Bolstering the Bromances: Turkey's and Iran's Tightening Ties with Africa

Changing global dynamics resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine are creating opportunities for non-traditional actors - such as Iran and Turkey - to scale up their engagement with Africa. The African continent is particularly affected by the war: the blockage of grain export routes, the repercussions of Western-imposed sanctions, and globally surging prices have fuelled anti-Western discourses on the continent. The consequences of the war against Ukraine have exacerbated the already existing challenges in Africa regarding food security, especially since the continent is heavily dependent on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. The war's precedence over other crises in terms of immediate response puts already vulnerable regions at risk of greater food scarcity, humanitarian emergencies, and political instability. Over the past twenty years, Turkey has emerged as a major humanitarian actor in Africa, promoting rhetoric that brands the country a benevolent brother of African states. Ankara's role in brokering the grain shipment agreement between Ukraine and Russia has strengthened this narrative, with Turkey gaining recognition for having prevented more severe food crises. In terms of Iran, Africa has played a crucial role in its international status-seeking agenda and intermittently as an economic survival sphere at times of deteriorating Iranian relations with the West. The developments regarding the domestic mass uprisings and unpromising nuclear negotiations - coupled with recent comprehensive cooperation with Russia since the beginning of the war - have led to a revitalisation of Iran's engagement with African states. Both Iran and Turkey deploy an amicable rhetoric, drawing on their discursive advantages - such as their Muslim identity and non-colonial history - to better engage with African states. In this way, they are able to leverage rising anti-Western sentiments among African leaders and societies to serve their foreign policy agendas. If European governments wish to remain relevant partners to African states and contain the anti-Western power projection of states such as Iran and Turkey, they should not depart from their commitments to the continent. They should exhibit a genuine commitment to horizontal partnerships and take a coherent approach towards authoritarian states to promote a value-based foreign policy

Iran's Uprisings: A Feminist Foreign Policy Approach

The current uprisings in Iran following the death in police custody of Mahsa Jhina Amini, a young Kurdish woman, carry strong implications for states that have adopted a "feminist foreign policy" (FFP). The ongoing protests there allow such states as Germany to showcase the potential of their FFP by responding to the violation of women’s and other marginalised groups' rights happening right now. The intersectional and inclusive viewpoint within the feminist scholarship must be indivisible from feminist foreign policy-making. Those states who have adopted an FFP must establish clear-cut and practical measures to distinguish it from current foreign policy approaches. Iranian women are at the epicentre of the current uprisings in Iran. However, the protests are intersectional and have mobilised a wide spectrum of marginalised groups. An FFP should showcase the voices of the latter and propose sound measures to defend their rights. In this vein, the political agency and demands of women and other marginalised groups in Iran must be clearly acknowledged and prioritised. The standpoint of Iranians and women should be inseparable from all measures taken against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Therefore, modes of engagement with the latter should not be restricted to the country's nuclear programme if "security" is conceived of from a feminist viewpoint. Any compromise over the nuclear negotiations with Iran that has as its trade-off the continuation of human rights' violations shall not be made under a sound FFP. Alternative measures should be taken in response to the brutal crackdown on the Iranian people by their government. Intersectional media outreach, sanctions targeting the political establishment, forming a diverse advisory team, and including gender in the collection as well as analysis of information are among such desirable measures. Supporting Iranian protesters and feminist networks on the ground and incorporating their standpoint should be the primary mode of engagement used

The Evolvement of Iran-Israel's Rivalry in the Red Sea and Eastern Africa

The rivalry between Iran and Israel has intensified over the past decades. Iran has continuously expanded its involvement across the region, which has led to a 'balance of terror' between the two countries. Various incidents of confrontation have occurred between the two countries in the Red Sea and East of Africa since 2010s. The Iranian regime, has been expanding its strategic depth into various regions, including Africa. Different Iranian administrations have adopted distinct policies in their term, that are influenced by various factors. The relations between Iran and East African countries have been transactional and facilitated by Iran's effort to provide various forms of financial and military assistance in exchange for friendly diplomatic relations and ability to influence African leaders' attitude towards the West and its allies, particularly Israel. This paper reviews the history of involvement of the two countries in these regions, and analyses how policies of confrontation in both countries have changed and developed over the different historical periods. The paper will have a particular focus on post-2005, because there is compelling evidence indicating a substantial expansion of Iran’s engagement in these regions

Aging of mesenchymal stem cell in vitro

BACKGROUND: A hot new topic in medical treatment is the use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) in therapy. The low frequency of this subpopulation of stem cells in bone marrow (BM) necessitates their in vitro expansion prior to clinical use. We evaluated the effect of long term culture on the senescence of these cells. RESULTS: The mean long term culture was 118 days and the mean passage number was 9. The average number of PD decreased from 7.7 to 1.2 in the 10th passage. The mean telomere length decreased from 9.19 Kbp to 8.7 kbp in the 9th passage. Differentiation potential dropped from the 6th passage on. The culture's morphological abnormalities were typical of the Hayflick model of cellular aging. CONCLUSION: We believe that MSC enter senescence almost undetectably from the moment of in vitro culturing. Simultaneously these cells are losing their stem cell characteristics. Therefore, it is much better to consider them for cell and gene therapy early on

Training Interventions Change Relative Power Spectrum of Alpha After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Deficiency in Athletes

Introduction: In individuals with anterior cruciate ligament deficiency (ACLD), defective sensory and motor neuroplasticity occurs in the central nervous system (CNS) due to defects in sensory afferents. To successfully restore ACLD individuals to pre-injury conditions, it is necessary to modify the neuroplasticity created in the CNS by prescribing more appropriate training. For this aim, in this study, we used perturbation training differently. Materials and Methods: Thirty athletes with unilateral anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture were randomly assigned to the perturbation and standard training groups. The training program of two groups was performed in three intermittent sessions per week for one month. The relative power spectrum of alpha of quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) was measured in three tasks: (1) the single-leg jump-landing, (2) the single-leg stance with opened eyes, and (3) the single-leg stance with closed eyes. Results: The perturbation training group only showed significant symmetry in the relative power spectrum of alpha between the two limbs in the single-leg jump-landing test (p=0.92, ES=0.04) in comparison pre-post test. Also, this group showed high symmetry in the alpha band in the single-leg stance test with closed eyes (p=0.53, ES=0.16). Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that both mechanical perturbation and standard training are suitable for transporting ACLDs back to sports. It also seems that mechanical perturbation training had higher effectiveness in modifying the CNS alpha power

Fog vehicular computing: augmentation of fog computing using vehicular cloud computing

© 20XX IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by IEEE in IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MVT.2017.2667499 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Fog computing has emerged as a promising solution for accommodating the surge of mobile traffic and reducing latency, both known to be inherent problems of cloud computing. Fog services, including computation, storage, and networking, are hosted in the vicinity of end users (edge of the network), and, as a result, reliable access is provisioned to delay-sensitive mobile applications. However, in some cases, the fog computing capacity is overwhelmed by the growing number of demands from patrons, particularly during peak hours, and this can subsequently result in acute performance degradation. In this article, we address this problem by proposing a new concept called fog vehicular computing (FVC) to augment the computation and storage power of fog computing. We also design a comprehensive architecture for FVC and present a number of salient applications. The result of implementation clearly shows the effectiveness of the proposed architecture. Finally, some open issues and envisioned directions are discussed for future research in the context of FVC.Published versio

Efficacy of 153Sm-EDTMP on Bone Pain Palliation in Metastatic Patients: Breast and Prostate Cancers

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of samarium-153-EDTMP (153Sm-EDTMP) on pain relief bone metastases of Breast Cancer (BC) and Prostate Cancer (PC) patients. Materials and Methods: Thirty patients aged 40-77 years (62.6±10.2 years) with intractable metastatic bone pain were included in the current study. A checklist of patient information and a standard questionnaire for the assessment of pain and quality of life were completed before and after four and eight week’s palliative treatment with 37 MBq/kg of 153Sm-EDTMP. To analyse the data, parametric and non-parametric tests were used in SPSS software. Results: Twelve females with BC (40%) and 18 males with PC (60%) were included. Four and eight weeks after palliative treatment of 153Sm-EDTMP, the mean pain score reduction and quality of life were statistically increased compared to before the intervention (P-value 0.05). Conclusion: The injection of 153Sm-EDTMP had therapeutic efficacy for bone pain palliation in patients with diffuse bone metastases at the end of the 4th and 8th week post-infusion

The 2012 August 11 Ahar earthquakes: consequences for tectonics and earthquake hazard in the Turkish-Iranian Plateau

We have examined the faulting in the 2012 August 11 Mw 6.4 and 6.3 Ahar (NW Iran) earthquakes using a combination of field mapping, remote-sensing observations of tectonic geomorphology, the cross-correlation of optical satellite images and the inversion of seismic waveforms. The first event was close to pure strike-slip, and the second was an oblique combination of thrust and strike-slip motion. Mapped surface ruptures indicate at least one of these events accommodated mostly right-lateral strike-slip motion on an ∼E–W striking plane. The occurrence of these earthquakes highlights the spatially distributed deformation in NW Iran, which has implications for both hazard assessment (the Ahar events killed over 300 people and injured over 3000), and also tectonic models of the region. Furthermore, these earthquakes demonstrate that the tectonics of the Ahar area is characterized by strike-slip faulting and a component of shortening, and not the previously suggested extension

“The new land of opportunity?” Immigrants' political participation and representation in Norway: Exploring the intersecting experiences of immigrants within the realm of Norwegian politics

Background: The low conventional political participation of immigrants in Norway, which has continually reflected in relevant statistics, contains grave consequences for the representative democracy and it significantly leads to the underrepresentation of immigrants in politics. Accordingly, few qualitative studies are aimed at providing an in-depth understanding of the lived experiences of immigrants, especially women, within the realm of politics in receiving countries. In this sense, the challenges of immigrants’ political participation are not sufficiently scrutinized through a phenomenological and intersectional analysis of their lived experiences. Methods: Seven in-depth interviews were conducted. Informants were either politicians or political activists with immigrant backgrounds. The thematic analysis was utilized to analyze the data. Findings: Language barriers, the issue of acceptance, and violent practices were reported as obstacles to political participation and representation of immigrant women. In addition, immigrants’ political participation is being shaped by formulation of gender roles, differences in political culture, language abilities, perceptions around their nationality, and the role of the political system in facilitating their participation. Discussion and conclusion: Immigrants are racialized based on the perceptions regarding the notion of ‘cultural differences’ that function as a substitute for race and, therefore, as a category of disadvantage that distinguishes immigrants from the ‘white’ ethnic majority. This process of racialization confines and restricts immigrants’ political agency and political participation. In addition, it is argued that the political agency of immigrant women politicians and political activists is limited as they confront a double bind in navigating their triple roles, while their other axes of identity exacerbate the challenges in their political career. Finally, it is argued that immigrant women, as politicians or political activists, experience intersectional microaggressions extensively and based on their different axes of identity. The study concludes that the racialized formulation of immigrants’ identity is a source of prejudice, discrimination, and exclusionary practices through which they are deterred from the political sphere