Gender differences in mobilization for collective action: case studies of villages in Northern Nigeria

"Men and women participate in collective action for different purposes in northern Nigeria. Field work conducted in six villages show that while men engage in community activities such as road repairs, maintenance of schools and hospitals, refuse collection and maintenance of the traditional village government, women mobilize around activities such as savings, house and farm work and care giving. It is argued that men mobilize around community activities outside the home because of their public orientation and because they want to maintain their dominance of that space. Women, in contrast, mobilize around activities in keeping with their domestic orientation and traditional roles such as care giving and housework. Religion also influences the extent of women's participation in collective action. Because men have command of community institutions, they are better able to access the resources embedded in these institutions, but women are able to negotiate within established social structures for better conditions. Given the socio-cultural characteristics of communities in northern Nigeria, an effective strategy for collective action is collaboration between men's and women's groups rather than separatism or integration." Authors' AbstractGender, Poverty, Collective action, Community participation, Social capital, Village associations, Northern Nigeria,

A conceptual model for federated authentication in the cloud

Authentication is a key security control for any computing system, whether that is a PC, server, laptop, tablet or mobile phone. However, authentication is traditionally poorly served, with existing implementations falling foul of a variety of weaknesses. Passwords are poorly selected, reused and shared (to name but a few). Research has suggested novel approaches to authentication such as transparent authentication and cooperative and distributed authentication. However, these technologies merely focus upon individual platforms rather than providing a universal and federated authentication approach that can be used across technologies and services. The advent of cloud computing, its universal connectivity, scalability and flexibility, offers a new opportunity of achieving usable and convenient authentication seamlessly in a technology and service independent fashion. The approach introduces a new dedicated authentication provider - the Managed Authentication Service Provider - that is able to provide state-of-the-art centralised verification of authenticity. However, relying upon such an environment also introduces a range of technology, privacy and trust-related issues that must be overcome

Animation for Visualization of Some Algebraic Concepts

Presenting the sciences and teaching the courses in an interactive way is one of the most attractive aspects of the web and educational technology. Many mathematical softwares demonstrate how these technologies make advance topics more accessible and complex mathematical concepts more understandable. The common problems in mathematics teaching process; is the difficulties, undergraduate students encounter in understanding math concepts, theories and problem solving. These problems can be overcome through using creativity in developing math teaching tools and styles. The objective of this project is to use macromedia Flash to make many confusing and complex math concepts simple, visualized and interesting and also to develop a part of a package of animated and visualized mathematical courses. Flash ability and flexibility are the features of this tool which help the designer to develop demonstrating of algebra concepts in a virtual environment. This research will use Macromedia Flash for developing a visualized package of algebra course (Introduction to Algebra (MTK 3001)

Subclinical Hypothyroidism and Accidental Hemorrhage

Back ground: Subclinical hypothyroidism (SH) is defined by an elevated serum thyrotropin level and normal serum thyroxine concentration. While strong evidence clearly demonstrates that overt dysfunctions (hyper- or hypothyroidism) have deleterious effects on pregnancy outcome, subclinical disease, namely subclinical hypothyroidism, has still to be conclusively defined as a risk factor for adverse outcomes., of those bad obstetric outcomes, placental abruption (PA) (accidental hemorrhage) is associated with underlying risk factors both jeopardizing trophoblast and vascular function. Subclinical hypothyroidism may relate to both conditions.   Aim of study: to prove the association between subclinical hypothyroidism and placental abruption(accidental hemorrhage)  in study group compared to  control group. Setting:  a prospective case controlled study involves total 109 laboring women, who attended Al-Zahra teaching hospital at Annajaf city-Iraq between  March to September 2013. Patients and methods:of total 109 women entered our study, 54 with normal labour and were regarded as control group and 55 with clinical diagnosis of placental abruption, after complete history and examination, blood sample withdrawn and thyroid function test, TSH, T3, T4, and free T4 were measured  using commercially available Minividas kits (biomerieux, France), Minividas was performed according to manufacturer instructions. The normal value for T3 was (0.95-2.23), T4 (60-120) and TSH (0.25-5) µIU/ml and freeT4 (0.76-2.24). Those who had high TSH and low T3, T4 and free T4 when compared to laboratory specific normal values, were diagnosed as clinical (overt) hypothyroidism, and were excluded from our study.  those who had high TSH but normal freeT4 thyroid hormone were diagnosed to have  subclinical hypothyroidism, those in whom all hormone values were within  normal limits were designated as euthyroid. Statistical analysis: These were used to accept or reject the statistical hypotheses, they include the followings: ANOVA test (F-test) and (chi square test). The comparison of significant (P-value) in any test were S= Significant difference (P? 0.05). Results: Of total 109 participants 54 regarded as control while 55 were diagnosed clinically as cases of PA, there were no statistical significant difference between two groups in maternal age with mean maternal age of 27.92±5.42 SD and 27.49±6.58 SD for control and PA respectively,  low parity dominated the picture for both groups and although the ratio of those who were P0-P2 was higher in cases of PA 92.7% compared to control group 87.7%this did not reach statistical significance with P value of 0.09, most of our participants were urban and there were no statistical clinical significance between two groups with figures of 76.3% and 79.6% for PA and control groups respectively, but there was statistically significance difference in gestational age between our study groups with PA tends to occur at smaller gestational age 34.67 weeks±3.39 SD compared to control group 37.57 weeks±1.57 SD, surprisingly  there was nearly fourfold rise in incidence of SH in patients with PA compared to control group with ratio of 16.3% and 3.7% for PA and control group respectively. And again there was no statistical significance in identification of SH for those who were term or preterm  in PA group (17.6% vs 15.1%). Discussion:  subclinical hypothyroidism was identified in 3.7% of the control  population tested, and this corresponds with all previous reports 2% to 5% in pregnant women. however, this ratio increased to 16.3%, 9/55 (nearly fourfold ) of cases diagnosed with clinical abruption a figure which was higher than reviewed  in previous reports of 2-3 fold rise incidence of placental abruption with subclinical hypothyroidism. This  results agree with  Casey and colleagues who  studied pregnancy complications with SH, who found that Significantly more placental abruptions (relative risk [RR], 3.0; 95% CI, 1.1-8.2), were found in the SH group, but disagree with Cleary-Goldman and colleagues who reported  on First and Second Trimester Evaluation of Risk (FASTER) trial, in which the researchers found no increased risk of placental abruption. Unlike Brian M. Casey, who found that  women with subclinical hypothyroidism were significantly older than control women3, in this study  there was no statistically significant difference in mean  maternal age between two  groups, there were also no significant differences in other demographic variables like residency and parity,however;  gestational age (GA) was significantly lower for cases PA,  but when gestational age  studied  in relation to placental abruption with SH at term and preterm gestational ages 3/17 vs 6/38 respectively, this failed  to reach statistical significance. Conclusion: 1-SH is not uncommon condition among our laboring population 2-SH was found to increase fourfold risk of placental abruption in this study 3-maternal age, parity, residence all were insignificant confounders between control and PA group 4- placental abruption tends to occur at preterm gestational age but this failed to reach statistical significance for cases with SH in term and preterm GA

An Approach towards Data Protection as a Service Intended for Cloud Masses

The Cloud is a database of numerous data which is accumulated , adjusted or recovered by clients . By Cloud Service Provider users may receive services of pay per use. There are many services, like quick access to data , scalability , data storage , data recovery … etc which can profit customers . Cloud service providers are responsible of the security and protection of their customers’ data which moves online and vast data centers. Thousands of requests and hundreds of millions of users can benefit from securities added to single cloud platform. Protecting data requires various sophisticated tools, mechanisms and activities. Keywords: Data protection as a service, cryptographic defenses, single cloud platform

Requirements for redesigning the interface of Iraqi e-government portal

Many countries have provided their government services to the people online. However, Iraq is still looking for opportunities to implement the online technology for their government services. The initiatives to venture into online government services, or called electronic government (e-government) have not shown good return. Although the e-government is available, people still prefer to work on traditional way, or enter into the e-government modules through improper channels. Hence, they are viewed as not using the e-government portal. Many factors were identified influencing the disadvantages of the existing e-government portal; nevertheless the design of the front office is not making users attracted to enter into the portal through the proper home page. In contrast, the users tend to go directly to the module they intend to. Hence, his study deduces that the user interface of the front office of the portal was not usable, not supporting user experience. This study proposes a set of elements for the Iraqi e-government portal to ensure that it is perceived usable in terms of usefulness and ease-of-use. This study develops the prototype that incorporates the elements as Iraqi e-government portal (Ie-gP). Therefore, the aim of the study is to propose a set of elements that make the Ie-gP usable from users‟ perception. To accomplish that, three specific objectives are formulated: (1) to determine the interface elements for the front office of Ie-gP, (2) to design and develop the front office of Ie-gP, and (3) to evaluate the ease-of-use of the front office of Ie-gP. Comparative analysis, prototyping, and experimental studies are used to accomplish the objectives and aim. General findings show that Ie-gP is perceived useful and easy-to-use. The main contributions of this study are the elements of usable e-government portals for Iraqi context and the prototype of the usable portal called IegP

Analyzing Iraqi Political Cartoons

Pictures have an essential effect on our thoughts and decisions.  We have also noticed how these pictures produced in the form of cartoons affect our viewpoints.  They do so since we are addicted to social media to the extent it can manipulate our thoughts unconsciously and obnoxiously. Besides, people don’t have the courage to express their viewpoints clearly, so they tend to use the satire to keep their face.  This motivates the researcher to analyze the underlying structure of this satire presented in caricatures to read the message clearly.  This research aims at revealing the way the political caricatures are produced and the main characteristics of political caricatures.  Incorporating a methodology depending on selecting some samples, this paper is a semiotic analysis of political caricatures announced through the election campaign 2018 in Iraq.  It concentrates on the format caricatures used as a communicative channel on net platform to come up with essential senses and prevailing political matters. This is carried out by adopting Barthes’ semiotic theory which is the first apparent semiotic approach. It is a good means to analyze the implied structure, including the dictionary and implied senses of creating influence of political caricatures. Besides, it provides us with a good means to interpret and understand political caricatures. This is quite important since political cartoons work as an approach to comprehend human consciousness