Changing Gender Norms in Islam Between Reason and Revelation

Women‘s movements in Islamic countries have had a long and arduous journey in their quest for the realization of human rights and genuine equality. The author examines whether discriminatory laws against women do in fact originate from Islam and, ultimately, if there is any interpretation of Islam compatible with gender equality. She investigates women’s rights in Iran since the 1979 Revolution from the perspectives of the main currents of Islamic thought, fundamentalists, reformists, and seculars, using a sociological explanation

Changing Gender Norms in Islam Between Reason and Revelation

Women‘s movements in Islamic countries have had a long and arduous journey in their quest for the realization of human rights and genuine equality. The author examines whether discriminatory laws against women do in fact originate from Islam and, ultimately, if there is any interpretation of Islam compatible with gender equality. She investigates women’s rights in Iran since the 1979 Revolution from the perspectives of the main currents of Islamic thought, fundamentalists, reformists, and seculars, using a sociological explanation

Purification strategy development for the recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) based HIV vaccine

Malgré le nombre croissant d'individus infectés par le virus de l'immunodéficience humaine (VIH) chaque année, il n'existe toujours pas de vaccin efficace qui prévienne son infection chez l'homme. Seulement en 2020, on peut encore compter 37,6 millions d'infection et 690 000 décès liés au SIDA. Le développement d'un vaccin contre le SIDA, sûr et efficace, serait donc un moyen très pertinent pour combattre les ravages de cette maladie. Le virus de la stomatite vésiculeuse (VSV), membre de la famille des Rhabdoviridae, infecte principalement les bovins, mais est relativement bénin pour l'humain, n'étant associé qu'à de légers symptômes pseudo-grippaux. Par ailleurs, le VSV recombinant a déjà été utilisé pour le développement de vaccins humains contre divers virus, notamment Ebola, Marbourg, Lassa, la fièvre hémorragique de Crimée-Congo (CCHFV), Nipah, les coronavirus MERS et SRAS, Zika, Influenza et VIH. Dans ce travail, effectué dans le cadre plus large du développement de nouveaux candidats vaccins contre le VIH, basé sur les VSV recombinants (rVSV), nous proposons différents schémas de purification pour le traitement de ces candidats. Une série de filtres avec des tailles de pores et des supports de filtration différents ont été testés pour leur efficacité à éliminer les débris cellulaires du surnageant de culture cellulaire tout en permettant aux particules infectieuses de traverser le filtre. Cette microfiltration en série a également été appliquée pour éliminer le besoin de centrifugation à basse vitesse à l'étape de la clarification et améliorer les rendements, la simplicité et l'extrapolabilité des schémas proposés. Afin de réduire le volume de l'échantillon à traiter, l'application de différentes unités d'ultrafiltration (UF), soit des unités d'UF centrifuge ou à flux tangentiel (TFUF), ont été testées. Pour ce faire, les paramètres de fonctionnement de la TFUF ont été maintenus à des valeurs ne générant que de faible taux de cisaillement (≤ 2000 s⁻¹) pour préserver l'intégrité du rVSV. Pour l'étape de la purification chromatographique proprement dite, plusieurs technologies candidates ont été testées pour leur capacité à séparer les particules infectieuses de l'ADN et des protéines contaminants. Des résines échangeuses d'anions fortes et faibles, à savoir HiTrap™ DEAE FF, HiTrap™ ANX FF, HiTrap™ Q FF et HiTrap™ XL (Cytiva), ont été testées en colonne. Dans les meilleures conditions, ces colonnes ont permis de récupérer 77 % des particules infectieuses tout en éliminant respectivement 93 % et 92,7 % des protéines totales et de l'ADN. Par la suite, un schéma de purification chromatographique en deux étapes utilisant initialement un adsorbeur échangeur d'ion membranaire (Sartobind® Q, Sartorius), suivi d'une résine multimodale (Captocore™ 700, Cytiva) a également été testé car les adsorbeurs membranaires sont plus pratiques pour les procédés à grande échelle. La purification des rVSV à l'aide de ce protocole a permis de récupérer 51 % de particules infectieuses et a éliminé 95 % et 85 % de l'ADN et des protéines contaminants, respectivement. Cependant, étant donné que les micrographies électroniques de ces préparations virales purifiées présentaient encore une quantité notable de vésicules extracellulaires ou d'exosomes, deux résines à base de céramique d'hydroxyapatite (CHT) ont aussi été testées pour leur capacité à séparer les rVSV de ces contaminants. La colonne CHT II (BioRad) a montré des résultats prometteurs en terme d'élimination des vésicules extracellulaires, comme vérifié par microscopie électronique à transmission (TEM). De plus, une récupération de 78 % de rVSV infectieux ainsi que l'élimination de 98 % de l'ADN résiduel et de 99 % des protéines ont été mesurées dans les éluats de cette colonne.Despite the growing number of Human immune deficiency virus (HIV) infected individuals every year, there is still no effective vaccine that prevents new HIV infection in humans. As of 2020, a total of 37.6 million individuals were found globally to be infected with HIV. With 690,000 AIDS-related death reports in 2020, developing a safe and effective HIV vaccine is of utmost importance. Vesicular stomatitis virus(VSV), a member of the Rhabdoviridae family, mainly infects cattle, but its infection in human is mainly benign and can only be associated with mild flu-like symptoms. In addition, the VSV platform has already been used to develop vaccines against a variety of virus infections, including Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHFV), Nipah, MERS- and SARS- coronaviruses, Zika, Influenza, and HIV. In the current work, carried out within the broader framework of developing new vaccine candidates against HIV based on recombinant VSVs (rVSVs), we propose different purification schemes for the DSP of the candidate vaccine. A series of filters with different pore sizes and filtration media were tested for their effectiveness in removing cellular debris from the cell culture supernatant while allowing the infectious particles to pass through the filter. Serial microfiltration was also applied to eliminate the need for low-speed centrifugation at the clarification step and improve the proposed schemes' yield, simplicity, and scalability. In order to reduce the volume of the sample to be processed, the application of different ultrafiltration (UF) units, either centrifugal based UF units or tangential flow UF (TFUF) systems, were tested. The TFF operation parameters were maintained at values generating low shear (≤2000 s⁻¹ shear rate) for preserving the integrity of the rVSV as an enveloped virus. For the actual chromatographic purification step, multiple candidate technologies were tested for their ability to separate infectious particles and to remove the contaminant DNA and proteins. Strong and weak anion exchanger resins, namely, HiTrap™ DEAE FF, HiTrap™ ANX FF, HiTrap™ Q FF, and HiTrap™ XL (Cytiva), were put into test in the column mode. In best condition, these columns resulted in the recovery of 77 % infectious particles while eliminating 86.6 % and 92.7 % of the total proteins and DNA, respectively. Subsequently, a two-step chromatographic purification scheme initially used a membrane adsorber (Sartobind® Q, Sartorius), followed by a multimodal resin (Captocore™ 700, Cytiva) was tested since membrane adsorbers are more applicable for large-scale processes. Purification of rVSVs using this protocol resulted in the recovery of 51 % infectious particles but removed 95 % of the contaminant DNA contents and 85 % of total proteins. However, since the electron micrographs of these purified virus preparations still showed a noticeable amount of extracellular vesicles or exosomes (visually through TEM), two resins based on ceramic hydroxyapatite (CHT) were screened for their ability in separating the rVSVs from these contaminants. The CHT II (BioRad) column showed promising results in removing extracellular vesicles from the virus preparations as verified by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Moreover, a recovery of 69.2 % infective rVSVs alongside the removal of 88 % residual DNA and 87 % of protein contents was measured in this column's eluates

EXPLICIT FEEDBACK IN COMPUTER ASSISTED READING COMPREHENSION VS. CLASSROOM FEEDBACK

This study investigated the effect of CALL and computer-mediated explicit feedback on reading comprehension of intermediate EFL learners. To this aim, two classes of general English were under study and learners’ reading comprehension was investigated. The two classes were randomly divided into experimental and control group. To homogenize the participants in reading comprehension a pre-test of FCE reading-oriented was administered. In one group CALL was employed and the learners did not attend the class at all and received explicit feedback on line. The other group received in-class feedback through the conventional methods of classroom interactions. After the treatment, the learners were administered with another FCE reading –oriented for the post-test. The collected data was analyzed through independent and paired sample t-tests. The results suggested that computer-mediated explicit feedback has remarkable effect on developing reading comprehension of intermediate EFL learners.  Article visualizations

Universality of Linearized Message Passing for Phase Retrieval with Structured Sensing Matrices

In the phase retrieval problem one seeks to recover an unknown $n$ dimensional signal vector $\mathbf{x}$ from $m$ measurements of the form $y_i = |(\mathbf{A} \mathbf{x})_i|$ where $\mathbf{A}$ denotes the sensing matrix. A popular class of algorithms for this problem are based on approximate message passing. For these algorithms, it is known that if the sensing matrix $\mathbf{A}$ is generated by sub-sampling $n$ columns of a uniformly random (i.e. Haar distributed) orthogonal matrix, in the high dimensional asymptotic regime ($m,n \rightarrow \infty, n/m \rightarrow \kappa$), the dynamics of the algorithm are given by a deterministic recursion known as the state evolution. For the special class of linearized message passing algorithms, we show that the state evolution is universal: it continues to hold even when $\mathbf{A}$ is generated by randomly sub-sampling columns of certain deterministic orthogonal matrices such as the Hadamard-Walsh matrix, provided the signal is drawn from a Gaussian prior

Customer-based brand equity and customer behavioral intention: Evidence from insurance service

Objectives: Brands as effective tools and the most valuable intangible assets of companies are widely applied to change customer behavioral intentions. Creating brands with high positions in customers\u27 minds which can offer great value to them and affect their decision-making processes and purchase intentions is companies\u27 priority. This study examines the effects of customer-based brand equity and its dimensions comprising brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality, and brand loyalty (Aaker\u27s model) on customer repurchase intention through customer perceived value in the light of signalling theory. Method: These relationships are investigated on a sample of Iranian life insureds (267 customers) in the insurance context. Research data are gathered by questionnaire with reliability coefficient equal to 0.95. The validity is investigated through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). To test the hypotheses, correlation analysis and structural equations model (path analysis) are used. Results: The results show that brand awareness and brand association do not impact customer perceived value and customer repurchase intention. Brand loyalty is the only dimension that affects customer repurchase intention directly. Customer perceived value mediates the effects of perceived quality and brand loyalty on customer repurchase intention. Moreover, customer-based brand equity directly and indirectly via customer perceived value influences customer repurchase intention. Theoretical contributions: This research examines the relationships between customer-based brand equity and its dimensions including brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality, and brand loyalty based on Aaker\u27s model and customer repurchase intention through customer perceived value in the light of signalling theory. These relationships have not been investigated in insurance context in Iran to date. Relevance/Originality: The investigation of mentioned relationship based on signalling theory in insurance context in Iran. Implications for management: The current study provides a pattern and a wide range of suggestions for insurance companies to enhance their customer-based brand equity and its aspects in order to persuade customers to purchase their brands again in a competitive insurance industry

Phase retrieval in the high-dimensional regime

The main focus of this thesis is on the phase retrieval problem. This problem has a broad range of applications in advanced imaging systems, such as X-ray crystallography, coherent diffraction imaging, and astrophotography. Thanks to its broad applications and its mathematical elegance and sophistication, phase retrieval has attracted researchers with diverse backgrounds. Formally, phase retrieval is the problem of recovering a signal ∈ ℂⁿ from its phaseless linear measurements of the form |ᵢ∗| + ᵢ where sensing vectors ᵢ, = 1, 2, ..., , are in the same vector space as and ᵢ denotes the measurement noise. Finding an effective recovery method in a practical setup, analyzing the required sample complexity and convergence rate of a solution, and discussing the optimality of a proposed solution are some of the major mathematical challenges that researchers have tried to address in the last few years. In this thesis, our aim is to shed some light on some of these challenges and propose new ways to improve the imaging systems that have this problem at their core. Toward this goal, we focus on the high-dimensional setting where the ratio of the number of measurements to the ambient dimension of the signal remains bounded. This regime differs from the classical asymptotic regime in which the signal's dimension is fixed and the number of measurements is increasing. We obtain sharp results regarding the performance of the existing algorithms and the algorithms that are introduced in this thesis. To achieve this goal, we first develop a few sharp concentration inequalities. These inequalities enable us to obtain sharp bounds on the performance of our algorithms. We believe such results can be useful for researchers who work in other research areas as well. Second, we study the spectrum of some of the random matrices that play important roles in the phase retrieval problem, and use our tools to study the performance of some of the popular phase retrieval recovery schemes. Finally, we revisit the problem of structured signal recovery from phaseless measurements. We propose an iterative recovery method that can take advantage of any prior knowledge about the signal that is given as a compression code to efficiently solve the problem. We rigorously analyze the performance of our proposed method and provide extensive simulations to demonstrate its state-of-the-art performance

CHARACTERIZATION OF ANTIOXIDANT AND ANTIPROLIFERATIVE ACTIVITIES OF INDIAN SALMON (ELEUTHERONEMA TETRADACTYLUM) PROTEIN HYDROLYSATES

Objective: The main aim of the present research was to evaluate the antioxidant and antiproliferative activity of Indian salmon (Eleutheronema tetradactylum) protein hydrolysates by pepsin and trypsin enzyme using In vitro gastrointestinal digestion procedure.Methods: Indian salmon protein hydrolysates (ISPH) were fractionated to obtain fraction I (FI), fraction II (FII) and fraction III (FIII) of peptides with different molecular weights (MW). Further, the antioxidant activity of ISPHs was evaluated by DPPH radical scavenging, metal chelating, reducing power and lipid peroxidation assays. Moreover, In vitro antiproliferative activity of ISPHs was assessed against breast cancer cell lines MCF-7. The amino acid contents of the bioactive peptides were also determined to find the correlation between the activity of peptides and their amino acid contents.Results: All bioactive peptides showed dose-dependent antioxidant activities. The highest antioxidant activity was measured in FII which was able to quench higher levels of free radicals. In the measurement of the antiproliferative capacity of peptides, they revealed nearly similar activities at low concentration. However, the cytotoxicity of peptides was significantly increased at the high dose in which only 43.9±1.8% to 65.7±1.6% cell proliferation occurred. The results showed an absence of correlation between MW and activity of peptides since the most potent bioactive peptides in our study had MWs of 1 to 3 kDa. However, hydrophobicity and presence of special amino acids like arginine and histidine is affected the activity of peptides.Conclusion: Consequently, Indian salmon protein hydrolysates were identified as good sources of antioxidant and antiproliferative peptides which could confer both nutritional and functional properties in the food industry.Keywords: Indian salmon, Protein hydrolysates, Antioxidant, Antiproliferative, Amino aci