Development and economic and social rights: The Bretton Woods Institutions in Egypt post-2011

Based on the hypothesis that there exists continuing tension between development and economic and social rights (ESR), where the latter end up principally skewed once they enter the development realm, this research explores why fields of development and ESR remain constantly at odds. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice to define both fields and understand the continuous struggles and contradictions between them, this research argues there is a structural bias that leads to the struggle and always ends in favor of economic development targets at the expense of realization of ESR. The research begins by unpacking the development and ESR fields to understand the roots of the tension, and then moves on to study the struggle between ESR legal norms as they conflict with the founding principle of Bretton Woods development model. It continues by examining how those dynamics play out in the struggle between the contending demands for ESR realization and the economic development crisis in Egypt post-2011 revolution, which had economic and social right deprivations as a major root cause. This research opens the door for further study of how human rights can be realized despite the current structural bias in place by looking at the continuing struggles between the fields, the dominant doxas, and the limitations that play out once human rights enter the development habitus

Tradition, change and social reform in the fatwas of the Imam Muhammad \u27Abduh

This thesis proposes to examine some of the fatwas, or legal opinions, issued by Muhammad ‘Abduh, and taken from the manuscript ledgers at Dār al-Iftā’ al-Miṣriyah. The fatwas involve official and semi-official issues, problems of personal status, financial matters, and relations with others. They were picked for their clarity, peculiarity, diversity, and will be examined for their relevance to the needs of various groups of society at that time and for the legal argumentation used. The fatwas will be examined to try to determine ‘Abduh’s legal approach, and his methodology when dealing with everyday issues. Fatwas are also useful tools to gauge different trends and tendencies in a society. The queries reflect some of the preoccupations of individuals. As for the responses, whether these are timely or untimely, or whether they are mundane or peculiar, they demonstrate the degree of empathy of the mufti with the public. Indeed, Muhammad ‘Abduh once observed that the ‘ulamā’- Muslim religious scholars- of his time, even if they were highly qualified, were totally isolated from the needs of the public, and that the only interaction the community had was with the storytellers that they called preachers at the Friday prayers. Such a statement implied that he considered that the function of the religious scholars was to serve society

Statistical Properties and Applications of Empirical Mode Decomposition

Signal analysis is key to extracting information buried in noise. The decomposition of signal is a data analysis tool for determining the underlying physical components of a processed data set. However, conventional signal decomposition approaches such as wavelet analysis, Wagner-Ville, and various short-time Fourier spectrograms are inadequate to process real world signals. Moreover, most of the given techniques require \emph{a prior} knowledge of the processed signal, to select the proper decomposition basis, which makes them improper for a wide range of practical applications. Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) is a non-parametric and adaptive basis driver that is capable of breaking-down non-linear, non-stationary signals into an intrinsic and finite components called Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMF). In addition, EMD approximates a dyadic filter that isolates high frequency components, e.g. noise, in higher index IMFs. Despite of being widely used in different applications, EMD is an ad hoc solution. The adaptive performance of EMD comes at the expense of formulating a theoretical base. Therefore, numerical analysis is usually adopted in literature to interpret the behavior. This dissertation involves investigating statistical properties of EMD and utilizing the outcome to enhance the performance of signal de-noising and spectrum sensing systems. The novel contributions can be broadly summarized in three categories: a statistical analysis of the probability distributions of the IMFs and a suggestion of Generalized Gaussian distribution (GGD) as a best fit distribution; a de-noising scheme based on a null-hypothesis of IMFs utilizing the unique filter behavior of EMD; and a novel noise estimation approach that is used to shift semi-blind spectrum sensing techniques into fully-blind ones based on the first IMF. These contributions are justified statistically and analytically and include comparison with other state of art techniques

Designing Majuah-juah Tongging Hotel Resort with Neo- Vernacular Architecture Approach

Tongging Village is a tourist village located on the shores of Lake Toba. The natural wealth is owned by Tongging villages such as Sipiso-Piso waterfall which is the highest waterfall in Indonesia, also Sapo Juma which is a flower garden and camping area not far from the site location. However, with the natural wealth of various tourist areas in Tongging Village has not been developed optimally. Accommodation in the village is also still very restricted because of this the need for supporting facilities that add visitors to the region. The application of Neo-Vernacular architecture aims to revive the traditional Siwaluh Jabu house which many people have forgotten. In this building, the concept of neo-vernacular architecture is seen regarding physical and non-physical aspects. If viewed from a physical point of view, this building uses materials and ornaments in traditional Karo houses and is also seen on the non-physical side of a traditional Karo house use double-loaded corridors and more flexible use of space. A resort Hotel in Tongging village that applies Neo-Vernacular architecture is expected to be an indicator of increased tourism and a reminder of traditional homes in the villages of Tongging and also North Sumatra

Augmentation Opportunity of Transmission Control Protocol Performance in Wireless Networks and Cellular Systems

The expansion in wireless technologies and the extensive with the wide use of mobile devices have drawn the attention of research and technological communities towards wireless environments, such as Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs), and mobile systems and ad-hoc networks. Unfortunately, wired and wireless networks are expressively different in terms of link reliability, bandwidth, and time of propagation delay. By adapting new solutions for these enhanced telecommunications, superior quality, efficiency, and opportunities will be provided where wireless communications were otherwise unfeasible. Some researchers define 4G as a significant improvement of 3G, where current cellular network's issues will be solved and data transfer will play a more significant role. For others, 4G unifies cellular and wireless local area networks, and introduces new routing techniques, efficient solutions for sharing dedicated frequency bands, and an increased mobility and bandwidth capacity. This paper discussed the possible solutions and enhancements probabilities that proposed to improve the performance of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) over different wireless networks and also the paper investigated each approach in term of advantages and disadvantages

Partial pedicle subtraction osteotomy (PPSO): A modification for PSO in treatment of sagittal deformities.

Background data: Pedicle subtraction osteotomy is used for treatment of sagittal deformities. It has the advantages of being accomplished completely through a posterior approach. Neurological deficits that accompany the procedure are believed to be the result of a combination of subluxation, residual dorsal impingement, and dural buckling. Purpose: To introduce a new modification of the traditional pedicle subtraction osteotomy, in which we perform partial pedicle osteotomy; preserving the inferior third of the pedicle. This allows more smooth correction of the deformity, minimizes the injury or irritation of the nerve root below this pedicle, and decreases the incidence of subluxation and dorsal impingement. Since the correction occurs with theoretically smaller wedges, better closure and union of the osteotomy site is expected. Study design: Our retrospective study included 33 patients with sagittal plan deformity (16 cases of ankylosing spondylitis, 8 cases of old fractures, 5 cases of congenital kyphosis and 4 cases of postlaminectomy kyphosis after cord tumour resection). Methods: All patients were treated by our modifications of the pedicle subtraction osteotomy technique. Radiographic analysis included assessment of kyphosis by regional Cobb angle, and the CV7 sagittal plumb line in pre and post plain radiographs. Clinically, the patients are assessed by the Oswestry functional score. Results: Our series included 23 male and 10 females. The age was of a mean 42.3 years. The vertical plumb line distance from the first sacral segment improved to 3.4 cm compared to a mean of 9.3 preoperatively. The degree of correction for single osteotomy was of a mean of 22.4°. The intervertebral foramen below the osteotomised pedicle showed unchanged vertical dimension after the osteotomy. The complications included 4 cases of dural tears, 1 case of massive bleeding (2500 ml), 3 cases of superficial wound infection, and 1 case developed transient postoperative paraparesis. There was no single case of root injury. The follow-up of the patients was of mean 27.4 months. At the end of follow up, radiologically, there was a loss of correction of mean of 2 degrees with no case of pseudoarthrosis or metal failure. According to Oswestry disability score, 88% of patients were able to return to their normal to moderate daily activities with good self image and overall satisfaction. Conclusion: Although our new technique is technically demanding, it has lower rate of neurological complication with better chances of union than the traditional osteotomy

ARED Organism: expansion of ARED reveals AU-rich element cluster variations between human and mouse

ARED Organism represents the expansion of the adenylate uridylate (AU)-rich element (ARE)-containing human mRNA database into the transcriptomes of mouse and rat. As a result, we performed quantitative assessment of ARE conservation in human, mouse and rat transcripts. We found that a significant proportion (∼25%) of human genes differ in their ARE patterns from mouse and rat transcripts. ARED-Integrated, another updated and expanded version of ARED, is a compilation of ARED versions 1.0 to 3.0 and updated version 4.0 that is devoted to human mRNAs. Thus, ARED-Integrated and ARED-Organism databases, both publicly available at http://brp.kfshrc.edu.sa/ARED, offer scientists a comprehensive view of AREs in the human transcriptome and the ability to study the comparative genomics of AREs in model organisms. This ultimately will help in inferring the biological consequences of ARE variation in these key animal models as opposed to humans, particularly, in relationships to the role of RNA stability in disease

Genome-Wide Analysis of DNA Methylation and Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution in Three Study Populations: KORA F3, KORA F4, and the Normative Aging Study

BACKGROUND: Epidemiological studies have reported associations between particulate matter (PM) concentrations and cancer and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. DNA methylation has been identified as a possible link but so far it has only been analyzed in candidate sites. OBJECTIVES: We studied the association between DNA methylation and short-and mid-term air pollution exposure using genome-wide data and identified potential biological pathways for-additional investigation. METHODS: We collected whole blood samples from three independent studies-KORA F3 (2004-2005) and F4 (2006-2008) in Germany, and the Normative Aging Study (1999-2007) in the United States-and measured genome-wide DNA methylation proportions with the Illumina 450k BeadChip. PM concentration was measured daily at fixed monitoring stations and three different trailing averages were considered and regressed against DNA methylation: 2-day, 7-day and 28-day. Meta-analysis was performed to pool the study-specific results. RESULTS: Random-effect meta-analysis revealed 12 CpG (cytosine-guanine dinucleotide) sites as associated with PM concentration (1 for 2-day average, 1 for 7-day, and 10 for 28-day) at a genome-wide Bonferroni significance level (p 0.05 and I-2< 0.5: the site from the 7-day average results and 3 for the 28-day average. Applying false discovery rate, p-value < 0.05 was observed in 8 and 1,819 additional CpGs at 7- and 28-day average PM2.5 exposure respectively. CONCLUSION: The PM-related CpG sites found in our study suggest novel plausible systemic pathways linking ambient PM exposure to adverse health effect through variations in DNA methylation