IBN ARABSHAH: THE UNACKNOWLEDGED DEBT OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’S TAMBURLAINE

This thesis suggests strong relations between Marlowe’s Tamburlaine I & II and Ibn Arabshah’s 1436 account of Tamerlane’s Life (‘Ajaib al-maqdur fi nawa’ib Timur: The Wonders of Destiny Concerning the Calamities Wrought by Tamerlane), clarifies controversial issues, and explains previously baffling allusions editors have pondered long. In general, the thesis enriches our understanding of Marlowe\u27s wide ranging sources, im­plies a critique of western-biased source scholarship, and opens possibilities to re-evaluate eastern contributions to the Renaissance in general. The first chapter high­lights some well-recognized events in the play and in historical sources (the caging of Bayazid and ill-treatment of his wife, the trampling of children- virgins under the hooves of cavalry), and some obscure and never before identified incidents in historical records (gold underwater and the Christians of Georgia). The second chapter treats the “scene of death” in Marlowe’s play and in Ibn Arabshah’s account; the third addresses the importance of astrology, especially stellar and planet­ary conjunctions in both works. The fourth proposes a source for Zenocrate stronger than any of those advanced so far

Continuum and combined continuum-discontinuum analysis of wellbore mechanics and stimulation response

Wellbore drilling and stimulation activities are interlinked processes within the task of borehole construction. Before drilling a well, the initial stress state in the rock can be defined by three principal stresses, with a typical assumption that these consist of the vertical stress (σv), the maximum horizontal stress (σH) and the minimum horizontal stress (σh). After drilling, the stress state changes around the created borehole. The fundamental engineering problem then is to calculate the stresses around the created borehole and/or at the borehole’s wall. Numerous analytical and numerical models exist to estimate the stresses around a circular hole, but these models cannot explain the observed phenomena either in the field or the lab. Attention here is focused on models that are commonly used to predict the stress state around a circular opening. These models do not account for the sequence of the physical processes, leading to an inadequate stress state estimation. This research investigates the 2D classical analytical method, along with a comparison of that approach against numerical methods. This investigation reveals that the models are not equivalent. This is not because of mathematical issues, but is due to the fact that the mechanical systems expressed by these models are not equivalent. The drilling model captures the physics of the real process which makes it possible to explain some phenomena observed in field and laboratory tests. The drilling model approach is applied for several sedimentary rock examples. The combined continuum-discontinuum method reveals its capability in calculating rock failure and deformation that is comparable to some published laboratory drilling tests. Also, the simulation results shed light into the complex fracture growth regime around the wellbore. Drilling and Hydraulic fracture simulation is carried out for Berea sandstone using both the continuum and the combined continuum-discontinuum methods. The results are in good agreement which identifies a practical engineering method for larger models. The fracturing initiates in Mode II (shear) near the circumference of the wellbore aligned with the maximum stress. At later stages, Mode I (tensile) fractures also develop and propagate the fracture parallel to the maximum horizontal stress. This fracturing mechanism continues for as long as the pressure is applied

Eastern characters on the Elizabethan stage: uses and abuses

In this study, I present representative samples of Eastern characters in four English plays of the late Elizabethan period. Pertinent historical material and travel narratives relating to contacts between West and East are consulted and used for support and contextualisation. Although I will be mainly focusing on the characters of the Moor and the Turk, at times my analysis will extend to cover Arabs and Saracens, non-Northern Africans, and Jews. My thesis investigates the socio-cultural and ideological roles that Eastern characters played in Elizabethan drama and their relation to English national concerns and issues during the 1580s and 1590s. These issues include the threat posed by Spain to England, the English succession crisis, international trade, politics, religious reform, relations with Catholic Europe, and with Moorish and Turkish dominions and powers. These issues are dramatised in the commercial playhouses where Eastern characters, though abused, seem to have enjoyed prominence during the last three decades of the sixteenth century. I will argue that although the plays were enacted in distant foreign settings, London theatres bring these Eastern figures closer to home to speak to one or more of the English concerns identified above. In the first chapter, I discuss the relationship between West and East prior to and during the Elizabethan period. I also note the presence of Easterners in England and Scotland. I then examine the uses and abuses of the figure of the Moor in recent scholarship. In the second chapter, I argue that George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar (1588/1589) examines the English succession crisis in relation to the Moorish succession conflict in North Africa, an issue he also articulates in his contribution to Titus Andronicus. In the third chapter, I maintain that Robert Greene’s Alphonsus, King of Aragon (1587) addresses the same issue of succession in the play’s first part, and then exposes the dangers of political prophecy, popular in the 1580s, through the staging of heathen Moors and Turkish characters in a foreign setting. In the fourth chapter, I contend that Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (1589) shows the ease with which religion can be exploited to fulfil personal ends through the corrupt actions of culturally suspect strangers of various faiths and ethnicities. In the last chapter, I analyse the figure of the Moor in Titus Andronicus (1594) within the context of the Spanish Black Legend. William Shakespeare and George Peele use the Goths and Aaron, the exaggerated Moor/Jew evil figure, to underscore the Moorish-Jewish mixed lineage of the early modern Spaniards and to undermine their claim to true faith (Roman Catholicism). In my conclusion I briefly look at a few Moors/Turks on the immediate Jacobean stage (1603-1625). Though the Moor seems to undergo a shift in gender and function (more women than men), she/he still epitomises devilish evil attributes

Dynamic priority-based efficient resource allocation and computing framework for vehicular multimedia cloud computing

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works In intelligent transportation system, smart vehicles are equipped with a variety of sensing devices those offer various multimedia applications and services related to smart driving assistance, weather forecasting, traffic congestion information, road safety alarms, and many entertainment and comfort-related applications. These smart vehicles produce a massive amount of multimedia related data that required fast and real-time processing which cannot be fully handled by the standalone onboard computing devices due to their limited computational power and storage capacities. Therefore, handling such multimedia applications and services demanded changes in the underlaying networking and computing models. Recently, the integration of vehicles with cloud computing is emerged as a challenging computing paradigm. However, there are certain challenges related to multimedia contents processing, (i.e., resource cost, fast service response time, and quality of experience) that severely affect the performance of vehicular communication. Thus, in this paper, we propose an efficient resource allocation and computation framework for vehicular multimedia cloud computing to overcome the aforementioned challenges. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of quality of experience, service response time, and resource cost by using the Cloudsim simulator

FANET: Smart city mobility off to a flying start with self‐organized drone‐based networks

Due to recent advancements in smart city traffic and transport monitoring industry 4.0 applications. Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs) ability to cover geographically large areas, makes it a suitable technology to address the challenges faced during remote areas traffic monitoring. The implementation of drone based FANETs have several advantages in remote traffic monitoring, including free air-to-air drone assisted communication zone and smart surveillance and security. The drone-based FANETs can be deployed within minutes without requiring physical infrastructure, making it suitable for mission critical applications in several areas of interests. Here a drone-based FANETs application for smart city remote traffic monitoring is presented while addressing several challenges including coverage of larger geographical area and data communication links between FANETs nodes. A FANET-inspired enhanced ACO algorithm that easily coped with drone assisted technology of FANETs is proposed to cover the large areas. Simulation results are presented to compare the proposed technique against different network lifetime and number of received packets. The presented results show that the proposed technique perform better compared to other state-of-the-art techniques

Sources of Mathematics Learning Disabilities for Middle School Classes from the Point of View of Supervisors and Teachers and Their Suggestions for Addressing them

The study aimed to identify the sources of mathematics learning Disabilities for middle school classes from the point of view of supervisors and teachers and their suggestions to address them. The study sample consisted of 38 male and female supervisors and 151 teachers for the mathematics course who were chosen by the available random method during the first semester of the academic year 2021 / 2022. To achieve the objectives of the study, a tool was prepared that consisted of four subscales (36 items), namely the student, the teacher, the textbook, and the classroom environment. The results showed that the textbook ranked first, followed by the student, and then the teacher. The average responses of the study participants on the survey subscales were moderate, and there were no statistically significant differences attributed to the job title and gender variables and there were statistically significant differences attributed to the educational qualification variable and in favor of the bachelor\u27s holders. There were statistically significant differences due to the number of years of experience in favor of the participants who have less than 5 years of experience. The study recommended holding training courses for mathematics teachers to find out a specific mechanism in dealing with people with learning difficulties. Keywords: Learning disabilities, mathematics, middle school, teachers, supervisor

The Utility of Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) in the Emergency Department: A Systematic Review

Point-of-Care Ultrasonography (POCUS) has increasingly become a pivotal tool in emergency medicine, offering significant improvements in diagnostic accuracy and patient care. This systematic review aims to evaluate the utility of POCUS in emergency settings, focusing on its impact on diagnostic accuracy, patient management, and the implications of POCUS training for emergency medicine residents. Following PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive search across major databases, primarily PubMed, was conducted in November 2023. The review included clinical trials, observational studies, and controlled clinical trials, focusing on the utility of POCUS in emergency departments. Out of 305 articles identified, 8 studies met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed. The review encompassed diverse studies with a total of 1203 participants, demonstrating the effectiveness of POCUS in various emergency scenarios. Key findings include the improvement of diagnostic accuracy for conditions like acute dyspnea and Acute Decompensated Heart Failure (ADHF), the utility of POCUS in pediatric emergency care, and its role in ocular emergencies. POCUS was also found to influence patient care decisions significantly, changing diagnostic impressions and management plans. Additionally, POCUS training for emergency medicine residents led to increased ultrasound usage and improved patient management efficiency. POCUS has emerged as a transformative tool in emergency medicine, enhancing diagnostic accuracy, guiding clinical decision-making, and improving patient care outcomes. Its applications range from general emergency scenarios to specialized pediatric and ocular emergencies. The integration of POCUS training in emergency medicine residency programs is crucial for harnessing its full potential. As technology advances, POCUS is poised to continue revolutionizing patient care in emergency settings, affirming its indispensable role in modern medical practice

5,5-Dimethyl-2,2-bis­(pyridin-2-yl)-1,3-diazinane

In the mol­ecule of the title compound, C16H20N4, the 1,3-diazinane ring adopts a chair conformation and the dihedral angle formed by the pyridine rings is 78.64 (8)°. The mol­ecular conformation is stabilized by an intra­molecular C—H⋯N hydrogen bond, forming an S(6) ring motif. In the crystal, centrosymmetrically related mol­ecules are linked into dimers by pairs of N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds, generating rings of R 2 2(10) graph-set motif

Heterostructured WO3–TiVO4 thin-film photocatalyst for efficient photoelectrochemical water splitting

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. Data availability: Data associated with this study have not been deposited into a publicly available repository. Data will be made available on request to the corresponding author.Photoelectrochemical water splitting via solar irradiation has garnered significant interest due to its potential in large-scale renewable hydrogen production. Heterostructure materials have emerged as an effective strategy, demonstrating enhanced performance in photoelectrochemical water-splitting applications compared to individual photocatalysts. In this study, to augment the performance of sprayed TiVO4 thin films, a hydrothermally prepared WO3 underlayer was integrated beneath the spray pyrolised TiVO4 film. The consequent heterostructure demonstrated notable enhancements in optical, structural, microstructural attributes, and photocurrent properties. This improvement is attributed to the strategic deposition of WO3 underlayer, forming a heterostructure composite electrode. This led to a marked increase in photocurrent density for the WO3/TiVO4 photoanode, reaching a peak of 740 μA/cm2 at an applied potential of 1.23 V vs RHE, about nine-fold that of standalone TiVO4. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy revealed a reduced semicircle for the heterostructure, indicating improved charge transfer compared to bare TiVO4. The heterostructure photoelectrode exhibited enhanced charge carrier conductivity at the interface and sustained stability over 3 h. The distinct attributes of heterostructure photoelectrode present significant opportunities for devising highly efficient sunlight-driven water splitting systems.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)Saudi Arabia Culture Bureau in the United Kingdo