Pantheism in wordsworth: a study from the Islamic perspective

William Wordsworth, a literary icon in romantic poetry, has impressed us with his pantheism and therefore, encouraged us to think of doing research into the concept with some modifications from Islamic perspective. It is, indeed, difficult to analyse the idea from Islamic perspective, because holding multidimensional concepts of God, and contradictory theories and hypotheses by some Muslim pundits and Sufis basing the concepts of other religions and ideas of God instead of authentic sources from the Holy Quran and Hadith, have made the general Muslims confused. Moreover, ideas like these may lead the believers to the Shirk (partnership) with God. So we have attempted to analyse the concept of the romantic poet along with the related concepts of some Sufis in the light of Islam with the support of some Qur’anic verses

Biological Markers in River Catfish, Mystus Nemurus (C&V) Exposed to Hydrogen Sulphide

Biochemical, histopathological, histochemical and bioenergetic parameters were studied to determine their suitability as biological markers for hydrogen sulphide toxicity detection using the river catfish Mystus nemurus (C&V) exposed to H2S in laboratory experiments as well as those caught from the wild. In the laboratory, the toxic effects of H2S to M nemurus juveniles were determined by using a flow-through bioassay technique. The 96-h LC₅₀ value of unionized H₂S was 3.20 µg/L, and 0.003 µg/L unionized H₂S was recommended as the safety level for M nemurus juveniles under tropical environmental condition. Sulphaemoglobin and thiosulphate concentrations significantly increased (p<0.01) with increasing hydrogen sulphide (H₂S) concentrations and exposure time. However, H₂S reduced the oxygen carrying capacity of haemoglobin by reducing oxyhaemoglobin. Glutathione S-transferase (GST) specific activities significantly increased (p<0.01) in fish exposed to H₂S higher than 30% of LC₅₀. Gill lesions such as epithelial separation, club-shaped lamellae and interlamellar fusion were observed at different concentrations of H2S. The evidence of neurotoxicity was elucidated by necrosis and damaged mitochondria in fish brain tissue. Sulphur accumulation in gills progressively increased with the increase of H₂S concentrations and exposure time. The liver-somatic index (LSI) and growth rate significantly decreased (p<0.05) with increased concentrations of H₂S and exposure time. Fulton's condition factor failed to predict (p>0.1) stress effects in fish exposed less than six weeks to H₂S. However, RNA-DNA ratios showed high correlations with H2S concentrations from the second (r²= 0.83; p<0.01) to sixth week (r²=0.98;p<0.01) of exposure. Thiosulphate and sulphaemoglobin showed positive correlations with H₂S concentrations (r²= 0.79; p<0.01 and r²= 0.89; p<0.01 respectively). Sulphur accumulation in gills was positively correlated with thiosulphate and sulphaemoglobin concentrations in blood (r²= 0.74; p<0.01), indicating that these compounds resulted from H2S exposure. In addition, H2S levels in water were directly correlated with GST activities and sulphaemoglobin concentrations. However, H2S concentrations showed an inverse relationship with oxyhaemoglobin concentrations. The field study supported the laboratory findings for two indicators; thiosulphate and sulphur accumulation, were potential biological markers for H₂S toxicity. Other markers such as Fulton' s condition factor, liver-somatic index, growth rate, RNA-DNA ratio, histopathology and histochemistry did not reflect specific toxic effect, although they can be used to indicate the general health condition of fish exposed to H₂S. Among all the indicators, thiosulphate was found to be the simplest and fastest biological marker for detecting H₂S toxicity

Problems of Pronunciation for the Chittagonian Learners of English: A Case Study

The study focuses on the scenario of English pronunciation of the speakers at the tertiary level at International Islamic University Chittagong in Bangladesh, dealing with existing pronunciation style of the students of Chittagong background and tries to identify the influence of the Chittagonian variety in this regard. The study is qualitative by nature and the methods of data collection consist of record keeping of words through direct interview, reading passages, presentation and dialogues with a view to avoiding confusion regarding pronunciation. The results of the study are the mispronunciation of some commonly used English words because of the influence of Chittagonian variety, ignorance and lack of knowledge of the Standard English pronunciation system, etc. On the basis of the findings, some recommendations have been suggested so that the students could create self-awareness about the standard pronunciation of English; also the teachers should be familiarized with the standard pronunciation of English, etc. Key words: Chittagonian English speaker, Chittagonian variety, Pronunciation problem, Tertiary level.

Incidence, trends and risk factors for perineal injuries of low-risk pregnant women: Experience from a midwife run obstetric unit, South Africa

Pregnant women experience perineal injuries during childbirth. The objectives of this cross-sectional retrospective study were to estimate the incidence, trends, and risk factors for perineal injuries of women who had childbirths from January 2013 to December 2017. We used logistic regression to identify risk factors for all injuries, episiotomy, and obstetric anal sphincter injury (OASI) measured by odds ratios (OR). A total of 5547 women showed gradual decreases of episiotomy from 17.6% in 2013 to 7.6% in 2017 (p&lt;0.05). Perineal injuries were reduced from 33.3% in 2013 to 28.9% in 2017 (p&lt;0.05). The risk factor for any perineal injury were younger ages, term pregnancy, and nil parity (p,0.05). Advanced gestational age, nil parity, and previous vaginal births were risk factors for episiotomy. However, birth weight of baby was significantly associated with OASI. Episiotomy and overall perineal injury rates were commendable. Training to midwives is needed to improve perineal care and maintain good practices during delivery. &nbsp; Les femmes enceintes subissent des blessures périnéales lors des accouchements. Les objectifs de cette étude rétrospective transversale étaient d'estimer l'incidence, les tendances et les facteurs de risque de blessures périnéales chez les femmes qui ont accouché de janvier 2013 à décembre 2017. Nous avons utilisé la régression logistique pour identifier les facteurs de risque pour toutes les blessures, l'épisiotomie et l'obstétrique. lésion du sphincter anal (OASI) mesurée par les rapports de cotes (OR). Au total, 5 547 femmes ont présenté une diminution progressive de l'épisiotomie de 17,6 % en 2013 à 7,6 % en 2017 (p&lt;0,05). Les blessures périnéales ont été réduites de 33,3% en 2013 à 28,9% en 2017 (p&lt;0,05). Le facteur de risque de toute lésion périnéale était un âge plus jeune, une grossesse à terme et une parité nulle (p, 0,05). L'âge gestationnel avancé, la parité nulle et les accouchements vaginaux antérieurs étaient des facteurs de risque d'épisiotomie. Cependant, le poids de naissance du bébé était significativement associé à l'OASI. Les taux d'épisiotomie et de lésions périnéales globales étaient louables. La formation des sages-femmes est nécessaire pour améliorer les soins périnéaux et maintenir les bonnes pratiques lors de l'accouchement. &nbsp

THE WORLD'S OLDEST UNIVERSITY AND ITS FINANCING EXPERIENCE: A STUDY ON AL-QARAWIYYIN UNIVERSITY (859-990)

Al-Qarawiyyin University's independence in terms of finances had been a significant and influential factor in making it possible for the university to maintain its high quality. Therefore, this paper aims to examine and analyse the financial sources for the development and operation of this university. It reviews and analyses historical data through relevant literature and documents. Waqf played a significant role in providing financial assistance to the university's communities and in strengthening its academic quality. There were four significant types of waqf sources which were the individual fund, the collective waqf fund, the Sultan fund and the alumni fund along with different other types of charities, i.e. sadaqah. This article adds new knowledge by examining the financing experiences of the world's oldest university. It is expected that the instance of Al-Qarawiyyin University may contribute to finding out a solution for the funding crises in contemporary institutions. This review is hoped to constitute a significant contribution to scholarship in general and act as a suggestion for solving the contemporary funding crisis of higher educational institutions. &nbsp; Keywords: Al-Qarawiyyin University, financing higher education, Morocco, Waqf. &nbsp; Cite as: Hoque, M. N., &amp; Abdullah, M. F. (2021). The world's oldest university and its financing experience: A study on Al-Qarawiyyin University (859-990).&nbsp; Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(1), 24-41. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss1pp24-4

Investigating leadership practices in retail banking in South Africa: a case study of Nedbank

The purpose of the cross-sectional study was to determine the leadership practices in a retail bank in South Africa. A self-administered anonymous questionnaire was used to collect the data, using an online survey tool (QuestionPro). A total of 60 managers completed the questionnaire. Results showed that there was a significant relationship between leadership practices and leadership style in the organization. Transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles were the important predictors, which influenced the leadership practices of the managerial bank employees. Therefore, managers should adopt different leadership behavior, depending on several other situational factors that come to hand. Keywords: leadership practices, retail banking, manager, factor, South Africa. JEL Classification: G20, G21, M10, M12, L2

Factors influencing the recommendation of the Human Papillomavirus vaccine by South African doctors working in a tertiary hospital.

Background: In South Africa, HPV vaccination programme has been incorporated recently in the school health system. Since doctors are the most trusted people regarding health issues in general, their knowledge and attitudes regarding HPV infections and vaccination are very important for HPV vaccine program nationally. Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate factors contributing to recommendation of HPV vaccines to the patients. Methods: This was a quantitative cross-sectional study conducted among 320 doctors, using a self-administered anonymous questionnaire. Results: All the doctors were aware of HPV and knew that HPV is transmitted sexually. Their overall level of knowledge regarding HPV infections and HPV vaccine was poor. But the majority intended to prescribe the vaccine to their patients. It was found that doctors who knew that HPV 6 and 11 are responsible for &gt;90% of anogenital warts, their patients would comply with the counselling regarding HPV vaccination, and received sufficient information about HPV vaccination were 5.68, 4.91 and 4.46 times respectively more likely to recommend HPV vaccination to their patients, compared to their counterparts (p&lt;0.05). Conclusion: There was a knowledge gap regarding HPV infection and HPV vaccine among the doctors

Saliency-based Video Summarization for Face Anti-spoofing

Due to the growing availability of face anti-spoofing databases, researchers are increasingly focusing on video-based methods that use hundreds to thousands of images to assess their impact on performance. However, there is no clear consensus on the exact number of frames in a video required to improve the performance of face anti-spoofing tasks. Inspired by the visual saliency theory, we present a video summarization method for face anti-spoofing tasks that aims to enhance the performance and efficiency of deep learning models by leveraging visual saliency. In particular, saliency information is extracted from the differences between the Laplacian and Wiener filter outputs of the source images, enabling identification of the most visually salient regions within each frame. Subsequently, the source images are decomposed into base and detail layers, enhancing representation of important information. The weighting maps are then computed based on the saliency information, indicating the importance of each pixel in the image. By linearly combining the base and detail layers using the weighting maps, the method fuses the source images to create a single representative image that summarizes the entire video. The key contribution of our proposed method lies in demonstrating how visual saliency can be used as a data-centric approach to improve the performance and efficiency of face presentation attack detection models. By focusing on the most salient images or regions within the images, a more representative and diverse training set can be created, potentially leading to more effective models. To validate the method's effectiveness, a simple deep learning architecture (CNN-RNN) was used, and the experimental results showcased state-of-the-art performance on five challenging face anti-spoofing datasets

Deep Ensemble Learning with Frame Skipping for Face Anti-Spoofing

Face presentation attacks, also known as spoofing attacks, pose a significant threat to biometric systems that rely on facial recognition systems, such as access control systems, mobile payments, and identity verification systems. To prevent spoofing, several video-based methods have been presented in the literature that analyze facial motion in successive video frames. However, estimating the motion between adjacent frames is a challenging task and requires high computational cost. In this paper, we reformulate the face anti-spoofing task as a motion prediction problem and introduce a deep ensemble learning model with a frame skipping mechanism. The proposed frame skipping is based on a uniform sampling approach where the original video is divided into fixed size video clips. In this way, every nth frame of the clip is selected to ensure that the temporal patterns can easily be perceived during the training of three different recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Motivated by the performance of each RNNs, a meta-model is developed to improve the overall recognition performance by combining the predictions of the individual RNNs. Extensive experiments were conducted on four datasets, and state-of-the-art performance is reported for MSU-MFSD (3.12\%), Replay-Attack (11.19\%), and OULU-NPU (12.23\%) using half total error rate (HTER) in the most challenging cross-dataset test scenario

Determination of Traffic Induced Noise Pollution and its Impact on City Dwellers in the Chittagong City Area

Chittagong, the port city of Bangladesh, is one of the nosiest cities of the country. Extreme noise is very inimical for human health and environment. Noise pollution implies a discomfort and restlessness caused to humans by unwanted high intensity sound. Motorized traffic is one of the major sources of producing noise in Chittagong city. The present paper deals with determining the level of the noise pollution in Chittagong city area and its impact on city dwellers. In this study noise levels have been measured with digital sound level meter at eight different places of Chittagong city from 6:00 am to 9:00 pm during working days. Time weighted average noise level has been measured at the road side. The data have been analyzed to compute the average, maximum and minimum noise level in decibel (dB) with respect to traffic volume. From the study it was observed that the highest noise level in the road side in Chittagong city was 112 dB found at New Market and 2 No gate traffic area, which for exceeded the acceptable limit of 60 dB set by the Government of Bangladesh and minimum sound level 67 dB was recorded at GEC traffic area. The highest average value is 109.66 dB found at 2 No gate traffic area and lowest average value is 68.7 dB found at GEC traffic area. Questionnaire survey was done during the study to determine the health impact on the city dwellers. Most of the common problems, the dwellers suffering from noise pollution are headache, bed temper, sleeplessness, aggravation, hearing problems etc