Facets of certainty: A critique of the development of a fundamental cartesian notion

Descartes is usually seen as a thinker who does not employ and preconceived principles in his system without establishing them first through his method. Through an analysis of the development of his notion of certain knowledge, I highlight his reliance in the development of such a principles on principles that he borrows from scholastic philosophy. These principles are unjustified and unjustifiable through his method. I argue that, on Descartes\u27s own terms, this notion should fail. Indeed, this is what happens over the course of the one hundred and fifty years following the publication of Descartes\u27s Meditations. I provide the conclusion that Descartes ends up with a notion of certain knowledge of truth that is psychological rather than ontological and ask whether the loss of an ontological commitment to truth is related to his unjustified rejection of substantial forms

Empirical analysis of the UAE stock market volatility

Financial market volatility of developed economies have been studied extensively since the 1987 stock market crash as well as the volatility of the East Asian stock markets after the East Asian financial crisis. However the volatility characteristics of the financial markets in the Middle East are far from being thoroughly analysed despite their tremendous growth in recent years. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we investigate the volatility characteristics of the UAE stock markets measured by fat tail, volatility clustering, and leverage effects, in order to explore a parsimonious model for the UAE stock market and predict its future performance. Second, we use switching regime ARCH methodology to assess the impact of stock market openness to foreign investors on the market returns and we analyse its observed irregular performance using recently developed methodologies

The Mausoleums of Fatima Khatun and al-Ashraf Khalil

This thesis will conduct an architectural analysis of two nearly contemporary mausoleums situated on the northern tip of the Southern Cemetery of Cairo near the Sayyida Nafisa shrine. The Southern Cemetery is the oldest one, which stretches from the east at Muqattam hill to the south at Fustat. The mausoleums of the princess Fatima Khatun and al-Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil date to the late 13th century. Among the interesting aspects of the mausoleum of Fatima Khatun (Umm al-Salih), the wife of al-Mansur Qalawun, is its unique Maghribi style minaret. In addition, apart from his splendid mausoleum, al-Ashraf Khalil, Qalawun’s son, constructed other royal secular buildings in the Citadel. I relied on a number of primary and recent sources, notably the Comité Bulletins. This study also traces the efforts exerted by the Comité and contemporary projects to safeguard the monuments from the encroachment of secular buildings and the rising of the groundwater table. The area is privileged by its religious significance, its funerary function, and the historic imperial mausoleums. Considering its dense population and the dilapidated status from which the two Mamluk complexes have suffered, prompt action should be taken for a twofold purpose: to restore the missing parts of the cultural heritage as well as to encourage the residents to maintain it and raise their living standard at the same time

The Context of Global Software Development: Challenges, Best Practices and Benefits

Global Software Development (GSD) environment is based on a contractual relationship between client and vendor organizations in which a client outsources all or some part of its software development activities to a vendor. The vendor in return provides the agreed services in lieu of certain amount of remuneration. The main reasons to select the GSD technique include reduced cost, faster development and access to skilled manpower available across the world. Though GSD is emerging as an effective technique, but it suffers from many challenges like poor communication, lack of trust and coordination. These challenges pose serious risk to the smooth execution of the GSD projects. In the past decade, GSD has become an area of active research and a number of the researchers have worked on different aspects of it. In this paper, we present a critical review of the research studies conducted on GSD to highlight the challenges, best practices and benefits of GSD. Our findings reveal that much of the research in this area has been focused on addressing issues faced by client organizations, however, vendor side in the GSD relationship is much ignored due to which this field of study is still immature; hence, further research work is required to be undertaken to address the issues faced by the vendor organizations

Impact of Brand positioning strategies on consumer standpoint (A consumer’s Perception)

Brand positioning is consider to be the most sensitive element to take the brand to the sky or nowhere the marketers try hard to come up to the mark of the consumers because every consumer is different and have a different mindset and contains different perceptions and different value. This research is conducted to see an impact of brand positioning strategies on consumer’s perception. The research basically revolves around 3 strategies of positioning i.e. beneficial positioning, surrogate positioning (Psychological) , Competitive positioning the impact of these strategies being checked by showing 250 consumers random brands in television commercials which contains the above said positioning strategies the questionnaires has been designed in a way that tells the responsiveness of different consumers by watching the ads  of the brands and what they feel and what is there perception about the particular brand whether highly negative, negative, neutral, positive or highly positive. The outcome of the research revealed that surrogate positioning by the brands showed the highest positive response, while the other two positioning strategies came out more or less on the negative side in terms of consumer perception. The analysis technique used is one sample t test and the software used is SPSS. Keywords: Consumer Perception, Brand Positioning, Consumer Standpoint, Strategie

Kinetika Adsorpsi Pb(ii) dalam Air Limbah Laboratorium Kimia Menggunakan Sistem Kolom dengan Bioadsorben Kulit Kacang Tanah

Keberadaan logam berat dalam air limbah menimbulkan permasalahan yang serius bagi lingkungan. Usaha penanganannya telah banyak dilakukan dengan berbagai metoda. Metode yang relatif efektif dan efisien adalah metode adsorpsi. Penelitian ini bertujuan penyisihan logam Pb(II) dalam air limbah menggunakan bioadsorben kulit kacang tanah dengan sistem kolom. Pada rancangan percobaan, sebagai variabel tetap digunakan berat adsorben, yaitu sebesar 50 g, ukuran partikel 40 mesh dan volume adsorbat digunakan 10 liter, laju alir 7 liter/menit. Variabel bebas waktu adsorpsi 0; 10; 20; 30; 60; 90; 120; 150; 180; 210; 240 menit dan jenis adsorben: tanpa aktivasi, aktivasi fisik dan aktivasi kimia (H2SO4 1N dan NaOH 1N). Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa adsorpsi logam Pb(II) dipengaruhi oleh waktu dan aktivator. Model kinetika adsorpsi memenuhi kinetika pseudo orde dua dengan kapasitas adsorpsi kesetimbangan (qe) terjadi pada waktu 210 menit untuk tanpa aktivasi sebesar 2,387 mg/g, aktivasi fisika sebesar 1,896 mg/g, aktivasi H2SO4 1N 2,768 mg/g dan aktivasi NaOH 1N 2,991 mg/g. Persen masa penyisihan Pb(II) tertinggi untuk tanpa aktivasi 64,98%, aktivasi fisika 59,21%, aktivasi dengan H2SO4 86,02% dan aktivasi dengan NaOH 1N 96,57%

Assessment of diagnostic ultrasound for abdomen and pelvis service in Palestine towards national diagnostic reference levels for ultrasound reporting

Objective: The study was conducted to provide national diagnostic reference levels for ultrasound reporting. Materials and methods: The study carried out in radiology and medical imaging departments in the three sectors representing Palestinian health system, particularly inside governmental, nongovernmental and private health sectors. The sample size comprised 600 ultrasound (u/s) reports of abdomen and pelvis u/s procedures. U/S reports collected and followed in term of record name, record number, finding and all criteria followed in the worldwide report of American College of Radiology (ACR). Results: The Palestinian private health sector u/s report for pelvis and abdominal examinations correlates (P value=0.001) with the ACR standards compared to other Palestinian health sectors. Regarding to report structure sections, in the history and indication, our results show that this section was completely absent from the governmental sector reports. Moreover, the limitation section was absent from all governmental and NGO (u/s) reports, while existed in just 19% of private sector (u/s) reports. Likewise in conclusion section of report structure, the most noteworthy rate was again in the Palestinian private health sectors as 80% of their (u/s) reports. On contrary finding section, all reports in the sample were having this section. Finally in previous study sections of the report, our results indicated that the highest percentage was in private health sectors as 57% of their (u/s) reports. Latest in the relationship between the quality of the (u/s) report and health sector type that gave the reports, the results found the sort of health sector has a positive effect on the quality of the (u/s) report. Where the Palestinian private health sectors got the highest quality in writing reports of the ultrasound compared to other sectors. Conclusion: The Palestinian private health sectors have the highest quality u/s reports among Palestinian health sectors

Optical Asymmetric Modulation for VLC Systems

The explosive growth of connected devices and the increasing number of broadband users have led to an unprecedented growth in traffic demand. To this effect, the next generation wireless systems are envisioned to meet this growth and offer a potential data rate of 10 Gbps or more. In this context, an attractive solution to the current spectrum crunch issue is to exploit the visible light spectrum for the realization of high-speed commutation systems. However, this requires solutions to certain challenges relating to visible light communications (VLC), such as the stringent requirements of VLC-based intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD), which require signals to be real and unipolar. The present work proposes a novel power-domain multiplexing based optical asymmetric modulation (OAM) scheme for indoor VLC systems, which is particularly adapted to transmit high-order modulation signals using linear real and unipolar constellations that fit into the restrictions of IM/DD systems. It is shown that the proposed scheme provides improved system performance that outperforms alternative modulation schemes, at no extra complexity

Optical Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for Visible Light Communication

The proliferation of mobile Internet and connected devices, offering a variety of services at different levels of performance, represents a major challenge for the fifth generation wireless networks and beyond. This requires a paradigm shift towards the development of key enabling techniques for the next generation wireless networks. In this respect, visible light communication (VLC) has recently emerged as a new communication paradigm that is capable of providing ubiquitous connectivity by complementing radio frequency communications. One of the main challenges of VLC systems, however, is the low modulation bandwidth of the light-emitting-diodes, which is in the megahertz range. This article presents a promising technology, referred to as "optical- non-orthogonal multiple access (O-NOMA)", which is envisioned to address the key challenges in the next generation of wireless networks. We provide a detailed overview and analysis of the state-of-the-art integration of O-NOMA in VLC networks. Furthermore, we provide insights on the potential opportunities and challenges as well as some open research problems that are envisioned to pave the way for the future design and implementation of O-NOMA in VLC systems