The Linguistic Landscape of Tahrir Square Protest Signs and Egyptian National Identity

This is a study of the languages that occurred naturally in Tahrir Square at the heart of Cairo during the revolution in 2011. This paper proposes a vivid perspective to the Linguistic Landscape (LL) research by investigating the Egyptian revolution protest signs and the semiotic aspects of communication of over one hundred photographs. This paper is situated within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methodological approaches and the grounded theory approach which have implications for investigating protest signs. The main objective of this study is to show how the LL of Tahrir Square protest signs can offer some insights into Egyptian national identity. The unit of analysis was protest sign in search for a dominant pattern that represents the Egyptian national identity. After analyzing the protest signs and the photographs, two main dominant patterns found in these signs which are unique features of Egyptian national identity. These patterns were sarcasm and faith

Placement generation and hybrid planning for robotic rearrangement on cluttered surfaces

Rearranging multiple moving objects across surfaces, e.g. from a table to kitchen shelves as it arises in the context of service robotics, is a challenging problem. The rearrangement problem consists of two subproblems: placement generation and rearrangement planning. Firstly, the collision-free goal poses of the objects to be moved need to be determined subject to the arbitrary geometries of the objects and the state of the surface that already includes movable objects (clutter) and immovable obstacles on it. Secondly, after the goal poses of all objects have been determined, a plan of physical actions must be computed to achieve these goal poses. Computation of such a rearrangement plan is difficult in that it necessitates not only high-level task planning, but also low-level feasibility checks to be integrated with this task plan to ensure that each step of the plan is collision-free. In this thesis, we propose a general solution to the rearrangement of multiple arbitrarily-shaped objects on a cluttered flat surface with multiple movable objects and obstacles. In particular, we introduce a novel method to solve the object placement problem, utilizing nested local searches guided by intelligent heuristics to efficiently perform multi-objective optimizations. The solutions computed by our method satisfy the collision-freeness constraint, and involves minimal movements of the clutter. Based on such a solution, we introduce a hybrid method to generate an optimal feasible rearrangement plan, by integrating ASP-based high-level task planning with low-level feasibility checks. Our hybrid planner is capable of solving challenging non-monotone rearrangement planning instances that cannot be solved by the existing geometric rearrangement approaches. The proposed algorithms have been systematically evaluated in terms of computational efficiency, solution quality, success rate, and scalability. Furthermore, several challenging benchmark instances have been introduced that demonstrate the capabilities of these methods. The real-life applicability of the proposed approaches have also been verified through physical implementation using a Baxter robot

Technology-Independent Algorithm for Collision Warning System at Semi-Controlled Intersections

Most of the collision warning systems that are available in the automotive market are mainly designed to detect imminent rear-end and/or lane-departure collisions. So far, no collision warning system is commercially available to detect imminent angle and turning collisions at semi-controlled intersections where the driver of a vehicle attempts to depart a minor road (controlled by a stop sign) to turn right, to turn left, or to cross an uncontrolled major road. One of the major causes for collisions at non-signalized intersections is the human error and misjudgment of the driver of the minor-road vehicle. Therefore, using a properly-designed collision warning system will have the potential to reduce, or even eliminate, this type of collision by reducing human error. This paper introduces a technology-independent algorithm for a collision warning system that can detect imminent collisions at semi-controlled intersections. The system utilizes commercially-available detectors to detect the approaching vehicles on the major road and calculate their speeds, accelerations, and rates of change of acceleration to estimate the time required to reach the intersection. The time required by the minor-road vehicle to clear the intersection is modeled as a function of driver and vehicle characteristics. By comparing the two times, the system displays a message for the driver of the minor-road vehicle when the departure maneuver is safe. An application example is provided to illustrate the proposed algorithm

Influence of Several Nano Minerals on The Mechanical Properties of Fresh and hardened Concrete

The current study aims at obtaining the influence of adding several nano-minerals on the mechanical properties of fresh and hardened concrete. Four types of Nano minerals were investigated in this work; namely: Brown Iron Oxide, Barium Sulfate, Titanium Dioxide and Poly Acrylic Acid. Five contents of each nano-minerals were studied. A range of contents starting from 0.5% to 2.5% with an increment of 0.5% by cement content of Brown Iron Oxide and Barium Sulfate was investigated. The Titanium Dioxide and Poly Acrylic Acid were added to concrete in percentages of 1% to 5% with an increment of 1% by cement content. Adding 5% Poly Acrylic Acid to the other three nano-minerals at selected contents separately was also studied. The measured mechanical properties of concrete comprised slump value, 7 and 28 days compressive strength. Some of the results revealed that there was 24% increase in the slump value corresponding to every 1% increase in PAA content. An improvement of 6.9% in the 28 days compressive strength was measured at every 0.5% increase of Brown Iron Oxide. It was also found that by adding 5% Poly Acrylic Acid and 2.5% Brown Iron Oxide to the concrete at the same time, the slump increased from 90 mm to 170 mm (88.9% increase) and the 28 days compressive strength improved from 37.37 kg/cm2 to 49.35 kg/cm2 (32.1% increase)

Efficient Assessment and Evaluation for Websites Vulnerabilities Using SNORT

An endless number of methods or ways exists to access illegally a web server or a website. The task of defending a system (e.g. network, server, website, etc.) is complex and challenging. SNORT is one of the popular open source tools that can be used to detect and possibly prevent illegal access and attacks for networks and websites. However, this largely depends on the way SNORT rules are designed and implemented. In this paper, we investigated in details several examples of SNORT rules and how they can be tuned to improve websites protection. We demonstrated practical methods to design and implement those methods in such ways that can show to security personnel how effectively can SNORT rules be used. Continuous experiments are conducted to evaluate and optimized the proposed rules. Results showed their ability to prevent tested network attacks. Each network should try to find the best set of rules that can detect and prevent most network attacks while at the same time cause minimal impact on network performance

À la découverte de la braie et du fossé autour de l’enceinte de Damas

La question du fossé et de la braie (ou l’avant-mur) de Damas n’avait jamais été abordée par les chercheurs, et ce, en raison, d’une part, de la rareté des informations historiques relatives à ces éléments, et d’autre part, de l’absence de vestiges archéologiques. Pour la première fois entre 2005 et 2006, des portions très importantes de ces éléments défensifs ont été mises au jour sur le côté sud de la muraille de Damas, près de Bāb Kīsān. Cette découverte a permis de mieux comprendre ces deux éléments du système défensif de la ville de Damas à l’époque médiévale et d’apporter les premières réponses aux interrogations les concernant. Cet article présente les résultats de ces deux campagnes de fouilles archéologiques.The moat and the outer wall (claustrum) of Damascus have never been studied by scholars due to the lack of historical information and archaeological remains. Great parts of these defensive elements were discovered between 2005 and 2006 along the southern part of Damascus city wall, close to Bāb Kīsān. As a result of this discovery we have a more comprehensive understanding of these two important elements of medieval Damascus. This article presents the results of the archaeological excavations.يعتبر السؤال المتعلق بخندق وفصيل مدينة دمشق أحد الأسئلة الهامة التي بقيت بعيدة عن متناول الباحثين وذلك لسببين، الأول هو ندرة المعلومات التاريخية المتعلقة بهذا الموضوع، والثاني هو انعدام الدلائل الأثرية. خلال الفترة الممتدة بين عامي ٢٠٠٥ و٢٠٠٦ تم الكشف ولأول مرة عن أجزاء واسعة من هذين العنصرين الدفاعيين، وذلك في الجهة الجنوبية من سور مدينة دمشق بالقرب من باب كيسان.وبفضل هذا الاكتشاف أصبح بمقدورنا التعرف على طبيعة هذين العنصرين الهامين في تحصينات مدينة دمشق خلال فترة العصور الوسطى، والإجابة على الكثير من الأسئلة المتعلقة بهما. فتقدم هذه المقالة نتائج تلك الحفريات الأثرية

Object Pose Estimation in Monocular Image Using Modified FDCM

In this paper, a new method for object detection and pose estimation in a monocular image is proposed based on FDCM method. it can detect object with high speed running time, even if the object was under the partial occlusion or in bad illumination. In addition, It requires only single template without any training process. The Modied FDCM based on FDCM with improvments, the LSD method was used in MFDCM instead of the line tting method, besides the integral distance transform was replaced with a distance transform image, and using an angular Voronoi diagram. In addition, the search process depends on Line segments based search instead of the sliding window search in FDCM. The MFDCM was evaluated by comparing it with FDCM in dierent scenarios and with other four methods: COF, HALCON, LINE2D, and BOLD using D-textureless dataset. The comparison results show that MFDCM was at least 14 times faster than FDCM in tested scenarios. Furthermore, it has the highest correct detection rate among all tested method with small advantage from COF and BLOD methods, while it was a little slower than LINE2D which was the fasted method among compared methods. The results proves that MFDCM able to detect and pose estimation of the objects in the clear or clustered background from a monocular image with high speed running time, even if the object was under the partial occlusion which makes it robust and reliable for real-time applications

Tautness and applications of the Alexander-Spanier cohomology of K

The aim of the present work is centered around the tautness property for the two K-types of Alexander-Spanier cohomology given by the authors. A version of the continuity property is proved, and some applications are given