Revolution in parallel times: an Egyptian village's lived revolution

This paper explores revolutionary and rural politics through the case study of Al-Tahseen, a small village in the Egyptian Delta that witnessed an administrative secessionist movement in 2012 and a lineage of protests in 2008. The paper interrogates the relationship between politics at the rural level and the 25 January revolution in 2011, the 18-day mass protest that led to the ouster of long-time President Hosni Mubarak. Indeed, parallels can be drawn between the protest movement in Al-Tahseen and the 25 January revolution. While the villagers were not part of the latter, they watched it closely on television and modelled their sequence and choice of collective action accordingly. Al-Tahseen experienced its own local revolution which the villagers consciously differentiated from the 25 January uprising. Through this case study, I explore how protest tactics shift with changing political regimes, and highlight the complicated ways in which rural lived experiences relate to the more popularly known 2011 revolution, which is often seen and described as an urban revolution

Investor trading behavior: empirical evidence from the Egyptian stock exchange

Using unique, intraday transactions data from Egypt, this study examines the extent to which past returns, over several intervals going back to up to six months of past returns, and the level of sophistication of the different investor types, determine the propensity of different investor groups to buy and sell. I adopted the buy ratio differences method to determine which investors adopt a momentum behavior and which investors adopt a contrarian behavior. I find that non-Arab foreign investors tend to be momentum investors, buying past winning stocks and selling past losers while domestic investors, especially individual investors, tend to exhibit contrarianism. The distinctions in behavior are, to a great extent, consistent across the five different past-return intervals

Employment Security in Egypt in Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Rethinking Policies and Practices

Crises such as COVID-19’s have inequitable impacts on different countries, various population groups and diverse sectors of society and the economy. Areas of work and employment were met with a lot of challenges worldwide, and in particular in countries like Egypt with a large sector of vulnerable and precarious workers. This policy paper addresses the question of employment security both in response to crises such as COVID-19, and on the long term. To do so, the research maps ‘vulnerable work’, including informal labor, labor in the gig economy, self-employed and other types of precarious work. It then assesses Egypt’s policy responses to COVID-19 with regards to the issues of unemployment and informal labor, including by assessing the efficacy of the irregular workers’ fund and the diverse methods used to finance the crisis. Although some of those responses were in the right direction, their shortcomings revealed much deeper structural obstacles within employment relations and existing labor market vulnerabilities. This research thus provides policy recommendations, both on the short term in response to the crisis, as well as longer term to address vulnerability and precariousness in the world of employment in Egypt

Urban Metabolism and Quality of Life in Informal Areas

The 21st century is known as the century of urbanization. Numerous debates are currently taking place to definecities and what they should aspire to be. A number of terms have appeared in this arena,such as sustainable city, eco-city and green city to name a few. However, the main question remains how to measure the performance of a city in regards tothese aims. In addition, it is vital to note that major urbanization activities take part in cities of the developing world, where informalization is synonym to urbanization, thus necessitating a profound study of informal areas and their potential role in achieving sustainable cities. This paper studies how acity performs in terms of consuming and producing resources and how they flow through its various systems, described as urban metabolism. The paper particularly discusses how informal areas perform regarding their metabolism, focusing on water flow through these areas as a priority identified by the residents. Imbaba district, one of the largest informal areas in Cairo, is investigated as a case study to determine the actual quality of life of local residents and their ecological footprint and to providepractical insights. The whole process depends on a multidisciplinary participatory research where the citizens and local community based organization are the focal point. In addition, the process depends on open source data and data sharing as a way to empower local communities to identify their needs and issues and hence their appropriate interventions. This is conducted through questionnaires and interviews to identify what the current conditions and processes in informal areas provide for the residents. The paper concludes with identifying points of leakages in the resources flows and the possible interventions to improve the quality of life in the area while maintaining an efficient use of local resources and minimizing the impact of urbanization of the ecological footprint of cities. This will assist cities to become more resilient in the face of water scarcity, and provide a more vibrant life for its residents

OPRM1 and COMT Gene-Gene Interaction Effects on the Inter-individual Variability in Postoperative Pain and Response to Opioids

Background: Treatment of postoperative pain remains suboptimal. This is attributed, in part, to the individualized physiological and psychological perception of pain. Although the effect of genetic variation on pain is unequivocal, precise understating of the effect of multiple gene interaction is yet to be investigated. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) interacts with several neuroreceptors in the brain including the mu receptor (OPRM1). Hence, we sought to explore the gene-gene interaction effect of OPRM1 and COMT on postoperative pain and opioid dose required for pain management. Methods: We used genotypes and clinical data for 153 postoperative orthopedic trauma patients. For the COMT gene four single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs6269, rs4633, rs4818 and rs4680), three haplotypes (ACCG, ATCA, and GCGG), and two diplotypes (low and high pain intensity) were considered for their interactions with A118G of OPRM1 on postoperative pain and opioid consumption. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression. Analyses were repeated including only the Caucasian subjects. Results: For postoperative opioid consumption; a significant interaction was found between OPRM1 and COMT rs4680 (b=0.093, p=.037) and OPRM1 and COMT rs4633 (b=0.097, p=.037). The interactions between OPRM1 and COMT rs6269 and OPRM1 and COMT diplotypes demonstrated trends toward significance (b=-0.075, p=.080 and b=0.071, p=.070, respectively). The results for OPRM1×COMT rs4680 and OPRM1×COMT rs4633 on opioid consumption were maintained even after restricting the analyses to only Caucasian subjects. For postoperative pain scores, a significant interaction was found between OPRM1 and the GCGG haplotype of COMT (b=-0.926, p=.017). The interaction between OPRM1 and COMT rs4818 demonstrated a trend (b=-0.755, p=.060). When the sample was limited to only Caucasian subjects, only a trend was observed for the interaction effect of OPRM1 and the GCGG haplotype of COMT on postoperative pain (p= .070). The interactions of OPRM1×ACCG haplotype and OPRM1×diplotypes of COMT also showed trends toward significance (b=1.110, p= .058 and b=0.831, p= .050, respectively). Conclusion: OPRM1×COMT interactions may influence the variability in postoperative pain and response to opioids. Individualized pain management based on genetic variation can be an effective strategy to maximize the usefulness of pain management

The Impact of Transit-Oriented Development on Fast-Urbanizing Cities: Applied analytical study on Greater Cairo Region

Transportation has always been the backbone of development. Transit-oriented development (TOD) has been theorized, piloted and expanded increasingly in the past few decades. In this regard, this paper investigates the relationship between urban development, the transportation process, and the required implementation guidelines within fast-urbanizing cities, such as Cairo. After reviewing different related sustainable development theories, the study investigates pioneering case studies that have applied TOD and provided adequate implementation frameworks. The authors then extract and compare a set of required policies. The current Egyptian development paradigm is then discussed in relation to these enabling policies, focusing on Greater Cairo Region, Egypt. The authors debate previous development plans, progress, and newly proposed ones, focusing on the transportation process as the means for development. The study concludes with a set of required guidelines to ensure the integration of transportation with land-use planning, thus ensuring a more prosperous and inclusive urban development

Survey of Personalized Learning Software Systems: A Taxonomy of Environments, Learning Content, and User Models

This paper presents a comprehensive systematic review of personalized learning software systems. All the systems under review are designed to aid educational stakeholders by personalizing one or more facets of the learning process. This is achieved by exploring and analyzing the common architectural attributes among personalized learning software systems. A literature-driven taxonomy is recognized and built to categorize and analyze the reviewed literature. Relevant papers are filtered to produce a final set of full systems to be reviewed and analyzed. In this meta-review, a set of 72 selected personalized learning software systems have been reviewed and categorized based on the proposed personalized learning taxonomy. The proposed taxonomy outlines the three main architectural components of any personalized learning software system: learning environment, learner model, and content. It further defines the different realizations and attributions of each component. Surveyed systems have been analyzed under the proposed taxonomy according to their architectural components, usage, strengths, and weaknesses. Then, the role of these systems in the development of the field of personalized learning systems is discussed. This review sheds light on the field’s current challenges that need to be resolved in the upcoming years

Triggers And Tweets: Implicit Aspect-Based Sentiment And Emotion Analysis Of Community Chatter Relevant To Education Post-Covid-19

This research proposes a well-being analytical framework using social media chatter data. The proposed framework infers analytics and provides insights into the public\u27s well-being relevant to education throughout and post the COVID-19 pandemic through a comprehensive Emotion and Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA). Moreover, this research aims to examine the variability in emotions of students, parents, and faculty toward the e-learning process over time and across different locations. The proposed framework curates Twitter chatter data relevant to the education sector, identifies tweets with the sentiment, and then identifies the exact emotion and emotional triggers associated with those feelings through implicit ABSA. The produced analytics are then factored by location and time to provide more comprehensive insights that aim to assist the decision-makers and personnel in the educational sector enhance and adapt the educational process during and following the pandemic and looking toward the future. The experimental results for emotion classification show that the Linear Support Vector Classifier (SVC) outperformed other classifiers in terms of overall accuracy, precision, recall, and F-measure of 91%. Moreover, the Logistic Regression classifier outperformed all other classifiers in terms of overall accuracy, recall, an F-measure of 81%, and precision of 83% for aspect classification. In online experiments using UAE COVID-19 education-related data, the analytics show high relevance with the public concerns around the education process that were reported during the experiment\u27s timeframe

THE VIRTUALITY OF INTELLIGENT CITIES - THE ROAD TO HYBRIDIZING OUR NEW CITIES

The incorporation IoT into our social systems and the digitization of our everyday life has become the new norm for societies worldwide. This study posits that digitization should apply to our cities as well. The digital aspect of technology is not always tangible – even in the figurative sense of grasping a concept – and its allure lies in this virtual aspect. That is the starting point of discussion in this paper – the virtuality of intelligent cities, the intangible forces that make these new cities smart, and how said forces can be incorporated to create new smart hybrid cities that also aim to be intelligent, connected, and efficient. This research paper was designed to first set a strong theoretical base, which includes how the Circular City Actions CCA assessment framework works. This framework is applied to the three virtual methods, Sharing Economy, Smart Parking, and Virtual Power Plants VPP, as well as an international case study, the VPP in South Australia. The CCA framework was then applied to the data gathered for the local case study, the New Administrative Capital NAC in Egypt, which was chosen because it is the largest smart city being constructed currently in Egypt right now. Since it is still not fully operational, the data collected was based on governmental plans, proposals, and published papers about the city released within the last 5 years. After theoretically incorporating the proposed virtual methods into the NAC’s plans and reapplying the assessment framework, the results were greatly improved in different aspects. This study made it clear that the NAC has a strong hypothetical foundation to become an intelligent connected city, but there were some missed opportunities of incorporating virtual intelligent solutions to be implemented at different levels as the three proposed in this paper to reach its goal