The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt pursuing moderation within an authoritarian environment

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is one of the biggest Islamist movements in the Middle East and North Africa, and its role in the future of Egyptian politics deserves careful consideration in light of the recent overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's regime. Over the past decades, the MB has changed their relationship with successive Egyptian authoritarian regimes by continuously renouncing violence and abiding by a moderate path as a means to achieve their objectives. This study uses competing theoretical approaches to understand the reasons behind the Muslim Brotherhood's decision to abide by a moderate strategy. The major finding of this study is that, over time, a combination of external and internal factors, such as regime repression and constraints and leadership, organizational and generational structures, as well as ideological influences, have shaped the organization's decision making. Furthermore, this study highlights the stagnation of this moderate development in the face of both regime constraints and internal leadership and generational issues, and demonstrates that the mode of recovery from this stagnation will be critical in the Muslim Brotherhood's future orientation as a movement.http://archive.org/details/themuslimbrother109455685Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Time course of motion adaptation: Motion-onset visual evoked potentials and subjective estimates

AbstractThe aim of this study was to quantitatively describe the dynamics of adaptation to visual motion with electrophysiological and psychophysical methods in man. We recorded visual evoked potentials (VEPs) to motion onset of random dot patterns from occipital and occipito-temporal electrodes during a succession of adaptation-recovery sequences. In these sequences the test stimulus was used to set the adaptation level: seven trials with 70% motion duty cycle (adaptation) followed by seven trials of 7% motion duty cycle (recovery). In a similar paradigm we determined the length of the perceptual motion after-effect to obtain a psychophysical measure of the time course of motion adaptation. Our results show a highly significant reduction of the N2 amplitude in the maximally compared to the minimally adapted condition (P<0.001). Electrophysiological and psychophysical results both indicate that adaptation to visual motion is faster than recovery: The data were fit with an exponential model yielding adaptation and recovery time constants, respectively, of 2.5 and 10.2 s for the N2 amplitude (occipito temporal derivation) and of 7.7 and 16.7 s for the perceptual motion after-effect. Implications for the design of motion stimuli are discussed, e.g. a motion stimulus moving 10% of the time may lead to about 30% motion adaptation

Biomechanical Analysis of the Knee Joint Load During a Unilateral Sit-to-Stand Movement

Background and Objectives: Sit-to-Stand (STS) movements are fundamental activities of daily living. As STS movements can be physically demanding especially for the elderly, bi- and unilateral STS movements are frequently used in motor tests to measure lower limb strength. In contrast to bilateral STS movements, the knee joint loads occurring during unilateral STS movements as well as the influences of chair height or lower limb dominance are still unknown. Methods: In a randomized study approach knee joint loads during unilateral STS movements from three different chair heights have been analyzed using biomechanical motion analysis in a population of 19 healthy middle-aged adults. Additionally, the influence of lower limb dominance and the level of perceived exertion have been investigated. Results: Lower limb dominance had no effect on knee joint load. In contrast, chair height significantly affected the peak shear forces in anterior (high: 3.94 ± 0.63 N/kg; low: 4.09 ± 0.61 N/kg) and lateral (high: 1.52 ± 0.79 N/kg; low: 1.78 ± 0.88 N/kg) direction as well as the peak knee adduction moment (high: 0.56 ± 0.29 Nm/kg; low: 0.65 ± 0.32 Nm/kg). Additionally, chair height but not limb dominance significantly affected the level of perceived exertion (high: 11.1 ± 2.8; low: 12.5 ± 3.5). Conclusion: The detected knee joint loads occurring during a unilateral STS movements are similar to those of other activities of daily living like e.g. stair ascent and thus, unilateral STS movements are applicable for usage in motor tests for middle-aged subjects. While lower limb dominance has no impact on the knee joint load, lower chair heights increase the load on the knee joint. Therefore, chair height should be considered when using unilateral STS movements in motor tests

Food consumption of adults in Germany: results of the German National Nutrition Survey II based on diet history interviews

The second German National Nutrition Survey (NVS II) aimed to evaluate food consumption and other aspects of nutritional behaviour of a representative sample of the German population, using a modular design with three different dietary assessment methods. To assess usual food consumption, 15 371 German speaking subjects 14–80 years of age completed a diet history interview between November 2005 and November 2006. With reference to the guidelines of the German Nutrition Society (DGE), NVS II observed that the German population did not eat enough foods of plant origin, especially vegetables and consumed too much of meat and meat products. While generally similar food consumption is observed in other European countries, consumption of bread, fruit juices/nectars and beer is higher in Germany. On average, men consumed two times more meat and soft drinks as well as six times more beer than women did, whereas the consumption of vegetables, fruit as well as herbal/fruit tea was higher in women. Older participants showed a lower consumption of meat, fruit juice/nectars, soft drinks and spirits as well as a higher consumption of fish, vegetables, fruit, and herbal/fruit tea than adolescents and younger adults did. There are also differences in food consumption with regard to socio-economic status (SES). Persons with higher SES consumed more vegetables, fruit, fish, water, coffee/tea and wine, while persons with lower SES consumed more meat and meat products, soft drinks and beer. In general, the food consumption of women, the elderly and the higher SES group tends to be closer to the official dietary guidelines in Germany

Chemically modified PTFE particles as solid lubricant additive for the fixation on substrate surfaces

During the irradiation of high molecular weight poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE) in presence of oxygen perfluoroalkyl(peroxy) radicals and functional groups are formed which allow chemical coupling reactions (cc = chemical compatibilized) with oils and plastics. Contrary to the well-known inert properties of perfluorinated organic compounds high-effective additives can be produced by radiation modification and subsequent chemical compatibilization of such substances with olefinically unsaturated groups of oils/lubricants. By the irradiation process high molecular weight PTFE degrades by C-C and C-F bond scission to lower molecular weight PTFE microparticles which possess perfluoroalkyl(peroxy) radicals. These radicals are used for the chemical compatibilization reaction with olefinically unsaturated groups base oils. The tribological properties and the dispersion stability of the resulting oil-PTFE-cc (cc = chemical compatibilized) dispersions are significantly enhanced in comparison to physical mixture of oil and PTFE micropowder. These oil-PTFE-cc-dispersions show primarily anti-wear (AW) properties. The use of reactive groups (e.g. phosphite groups) in the oil gives the dispersions extreme pressure (EP) properties additionally. This article demonstrates the usefulness of the oil-PTFE-cc-dispersions in rolling bearings using phosphite-modified PTFE products as additive in lubricants (FE-8 test). The investigations are completed by the examination of roller elements by SEM/EDX analysis. A model is shown to explain the effect of phosphite groups on oxidic/hydrolytic metal surfaces

Fractional Multi-Trace Fields of N=4 SYM_4 from AdS/CFT

We prove inductively that every k-trace operator of SO(6)_R irrep with Young tableau partition {r_1,r_2,r_3}, constructed out of k chiral primaries in the twenty dimensional SO(6)_R irrep, leads to a quasi primary field with protected conformal dimension. Our argument is based on perturbative evaluations of certain four point functions up to order 1/N^2.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, revised version, essential changes, to appear in Physics Letters

How to Manage Affective State in Child-Robot Tutoring Interactions?

Schodde T, Hoffmann L, Kopp S. How to Manage Affective State in Child-Robot Tutoring Interactions? In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Companion Technology 2017. IEEE; 2017: 1-6.Social robots represent a fruitful enhancement of intelligent tutoring systems that can be used for one-to-one tutoring. The role of affective states during learning has so far only scarcely been considered in such systems, because it is unclear which cues should be tracked, how they should be interpreted, and how the system should react to them. Therefore, we conducted expert interviews with preschool teachers, and based on these results suggest a conceptual model for tracing and managing the affective state of preschool children during robot-child tutoring