Secularism and identity: non-Islamiosity in the Iranian diaspora

Within western political, media and academic discourses, Muslim communities are predominantly seen through the prism of their Islamic religiosities, yet there exist within diasporic communities unique and complex secularisms. Drawing on detailed interview and ethnographic material gathered in the UK, this book examines the ways in which a form of secularism - ‘non-Islamiosity’ - amongst members of the Iranian diaspora shapes ideas and practices of diasporic community and identity, as well as wider social relations. In addition to developing a novel theoretical paradigm to make sense of the manner in which diasporic communities construct and live diasporic identity and consciousness in a way that marginalises, stigmatises or eradicates only ‘Islam’, Secularism and Identity shows how this approach is used to overcome religiously inculcated ideas and fashion a desirable self, thus creating a new space in which to live and thereby attaining ‘freedom’. Calling into question notions of anti-Islamism and Islamophobia, whilst examining secularism as a means or mechanism rather than an end, this volume offers a new understanding of religion as a marker of migrant identity. As such it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and political science with interests in migration and ethnicity, diasporic communities, the sociology of religion and emerging forms of secularism

On Maximum Signless Laplacian Estrada Indices of Graphs with Given Parameters

Signless Laplacian Estrada index of a graph $G$, defined as $SLEE(G)=\sum^{n}_{i=1}e^{q_i}$, where $q_1, q_2, \cdots, q_n$ are the eigenvalues of the matrix $\mathbf{Q}(G)=\mathbf{D}(G)+\mathbf{A}(G)$. We determine the unique graphs with maximum signless Laplacian Estrada indices among the set of graphs with given number of cut edges, pendent vertices, (vertex) connectivity and edge connectivity.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

The Devil is not in the Detail: Representational absence and Stereotyping in the Trojan Horse News Story

Using Content Analysis, this study investigated the coverage of the Trojan Horse news story aiming to ascertain whether its representation by the British press emphasised ‘Islamist extremism’ over ‘poor school governance’. The sample coverage was extracted from five national newspapers and ranged from 9 June (the date of release of the Ofsted Advice Note) to 26 June 2014. Our analysis shows that the coverage reported evidence of Islamist ideology much more frequently (61.5%) than evidence of poor governance (38.5%). This suggests that the Trojan Horse news story was predominantly represented as a case of Islamist extremism and therefore covered in an unbalanced manner. Such a partial coverage relied on ideological dualisms and negative stereotypes to represent Islam and Muslims, and on the textual strategy of selecting some features (extremism) whilst omitting others (governors’ professional misconduct). This bias has arguably diverted attention away from systemic problems within the national school system whilst reinforcing Islamophobic discourses

Alteration in incidence and pattern of congenital anomalies among newborns during one decade in Azarshahr, Northwest of Iran

Background and aims: Congenital anomalies are as the major causes of stillbirths, neonatal death, disability and childhood health problems all over the world. The aim of this study was to determine the incidence and pattern of congenital anomalies in newborn during the first 24 hours of life in Shahid-Madani hospital, Azarshahr, Tabriz, during two periods 2002-2003 and 2012-2013 years. Methods: This is a records-based descriptive study with 4515 newborns who were delivered at Shahid-Madani hospital. Results: The incidence of congenital anomalies in newborns during 2002-2003 and 2012-2013 years was 1.31 and 1.06 respectively. We found that the incidence rate of congenital anomalies has declined during one decade, and also the pattern of these has varied. In 2002-2003, the most common anomaly was musculoskeletal system anomaly whereas in 2012-2013, the genitourinary system was the most frequent anomaly. Conclusion: Our findings showed incidence and pattern of congenital anomalies have changed during one decade. Research into the etiology, prevention and prenatal care planning must focus on in prevalent congenital anomalies in this city

A survey of patient safety culture: A tool for improving patient safety in healthcare providers service organizations

Background and aims: Patient safety is one of the main factors in quality of services provided by a health system. Patient safety culture plays a key role in improvement of patient safety, reduction of medical errors, and prevention of adverse events in health care organizations. Thereby, the present study is aimed to survey patient safety culture in hospitals of Neyshabur University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This research was a cross sectional study that conducted on all qualified staff of hospitals affiliated with Neyshabur University of Medical Sciences in 2013. Hospital Survey of Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) questionnaire was used to assess patient safety culture. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS (16), using Chi-Square test and logistic regression model. Results: Total score average of patient safety culture was 25.50±9.52. The results showed that among the twelve dimensions the highest and lowest scores were obtained by the supervisor/ manager expectations & actions promoting patient safety (score rate 45) and the reporting frequency of adverse events (score rate 15) respectively According to logistic regression model there was also significant relationship between the patient safety culture and direct contact with the patient, employment duration in hospital, and current unit (p<0.05). Conclusion: Total average of patient safety culture and scores of all twelve dimensions were lower than the acceptable criteria. Patient safety culture in the studied hospitals urgently needs enhancement and improvement. So, creating policies to institutionalize and enhance patient safety culture among the staffs are recommended

TDOA based positioning in the presence of unknown clock skew

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This paper studies the positioning problem of a single target node based on time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) measurements in the presence of clock imperfections. Employing an affine model for the behaviour of a local clock, it is observed that TDOA based approaches suffer from a parameter of the model, called the clock skew. Modeling the clock skew as a nuisance parameter, this paper investigates joint clock skew and position estimation. The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is derived for this problem, which is highly nonconvex and difficult to solve. To avoid the difficulty in solving the MLE, we employ suitable approximations and relaxations and propose two suboptimal estimators based on semidefinite programming and linear estimation. To further improve the estimation accuracy, we also propose a refining step. In addition, the Cramer-Rao ´ lower bound (CRLB) is derived for this problem as a benchmark. Simulation results show that the proposed suboptimal estimators can attain the CRLB for sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratios

Automorphism Group of Certain Power Graphs of Finite Groups

The power graph $\mathcal{P}(G)$ of a group $G$ is the graphwith group elements as vertex set and two elements areadjacent if one is a power of the other. The aim of this paper is to compute the automorphism group of the power graph of several well-known and important classes of finite groups