Islamization of Contemporary Architecture: Shifting the Paradigm of Islamic Architecture

Islamic architecture is often thought as a history course and thus finds its material limited to the cataloguing and studying of legacies of successive empires or various geographic regions of the Islamic world. In practice, adherent professionals tend to reproduce high styles such as Umayyad, Abassid, Fatimid, Ottoman, etc., or recycle well known elements such as the minarets, courtyards, and mashrabiyyahs. This approach, endorsed by the present comprehensive Islamic revival, is believed to be the way to defend and revitalize the identity of Muslim societies that was initially affected by colonization and now is being offended by globalization. However, this approach often clashes with the contemporary trends in architecture that do not necessarily oppose the essence of Islamic architecture. Furthermore, it sometimes lead to an erroneous belief that consists of relating a priori forms to Islam and that clashes with the timeless and universal character of the Islamic religion. The key question to be asked then is, beyond this historicist view, what would be an “Islamic architec-ture” of nowadays that originates from the essence of Islam and that responds to contemporary conditions, needs, aspirations of present Muslim societies and individuals. To what extends can Islamic architecture bene-fits from modern progress and contemporary thought in resurrecting itself without loosing its essence. The hypothesis of the study is that, just as early Muslim architecture started from the adoption, use and re-use of early pre-Islamic architectures before reaching originality, this process, called Islamization, could also take place nowadays with the contemporary thought that is mostly developed in Western and non-Islamic environ-ments. Mechanisms in Islam that allowed the “absorption” of pre-existing civilizations should thus structure the islamization approach and serve the scholars and professionals to reach the new Islamic architecture. The objectives of the paper consist of counter-criticizing orientalists' views that overwhelm our libraries and references systems, and that consider the first stage of Islamic civilization, within which architecture is part, as a mere cut-and-paste process and, at best, a synthesis of these pre-Islamic heritages, and overcoming the prevailing historicist approach, and open new scopes for future generations to instate a new era of islamization that permits digesting the contemporary Western thoughts in a conscious, critical, and constructive way

Green and Sustainable Development for TVET in Asia

Green paradigm is emerging in Asia. In order to achieve sustainability, embracing green paradigm is critical. The growing significance of sustainability is having a major impact on business, industry, and society as a whole. Hence, preparing the future workforce for the coming green economy is a challenging task for many Asian countries especially in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in the post-2015 agenda. As a ground work, transforming TVET in Asia to meet the challenges of the green economy for the purpose of sustainability should begin now. The aim of this paper is to map the sustainable development in terms of green mindset, lifestyle, economy, education, training, employability and sustainability in selected Asian countries. A country's quantum leap or leap-frogging in sustainable economy is dependent of its transformation of human resources especially in TVET sector. Thus, TVET should be transformed to fit the requirements of the sustainable green paradigm. The results posit the country's policies, best practices, and challenges toward green economy in order to achieve sustainable development. Finally, the implication of green paradigm on TVET system in selected countries in the Asia Pacific will be discussed

A survey on drug related problems in cervical cancer patients receiving chemotherapy in Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria

A drug-related problem (DRP) is an event or circumstance involving drug therapy that actually or potentially interferes with desired outcome. The complexities in drug regimens used in cervical cancer chemotherapy has led to more serious problems. The aim of this study is to investigate DRPs in cervical cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. The study was a retrospective cross sectional study on patients receiving cervical cancer chemotherapy at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria (ABUTH). Patients’ medication charts were reviewed from July, 2015 to June, 2016. Data were collected using the Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe (PCNE) Classification of DRP V 6.20. A total of 224 DRPs cases were identified from 65 cervical cancer patients. The DRPs were mostly on treatment effectiveness (28.1%), adverse reaction (29.0%), and cost (26.8%), while the causes were majorly drug selection (28.1%) and dose selection (29.0%). The risk factors for the DRPs were found to be comorbidities and polypharmacy. In conclusion, DRPs were common among cervical cancer patients receiving chemotherapy at ABUTH. Pharmacist interventions to achieve a better therapeutic outcome are necessary.Keywords: Cervical cancer, chemotherapy, drug related problem, pharmacist, polypharmac

Spot deformation and replication in the two-dimensional Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction in water-in-oil microemulsion

In the limit of large diffusivity ratio, spot-like solutions in the two-dimensional Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction in water-in-oil microemulsion are studied. It is shown analytically that such spots undergo an instability as the diffusivity ratio is decreased. An instability threshold is derived. For spots of small radius, it is shown that this instability leads to a spot splitting into precisely two spots. For larger spots, it leads to deformation, fingering patterns and space-filling curves. Numerical simulations are shown to be in close agreement with the analytical predictions.Comment: To appear, PR

Bioactive molecule prediction using extreme gradient boosting

Following the explosive growth in chemical and biological data, the shift from traditional methods of drug discovery to computer-aided means has made data mining and machine learning methods integral parts of today's drug discovery process. In this paper, extreme gradient boosting (Xgboost), which is an ensemble of Classification and Regression Tree (CART) and a variant of the Gradient Boosting Machine, was investigated for the prediction of biological activity based on quantitative description of the compound's molecular structure. Seven datasets, well known in the literature were used in this paper and experimental results show that Xgboost can outperform machine learning algorithms like Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machines (LSVM), Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFN) and Naïve Bayes (NB) for the prediction of biological activities. In addition to its ability to detect minority activity classes in highly imbalanced datasets, it showed remarkable performance on both high and low diversity datasets

IN VITRO EFFECT OF ACETYLSALICYLIC ACID ON CALCIUM OXALATE CRYSTALLIZATION: AN APPROACH TO ANTILITHIASIS

Objective: In recent years, significant progress has been made in identifying and counting physico-chemical processes involved in urinary stone formation. The ability of urine to inhibit calcium oxalate crystallization is considered an important mechanism against stone formation. Several natural substances were tested to inhibit calcium oxalate crystallization. In the present study, we evaluate the effects of acetylsalicylic acid, also known as Aspirin, as an inhibitor of calcium oxalate crystallization in vitro.Methods: The nucleation and aggregation of calcium oxalate crystals were studied using turbidimetric 400-sec time course measurements of optic density at 620 nm after mixing solutions containing calcium chloride and sodium oxalate at room temperature, pH 5.7. The formation of crystals is induced by the addition of the oxalate to calcium solution. The effects on calcium oxalate crystal growth of acetylsalicylic acid with various concentrations were examined. The maximum increase of optic density in the course of time reflects maximum rate of formation of new particles. After reaching equilibrium, a progressive decrease of optic density with time is observed. Rate of aggregation is derived from the maximum decrease in optic density.Results: The results showed that if a concentration of acetylsalicylic acid is more than 1,66 mM both rate of formations of new particles and Rate of aggregation decreased (P<0.05).Conclusion: acetylsalicylic acid has a significant effect on nucleation as well as on crystal growth stage; consequently, it inhibits the crystal formation of calcium oxalate urinary lithiasis. Â

Susan Haas v. 3M Co

USDC for the District of New Jerse

Honeybee sting of the sclera: occular features, treatment, outcome and presumed pathogenesis

Ocular bee sting injury has caused several reactions in the eye but has rarely been reported among local African farmers, and Nigerians in particular. This case seeks to report the first ocular and external eye  reactions following a honey bee sting of the eye through the sclera, highlighting the treatment and outcome. Oral interview, clinical examination and external photographs were used to obtain and document findings. Medical treatment was instituted as soon as subject presented. There was complete inflammatory resolution within a week, normal vision and no evidence of stinger migration after four weeks of follow up. The wound site healed with ciliary staphyloma. The role of physical properties, immunological and genetics interplay and the presumed pathogenesis is further discussed. Health education on early presentation and avoidance of harmful traditional eye medications should be promoted among the farming populations in our communities, in order to prevent blinding complications Key words: Sclera bee sting, features, treatment, outcome, presumed pathogenesi