Political and Social Developments in Morocco During the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman 1792-1822.

Mawlay Sulayman's reign (1792-1822) has so far received little attention from students of Moroccan history. The present work is designed to fill this gap in the modern history of Morocco by investigating the social, economic, political and religious aspects of this period of thirty years. It is intended to provide students of the modern history of Morocco with basic factual knowledge about the period. Initially, the thesis describes the structures of the Moroccan State and of Moroccan society at the turn of the nineteenth century. The economic history of the period is emphasised, particularly Morocco's commercial relations with Europe and the reasons behind the weakening of these relations at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The thesis then reconstructs the political history of Morocco during Mawlay Sulayman's reign. The discussion of political relations with the major European powers is intended to invalidate the long-held view of Morocco's isolation during the period under study. However, the most important - and the least known -aspect of the period from 1792 to 1822 is made up by Mawlay Sulayman's religious ideas and policy. To what extent was he reformist in his ideas? What was the real impact of the Wahhabi doctrine on the religious debate in Morocco, and what made the confrontation between Mawlay Sulayman and religious groups inevitable? These are some of the questions the thesis seeks to answer before moving on to discuss the Fes rebellion (1820-1822) which was really the last serious attempt by traditionalist groups to change the course of history to their advantage

Design and Development of a Tractor Mounted Sweet Potato Transplanting Machine

Transplanting is an important method of establishing field sweet potatoes. Design of a suitable transplanting machine depends on transplanting method. A design concept for the sweet potato transplanting machine was developed using Auto CAD R14. A prototype transplanter was designed, fabricated and field tested at the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, UPM, Serdang, Malaysia. The overall construction of the machine consists of the main chassis, power transmission system, transplanting pocket and handling system of the sweet potatoes vine cuttings. The machine was ground driven and mounted on the 3-point hitch linkage system of a mini or medium size tractor of 20-40 kW. Two operators were required in the transplanting operation; a driver for the tractor and an operator to feed the sweet potato seedlings manually. The operational activities for the machine include the preparation of planting furrow, placement of seedlings horizontally in the prepared furrow, covering of the seedlings and compacting the soil around the planted seedlings. The machine allowed all possible variations and component adjustments to ensure prompt and comprehensive field evaluation. The power requirement was about 8.9 kW for a single row machine. The machine was simple in design, easily manufactured locally and able to operate at high efficiency (77%). Forward speeds were significant parameter for transplanting and machine efficiency. These experimental results showed that first speed of 2km/hr together with planting depth of 20cm is the best among speeds and depths tested as it gave the lower number of missing plants. The sweet potato transplanting machine had an average capacity of 0.19 ha/hr at low speed (2km/hr) while the vegetable transplanter had about 0.09 ha/hr at the same speed. The expected yield for this machine should be greater than the yield produced vertically

Gases Reservoirs Fluid Phase Behavior

This chapter discusses the fundamentals of the phase behavior of hydrocarbon fluids. Real reservoir fluids contain many more than two, three, or four components; therefore, phase-composition data can no longer be represented with two, three or four coordinates. Instead, phase diagrams that give more limited information are used. The behavior of reservoir of a reservoir fluid during producing is determined by the shape of its phase diagram and the position of its critical point. Many of producing characteristic of each type of fluid will be discussed. Ensuing chapters will address the physical properties of these three natural gas reservoir fluids, with emphasis on retrograde gas condensate gas, dry gas, and wet gas

Approximated fixed points via completion

In this paper, using the concept of completion, we establish the existence of approximate fixed points for contracting set-valued mappings defined in a metric space not necessarily assumed to be complete. As a consequence, we obtain approximate versions of the famous results of the global Contraction Mapping Principle and Nadler Fixed Point Theorem without completeness

Relation of serum visfatin level and uterine artery Doppler to preeclampsia

Background: Preeclampsia (PE) is a significant cause of remarkable fetomaternal morbidity and mortality worldwide. Visfatin is 52 KDa novel adipokine, pre B cell colony enhancing factor (PBEF) which could be used as a biochemical marker predictor or a diagnostic tool for preeclampsia. Trans abdominal pulsed Doppler ultrasound (US) monitor the impedance to blood flow in the uterine arteries in pregnant females and those with preeclampsia. Visfatin has been implicated in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia with a limited contradictory. The aim of our study is to monitor the risky pregnant females through Visfatin level and transabdominal pulsed Doppler of the uterine artery.Methods: Assessment of the serum Visfatin levels in the maternal circulation of preeclamptic pregnant females wether mild or severe, and compared to those in the normal pregnant subjects as control through recruitment of cases of mild PE (n=40), severe PE (n=40), normal pregnant subjects (n=60) in a cross sectional study where the cases were of the patients hospitalized at El Shatby Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the control subjects were of referrals to the outpatient departments. Fasting blood samples were drawn, kept at -20 degree centigrades , enzyme linked immune sorbant assay (ELISA) Test was performed on them to determine the Visfatin level and recorded the uterine arteries pulsatility index through transabdominal doppler ultrasound. Lastly, the data were analysed using (F test) ANOVA statistical method.Results: Amongst the groups, Serum visfatin level was significantly higher in the severe preeclamptic group rather than the normal pregnant group and those with mild preeclampsia (p<0.001). Uterine artery pulsatility index was significantly higher in the severe preeclamptic group rather than the normal pregnant group and those with mild preeclampsia (p<0.001).Conclusions: Severe preeclamptic pregnant females were shown to represent higher circulating visfatin levels as one of the most recent biochemical markers of preeclampsia, higher uterine artery pulsatility index compared to normal pregnant and those with mild preeclamptic groups of women

Occupational Stress: Measuring its Impact on Employee Performance and Turnover

Stress is an emotional strain resulting from adverse circumstances, and currently stress seems to be the numinous sound that affects the performance of employee in the workplace.  Stress is not new in the physiological concepts, but it growing so fast that makes imperative for organizations and employees to accept this instinctive indicator.  Higher level of stress existed with no managerial concern for solution consequently lowering the employee performance, staking organizational reputation and loss of skilled employees.  These situations call for immediate concern that organizations can reduce the occupational stress levels of their employees by designing an effective stress management practices according to their expectations.  In that way, employees can feel that they are the most important assets of the organizations.  The purpose of study is to investigate the relevance of different factors of occupational stress such as workload, interpersonal relationships, conflict, and career development to overall employee performance.  It also examines the impact of stress to the job satisfaction and turnover levels of employee based on reviewed literatures.  Studies revealed that those stressors increases tremendously to employee performance, but voluminous empirical studies also found reverse.  This paper will provide a valuable understandings and awareness that can contribute to develop policies for increasing employee performance and mitigating turnover rate. Keywords: performance, occupational stress, turnove

Non- Newtonian Drag Reducing Flow Characteristics in Porous Media

In this paper, the properties affecting the flow behavior of a non-Newtonian drag reduction fluid through porous media were studied. The experimental work was carried out for the flow of pure water and dilute polyethylene oxide solution with concentrations C = 50, 100, 150, 200, and 250 ppm in a circular pipe with a 2.54 cm inside diameter filled with porous media (uniform size of plastic spheres with 5.5 mm in diameter). The experiments are utilized to show the effect of the variation of polyethylene oxide concentration on the pressure drop and friction factor by changing the flow rate and polyethylene oxide concentrations. To validate the experimental results, a comparison of pressure drop and friction factor for pure water is done with the Ergun model, which gives good agreement. The experiments show that the friction factor and the pressure drop are reduced by the increase in POE concentration. The drag reduction ratio increases with the increase in POE concentration and its effectiveness is higher at low velocities (between 0.012 and 0.068 m/s) than at higher velocities (from 0.068 to 0.157 m/s). A modified relationship was deduced as an extension of Ergun to describe the effect of POE concentrations as a drag reducing additive in the non-Newtonian fluid flow through a porous medium

Diversity techniques for a free-space optical communication system in correlated log-normal channels

International audiencePerformance analysis of free-space optical (FSO) communication systems in different channel conditions has gained significant attention in literature. Nevertheless, most existing studies consider uncorrelated channel conditions. An uncorrelated channel requires sufficient spacing between transmitters and limits the receiver field of view and link distance. However, this might not be feasible in all applications. Thereby, this paper studies repetition code (RC) and orthogonal space time block code (OSTBC) performance in correlated log-normal FSO channels using intensity modulation and direct detection. An approximate analytical expressions using moment generating function for the average bit error probability are derived. Our simulation results show that RCs are superior to OSTBCs in correlated channel conditions

Tioconazole and Chloroquine Act Synergistically to Combat Doxorubicin-Induced Toxicity via Inactivation of PI3K/AKT/mTOR Signaling Mediated ROS-Dependent Apoptosis and Autophagic Flux Inhibition in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells.

Cancer is a complex devastating disease with enormous treatment challenges, including chemo- and radiotherapeutic resistance. Combination therapy demonstrated a promising strategy to target hard-to-treat cancers and sensitize cancer cells to conventional anti-cancer drugs such as doxorubicin. This study aimed to establish molecular profiling and therapeutic efficacy assessment of chloroquine and/or tioconazole (TIC) combination with doxorubicin (DOX) as anew combination model in MCF-7 breast cancer. The drugs are tested against apoptotic/autophagic pathways and related redox status. Molecular docking revealed that chloroquine (CQ) and TIC could be potential PI3K and ATG4B pathway inhibitors. Combination therapy significantly inhibited cancer cell viability, PI3K/AkT/mTOR pathway, and tumor-supporting autophagic flux, however, induced apoptotic pathways and altered nuclear genotoxic feature. Our data revealed that the combination cocktail therapy markedly inhibited tumor proliferation marker (KI-67) and cell growth, along with the accumulation of autophagosomes and elevation of LC3-II and p62 levels indicated autophagic flux blockage and increased apoptosis. Additionally, CQ and/or TIC combination therapy with DOX exerts its activity on the redox balance of cancer cells mediated ROS-dependent apoptosis induction achieved by GPX3 suppression. Besides, Autophagy inhibition causes moderately upregulation in ATGs 5,7 redundant proteins strengthened combinations induced apoptosis, whereas inhibition of PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway with Beclin-1 upregulation leading to cytodestructive autophagy with overcome drug resistance effectively in curing cancer. Notably, the tumor growth inhibition and various antioxidant effects were observed in vivo. These results suggest CQ and/or TIC combination with DOX could act as effective cocktail therapy targeting autophagy and PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathways in MCF-7 breast cancer cells and hence, sensitizes cancer cells to doxorubicin treatment and combat its toxicity