Chasing after Huntington\u27s third wave of democratization: the Middle East under change

Escaping Huntington\u27s three waves of democracy, the Middle East has become a phenomenon. Ever since, the Middle East scholars attempted extensively to rationalize the prevailing authoritarian regimes over the past four decades; a number of theories were proposed to address such a paradox. Studying authoritarianism has denied the Middle East academic society the chance to predict the current wave of political change that is being witnessed in the region. A draw back that could be believed to have left researchers with limited theoretical explanations for the on going experience, but that could always remain superficial. in fact a number of theories on authoritarianism still carry an explanatory power, though remain sometimes insensitive to the differences between experiences, for theorizing the wave of political change in the region . Principles such as authoritarian coercive apparatus, the lack of associational life, the weak institutional structure, and the non-existence of civil liberties, represents a dichotomy that in a way can help understanding the endurance of authoritarianism over the past four decades, while on another note still can rationalize the reasons that provoked the Arab uprisings. This paper searches for variables that could validate the usefulness of the theories on authoritarianism for anticipating such a turn out of events

Leveraging Decision Making in Cyber Security Analysis through Data Cleaning

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) have been built in many institutions for intrusion detection and incident response. A SOC employs various cyber defense technologies to continually monitor and control network traffic. Given the voluminous monitoring data, cyber security analysts need to identify suspicious network activities to detect potential attacks. As the network monitoring data are generated at a rapid speed and contain a lot of noise, analysts are so bounded by tedious and repetitive data triage tasks that they can hardly concentrate on in-depth analysis for further decision making. Therefore, it is critical to employ data cleaning methods in cyber situational awareness. In this paper, we investigate the main characteristics and categories of cyber security data with a special emphasis on its heterogeneous features. We also discuss how cyber analysts attempt to understand the incoming data through the data analytical process. Based on this understanding, this paper discusses five categories of data cleaning methods for heterogeneous data and addresses the main challenges for applying data cleaning in cyber situational awareness. The goal is to create a dataset that contains accurate information for cyber analysts to work with and thus achieving higher levels of data-driven decision making in cyber defense

Indexing collections of XML documents with arbitrary links

In recent years, the popularity of XML has increased significantly. XML is the extensible markup language of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). XML is used to represent data in many areas, such as traditional database management systems, e-business environments, and the World Wide Web. XML data, unlike relational and object-oriented data, has no fixed schema known in advance and is stored separately from the data. XML data is self-describing and can model heterogeneity more naturally than relational or object-oriented data models. Moreover, XML data usually has XLinks or XPointers to data in other documents (e.g., global-links). In addition to XLink or XPointer links, the XML standard allows to add internal-links between different elements in the same XML document using the ID/IDREF attributes. The rise in popularity of XML has generated much interest in query processing over graph-structured data. In order to facilitate efficient evaluation of path expressions, structured indexes have been proposed. However, most variants of structured indexes ignore global- or interior-document references. They assume a tree-like structure of XML-documents, which do not contain such global-and internal-links. Extending these indexes to work with large XML graphs considering of global- or internal-document links, firstly requires a lot of computing power for the creation process. Secondly, this would also require a great deal of space in which to store the indexes. As a latter demonstrates, the efficient evaluation of ancestors-descendants queries over arbitrary graphs with long paths is indeed a complex issue. This thesis proposes the HID index (2-Hop cover path Index based on DAG) is based on the concept of a two-hop cover for a directed graph. The algorithms proposed for the HID index creation, in effect, scales down the original graph size substantially. As a result, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) with a smaller number of nodes and edges will emerge. This reduces the number of computing steps required for building the index. In addition to this, computing time and space will be reduced as well. The index also permits to efficiently evaluate ancestors-descendants relationships. Moreover, the proposed index has an advantage over other comparable indexes: it is optimized for descendants- or-self queries on arbitrary graphs with link relationship, a task that would stress any index structures. Our experiments with real life XML data show that, the HID index provides better performance than other indexes

Developing and Applying Smartphone Apps in Online Courses

Online courses provide students flexible access to class at anytime and anywhere. Most online courses currently rely on computer-based delivery. However, computers still burden instructors and students with limited mobility and flexibility. To provide more convenient access to online courses, smartphones have been increasingly adopted as a mobile method to access online courses. In this paper, we share our practical experience in designing and developing a smartphone platform for accessing online courses. The main contributions of this paper include: 1) we present the main technical issues of applying smartphones to online courses; 2) we discuss several key factors of designing, developing and delivering online courses that support smartphone access

Two-year successful results of femto-LASIK in steep and opacified corneas

  Background: Flap creation is the most critical step of laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK). The introduction of the femtosecond laser with its uniform flaps, which enhance the accuracy of LASIK, has decreased the risk of flap-related complications like buttonholes and incomplete flaps. We recommended femtosecond laser-assisted LASIK (FS-LASIK) in the presence of superficial corneal opacities. Case Presentation: We report a case of a 31-year-old female who reported to the Cornea clinic of the Sohag Center for LASIK and Corneal Surgeries, Sohag, Egypt, complaining of bilateral decreased vision due to refractive error. The uncorrected distance visual acuity (UDVA) and corrected distance visual acuity (CDVA) were 0.01 and 0.7 with a refractive correction of -3.50Ds/ –3.00Dc x 172° in the right eye and 0.01 and 0.6 with a refractive correction of -1.75 Ds/-6.00Dc x164° in the left eye, respectively. Slit-lamp examination of the anterior segment showed bilateral superior vascularized corneal scars and a linear superior conjunctival scar suggestive of old trachoma. Corneal tomographic imaging with a Scheimpflug based tomography device (Oculus Inc., Wetzlar, Germany) revealed a symmetrical bow tie with a very steep cornea without other ectatic changes. The patient underwent bilateral FS-LASIK with an excimer laser. No intraoperative complications occurred. She was followed up for two years with serial corneal topographies and stable post-LASIK results and visual outcomes. Conclusions: FS-LASIK, in the presence of superficial corneal opacities, was safe and effective and induced no complications with special precautions. However, these findings are yet to be confirmed using wellâ€designed clinical studies with larger samples and longer follow-ups

THE SUCCESS METRICS AND THE SUCCESS FACTORS

The article deals with the issue of implementation process of ISO-9000 standard and the factors that lead to its success. It's being examined the correlation between success and various factors; the level of correlation between the success of different Local Authorities of Israel and the activities carried out by them in the process of implementing the quality management system.INDICII DE SUCCES ȘI FACTORII DE SUCCESÎn articol este abordată problema privind procesul de implementare a standardului ISO-9000 și factorii care deter­mină succesul acestuia. Analizei este supusă corelația dintre succesul implementării respectivului proces și diferiți factori determi­nanți ai acestuia. Este examinat nivelul de corelație între succesul diferitelor autorități locale din Israel și activitățile desfășurate de acestea în procesul implementării sistemului de management al calității.</p