5324 research outputs found
Sort by
Landscape change in Ramallah—Palestine (1994–2014)
No full textThe Palestinian landscape has always been subjected to dynamic processes of change. This article examines the landscape change in Ramallah city during the last 20 years by analysing two aerial photographs from two periods—1994 and 2014—to create land cover maps which illustrate the change in different landscape classes in the city. The article aims to quantify the landscape change in the specified periods using GIS and FRAGSTATS analysis, and to identify and explain spatial patterns of the landscape, taking into consideration the political, social, and economic circumstances. The results reveal a considerable change and fragmentation. The main change is an increase in the built-up area at the expense of a decrease in the permanent trees and scrub areas. This change, due to the occupation policies, is a reflection of many indicators, including population growth, migration, and an economic boom in the construction sector
Planting roots, claiming space: how the tangled histories of dryland farming in the U.S. West shaped political aspirations in early Palestine and post-revolutionary Mexico
No full textEmpirical-Markovian model for predicting the overlay design thickness for asphalt concrete pavement
No full textAn Empirical-Markovian model has been developed to predict the overlay design thickness for asphalt concrete pavement from relevant design parameters. The Empirical-Markovian model mainly predicts the structural capacity of overlaid pavement as a function of the structural capacity associated with original pavement, annual traffic growth rate, rehabilitation scheduling time, and two calibration constants. The structural capacity is evaluated using either the structural number (SN) or gravel equivalent (GE) deployed by the AASHTO and Caltrans design methods for flexible pavement, respectively. The Empirical-Markovian model provides the practitioner with two options as related to the performance of overlaid pavement. The first option enforces the performance of overlaid pavement to be similar to that of the original pavement, an objective achieved by requiring the deterioration transition probabilities for overlaid pavement to be the same as the corresponding ones for original pavement. The second option imposes improved performance of overlaid pavement compared to that of the original pavement, an objective accomplished by requiring the deterioration transition probabilities of overlaid pavement to be lower than the corresponding values associated with original pavement. The two calibration constants can be estimated by either minimizing the sum of squared errors (SSE) applied to historical records of pavement distress (forward approach) or a backward solution of the developed Empirical-Markovian model mainly relying on historical records of pavement rehabilitation. Two case studies are presented to demonstrate the use of both forward and backward approaches with results seem to be in line with the common practice
Research priority-setting : reproductive health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
No full textArticle published in : Reproductive Health, 2018, vol. 15 article no. 27Background: Occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) is an authority with limited resources. Therefore, research conducted in such a setting should be prioritized and coordinated to follow a national research agenda. This study aims to produce a research agenda for reproductive health in the oPt that can be utilized by reproductive health stakeholders and contribute to the development of policy-based evidence to guide health practice. Methods: In the current study, we followed research prioritization methods developed by the World Health. Organization-Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative. Research questions were obtained from reproductive health experts in the oPt. The questions were then grouped into thematic areas which were prioritized by the reproductive health experts. Scores were calculated and sorted to define the top priority research areas. Results: A total of 232 research questions were prioritized by 30 reproductive health experts. Health system issues were the most addressed in the top 50 research questions. They included questions on the quality of services and health professionals’ knowledge and continuous professional training. Adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health
and gender-based violence were rarely mentioned in the top 50 questions. The number of questions related to safe motherhood was around 50% followed by questions related to health system. Questions related to elderly women and menopause as well as reproductive system cancers were also within the top 50 ranked questions. Conclusions: Priority research areas in reproductive health were identified for the oPt, which should be utilized by researchers with a focus on the high priority areas. Policy makers and funders should coordinate their efforts to ensure the production of research with value to the Palestinian context, in the most efficient way possibl
The Administration of Justice in Palestine: The Enhanced Role of the High Judicial Council and the Marginalised Role of the Ministry of Justice
No full textThere is no comprehensive definition of the concept “administration of justice”. Instead, most definitions seem to be a kind of listing the duties of certain components of the system, i.e., the Police, the Public Prosecution and the Courts. Meanwhile, the administration of a judicial system should be adapted to the social, economical and cultural values of the society. Such adaptation should be clear in the structure, process, values, responses, etc. Of course, the protection of the litigants’ rights would be the core concern, but priorities would be activated too. On the other hand, the management in the justice field means partially “directing the efforts of the personnel and getting benefit of the available resources to achieve the objectives of the system”. The decentralisation is an important input in this context. Although the other components of the criminal justice system have been characterised as bureaucratic, the characteristics of bureaucracies do not apply to courts. On the contrary, courts have typical organisation and different style of administration due to their unique structure. The court is, somehow, an autonomous body which does not report to a certain figure in the chain of command as any figure does in bureaucracies. The bureaucratic management and administration style does not suit the courts therefore the cooperative and the interdependent relationship between the judge, the public prosecutor and the defense attorney would diminish if the judge insists on being treated with great deference
Les universités palestiniennes : entre hiérarchisations académiques et attente sociale
Get PDFLes universités palestiniennes : entre hiérarchisations académiques et attente sociale
L’article retrace une lecture historique des universités palestiniennes, en identifiant les acteurs, leurs profils, etc. Nous exposons ensuite les différents modes de financement internationaux de la recherche dans les universités et les organismes de recherche, puis les liens entre les institutions palestiniennes et les différents champs universitaires internationaux. L’article est organisé en trois parties : dans un premier temps, j’expose le cadre historique et institutionnel d’exercice des universités, en montrant comment université et nationalisme interagissent et structurent l’espace sociétal. Dans un second temps, j’analyse les contraintes internes et externes. Dans la dernière partie enfin, j’analyse les dynamiques de production des savoirs et l’influence d’acteurs internationaux. Signalons enfin que cette recherche s’appuie sur des réflexions théoriques et des études empiriques que nous avons menées, notamment à partir d’une observation participante.Palestinian universities: between academic hierarchies and social expectations
Presenting a thorough historical reading of the Palestinian universities, this article aims at identifying the major agents and players; forms of international aid to the research centers; and the networking process with higher education peer-institutes around the world. The article is divided into three parts: the first part tackles the historical and institutional frameworks of the Palestinian universities with a special emphasis on the organic relationship between nationalism, the university, and the social space/milieu. The second part examines the internal and external challenges and risks facing the Palestinian universities. Finally, the third part analyzes the mechanisms of knowledge production and the impact of international aid agendas. The methodology of this paper depends on both theoretical and empirical sources and action research
إسماعيل الناشف : طفولة حزيران : دار الفتى العربي و أدب المأساة
Get PDFمقال في مجلة : إضافات، العددان 41-42، ربيع - شتاء 2018، ص. 291-296يــطــرح هـــذا الــكــتــاب بـــقـــراءة مستفيضة الــــطــــفــــولــــة كـــمـــفـــهـــوم ســــوســــيــــولــــوجــــي ضــمــن عملية تأريخ للنظم الاجتماعية، من خلال مـــقـــاربـــة أدب الأطـــــفـــــال بـــعـــد نـــكـــســـة 1967؛ والـــتـــي وســمــت هــــذا الـــكـــتـــاب. يــبــدأ الـنـاشـف بتتبع تـاريـخـيـة تـأسـيـس دار الـطـفـل العربي وعلاقة هذا التأسيس بالقضية الفلسطينية، والـــــتـــــي مـــثـــلـــت فـــــي حـــيـــنـــهـــا إحــــــــدى أمـــنـــيـــات الـــجـــمـــاعـــة الـــعـــربـــيـــة لـتـخـلـيـق جـــمـــاعـــة عـربـيـة جديدةمتَخذةمننموذج»الأمـة-الدولة«، عبر محاكاة النماذج الغربية الحداثية. كما يـنـقـلـنـا إســمــاعــيــل الـــنـــاشـــف لـــعـــرض الآلـــيـــات السردية وكيفية اشتغال هذه الآليات لإنتاج الــــســــرديــــات وتـــمـــحـــيـــص نـــمـــوذجـــه الــــدراســــي »الــفــتــى الـــعـــربـــي«. وفـــي هـــذا الــمــحــور يهتم الكتاب بموضوعة دراسة الطفولة وتحديد ًا فـي الـوطـن العربي، ودراســـة أدب الأطفال الـــــعـــــربـــــي، ويــــهــــتــــم عــــلــــى وجــــــــه الــــخــــصــــوص بـــكـــيـــفـــيـــة مـــوضـــعـــة الأطــــــفــــــال فـــــي مـــــا يـخـص
القضية الفلسطينية
Asynchronous accelerating multi-leader salp chains for feature selection
Get PDFFeature selection is an imperative preprocessing step that can positively affect the performance of data mining techniques. Searching for the optimal feature subset amongst an unabridged dataset is a challenging problem, especially for large-scale datasets. In this research, a binary Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA) with asynchronous updating rules and a new leadership structure is proposed. To set the best leadership structure, several extensive experiments are performed to determine the most effective number of leaders in the social organization of the artificial salp chain. Inspired from the behaviour of a termite colony (TC) in dividing the termites into four types, the salp chain is then divided into several sub-chains, where the salps in each sub-chain can follow a different strategy to adaptively update their locations. Three different updating strategies are employed in this paper. The proposed algorithm is tested and validated on 20 well-known datasets from the UCI repository. The results and comparisons verify that utilizing half of the salps as leaders of the chain can significantly improve the performance of SSA in terms of accuracy metric. Furthermore, dynamically tuning the single parameter of algorithm enable it to more effectively explore the search space in dealing with different feature selection datasets
