35,500 research outputs found
Advanced dilatometric technique 'SID' for studying the kinetics of the intermediate stage of sintering. Example: Sintering of UO<sub>2</sub> and CeO<sub>2</sub>
No full textConservation in an Islamic context a case study of Makkah
No full textThe Holy Qu’ rān contains many injunctions for Muslims to respect and conserve the natural environment but few address the built environment. Habitat at the time of the Prophet (PBOH) was in the vernacular and relatively impermanent. The first habitat was the cave, the second the tent and then simple flat roofed buildings of post and lintel construction made of mud and rubble. Later buildings were not indigenous but reflected the architectural styles and techniques of Muslim pilgrims from beyond the Arabian Peninsula. Permanent exotic buildings were later erected as reminders of holy places and events. This work advances a case to restore and preserve historic and religious sites in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Makkah is the destination for millions of Muslim pilgrims who annually pay homage to Allah during the occasions of Hajj, Ramadan and Umra. The tranquillity and peaceful ambience that one associates with the holiest of Islamic experiences have, over the years, given way to jostling crowds of people who must be expediently housed, fed, transported, and protected. Due to the lack of planning and the insensitive but profitable development of the city, Makkah is in grave danger of becoming a bustling metropolis instead of a sanctuary where pilgrims gather to perform their religious rites and reaffirm their dedication to Allah. The author calls for professional planning and international cooperation to guide future development for this expanding and sensitive area. The author's ideas are grounded in practical and aesthetic study, therefore, the political, environmental and economic issues are examined in relationship to religious, historic and artistic values. The author makes proposals for a future Makkah that would provide pilgrims with the physical comforts, security, and serene environment they deserve—without destroying the city they came to visit. The author discusses preservation and conservation in the western world and the need for their acceptance in Muslim countries, the former being an aesthetic and intellectual concept sustained by law and the latter being the prescribed free expression of the individual unhindered by material considerations. Both worlds are rapidly being overwhelmed by materialism, but body, mind and spirit combine in making us aware of our surroundings and the way in what we see around us has come into being
Measuring and accounting for community capabilities in Kordofan, Sudan:
No full text"Parallel to the growing attention being devoted to the relationship between empowerment and development, an increasing number of tools are being developed to measure empowerment and determine the link between these two phenomena. This paper details the methodological processes used to construct, test and possibly refine one such instrument, the Community Capability Index, an innovative tool to measure community capabilities in the domain of natural resource governance. Empirical reference is made to research conducted in 85 villages in North and South Kordofan, Sudan. Following this, the paper presents findings from analyses of the determinants of community capabilities, including geographic, economic, and institutional variables. The results suggest that in Kordofan a number of factors influence capabilities. Possessing a village market, proximity to the nearest town, and access to credit are economic variables that have a significant and highly positive effect on community capabilities. Regarding the environment, capabilities are found to be greater where there is more rainfall, but access to groundwater from lower-quality aquifers and cracking clay soils have negative impacts on capabilities. War shocks, as might be expected, have a negative and significant effect. Particularly interesting is the generally weak correlation found between capabilities and wealth, along with strong correlations between institutional and social dimensions of community capabilities and participation in donor-funded projects. This combination suggests that development interventions must take into account the non-identity of poverty reduction and empowerment processes, at least when the targeted agents are communities rather than individuals or households. The findings reveal areas for further investigation into the relationship between the determinants and dimensions of capabilities, and the potential significance of the relationship for some dimensions suggests context-specific interventions to strengthen the relevant capabilities." from Authors' AbstractCapabilities, Community Capabilities Index, Empowerment, methodologies, Social capital,
Translation of the Imperative Forms in the Holy Qur'an
No full textA Master of Arts thesis in Translation and Interpreting MATI (English/Arabic/English) by Ibrahim El Sayed Elaissawi entitled, "Translation of the Imperative Forms in the Holy Qur'an," submitted in May 2016. Thesis advisor is Dr. Ahmed Ali. Soft and hard copy available.This thesis is about the translation of the imperative forms in the Holy Qur'an. Relevant issues in translation theory are covered in the beginning of the thesis. I focused on the linguistic approaches in translation studies because they may be helpful in the translation analysis section of the thesis. Then some of the syntactic structures and semantic features of the imperative forms are explored, with examples cited from the Holy Qur'an. In the chapter on translation analysis, ten examples are discussed in light of the theoretical and linguistic background explored in the first six chapters. The three translations selected are each carried out by reputable Muslim scholars. The first translation is Translation of the Meanings of the Noble Qur'an in the English Language, written by Dr. Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali and Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan. The second translation, Towards Understanding the Ever-Glorious Quran, is written by Professor Muhammad Mahmoud Ghali, and the final translation is entitled The Qur'an, A new Translation by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem. The analysis is done systematically according to the following approach. After citing the ayat, the imperative form is defined in terms of its dictionary meaning, lexical root, and morphological measure. Then it is analyzed syntactically to identify its grammatical relationship to the other grammatical items preceding and following it. If there could be more than one reading of a word, these readings are studied to see their effect on meaning. All this is done in light of what the authentic books of Tafseer say about the ayat under discussion. Some elements of the translation models are explored in the beginning of the thesis to be used as a theoretical background for the translation analysis in chapter seven. The thesis concludes that the three translations examined approached the translation of the Qur'anic text in different ways. The renderings may sometimes be literal, sometimes non-literal. In several places in the translations, lexical and grammatical equivalences were maintained. However in other places, another grammatical category other than that in the source text was used to maintain the meaning of the Qur'anic text.College of Arts and SciencesDepartment of Arabic and Translation StudiesMaster of Arts in English/Arabic/English Translation and Interpreting (MATI
Decentralized resource assignment in cognitive networks based on swarming mechanisms over random graphs
No full textThis paper proposes a distributed resource assignment strategy for cognitive networks mimicking a swarm foraging mechanism, assuming that the communication among the cognitive nodes is impaired by random link failures and quantization noise. Using results from stochastic approximation theory, we propose a swarm mechanism that converges almost surely to a final allocation even in the presence of imperfect communication scenarios. The theoretical findings are corroborated by numerical results showing that the only effect of the random link failures is to decrease the convergence rate of the algorithm. We propose then a fast swarming approach, robust to random disturbances, that adapts its behavior with respect to the interference power perceived by every node, thus increasing the speed of convergence and improving the resource allocation capabilities
Figure 2 in Target-site insensitivity to some acaricides in a field population of Tetranychus urticae Koch (Acari: Tetranychidae) from Egypt
No full textFigure 2. Multiple alignment of the amino acid sequences of T. urticae acetylcholinesterase (AChE) between Eg-Bernasht population and GenBank published populations. Tetranychus urticae AChE sequences were performed local as well as global alignments, using BLASTX search protein databases, using a translated nucleotide (NCBI). Three different specific primer sets (1, 2, and 3; Table 1) contained 422 amino acids of AChE gene. Dots: indicate amino acid similarity. Digital number: amino acid position on the AChE protein.Published as part of Zein, Haggag S., Afifi, Abdallah M., Ali, Fatma S., Shaurub, El-Sayed H. & Ahmed, Mahmoud M., 2022, Target-site insensitivity to some acaricides in a field population of Tetranychus urticae Koch (Acari: Tetranychidae) from Egypt, pp. 323-337 in Persian Journal of Acarology 11 (2) on page 329, DOI: 10.22073/pja.v11i2.71694, http://zenodo.org/record/717353
Sparse diffusion LMS for distributed adaptive estimation
No full textThe goal of this paper is to propose diffusion LMS techniques for distributed estimation over adaptive networks, which are able to exploit sparsity in the underlying system model. The approach relies on convex regularization, common in compressive sensing, to improve the performance of the diffusion strategies. We provide convergence and performance analysis of the proposed method, showing under what conditions it outperforms the unregularized diffusion version. Simulation results illustrate the advantage of the proposed filter under the sparsity assumption on the true coefficient vector. © 2012 IEEE
The Pherobase
No full textThe Pherobase was developed by Dr. Ashraf El-Sayed, a research scientist at HortResearch in New Zealand, with the primary objective of providing "coverage of the literature published on chemical communication in insects." The Pherobase is intended for use by both scientific and non-scientific communities and currently contains "over 10000 entries, around 3000 molecules, and over 32000 static html pages that make it the world's largest database of behavior modifying chemicals." The site contains multiple Insect indices for such categories as Order, Family A-Z, and Species; References indices such as Discovery by Author, Discovery by Year, and References A-Z; and indices for Compounds, Compounds by Family, and Compounds by Genus. The site also contains a Contribution Form, and number of online forums relating to The Pherobase
A bio-inspired fast swarming algorithm for dynamic radio access
No full textThe goal of this paper is to propose a bio-inspired algorithm for decentralized dynamic access in cognitive radio systems. We study an improved social foraging swarm model that lets every node allocate its resources (power/bits) in the frequency regions where the interference is minimum while avoiding collisions with other nodes. The proposed approach adapts its behavior with respect to the interference power perceived by every node, thus increasing the speed of convergence and reducing the reaction time needed by the algorithm to react to dynamic changes in the environment. The presence of random disturbances such as link failures, quantization noise and estimation errors is taken into account in the convergence analysis. Numerical results illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm. © 2011 IEEE
Decisions Under Binary Messaging over Adaptive Networks
No full textWe consider an adaptive network made of interconnected agents engaged in a binary decision task. It is assumed that the agents cannot deliver full-precision messages to their neighbors, but only binary messages. For this scenario, a modified version of the ATC diffusion rule for the agent state evolution is proposed with improved decision performance under adaptive learning scenarios. An approximate analytical characterization of the agents' state is derived, giving insight into the network behavior at steady-state and enabling numerical computation of the decision performance. Computer experiments show that the analytical characterization is accurate for a wide range of the parameters of interest.AS
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