Passing Before ‘Passing’: The Ambivalent Identity of the Narrator in Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is considered by many as an early seminal censure and commentary on the contested racial issue of African American in the United States of America. This paper argues that the ‘invisible’ protagonist of the Novel has passed for white as early as his childhood years. The narrator relinquishes his black identity for the conveniences and supremacy that the white identity entails. This paper brings to question the credibility of narrative in the novel; also, it proves that the narrator contradicts himself. The invisible narrator appears not to have a firm stance regarding the atrocities suffered by his own people—African Americans. People of color in the United States were caught between two cultures, identities, and lives. The un-named narrator has taken the least troubled road. He announces his passing for white at the end of the novel. This study contends that he has done so long time ago before he literally announces his passing

Corporate Boards and Ownership Structure as Antecedents of Corporate Governance Disclosure in Saudi Arabian Publicly Listed Corporations

We investigate whether and to what extent publicly listed corporations voluntarily comply with and disclose recommended good corporate governance (CG) practices, and distinctively examine whether the observed cross-sectional differences in such CG disclosures can be explained by ownership and board mechanisms with specific focus on Saudi Arabia. Our results suggest that corporations with larger boards, a big-four auditor, higher government ownership, a CG committee and higher institutional ownership disclose considerably more than those that are not. By contrast, we find that an increase in block ownership significantly reduces CG disclosure. Our results are generally robust to a number of econometric models that control for different types of disclosure indices, firm-specific characteristics and firm-level fixed-effects. Our results have important implications for policy-makers, practitioners and regulatory authorities, especially those in developing countries across the globe

MANAGEMENT’S PERCEPTION OF STOCK DIVIDEND DISTRIBUTION IN AN EMERGING CAPITAL MARKET: THE CASE OF KUWAIT

The purpose of this study is to investigate perceptions of top managers of Kuwaiti companies regarding factors the affect their companies’ decision to distribute stock dividend ( SD ). A questionnaire listing 32 reasons that could explain companies’ decisions to declare SDs was distributed to a sample of 120 randomly selected top managers from 100 Kuwaiti companies and 73 responses were received (representing a 61% response rate ). Participants were classified according to: ( 1 )business sector ( investment, real estate, banking, service, and industrial ) and ( 2 ) size of SDs ( small ( less than 25% ) and large ( 25% or more )). Nonparametric statistical tests were employed to analyze the data.Stock Dividends, Importance Ratings, Trading Liquidity, Institutional Investors

Growth Policy and Bank Profitability for Jordan Commercial Banks: Housing Bank for Trade & Finance Model

The present study aimed to estimate growth Policy for (HBTF) in Jordan measured by total assets percentage growth and profit percentage growth ,this study also correlate growth strategy  with the accounting-based determinants of bank profitability measured by  return on assets (ROA) , and return on equity(ROE) during the period (2000-2009). The researcher  collected bank-specific data variables from the financial statements of housing bank for trade and finance in Jordan over the period 1999-2009 available in the annual reports and Amman financial market. The researcher used the Descriptive Analytical Method, the researcher used Analytical method to analyze the data from the financial statements throughout the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS-15). The present study revealed the following findings: 1- There is statistical significant correlation at of significance (p?0.05) between ROE and growth percent in profit during 2000-2009. 2-There is statistical significant correlation at of significance (p?0.05) between ROE and growth percent in total Assets during 2000-2009. 3-There is statistical significant correlation at of significance (p?0.05) between ROA and growth percent in assets during 2000-2009.. 4-There is no statistical significant correlation at of significance (p?0.05) between ROA and growth percent in profit during 2000-2009. Keywords: growth policy,  profitability,  ROE ,ROA.   

Evaluation of Social Responsibility at the Jordanian Islamic Banks using Balance Scorecard Method

The study aimed to identify the impact of social responsibility on the organizational performance at the Islamic banks of  Jordan, through the identification of trends in the study sample of social responsibility dimensions, and organizational performance. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researchers developed a questionnaire for the detection of the dimensions of corporate social responsibility (economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropy responsibility) and the organizational performance. The study sample consisted of (198) directors of top management and middle management in the Jordanian Islamic banks.  Sample was selected randomly, and in light of this, data was collected and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The research most important findings and conclusions are: There are high arithmetic mean of manager's estimations at the Jordanian Islamic banks towards social responsibility and organizational performance. The social responsibility as an independent variable accumulates a variance of (48.3%) from the organizational performance.The ethical responsibility ranked first in the impact on the organizational performance, it accumulates a variance of (39.7%) from the organizational performance. Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, Organizational performance, balanced scorecard, Jordanian Islamic banks, stock shareholders

Workers Attitudes in the Municipalities and Provinces towards the Decentralized and Regional Project in Jordan

The present study aimed to identify the attitudes of workers in local Jordanian public departments as a project towards decentralization of territories of its municipalities in Jordan, The study sample consist of (228) managers, and employees of different ranks whom are working in municipalities and local governmental departments, in order to answer the study questions and hypotheses, the researcher developed questionnaires to measure main variables of the study. Some statistical techniques were used for testing the hypotheses and answering the study questions. The present study revealed the following findings: There is statistically significant correlation between decentralization advantages and environmental factors.There are no statistically significant impact of investigators attitudes toward advantages and disadvantages of decentralization according to demographic factors.There is statistically significant impact of scientific qualification attitudes toward decentralization disadvantages.There is statistically significant impact of investigators attitudes toward decentralization disadvantages and advantages. Keywords: decentralization, attitudes, territories, project in Jordan, environmental factors Participation, political factors, social factors, financial, Developmental planning Factors, organizational factors

Radioactive and Environmental Pollution in the Hilla River

يعد التلوث البيئي من أكبر مشاكل هذا العصر, ومن أكثرها خطورة على مستقبل الحياة فوق كوكب الأرض. ان اغلب العلماء اختلفوا في تحديد تعريف دقيق للمفهوم العلمي الخاص بالتلوث البيئي وأياً كان المفهوم العلمي للتلوث الاشعاعي مرتبط بالدرجة الاساسية بالنظام البيئي (Eco System), فالتباين النوعي و الكمي الذي يحصل على تركيب مواد وعناصر هذا النظام يؤدي الى اختلال في توازن هذا النظام مما يؤدي الى حدوث تأثيرات مباشرة او غير مباشرة في النظام البيئي، و أحد أنواع التلوث البيئي هو التلوث الإشعاعي الذي يمثل مشكلة مهمة ومعقدة. يشكل التلوث الإشعاعي ثقلاً متزايداً على المكونات المختلفة لبيئتنا من ضمنها التربة التي تعد طبقة حية تتفاعل الكثير من العوامل الطبيعية والكيميائية والحياتية في تكوينها وتطورها وإكسابها خواصها المختلفة. تكمن أهمية التربة من حيث إنها المستقبل للمواد المشعة وأن دورها بعيد الأمد يكون بوصفها مستودعاً للمواد المشعة وفي الوقت نفسه بوصفها مصدراً لهذه المواد في تلوث الهواء والماء والنبات.Environmental pollution is one of the biggest problems of this age, and one of the most dangerous for the future of life on Earth. Most of the scientists differed in determining a precise definition of the scientific concept of environmental pollution, and whatever the scientific concept of radioactive pollution is related primarily to the ecosystem (Eco System), The qualitative and quantitative variation that occurs in the composition of the materials and elements of this system leads to an imbalance in the balance of this system, which leads to direct or indirect effects on the ecosystem, and one of the types of environmental pollution is radioactive pollution, which represents an important and complex problem. Radioactive pollution places an increasing burden on the various components of our environment, including soil, which is a living layer. Many natural, chemical and biological factors interact in their various formation, development and properties. The importance of soil lies in the fact that it is the future of radioactive materials and its long-term role as a repository of radioactive materials and at the same time a source of these materials in air, water and plant pollution. Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample

Practical Trade-Offs in Integrity Protection for Binaries via Ethereum

Ensuring the integrity of executable binaries is of vital importance to systems that run and depend on them. Additionally, supply-chain attacks and security related bugs demonstrate that binaries, once deployed, may need to be revoked and replaced with updated versions. Recently, blockchain ecosystems have garnered broad attention as middlewares for decentralised solutions to existing problems. Stengele et al. presented a concept how the Ethereum blockchain and peer-to-peer network can be used to ensure the integrity of binaries with timely, accurate, and machine-readable revocations. In this work, we show this concept in practice with a user client implementation in Go and demonstrate how revocations and updates can reliably reach a user client within minutes. We show the client\u27s ability to ensure the integrity of multiple binaries and continuously monitor the Ethereum blockchain for updates and revocations via an unmodified Ethereum client. We also examine the trust relations and trade-offs through our use case. Since the user client fully relies on an Ethereum client as a gateway, the latter\u27s resilience against malicious actors is crucial to consider in a practical deployment

Replay Attacks and Defenses Against Cross-shard Consensus in Sharded Distributed Ledgers

We present a family of replay attacks against sharded distributed ledgers targeting cross-shard consensus protocols, such as the recently proposed Chainspace and Omniledger. They allow an attacker, with network access only, to double-spend or lock resources with minimal efforts. The attacker can act independently without colluding with any nodes, and succeed even if all nodes are honest; most of the attacks can also exhibit themselves as faults under periods of asynchrony. These attacks are effective against both shard-led and client-led cross-shard consensus approaches. We present Byzcuit-a new cross-shard consensus protocol that is immune to those attacks. We implement a prototype of Byzcuit and evaluate it on a real cloud-based testbed, showing that our defenses impact performance minimally, and overall performance surpasses previous works

The effect of radiotherapy on survival of dental implants in head and neck cancer patients

Objectives: To explore the current literature of the survival of dental implants in irradiated head and neck cancer patients considering the role of implant location, bone augmentation, dose of radiation and timing of implant placement. Study Design: Pubmed search was conducted to identify articles published between January 2000 and December 2014 and presenting data of dental implant survival with radiotherapy in head and neck cancer patients. Studies on animal subjects and craniofacial implants were excluded. Results: 18 articles out of 27 were eligible for inclusion in this systematic review. 12 out of 18 studies reported favorable outcome of dental implants and radiotherapy with survival rates between 74.4% and 97%. Seven out of ten studies comparing the survival rates according to site of implant placement reported that implants were found to osseointegrate with greater success in the irradiated mandible than irradiated maxilla. 5 studies which compared implant survival in irradiated native bone versus irradiated grafted bone reported that irradiated grafted bone showed a significantly reduced dental implant survival rate in comparison to irradiated native bone. 6 out of 18studies in which radiation doses exceeded 70 Gy reported lower survival rates of dental implants in comparison to the studies in which radiation doses were ≤70Gy. Higher survival rates were reported in 2 studies in which implants placement was before radiotherapy in comparison to the remaining 16 studies in which implants placement was after radiotherapy. Conclusions: Dental implants may be affected by radiotherapy especially when they are placed in maxilla, in grafted bone, or after radiation, however, they remain a functional option for rehabilitation of head and cancer patients. More prospective cohort studies and randomized controlled trails are still needed to draw more evidence based conclusion