93 research outputs found
Interview with Rashad Rushdy
No full textمقابلة مع المؤلف المصري و أستاذ الأدب الإنجليزي رشاد رشدي عن أهتمامه المبكر بالتمثيل والكتابة المسرحية والأدب المسرحي وأعماله الكتابية ورؤيته الإبداعية وخبرته التدريسية.An interview with Egyptian author and Professor of English Literature Rashad Rushdy about his early interest in acting, playwriting, and theatrical literature as well as his writings, creative vision, and his teaching experience
Carceral Interstice: Between Prison and Home
No full textThis talk examines Chicago’s Robert Taylor housing projects. In this talk I’ll demonstrate how the project sat at the interstice of home and prison. Carceral power—the practice of policing, surveillance, and contentment that are used to control populations—organized the construction, location, planning, and architecture of the housing project. One of the consequences of this geographic order was the impact it had on the production of subjects.
About the Lecturer: Rashad Shabazz is an Associate Professor, Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. He is the author of Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago. htpp://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/52nwq3by9780252039645.htm
Thigh isosulfan blue injection in the treatment of postoperative lymphatic complications
No full textAbstractPostoperative Lymphatic Complications After Infrainguinal Revascularization Are Troublesome And Potentially Serious Complications. Vital Dye Injection Into The Web Spaces Of The Foot Has Been Recommended As A Simple And Reliable Method To Identify Lymphatic Channel Disruption Before Groin Exploration. Such Distal Injections, However, Are Not Always Successful. We Describe A Modified Technique Using A Proximal Thigh Injection With Isosulfan Blue, Which Is Faster And More Useful Than The Distal Web Space Method. (J Vasc Surg 1999;30:350-4.
A policy and political analysis of how America’s College Promise Act of 2018 could impact higher education access of nontraditional Black college students, 2020
No full textThis study examines the political motivations and policy nuances associated with higher education access by Black nontraditional college students using the context of America’s College Promise Act of 2018, which failed to receive a floor vote in the United States Congress. Through grounded theory analysis, the researcher observed the emergence of patterns in the data that illustrate clear disparities in educational access among Black college students, particularly nontraditional Black students. The data also suggest the existence of extra-political influences designed to impede progressive reform legislation in higher education. The researcher also examined economic, social, racial, and equity principles in the literature, underscoring the need for enhanced affordability in the higher education industry, which was a primary focus of the Act. The conclusions drawn from the findings suggest that partisanship has created significant legislative gridlock and tribalism that often stifles higher education reform policies. Additionally, the data also revealed a clear contrast between priorities and motivational factors associated with Democrats and Republicans in the United States Congress regarding access to funding and other resources in higher education. Even though the study results were indicative of massive differences in the approach and values of these groups, some commonalities were also found that may provide pragmatic solutions, where certain tools, such as data-driven modeling, economic messaging, jobs messaging, compromise, and recalibrated branding, have the potential to facilitate meaningful higher education reform
Pollution control in a decentralized economy : which level of government should subsidize what in Brazil
No full textSubsidies in Brazil essentially serve three purposes: (i) if assigned to the right level of government, they could reinforce the effectiveness of pollution taxes in reducing pollution; (ii) they offer an opportunity foradditional combinations of instruments and hence more flexibility in dealing with specific institutional characteristics of every state; and (iii) they can serve a purely"public relations"affect by showing that the federal government does not always rely on"sticks"but can also provide"carrots."The authors have four main messages of relevance to the Brazilian economy. First, carrots will not work without a stick. Subsidies of any type will not work without a coexisting pollution tax. Second, some carrots are better than others at achieving the government's objectives. In general, a state abatement subsidy is the more effective instrument to combine with a pollution tax. But when federal or state inspection capabilities are limited, monitoring subsidies may be an effective substitute. Third, increasing abatement subsidy rates can be counterproductive - tending to increase firm investment more than necessary and hence reduce the pollution tax base, while increasing subsidy costs. This can worsen the monitoring and inspection efforts and fiscal revenue. Finally, it is more effective to keep subsidy rates low if they are to be effective and sustainable and at the same time get the endorsement needed from state and federal fiscal administrations.Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Pollution Management&Control,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Taxation&Subsidies
TabVFL: Improving Latent Representation Learning in Vertical Federated Learning
No full textAutoencoders are popular neural networks that are able to compress high dimensional data to extract relevant latent information. TabNet is a state-of-the-art neural network model designed for tabular data that utilizes an autoencoder architecture for training. Vertical Federated Learning (VFL) is an emerging distributed machine learning paradigm that allows multiple parties to train a model collaboratively on vertically partitioned data while maintaining data privacy. The existing design of training autoencoders in VFL is to train a separate autoencoder in each participant and aggregate the latent representation later. This design could potentially break important correlations between feature data of participating parties, as each autoencoder is trained on locally available features while disregarding the features of others. In addition, traditional autoencoders are not specifically designed for tabular data, which is ubiquitous in VFL settings. Moreover, the impact of client failures during training on the model robustness is under-researched in the VFL scene. In this paper, we propose TabVFL, a distributed framework designed to improve latent representation learning using the joint features of participants. The framework (i) preserves privacy by mitigating potential data leakage with the addition of a fully-connected layer, (ii) conserves feature correlations by learning one latent representation vector, and (iii) provides enhanced robustness against client failures during training phase. Extensive experiments on five classification datasets show that TabVFL can outperform the prior work design, with 26.12% of improvement on f1-score.Computer Scienc
Security and privacy attacks and mitigations in Information-Centric Network
No full textInformation-Centric Networking (ICN) is a new approach for a more scalable and effective internet. ICN has many benefits, namely: ubiquitous caching, location-independent content routing and content-centric security. Despite the aforementioned benefits, the network paradigm is not ready to replace the current host-centric network as ICN is relatively new and has many security and privacy flaws. In this paper, an overview of how ICN works is given with its benefits and challenges compared to the host-centric paradigm. The most important state-of-the-art security and privacy attacks are analysed and investigated. Those consist of interest flooding, cache pollution, censorship and timing attack. The existent mitigation methods are also described for each attack. The paper also proposes an improved version of an existing defence mechanism for the timing attack. Lastly, the conclusion is drawn and future work is discussed.CSE3000 Research ProjectComputer Science and Engineerin
Quality of life between two groups of psychiatric patients in Baghdad, Iraq
No full textObjectivesTo assess and compare the subjective rating of quality of life (QOL) in psychiatric patients who attended two psychiatric outpatient clinics in Baghdad city [Al-Rashad psychiatric teaching hospital and Baghdad teaching hospital]. In addition, it also aims at studying the effect of socio-demographic and clinical characteristics on the patients’ life qualities.MethodA sample of one hundred patients divided equally into two groups (fifty patient) from each hospital were interviewed and diagnosed in accordance with the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, for the period (from the 1st of March to the 1st of September 2011). The Arabic modified version of WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire (modified by WHO) was applied on each patient.ResultsData gathered from completed hundred forms showed that 50% of patients from Baghdad teaching hospital responded and scored (fair, acceptable) to describe their satisfaction in overall QOL, while (38%) of patients from Al-Rashad teaching mental hospital scored (bad) and (16%) scored (very bad). There was no significant difference in the four domains of QOL between the two studied groups. The findings were discussed accordingly.ConclusionsThis study showed that although the overall satisfaction of the patients’ life quality was higher in patients from Baghdad teaching hospital than those of Al-Rashad teaching mental hospital, a non-significant difference in the four domains between the two hospitals was found. The socio-demographic and clinical characteristics were not significantly correlated to the QOL domains except for the educational level, which was significantly correlated, with the physical health domain in patients from Al-Rashad teaching mental hospital.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.</jats:sec
Development of the Zimbabwe family planning program
No full textFamily planning was introduced in Zimbabwe as a voluntary movement in the 1950s. Volunteers formed a Family Planning Association in the mid-1960s. The government became interested in family planning in the late 1960s after analysis of the 1961 population census. It gave the Family Planning Association an annual grant, allowed contraceptives to be available through Ministry of Health facilities, and allowed nonmedical personnel to initiate and resupply family planning clients with condoms and pills. But before Zimbabwe achieved independence in 1980, family planning was viewed with great suspicion by the black majority, so the program's effectiveness was limited to the urban few. A new era began after independence. The new government took over theFamily Planning Association and changed its outlook completely. Through government and international donor support, the family planning program was restructured and expanded. The number of family planning personnel more than doubled in some units. More service delivery points were set up - particularly in rural areas. And the information, education, and communication and evaluation and research units were established. Through a World Bank-assisted project (with grant funding from Norway and Denmark), the Ministry of Health began strengthening its family planning capabilities. These efforts helped increase the contraceptive prevalence rate from about 14 percent in 1982 to 43 percent in 1988. But the program's growth is beginning to stall. More effort and resources are needed if the program is to grow or even maintain its present status. Particularly important are the following: designing innovative strategies to reach hard-to-reach populations; giving more emphasis to information, education, and communication, especially for men and youths, using multimedia; involving other sectors in the delivery of family planning services; broadening the mix of contraceptive methods (especially promoting long-term and permanent methods); making use of alternative family planning delivery systems, such as the use of depot holders, volunteers, and government extension workers; establishing a national population policy; and considering cost recovery and other measures for self-sustainment and program growth.Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,ICT Policy and Strategies,Gender and Health,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Adolescent Health
Temporary femoral artery bifurcation shunting following penetrating trauma
No full textPenetrating common femoral artery injuries are life-threatening, especially when the femoral bifurcation has been destroyed. In the presence of other associated injuries which preclude immediate definitive vascular reconstruction, temporary arterial shunting may be useful. Presently available shunts, however, are tubular and allow for distal perfusion to only one vessel. We have utilized a modified bifurcated hemodialysis catheter (Mahurkar MAXID; Tyco Healthcare, Mansfield, Mass) to successfully provide simultaneous perfusion from the proximal common femoral artery to both the superficial and deep femoral vessels. Such catheters are readily available in most institutions, can be quickly modified, and are easy use in urgent trauma situations
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