Die arabische Sprachwissenschaft: Ein Vergleich zwischen den Basra und Kufa Schulen

Arabic Linguistics: A comparison between the Basra and Kufa Shools Arabic linguistics developed in the medieval period, it also has its place in the historiography of linguistics. Arabs were concerned with language and grammar such as lexicology, lexicography, phonetics and phonology; Arabic linguistics was marked by great scholars like EL Farahidi, EL Douali, Sibawayh, Ibn El Djini and other linguists. There were Arabic grammar schools like Basra and Kufa which have different opinions. There have been debates and controversies concerning both schools Basra and Kufa in order to discuss their principles of Arabic Grammar. Most scholars claimed that Basra and Kufa were the two schools permanently rivaling each other. This paper is concerned with history of Arabic Linguistics through comparative insights on the approaches adopted by the Kufa and Basra schools. They do, indeed, have two differing linguistic and grammatical approaches. The school of Basra was generally more philosophical when it comes to formulating the system of Arabic grammar while the school of Kufa based its assumptions on evidence drawn from classical texts. However, though Basra school referred more to analogy does not mean that Kufa school did not also refer to linguistic corpora in classical texts. It can be concluded, then, that the differences between the two grammatical schools were terminological at best, but mostly fictitious, the essential criterion for belonging to either school was being one's background rather than the adaptation of a particular grammatical doctrine; if not even the two schools were subsequently created as a myth that could be excellently exploited for personal purposes

PEER Testbed Study on a Laboratory Building: Exercising Seismic Performance Assessment

From 2002 to 2004 (years five and six of a ten-year funding cycle), the PEER Center organized the majority of its research around six testbeds. Two buildings and two bridges, a campus, and a transportation network were selected as case studies to “exercise” the PEER performance-based earthquake engineering methodology. All projects involved interdisciplinary teams of researchers, each producing data to be used by other colleagues in their research. The testbeds demonstrated that it is possible to create the data necessary to populate the PEER performancebased framing equation, linking the hazard analysis, the structural analysis, the development of damage measures, loss analysis, and decision variables. This report describes one of the building testbeds—the UC Science Building. The project was chosen to focus attention on the consequences of losses of laboratory contents, particularly downtime. The UC Science testbed evaluated the earthquake hazard and the structural performance of a well-designed recently built reinforced concrete laboratory building using the OpenSees platform. Researchers conducted shake table tests on samples of critical laboratory contents in order to develop fragility curves used to analyze the probability of losses based on equipment failure. The UC Science testbed undertook an extreme case in performance assessment—linking performance of contents to operational failure. The research shows the interdependence of building structure, systems, and contents in performance assessment, and highlights where further research is needed. The Executive Summary provides a short description of the overall testbed research program, while the main body of the report includes summary chapters from individual researchers. More extensive research reports are cited in the reference section of each chapter

Antidepressants and Breast and Ovarian Cancer Risk: A Review of the Literature and Researchers' Financial Associations with Industry

BACKGROUND: Antidepressant (AD) use has been purported to increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, although both epidemiological and pre-clinical studies have reported mixed results. Previous studies in a variety of biomedical fields have found that financial ties to drug companies are associated with favorable study conclusions. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We searched English-language articles in MEDLINE, PsychINFO, the Science Citations Index and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Clinical Trials (through November 2010). A total of 61 articles that assessed the relationship between breast and ovarian cancer and AD use and articles that examined the effect of ADs on cell growth were included. Multi-modal screening techniques were used to investigate researchers' financial ties with industry. A random effects meta-analysis was used to pool the findings from the epidemiological literature. Thirty-three percent (20/61) of the studies reported a positive association between ADs and cancer. Sixty-seven percent (41/61) of the studies reported no association or antiproliferative effect. The pooled odds ratio for the association between AD use and breast/ovarian cancer in the epidemiologic studies was 1.11 (95% CI, 1.03-1.20). Researchers with industry affiliations were significantly less likely than researchers without those ties to conclude that ADs increase the risk of breast or ovarian cancer. (0/15 [0%] vs 20/46 [43.5%] (Fisher's Exact test P = 0.0012). CONCLUSIONS: Both the pre-clinical and clinical data are mixed in terms of showing an association between AD use and breast and ovarian cancer. The possibility that ADs may exhibit a bi-phasic effect, whereby short-term use and/or low dose antidepressants may increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, warrants further investigation. Industry affiliations were significantly associated with negative conclusions regarding cancer risk. The findings have implications in light of the 2009 USPSTF guidelines for breast cancer screening and for the informed consent process