Special oils for halal and safe cosmetics

Three types of non conventional oils were extracted, analyzed and tested for toxicity. Date palm kernel oil (DPKO), mango kernel oil (MKO) and Ramputan seed oil (RSO). Oil content for tow cultivars of dates Deglect Noor and Moshkan was 9.67% and 7.30%, respectively. The three varieties of mango were found to contain about 10% oil in average. The red yellow types of Ramputan were found to have 11 and 14% oil, respectively. The phenolic compounds in DPKO, MKO and RSO were 0.98, 0.88 and 0.78 mg/ml Gallic acid equivalent, respectively. Oils were analyzed for their fatty acid composition and they are rich in oleic acid C18:1 and showed the presence of (dodecanoic acid) lauric acid C12:0, which reported to appear some antimicrobial activities. All extracted oils, DPKO, MKO and RSO showed no toxic effect using prime shrimp bioassay. Since these oils are stable, melt at skin temperature, have good lubricity and are great source of essential fatty acids; they could be used as highly moisturizing, cleansing and nourishing oils because of high oleic acid content. They are ideal for use in such halal cosmetics such as Science, Engineering and Technology 75 skin care and massage, hair-care, soap and shampoo products

The major and the minor on political aesthetics in the control society

This thesis examines the crucial diagnostic and productive roles that the concepts of minor and major practice, two interrelated modes of cultural production set out by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Kafka: toward a Minor Literature (1975), have to play in the present era of ubiquitous digital technology and informatics that Deleuze himself has influentially described as the control society. In first establishing the conditions of majority and majority, Deleuze and Guattari’s historical focus in Kafka is the early twentieth century period of Franz Kafka’s writing, a period which, for Deleuze, marks the start of a transition between two types of society – the disciplinary society described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish and the control society that is set apart by its distribution, indifferent technical processes and the replacement of the individual with the dividual in social and political thought. Because of their unique conceptual location, at the transition between societies, the concepts of majority and minority present an essential framework for understanding the impact of ubiquitous digital technology and informatics on cultural production in the twentieth century and beyond. In order to determine the conditions of contemporary major and minor practice across the transition from disciplinary to control societies, the thesis is comprised of two interconnecting threads corresponding to majority and minority respectively. Drawing on the theoretical work of Deleuze and Guattari, Friedrich Kittler and Fredric Jameson alongside pioneering figures in the historical development of computation and informatics (Alan Turing, Claude Shannon and others), material observation on the technical function of digital machines, and the close examination of emblematic cultural forms, I determine the specific conditions of majority that emerge through the development of the contemporary control era. Alongside this delineation of the conditions of majority I examine the prospective tactics, corresponding to the characteristics of minority set out by Deleuze and Guattari in Kafka, which emerge as a contemporary counter-practice within the control-era. This is carried out through the close observation of key examples of cultural production in the fields of literature, film, video, television and the videogame that manifest prospective tactics for a control-era minor practice within the overarching technical characteristics of the control-era major. Through an examination of these interrelated threads the thesis presents a framework for both addressing the significant political and cultural changes that ubiquitous computation effects in constituting the contemporary control society and determining the ways in which these changes can be addressed and countered through cultural production

The role of visual adaptation in cichlid fish speciation

D. Shane Wright (1) , Ole Seehausen (2), Ton G.G. Groothuis (1), Martine E. Maan (1) (1) University of Groningen; GELIFES; EGDB(2) Department of Fish Ecology & Evolution, EAWAG Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Biogeochemistry, Kastanienbaum AND Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Aquatic Ecology, University of Bern.In less than 15,000 years, Lake Victoria cichlid fishes have radiated into as many as 500 different species. Ecological and sexual sel ection are thought to contribute to this ongoing speciation process, but genetic differentiation remains low. However, recent work in visual pigment genes, opsins, has shown more diversity. Unlike neighboring Lakes Malawi and Tanganyika, Lake Victoria is highly turbid, resulting in a long wavelength shift in the light spectrum with increasing depth, providing an environmental gradient for exploring divergent coevolution in sensory systems and colour signals via sensory drive. Pundamilia pundamila and Pundamilia nyererei are two sympatric species found at rocky islands across southern portions of Lake Victoria, differing in male colouration and the depth they reside. Previous work has shown species differentiation in colour discrimination, corresponding to divergent female preferences for conspecific male colouration. A mechanistic link between colour vision and preference would provide a rapid route to reproductive isolation between divergently adapting populations. This link is tested by experimental manip ulation of colour vision - raising both species and their hybrids under light conditions mimicking shallow and deep habitats. We quantify the expression of retinal opsins and test behaviours important for speciation: mate choice, habitat preference, and fo raging performance