The Politics and Culture of "Honour Killing": The Murder of Fadime §ahindal

Rahmi Sahindal, a Kurdish man who migrated from Turkey to Sweden in 1980, killed his daughter Fadime in the city of Uppsala on 21 January 2002. Rahmi and his son, Mesud, felt that Fadime had shamed the family by rejecting an arranged marriage, and by feeling free to love a partner of her choice, a Swedish man. She had, according to tradition, violated the codes of honour "namus." She had further "shamed" her father and brother by resisting their death threats, going public about their intentions, taking them to court, and by launching a campaign against honour killing. Rahmi told the police that he had to defend his (family's) honour by killing his daughter

Controlled Hydrothermal Growth of ZnO Nanorod Arrays: Selective Growth and Cation Doping

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a well-studied wide band gap (~3.37 eV) n-type semiconductor material with significant properties such as large exciton binding energy (60 meV). Recently, 1-dimensional ZnO nanostructures have attracted a lot of attention owing to their dimensionality-dependent chemical, physical, electrical, and magnetic properties. In this project, we have grown patterned low-aspect-ratio, well-separated single ZnO nanorods using a hydrothermal method on two different substrates with dissimilar crystal orientations. ZnO nuclei have been used as a seed layer to compensate the crystal mismatch between the substrates and nanorods. Based on XRD results, in order to have highly oriented nanorods, the seed layer must be annealed over 300 ̊ C. Micro-Raman spectra show that our patterned nanorods have a wurtzite crystal structure, with most nanorods presenting vertical orientation relative to the substrate. Room-temperature micro-photoluminescence spectra from the nanorods show sharp band edge emission at 385 nm and a common broadband defect emission in the visible range. This method is a significant step towards an economical controlled synthesis of 1-dimensional ZnO for application in mass-production advanced devices. In the second part, undoped and C-doped (C: Mg, Ni, Mn, Co, Cu, Cr, Na) ZnO nanorods were synthesized by a hydrothermal method at temperatures as low as 60 ̊C. The effect of doping on morphology of the ZnO nanorods was visualized by taking their cross section and top SEM images. The crystallinity change of the ZnO nanorods due to each cationic dopant was thoroughly investigated according to their XRD patterns. The optical Raman active modes of undoped and cation-doped nanorods were measured with a micro-Raman set up at room temperature. The surface chemistry of undoped and doped ZnO nanorods were investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Finally, the band gap shift and defect emission of undoped and doped nanorods were measured by a photoluminescence set up at room temperature. Our results can be used as a comprehensive reference regarding the engineering of the morphological, structural and optical properties of ZnO nanorods by using a low temperature doping synthesis as an economical mass production approach

Quantifying morphologies of developing neuronal cells using deep learning with imperfect annotations

The functionality of human intelligence relies on the interaction and health of neurons, hence, quantifying neuronal morphologies can be crucial for investigating the functionality of the human brain. This paper proposes a deep learning (DL) based method for segmenting and quantifying neuronal structures in fluorescence microscopy images of developing neuronal cells cultured in vitro. Compared to the majority of supervised DL-based segmentation methods that heavily rely on creating exact corresponding masks of neuronal structures for the preparation of training samples, the proposed approach allows for imperfect annotation of neurons, as it only requires tracing the centrelines of the neurites. This ability accelerates the preparation of training data by several folds. Our proposed framework is built on a modified version of PSPNet with an EfficientNet backbone pre-trained on the CityScapes dataset. To handle the imperfectness of training samples, we incorporated a weighted combination of two loss functions, namely the Dice loss and Lovász loss functions, into our network. We evaluated the proposed framework and several other state-of-the-art methods on a published dataset of approximately 900 manually quantified cultured mouse neurons. Our results indicate a close correlation between the proposed method and manual quantification in terms of neuron length and the number of branches while demonstrating improved analysis speed. Furthermore, the proposed method achieved high accuracy in neuron segmentation, as evidenced by the evaluation of the neurons’ length and number of branches

Estudio experimental y numérico de la estabilidad de la pendiente aguas arriba en un embalse de presas de tierra en condiciones de extracción rápida

The rapid ‎drawdown of the dam reservoir is one of the most common situations occurring in the lifetime of a dam. For this reason, one of the main factors in the design of the upstream slope is the rapid drainage of the reservoir. In this case, the upstream slope is in a critical condition and the slope may be unstable. When the water surface in the reservoir is drawdown suddenly, the water level in the dam body does not decrease at the same time as the reservoir water level. The analysis of seepage from the earth dam body and calculation of the water loss play an important role in calculating the amount of pore water pressure, and, consequently, the stability analysis of the dam body. In addition, any seepage analysis is dependent on the hydraulic properties of the dam materials. In order to investigate the effect of hydraulic conductivity on the rapid drawdown of water level and the seepage, an experimental model was constructed of an earth dam. By accurate measurement of hydraulic parameters of the materials in saturated and unsaturated media, the flow through this model was modeled using a disk penetrometer by seep/w software. The results were then compared with the observed data.The rapid ‎drawdown of the dam reservoir is one of the most common situations occurring in the lifetime of a dam. For this reason, one of the main factors in the design of the upstream slope is the rapid drainage of the reservoir. In this case, the upstream slope is in a critical condition and the slope may be unstable. When the water surface in the reservoir is drawdown suddenly, the water level in the dam body does not decrease at the same time as the reservoir water level. The analysis of seepage from the earth dam body and calculation of the water loss play an important role in calculating the amount of pore water pressure, and, consequently, the stability analysis of the dam body. In addition, any seepage analysis is dependent on the hydraulic properties of the dam materials. In order to investigate the effect of hydraulic conductivity on the rapid drawdown of water level and the seepage, an experimental model was constructed of an earth dam. By accurate measurement of hydraulic parameters of the materials in saturated and unsaturated media, the flow through this model was modeled using a disk penetrometer by seep/w software. The results were then compared with the observed data

Effects of Silicon and AgNO3 Elicitors on Biochemical Traits and Antioxidant Enzymes Activity of Henbane (Hyoscyamus reticulatus L.) Hairy Roots

Lattice henbane (Hyoscyamus reticulatus L.) is an herbaceous, biennial plant belonging to Solanaceae family. H. reticulatus hairy roots were established from two-week-old leaves infected by A7 strain of Agrobacterium rhizogenes on solid Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium. In this study, abiotic elicitors including; Sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) with different concentrations (0, 1, 5 and 7 mM) and silver nitrate (AgNO3) concentrations (0, 0.5, 1 and 2 mM) were added to hairy roots culture media. The results showed that, Na2SiO3 and AgNO3 significantly affected hairy roots fresh weight after 24h. Also, the highest hairy root fresh weight was observed in the control, and with broadening elicitor concentrations, fresh weight was decreased in both treated hairy roots with AgNO3 and Na2SiO3 but the effect of exposure duration was not significant. Biochemical analysis showed that total antioxidant activity (TAA), total phenol (TP), catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and Guaiacolperoxidase (GPX) activities were enhanced in elicitated hairy roots compared to non elicitated hairy roots. The highest CAT, APX and GPX activities were observed in hairy roots treated with 7mM Na2SiO3 and 2mM AgNO3. Our results suggest that, Na2SiO3 and AgNO3 can stimulate the antioxidant defense systems and protect the plants from subsequent stresses

E2F-GAN: Eyes-to-Face Inpainting via Edge-Aware Coarse-to-Fine GANs

Face inpainting is a challenging task aiming to ll the damaged or masked regions in face images with plausibly synthesized contents. Based on the given information, the reconstructed regions should look realistic and more importantly preserve the demographic and biometric properties of the individual. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the face based on the periocular region (eyes-to-face). To do this, we proposed a novel GAN-based deep learning model called Eyes-to-Face GAN (E2F-GAN) which includes two main modules: a coarse module and a re nement module. The coarse module along with an edge predictor module attempts to extract all required features from a periocular region and to generate a coarse output which will be re ned by a re nement module. Additionally, a dataset of eyes-to-face synthesis has been generated based on the public face dataset called CelebA-HQ for training and testing. Thus, we perform both qualitative and quantitative evaluations on the generated dataset. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms previous learning-based face inpainting methods and generates realistic and semantically plausible images. We also provide the implementation of the proposed approach to support reproducible research via (https://github.com/amiretefaghi/E2F-GAN). INDEXThis work was supported by the Project Privacy Matters (PRIMA) under Grant H2020-MSCA-ITN-2019-860315. The work of Julian Fierrez was supported by the Project Biometrics and Behavior for Unbiased and Trusted AI with Applications (BBforTAI) under Grant PID2021-127641OB-I00 MICINN/FEDER

Shear bond strengths of composite resin and giomer to mineral trioxide aggregate at different time intervals

The efficacy of the bond between the restorative materials and the pulp capping materials has an important role in the success of vital pulp therapy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the shear bond strength of composite resin and giomer to MTA at different time intervals after mixing of MTA. Ninety cylindrical MTA samples were prepared and assigned to two groups (n=45) based on the restorative materials used (composite resin or giomer). Each group was subdivided into 3 subgroups (n=15) based on the evaluation intervals (immediately, 2.45 hours and 3 days after mixing MTA). After the bonding procedures, the shear bond strengths of the samples were measured in MPa at a strain rate of 0.5 mm/min. Data were analyzed with repeated-measures ANOVA, post hoc tests and t-test (P<0.05). Bond strength of composite resin was minimum at baseline but it increased significantly 2.45 hours after mixing MTA (P=0.002), with no significant changes in bond strength up to three days (P=0.08). Bond strength of giomer did not exhibit any significant changes from baseline to 2.45 hours after mixing MTA (P=078); however, at 3 days it reached a minimum (P=0.000). In addition, the means of bond strength of composite resin 2.45 hours and 3 days after mixing were significantly higher than those of giomer (P=0.001 and P=0.000, respectively). Bond strengths of composite resin 2.45 hours and also 3 days after mixing were significantly higher than those of giomer. In addition, the shear bond strength of giomer decreased over time; however, the shear bond strength of composite resin increased

Clinical Outcomes of Femtosecond Laser-assisted Implantation of 325-Degree Versus 340-Degree Arc Length Intracorneal Ring Segments in Naive Keratoconic Eyes

Purpose: To evaluate and compare clinical outcomes after femtosecond laser-assisted implantation of 325-degree versus 340-degree arc length intracorneal ring segments (ICRS) in eyes with keratoconus (KCN). Methods: In this prospective non-randomized interventional case series, 23 eyes of 21 patients diagnosed with KCN, underwent femtosecond laser-assisted implantation of two types of ICRS, which included a 325-degree ICRS (Group 325) and a 340-degree ICRS (Group 340). The primary outcome measures were uncorrected distance visual acuity (UDVA), and the secondary outcome measures included corrected distance visual acuity (CDVA), sphere, cylinder, mean refractive spherical equivalent (MRSE), keratometry, vectorial change in corneal astigmatism, and the location of maximum keratometry relative to the corneal apex. The study groups were compared using the primary and secondary outcome measures obtained at postoperative months six and 12. Results: Groups 325 and 340 consisted of 10 and 13 eyes, respectively. The two groups were comparable in terms of parameters measured preoperatively. On comparison to the baseline values, both study groups exhibited a significant increase in UDVA and CDVA measured at postoperative month six (Ps &lt; 0.05) and a significant decrease in the sphere, cylinder, spherical equivalent refraction, and keratometry readings measured at postoperative months six and 12 (Ps &lt; 0.05). No significant differences were observed between the two groups in terms of visual, refractive, and keratometric outcomes at any time point. No intraoperative or postoperative complications were observed in any of the study groups. Conclusion: Both the 325-degree ICRS and the 340-degree ICRS effectively and equally improved visual, refractive, and keratometric outcomes in keratoconic eyes

Evaluation of Staggered Osteotomy in Surgical Treatment of Trigonocephaly

Introduction: undiagnosed metopic synostosis (Trigonocephaly) have many complications for infants such as Brain damage and cognitive &amp; behavioral disorders, they also result in poor aesthetic features. There are many surgical techniques for this malformation which have their advantages and disadvantages; but with this new method (staggered osteotomy) we can solve some of these problems and minimize damages.Materials and Methods:  In this study, 20 infants with metopic synostosis underwent surgery in Mofid Children Hospital, Tehran.  The minimum age of our patients was 4 months and the maximum was 9 months with an average of 6.72 months. Their diagnosis was confirmed with clinical symptoms &amp; signs also with CTscan and paraclinical findings. Age and weight before and after surgery and anthropometric indices including: biparietal width and frontal width were recorded and reported.Results: We found significant differences in anthropometric indices before &amp; after surgery such as lowering of biparietal width after surgery and elevation of frontoparital index after surgery. Since in this procedure, we don’t separate the frontal bone segments and it keeps its frame, less plaques and screws are needed which will decrease the costs of surgery and the surgical time is much less than other techniques. Last but not the least, the satisfactions of parents were high and there was no need for secondary surgery.Conclusion:Based on all the perfect results we got , it is safe to say that staggered osteotomy as a surgical method for correction of trigonocephaly is useful and we can use it as a new method in correction of  metopic synostosis