The origins of Muslim prayer : sixth and seventh century religious influences on the salat ritual

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 12, 2009)Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2008.While salat is a central aspect of Islamic practice, the way the first Muslims developed the prayer ritual has not been widely researched. This study employs the theory of syncretism to show that religious rituals practiced in Jewish traditions, Zoroastrian traditions, Christian traditions and traditions indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula influenced how the Muslim daily prayer was developed. Four aspects of salat are considered: washing before prayer, prostration, direction faced during prayer and number of times prayer is performed throughout the day. A set of criteria for potential syncretic influence is applied to historical evidence of religious practice in specific communities in the Northeast Africa, Southwest Asia region in the sixth and seventh centuries. The criteria are similarity in practice, contact between early Muslims and other religious individuals or groups, and the extent of that contact. When these criteria are met, possible syncretic influence is indicated. Conclusions reached indicate that ritual washing was influenced by Jewish and Zoroastrian practice. Prostration was likely an influence from indigenous Arabian traditions and not from Jewish and Christian traditions, as previous studies have concluded. Direction faced during prayer was an influence stemming from the Jewish tradition. Number of times prayer is performed throughout the day was primarily a Zoroastrian influence, while other traditions also likely had some influence

Effects of Presence of Waves on Shallow Estuaries Hydrodynamics

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Analyses of collective flow and space-time evolution based on relativistic hydrodynamical model

We numerically solve fully (3+1)-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamical equation with the baryon number conservation law. For realistic initial conditions we adopt the results from the event generator (URASiMA). Using this model we discuss collective flow.Comment: 4 pages, 11 figures, to apper in Proceedings of Quark Matter '9

An uncomplicated method for making periodical identical radiographs of experimental bone lesions in the rat. A technical report.

An uncomplicated method for making periodically similar radiographs of the rat mandible is presented. A stent was produced by making an impression of the rat maxilla using an acrylic resin, incorporating an orthodontic wire: and fixing the impression to a RinnTM holder for the detector of the Sens-A-RayTM direct digital radiographie system This inflexible stent was then inserted and fixed to the maxilla of rats, anaesthetised with HypnormTM(fluanison 10mg/ml and fentanyl 0.2 mg/ml). In this fashion, serial radiographs were taken once a week for 12 weeks, making it possible to follow the healing of experimental bone lesions

Foreign economic policy of Ukraine and its influence on the state of domestic consumer market

Зовнішньоекономічна політика є важливою складовою економічної політики держави, що забезпечує її вплив на розвиток національної економіки в цілому та споживчого ринку зокрема. Незважаючи на велику кількість досліджень в даній області та розгляд зовнішньоекономічної політики країни науковцями в різних аспектах, недостатньо розробленими залишаються питання розгляду її в пливу на функціонування споживчого ринку всередині країни. Метою статті є розробка рекомендацій щодо аналізу ефективності зовнішньоекономічної політики через оцінку стану споживчого ринку. При дослідженні впливу зовнішньоекономічної політики на функціонування внутрішнього споживчого ринку запропоновано зосереджувати увагу на забезпеченні потреб споживачів та конкурентоспроможності вітчизняних виробників на внутрішньому ринку. При цьому з позицій досягнення соціального розвитку країни та добробуту населення пріоритетним визначено реалізація потреб споживачів за рахунок виробництва вітчизняних товарів при за безпеченні конкурентного рівня якості. Розроблено стратегічну карту та визначено сукупність стратегічних цілей зовнішньоекономічної політики держави щодо впливу на внутрішній споживчий ринок. Для оцінки ефективності зовнішньоекономічної політики визначено набір ключових показників функціонування споживчого ринку, які відображають ступінь досягнення стратегічних цілей. Такими показниками є частка імпортних товарів на внутрішньому споживчому ринку України, індекс динаміки обсягів імпорту та індекси динаміки обсягу прямих іноземних інвестицій в економіку України. Зазначені показники були розраховані щодо основних галузей промисловості, які забезпечують задоволення потреб населення на споживчому ринку. Проведені розрахунки та аналіз показників дозволив зробити висновок про те, що серед розглянутих сегментів ринку лише у сфері продовольчих товарів та друкованої продукції спостерігаються позитивні результати щодо досягнення стратегічних цілей. Щодо і нших галузей на даний момент констатуємо негативні тенденції, що вимагають застосування інструментів політики імпортозаміщення. Серед цих інструментів найбільшого значення набувають заходи державної цільової підтримки, спрямованої на розширення виробництва та інноваційного розвитку вітчизняного бізнесу шляхом створенн я умов для залучення іноземних інвестицій, а також імпортні тарифні квоти та технічні стандарти для товарів, що ввозяться.Foreign economic policy is an important part of the economic policy of government. This fact causes its influence on development of the national economy in whole and consumer market in particular. Although there are many researches in this field and scientists look into foreign economic policy from different standpoints, influence of foreign economic policy on consumer market performance has not yet been suffi ciently explored. The purpose of the present article is to develop recommendations for the analysis of foreign economic policy effectiveness with the aid of the assessment of the state of consumer market. In the study of influence of foreign economic policy on consumer market performance it is suggested to focus on meeting the demands of consumers and competitive ability of domestic producers in the domestic market. Realization of the demands of consumers through the production of domestic goods of good quality is estimated as a priority from the perspective of social development of the country and webeing of the population.The strategic map was made, a set of strategic goals of foreign economic policy of the state concerning influence on domestic consumer market was developed. A set of core indicators of consumer market performance reflecting degree of achievement of strategic goals was determined for assessing the effectiveness of foreign economic policy. The indicators include the share of imported goods on domestic consumer market of Ukraine, an index of dynamics of import and indexes of dynamics of foreign direct investment in economy of Ukraine. These indicators were calculated for basic branches of industry which provide meeting the needs of the population on consumer market. The calculations that were done and analysis of indicators led to the conclusion that positive results in achievement of strategic goals occur only in the area of food commodities and printed product among reviewed market segments. In other areas we stated to date negative tr ends that require the use of import substitution policy tools. Government targeted support measures aimed to increase production and innovative development of the national business by creating conditions for the attraction of foreign investment, as well as import tariff quotas and techn ical standards for goods that are being imported are the most important of these tools

A porcine model of acute, haematogenous, localized osteomyelitis due to Staphylococcus aureus: a pathomorphological study

A porcine model of acute, haematogenous, localized osteomyelitis was established. Serial dilutions of Staphylococcus aureus [5–50–500–5000–50 000 CFU/kg body weight (BW) suspended in saline or saline alone] were inoculated into the right brachial artery of pigs (BW 15 kg) separated into six groups of two animals. During the infection, blood was collected for cultivation, and after the animals were killed from day 5 to 15, they were necropsied and tissues were sampled for histopathology. Animals receiving ≤500 CFU/kg BW were free of lesions. Pigs inoculated with 5000 and 50 000 CFU/kg BW only developed microabscesses in bones of the infected legs. In the centre of microabscesses, S. aureus was regularly demonstrated together with necrotic neutrophils. Often, bone lesions resulted in trabecular osteonecrosis. The present localized model of acute haematogenous osteomyelitis revealed a pattern of development and presence of lesions similar to the situation in children. Therefore, this model should be reliably applied in studies of this disease with respect to e.g. pathophysiology and pathomorphology. Moreover, because of the regional containment of the infection to a defined number of bones, the model should be applicable also for screening of new therapy strategies

Zebra finches and Dutch adults exhibit the same cue weighting bias in vowel perception

Vocal tract resonances, called formants, are the most important parameters in human speech production and perception. They encode linguistic meaning and have been shown to be perceived by a wide range of species. Songbirds are also sensitive to different formant patterns in human speech. They can categorize words differing only in their vowels based on the formant patterns independent of speaker identity in a way comparable to humans. These results indicate that speech perception mechanisms are more similar between songbirds and humans than realized before. One of the major questions regarding formant perception concerns the weighting of different formants in the speech signal (“acoustic cue weighting”) and whether this process is unique to humans. Using an operant Go/NoGo design, we trained zebra finches to discriminate syllables, whose vowels differed in their first three formants. When subsequently tested with novel vowels, similar in either their first formant or their second and third formants to the familiar vowels, similarity in the higher formants was weighted much more strongly than similarity in the lower formant. Thus, zebra finches indeed exhibit a cue weighting bias. Interestingly, we also found that Dutch speakers when tested with the same paradigm exhibit the same cue weighting bias. This, together with earlier findings, supports the hypothesis that human speech evolution might have exploited general properties of the vertebrate auditory system

Return of auditory function following structural regeneration after acoustic trauma: Behavioral measures from quail,

After measuring baseline behavioral audiograms, three of four behaviorally trained quail and fifteen untrained cohorts were exposed to a 1.5-kHz octave-band noise at 116-dB SPL for 4 h. The trained birds were tested daily following the exposure and showed a steady recovery of absolute sensitivity with a return to normal absolute thresholds by post-exposure days 8-10. Thirteen untrained cohorts were sacrificed after various survival times to evaluate the structural condition of the car. The cohorts all showed regeneration of sensory cells similar to that seen in chicks. The effects of repeated acoustic trauma on recovery of sensitivity were evaluated by re-exposing the three trained birds and two untrained cohorts 106 days after the first exposure. One of the trained birds was exposed a third time, 113 days following the second exposure. The findings demonstrate that, following acoustic trauma, normal sensitivity returns prior to complete structural regeneration of the sensory epithelium and that repeated acoustic trauma may increase the time course of recovery of normal hearing sensitivity.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31335/1/0000245.pd

Across-Channel Timing Differences as a Potential Code for the Frequency of Pure Tones

When a pure tone or low-numbered harmonic is presented to a listener, the resulting travelling wave in the cochlea slows down at the portion of the basilar membrane (BM) tuned to the input frequency due to the filtering properties of the BM. This slowing is reflected in the phase of the response of neurons across the auditory nerve (AN) array. It has been suggested that the auditory system exploits these across-channel timing differences to encode the pitch of both pure tones and resolved harmonics in complex tones. Here, we report a quantitative analysis of previously published data on the response of guinea pig AN fibres, of a range of characteristic frequencies, to pure tones of different frequencies and levels. We conclude that although the use of across-channel timing cues provides an a priori attractive and plausible means of encoding pitch, many of the most obvious metrics for using that cue produce pitch estimates that are strongly influenced by the overall level and therefore are unlikely to provide a straightforward means for encoding the pitch of pure tones

Importance of the Collagen Adhesin Ace in Pathogenesis and Protection against Enterococcus faecalis Experimental Endocarditis

Ace is an adhesin to collagen from Enterococcus faecalis expressed conditionally after growth in serum or in the presence of collagen. Here, we generated an ace deletion mutant and showed that it was significantly attenuated versus wild-type OG1RF in a mixed infection rat endocarditis model (P<0.0001), while no differences were observed in a peritonitis model. Complemented OG1RFΔace (pAT392::ace) enhanced early (4 h) heart valve colonization versus OG1RFΔace (pAT392) (P = 0.0418), suggesting that Ace expression is important for early attachment. By flow cytometry using specific anti-recombinant Ace (rAce) immunoglobulins (Igs), we showed in vivo expression of Ace by OG1RF cells obtained directly from infected vegetations, consistent with our previous finding of anti-Ace antibodies in E. faecalis endocarditis patient sera. Finally, rats actively immunized against rAce were less susceptible to infection by OG1RF than non-immunized (P = 0.0004) or sham-immunized (P = 0.0475) by CFU counts. Similarly, animals given specific anti-rAce Igs were less likely to develop E. faecalis endocarditis (P = 0.0001) and showed fewer CFU in vegetations (P = 0.0146). In conclusion, we have shown for the first time that Ace is involved in pathogenesis of, and is useful for protection against, E. faecalis experimental endocarditis