We live like Khayalat (scarecrows): An ethnography of a Palestinian village in Egypt

Based on my preliminary research on the literature, I can argue that this is the first ethnographic study of the social life of the village of Jazirat Fadil and its inhabitants. Jazirat Fadil is a Palestinian village of about 5,000 people who have lived in Egypt since 1948. The village is precisely located in Al-Sharqiya province about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Cairo. The village has hosted scattered Palestinian refugees who fled their home village of Beersheba (Byr Sab\u27 / Ba\u27ar Sab\u27) after the 1948 exodus. There are no official records of the number of inhabitants in the village with the exception of insignificant information in newspaper articles and a brief mention in a previous ethnographic study about exiled Palestinians in Egypt . The current fieldwork depended on participatory observation, oral history testimonies and field notes, while taking advantage of the shared language between us, Arabic. I also decided to live in the community to be studied for a while to help counter the difficulty of access. During my three-month study I was able to observe how they perform their day to day life in the village. In this sense, this research project attempts to determine how the inhabitants of Jazirat Fadil, as agents, managed to navigate, negotiate, and contest the social context they have been forced into after their exile from Palestine since 1948. Based on that, the research concentrates on how the storytellers who are involved in this research, my interlocutors and myself, managed the performance of both being and doing while living in the village of Jazirat Fadil. The core idea is about the ghostly/shadowy existence of the people of this community and how they managed to penetrate what was forced upon them by their active agency and their cultural heritage of survival. In other words, this project is about the dialectical discourse between being and doing as seen in the daily life of my interlocutors and myself. The field experience conveyed three different dimensions of this process of negotiation across past, present, and future times that are overlapping synchronically. For the purpose of mapping my co-storytellers’ steps until their settlement at Jazirat Fadil, the first section is entitled the (up)rooted and is related to their past history and where they come from. The present has its own dimensions that are related to their past memory and to the actual process of agency as they try to survive: how they managed to overcome being (un)seen within their new context as well as being (un)certain about their memory, as is the case of the old timers of Jazirat Fadil. Finally, when it comes to the future of an exiled community living in the midst of Egyptian society and suffering from uncertainty and lack of recognition by the international humanitarian aid organizations , the question will be whether the community of Jazirat Fadil holds some sort of hope regarding their future or if it is too (un)imaginable for them to bear hope. The constellation of chapters that compose the body of this thesis are not written for the purpose of proving a certain argument. They do not proceed toward a certain point, but rather try to capture different moments within the social life of the village of Jazirat Fadil that I witnessed during my stay there. These moments are “juxtaposed in mutual discordance so as to echo the discordance of the phenomena being studied,” (Daniel 1996:6). This being said, the story that is narrated through the chapters of this thesis is not only about my interlocutors, but it is also about me as an outsider who went to the field with certain assumptions and was altered through the experience

The Right to a Fair Trial before The European Court of Human Rights

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) guarantees the right to a fair trial, applies to disputes relating to civil rights and obligations as well as to criminal charges. The right to a fair trial includes, inter alia, the right of access to a court, the right to be heard and the equality of arms between the parties. This challenging new work elucidates the meaning of the fair trial and looks at the fair trials jurisprudence of the ECHR.Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights has become the defining standard within Europe for determining the fairness of criminal proceedings. Its success has been attributed to the fact that it is not based on a particular model of criminal procedure

Adaptation to the impacts of sea level rise in the Nile Delta coastal zone, Egypt : final project report

The Nile Delta coastal zone is low lying and potentially exposed to inundation from the sea. A relatively small rise in sea level could cause serious adverse effects on the delta coast and its growing population. However, the institutional context of decision making and planning for coastal defenses and development in Egypt is weak and there is no policy process for integrated coastal zone management. To help inform decision-making and raise awareness, the monetary value of impacts on agricultural activities as well as real estate in the project area, were estimated. Project activities identified the most vulnerable areas and developed adaptation options

Multi-Element Analysis of Spanish Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Based Techniques. Discrimination Using Multivariate Statistical Analysis

The elemental analysis of Spanish palm dates by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry is reported for the first time. To complete the information about the mineral composition of the samples, C, H, and N are determined by elemental analysis. Dates from Israel, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Iran have also been analyzed. The elemental composition have been used in multivariate statistical analysis to discriminate the dates according to its geographical origin. A total of 23 elements (As, Ba, C, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, H, In, K, Li, Mg, Mn, N, Na, Ni, Pb, Se, Sr, V, and Zn) at concentrations from major to ultra-trace levels have been determined in 13 date samples (flesh and seeds). A careful inspection of the results indicate that Spanish samples show higher concentrations of Cd, Co, Cr, and Ni than the remaining ones. Multivariate statistical analysis of the obtained results, both in flesh and seed, indicate that the proposed approach can be successfully applied to discriminate the Spanish date samples from the rest of the samples tested

Evaluación de diferentes metodologías para el análisis elemental de vinos mediante técnicas de espectrometría atómica de plasma

Póster presentado en el V Congreso Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología de los Alimentos, Murcia, 26-29 mayo 2009

Assessment of the Activity of Lactate Dehydrogenase, Gamma-glutamyl Transpeptidase and Alkaline Phosphatase in Breast Cancer Patients with and without Lymph Node Metastasis

Background: Breast cancer has the highest cancer incidence in women and is one of the leading causes of mortality globally. Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and other enzymes are vital metabolic enzymes that are associated with cancer development, invasion, and metastasis. Aim: The present study aimed to evaluate the LDH, Gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) and Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) levels in the circulation of patients of breast cancer in different stages and tried to correlate levels with the disease stage and duration of breast cancer with and without lymph node involvement. Methods: LDH, GGT, and ALP were analyzed by means of the spectrophotometer, Biosystem device and reagents, serum samples were used for measurement. Results: GGT and LDH had a significant difference with P.value 0.022 and 0.001 respectively between stages II and III, while ALP didn't show a significant difference. Conclusion: This data concluded that enzyme markers like serum LDH and GGT could be sensitive, specific and cost effective biomarkers for diagnosing carcinoma of the breast and for monitoring its progressio

Evaluation of Serum Gonadotropin and Prolactin Level among Sudanese Patients with Chronic Renal Failure

Background: Generally, patients on hemodialysis for chronic renal failure also have endocrine defects and sexual function disorders. In this study, we aimed to assess the serum prolactin (PRL), luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) in patients with chronic renal failure. Methods: This hospital-based case–control study was conducted at Jabal Aulia Teaching Hospital, Khartoum, Sudan. The study was carried out between August 2019 and February 2020. A total of 100 subjects were enrolled – 50 chronic renal failure patients and 50 as controls. The serum hormones were estimated using Tosoh 360. SPSS version 25 was used to analyze the results. Results: The serum PRL, LH, and FSH were significantly increased among chronic renal failure patients than their healthy counterparts (p-value = 0.000). The age of patients was positive correlated with plasma hormones, PRL (r = 0.332, p = 0.001), LH (r = 0.387, p = 0.000), and FSH (r = 0.320, p = 0.001). No correlation was found between the duration of the disease and serum hormones. Conclusion: Patients with chronic renal failure had a highly significant increase of serum PRL, LH, and FSH and also the age of the patients was positively correlated with serum hormones. Keywords: chronic renal failure, prolactin, gonadotropin, hemodialysi

Risks and opportunities : understanding climate change in the Nile Delta

The Alexandria Research Center for Adaptation to Climate Change (ARCA) is a policy-oriented centre for research. ARCA’s work focuses on socioeconomic aspects of adaptation in the Nile Delta, which up to this point (2011) has been under researched: only 15 research papers on climate change issues have been produced during the last 25 years. However, current ARCA studies show for instance, that large areas exposed to flooding can be protected through small-scale engineering works along the coastline; 23-26% of the Alexandria area is susceptible to flooding by sea level rise and would be protected with a 4 km long sea wall