would serve as good references for the real data. By comparing the yields of heavy and light quarks in the vacuum, the results displayed differences that should be considered while interpreting the data from real collider experiments. These differences are primarily because charm quarks follow different fragmentation mechanisms than light quarks
Stuck in the Maze: Syrian Unaccompanied Children Navigating Spheres of Protection in Egypt
Get PDFThis research explores the protection of Syrian unaccompanied and separated children (UASC) in Egypt who have fled the Syrian conflict and reflects on the role of formal protection providers and informal networks of solidarity. In hopes of pushing back against the over- essentialization of UASC as vulnerable children, this research unravels the lived experiences of seven aged-out Syrian UASCs who have been living in Egypt for a few years, which reveals their authentic and original crafting of spheres of protection. This thesis aims to contribute to a more extensive and more accurate understanding of the lives and needs of Syrian youth and UASC, arguing that a more significant effort to rethink refugee protection, in general, is needed. Through a qualitative approach, the research unpacks the circumstances that led each participant to leave Syria and choose Egypt as a new country to settle in, their daily lives marked by forced independence, the support they’ve received from different protection stakeholders, and their hopes for the future: stay, move, or return
Egyptian Public Economic Policies Between the Supreme Constitutional Court and the State
Get PDFTo fully understand the present, it is useful to trace the past. The relationship between the rule of law and economic development has been a significant topic in the literature. In the 1960s, it was believed that economic development required regulated markets in which the state played an active role. However, when it became evident that the state\u27s involvement in the economy yielded few of the promised benefits, economic neoliberalism emerged. This involved the state withdrawing from the economy and allowing the market to take the lead. Still, the state must govern the institutional conditions necessary for the markets. These institutional conditions often included constitutional guarantees and an independent judiciary equipped with judicial review. The case of Egypt exemplifies these stages. This paper highlights the various economic approaches that Egypt has adopted since the 1952 Free Officers Revolution until Mubarak’s era, focusing on the emergence of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) as a new actor in the economic and political spheres. Although the state relied on the SCC to promote some of its most controversial economic policies, things did not proceed as intended. In some instances, the Court’s ideology exceeded what was tolerable, leaving the regime struggling to align itself and eventually leading to its efforts to undermine the Court. This paper examines the Court\u27s and the regime\u27s different responses regarding economic policies throughout the 1990s. It argues that while the regime considered the Court an ally in economic liberalism, the Court’s ideological approach went too far, prompting the state to initiate a project to weaken it
Social Media Advocacy for SDG 5 in the Middle East: Insights from Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan
No full textSocial Media Advocacy for SDG 5 in the Middle East: Insights from Egypt, Tunisia, and JordanThis article explores how government organizations in Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan use Facebook (FB) to advocate for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5). Guided by the Dragonfly Advocacy Model for evaluating social media advocacy and using CrowdTangle for FB content analysis, researchers analyzed advocacy efforts over eight and a half years, nearly midway through the planned implementation timeframe of the SDGs. Findings show that the SDG 5 targets most advocated by all three countries were those for women’s empowerment, eliminating violence, ending child marriage, and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). “Reproductive health,” “technology,” and “unpaid work”’ were among the lowest-mentioned terms. Videos, animation, and influencers were key factors contributing to the effectiveness of FB posts. Gender inequities identified in these Middle Eastern countries, like FGM, honor killings, and inheritance rights, stood in contrast with Western concerns about abortion rights, access to contraception, flexible work arrangements, and digital inclusion
Sustainable advertising and brand engagement: the role of consumer minimalism and scepticism
Get PDFRecognizing the significance of sustainable advertising practices and their influence on consumer behaviour, this study explores their capacity to not only enhance consumer engagement with the brand but also strengthen brand reputation. Additionally, it examines how these practices can promote more conscious consumption patterns, contributing to broader sustainability goals. In this line, we propose a theoretical conceptual model highlighting how customers perceive sustainability-related activities and how these perceptions can influence brand engagement, ultimately enhancing brand reputation and fostering mindful consumption. Furthermore, we also investigated the moderating roles of consumer minimalism, scepticism towards advertising, and brand value congruence in relation to perceived sustainable advertising activities, brand engagement, brand reputation, and mindful consumption. In order to do so, Based on an online survey of 700 Egyptian customers of an FMCG brand conducted from February to April 2024, we empirically investigated and validated our proposed conceptual framework. These findings can provide managers with valuable insights into the essential operational dynamics of perceived sustainable advertising activities, underscoring their vital role in enhancing brand engagement